RON HENGGELER

January 8, 2025
Photographing the Architecture of Homelessness in San Francisco

These photos were taken in the last three months of 2024. 

In the past 10 years, San Francisco and other major cities have become well-known for their large homeless populations. The number of people living on the streets of San Francisco has grown considerably since the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Many of these homeless and wandering individuals have substance abuse issues, particularily these days with fentanyl which is so cheap and highly addictive.  

All of the photos were taken while I was driving in San Francisco, and most of the photos were taken while I was stopped at an intersection, waiting for the light to change. Scenes like this have become all too common and are now a permanent part of our urban landscape.

I have an interest in giving people a cathartic experience, and making them look at homeless people differently, and making them question how they judge people, in general.

Paul Bettany

After all, a homeless man has reason to cry, everything in the world is pointed against him. 

Jack Kerouac

I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself. 

Maya Angelou

Not everyone who’s homeless is a drug-addict or in need of mental health care. Some are normal people who’ve been knocked down, and it can happen to you too. Not all of us made bad life choices.  

Sherrilyn Kenyon

We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes...

Madeleine L'Engle

Where thou art, that is home. 

Emily Dickinson

We have weapons of mass destruction we have to address here at home. Poverty is a weapon of mass destruction. Homelessness is a weapon of mass destruction. Unemployment is a weapon of mass destruction. 

Dennis Kucinich

Older homeless people are more likely to be women, because they don't have pensions and they are caretakers, so they withdraw from the workforce and end up having no pension if their husband leaves them, so the whole thing is just a nightmare. 

Patricia Arquette

Seven out of ten Americans are one paycheck away from being homeless. 

Pras Michel

Home, the spot of earth supremely blest,
A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest. 

Robert Montgomery

The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly. 

F. Scott Fitzgerald

If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. 

William Blake

Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. 

Being alive is the meaning.

Joseph Campbell

Have you ever noticed that the only metaphor we have in our public discourse for solving problems is to declare war on it? We have the war on crime, the war on cancer, the war on drugs. But did you ever notice that we have no war on homelessness? You know why? Because there's no money in that problem. No money to be made off of the homeless. If you can find a solution to homelessness where the corporations and politicians can make a few million dollars each, you will see the streets of America begin to clear up pretty damn quick! 

George Carlin

We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep. 

William Shakespeare

People will sooner aid a sick dog lying on the sidewalk than to try to find shelter for a sick person. It’s too much to deal with. 

Michael Zaslow

A camera alone does not make a picture. To make a picture you need a camera, a photographer and above all a subject. It is the subject that determines the interest of the photograph.

Man Ray

The truth is you don't know what is going to happen tomorrow. 

Life is a crazy ride, and nothing is guaranteed. 

Eminem