Life Inside a Sprawling Homeless Camp

Two New York Times reporters spent three months in the High Street Camp, a homeless community of 100 people in Oakland, California.

1 minute read

December 20, 2019, 5:00 AM PST

By James Brasuell @CasualBrasuell


Homelessness

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Thomas Fuller and Josh Haner report from the High Street Camp in Oakland, California, a homeless encampment that the reporters also describe as refugee encampment. The camp, home to 100 people, sprawls across in a Home Depot parking lot, 100 people living there.

Drone footage, portrait photography, and video on the ground provide the interactive piece a rare kind of access to this dire place—"the end of the world" as one resident describes it.

Personal disasters, natural disasters, and out-of-reach housing prices have brought the residents of the community here. As noted throughout the piece—all in the nation's wealthyiest state, just across the Bay from glass condominium towers. A United Nations official quoted in the article compares the camp, located so close to such incredible wealth, to similar conditions in Delhi.

Still, according to the article, a sense of community pervades the camp, despite the many risks involved in living there. Still, one of the worst things about living there, according to the reporters' knowledge of the residents, is knowing you could be forced to leave at any moment.

Tuesday, December 17, 2019 in The New York Times

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