Picture the Homeless

♥ Invite a homeless leader to speak at your place of worship, congregation, club, or union.

♥ Build a letter writing/email/fax/phone tree to get your friends and contacts mobilized to impact critical legislation & support us on other issues.

♥ Find out the affordability standards for your community from Federal HUD. Does it make sense? If not, meet with your elected officials to make sure that “very low income” really does mean poor people.

♥ Help make phone calls. It sounds boring but we need to call allies and members to turn out for protests and special events.

♥ If you have a design or artistic background—help make props for actions or nice educational materials!

♥ Can your company or business help? Are you a printer, can you get T Shirts made, flyers or a banner? Can you help with translating documents in another language? Come regularly to our office to do computer maintenance?

♥ Find out about our organizing campaigns and get involved in an issue that excites you. You could help research laws and regulations, history behind an issue, newsclippings, etc.

♥ Set up meetings with your contacts who have skills that could advance our agendas—do you have journalist friends?

♥ See if your organization, business, or community of faith can endorse our Homeless Housing & Jobs Platform!

♥ Commit to buying ad space in the program for our next event!

♥ While it doesn’t sound exciting, we need money. Individual donations are really critical, but how about inviting a few speakers and your friends to your house to host a house party? We can build our contacts and educate folks in a more intimate setting than a public forum. As a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization, your donations are fully tax-deductible.

There are many ways to support our work and support does not always have to be financial. But you know that this work costs money, and we really need your donations!

Picture the Homeless is a 501(c)3 and you can make a donation by writing a check to Picture the Homeless and mailing it to the address below. Because we are a not for profit organization your donation is tax deductible, and we will send you a receipt for your records.

You can also buy and proudly wear Picture the Homeless T Shirts with our logo! They are 100% cotton: blue with our black logo and DVD’s of our videos for sale. Our T Shirts are $15.00, in M, L, XL, and XXL.


Our DVD’s Anthologies feature copies of our very best videos. DVD’s are $20.00, just send your check and note in the memo section that it is for a DVD and we will mail it out to you.


Our documentary project is partially funded by Manhattan Neighborhood Network, who also provided Picture the Homeless members with training, resources, and access to equipment. For more information on their amazing work in support of community groups developing their own media, visit their website: www.mnn.org.

Picture the Homeless has developed working relationships with Judson Memorial Church and Charas/El Bohio Cultural and Community Center. Judson is our fiscal sponsor, providing us with free office and meeting space, supporting our efforts at building an organization. Charas/El Bohio Cultural and Community Center provides us with free meeting space to hold teach ins and planning meetings with homeless people to educate them about the HUD funding process and elicit their opinions on how that funding should be spent. Prior to obtaining our office space, we received mail and phone messages at Charas, and used the phone and fax machines at both Judson and Charas. We receive critical technical support from both Judson and Charas as we talk through issues such as organization building, racism, gentrification and how to bring our message to the public at large.

Picture the Homeless is a member of the National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH). Lynn Lewis is a Board member of NCH, she and Anthony Williams both sit on the Civil Rights Workgroup, and Lynn participates in the Economic Justice Workgroup and Grassroots Organizing Committee. Picture the Homeless has begun actively documenting civil rights abuses of homeless people in conjunction with the National Civil Rights Organizing Project. Picture the Homeless also sits on the NYC Continuum of Care Coalition Planning Committee which will determine how Millions in HUD funding for homeless New Yorkers will be spent on an annual basis. Picture the Homeless are members of the National Organizers Alliance.

Our constituency is people who are homeless. NYC is experiencing record numbers of homeless people in shelter. The point in time number of homeless families in city shelters at 6,252, including 11,594 children, is a 31% increase over the same time 1 year ago. The total shelter census (on a single night) in March, 2001 reached 26,226. These numbers do not include unsheltered homeless people who are not counted by or included in NYC homeless statistics, nor do they include people living in Transitional or Permanent Supportive Housing funded by Homeless Assistance funds, people doubled up, or in jail who were homeless prior to arrest, often for offenses such as sleeping on the sidewalk and who will be released from jail to return to homelessness, or homeless people currently on psychiatric or “detox” units with no housing upon discharge.

