For three months, Associated Press photographer Jae Hong traveled America’s West Coast to chronicle the region’s exploding homeless crisis and do what many try to avoid: look into the eyes of the people living on the streets, in tents or in their vehicles and get to know them.
His series of intimate portraits focused on the subjects’ eyes and were combined with short text stories to reveal their humanity, whether it was an aging, down-on-his-luck street performer on Los Angeles’ Skid Row or a 9-year-old boy who lives with his family in a rented RV blocks from Google’s headquarters.
The unique portraits were one part of a larger package of images that Hong and his colleagues across the West – Ted Warren, Marcio Sanchez, Chris Carlson and Greg Bull – produced for a project looking at the roots of the homeless crisis in the region and identifying potential solutions.
For their work documenting the lives of the homeless, the team wins this week’s Beat of the Week prize.
A pedestrian walks past a man sleeping on a public sidewalk in downtown Portland, Ore. , Sept. 20, 2017. Rising numbers of homeless people up and down the West Coast region of the U.S. have pushed abject poverty and issues such as addiction and mental health into the forefront.
AP Photo / Ted S. Warren
Ellen Tara James-Penney, a lecturer at San Jose State University, prepares to stay the night inside her station wagon in the parking lot of Grace Baptist Church in San Jose, Calif., Oct. 10, 2017. The booming economy along the West Coast has led to an historic shortage of affordable housing and has upended the stereotypical view of people out on the streets. Many of them are employed, working as retail clerks, plumbers, janitors – even teachers.
AP Photo / Marcio Jose Sanchez
Ellen Tara James-Penney, a lecturer at San Jose State University, speaks to her English class on the university's campus in San Jose, Calif., Oct. 11, 2017. Reporting by The Associated Press finds that many homeless people are employed, working as retail clerks, plumbers, janitors – even teachers. They go to work, sleep where they can and buy gym memberships for a place to shower.
AP Photo / Marcio Jose Sanchez
Wearing a "Make America Great Again" hat, Nathanael Baisley, 38, sits in a bus in Los Angeles en route to Santa Monica Beach, where he spends the night, Oct. 28, 2017. Baisley said he has been homeless on-and-off for three years and is going through a divorce with his wife, who lives in England with their 5-year-old son.
AP Photo / Jae C. Hong
Paige Clem sits in the car she lives in along with her husband and three dogs outside a church where free food was being distributed in Everett, Wash., Oct. 12, 2017. Clem, who said she has battled drug addiction in the past but was now clean, said having enough money just to run her car for heat and move it when required was a daily challenge.
AP Photo / Ted S. Warren
Stanley Timmings is seen through the door of the RV where he lives with his girlfriend on the streets of Seattle, Oct. 30, 2017. Timmings was parked just north of Boeing Field, the King County International Airport, along with a group of fellow RV-dwellers who are periodically told by the city to move their vehicles – even if just across the street – or risk having them towed away. In Seattle, about one-third of unsheltered homeless people live in vehicles, according to recent homeless counts.
AP Photo / Ted S. Warren
Covering herself with a blanket, homeless woman Christian McKenzie, a 29-year-old heroin addict and mother of a 7-year-old boy, settles down next to a wall in the Waterfront Park area in Seattle, Sept. 28, 2017. "I'm doing drugs still, but I'm not doing them as much. I've restrained myself all day not to," said McKenzie. "I miss my kitchen. I miss my kid."
AP Photo / Jae C. Hong
After spending a night on the streets trying to keep dry in the rain, Cheyvonne Price, who says she is homeless primarily due to heroin addiction, naps on a sidewalk outside a Starbucks in downtown Portland, Ore., Sept. 20, 2017. Price said she hoped to get enough money during the day to afford a bed for the night and said that she wishes people would realize that the homeless "are not all bad people."
AP Photo / Ted S. Warren
A worker sprays a bleach solution on a sidewalk in downtown San Diego as part of an effort to control a deadly hepatitis A outbreak, Sept. 25, 2017. The increased number of hepatitis cases in the homeless population, and the geographic spread of the disease, led California to declare a state of emergency in October.
AP Photo / Gregory Bull
A woman who was camping in downtown San Diego sorts through her belongings on a sidewalk that was being sprayed with a bleach solution to fight a deadly hepatitis A outbreak, Sept. 25, 2017.
AP Photo / Gregory Bull
Charles, a 59-year-old homeless man who gave only his first name, wears a hat that says "God is good all the time" as he and other homeless people wait to spend the night at Seattle's Union Gospel Mission shelter, Sept. 27, 2017.
