Inside the Mind of a Homeless Person
This media blog post I watched was a documentary called “Under The Bridge: The Criminalization of Homelessness” and this documentary talks about the situation in a city of Indiana called Indianapolis. It was filmed during the summer of 2013 and showed a group of people that lived under a bridge on a street called Davidson Street. In this city homelessness is a big issue and it comes to a point where people have camp sites across the city. In one particular site, was a big site where everyone would go and people in the community would help bring food and do services for them to make sure they can still stand on their feet. This camp had church groups come in and do music shows and BBQ events for them. Some of the people that helped them became good friends with the homeless people. A person named Maurice Young was the founder of that camp and is still currently in charge of it. It also had amazing reputation and became one of the biggest camps. In the documentary it talks about how the police borough of Indianapolis made a separate department for homeless people and tried to help them out and try to keep them out of harm’s way. Throughout the documentary this department checked on them regularly and tried to make sure they know where all the camps are located. The conflict that occurred during the documentary was the camp lived under a train bridge and the company wanted to do a bridge cleaning and that meant that the people living in that camp needed to leave, but they didn’t want to leave so the people who were standing there after five days were arrested. The issue was that the company that owned the land right next to the bridge wanted to sell the land to make apartments but no one wanted to buy the land with the homeless people living right next to the property.
This documentary let some of the people talk about how they ended up being homeless and they talk how some people had substance abuse problems, mental issues, and low income. These corresponds to information that was given to us in class during the power point about “Criminalization of Homelessness”. From reading through the PowerPoint slides the one positive I realized Indianapolis was very supported of homeless people and tried to help. The reason why I said this is that in one of the slides claims that 72% of cities do not support camping in public and 51% cities do not support sleeping in public. The issue I do not get is why camping in some areas in the world is a crime. I can understand no camping on private property, but if its public I do not see anything wrong with it. Police in some cities will fine homeless people for camping or sleeping public areas.
After watching the documentary, I personally would recommend this to anyone interested in public issues. Even if you have no interest on this topic, I would recommend it just for the learning experience. I personally learned a lot from this documentary and watched the whole process on what some homeless people go through. I was very shocked to find out how nice some homeless people are and how well they got along with people that are not homeless. When seeing how some of those who helped became good friends with the homeless people it warmed my heart because I feel like the world just sees them as street dogs.
The main reason why I did my topic on homelessness is because when I got to India, homelessness is a big deal and it is a coincidence that a lot of homeless people in India live under bridges, and that this documentary talks about a specific camp under the bridge. When going through cities in India, a lot of homeless people will come up to your car and ask for money and will go to the extent of cleaning your car in traffic and then, immediately ask for a tip for cleaning. Homelessness in India is very welcomed in certain parts of India because where I live, homeless people are welcomed but I know in different parts the police over there do beat the homeless and no one can do anything about it. The India law enforcement is a very corrupt system, so they can mostly do what they want. I have known some family friends in India that have become homeless and they have told me that it is very difficult to get out of being homeless if you do not have a family or anyone to help you.
By: Lavkirit Gurm
December 7, 2020 @ 8:56 pm
I think it is sad that people have to live like this and that most of them do have mental illnesses or substance abuse problems. I agree with you that it doesn’t really make sense sometimes why camping out on the streets is considered a crime when they have no where else to go. It’s a shame that they are constantly kicked out of places, or arrested when they are not allowed to stay where they have been, like in this case, because they wanted to build apartments. I think cities should try to do more to help them overcome their problems and help them get back on their feet rather than make their situations worse by throwing them in jail.