Welcome

Today’s economy is tough for the average American. There’s no doubt that more people are struggling to get by today than at any time in the last seven decades. We have seen it on the news and lived it every day for the last year and a half: people losing their jobs and health care, going bankrupt, facing foreclosure. But with all of the attention this subject has received over the course of the past year and a half, a fact that is often overlooked is that, even in good times for our economy, even in the best of times, when the news crews and cameras are off the streets, there are millions upon millions of people living in extreme poverty across the country. There are people and families, the most destitute of us, living on the streets of our cities.

Every day there are people sprawled out along church steps to rest, crouched on the sidewalks with hands outstretched begging for donations, wandering the streets with nowhere to go. It is perhaps a sight so routine that on occasion people in these dire financial circumstances are dismissed as easily as the brick and mortar structures that comprise the city landscape. This website is intended to contribute in some small way to DC’s awareness about the homeless people in this city by sharing the stories that make up their respective lives, as taken from one-on-one interviews. For all of the celebrities featured in biopics, we surely have as much to learn from the perseverance, spirit, and street sense of those who quietly live as the poorest among us.