When the City of Indianapolis dismantled an outdoor encampment of unhoused people a decade ago, arresting its leader and displacing 65 people who had formed a tight-knit community under an area bridge, filmmakers Don Sawyer and Tim Hashko were appalled. They decided to delve into the impact of the displacement on the unhoused people who once called the area home.
The result, Under the Bridge: The Criminalization of Homelessness, was released in 2015 to near-universal praise. Nonetheless, Sawyer told The Indypendent that at every screening, viewers raised the same question: What can be done to get people off the streets and into safe, secure and affordable housing?
Beyond the Bridge: A Solution to Homelessness attempts to answer this question. Although the 84-minute documentary focuses exclusively on homeless individuals rather than on families (according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, approximately 70% of unhoused people are single adults), it offers cogent policy recommendations for ending homelessness among this constituency.
The Housing First model offers residents access to supportive services once they are living at a shelter but does not require them to participate or to remain sober.
The film centers on two cities, Milwaukee and Houston, and zeroes in on Housing First, a systemic response to homelessness that gives people a place to stay with no strings attached. The Housing First model offers residents access to supportive services once they are living at a shelter, from access to comprehensive health care to job readiness training and placement, to substance abuse counseling and treatment. But it does not require them to participate in any of these programs or to remain sober during their tenancy.
Unsurprisingly, the model works, but as Beyond the Bridge emphasizes, establishing Housing First programs requires coordination and buy-in from a vast array of collaborators, including local government officials, medical providers, social service workers, the business community and philanthropists, as well as from law enforcers and judges willing to vacate arrest warrants and fines for vagrancy. (This was made even more challenging by June’s Supreme Court decision in Grants Pass v. Oregon, which upheld the right of localities to issue fines and arrest people for sleeping, sitting or lying outdoors.)
The film stresses that since the rent on Housing First apartments is paid with Section 8 vouchers — a subsidy in which tenants pay a small portion of their wages or benefits to the landlord while the gap between their contribution and the “fair-market rent” on the unit is paid by the government — a landlord-engagement coordinator is essential.
The film features many moving interviews with people who have benefitted from Housing First. Their testimonies affirm that people don’t sleep outdoors by choice; they do so only when they believe it’s their only option.
The documentary gives voice to opponents to the Housing First model who argue that access to housing should be conditioned on sobriety. This position, which remains dominant in government and social welfare circles, is effectively rebutted in the film by Dr. Sam Tsemberis, a New York City physician who is credited with coming up with the Housing First concept. He argues that shelter should not be treated as a reward for “good behavior.”
Context, of course, is key, and Beyond the Bridge includes multiple housing activists who remind viewers that forestalling eviction and keeping people housed is critical to stemming homelessness. That said, while the film offers an impassioned argument about using Housing First to bring unsheltered people indoors, it does not address the need for nationwide rent controls, robust tenant organizing or limiting the outrageous profiteering of private landlords.
Perhaps this will be fodder for the filmmakers’ next project.
Making Beyond the Bridge took Sawyer and Hashko to 12 cities over seven years. The result is a compassionate look at a social issue that has been deemed intractable — but isn’t. Should lawmakers take its message to heart, the film gives them a concrete way to provide care, support and homes to those who need them. It’s not large-scale social housing, but it’s an inspiring and hopeful move in the right direction.
Beyond the Bridge is currently being screened throughout the country. For more information about scheduling a screening of the film, go to asolutiontohomelessness.com or abiggervisionfilms.com/#contact.
Beyond the Bridge: A Solution to Homelessness
Don Sawyer and Tim Hashko
A Bigger Vision Films: 84 minutes
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