An unidentified homeless person sheltered under a tarp in a doorway during the Valentine's Day snow.
Photo by JM Simpson, February 15, 2024
Snow on the Pillow: A homeless man sleeps in the snow next to a warehouse located on Thurston Avenue NE.
Photo by JM Simpson, February 15, 2024
Two unidentified homeless men weathered the Valentine's Day nighttime snowstorm. The man on the left commented that he had been homeless for 12 years. When asked about the tarp and towel he said, "It's all I could find to stay warm and dry with all this snow."
Photo by JM Simpson, February 15, 2024
Justin holds a pastry given to him by a passerby. On the morning after Valentine's Day, he said that he was cold, wet and hungry.
Photo by JM Simpson, February 15, 2024
Posted
Photos and captions by JM Simpson
Snow on the Pillow: A homeless man sleeps in the snow next to a warehouse located on Thurston Avenue NE.
Two unidentified homeless men weathered the Valentine's Day nighttime snowstorm. The man on the left commented that he had been homeless for 12 …
Justin holds a pastry given to him by a passerby. On the morning after Valentine's Day, he said that he was cold, wet and hungry.
These photos leave me feeling deep despair and profound sadness, and they make me ashamed to be a citizen and voter in America of 2024.
I was born in the Atlanta Georgia area and lived in Georgia until 1982. Born in 1947, there was no homelessness like this anywhere in Georgia up to the time I left. Everyone was housed. Perhaps they lived in 'the projects', ghettos in the cities. Or possibly people were housed in the huge warehouses of 'mental hospitals' such as the one in Milledgeville, GA, which, at one time had a patient population in the 10s of thousands and a total staff of maybe 4 or 5 thousand. Locked inside, but enough freedom to escape anytime the resident patients wanted to leave and go somewhere else.
There were very modest houses with outhouses that housed some folks, often blacks, who were desperately poor.
My mother recalled back in 1929 when the house that she and her 8 brothers and sisters lived in was foreclosed on and auctioned off, and with the auctioneer saying "sold," they became 'homeless' overnight - moving into a relative's very modest outbuilding of only two rooms fighting to survive in the Great Depression where some folks went hungry, but they always had biscuits and fat back with garden vegetables to eat and share freely with others.
But even back then, nobody went without a roof over their head - albeit a very modest roof to be sure.
I believe that in a world where there are filthy rich billionaires and people who have amounts of money that are not only obscenely large, but are so immense that it is practically impossible to even conceive of the amount of money these people have, that it is immoral, unethical, and wrong in every conceivable way that something can be wrong for there to be people without roofs over their heads. Period.
Boatyarddog
What are we doing about these folks on the streets?
Sleeping in the snow?
Olympia needs to open an Emergency shelter at these times of cold weather.
Temporary shelter
Friday, February 16 Report this
BevBassett
These photos leave me feeling deep despair and profound sadness, and they make me ashamed to be a citizen and voter in America of 2024.
I was born in the Atlanta Georgia area and lived in Georgia until 1982. Born in 1947, there was no homelessness like this anywhere in Georgia up to the time I left. Everyone was housed. Perhaps they lived in 'the projects', ghettos in the cities. Or possibly people were housed in the huge warehouses of 'mental hospitals' such as the one in Milledgeville, GA, which, at one time had a patient population in the 10s of thousands and a total staff of maybe 4 or 5 thousand. Locked inside, but enough freedom to escape anytime the resident patients wanted to leave and go somewhere else.
There were very modest houses with outhouses that housed some folks, often blacks, who were desperately poor.
My mother recalled back in 1929 when the house that she and her 8 brothers and sisters lived in was foreclosed on and auctioned off, and with the auctioneer saying "sold," they became 'homeless' overnight - moving into a relative's very modest outbuilding of only two rooms fighting to survive in the Great Depression where some folks went hungry, but they always had biscuits and fat back with garden vegetables to eat and share freely with others.
But even back then, nobody went without a roof over their head - albeit a very modest roof to be sure.
I believe that in a world where there are filthy rich billionaires and people who have amounts of money that are not only obscenely large, but are so immense that it is practically impossible to even conceive of the amount of money these people have, that it is immoral, unethical, and wrong in every conceivable way that something can be wrong for there to be people without roofs over their heads. Period.
Saturday, February 17 Report this