There’s a lot of talk about issues surrounding homelessness in the United States, but not a lot of chatter about resolutions.
A new documentary film, ‘Beyond the Bridge: A Solution to Homelessness‘ is looking to change that.
A Bigger Vision Films team traveled over 40,000 miles to ask: “How can this country solve homelessness in a comprehensive way?” The new documentary shows some of the solutions the filmmakers found while exploring the dynamics of homeless populations in 12 different cities.
Those behind ‘Beyond the Bridge’ have also embarked on a 40-city screening tour with post-screening panels and Q&As, as well as calls-to-action and follow-up activities for audience and community members. The next free showing for this documentary is set to take place in Philadelphia this Thursday, Nov. 21, at the Philadelphia Film Center (1412 Chestnut St.) at 6:30 p.m.
The idea for this film, however, came from the conclusion of another film, ‘Under the Bridge: The Criminalization of Homelessness.’
“We followed a homeless camp in Indianapolis, Indiana and watched the inner workings of it and how they tried to support each other. The city closed the camp, displaced like 76 people and didn’t have another place for them to go. We documented the whole thing,” explains director Don Sawyer. “As we were showing the film, people were impressed with how we humanized the homeless community. We took that seriously, and so [then], we decided to make our next film about solutions.”
Working on ‘Beyond the Bridge’ connected Sawyer and cinematographer Tim Hashko to clinical psychologist Sam Tsemberis, who created Housing First—a model that uses an evidence-based approach to homelessness by prioritizing immediate and unconditional access to permanent housing.
“I see the model of Housing First and how it works and how successful it can be on a daily basis. I’m living proof of that as well,” adds Camden local Brian Thompson. Thompson works as the Housing Coordinator on the Care Management Initiatives team for Camden Coalition. He also is an individual who experienced homelessness with addiction.
“If you give someone an opportunity with housing and some services wrapped around it, you can turn someone’s life completely around. Not everyone’s a success story, but we have so many more successes than failures in this model and it’s cost effective,” continues Thompson. “The data that we have to show for it as well, it’s just common sense. [It’s about] getting it out to the public in a way that can be digestible and that folks can get behind and moving the needle towards this model to try to solve this epidemic of homelessness.”
The work on ‘Beyond the Bridge’ also caught the eye of the Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH), a national nonprofit.
“Don and Tim reached out, met folks from CSH very early on in the planning process for the Impact Campaign. We really believe in this film, and I knew Philadelphia would be the perfect location [for a screening],” says Andrew Spiers, a Senior Program Manager at CSH. “Philadelphia already has several housing programs that are using the Housing First model and the city has done great work using [it] to address homelessness.”
Spiers continued: “But I think the need for the model outpaces the number of programs or subsidies within those programs. So it’s really about highlighting the conversation around what homelessness looks like, what effective solutions are, and inviting as many people into that conversation and into that solution as possible. We need average Philadelphians to understand what policies to advocate for and what policies don’t work and what approaches don’t work, because people need to have that in mind when they vote and when they’re civically engaged.”
In ‘Beyond the Bridge,’ locals will see different cities’ responses to homelessness—from Seattle, to LA, to Denver. Sawyer cites Houston and Milwaukee, however, for having some of the most impressive solutions for this problem.
“They looked in the abyss of their systems and they said, ‘This isn’t working. We’re going to be humble enough to say we’re not doing well and we’re going to fix it.’ They curtailed their systems to serve primarily the people who were experiencing homelessness versus primarily only people who are dealing with homelessness. That was the first step,” says Sawyer.
The director also notes that the real solutions came from collaborating with the community by creating one homeless response system. Everybody works within it and everybody cooperates within it, including funders. They fund the system rather than funding individual organizations and keeping them siloed. It’s also about looking at youth, LGBTQ+, families and others in certain circumstances experiencing homelessness.
“It’s about fixing the system and service providers to accommodate that whole process. Let’s work as one system. That’s from the mayor and county executive’s office, all the way down to the faith-based volunteers—everybody. Community collaboration is what you’ll see in the film,” continues Sawyer.
And that collaboration is essential to fixing the problem, especially for those who know the most about it.
“Everyone that’s experiencing homelessness doesn’t suffer with an addiction or mental health illness. And individuals didn’t ask to be out there or choose to be out there,” adds Thompson. “Just my experience being out there is the feeling of being treated differently and not part of society… [It] was very burdensome and stigmatizing. If we could just treat our fellow brothers and sisters with a little bit more empathy and maybe understanding, we could help that individual instead of just pre-judging why somebody’s out there. Not everyone’s in the same boat.”
The ‘Beyond the Bridge’ screenings and call-to-actions have already seen some success stories around the country, like in Indianapolis. The steering committee there was insistent on the mayor’s participation, and that led for the film to be screened in his conference room with some staff. After he saw the documentary, he was moved to create the Mayor’s Leadership Council on Homelessness, and that led to the largest screening of the tour, with about 1,000 people in attendance.
The team behind this film hopes to have a meaningful response in the City of Brotherly Love as well with the event this Thursday (which also happens to take place during Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week.)
“I hope that the film helps people humanize those experiencing homelessness a little bit more. We are all in this together. People experiencing homelessness are a part of your community whether you like it or not, so how do we help? The whole community benefits when we solve homelessness,” finishes Spiers.
“If you don’t like seeing encampments in your neighborhood, then let’s solve homelessness so you don’t have to see [them.] That’s good for the people who are living there and it’s good for the people who now have a place to live. It’s not an us versus them problem. It’s how do we all come together, people from all walks of life, to address and solve the problem of homelessness.”
To find out more information and tickets for the screening of ‘Beyond the Bridge: A Solution to Homelessness’, visit asolutiontohomelessness.com
