\u201cI got three jobs, I can\u2019t afford to go nowhere else!\u201d cries LaMont\u00e9 \u201cMonte\u201d Ford, a resident and community organizer at Wood Street Commons. It\u2019s April 2023, and police and city workers have come to demolish the site, the largest homeless encampment in Oakland, and evict scores of people from beneath the highway where have lived for decades.<\/p>\n
\u201cWood Street,\u201d a documentary directed by Caron Creighton, follows residents through the tumultuous year leading up to that moment, showing their humor, resilience and unrelenting determination as they attend City Hall meetings, and work with lawyers to try to stave off eviction. <\/p>\n
\u201cWood Street\u201d will make its Bay Area debut at SF DocFest on May 31<\/a> at the Roxie Theater. An additional Oakland screening will take place at the New Parkway Theater<\/a> in July.\u00a0<\/p>\n In advance of that debut, Creighton and two Wood Street residents, \u00a0LaMont\u00e9 \u201cMonte\u201d Ford and John Janosko, talked with Mission Local about\u00a0what it\u2019s like\u00a0 to report on, and live through, the Bay Area\u2019s homeless crisis.\u00a0<\/p>\n This Q &A has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n Mission Local: A lot of films about homelessness lean on tropes of trauma and devastation. Could you tell me more about what it means to find joy while living under such difficult circumstances?<\/p>\n LaMont\u00e9 \u201cMonte\u201d Ford: Well, we have to live, right? In any situation, you try to make the best of it as much as you possibly can. So that\u2019s what we did.<\/p>\n John Janosko: People always want to make homelessness into this horror story. Like I always say, \u201cDon\u2019t become homeless to find yourself.\u201d But I was lucky to come across the people and the community that I did.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s horrible not having running water. You\u2019ve got to go across the street to the park to get some water, bring it back and boil it. You\u2019ve got to find a place to take a shower. <\/p>\n But for me, honestly, I got support that I would never have gotten before from people who were housed, including my family, who didn\u2019t really understand what we were going through. We were the best ones to support each other because we were all living it together.<\/p>\n \u00a0I\u2019m not saying I loved being homeless. But the people I met were amazing.<\/p>\n Caron Creighton: It felt important to me to avoid some of these tropes that we see in films about homeless folks.<\/p>\n I think those films often go into a deep backstory to create a certain level of empathy for the viewer to let them put themselves in someone else\u2019s shoes. I really wanted to avoid backstory and outside experts.<\/p>\n ML: For people who want to work with unhoused communities, how can they help?<\/p>\n CC: John and Monte will have a better answer than I do. But I think there\u2019s a big problem in the Bay Area of housed people just not knowing their neighbors at all. That feeds into this assumption that your neighbor living in an RV is somehow not your neighbor, and is just a pile of trash that needs to be moved.<\/p>\n It\u2019s important to learn people\u2019s names and say hello to them.\u00a0That\u2019s the first step: just meeting people, period. Then you can learn how you might be able to help.<\/p>\n LF: I agree with Caron. The meet-and-greet is very important.\u00a0<\/p>\n JJ: Bring water. Bring hygiene stuff. Bring hot meals. Bring a table and some chairs, a little radio, maybe some cards, maybe chess or checkers. Go out there and hang out with people for a couple of hours. Build a relationship like you would with your friends, or somebody you met at school or at your job. It\u2019s the same thing with unhoused people. I know it can feel a little scary or uneasy \u2014 I admit that.\u00a0<\/p>\n But the main thing is consistency. Everybody needs consistency in their life. When you consistently show up, and people start to know your name and what you\u2019re there for, they know you\u2019re there to help. Then they start opening up, and you can have a conversation about what they need, not what other people tell you they need.\u00a0<\/p>\n I mean, it\u2019s really messed up, honestly, because they put this narrative out there, like all homeless people are drug addicts, they\u2019re lazy, they don\u2019t want to do anything, they just like living like this.<\/p>\n And that narrative is perpetuated by the way different cities do things. They don\u2019t want people to realize that these are human beings. They don\u2019t bring up the narrative that these people lost their jobs when the market crashed, or these people lost their jobs when the CEO literally embezzled all this money.<\/p>\n