A few weeks ago I bought a Spare Change newspaper from a street vendor and read an article about the closure of the Long Island bridge off of Boston.  The Island had housed nearly 700 beds for homeless residents of Boston and had 11 addition recovery centers.  The article talked about how the closure of the centers on the Island had adversely impacted Boston’s most vulnerable populations and that 18 months since its closure the city had not since replaced the facilities.

This last week I went to one of the weekly meetings for the Massachusetts Homeless Coalition of the homeless and they explained to me the public and private narrative of the how and why the bridge had closed.

I was fascinated to hear the story and astounded to have not heard it before.  Some pieces of their narrative were easy to back up through research but other pieces were harder to fact check.  Nonetheless the lived experience of many of these case workers and formerly/ currently homeless individuals provided a lot of weight.  Though I could not record the meeting I felt compelled to make a video about what I learned as part of the Explainer Assignment.

The video uses found footage and imagery and is contrasted with text that I wrote in response to my learnings through informal interviews and online research.