America’s Hidden Homeless: Invisible People on the Streets | Poverty in USA Documentary

probably one of my unconscious driving forces is i'm trying to solve homelessness so i don't end up on the streets i started something called invisiblepeople.tv where i travel the country empowering homeless people to tell their own stories part of being homeless is being lonely we had a house at one point we had everything and it fell apart when i was about ready to become homeless did you see that coming the number one thing that i want people to know about homelessness is we can solve it [Music] so rick we're here right at the mouth of a tunnel vegas you say this is your summer home yeah how long have you been out here homeless uh i've been in and out of these tunnels for six years wow how do you survive panhandling washing windows pumping gas odd jobs here and there that's basically about it you know i go out i try to earn a little change i can instead of just standing around on the corner somewhere or standing around just chasing people there you give me some change which is why i've been able to survive so long on this block actually the businesses and the people around here in this little neighborhood they haven't just ran me off or you know they've allowed me to survive here you know basically so what's your future like well there was a point in time where i thought i didn't want one didn't have one you know well a lot of that's changed in the last well last year if you had three wishes what would they be wow be self-sustaining for one thing where i could be able to just go ahead and do the move i want to move and be able to sustain myself and not have to rely on uh family or whoever to help me right now that's really about it i mean uh far as far as anything else recently i've been able to accomplish a lot well thank you very much for talking to me [Music] is [Music] last night we were walking by and a girl probably in her 20s maybe younger because the streets age you and she's living like underneath that overturned couch over there she's crawled up in there she was so skinny it was more than your just normal uh male nourishment she's definitely at risk and this is america [Music] how are you cool thank you have a good day i started something called invisiblepeople.tv where i travel the country empowering homeless people to tell their own stories whatever you say raw and unedited you don't have to do it it goes on a website called invisiblepeople.tv now how long have you been out on the streets this is my first day today is my 18th birthday [Music] we have a very serious problem in recognizing homelessness in this country people have grown up in america thinking homelessness is part of the landscape and we don't expect that it's solvable [Music] how long you guys been out here too long what's too long what mark is doing with invisible people is he's like hey they're still here there's still people here whoa over here under this bridge and he's this alarm bell that i hope he keeps ringing that alarm until there's nobody left [Music] continue 0.3 miles then turn left on south 300 west thanks mildred this is homeless i mean 29 a night 30 a night yeah you know what i mean this looks like one of the better hotels yeah yeah this is the best one yeah at that price yeah now these guys are a married couple with five kids wow she works hey how are you fine wow look at all you guys is there any way to get some more lights or oh yeah um [Music] just because cameras are just so bad with low light cool gene yes we're here in a weekly rate hotel you're here with your five kids and your husband yes you're homeless yes tell me about it i consider anywhere that i'm with my children our home so i try not to use the word homeless um but we've been here about six months uh we had a house at one point we had vehicles we had everything and it kind of just it fell apart and it's a very humbling experience i lost my job i couldn't find another one was living off of savings um we lost our house because of it we moved here you're working now right oh yeah i work at the mcdonald's in winsville which is something i thought i'd never do but um it's a full-time job and it gets us by but it doesn't get us by if i miss a day we're pretty much sol what does it feel like as a mom raising five kids in a small room especially after coming having your own home i know but at one point when this is all happening you feel like a failure and then you think you know what there are still people worse off than you there are people who are living under bridges so i'm very grateful if you had three wishes what would they be a home for them to run around like they used to play in the yard and just a steady good job that's it that's all i want well thank you very much for talking to me thank you [Music] this is um you believe and you just feel their pain you know [Music] hi youtube my name is mark many people know me as hardly normal on twitter so today is invisiblepeople.tv day on youtube oh my gosh i am so grateful and so excited because today we're going to scream real loud about homelessness and poverty and actually make youtube can be a full-time job many big youtubers spend a day responding to comments after upload there's a thousand comments just on this one i mean every video is been getting commented on so here's about gene that we interviewed there really needs to be more opportunities made for these people everything she's talking about is true that's why america sucks the economy on your head and doesn't