BY Christina Griffith
Nov. 13, 2024
In 2015, when A Bigger Vision Films released Under the Bridge: The Criminalization of Homelessness, the filmmakers continuously faced the same question from audiences: Thanks for pointing out the problem; what is the solution?
“And we were like, well, we don’t know,” says cinematographer and editor Tim Hashko. “Let’s look into it,”
Seven years of research and subsequent filming resulted in A Bigger Vision’s new documentary Beyond the Bridge: A Solution to Homelessness, by Hashko and producer / director Don Sawyer, which will screen at The Philadelphia FIlm Center on Thursday November 21. The special “ “impact screening” is part of a social impact campaign the filmmakers and partner organizations hope will galvanize community efforts around putting an end to homelessness.
While Under the Bridge centered on a tent city beneath a bridge in Indianapolis, for this documentary, Sawyer and Hashko traveled to a dozen cities in search of working solutions for their follow-up work.
The working solutions they found all consisted of coordination, cooperation, and communication among impacted communities, law enforcement, service providers, businesses, volunteers, and municipal leaders — and the same set of housing first principles.
“The solution … is very simple, but hard to do, because they’re all really systemic fixes to systemic problems,” explains Sawyer. “There’s an array [of organizations], from government to nonprofits to faith-based organizations, that are trying to help, and all this stuff is siloed. You’re going to see communities that recognized this, and then said, we’re going to create one system that everybody’s going to work within, and people are going to adjust their way of doing business to serve the greater good.”
The key is for all organizations to adopt the same approach, leveraging their strengths and weaknesses so that each facet of government, community, and human services providers do their part within a single cooperative system.
Figure: Filmmakers Don Sawyer, right, and Tim Hashko, left.
The upcoming documentary screening in Philadelphia is part of a 40-city impact screening campaign locally supported by Bethesda Project, the Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH), the Homeless Advocacy Project, the National Homelessness Law Center, and Pathways to Housing PA. After the film, Emily Rizzo, accountability reporter for The Kensington Voice, will moderate a panel featuring Brian Thompson, housing coordinator for the Camden Coalition, T Sanders, director of entry level programs for the Bethesda Project, and Eric Tars, senior policy director at the National Homelessness Law Center, followed by an audience Q&A.
The goal of these impact screenings is to jump-start a community conversation about homelessness and how to implement the solutions outlined in the documentary with specific calls to action and follow-up activities for attendees. Getting to those solutions requires changing the narrative around the people experiencing homelessness and the solutions to the housing crisis, inspiring community members and advocates to develop a unified approach, and increasing public involvement on the issue.
The idea for the impact campaign tour came as the documentary was wrapping up. The organizations that contributed to the film were evaluating their communication strategies and wanted new, more effective ways to reach their constituents. Sawyer and Hashko thought that beyond film festivals and YouTube, they could strategically identify communities and stakeholders, putting them directly in touch with the steering committee and ensuring that decision-makers, policymakers, and average people in the community were part of the experience. While it has been done before by filmmakers, the scale of this tour is, as Hashko described it, “ridiculous.”
“A documentary about homelessness that brings 600 people together in the same room, 1,000 people, mayors, lieutenant governors? It hasn’t been done at this level,” Hashko says.
Andrew Spiers is a senior program manager for CSH, a national nonprofit and Community Development Financial Institution headquartered in New York City. Focused solely on supportive housing, they advocate for policy and programs expanding housing and services, fund projects and initiatives that include supportive housing, and help develop new models and programs using data and collaboration. Since 1991, they have created more than 467,600 housing units and distributed over $1.5 billion in loans and grants. CSH has a longstanding relationship with the filmmakers going back to early research and development for the documentary.
“Average people can also play a role in ending homelessness by knowing what solutions are out there, what policies to advocate for, how to dispel myths about people experiencing homelessness,” Spiers says. “So, we’re inviting members of the general public. We’re inviting people that are leaders in the business community. We’re inviting people in the homeless response system already. There’s a place for everybody at the event.”
Having previously worked with Rob Wetherington, director of community inclusion and advocacy at Pathways to Housing PA, Spiers knew Philly would be a great location to host a screening.
“I think there’s already been an impact coordinating the impact screening and the communication, and the connections that have been fostered with the partners that are helping present it,” Wetherington says. “The movie addresses and talks about the silos and the separation. That’s not a bug of the system, that’s a feature of the system.”
Human services needs are increasing every year, Wetherington notes, but though the requirements to maintain funding increase, the money doesn’t go as far, and providers are continuously stretching their budgets. Collective action is an effective way to improve results, rather than human service providers competing for the small pool of funding that private donors, grants, and municipal budgets allocate.
“But I think the reality is, and what I really love about this movie and the impact screenings, is the encouragement to continue communicating, right? Like, let’s break it down, let’s get together,” Wetherington says. “We’ll get more done together than apart.”
For Sawyer, the most important takeaway he wants audiences to leave the event with is that homelessness is solvable. “The big question I think that every community can answer at these events, after the film and after the panel gets up there, is, what can we do for no extra money, just by working together?” he says.
Beyond the Bridge: A Solution to Homelessness followed by a panel discussion and Q&A, Thursday, November 21 at 6:30pm, Philadelphia Film Center, 1412 Chestnut Street. Reserve free tickets here.
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