Steve, 57, has been homeless for more than a decade. Born in Allentown, he has also lived briefly in North Carolina, South Carolina and New Orleans. He was spared of being drafted and sent to Vietnam because his brother was already serving, "But I wanted to go too!" He lives with his lady in a wooded area not far from downtown, and the sign shown here would be used at a busy intersection, of course. "We keep it clean around here, as if we had a home," and it was clean. There were at least twenty people living under a nearby bridge, until the city erected a chain link fence around that area.
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If you see Steve again, ask him if he's ever thought of building a 'bender' to get them through the winter. Especially if he's living in some woods, he can cut down a dozen young saplings, bend them into an arc, tied up with some horizontal supports and then sling a heavy truck tarpaulin, which can often be found in junkyards, over the sapling frame. Plastic tarp flooring, topped with carpet scraps, wooden pallets for raised bed space.
http://voices.yahoo.com/how-build-bender-5456975.html
You could print this out for him; there's lots of other websites, google 'how to build a bender'.
Benders can last through all sorts of weather, and can accommodate a woodstove made out of an old oil drum, if you can find a bit of metal piping for a chimney. I've lived in one, and also in a tiny trailer with no electric, but a oil-drum woodstove, and was warm in the winter. It's not a piece of cake to make, but better than the tent you've photographed. It's heartbreaking to see, and makes me so angry. I hope they're okay this winter.
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