The Picture the Homeless Oral History Project: They Said We Couldn't Do It

They Said We Couldn’t Do It

I think about Harriet Tubman. She told her people, “keep moving” and that what Picture the Homeless has done.

DeBoRah Dickerson, PTH Housing Campaign Leader

The Picture the Homeless Oral History Project

Don’t Talk About Us: Talk With Us!

DeBoRah Dickerson with PTH members speaking at the Institute for Social Ecology January 10, 2010

They Said We Couldn’t Do It starts at the beginning of PTH and runs through all of PTH’s campaigns.

This skill-share traces the history of how PTH created a space of organizing and political leadership by homeless New Yorkers. Not only did PTH organize when we were told it wasn’t possible, we created space in the social justice movement for homeless leadership and won policy changes that PTH was told “could not be done.”

The following reflections from the projects oral history interviews reveal the power of making sure homeless folks are respected and acknowledged and supported in all ways necessary to teach, learn, organize, and lead.

Jazmin Berges with PTH Housing Campaign, Gaining Ground roll out. January 27, 2016

Creating a culture of many leaders:

• Respects the knowledge of homeless folks

• Everyone is a learner and a teacher

• Welcomes folks to share knowledge and support

• Disrupts negative stereotypes and changes how homeless folks are “pictured”.

• Believes that homeless folks must be in the leadership of social justice struggles to truly address root causes

How did we do this?

• Listening to what people say

• Finding the common threads across conversations

• Being accountable to one another

• Knowing the difference between speaking for yourself and speaking for an organization

• Developing collective analysis

• Identifying systemic solutions to homelessness

• Training and supporting members to take action

• Homeless folks represented PTH

• Organizing bold, creative direct actions

• Taking retaliation and harm into consideration as well as the safety offered by publicly being part of an organization.

What was accomplished through Homeless organizing?

• We changed negative stereotypes

• Built solidarity among members and the social justice movement around common issues

• Seeded the social justice movement with skilled leaders

• Moved innovative ideas and fought for policy change that was shaped by homeless New Yorkers.

Taking a Stand

Anthony Williams (January 3, 2018)

I didn’t realize this until later, but he [Lewis Haggins] actually wanted me close to him, and he had a vision that I knew nothing about. I didn’t know who this guy was, or what his angle was except that, once I got into Bellevue, he come to me and say, “Hey, Ant, how you doing? I was out and about, and I was looking at some articles. I found this article about CHARAS, a Community Center.”

But even before that, he would come to my room, every night, and say, “Want to go down to the radio station and do an interview at WBAI?” So, I kept telling him, “No, no, no.” We’re still were in the same outpatient program, B.R.C., so I would run into him there, and he would say the same thing to me again, “Anthony, you want to come to WBAI?” And I was like, “Ah… I don't know.” He goes, “This is the last time. This is it. This is final. It’s either you’re coming with me to the radio station, or this is it. It’s your last shot. This is it.”

Anthony Williams (January 3, 2018)

What happened was, the Warrant Squad came in, made him get out of bed, rousted him up, slammed him up against the wall. I mean, they really roughed him up. And Lou watched it, and came over to my room, like three in the morning, “We got to do something about this. They just beat up a homeless guy, that was sleeping right across from me.” I said, “But that’s nothing new.” He goes, “No! No. They… We got to do something about this, Anthony.”

“So, what are we going to do? I mean, this is what they do! This is the shelter. This is the norm. If the Warrant Squad comes in, and wake you up out of bed, and if you attempt to resist or whatever, then you get an ass whooping, and that’s what you get, because

you’re homeless. You get what you deserve, right? An ass whooping.”

“No. No! No. It’s just wrong. I watched them beat this guy up, with no clothes on, just in his underwear, okay? No. We got to do something, Anthony.” And so, I was like, “I don't know what we could do. What?!” You know what I mean? Like, what? And so, that’s when I decided to go with him to WBAI.

I said, “Okay, Lou, I’ll come with you.” He goes, “You got to get up, three in the morning, and walk down to Wall Street.” I said, “Okay! I’ll be up at three. I’ll be up at three.” And sure enough, I got up at three and we left Bellevue and headed south towards Wall Street, from Thirtieth Street, no money, no food, no nothing, just going to a radio station, and early in the morning.

Finding Allies

Carlos Chino Garcia (August 21, 2018)

When I first met them, especially Lewis, I had respect because I saw him coming to meetings. And when you’re a brother that’s down-and-out, and you want to develop yourself and clean yourself up, it shows that you’re serious. I’ve dealt with a lot of groups throughout the city and the country with a lot of people that basically have an idea, and you have to encourage them quickly to become serious with that idea. So, it doesn’t go away from their thoughts, you know?

Basically, that’s the advantage that I felt, and it wasn’t just me. It was Tony and Armando and we wanted to give them that spirit, “Go ahead, go for it. You got an idea, go for it.” And not only you’ve got an idea, you’ve got an idea that is necessary! It’s not an idea like “Hey, Hey” just any idea. Because, at that time, there wasn’t a group. They were advocates.

I sincerely felt that they were sincere about that idea, and it’s an idea that didn’t exist in the city, of homeless people forming their own advocacy group. It didn’t exist that I know of you know. Then seeing Lewis coming day after day to the AA meetings and basically trying to clean himself, I felt that he needed something to put time into, and that was it. I don’t think we knew of a group, of any other group that was doing that. *

Dave Powell (March 13, 2023)

It's just great to be with those guys and just watching them work and just watching them think like literally figure it out from scratch. It's not that they didn't have supporters, or they didn't have people that knew what they were about to do was important. But they come with any institution that was like, "Oh yeah! Great idea. Let us know what you need."

