Photographs by Ed Hamlin at Believe Fotografie

From the Blog

Feb
05

On The Street

Posted by Ed Hamlin on February 5th, 2012 at 1:35 am

During last fall after my early morning physical therapy session I would hang out in the down town Riverside, so I could shoot some street portraits. I would park where I would have to pay for parking, so the short walk to the main street area took me past the library. I knew the homeless use the certain areas to sleep because of the warm concrete walls. I was surprised that this guy was still sleeping when I came around the corner. Riverside has taken up a similar policy to LA. You can use locations around public buildings but you can occupy the space until after the business closes it’s doors and you have to leave before they open up for business. If you don’t follow the terms then they write a ticket or worse arrest you.

 
Helping the homeless is not the simple problem of find a job and help them with rent for a month or two. The solution is much more complex. There may be similarities of how the came to their current circumstances, yet there are complexities to how they became displaced. Consider this information.
Since 2007, the annual number of people using homeless shelters in principal cities has decreased 17
percent (from 1.22 million to 1.02 million), and the annual number of people using homeless shelters in
suburban and rural areas has increased 57 percent (from 367,000 to 576,000).

What would you conclude by the information? What would you conclude by the numbers? This is just the surface of information contained in a 207 page U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s report to congress. The issue is there are approximately 1.5 million homeless peopleon any given night, and about one third are on the streets. I have recently seen commercials about teens and how on any given night there are 2 million homeless teens. I am not sure how they have come to the conclusion, yet I would conclude the number is fairly accurate.

The issue is how can we reduce the number of people that are homeless? If six out of ten of the homeless are in some type of sheltered program, why can’t it be nine out of ten are sheltered? On the street looks at the contributing events that lead up to becoming homeless, surviving On The Street,  and the problems returning to a life off the streets.

 
Helping the homeless is not the simple problem of find a job and help them with rent for a month or two. The solution is much more complex. There may be similarities of how the came to their current circumstances, yet there are complexities to how they became displaced. Consider this information.
 

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