A woman sits on the street with her belongings, capturing the struggle and isolation faced by many experiencing homelessness.
(Photo by Dylan Han)
Heads on asphalt under the scorching sun — concrete pillows so hot you could fry an egg on them. People huddled under tarps whipping in the ocean breeze. Kids tucked away into shadowed alleys.
All pushed aside for the sake of keeping a clean, happy, coastal vacation spot “presentable”.
These aren’t just snapshots; they are someone’s reality in cities where homelessness is treated less like a humanitarian crisis and more like a wine stain on a white couch.
In places such as Newport Beach, unhoused individuals are swept off boardwalks and sidewalks, not out of concern for their well-being, but to preserve a perfected illusion for tourists and reduce complaints from entitled locals. This approach is heinously simple: out of sight, out of mind. Similar tactics unfold in Honolulu, Hawai’i, where homeless “sweeps” are regularly conducted to clear encampments, leaving many displaced. It’s almost as if public officials believe that by pushing homelessness out of sight, the crisis will fix itself.
Ironically, this strategy has deepened the issue because it blatantly avoids addressing the crisis at hand. By completely disregarding the crisis, public officials strip the issue of its urgency and complexity, reducing it to simply a matter of aesthetics.
An elderly homeless man uses a walker to move slowly through the city while carrying his belongings, showing the daily challenges faced by disabled individuals without stable housing.
(Photo by Jonathan Ye)
Criminalizing encampments, implementing hostile architecture around any open area, or enforcing loitering laws under “public safety” does nothing to address the root causes that leave so many unhoused individuals on the street. Instead, all these laws do is force more and more unhoused individuals into dangerous and isolated conditions.
This, in turn, creates a cycle of disparity, where many are displaced but never helped, seen but never heard. By treating homelessness as sweeping dust under the rug instead of a humanitarian crisis, cities cause the very suffering they claim they want to solve.
Worst of all is the implication that somehow, by shoving these people to the side, the problem ceases to exist – something easily disproven when you question the people shoved under the rug in the first place. I sought to expose the flawed logic of these tactics by Documenting Change. Nine classmates and I pieced together a camera and sound system, circling the edges of Santa Ana and Long Beach to interview the real people our city tried to push out of sight.
Students document personal stories and community efforts to address homelessness, interviewing individuals with lived experience and filming in support centers as part of their ongoing documentary project.
(Photo by Dylan Han)
We interviewed those in shelters, those distributing goods from vans, and those living on the street. Doing so, we learned that most people avoid shelters because they’re forced to give up all but one backpack — only to be kicked out days later without the gear needed to survive. One organization, Clothing the Homeless, taught us the power of direct aid, while our work with Project Hope Alliance showed us how education, nutrition, and shelter can transform a child’s future.
We captured it all in “Documenting Change: What We Choose Not to See,” winning Best Documentary at the Student World Awards. This fall, our journey continues as we’re set to be presented at the AMC Theater in Times Square for the All American Film Festival and walk the red carpet in North Hollywood for the Studio City Film Festival.
More important than the award is the impact: the more people who see it, the more people start to act. Visibility breeds awareness, and awareness sparks change. By amplifying the voices of those who often get passed by on the street, we challenge the careless narratives that allow this crisis to persist. The goal of Documenting Change was never to win recognition, but to make people uncomfortable enough to care, informed enough to speak, and empowered enough to act.