They had to build that shit. They built that shit brick by brick, absolutely and totally, you know? And with genuine curiosity about, what is the best way to get there, of thinking it through strategically. I remember just the weight of those conversations.

PTH’s First Office Space

Anthony Williams (January 3, 2018)

So he went in the church [Judson Memorial Church] and talked to Peter Laarman. And he came back out, and said, “Anthony! They want to meet with us. The reverend wants to meet with you.” I was like, “Hell no, I don’t want to meet with him.” He goes, “Anthony, come on Ant. I need you to come and talk to him. We need you to talk to him. I need you to talk to the Rev, to Reverend Peter Laarman. He wants to hear what we have to say. So, we should at least let him hear us out. Okay?”

So, after the twenty-four-hour action that we did, Peter said, “We have an office downstairs, it’s full of stuff. If we can clean that out, we can give you an office.” And I’m like, “Really?” He goes, “Yeah, we just need to clean it out.”

They supported us with a phone. We had a phone. Then we got a computer… Then, site visits was coming to see what we do. You know, you can’t show people something that’s not there! Right? It has to be there for you to show them, for them to do it, and the only way to get what you need is by showing them that you have something unique, and you have something that’s worthwhile for them to come and support, and we had that. We had all of that. We had every bit of it.

It was amazing. It was different. I was a little worried. I was scared. I had fears of are we going to be successful? How are we going to do this? You’re experiencing it as you go. We just moved in and then we started. Right? And then, it flourished. No plan. We didn’t plan it. I didn’t plan it.

There was no plan, but we got an office, and you stayed with me. You helped me to stay on top of Peter because I think

he was getting a lot of flak from his board. I didn’t see the flak that he was getting, but he knew what we had was something, when he met with me and Lewis that day.

And I think he even said, “This is amazing to me. Long as I’ve been here, in this church, and looking out the window and seeing homeless people… “This is the first time I… ” And he saw something. And he said, “Let me get them guys an office.” Who would give two homeless dudes an office, or offer them an office? Why?! Because you pictured something in them. You saw something in them, right?

*

Charley Heck (December 12, 2018)

Picture the Homeless was started at the end of 1999 by two men, Anthony Williams, and Lewis Haggins. Both men were homeless and stayed inside the Bellevue Men’s Shelter in Midtown, New York City. At that time, as a result of the poorly managed and inept bureaucracy, the two homeless men in the shelter believed that their rights as American citizens were increasingly and more intensely deprived. Living in the most spartan and most austere conditions did to weaken or less diminish their resolve to express their human right to be treated fairly. Thus, Picture the Homeless was born.

Lynn Lewis (January 25, 2018)

The difference with you and Lewis is that you all had created an organization. You weren’t going to go there, chained to a service provider… There's still that power dynamic where, “We're going to go to this meeting, but we're not really equals because after the meeting, I need to give you a bed. Like, you need me in a way that I don’t need you, per se. And people are intimidated. That's why you need a separate organization of homeless folks, where folks can determine their own interests. It doesn't have to be in conflict

with service providers, but people need to represent their own interests and understand how the system works.

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Paul Boden (December 4, 2018)

There was this real for me, sense of wanting to see Picture the Homeless kick fucking ass and feeling like this is fucking cool. Because it’s still my hometown, you know? I was really energized about the people that came out and this absolute belief system that they were going to do it. There was never a question in my mind that these guys weren’t going to do the shit.

PTH Original Mission Statement, hand written in Bellevue Men's Shelter by Lewis Haggins, signed by both co-founders, Lewis Haggins and Anthony Williams

That was the same experience I had when I first met Denver Homeless Out Loud folks. It was very clear there was a fucking plan afoot. They didn’t know exactly what the plan was but there was a plan to do this shit. And so, it was just exciting! I think the more we can share… They’ll end up doing whatever the fuck they want. But to be able to actually talk to a group of people with the same belief systems and talk about the freedom of just start stirring some shit. Like, you’ll figure it out. If you listen to people, you’ll figure it out. But just start doing something! Don’t just have meetings to talk about doing something.

Marcus Moore (January 11, 2018)

Risk is starting to be the new hope, and so if you’re not taking risks these days, then you’re almost in a situation where you just I don’t know how to put this. You’re going to deteriorate, or you’re just going to die! And so, I’ve learned how to take risks, manage my risk. I know that there’s going to be a lot of risk-taking. If I’m not going to take the risk, then I don’t know if I’ll be able to advance if I don’t take a risk. So, I’ve learned how to take risks.

Building on the Strength of Homeless Folks

Charley Heck (December 12, 2018)

I was not doing just simply nothing… Like waiting for the world to come to me, like the world owed me something that I was now doing myself. I was doing something.

For people that have never been forced to live on the street the uninitiated… They really don’t have a conception of the life of a homeless person. And for them to devise all these programs and charities is helpful to a degree, but it doesn’t satisfy the sense of

accomplishment. It doesn’t really give a person a sense of accomplishment of doing something, and that’s what I feel is vastly insufficient in helping people on the street.

DeBoRah Dickerson (October 27, 2017)

So, I was in the shelter, and I wanted to see what I could do, and I wanted to have an activity and get involved with people because I've been involved with social justice a long time, as a teenager. That's what we did in in Crown Heights, in our community.

I was working and I was also in the shelter, and I was really looking for something to do. Being in the shelter it's always good to have a support. I say, a group, to know that you're not in this by yourself, especially if you're experiencing homelessness.