AP Photo / Jae C. Hong
Tucked in a sleeping bag, Danny, a 60-year-old homeless man who gave only his first name, lies on an overpass above the 101 Freeway, one of the nation's busiest freeways, Sept. 21, 2017, in Los Angeles. Although he never feels safe sleeping on the street, Danny said the freeway noise doesn't bother him much. "You get used to it after a while."
AP Photo / Jae C. Hong
A man sleeps in a doorway in downtown Portland, Ore., Sept. 19, 2017. On any given night, and often during the day, dozens of people sleep or camp on the sidewalks and parks of the downtown area, as the rising crisis of homelessness becomes more visible.
AP Photo / Ted S. Warren
A piece of bread is left on a sidewalk as Korey Epps, a 44-year-old homeless man who had his leg amputated due to an infection while in jail, waits in line to spend the night at Seattle's Union Gospel Mission, Sept. 27, 2017. Serving 14 months in jail, Epps said he lost his job, family and home. "Everyday I feel more more worthless, hopeless. I can't believe this is where my life is," said Epps. "I may as well be on drugs because I lost everything."
AP Photo / Jae C. Hong
A homeless woman rests under a shade tree as children play at Lions Park in Costa Mesa, Calif., Oct. 6, 2012. The posh California coastal town recently passed ordinances that are the latest in a rash of law-making in Orange County that some see as thinly veiled attacks on the homeless. But lawmakers defend the policies as necessary to ensure safety, protect public property and guarantee access to communal spaces.
AP Photo / Chris Carlson
Lying on a urine-stained sidewalk, two homeless drug addicts, high on drugs, hallucinate in Los Angeles' Skid Row area, home to the nation's largest concentration of homeless people, Sept. 1, 2017.
AP Photo / Jae C. Hong
In recent years, the rise in the number of homeless has led officials in several municipalities to declare public emergencies as they grapple with how to respond to a crisis that’s been fed by soaring housing costs, rock-bottom vacancy rates and a roaring economy.
One challenge emerged immediately in the planning for the project: How do you tell this story visually beyond the kinds of images of homeless that we’ve all seen? Conversation centered on making portraits of the homeless, mainly because most people tend to walk quickly past them without making eye contact.
Hong, who has spent years photographing the lives of the homeless living on LA’s Skid Row, got the assignment. Working with West photo editor Stephanie Mullen, Hong developed the idea further, deciding to use a special lens that allows the photographer to focus on a section of an image and have the rest remain out of focus.
They would focus on the subjects’ eyes, and for the next three months, Hong hit the streets in Washington state, Oregon and California to find subjects. Many told him their stories. Some were high on drugs or mentally ill. Some cursed at him inches from his face. Hong also recorded his interviews with his subjects, written into a series of vignettes by Los Angeles reporter Brian Melley.
Alicia Adara, 33, poses for a photo in Seattle, Sept. 27, 2017. Adara said she ended up on the street after losing a custody fight for her two children with her ex-husband. "I don't do shelters. I feel like I'm in jail," she said. "I've been like basically a prisoner all my life. I need to do this. I need to be out here. It's freedom."
AP Photo / Jae C. Hong
Dolores Epps, 41, poses for a photo in Los Angeles, Oct. 26, 2017. Epps, a mother of two children who has been homeless for five years, once had a job at a salon and still makes money cutting hair. Her mother has custody of her 15-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son.
AP Photo / Jae C. Hong
Bernadette Ortiz, 39, poses for a photo in San Jose, Calif., Oct. 24, 2017. Ortiz recently gave a birth to her fifth child. She and her fiance were living in a tent when she found out she was pregnant. The couple lives in a temporary shelter at a local church until their move to a studio apartment. "I don't want to live in a tent ever again," said Ortiz.
AP Photo / Jae C. Hong
With his face half-painted, James Harris, 54, poses for a photo in Los Angeles, Oct. 3, 2017. Harris who says he has had AIDS for 30 years, said that when medication stopped working, he got depressed and was evicted. Now he feels like an outcast, vulnerable and struggling to survive.
AP Photo / Jae C. Hong
Bennie Sayee Koffa, 66, poses for a photo at Camp Second Chance, a city-sanctioned homeless camp in Seattle, Sept. 26, 2017. Koffa said he came to the U.S. in 1990 and never returned as a civil war raged for years in Liberia. He has lived in Canada and sought refugee status in the U.S. He ended up homeless and living on the streets of Seattle after splitting up with his wife a year ago, he said.
AP Photo / Jae C. Hong
John Ruiz, 9, poses for a photo in front of the RV where he lives with his family in Mountain View, Calif., Oct. 23, 2017. His parents and four siblings moved into the camper after they could no longer afford rent. John dreams of his family having a successful life and maybe ending up in mansion – a home that might have swimming pool and backyard. Or at least one big enough to have his own room.
