"I take pictures at night because people are living in the streets at night. These people are still homeless in these abandoned buildings, at night sleeping. Sometimes on these curbs at night. Sleeping in these buildings. Dying in these buildings." (Cordelia Beard, 41, House of Mercy)
"I stand on the corner—no place to go. My mind all twisted with my own thoughts. No place to go. Nowhere to turn. No one to love and no one to love me. I stand and wonder where to go so I live on the streets with the trees as my friends and the grass as my bed." (Breanna Blascak, 12, Sojourner House)
"When I was young, my grandmother used to tell me this, 'We all have our own life to pursue and our own kind of dream to be weaving. And we all have some power to make wishes come true, as long as we keep believing.' And when I heard these words of inspiration they told me no matter how hard life may seem that I should never give up." - (Christopher Torres, 21, Center for Youth)
Trends
Children are the fastest growing homeless population, locally and across the nation, said Carrie Michel-Wynne, chair of the Homeless Services Network in Rochester.
“We’ve quadrupled the amount of kids we’ve seen. It’s a growing epidemic,” she said.
Meanwhile, Rochester is also going to see a dramatic decline in federal funding this year for homeless prevention programs. As part of the Recovery Act, $6.5 million was appropriated to Rochester for a span of three years, from 2009 to 2012.
“If those funds were not here it’s hard to tell if we’d have seen a spike in homelessness,” Michel-Wynne said. “I imagine we probably would have. I think that we prevented a lot of people from entering in to the homeless system.”
Knowing that funding is about to dry up, Michel-Wynne says the network has been preparing.
“Providers have spent the last couple of years strategizing what our system would look like when we lost this funding,” she said. “We’re actively working on creating a coordinated response to homelessness.”
The focus is putting together a system where an individual only has to go to one place for all services and needs.
“Right now an individual can access services from any organization. We’re all coming together and saying that we have to partner, so that if a person goes somewhere, all of their needs will be met.”
"I take pictures at night because people are living in the streets at night. These people are still homeless in these abandoned buildings, at night sleeping. Sometimes on these curbs at night. Sleeping in these buildings. Dying in these buildings." (Cordelia Beard, 41, House of Mercy)
"I stand on the corner—no place to go. My mind all twisted with my own thoughts. No place to go. Nowhere to turn. No one to love and no one to love me. I stand and wonder where to go so I live on the streets with the trees as my friends and the grass as my bed." (Breanna Blascak, 12, Sojourner House)
"When I was young, my grandmother used to tell me this, 'We all have our own life to pursue and our own kind of dream to be weaving. And we all have some power to make wishes come true, as long as we keep believing.' And when I heard these words of inspiration they told me no matter how hard life may seem that I should never give up." - (Christopher Torres, 21, Center for Youth)
Trends
Children are the fastest growing homeless population, locally and across the nation, said Carrie Michel-Wynne, chair of the Homeless Services Network in Rochester.
“We’ve quadrupled the amount of kids we’ve seen. It’s a growing epidemic,” she said.
Meanwhile, Rochester is also going to see a dramatic decline in federal funding this year for homeless prevention programs. As part of the Recovery Act, $6.5 million was appropriated to Rochester for a span of three years, from 2009 to 2012.
“If those funds were not here it’s hard to tell if we’d have seen a spike in homelessness,” Michel-Wynne said. “I imagine we probably would have. I think that we prevented a lot of people from entering in to the homeless system.”
Knowing that funding is about to dry up, Michel-Wynne says the network has been preparing.
“Providers have spent the last couple of years strategizing what our system would look like when we lost this funding,” she said. “We’re actively working on creating a coordinated response to homelessness.”
The focus is putting together a system where an individual only has to go to one place for all services and needs.
“Right now an individual can access services from any organization. We’re all coming together and saying that we have to partner, so that if a person goes somewhere, all of their needs will be met.”
Their voices, exposed
For four years, Cordelia Beards wandered the streets of Rochester — and she called them her home.
“It started when my mother passed away. I couldn’t deal with her death,” said Beards. “I self-medicated and got into drug addiction, and that led me to being in the streets.”
From there, it was a downward spiral for Beards. She began selling her body as a means to survive.
“I can remember my hands... freezing and cold. I was trying my hardest to pick somebody up, just to get a few minutes out of the cold. It took so much out of me. I was so bitter. I remember thinking... ‘I don’t want to live, I just don’t want to live.’”
In a poem, 12-year-old and former homeless victim Breanna Blascak relives her memory, writing, “This is my house, a worn out mattress like it is a piece of junk. I use it as a house when it is dark outside so no one sees me. So my house is someone’s old garbage left for me to live my life outside. I hide underneath my worn out mattress and your old junk. This is my house. This is my castle.”
Blascak was homeless for just under a year.
Twenty-one-year-old Christopher Torres bounced around several homes for years. On many nights, he’d break into abandoned homes to find reprieve from the bitter cold.
“A lot of my friends didn’t know I was homeless,” he said. “A homeless person isn’t always a bum, or an old person. It’s a stereotype.”
All three survived — and are now looking to tell their story, in an event coming up at Nazareth College, beginning May 15.
The exhibition
“Exposed: Rochester’s Hidden Victims of Homelessness PhotoVoice Exhibition” is the brainchild of Leanne Charlesworth, a professor of social work at Nazareth college.
“I had the idea primarily because several of the research efforts gong on are dealing with quantitative data,” said Charlesworth, “but I was pretty sure nothing like this had ever been done.”
Charlesworth envisioned something more visual and raw — something that would not only tell a story, but spur conversation and action.
In the fall 2011, she and several Nazareth College faculty, staff and students collaborated with Rochester’s Homeless Services Network to initiate the PhotoVoice project. Through the lens of a camera, their lives were intimately revealed. Thirteen victims of homelessness in Rochester took pictures of their daily lives, writing short paragraphs reflecting on each shot.
“I am really stunned by the amount of talent across the participants,” said Charlesworth.
Now that the project has been completed, Charlesworth said she hopes the exhibit will spark new conversations and provoke progressive thinking.
“Our hope now is to bring the community together. It will be a moment where we’re all thinking of homelessness in different ways,” she said. “The participants, from the moment they’ve seen their own work, were so excited to have a voice. It’s so exciting to be at that point.”