Anthony Williams (January 22, 2018)

So, to get a homeless person, in my opinion, if you get them doing something that they could see that’s making a difference for them, then they will stay! Because they see things changing. They see them having an opportunity to say what they need to say, without any type of repression or told they cannot speak that way or talk that way. And once they’re given a space to really talk about who they are and how they got there and what put them there.

Nikita Price (2017.12.02)

I've learned this from homeless people, and from Picture the Homeless you make do with what you got. Homeless people don't have a lot. Picture the Homeless doesn't have a lot. But what we do have, we make it work.

William Burnett (November 16, 2017)

Eventually I became homeless myself and had a reason to move from journalist mode to member mode. One of the things that I learned, was how homeless people related to each other. I had already seen when, not even homeless but just poor and you have nowhere to turn and you really need some help, it's usually another poor person who'll be the one to respond.

And so, there was that sense of empathy. But there was also this sense of resourcefulness among the members, so that if one person didn't have a resource, another person did, and so it really gave a strong sense of an authentic community. Where other folks talk about community, here I was watching people live it out, in a space, New York City, where you didn't expect people to have that sense of community spirit. Here the poorest of the poor were exhibiting that community spirit.

Anthony Williams (January 3, 2018)

But I survived! People are surviving. People are making it. We are helping people do this. We are showing them that they could do this. We could show them that they have power! Most important thing is homeless people have power. They don’t need to be empowered. Kill that language, right?

Nikita Price (December 2, 2017)

I went by Picture the Homeless one day and I was introduced around, and I saw that there were other folks like myself. Some folks were in shelter and most of the folks were living on the street. So, I said, “Well, if they can do it, I can do it.”

So, how am I going to fit myself into this picture and survive and exist? I knew that in order to do that, I was going to have to be coming back and finding out how best to do that. And I've always

been good with that. If you want to know how to do something, you go to where it's being done, and you deal with the people that are doing it. So, I did! And I kept going back to Picture the Homeless and finding out how to navigate the system.

They Said We Couldn’t, But We Did

Tyletha Samuels (April 19, 2019)

It’s so many places that you can do outreach, because homeless is just everywhere on the train, in front of a bus, in front of a shelter. I’ve been to shelters, done trainings in shelters, done public speaking to tell people about Picture the Homeless, met people in the shelters, to try and get them to come to Picture the Homeless.

Lynn Lewis (January 25, 2018)

I would hear from you and Lewis, and you and Lewis were out there talking to homeless people. I mean you guys were like on fire. You're going to [W]BAI. You're putting calls out. But, where were people supposed to meet? How could homeless people find you? It's not the same as door knocking, but people generally are in the same area. They eat at the same soup kitchen. You know where to find them. Like, “Oh, this one always goes to Holy Apostles [Soup Kitchen] for lunch, I can go find him there. Oh, this guy picks up cans all night around Penn Station, I can find him.”

When you're organizing homeless folks, it's definitely much more complicated than everybody's in one building and you’re gonna knock on their doors. We needed to be very consistent and have the meetings at the same time, on the same day because we are giving out flyers saying we have membership meetings Wednesday nights at six o'clock. So we had to be there. Because it's not like other kinds of organizing where you set a meeting date and then you call everybody.

Rogers (January 18, 2018)

There were disparate voices, but I didn’t see enough people being organized into one voice until I was reading some of what Picture the Homeless, some of what Anthony and Lewis had done and were saying. Because that was the coming together of united voices against the gentrification, against the profiteering, against the elite landowners and, if you want to call it, the municipal land barons. That was part of what was being done by Picture the Homeless in many ways better than anyone else was doing it. So, I said. “This is something I see, I understand, and I agree with.” That’s what would have drawn me to Picture the Homeless, to their meetings, and then eventually to 116th Street.

Sam J. Miller (November 30, 2017)

There's this narrative a lot of people had that they don't have any more, that people are unorganizable, or that they're dealing with so much shit that they can't focus on… They have to deal with their personal stuff before they can make change around the systemic issues they're facing. It's true that people carry a lot with them, and are in a crisis, even if it's a crisis that been going on for years, right? That they’re in a shitty situation that absolutely nobody gives a shit about. And so, being able to sort of help them, and love them, and get them to see that this is not about the terrible mistakes they've made. This is about what is wrong with us as people, that this is what this is the situation that we're in.

I just remember being so excited most of the time and talking to my friends, many of whom are social workers or who are working on the same issues but in a much less transformative, social justice context and how burnt out they were and how miserable they were. I felt so lucky because they’d be like, “I met this person who blah blah blah blah, and oh my God it was awful.” And the, I was like, “I met this person and blah blah blah blah, and it was awful, and I

was like, let’s get those motherfuckers!” Right? And so, instead of helping people accommodate and navigate and understand and function within a fucked-up system, like really helping people fix a fucked-up system.

James Tracy (December 2, 2018)

I do not value the assertion that it’s because homeless people can’t, or are so unstable that they can’t organize permanent organizations. I think that they instability that they point to is real, right? It’s a real challenge. It’s a real barrier, but it’s not impossible to overcome and I think Picture the Homeless shows that.

DeBoRah Dickerson (October 27, 2017)

We were counting vacant buildings and properties. We had a meeting one night, and I got so fired up and mad. I remember there was one block it was nothing but commercial buildings on the bottom and apartment buildings on the top. And I said, “Oh my God. Those could be homes for people! They don't have to stay in the freaking shelter.”

Rogers

And that was just the beginning of a little seed that has blossomed and I'm like,

with PTH Housing campaign, East Harlem Vacant Property Tour.2010

wow… And we went out. They said, we couldn't do it. But you know, I'm going to get to some of my faith. If Jesus took two fishes and a loaf of bread and fed a multitude, well we took some vacant buildings and we counted all these vacant buildings in all five boroughs, and they said we couldn't do it. We didn't have a lot of people, but we had committed people… And this is what I'm talking about is commitment. When you believe in something you're committed and you have faith and trust in God, you can do anything.

Ryan Hickey (May 22, 2019)

I know when Picture the Homeless was founded people told you, “It can’t be done…” Whatever, whatever.

But you proved that it can be done very successfully, and our members prove that homeless people aren’t anything like what we’ve been fed our entire lives.

When people talk about the bottom-up organizing in terms of like socioeconomic status and marginalization, homeless people are quite damn near the bottom. And of course there are intersections between LGTBQ runaway youth who are homeless, and trans folks who are homeless and there are all these intersections of oppression, but a lot of the times what they have in common is that they’re homeless.

*

Founding PTH board member, Sylvia Gina Hunt, Still We Rise march, Republican National Convention 2004

Jean Rice (November 10, 2017)

When State legislators are the target of your action, when they are the ones, the objects of your demand… Going to Albany if you’re in New York City, you have to get on a bus by six a.m. in order to get to Albany at the beginning of the Albany legislative day. You have to schedule audiences with these targeted State legislators in advance. And it's hard when you're part of a homeless led, homeless directed group, to plan that far ahead. To make sure that when you are given a slot, you fulfill it.

Only members of Picture the Homeless know how hard it has been to gain access to the policy makers. And some of the excuses, when we first started to try to get access was, “Well, we talk for you because you're a homeless group, we never know where you are bah-bah-bah-bah-bah.” So, in order in keeping with our motto, “Don't Talk About Us, Talk To Us!”, we have to make sure that when we're given access that we are present at the designated time, at the designated place, with the designated message, in order to have a shot at gaining the designated objective.

*

Arvernetta Henry (September 28, 2017)

It became something that was important and vital for history, that I can look back and say, “I was a part of this.” I was reminded of when I marched in DC with Dr. Martin Luther King, and how we fought for civil rights. It brought back good memories. I never thought that I would be doing this at an adult age, but I guess I've been an activist all my life, I just didn't realize it. *

Andres Perez (August 7, 2019)

I used to be a stressed-out person. I used to be very argumentative and all that. I learned how to be calmer and more cool, and

collected, in a way. I’m more like a people person, you know, trying to talk to a person, and trying to bring them down to our level so we get to comfort and everything and let them know, we can do certain things without going through the stress and everything.

We can do this project together, and we don’t have to be going through making errors and mistakes. I try my best to be that person, and let the person who I’m dealing with, whoever and whatever work that we do, to let them know exactly, “This is worth it, it’s going to benefit all of us. If we don’t get together and try to do something about what we’ve got to do together, we’ll be fighting or whatever, arguing about it, we’re not going to get nothing done that way. If we get together and work this out, we’ll get the job done, and we’ll all be happy.”

Willie Baptist (November 19, 2018)

It’s not simple because there’s a certain internalized oppression and an internalized misconception even of yourself as a homeless person. That somehow, you’re a failure. That it’s something to be ashamed of, and that it’s not your place to be able to speak to these issues. So, you have to overcome a lot of that. I think we overcame that in our organizing of homeless folks, in the organizing.

As homeless folks begin to link up and work with each other, there’s a certain strength and a certain trust that develops that you’re not going to be played with, or the fact that you’re homeless is not going to be manipulated, make you think even worse about yourself. So you’re kind of quiet for a while. But in that organizing and the trust building… And you’re having to have them speak as they never have spoken before about their homelessness, something that they know, why they’re homeless. They know that. And so, it’s easier for them to talk about their own homelessness. So that’s the first step.

Charmel Lucas (November 21, 2022)

The housing meeting was very informative. First of all [learning] why we were there. Not speaking of Picture the Homeless, why we were in our situation. To me, that was very helpful because at the end of the day, it’s like, “Father God, how did we fail?” I mean, yeah, we smoke cigarettes, and we drink. But what did we do to become homeless, and treated… So, that stood out a lot! It's not our fault. That really stood out. And obviously, you know Al and I, we agree to disagree, but he felt comfortable enough to that yeah, it’s not our fault.

Frank Morales

I’m sure I just picked up somewhere along the line, that there was an action happening and I remember being struck by the fact that this was a homeless organization that was beyond service… You know, the offering meals and offering shelter. That it was an activist social justice-oriented group. and that was unique.

I think Picture the Homeless was a unique organization among even Coalition of the Homeless type groups, and others. I don’t put them down, I mean, these were folks who were benevolent people, they’re attempting to do what they think is the right thing, providing shelter, and all of that. But in any case, you know, going at the deeper issues, and organizing for themselves rather than some kind of top-down thing, or social welfare program, or something like that. It was impressive. So, I’m sure it probably was picking up on some action that was happening going, “Who are these people?” And just, you know because I was very interested in those issues and so, I just followed up and eventually made my way up to the Fordham Road house there.

The organization of Picture the Homeless in terms of the classes, and the organizer school, and all the rest… The administrative aspect I guess of it, was ingenious really and again, unique the

way it was the way it functioned… But I think what was really most impressive to me was just the stick-to-itiveness that people had, you know just like staying with it… And mounting campaigns, and so forth. *

Willie Baptist (November 19, 2018)

I remember a meeting. I went there and didn’t know what to expect. I seen homeless folks trying to figure out what to do, planning about particular police brutality issues, all the different issues. I was very impressed with the fact that you had homeless folks, men, and women, who are there planning their next action based on, I think at that time it was dealing with police injustices that that they were trying to deal with at that stage. And you know, there was no doubt who was the leadership of that process.

Pushing Back on “Things Will Never Change”

Nikita Price (December 2, 2017)

We’ve always been a small group of folks who finally got it, like, “If we don't say something or do something, that shit's going to continue.” And we'd have to go back to our environments and see people that were suffering, and that had resigned to, “Well my fate is whatever my fate’s going to be.”

Whereas the folks at Picture the Homeless said, “My fate is going to be whatever the fuck I want it to be and so, I'm going to do whatever I have to do, to make that. And if I have to step out of my comfort zone, and let it be known and tell you that, then I'm going to do that.”

So, I always liked the fact that Picture the Homeless always pushed back. This is the reality of the bullshit that you're trying to jam down people's throats. And I think during that time we didn't have

a big voice, but we were consistent, and we were not going to back down. That's when I realized that we had a lot of power. Picture the Homeless had power, if we stayed consistent.

Kazembe Balagun (June 4, 2019)

PTH's ability to win at the vacancy count also opened up the space for people to talk about community land trusts because then people werelike,“Youknowwhat?There'salotoflandinNewYorkCity.” And I'm assuming that people thought that that was a bullshit struggle.

Nikita Price (December 2, 2017)

Because, it's one thing to say, “Okay, you know we're getting fucked, we’re getting fucked…” But to come up with, you know, what's the next step? We know what the problem is, so what do you do? How do you fix it?

And I think that was when we would then introduce the issue of all this abandoned property, and that's when we're also doing our abandoned building count, you know. The City does own some of this property and there are this many people in the fucking shelter, and on the street.

Sue Lob (October 22, 2019)

I think Picture the Homeless has been extraordinary in giving voice to and the whole idea of “picture the homeless”, having homeless people be visible as full people and not just be referred to as “homeless”. Picture the Homeless changed that in New York and continues to do that and there’s no substitute for that, I think.

Arvernetta Henry (September 28, 2017)

When this particular party said that there was no vacant property. And they said, “There isn't any vacant property available for the homeless population. That's why you have to be in the shelter system.” Well, she was talking to the wrong group of members!

I never thought I would be sleeping out in the rain, on the ground, on an air mattress, camping out… Because this person owned this building and it had been vacant for many, many, many years in a popular district. And we called the media, we called other organizations that supported us, and I said, “I wanted to do something new.”

And this was something exciting and new to me. I said, “I always liked camping!” But this was different. This was at night in the city streets! I had so much fun. And people came and asked us why we were doing this.

PTH Housing campaign vacant property march and sleep-out in City Council Speaker Quinn's district. August 24, 2010

The Only Way Things Will Change Is If We Organize

Andres Perez (August 7, 2019)

This is the way I always tell my fellow members. I always tell them, “This is our safe haven place here. Without this place here, we would be nothing. We’ll be out here struggling. The system would have a better advantage over us. We need a place that we’ve been having that we can put a stop to a lot of this nonsense that we have to deal with in our everyday life. If we don’t stand up strong and fight against the system, and stay together as members and families or whatever, we’re never going to get anywhere. We’re going to be out there worrying about what’s going to happen each day.

So, Picture the Homeless has always been that safe haven place for me. It’s always been a place that I get my knowledge and my energy. I mean, extra knowledge, and stuff. I’m able to do things and everything. I’ve learned a lot from Picture the Homeless, and I’ve learned a lot from the members I deal with. I also feel that other members appreciate the stuff I’ve done for them, as well. So, being part of Picture the Homeless, I’m going to stick and stay, stay strong, and fight this battle, and stop this nonsense that’s going on.

James Tracy (December 2, 2018)

I noticed as Picture the Homeless interacted with different formations in New York, political formations, is that even with really, really enlightened people who care really deeply about social justice and a better world that the idea of homeless people being in an organization and doing it for themselves and being fierce and strong can still be a little bit surprising for them.

Ultimately, most of them welcomed it, but at first, they were like, “Oh, wow! These people can speak for themselves.” I think that that’s one of the things about Picture the Homeless, the smaller impacts that are still really profound. I remember marching alongside the immigrant rights group with you guys and you could tell that they weren’t used to working with homeless people or marching along with homeless people, but once people got over the initial cognitive dissonance about what they thought was possible, often times it was very welcomed. So, like making that space for homeless people to be part of a movement was something that was really evident out there. Picture the Homeless has made that space. *

Joo-Hyun Kang (January 4, 2019)

One of the things that struck me about Picture the Homeless, which I think is a discipline, because it doesn’t exist with all organizations, grassroots or otherwise, is that PTH members in meetings tried to be clear about when they were speaking for

Jean Rice and Maria Walles with PTH May 1 rally and march, Union Square.

Picture the Homeless versus when they had an idea themselves. And that’s a practice of accountability that I just don’t think is as common as we would like it to be. We want it to be more common, but, you know, it’s just not that common.

But it’s also part of what makes Picture the Homeless’s practice around movement-building so important. Picture the Homeless doesn’t speak for just one or two people. It speaks for members. The conditions that members face change at different times, so what might have been true a year ago is not true or might be different, two years after that depending on what the actual conditions are.

I experienced a rigor that Picture the Homeless members brought to meetings or actions or things that I was out with them, that is not always present. It’s a gift. It’s not always present with a lot of organizations. It’s a gift that doesn’t just arise organically in some romanticized ways. It’s cultivated. It’s developed. It’s supported.