care if you lose your home or job in europe people care about one another and you sales have the same stuff in europe actually over here in scotland people are wads no one told her to have five kids before you start feeling sorry for her remember she did this to herself take her kids away and put them in foster care and sterilize her people like her ruin society you don't engage extreme ignorance because those people are never going to change their mind anyways all they're looking for is conflict and it's a hard one to do because sometimes i get pissed you know we spend billions of dollars killing people in war including our own and this woman doesn't have a home for her children and job not paying minimum wage gives you something to think about next time you complain about something trivial my heart goes out to her and her family see i mean a lot of people are supportive there's um and they're talking to each other low estimate 1.5 million people watched a homeless video that would never roll down their window at an exit ramp and said what's your story [Music] mark's always been good at taking an idea and actually making it happen and uh and especially making an idea happen in the context of where it can go technology and social media social networking they were right at the start i mean twitter was barely getting out the gate and people are still trying to figure out what it was and mark's ability to ride the wave of this and and really get in at the ground floor was something that was uh quite remarkable he is a homelessness activist and his site you can find him online at invisiblepeople.tv blog uh happy to welcome mark horvath how are you just struck by how good he was at this whole social media thing which you know i had maybe 25 friends on facebook or something at the time social media is a big giant cocktail party social media is really real life it just allows instant online collaboration with people that i never would have met in social media it's frequently meeting an old friend for the first time this is the first time i've actually gotten to touch this guy but we've learned about each other through pictures through words and little teaspoons of information on twitter he's an old friend we know all these people all over the world many of them neither of us have ever met with their old friends awesome so nice to meet you you actually look like your avatar you do a couple real serious crisis happened in my life i lost my confidence i stopped being myself and social media has given me back that confidence and this is my friend rd this is a person who takes invisible people and makes them incredibly visible this is a human experience i might be using technology but i'm still in the real world when i started honest to god i said nobody's going to watch nobody's going to listen because it's like the late night tv with the kids with the flies on their face and then it's the people of social media who started listening watching looking supporting retweeting engaging and and really adopting the homeless cause through invisiblepeople.tv [Music] well you're cleaning you want me finish cleaning no okay i offered and you don't interrupt the mom when she's cleaning so did you ever think i was gonna turn out to be a nice guy no not because i was i was pretty rotten as a kid huh well up to nine you were nights but after nine deer or the devil on where's there's not much of me left down here anymore i don't think remnants of uh a crazy rock band room for many years you know my band's practice down here i sold drugs out of here we would practice eight hours a day maybe more but also drink vodka eight hours a day maybe more you know she says they didn't know but they knew what do you need you need me to get out of the way i'm good at that 1984 is when you had the stroke they said i couldn't talk but i got it back you told them screw you i'm a strong woman yeah you know what did you think when i was about ready to become homeless did you see that coming oh yes the reason i was first homeless was 20 years of drugs 300 day drug habit i had to feed and i sold pictures of my iguana to tourists on hollywood boulevard hopeless discouraged you know gosh what how did i get here how am i going to get out of here by this time i had been so wasted on drugs i had mental illness i walked the san fernando valley thinking i was jesus christ and i called home for bible references and that scared the guacamole out of my stepfather and mom you allowed me one collect phone call a day yeah which i would call and i would use it to manipulate you to send me money which is why i you know everybody manipulates and i am so conscious of it and i think it's because of that particular time roger told me he will get all better or he would die and i i i thought um almost killed me yeah yeah oh i'm sorry that's one of my regrets is what did did to you i but um [Music] probably one of my unconscious driving forces is i'm trying to solve homelessness within the next five ten years so i don't end up on the streets [Music] [Music] what's your name caleb hey caleb yeah caleb we're here in ann arbor michigan at a tent city that people came up with camp take notice tell me about you and living here homeless in this tent city camp take notice um is uh based on the model that i lived inside of when i was in seattle tent city three and four um and while i was out there i i became i fell in love with what the tent community did for a population of people that don't usually have uh a peer group a friend