Sharing Our Stories: An evening of experience and ideas from folks who have been homeless & their allies — Tues. & Fri., March 16 & 19

Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don't know each other; they don't know each other because they can not communicate; they can not communicate because they are separated.— Martin Luther King, Jr.

Tuesday, March 16, 7 p.m.
Live Oak Friends Meetinghouse (Quakers)

1318 West 26th St. (inside North Loop between Durham & Ella)

Friday, March 19, 7:30 p.m.

Houston Institute for Culture

708 Telephone Road (at Lockwood) (inside the Tlaquepaque Market, next to bohemeos coffeehouse)

 
The Understanding Poverty Project (UPP) continues its exploration into poverty and homelessness March 16 and 19 with the “Sharing Our Stories” panels^{: “}An evening of experience and ideas from folks who have been homeless & their allies.” Moderated by Joseph Benson and Ann Walton Sieber.

We are all so separated. We don’t often get a chance to know each other, all we diverse people — even we Houston neighbors traversing the same city streets, looking at the same skyline, reading the same headlines. We get to know other folks from similar backgrounds, similar schools, similar jobs, similar hobbies. But as for knowing people who fall outside this circle of familiarity, we’re left to guessing, stereotypes, the occasional news article.

Most people are concerned about homelessness, but few know what to do about it. We have questions and guesses. Do homelessness people want to be homeless? Should I give money to pan-handlers? How many mentally ill people are on the street? How many veterans? Can anything be done? Is there anything I can do, short of giving money (that won’t take over my life)? Might I end up homeless myself?

There are no clear answers, but we with the Understanding Poverty Project think an excellent place to start looking for the answers is to listen to those who have been there. We’ve invited people who have lived on the street to come tell what it was like for them, what was especially hard, what helped them, what support they wished had been there, what changes they’d like to see. We’ve also invited people who are allies to the homeless: Dr. David Buck who founded and heads Healthcare for the Homeless-Houston; Scot More, who went from being homeless to running the Community Outreach services for the Coalition for the Homeless; Joseph Benson, who went from being homeless to being a leader in the consumer advocate movement.

Co-sponsored by SEARCH, Healthcare for the Homeless-Houston and the Live Oak Friends Meeting

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About the Understanding Poverty Project

The Understanding Poverty Project is a long-term art and reporting undertaking by photographer Ben Tecumseh DeSoto and writer Ann Walton Sieber — with the inspired assistance of the UPP Collective — a humanistic inquiry into the life stories of those who have experienced homeless and the conditions in society that produce homelessness, documenting the effects of trauma on the street as well as the effects of understanding, help, and hope in changing all our lives.
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Ann Walton Sieber is a recipient of an Individual Artist Grant Award. This grant is funded by the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance.