In summary
CalMatters and Catchlight collaborate to tell human stories of people’s experiences in California.
California’s more than 170,000 unhoused people often lack the means and mobility to locate and visit a doctor who will accept them, so conditions fester until they need emergency treatment. To address these combined crises, the state is supporting street medicine teams.
At least 25 teams now operate throughout California, strapping on backpacks filled with medical supplies and meeting homeless people where they are. Most teams stress continuity — visiting the same patients in the same places, at regular intervals. They also include community health workers, who hand out food and hygiene supplies and help people overcome hurdles to obtaining aid and housing.
CalMatters and CatchLight’s Local Visual Desk worked together over the past year to document three street medic teams in Los Angeles, Bakersfield and Redding. Larry Valenzuela, the CatchLight Fellow working as a CalMatters photographer, said the long-term nature of the assignment is what brought it to life: “This project gave me the opportunity to go deeper and spend time getting to know both the medics and their patients.”
Carla Bolen, a patient Valenzuela covered for the story, said the medic team helped her get her life back by getting her off the streets and finding her housing.
“It’s a total change going from living outside to inside. You got to train yourself to where you were before you became homeless,” Bolen said. ”Like paying bills or picking up your medication. You can’t be lazy when you want your life back, and I prefer not to be lazy because I want my life back.” As of May, the team had moved her into an apartment.
“By taking a longform, solutions-oriented approach to the visual reporting, Valenzuela was able to document not only the services that these street medic teams are providing on a daily basis, but the ways these services positively impact the lives of their patients in the long-term,” said Jenny Jacklin Stratton, CatchLight Local’s Director and Managing Editor.
CalMatters members, major donors and foundations make such unique partnerships possible.
This unique photo collaboration represents the intersection of CalMatters’ mission to improve California’s democracy through accountability-focused and informative journalism with CatchLight’s mission to inform, connect and transform communities.
This project was produced by CalMatters and CatchLight as part of the CatchLight Local CA Visual Desk.