network now um how did you end up homeless in seattle um so in my 20s i was a paramedic and my my malfunction is major depressive disorder ended up losing my job because of because of absentee days because of the depression and when i lost that job i became ashamed and embarrassed of my dependent status and i didn't want to be around friends or family locally in that condition i didn't want people to see me that way so i decided uh that if i moved at a distance i could be dysfunctional where nobody knew who i was you found community in a tent city yeah it's been one of the great surprises of my life to to discover that a group of people as broken and dysfunctional as the homeless can actually come together and work on common issues we'll get people who've heard this is out here and want to come check it out or their first time they come out here they're wasted drunk you know they're like listen you know we don't mind having you here but you can't be here drunk so go sober up and come back and it's security's job to escort them out when they get in that condition we take turns with it it's not always the same people that our security you know everyone has to take a turn doing it and do you feel so good i do yeah but i come from a pretty violent background where i'm gonna feel safe just about anywhere so [Applause] i love this model but this is a slap in the face of homeless services if there was homeless services that provided shelter and care you guys wouldn't be living in a tent well there is there is homeless services for somebody as soon as they start to get overloaded and overbooked uh if you're younger healthier you have any source of income anything going on whatsoever they're quick to shuttle you out the door in the process of throwing you out of the homeless shelter um they let you know about the uh tent city you know that's one of the options that they point out to you what we're experiencing now is a heightened degree of compassion fatigue towards homeless individuals at the same time it's becoming more and more a part of our everyday lives it's now something that you're going to see at the end of your street it's going to be someone that you know from your church or your synagogue or your school [Music] so we need to really understand it as a country because not only are we responsible and accountable but we really need to recognize this as who we are [Music] [Music] there's a three to four month window for a person who is newly homeless that you have to reach them and turn around their situation before they start to put on that survival mentality because you think differently when survival is your primary focus and usually when you go down in this situation it's easy for you to get depressed because you have so much a lonely time and you're unemployed and you're running into people and you've seen people seem to try to look down on you but i think the most important thing is that if you don't get so down that you you give up and you look down on yourself no jobs in the state of michigan it's hard out here man well then you get people who treat uh the homeless people as if they got uh leprosy and uh it's like we're uh third class citizens and uh it's very hurtful you know very hurtful what we do observing people who are poor is we tend to attribute their poverty to something about them that created it rather than there's just an economic difference and so we build a system of support that is based on character improvement to actually fix an economic disparity unless we see that there but for the grace of god go eye it's a very a tough bridge to span lakeisha it's okay it's okay yeah you're here in a homeless shelter a rotating homeless shelter let me look in there it's a different experience i i'll let you look in a bit let me see i'll let you watch it and when we're done how's that i was scared at first but as i got to know and grow with more people less than that predicament as i am i changed a lot i see a lot of things out of perspective of life in my life and she's showing me much support and nothing everything i'll see now look now if you had three wishes what would they be home school and a job thank you very much for talking [Music] [Music] julie hi jill i know you we're gonna go around work on that hi man [Music] jamir we're in chicago you're homeless tell me about it part of being homeless is being lonely and that's one of the worst feelings in the world for me you know and i can say for every anyone else how long were you out on the streets um i've been homeless since i was 13. me being homeless you know um really gave me a wake-up call to life you know i'm a senior in high school still you know i'm gonna push it out graduate may 27th good friends and um that being homeless and going to school build character shows your character you know show who you are have a strong mind out here you know these streets ain't nothing to play with in chicago and [Music] [Music] hey everybody here we are in utah at salt lake city and this is lloyd pendleton and he's the director of the state's homeless tax force task force task force taft bad boxing people yeah that'd be a whole different interview [Music] i've been fighting my own homelessness and it's because of you guys that i'm not only still surviving and not homeless but i'm able to help other homeless people what do i have i'm not really attached to any organization so it's only social media that has made my activism have any influence or power yeah let me get out my camera i got one for each of you all