by Cathleen Williams
The introduction to the film “Unhoused Neighbors” asks us to consider “what it means” to live in extreme poverty in America’s wealthiest state. At the close of the film, on a black screen, the numbers scroll: upwards of 770,000 people unhoused in the U.S.
“These are just seven of them,” the final sentence reads.
It’s a quiet film. Seven unhoused people face the camera, unguarded, and speak in low voices, explaining the arc of their lives, so far. Months, even years, of living outside. The faces are often thoughtful, reflective, somber, curiously free of anger, but also confident, optimistic.
The film is shot in Sacramento, mostly downtown in Alkali Flat, but not the trees, the century-old houses or the leafy back yards. The streets stretch out into the distance, hard surfaced, nearly deserted, enclosing these seven people with silence, heat, rain— by the roadside or in the empty lot, perched on a tailgate, camped under a freeway overpass. A shot of a campsite left devastated by a fire and a police raid. Everything needed is gone.
An image of two pigeons nestling against the girders of a railroad trestle across the Sacramento River somehow captures the fragility of belonging to the surrounding city.
Alicia, “street homeless” for five years, and Lauren, who lives in her car, cast out of her profession by the pandemic, are the first two to be introduced. Each of them, in different, even contrasting, ways, reflects on how their destinies are caught up with family.
In the midst of her struggle with mental health and substance use, Alicia gave up the baby she birthed at 21, placing her with people who could afford to send her to college. “’I’m not going to be the person, later, who stands in the way of her full potential,” Alicia tells us as she grieves the loss, and explains, too, how being a mother sustains her. “The only reason I’m alive is because of her.”
The film takes us out on the delta with Alicia at the wheel. “Freedom,” she says, “that’s the biggest emotion I feel when I’m driving. We were never in one place for too long— one to three months at the most. So to be driving, I get that feeling of freedom and hope. For me, home is, like, the road. That’s why I want to drive for a career.”
Lauren, dealing with the “logistical realities of being a transgender person,” has been “disowned” by her family, who stopped supporting her “in every possible way.” Still, she attends to small goals, though it might seem silly, she says, like cleaning out her living space and making her bed in her Prius. Every night she parks on a different street, and, in secret, folds her body inside to sleep.
Jordan, who grew up on a small farm, explains that after high school, he was exposed to what he calls “the party lifestyle.” In his teens and twenties—even as he trained to be an airplane pilot—he got hooked on opioids. “It takes over your life,” he says. “Everything you do has to revolve around that. You build up physical dependency. You get sick. It sucks. It’s tough.”
Now in his thirties and facing jail for a commercial burglary conviction, Jordan refuses to give up on himself. “I have a lot of potential,” he says. “I want to get on with my life.”
We see Jordan leaving his tent at 1 a.m. and, using a headlamp, carefully sifting through garbage cans in front of big houses. “We have to beat the trash truck,” he says. Recycling from a neighborhood where they hold parties and barbecues, Jordan tells us “it’s clean. Nice for it to be clean and not smell too bad. We like to leave it cleaner than we find it.”
Danny, a Navy veteran and law school graduate, slips into homelessness after he suffered a brain injury. Police shot Danny in the head while he was serving as a legal observer during the George Floyd uprising in the summer of 2020. Losing his job, then his housing, he moves into a neighborhood “safe ground” camp that has an exemption from police sweeps. He’s caring for his “elder dog,” Gonzo. He knows it is their last year together. We see Gonzo, grizzled and suffering from a heart condition, slowly padding after Danny.
“It’s 105 degrees outside,” Danny says. “Just doing your best to take care of him. It’s hard.”
The camera moves to an overhead shot of Sacramento and its somber night streets, tents under a freeway overpass. It could be any street scene in the U.S.
Carl, an Army veteran, tells us he is 62 years old. “The army is the only place I felt I really belonged,” he says. Carl returned to Sacramento to care for his mother, then lost his housing when his stepfather signed off on a reverse mortgage and he lost any inheritance. He has lived outside for seven years, making his own tents with canvas and heavy tarps to face weather that is “brutal.” We see him cooking on a propane stove, laying bread slices on a meticulously clean paper towel, making sandwiches for his neighbors. “There’s a lot of people with big hearts who come around, bring you meals, bring you clothing,” he says. “People are people, no matter where you’re at.”
The camera finds Tammy sitting on a wall. “Going to smoke another cigarette,” she says. “I don’t give people my last stuff, I won’t put myself out, but if I have extra stuff, I always share. I don’t need a profit from it, I don’t need money for it.” Tammy says she skateboards all over the place. “That’s what got me through everything. Skateboarding and music got me through the best and worst life has to offer.”
We spend a few minutes with Harold, Tammy’s best friend, who was in mourning for his wife and close family. “I don’t know what the Lord is putting me through,” he says. wondering why God has sent him so much loss. Harold died before the film was completed. “He was a really good man,” Tammy tells us. “A lot of people are affected by his death.”
Tammy is bottle feeding kittens with a Narcan syringe dropped off by a local harm reduction service. She finds an abandoned apartment and stays there, awaiting eviction, pointing out that the rent, which she does not pay, is “crazy” at $2,000 per month. One of the kittens—everyone’s favorite—is hit by a car. “He was named Harold, in memory of my friend,” Tammy says.
The introduction to the film asks us to consider what it means to live in extreme poverty. Wanting to understand the question, I looked up the root of the word “‘meaning”—in Sanskrit, the root word is “artha,” referring to the concepts of “purpose” or “significance.” So what is the “purpose” or “significance” of this glimpse into the lives of these seven people?
The film answers the question. These lives are not defined by homelessness, these seven individuals are not defined by extreme poverty. They are defined—illuminated, even—by resilience, struggle, generosity. Just like the rest of us. Here walks no separate tribe, no ragged alien pack. Deeply individual, the integrity of each of these seven people shines through their day-to-day striving and their care for their neighbors, their comrades in homelessness, their beloved and vulnerable animals. They have little: their lives, as intense and connected, as sad, joyful, and memorable, as anyone’s life may be.
The film “Unhoused Neighbors,” shot in Sacramento between the spring of 2024 and the winter of 2025, is available to stream on pbs.org and the PBS app.
