The Shantytowns of America: Inside the Shacks, Cars, Tents and Boxes that America’s Homeless Call Home
From Florida to Louisiana, one photographer has captured these captivating images of homeless people across the United States.
Mary Lou Uttermohlen’s ongoing documentary project, Structure Out of Chaos, shows how the homeless have organized their lives by building shantytowns.
Uttermohlen told Feature Shoot that the series began in 1993 when she moved to Miami.
‘At the time the city was being sued for arresting homeless people prior to public events.
‘During the federal court case a judge ruled that “safe zones” must be established where people could eat, sleep and bath in public without fear of arrest until services could be offered to them,’ she said.
Uttermohlen said that as a result of the ruling ‘shantytowns sprung up all over Miami and across the country’.
There are an estimated 1,200 people living in shantytowns in Miami.
She said that in order to take the portraits she had to ‘build relationships and abide by the requests of the community’, because a lot of people didn’t want to be photographed.
Uttermohlen told the website that there were some shantytowns that she completely avoided because they were too dangerous.
In Miami, laws were passed making it impossible for paroled sex offenders to move home with their families, Uttermohlen wrote.
She said they were required to wear leg monitors and sleep under a bridge each night or they would violate their parole.
The project has been waves of watching people organize until a task force comes along to sweep them away, according to Uttermohlen.
Shelter and services might be offered during a sweep, but the residents usually don’t want to lose their freedom.
The cycle of building villages and having them swept away repeats over and over again.
Homeless people get dis-empowered and disorganized every time the get disbanded.
And the lives of homeless families is a paradox as they need to ask for help but also feel vulnerable of losing custody of their children to social services.
In the past, homeless people built shanties with wood, and electricity was acquired by rewiring streetlights, Uttermohlen wrote.
She said, today’s shantytowns people are living in tents because it’s cheap and easy to move quickly.
Many homeless people work full time jobs, have bank accounts and keep up their personal hygiene.
In October, America’s war in Afghanistan will turn 17. At that point, it will be old enough to go and fight in itself—and there is no end in sight. The United States escalated the war in 2018 by increasing the number of its troops and airstrikes, and this year is bringing a record-high number of…
Tahnoun bin Zayed, the national security adviser of the United Arab Emirates and the crown prince’s younger brother, has been in Tehran for the last 48 hours on a secret mission aiming to defuse the Gulf crisis, a senior security source in the UAE told Middle East Eye. Tahnoun’s secret mission is the highest-level meeting…
Events in Syria have recently clearly taken a turn for the worse and there is an increasing amount of evidence that the Russian task force in Syria is being targeted by a systematic campaign of “harassing attacks”. First, there was the (relatively successful) drone and mortar attack on the Russian Aerospace base in Khmeimin. Then…
Following the second ever US-Africa summit in Washington (the first was in 2014), the White House launched a massive offensive against African states, attempting to force them to either abandon cooperation with Russia entirely or reshape it in ways that benefit US businesses. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen embarked on an 11-day tour of African…
If the Trump White House had let it be known a couple of months ago that it was working with the Kremlin to schedule a summit meeting between the two presidents, all hell would have broken loose in the Washington Beltway. But that isn’t happening. There is an eerie calm in Washington, as if Trump’s…
American military are stealing oil in Syria, trucking it into Turkey while the Syrian people do without fuel. American military burned wheat fields in Syria, this is not conjecture. American military attacked Syria with missiles, albeit with a humorous lack of success, in response to poison gas attacks that the US and its coalition partners…
One Comment
Reblogged this on The Most Revolutionary Act and commented:
*
*
Many homeless people work full time jobs.
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.OkPrivacy policy
Reblogged this on The Most Revolutionary Act and commented:
*
*
Many homeless people work full time jobs.