right dude i love that hat cool all right thanks very much you got it see you guys later nice to meet you how are you my friend oh hello there i haven't seen you in a while yeah how about that where you've been keeping yourself i've been traveling the country helping homeless people john has been out here for how many years since maybe late 96 early 97 well i started a video blog to help homeless and you're the very first person i highlighted walking down hollywood boulevard is really very moving to me because i remember where i came from you know i lived homeless i was john i slept on this boulevard when i lived in this park everything i owned i could fit in this backpack right here and i carried a kitchen knife which i thought i would use for survival but more often than not i sat on this very park bench contemplating suicide i kept on getting kicked out of the homeless shelter i was at on hollywood boulevard and i saw a flyer for this church and it said stand on hollywood and ivar and they pick you up well the bus just drove right by me so the next week i stood out there with a bible and flagged down the bus and all of a sudden there's a guy running behind our bus with an iguana on his shoulder chasing down our bus saying i want to come for the free food that night he was raw he was rough living homeless under a bench came into our program live in this building right here went through the recovery process by this time i'd known god was real i had experienced god and i started coming here to weekly services and basically lived here for eight years what's up guys busy day yeah [Music] if it wasn't for the dream center just like today i say you know if it wasn't for the people on social media i would be dead well if it wasn't for the dream center [Music] i started a christian rock band called under the influence [Music] it's the first time that rock club ever had 400 men of god in it here's this guy up there and he's just kind of coming off drugs at church playing the drums and still kind of trying to get himself together but i thought you know what those are the kind of people that need to be playing drums in church not the perfect but the people that are broken [Music] thank you [Applause] [Music] after i got off the streets i went and started working in the christian world with televangelists what today is kingdom builder sunday and by being a kingdom builder it's just a step in faith it's not about money it's a step of faith that as you help god build his kingdom he's going to build your home and i started buying expensive watches and suits and i said oh my gosh this is it i've arrived i'm going to buy a house and this thing called the economy hit where's your house the one with the pool i mean this is a dream that probably was never meant to be you know the white picket fence dream going through foreclosure is the worst thing that can happen to anybody you feel dirty there's been two major crisis in my life and one was homelessness and one was losing my house but now looking back it was one of the best things that ever happened to me because it took me out of pretending that i was a christian to actually somebody that was a follower of jesus where i am at today is that i don't want to listen to some guy on sunday morning talk about jesus i want to be out on the streets and loving on people and filling needs he's gone he's gone he's gone he's out hiding since the visible people's just growing there's no salary there's no way that it can support me at this time so i work a full-time job at a homeless services in los angeles whoa whoa whoa whoa that's him right right up there anything else well we're close we're closest we've been in three years to get you into housing i was a street outreach worker and our mission was to identify people that were particularly vulnerable because of their mental illness or addiction and if we felt they might be a danger to people we would take them to bellevue hospital two or three weeks after the hospitalization that same person would be back on the street the repetition of that cycle began to be very disturbing and began to raise a number of questions of like what are we doing hey how are you good did you find work ah not yet not yet yeah that person just spent 30 days in the hospital at 1500 a day we could have bought them a condo you know certainly paid the rent for a long time how are you i'm here i'm living breathing yeah so you you want to go to rehab so we'll start working on that that's exactly what i want to do dude i've been on the street for almost five years bro i want i want to get out of here man and if i'm out here i can't do it right easy access oh yeah i know who wants to do homeless sober right it's hard to do yeah it's hard to do almost over i know it well i'll see you tonight okay bro stay safe you okay i just want to get off the streets i want you off the streets we've created a subculture that takes care of homelessness but not really solving the fundamental problem which was building affordable housing uh increasing the minimum wage to a livable wage and that's probably why we have more homeless people falling out of the mainstream way way right there by the door that's a line where'd you find what corner glendale and uh lost village okay i'll talk to her so how can i help you um i don't know i'm homeless i don't know yeah you have you eaten no okay right now okay christina come here please please okay housing is the most important thing to a homeless person regardless of mental illness or addiction or