Alcohol problems are both a symptom and a cause for many olderhomeless men. Treatment programs for this problem havesuffered massive cuts. I found these men in this ditch and at first thought they were injured in a bomb blast or something -- but they…
Homeless squatters lived in this old power plant for some time before police discovered and evicted them. People who no longer had families formed their own, gathering together in abandoned buildings to assist each other. Sacramento, California…
Many homeless people stay in rescue missions. This mission in Northern California requires residents of the shelter to listen to the preaching of the gospel before they can eat or bed down foro the night. Oroville, California 1989.
Some workers from the north went to Houston and got minimum wage jobs. But like new Jim from Akron, Ohio, he could not afford rent abd stayed under a bridge with partner, old Jim. Houston, Texas 1983.
Boxcars are not easy rides to coem by for new hobos -- and any platform or ledge sufficed as the newly unemployed moved around the nation. Somewhee in the desert near Salt Lake City, Utah 1982.
As the journey of the newly unemployed continued in the 1980's, many sunk into further hopelessness -- and some resosrted to modes of travel many thought vanishe din the 1930's depression. Don, who owned a small business and lost it, wound up on the…
Some institutions, such as churches, have been kind-hearted about the growinghomeless population, especially among older women. This church in Raleigh, North Carolina regularly lets people sleep int the doorway and often times offers tehm food, too. …
As the 1980's wore on, more and more homelss women were seen on American streets. High rents drove Rose out of her apartmnet, and she slept in a doorway, surviving on rescue mission food and by begging from people leaving a nearby restaurant.
Unemployment took its toll onplans fro Bob and Cora. They are engaed to be married but have dlayed the weddign because neither can find dwork. They live under a bridge along the Sacramento River. - Sacramento, California 1987
Great changes began in the American economy at the beginning of the 1980's. Many large factories and steel mills were permanently closed, casting tens of thousands of middle class Americans out of work. These people became the new underclass.…