Moved Ideas and Won Policy Change that was Shaped by Homeless New Yorkers

Nikita Price (2017.12.02)

What Picture the Homeless has done is always shown that it's a myth about homeless people. We've gotten legislation on that fucking board in there, Housing Not Warehousing, that homeless people put together. We're part of a coalition where there's three, there’s two pieces of legislation that should have been passed with some other legislation back in 2013, the Right to Know Act.

Homeless people are doing this shit. Homeless people are doing this shit. We're not doing it by ourselves, but we’ve injected ourselves into the conversation on housing, on policing, your civil rights, your basic rights, your basic needs. And I think that

says a lot about Picture the Homeless. That has a lot to say about this organization and if it has a little bit to do with me, then I'm grateful. I'll own that. I’ll own that.

Jenny Akchin (2019.06.05)

Picture the Homeless was in their own category. It was just like, “This is an organization that’s super-down, that does direct action, that is in all the movement spaces and engages in this radical way.” And maybe I’m just projecting my like current experience on like the thoughts what I knew about Picture the Homeless at the time.

But I do people would talk about Banking on Vacancy and how amazing it was. That people went and just counted, right? Because people talk all the time about data, right? And like, “Oh, we need to get this data. Oh, we need to get that data.” And like, yeah you all just did that! And I think that was really attractive to me at the time. Seeing groups that actually do and show up in that way was like really, really cool.

Lynn Lewis (from interview with Kazembe Balagun)

People told us that, “That’s not an issue anymore, that was in the '70s.” And we, said “It's an issue, but the difference was that in the '70s people abandoned property, and the city took it over. And so, we're in the '90s and the 2000s, and there's lots of vacant buildings and lots of vacant land, but most of it is privately owned. We had all these people telling us that that wasn't an issue anymore.

First they would say, “There isn't any vacant property.” And PTH members were like, “what are you talking about? There are vacant buildings everywhere.”

Then we started doing sleep outs and we did this Manhattan count, and we were all proud of ourselves, and we get these housing activists in a room, and then they're kind of like, “Okay, but so what? They're privately owned, and they pay their taxes.” And our members were like, “Unjust laws are made to be broken, and slavery used to be legal!” A lot of shit used to be legal!

So then Chino [Garcia] had the idea and Valerio from Cooper Square, they said, “Well, you could tag the buildings and claim them.” And so, then that's when we did the wheat pasting. We kept engaging with vacant buildings and vacant lots in all these different ways, and members sometimes also were squatting.

So it was at the center of Picture the Homeless discourse from the very beginning. People were like, "I ain't got nowhere to live, and there's empty apartments.” And if they're in the street, they’re getting arrested. If they're in a shelter the shelter is getting thousands of dollars a month for them to live in a jail environment. And so, where do we go from here?

But it took years to move other folks to that. So then it was counting the buildings, but not just to count them but to actually tell everybody, “Look! There are a lot.” And then it did wake a lot of people up. Then the next move was, “Well, let's decommodify the land.” And people actually use that language. So, you don't walk up to people on the street and be like, "Hey, you want to decommodify some land?" But you had people like Jean using that language.

James Tracy (December 2, 2018)

You know, when people think about housing that it’s not simply a tenant’s right issue, even though tenant’s rights are enormously important. If we had better ones, we would have less homelessness in the first place. But the homelessness question is part of the housing question. And it’s just so weird that at the core, homelessness… Sorry, rather the word homelessness means you don’t have a house, right? It’s like home-less-ness, but it’s still really surprising how so many people even really smart and compassionate and politically astute people attach so much other stuff onto it.

PTH Housing Campaign wheatpasting vacant buildings in Harlem. February 16, 2006

It still comes down to the housing question, at its core. Yes, people’s experience of homelessness can be intensified and worsened if they’re also struggling with an addiction, right, or also struggling with a mental health issue. But to be boil everything down to mental health and substance abuse is really disingenuous when, really at its core… It’s the fact that every human being doesn’t have the right to housing. That’s something that Picture the Homeless reminds people of. Sometimes, it’s a gentle reminder and sometimes it’s a loud reminder.

Kay Samuels (December 6, 2019)

It maybe might be in a funky way, but it’s effective. Sleeping outside that guy’s building was pretty funky, and for them to realize they couldn’t move anybody. I don’t think a lot of people know that you can sleep on the street in New York. I don’t think people really know that.

Shaun Lin (October 12, 2019)

I think it must have been either Rob [Robinson] or Jean [Rice] at that action saying something about, “What role does land play? Should land serve a social good in terms of housing people, in terms of giving people a safe space? Or should it serve the role of real estate, and be treated as a commodity?”

And I think the action of breaking into private property and trespassing on private property and then thinking about what is private property, what is this thing that we’re upholding that we that others would kind of clutch their pearls at, you know that cutting the locks, going into a vacant lot. And then really thinking through what is land? What is our relationship with land and what is its value? Is its value making money for somebody, or is its value in providing shelter, space, homes for somebody? That I think really like fundamentally kind of made me think about capitalism in a different way.

I think from that moment on, I always looked at Picture the Homeless as an organization that was willing to kind of push the envelope in terms of what type of organizing was happening, willing to break the law if it felt it was necessary to do so, and also pushing consciousness, you know? Like forcing us to think about the political issues of homelessness, not just like we need shelters for homeless folks, but like we need to think about, how we think about land in the city. And that was really powerful to me.

Kazembe Balagun (June 4, 2019)

I think that there was also this level of coalition building from the bottom up that allowed people to create a network. And that to me is an interesting thing. So, I think that seed that I think PTH has created has also been able to expand itself into this kind of like, network of ideas and network of sensibility that can really build out from underneath it, you know? I think that building these networks are going to be crucial, and that's the dreams that I think

people are having right now. They're like, “Oh, this is really possible. These are real tools. We can do this.”

Betty Yu (January 20, 2023)

I remember we got feedback from folks about PTH's [video] pieces quite a bit, because I don't think people are used to seeing homeless folks in that way, right? So you have a stereotype, right? That they look a certain way, they talk a certain way. so on, so forth. And to show folks in this light of like extremely smart and thoughtful and actually critiquing the system and understanding the conditions and what has to change in order for folks to achieve the goals and to change the system end homelessness, and all that. Like, understanding it systemically.

I think folks were like, “Wow! This is like the first time we've actually seen this.” I mean like, more than once even within the staff of folks, like within MNN. I mean, even outside because folks are used to, “Okay, there's Coalition for the Homeless…” And there’s these organizations, advocacy groups. Of course, there's a place for advocacy groups, but this was very different. And so I think people were really, really inspired by PTH and the work they were doing because it was so unique. Something we've never I've never seen before, you know?

Joo-Hyun Kang (2019.01.04)

Another memory, is when the Community Safety Act got passed. What was it, like two o’clock in the morning or some shit? And Picture the Homeless members who were there, who were clear, they’re like, “We did this.” Which I was so thankful for because I feel like that was true, and it’s too often when legislative victories happen that grassroots organizations or directly impacted people

don’t own that victory and Picture the Homeless had not only fought for, but really led that fight.

* Shaun Lin (October 12, 2019)

I remember the one bill that really resonated with folks was around the profiling bill, which initially started as a racial profiling bill if I remember correctly.

And Picture the Homeless fought really hard to have language around profiling of homelessness or perception of homelessness included in that to protect people from I forget exactly what the legal term was but that that inclusion of that language was really important.

And if it wasn’t for Picture the Homeless’ participation in CPR, I don’t think that that language would have even been obvious to people that was important.

*

PTH.Civil Rights Campaign Rally with CPR for passage of the Community Safety Act. June 23, 2013

Paul Boden (December 4, 2018)

The building count shit I thought was fucking brilliant, you know? Like, nobody had any idea there were that many empty fucking buildings. But everyone has seen an empty building, you know? So, like as you guys would develop these campaigns, and I really liked the direct actions that you did. I just thought they were creative, and they were fearless of the cops. And the cops would show up and none of the organizers would freak the fuck out.

Rogers (January 18, 2018)

The rules that get in the way of putting together people who need a place to live and vacant places to live, a child could tell you, “Duh! Those two things belong. They can serve each other.” That fight up and down Third Avenue, identifying buildings, trying to get the city council members to see what is all so obvious, that we have vacant spaces enough, sufficient to house every person who’s in the shelter. We are the children saying to the emperor, “Hey,

Artwork by Seth Tobocman in support of PTH Housing campaign vacant lot takeover, July 23, 2009

you’re out there naked. You should know better.” And like the children who say that, we have often been dismissed.

It is a wonderful thing that some members of the city council, pushing past several mayors because we’ve been down this road with several mayors have gotten to the point where they have identified, not only the existence of vacant spaces, but the ease with which homeless people can be domiciled. And more and more and more we have to continue pushing so that the vacant spaces are not only identified, but that they become occupied by the sixty, seventy, eighty thousand people in New York City who are homeless.

Ryan Hickey (May 22, 2019)

Nobody was talking about vacant property as being a problem. And Picture the Homeless was, even before I got there long before I got there, since basically the beginning was talking about vacant

PTH Housing Campaign, vacant building takeover and sleepout. March 19, 2009

property and we were just kind of asking ourselves questions, you know?

There’s an affordable housing crisis, there’s a lot of vacant property, why don’t we just open up this vacant property and put people in them? Flat out. Right? And then a lot of other questions started bubbling up, you know? Who owns these properties? Where are they? Are they located more densely in another area, or whatever?

I mean, this was something that we were asking ourselves that was politically unpopular, even though it shouldn’t have been unpopular. It was unpopular because nobody wanted to think about it. It was unpopular because people always said, “Oh, that’s not a problem.” That was the answer, right? “This is not a problem, like you think it is.”

But our membership was like, “No, every time I walk in my neighborhood, every time I walk in East Harlem, every time I walk here, I see boarded up housing, boarded up buildings, and then I see somebody sleeping on the street right next to it.” That is just not just. That is not right.

Kazembe Balagun

(June 4, 2019)

The Vacancy Count felt like such a vanguard issue. Pointing at the vacant houses that exist in the city, is the most intrinsic critique of capitalism that you can do without even telling people that, “This shit's about capitalism.” And that shit is so slick and so smart that people don't understand they're talking about capitalism, because it's like, “Yeah! Look at all of us homeless people and look at all those empty houses. You make that connection.” And folks are like, “Damn!”

Jean Rice (October 6, 2017)

The things that mean the most to me are not the individual accomplishments, like helping to be a founding member of the Picture the Homeless board, helping to be a founding member of our civil rights committee. What I get the most satisfaction from, is the victories that Picture the Homeless has achieved that affected multitudes of homeless people.

For instance, defending the Better Bottle Bill, and getting it expanded to where it includes plastic water bottles. And when I walk down the street people that [smiles] don't even know me, they don't even know Picture the Homeless they're lined up at these reverse vending machines, that I could remember when they weren't available. And they are getting revenue without confrontation, without being dehumanized. And that gives me great satisfaction.