anything else and once they're housed they'll consider maybe treatment maybe reconnecting with family maybe looking for a job but the first response was always housing [Applause] [Music] [Music] thank you okay all right good afternoon everybody this picture was taken in 2000 these people don't look that sick do they they don't look like they're gonna die really soon all right only two of them are still alive right now so that's how lethal homelessness is and that's what everyone in this room is gonna do everything we can to stop the vulnerability index is a survey that's administered to people who are sleeping outside or in the shelters it takes about 10 minutes and it finds out how long they've been out there what health conditions they have that are associated in the research with a high mortality risk we get their name date of birth social security number and their picture so that's what we're looking for the people on the streets with the highest risk of dying who've been there the longest and it's really important that you sincerely communicate to people this isn't mandatory you don't have to do this if you change your mind halfway through we'll stop and that nothing bad will happen all right need your team together we don't want you to lose anybody make sure you write down myself and dennis's cell phone number if you get lost if something bad happens or if you're lonely give us a call hi everybody uh here it is four in the morning in albuquerque new mexico and i'm with mayor barry i was just really impressed with your leadership and you for being the champion to make this all happen can you tell me about it well when you can get a community like this to come together to really go out and try to alleviate the human suffering side we're just really proud that we got an opportunity to get the community together do something positive here good morning going out and doing this with the end goal of housing 75 people and that's amazing my name is mark honored to meet you how long have been out on the streets not including the time i was spent in jail in prison about nine and a half years uh where do you sleep more frequently camp okay i don't go to the shelters unless i have to you've never been there so you don't know i haven't been here but i i've been in shelters all around the country um violent attacks against me or yeah you're on the streets oh yeah everybody has i know it's sad one time when i got passed out he tried to kill me wow hi we're doing a vulnerability index to try to uh help people with uh the homeless population uh health and housing i need housing awesome do you want to do a vulnerability index i'm vulnerable uh how long have you been out on the streets i'd say off and on for about 10 years okay uh and you know that's the shoes being treated oh no but i'm losing my mind out here slowly i'm pretty sure were you in the military yes i was and discharge honorable jail i've been to jail prison never uh foster care were you in foster care yeah i was in an orphanage for the first 10 years of my life how do you survive what's the day like on the streets it's cold outside try to stay as warm as you can cling to the sun the sun's like your blanket you're been in the emergency room four times in the last year uh what were the reasons confrontations violent confrontations you know move along or get get off my property or all kinds of different reasons you know if you had three wishes what would they be oh one of them would be uh to have a place to stay a place to live i miss being domestic you know i'm kind of losing that feeling as time goes by and i'm kind of worried about that i don't want to be like some of some of these people out here they've been out here for years and they're getting used to it last year there was this big event the 1287. there's 1287 homeless people in this area and a group of homeless people showed up and just gentlemen in the blue first so i decided to call them down and i interviewed them live you want to come down and speak come on and your name is my name is judy i'll leave it at that i've been homeless for three months and i have health problems and i'm fighting real hard i'm out in the heat 24 7. and nowhere to go um sometimes i feel like i need a nap and there's nowhere to go um i'm a good person i have a kind heart i help everyone i just wanted people to know my story i bet you're all my life thank you wow but the one that really got me was david david is just this kind man and i remember talking to him last year i didn't know david was homeless i thought he was but i wasn't quite sure i sat next to him and i just started talking i had my yankees hat on and i think we were trying to talk baseball or something you know and just started a conversation he said i'd like to help but i just don't know what to do well i really didn't have a big game plan for him but i just said i just said well you know there's no place to go for breakfast at home seven hills wouldn't open on saturdays and i said maybe you could start a breakfast or something that morning henry took him to breakfast and a relationship developed when it rains i start thinking oh my goodness what's david up to i hope he's okay and uh david's no longer homeless i went from sleeping in a camp in a tent [Music] it's kind of weird this is a guy because i came and visited here that's been housed and i don't know how to react i don't know you know so oh don this is mark hey man this is don house honor to meet you come on in everybody don you have to get another picture