Homelessness cuts across all racial, ethnic, gender, family composition, age and sexual orientation demographics. What homeless people have in common is extreme poverty and even when working, do not earn enough to obtain housing. Disabilities, such as chronic mental illness, chemical addiction and chronic health problems such as HIV/AIDS, and TB are more prevalent among people who are homeless than the general population.

Picture the Homeless is led and directed by homeless people. Members gain the skills and knowledge to impact public policy decisions and the service system and develop courses of action that move the public discourse on homelessness. Members who do not consistently participate in meetings benefit from learning about their rights and having a connection with other homeless people fighting to make systemic changes. Real solutions to homelessness benefits both homeless and housed people. New members are often surprised at having a place to go to express their ideas, develop and carry out direct actions, build organizing and communication skills and have a chance to educate the public about homelessness.

Picture the Homeless is an emerging grass roots organization led by people who are homeless. Because our goal is to end homelessness our work is multi issue. Our primary focus is ensuring the participation of homeless people in the public policy decision making processes that impact their lives, civil rights work, living wages and income supports indexed to the cost of housing. Our strategies include grass roots organizing, documentation of civil rights violations, outreach, public education, political education, public policy work, collaboration with other grass roots efforts led by homeless people, and coalition work.

Grassroots Organizing: Activities include weekly meetings at Judson Memorial Church, and outreach to members and other homeless people in parks, soup kitchens, and shelters. Members have networks of people who they stay in contact with, inviting people to meetings and actions, but also taking information to people where they are, asking for imput and bringing in this work from the street to each organizing meeting. Attendance at meetings is not a prerequisite for your voice to be heard.

Leadership Development: New members are quickly oriented to our organizational goals and identify areas that they want to work on, some consistently participate and quickly move into leadership roles. Training is provided as members identify needs such as funding, organizing, planning actions, sweat equity housing development and public education. Members are encouraged to participate in direct actions and other public events as soon as they join.

Political Education: Several members have taken a leadership role in the NYC Continuum of Care Planning Process. Members have attended Mayoral Candidate Forums, leafleting and working to ensure that the candidates commit to ending homelessness, and have attended workshops and conferences.

Public Educaton: Members have spoken in dozens of public speaking venues, have just launched our website www.picturethehomeless.org with labor donated by volunteers. Members have made inquiries into training through our local cable public access affiliate Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN).

• Conducted 24 hour vigil to protest upstate exile of homeless men on the steps of Judson Church;
• Organized Homeless Against the Diallo Verdict Rally linking police brutality against people of color and homeless people;
• Co-sponsored May Day for the Homeless Rally, with the National Action Network, receiving endorsements from local and national organizations fighting for housing and civil rights;
• Organized a March on 125th St to protest gentrification of Harlem and development of “so called affordable” housing;
• Protested the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) selling out poor communities to Private for Profit Developers, demanding that vacant, city owned building be rehabilitated for very low income people;
• Protested closing of Kingsbridge Women's Shelter, called for 1 year housing subsidy for homeless women instead of transferring them to another shelter;
• Were the first homeless participants in the NYC Continuum of Care planning process which determined how $84 Million of HUD funding for services and housing was allocated in 2000;
• Created training materials for homeless people about HUD funding processes;
• Educated 100 to 125 homeless people about HUD funding processes and how to impact funding priorities for the use of Federal HUD funds;
• Won recognition of the expertise of homeless people in the Continuum of Care Process by securing a commitment from the Coalition Steering Committee to pay homeless participants $10.00 an hour;
• Conducted public education activities, including publishing newspaper articles, public speaking engagements, appearing on WBAI Wake Up Call, WBAI in Exile; WLIB and other radio stations;
• Opened an office to build organizational power, provide homeless people with meeting space and have resources and equipment available such as a computer, fax machine and phone;
• Launched a web site www.picturethehomeless.org;