Hacker Cinema
The Homestretch
2014 · Film · documentary · 90 min
Directed by Anne de Mare, Kirsten Kelly
Three homeless teenagers brave Chicago winters, the pressures of high school, and life alone on the streets to build a brighter future.
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1 comment on Hacker News
From what I can tell your main complaint here is that homeless addicts are... addicts?
I really appreciate that you serve homeless residents just like other residents. But you might consider that the people who you are most frequently called to help are not representative of the homeless population. Look at the national stats:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_States#Other_statistics
That's a lot of families. It's a lot of kids. A friend of mine put years into making a documentary about homeless youth in Chicago. I got to meet some of them, and they are entirely different than the picture you paint:
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/homestretch/
I think it's also important to note that active addicts generally refuse help no matter what level of society they're in. That's part of the addictive cycle. Homeless addicts claim to prefer their "lifestyle" and will fight to keep it. But so do gainfully employed alcoholics. So do wealthy coke fiends. It's a disease that will kill all of them eventually unless they can start facing how much addiction has screwed up their lives. And as hard as facing that has to be for a well-off person, I expect it's way harder for someone who has fallen so low as to be sleeping under an overpass and living out of a trash can.