Streetlife: The Invisible Family

As the situation of the homeless has steadily worsened over the past decade, a new wrinkle has come prominently to the fore: families. Today, it is estimated that families make up one-third of the homeless. This superb documentary, produced by Ken Verdoia for KUED-7 Public Television in Salt Lake City, explores a makeshift shelter at a Traveler's Aid station outside the city where trailers have been divided into compartments so that four families can occupy each one. The cars in the parking lot, some of them broken down, sport out of state licence plates. The station is a locus for travelers stranded enroute to destinations east and west: yet, increasingly, for many families it's a choice between sleeping in their car or in the trailer. A job opportunity didn't come through; medical problems drained the travelers of their last bit of money; a husband abandoned his wife and children. Streetlife is an in-depth sobering look at the situation in Salt Lake City, a microcosm of the undoubtedly graver problems faced by larger cities. Since welfare is unavailable to nuclear families, the families in the film have no place to turn. A local program employs some of the homeless fathers in city maintenance work every day for $400 a month--not enough to support a single person let alone a family. The St. Vincent de Paul cafeteria feeds 380 people one meal a day, and the number climbs every month. A volunteer at a local food bank reports that 45% of the people who come in for food are children, aged 12 and under. A health care worker who helps care for the homeless cites an alarming upswing in the number of tuberculosis cases. For the homeless, she says: "we're going back to the health issues of the 1920s." While the courageous efforts of concerned individuals in the Salt Lake area is inspiring, the stopgap measures adopted by the city are woefully inadequate in dealing with the scope of the problem. An award-winner at the Chicago International Film Festival, Streetlife: The Invisible Family puts a human face on a problem that too many of us still see in the abstract. Highly recommended. Editor's Choice. (See BREATH TAKEN for availability.)