Regardless of where you live in the United States, you may have noticed a change in your community. Perhaps it's a dozen tents below a freeway overpass where there were once only one or two, or cars in your neighborhood crammed with belongings, the windows covered with blankets and cloth. You might notice more people sleeping rough on the steps of the nearby church or the line for free food at the local mission stretching around the block. That's because the country is in the grips of a growing homelessness crisis. But as everybody from governors and mayors to neighborhood councils debate what can be done, there is a group of people often missing from the conversation: the people experiencing homelessness. So when we at Times Opinion started discussing a potential project on homelessness, we set about putting it together in an entirely different way. We made hundreds of paper surveys and handed them out or mailed them across the country. We asked people to document their lives, with disposable cameras and with cellphones. And though we tapped some of the sharpest journalists and writers on the subject, they went into the field with the explicit goal of putting the voices of people experiencing homelessness at the forefront of their work. That's who you'll hear the most from in this story: the people who are living through record levels of homelessness, telling us in their own words what they see, what they want and what they would do if they were in charge. We've been reporting for over six months, but I still remember getting back the first batch of handwritten surveys. They were filled out by people in Los Angeles living in their cars; some had been homeless for years, others had newly lost their housing. One of our survey questions asked how their lives had changed since they became homeless. "I stopped reading books," one woman responded. I was bowled over when I came across her answer, and it has stayed with me even now, after I've read and listened to dozens of heartbreaking, harrowing and infuriating accounts. Her simple response encapsulates the humanity we often strip from people experiencing homelessness in our perception of them, as well as the indignity of what it means to live without a home. This project has so many moments like that one. Although I've read the headlines and know the statistics, hearing directly from people actually living through this crisis has fundamentally changed how I think about homelessness. The sooner we hear what they have to say — and see their opinions not just as valuable but perhaps the most valuable in the volatile debates on homelessness — the sooner this country can find its way out of this. Read the full project.
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Wednesday, February 21, 2024
Opinion Today: Voices from inside America’s homelessness crisis
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