Marginalized Populations

I've survived the first week of the Fall semester, even with a sprained knee which immobilized me for a day or two (painful enough to send me to the doctor- which I hardly ever do!). I'm still hobbling around with a knee brace- but this too shall pass.

Being confined did give me a chance to develop a lecture on homelessness in San Francisco. I hadn't intended to take photos of the homeless, and felt weird about doing it, but then again, the sociologist in me decided that this was an opportunity to bring first hand observations of the homeless as I observed it in San Francisco during my recent trip to attend the ASA conference there. Homeless people sleeping on the street or sorting through garbage were everywhere- shockingly so just because it was almost inescapable!

Most important to me was to establish guidelines for taking photos so that I would not be revealing anyone's identifiable features or compromising their humanity by being disrespectful. All photos below were taken discretely, as I didn't even want other people on the street knowing that I was taking photos of homeless people.

 Shown above is a man picking through the garbage at Union Square- it's in the center of downtown SF surrounded by outdoor restaurants... and below is a man in the Haight-Ashbury district using a wheel chair to travel with his belongings. He used his feet to move himself along.

The city of San Francisco spends millions on getting the homeless off the streets and into some alternative lifestyles like halfway houses and rehab programs, but the city also admits that there are 3-4 thousand of what are called "hard-core" homeless who live on the streets.

People walk by as if this is not out of the ordinary. These people sleeping on the street seem to cover themselves with an assortment of dark colored coverings as though to make themselves invisible. And after one gets over the shock of seeing people thus, they do become invisible because you simply get used to seeing people sleeping on the street. 

I could have taken many more photos of people begging, panhandling, and sleeping on the street but I didn't. It just seemed too self-serving to continue taking these photos, so after a few I stopped, and like every other passerby, I tried not to look. It's just too hard.