Picture the Homeless

Picture the Homeless was founded by two homeless men in November of 1999, Lewis Haggins and Anthony Williams who were both residing in Bellevue Men’s Shelter. Since our founding we have grown to a membership of over 1,000 homeless New Yorkers living on the streets, and in the shelter system. Picture the Homeless was founded on the principle that in order to end homelessness, people who are homeless must become an organized, effective voice for systemic change.

The catalyst for our founding was an urgent need to respond to the Giuliani administration’s “get tough on homeless policies” that took the form of increased police harassment of homeless people in public spaces as well as attempts to force homeless New Yorkers to work for their shelter beds in slave labor types of jobs that would not lead out of the shelter system or extreme poverty but only reinforce the institutionalization of the very poor in shelters and jails.

In 2002, Picture the Homeless received the Union Square Award for grassroots activists. Jean Rice is pictured here receving the award.

The Giuliani administration’s policies initiatives were broadly supported by local media outlets – primarily because homeless New Yorkers ourselves had no space in the media to present our perspectives and solutions.

When Nicole Barrett was injured by a man with a brick on the streets of New York, some witnesses said that the man “looked homeless”. The administration played on the general publics’ fear and seized this opportunity to increase street sweeps and shelter raids arresting primarily African American homeless men. The co-founders of Picture the Homeless began to provide leadership to other shelter residents as well as talking to folks in parks and soup kitchens to figure out how to collectively respond as a community under assault. They also looked for allies and a place to meet outside of the shelter: to figure out how to create an organization of homeless people to represent themselves and to fight back.

In January 2000, Picture the Homeless held its first organizing meeting at CHARAS/El Bohio in Loisaida. Lynn Lewis was at that first meeting and began working with Anthony and Lewis to move forward. We worked for our first two years as volunteers without an office and then with donated office space in Judson Memorial Church and initial funding from the North Star Fund. Picture the Homeless has worked to develop an organization directed and run by homeless people by building an infrastructure that keeps organizational decision- making in the hands of homeless New Yorkers.

Today, we have an office in the Bronx and campaigns in the areas of Civil Rights, Housing, and Rental Subsidies--and a membership of over 1,000. Since our founding we have achieved significant public policy wins and changed administrative processes that impact homeless New Yorkers because our agenda is developed and advanced by homeless people. Picture the Homeless is founded on the principle that in order to address the root causes of homelessness, people who are homeless must develop a collective, effective voice for systemic change. By developing leadership among homeless people, we are addressing a root cause of homelessness - the stigma attached to poverty and the silence of the poor.

Picture the Homeless increasingly fills a critical vacuum among grass roots organizing efforts in NYC by providing resources to homeless New Yorkers living in the streets and in the shelter system to collectively develop and implement an agenda for systemic change. We are creating space not only within policy making venues around the issues of housing, shelter, life sustaining services and holding governmental institutions accountable such as the NYPD, but we are also creating space within the social justice and advocacy movement for the participation and leadership of homeless New Yorkers.