AP Photo / Jae C. Hong
Harrison Perkins, 31, poses for a photo in Seattle, Sept. 27, 2017. Perkins said he and his fiancee ended up on the street about two months ago after she accidentally burned down her mother's kitchen. Perkins, a recovering drug addict, wants to go back to Cleveland, where his family lives.
AP Photo / Jae C. Hong
Robert Irwin, 72, poses for a photo at Camp Second Chance, a city-sanctioned homeless encampment in Seattle, Sept. 26, 2017. Irwin said he is planning a trip to Michigan to see his older sister. "I have my own SUV, Chevy Trailblazer. I want to go in March. It will be my last trip."
AP Photo / Jae C. Hong
Jorge Ortega, 40, poses for a photo in Los Angeles, Oct. 5, 2017. Ortega said has been living on the street for more than 10 years after losing his job at the Los Angeles International Airport. Ortega says he has a 14-year-old son living in Washington who doesn't know Ortega is homeless, sleeping on a sidewalk of Skid Row.
AP Photo / Jae C. Hong
Tammy Stephen, 54, who lives in Camp Second Chance, a city-sanctioned homeless encampment in Seattle, poses for a photo, Sept. 26, 2017. "Housing here is out of control. That's why we have so many people on the street," she said. "There's nowhere for them to go."
AP Photo / Jae C. Hong
Barry Warren, 52, who says he has been homeless his entire adult life, poses for a photo in Seattle, Sept. 27, 2017. After about 20 years without a home in California, he moved to Seattle, where he says the benefits are better and life on the street is safer.
AP Photo / Jae C. Hong
He wrote in a first-person account of his travels:
“I saw so much of people in their rawest moments that I couldn’t bring myself to photograph some of it … There’s always an internal struggle. As a photographer, I want to capture the moment because my job is to tell the story. As a human, the agony can be too hard to watch. Some don’t know they need help – or even that help exists.”
Meanwhile, Hong and his colleagues set out to chronicle the breadth of the crisis in the gleaming West Coast cities that have come to be known for their progressive lifestyles and innovation. Their images delved deeply into the lives of the homeless, revealing that some are working but not making enough to afford to pay rent.
– In Anaheim, California, Chris Carlson captured images of the city of tents and tarps clustered beneath the giant "A" outside Angels Stadium.
– In San Jose, California, Marcio Sanchez brought us the story of a San Jose State University lecturer who lives in her car with her husband and two dogs because they can’t afford the rent in Silicon Valley.
– In Seattle, within view of the iconic Space Needle, Ted Warren captured an image of a man sitting at a bus stop bench, his possessions packed into a wheelchair.
– And on San Diego’s Ocean Beach, next to the pier, Greg Bull photographed a homeless person asleep on the sand.
Their success was evident in the comments on social media: Many readers thanked the photographers for portraying the homeless not as the anonymous byproducts of a society that has pushed them to the margins, but as real people feeling real anguish.
The project began with Geoff Mulvihill of the State Government Team. He obtained exclusive facts and figures that made the on-the-ground reporting possible. He teamed up with Gillian Flaccus in Portland for the first day’s story, and later wrote one on the lessons the West Coast could learn from East Coast cities in dealing with homelessness. Janie Har in San Francisco wrote a piece exploring the working poor in Silicon Valley.
Top Stories editor Jerry Schwartz worked his usual wizardry with the copy; Seattle-based video journalist Manuel Valdes spent months trying to find subjects who would be willing to go on camera; New York City photographer Seth Wenig helped with a story anchored there; and West region editor Katie Oyan, working with Alina Hartounian, prepared a detailed and compelling social media plan that drove engagement throughout the week. New York digital display guru Nat Castañeda followed up with a compelling behind-the-story video.
Even after several pieces had moved, engagement with the West Coast homeless package was exceeding three minutes – an astounding number. Other metrics illustrated the high level of interest: The day the mainbar moved, it was the most read story on the website of the San Francisco Chronicle. The Seattle Times ran the entire series on its website. Both newspapers have had extensive coverage of the homeless problem in their readership areas, but no media outlet had reported the scope of the crisis as the AP had.
“I haven’t seen the West Coast’s current crisis better illustrated and explained than in this piece.” – Scott Greenstone, Seattle Times reporter on homelessness
It was the Seattle Times’ dedicated homelessness reporter who wrote on Twitter: “I haven’t seen the West Coast’s current crisis better illustrated and explained than in this piece.” Fittingly, the first reference in his compliment was for the images by the AP’s photo team.
For photos that showed the humanity of the homeless, Hong, Warren, Sanchez, Carlson and Bull win this week’s $500 Beat of the Week prize.