Picture the Homeless

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).

Building Ally Relationships: Among our key allies are Judson Memorial Church, Charas/El Bohio Cultural and Community Center, The Anti Displacement Coalition, Met Council on Housing, Urban Justice Center, AIDS Housing Network, The Employment Project, Community Voices Heard, National Association of Street Newspapers, National Coalition for the Homeless, San Francisco Coalition for the Homeless, and the National Action Network.

National Civil Rights Organizing Project (NHCROP): Police brutality and harassment were the primary reasons behind the founding of Picture the Homeless. Members have joined with people in other communities for training and support to expose the harassment of homeless people. We have participated in the development of a national survey tool for outreach to document civil rights violations by the police and city workers. We were instrumental in ensuring that this survey tool is written in layman’s terms so that homeless people themselves can carry out outreach activities