Volunteers make their way to Roosevelt Park every Sunday to provide food, water, clothing, and blankets for homeless residents living in an encampment on the banks of a creek. (E. Bañuelos, 2019. All rights reserved.)
October 2019 Issue
Median household income in San Jose, California, the so-called Capital of Silicon Valley, is $96,662 a year, with the "middle class income" range cresting at $193,324, according to the finance website, GoBankingRates. For more than 6,000 people in the epicenter of high tech affluence, however, the abundance one sees almost everywhere in the region—twin Teslas in the driveways of "modest" million-plus-dollar homes, upscale malls and shopping centers in every direction, private jets lined up in rows at the local airport—everyday life is not the stuff of sitcom innovation hilarity. For aged-out data entry workers, families that didn't bounce back from the 2008 tech crash, veterans of every ill-conceived U.S. war from Vietnam to Afghanistan, people with mental health and addiction issues, as well as immigrants and refugees who never quite landed once they made it to America, the edges of California's golden valley of dreams offer the only safe shelter.
The crisis has only grown as Google begins development on a $385 million investment in dozens of parcels of land in downtown San Jose. Far beyond the envisioned Google Transit Village—Googleville, to locals—a very different Silicon Valley emerges. In shaggy woodlands behind high-end golf courses, along the banks of rivers, in gullies along the area's vast network of highways and railroad tracks, homeless people gather for shelter, safety, and community—that is, until county and city workers come to doze down their encampments. Between these abrupt displacements, Pastor Scott Wagers, of CHAM Deliverance Ministries, and volunteers from local congregations share food, water, clothing, conversation, and prayer with people living in the Silicon Valley's widely distributed encampments. We invited narrative photographer Émilio Bañuelos to visit encampments, where he met people experiencing homelessness and those offering ministries of care and compassion. His powerful images share a story of resilience and mercy at the margins that we cannot ignore. ~Editor
Note: Slides are set to advance automatically. However, if you click on the images below the main image, you can advance them manually, at your own pace.
Photo Credit:
All photos by Émilio Bañuelos, 2019. Used by permission. All rights reserved.