Looking Up at the Bottom Line: The Struggle for the Living Wage

Remarkable! An energizing, engaging book that can lead to the end of homelessness for over 1,000,000 minimum wage workers. This book takes off where all the other minimum wage, living wage books end.

Michael Stoops
National Civil Rights Organizer for the
National Coalition for the Homeless

"... the only book on the subject that combines in such depth both personal stories of low wage workers and their families, on the one hand, and analytic arguments about the costs and benefits of living wages, on the other. The idea of indexing wages to housing costs just may be the right way to think about this."

Robert Pollin
Author of The Living Wage: Building a Fair Economy

Troxell's accounts of the homeless point to a profound break down in our culture - a society that grows more rootless and disconnected with each passing year. After reading this book your next experience at a highway intersection will be radically changed. The bedraggled figure holding a cardboard sign will not be a complete stranger. You won't be looking at a bum; you'll be seeing another human being and into the brokenness of our culture.

Tom Spencer
CEO Austin Area Interreligious Ministries

Compassion means to suffer (pati) with (com) another. To suffer with! Unfortunately in today's world the idea of compassion is confused with the liberal notion of charity as opposed to a genuine call to justice. Richard Troxell has shared and taken on the pain of others and battled like a great warrior the institutional mindset that prevents humans from simply doing what is right.

Alan Graham
President Mobile Loaves & Fishes

Finally, someone with some common sense! Troxell lays out a plan that will end homelessness for over 1,000,000 minimum wage workers- without costing tax payers a dime. Plus, this is a great read - a compelling activist's tell.

Jim Hightower
Radio commentator and editor of The Hightower Lowdown

... the inspiration and key to Bringing America Home for millions of people through the Universal Living Wage - by indexing employment income to housing costs.

Sue Watlov Phillips, M.A., C.S.P.
Executive director of Elim Transitional Housing
Founder Minnesota and National Coalition for the Homeless

Troxell's outstanding advocacy and efforts on behalf of the homeless are legend and truly appreciated by those he helps and those who admire his selfless work.

Kirk Watson
Texas State Senator , District 14

Richard has been striving to end homelessness since he first saw it come into existence as a mortgage foreclosure preventionist in Philadelphia in the 1980s.
Today, he is the creator and Director of Legal Aid for the Homeless where he has daily interaction with the disabled homeless citizens of Austin, Texas. He is President and founder of House the Homeless, Inc. which he established in 1989.  HtH is comprised of homeless and formerly homeless citizens struggling to protect their civil rights and find solutions that will end homelessness in their lifetime.
Currently, he sits on the Board of the National Coalition for the Homeless. As a member of the Executive Committee, he is the Coordinator of the Livable Incomes Committee. His work is culminating in his drive to "fix the Federal Minimum Wage" as the National Chairman of the Universal Living Wage Campaign.  Using existing government guidelines, he has designed a single National formula that ensures that if a person works 40 hours in a week they will be able to afford basic food, clothing, and shelter (utilities included), no matter where that work is done throughout the United States.
Richard is also the TX Civil Rights Coordinator for the National Coalition for the Homeless.
In 2009, recognizing that our Cities Continuum of Care formats are unable to act as designed, with people leaving the streets, entering shelters and getting stuck in transitional housing being unable to re-enter the workforce or leave financially supported housing because neither the Federal minimum Wage nor the SSI stipend will sustain them, he mobilized the city of Austin and held a best practices Forum. Focusing on the work and education components, he involved House the Homeless, Mobile Loaves and Fishes, Ending Community Homeless Organization, ECHO and the Texas Homeless Network.