Immersive photography exhibit shows the plight of San Diego’s elderly homeless

Hutton Marshall | Downtown Assistant Editor

Derek Slevin spent much of the last three years photographing people who spend their days and nights on city streets.

In San Diego and beyond, Slevin met more than 1,000 homeless people, getting to know the human side of the faces we hurriedly pass by every day. He found more than 100 subjects for his series “Portraits of the Forgotten,” and listened to the stories of countless others.

On April 3, Slevin will show San Diego’s Downtown community what he has discovered, and hopes his now-massive body of work will do some good for those he has grown so familiar with.

A North County business consultant with a recently revived passion for photography, Slevin didn’t predict this project would be so expansive when he first began asking the homeless in Downtown San Diego permission to photograph them.

It began casually, or at least as casually as such a project can. Slevin first began photographing only when he had free time; however, citing his own personal turmoil, Slevin became enthralled by the real, relatable people so often overlooked by society. He took time off to travel along the West Coast and eventually road tripped all the way to his native New York.

“My quest really was to look at that understanding of that individual as a human being, and learn where they came from and how they ended up where they’re at,” Slevin said during a phone interview, as he bustled between his busy life balancing childcare, business consulting and an emerging career as a photographer.

“My goal after starting this, knowing that I was going to be doing this a little longer than expected, was to really understand and get into the mix with them, really get to know them, which wasn’t easy at times,” he said.

The shoots often took place late at night and Slevin said he was usually carrying between $10-20 thousand dollars in photography equipment, in dangerous neighborhoods such as Los Angeles’s Skid Row or San Francisco’s Tenderloin District. He admitted surprise in finding the source of danger wasn’t the homeless themselves, but the environment they called home. He said it made him review his own preconceptions about these people, whom he had been taught were simply lazy and unmotivated. He questioned how a person could enter this lifestyle.

“The biggest problem was dealing with choices,” Slevin said. “How do people end up on the street and is it really their choice when they say I want to be there?

“Who would want to pick that lifestyle? Because if it’s that easy and that lazy then why aren’t you doing it and why am I not doing it … because life can be pretty challenging at times, so why not take the easy way out because I didn’t find the streets to be easy,” he said.

Slevin will soon display what he’s captured to benefit an organization that supports all he has come to appreciate.

Senior Community Centers (SCC), a nonprofit that’s dedicated the last 44 years to serving the elderly in need, will host a photography exhibit and reception, “Experience Of A Lifetime,” showcasing more than 35 of Slevin’s prints, with 100 percent of the proceeds going to SCC. The prints will continue to be sold online after the event, with Slevin and SCC then splitting the proceeds.

SCC hopes that the event, which acts as a fundraiser for its Homeless Prevention Program, will reach people on an emotional and empathetic level and motivate them to act.

“Many don’t realize the prevalence of senior homelessness,” said SCC President and CEO Paul Downey, who has run the nonprofit for the last 17 years.

In San Diego, an estimated 25 percent of homeless are over the age of 60.

“The idea of this is [the exhibition] highlights it, and it says to people, ‘this is real, these photos can’t be ignored,’” Downey said. “They’re hard to look away from. You look them in the eyes and see that they’re real people.”

Both Slevin and Downey agree that adapting to a life lived outdoors can be brutal even for someone in his or her prime, but those in their later years are even more vulnerable. While SCC provides immediate relief to many seniors by housing them, the organization also goes a step deeper. After providing temporary housing, SCC tries to identify why the person became homeless — whether it be medical, mental, or employment-related — and then seeks to address those issues by placing the individual into one of its two affordable-housing complexes, where they may live as autonomously as possible.

Common problems like overwhelming medical bills — as well as those who have lost their jobs late in life and struggle to find reemployment — have created a sizable elderly demographic unable to pay for life’s bare necessities.

Two out of five seniors living in San Diego must choose between paying for food or rent each month, according to SCC.

“So virtually every single person we see on a daily basis is on the cusp of homelessness,” Downey said. “For you and I, it would presumably take a series of cataclysmic events to end up homeless. We’ve got friends, we’ve got family, we’ve got savings, but for most of the folks that we serve, there is no safety net for them besides SCC. One small blip is all it takes and they’re facing homelessness.”

With renewed discussion of a “living wage” in San Diego, many elected officials and community activists have pointed to data showing the difficulty of making ends meet in America’s Finest City. While the information sheds light on the difficulty of providing for a family or just for oneself with a low-wage job, one demographic remains left out in the cold.

As organizations like the Center for Policy Initiatives and elected officials like Council President Todd Gloria have pointed out, it takes $30,000 to live comfortably in the City, which a large number of full-time employees don’t make.

The average income for a senior that SCC serves is only $830 per month. If they’re paying the median rent price in San Diego, which is $1,100, covering the basics becomes a daunting task.

Downey said this is too common of a problem, and consequently, due to a lack of redevelopment funds, there is a lack of affordable housing.

“It’s not getting the attention it deserves … we are not even coming close to providing affordable housing for seniors today,” Downey said.

Job training, redevelopment funding and senior care need to increase today, he said, otherwise future generations will have a towering problem on their hands when the baby boomers retire.

“When you look at the demographics by 2030, a quarter of the population will be over 60, a quarter of the population will be 18 or under, so it’s the people in the middle who will bear large responsibility for taking care of 50 percent of the population on either end,” Downey said.

“Experience Of A Lifetime” will take place April 3 from 6 – 9 p.m. at the Port Pavilion on Broadway Pier, 1000 N. Harbor Dr. In addition to the exhibition there will be a silent auction, live entertainment, wine and food stations. The event serves as a critical part of SCC’s funding, allowing them to provide crucial services to San Diego’s low-income elderly. It will also honor Mary and Gary West, two philanthropists whose funding dramatically benefit SCC and the issues they are addressing.

To purchase tickets or learn more, visit seniorcommunitycenters.org/news-events/experience-of-a-lifetime.