by Kimberly Gunning
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development released a study naming Denver as a national model for helping the homeless. The study focused on the homeless’ access to mainstream services and how cities have responded to the housing over services policy shift by the HUD in 2000.
Published April 2010 Vol. 14 Issue 4
by Margo Pierce, with contributions from Kimberly Gunning and Ross Evertson
photos by Adrian Diubaldo
Economic profiling treats homeless people as criminals.
In 2007, approximately 3.6 million people were homeless at some time in North America, according to a number of non-profit organizations. “Homelessness” is defined in a variety of ways, so it is impossible to paint a uniform picture of what this reality looks like, but the numbers show that homelessness has reached epidemic proportions. And looking around the country, for many communities a popular response is punishment.
A man holds up a ticket in Denver for camping ilegaly . The ticket had no fine, but required him to go to Homeles Court.
Published: April 2009 Vol. 13 Issue 3
photography & text by Ross Evertson
Earthship designed and built by Joe Callahan of Boulder, Colorado. Photos by Ross Evertson.
I was raised in the carpet and drywall world of suburban Denver. The homes of my friends all looked and felt so similar to my own, each one was like a visit to a parallel universe (some of them even shared the exact same floor plan, and everyone decorated the same way—the primary difference was the odor, if the parents smoked, or if there was a baby). There was something comforting to the sameness at that age, but as I got older that sameness became almost depressing and it was rare for me to ever find that level of comfort in the home of anyone else, friend or stranger.
It was particularly bizarre, then, when I first stepped into an earthship. It did not look like any home I had ever been in before. Beneath the iconic south-facing floor to ceiling windows is an indoor garden, fed by greywater from the sinks and shower. The soft forms of the structure flow all around. As organic as the stucco walls feel, they are covering a traditional earthship building material—used automobile tires filled with tightly compacted dirt.