While shooting the building in the background, i was talking to one guy, when another guy showed up and we all got to talking. This is what’s left from our encounter. His name is Mike.
The guy i initially was hanging out with lives behind the building and pays 350 a month. He works in Solon which is about 25 miles away and takes hours on public transportation, but that’s where the unskilled manufacturing jobs are today – away from the cities that were founded on this kind of work. In this city there is still affordable housing, while in a suburbs like Solon it’s housing is unafordable for the manual laborers employed there.
This neighborhood is quickly gentirfying and will soon price out the working broke.
The shelter life or living completely on the streets, could only make sense if you knew the difficulty of the other few available alternatives.