Utilizing innovative ethnographic research, Swept-Up Lives challenges conventional accounts of urban homelessness in the contemporary city to trace the complex and varied attempts that have been instituted to care for homeless people. It presents innovative ethnographic research which suggests a shift in perspective in the analysis and understanding of homelessness in the city. It emphasizes the ethical and emotional geographies of care embodied and performed within homeless services spaces. It suggests that different ‘scenes’ of homelessness develop in different places due to varied historical, political, and cultural responses to the problems faced by homeless people.