with katelyn come on i didn't do anything there you go yeah you did one two three just because we get someone off the street and into a home doesn't mean that everything's fine and dandy i think sometimes in our culture especially today we want to fix it and getting a homeless person into a house solves the condition but it doesn't really address the whole person and i think mark has really challenged me to think long term saying you know how do we care for this person who is in a house now a year later [Music] [Music] this didn't exist last year and i think with mark's visit provided really kind of a catalyst and a rally point for our community [Music] [Music] we harvested yesterday almost 300 pounds of produce for the soup kitchen and for their distribution there [Music] [Music] let me see he's a little shorter let me go to oh look at that look at that looking good rolling hi everybody here we are in pittsburgh and i'm with dr jim withers and this is truly an honor because he goes out on the streets he does the house calls to homeless people swallow those you don't shoot them okay oh i don't know because it'll make your mouth go numb all right but it's good i'll take one of these three times yeah yeah swallow it and it'll help your cough if you feel worse you get a hold of us okay or go to the hospital yeah okay we're out here with dr jim and you have a cold i had to call for two weeks it's it's tough man being sick out here but i'm okay i i i try to do the best i can if you had three wishes what would they be three wishes number one get up off these streets number two to have all my kids living right now number three for me to be able to help somebody else that's homeless thank you thank you there's a real disconnect between our brothers and sisters who are sleeping on the streets or in these very difficult conditions and the whole society they don't know who to turn to they don't have insurance and they get rejected by the health system they don't actually believe anyone cares enough so they they've given up it's time for us to get out of the hospital get out of wherever we're in to start talking to people listening to them and then solving problems with them you have to deal with the reality of someone else not have them come to your reality [Music] so [Music] dale yes sir how are you oh my gosh you look better than last year if you think about the kind of community you want to live in and the kind of community you want to raise your children in and who we are as a people in terms of do we care for each other do we care for the weakest or the poorest or the uh most vulnerable among us or not and what does that say about our own character if i give you the money we go buy me a couple of hamburgers and mcdonald's you just need hamburgers yes that's all i need something anything to drink no i don't okay i'll be right back it's not me are you sure i'm positive you asked the right guy [Music] i started off today uh with some tweets you know saying thank you to ford and pepsi and matthew barnett and a hundred thousand homes and i i start getting you know very teary-eyed and grateful you know to all of you as i say thank you and then i i end it with all the homeless people that we met they're still out on history it's almost [Music] wild white moonlit night it takes a little shine it takes a little time to design the stars around [Music] [Music] 11 686 miles [Music] what a long strange trip it's been [Music] the number one thing that i want people to know about homelessness is we can solve it [Music] robert we're here in sacramento you're homeless living in a tent city tell me about it june 15 2007 i worked for a property management for four and a half years came with housing i had 72 hours to get off the property and i became homeless i never thought i'd end up on skid row out here sleeping on docks in the back of businesses and everything but that's what i guess i'm gonna have to do i don't know um if you had three wishes what would they be for everybody to have a place to stay where we can gather our thoughts and think about what we can do if anybody's listening that's all it's not about me it's about us it's not about safe ground it's not about it running around like a terrorist clandestine camping and all that stuff it's not about that this isn't our lifestyle we just want a place to go thank you very much for talking to me [Music] wild white moonlit night it takes a little shine it takes a little time to design the stars [Music] stretch of grass they're on a church run long wrestling and polling closer getting a little closer now getting a little closer now [Music] while [Music] the first shadow fell on you promise to chase it to the new [Music] there is no running out of time [Music] something better in me [Music] it takes a little time it takes a little shine at night to find the light wild white at home is brought to you in part by the because foundation and because films finding innovative solutions to complex social problems [Music] the pierce family foundation building the capacity of nonprofit organizations to help meet the needs of people experiencing homelessness the irving harris foundation the exelon corporation and generous donations from friends and supporters to order your dvd or blu-ray of at home or to host a community screening please visit at homedocumentary.org store or call 773-728-8489 [Music] you

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Length: 56min 50sec (3410 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 02 2022