I shot and edited this vlog down and dirty to get it up quick. People are dying outside! WE MUST ALL DO SOMETHING!
Chris Biehn who is an Ithaca College Student and started an organization to help the homeless people in Ithaca invited me down for a visit. We met up with Carmen Guidi, a local businessman who started building tiny homes to help our homeless neighbors.
In 2013, Carmen gave me a tour of Ithaca’s tent city known as the Jungle and I wore Google Glass to share more of an immersive experience. While walking with Carmen talking about the tents that are catching fire I remembered the person Carmen introduced me to in this video died the following day after his tent bust into flames! THE NEED IS URGENT!
Many of the people that live in this tent city are employed. They just cannot afford rent. Chris explains that Ithaca is the 8th most expensive city in the U.S. and had only a 1% vacancy rate. The cost of housing has skyrocketed to the point living in a tent in the woods is now affordable housing.
Ithaca is a rural community in Upstate New York. Although the cost of housing is high the funding for social services you’d see in a larger city is not available. There literally is no place for all of the homeless people to go to get the help they need.
Sadly, this is not just an Ithaca problem but a crisis happening all over America. Unless we do something about the increasing lack of affordable housing in this country homelessness will continue to grow!