So, I mean, when you look at major structural changes that have happened since 1999. Globally! Globally! Picture are Homeless seldom heard of, but often our footprint is there. From Istanbul

Eugene Gadsen with PTH Canners Campaign protesting supermarkets refusing canners their right to redeem bottles and cans. April 14, 2005.

where people that are trying to reform a process that is not in the common good, when the people that fell between the cracks, where people end up being criminalized or vandalized having their rights, basic human rights trampled upon... When they come all the way from Istanbul to New York City and seek Picture the Homeless out and use us as a model. When the Shackdwellers from South Africa come to Picture the Homeless and use us as a model! I mean, I sometimes get that Urkel complex and say, “Gee! Did we do that?!” It's unbelievable that where God and this chain of events has led my organization and I'm proud to be part of that.

Brazilian delegation visiting PTH office to learn about organizing with homeless folks. 2016

Ryan Hickey (April 25, 2019)

So, the finished product was Gaining Ground where we specifically looked at, five, six, seven cluster site buildings and we did value assessments on them, and we said the government should take this over through eminent domain.

Darlene Bryant and PTH Housing Campaign, Gaining Ground rollout. January 27, 2016

And a lot of people who we asked to sign on to Gaining Ground did not like that. And they specifically said, no they weren’t going to sign on to it because it said eminent domain.

We were told, “It would never be done!” ANHD told us that. Even the people we were working with, they were like, “This is not going to happen but put it in there.”

And we were just like, “No, fuck you. We’re going to put it in there because we know it’s important, we know it’s the right thing to do.” And also, you don’t organize for what you can get. You organize for what you want, right? And we wanted eminent domain.

We wanted these buildings taken out of these peoples’ control, preferably for no money, but we soon learned that that wasn’t possible, because that’s not lawful. And then fast forward whatever, a year and a half, two years later after Gaining Ground. That’s when Mayor de Blasio announced that actually they did like the eminent domain question, and they were going to implement eminent domain on the Podolsky portfolio. And I remember that day being like, “What the fuck is this?”

You know nobody else was pushing this except us. We were the only ones knocking on doors in cluster sites. Even one of our members, we got her whole family housing because we knocked on her door. She was in a cluster site.

Charmel was really the one member who was knocking on doors, I mean consistently, and building relationships with people. And I just said to the mayor, “You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for these two people, Lisa, and Charmel. Like, you wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for us because I don’t know if you know but we’re the ones who put this plan in motion. We’re the ones who gave you the statistics. We’re the ones who gave you the facts. We’re the ones who gave you the framework to work with and then you’re just ignoring homeless peoples’ work.” Which the city often does and

always does and hopefully they won’t continue to do that. It turns out eminent domain wasn’t such a bad idea after all, and the city really liked it and that was because of us. For the record that was because of us.

Charmel Lucas (November 21, 2022

The landlord was playing the shelter issue people against the paying tenants. That was a big thing.

Don't tell me that you're not gonna pick up my trash because we got shelter people here! You got shelter people. Okay. Don't tell me you're not going to fix my door because you got shelter people here for six and five thousand dollars and the ones with the kids, ain’t no telling. They had to make close to ten thousand. It still has to be lose to $10,000 a month! Ten thousand dollars a damn month. So, that was the most impactful. Just because you money hungry.

Charmel Lucas, PTH Housing Campaign 2016

Jean Rice (November 10, 2017)

As we sit here nearing Thanksgiving, we're already preparing for our December, Longest Night commemoration. We always return to Judson Memorial Church on the Longest Night of the Year to commemorate those undomiciled New Yorkers who have passed on during the last twelve months. So when we do that, I can't help but reflect on our humble beginnings which makes me appreciate how my organization has evolved. And it always brings warmth to my heart and a smile to my face to think that I've been part of that evolution and that Picture the Homeless is still going strong.

We have a lot of more work to do. But we have a lot more assets, and I don't just mean financial. We have name recognition. We have allies, globally. These are assets. We have assets in human resources. We have social capital. How do we transform that to make a difference in the struggle for global economic and social justice? And I guess that's part of what keeps me alive. Every day that I wake up, after I prioritize about life sustaining assets what I need for that day, to get through that day, my second agenda item is, how can I contribute to make social and economic justice a global reality?

Bernard and PTH Longest Night Memorial. December 21, 2011

List of narrators

Andres Perez Anthony Williams Arvernetta Henry

Betty Yu Charley Heck Charmel Lucas

DeBoRah Dickerson Floyd Parks Frank Morales

James Tracy Jean Rice Jenny Akchin

Joo-Hyun Kang Kazembe Balagun Kay Samuels

Lynn Lewis Marcus Moore Nikita Price

Paul Boden Ryan Hickey Rob Robinson

Rogers Sam J Miller Shaun Lin

Tyletha Samuels Willie Baptist William Burnett

List of Supplementary Tools

1. Legal Decision in support of First Amendment right to “sleep out” on public sidewalks as a form of protest

2. Gaining Ground: A Homeless-Led Housing Plan to Ensure Affordable Housing for All

3. Homeless People Count (Manhattan vacant property count)

4. Banking on Vacancy (City Wide vacant property count)

5. Field Guide to Counting Vacant Property

6. Sample of Community Land Trust Pop Ed Materials

Listening to the Complete Interviews

The quotes included in this zine include the date of the interview. The full audio recordings and interview transcripts are available on the Picture the Homeless Oral History Project website.

They Said We Couldn’t Do It is one in a series of skillsshare zines from the Picture the Homeless Oral History Project. The PTH Oral History project is a work in progress. Email us if you would like to stay in touch!

pth.oral.history@gmail.com

PTH Housing Campaign rally chant sheet. January 29, 2010