New documentary from Indianapolis filmmaker explores solutions to homelessness

Check out Ben Thorpe’s full interview of Don Sawyer here

Don Sawyer knows as much if not more about the solution to homelessness than anyone else, except maybe his production partner Tim Hashko. After the release of Don’s 2017 documentary Under The Bridge: The Criminalization of Homelessness, Don and Tim set out across the country to document what cities are doing - what works, what doesn’t. Their YouTube series Behind The Scenes makes clear we know what works - Housing First in its full form, not Housing First as we envision it. The data supports this.

Indianapolis documentary filmmaker Don Sawyer has a new movie exploring solutions to homelessness.
WFYI News / Ben Thorp

Don and Tim just premiered their follow up documentary, Beyond The Bridge: A Solution to Homelessness. WFYI’s Ben Thorpe interviewed Don about the movie and Indianapolis’ inability to address chronic homelessness.

“Indianapolis is not unique in its fragmented approach to addressing homelessness, and that is why Indianapolis is not better at it. Milwaukee is a twin city it basically has the same makeup and it's in the Midwest or three hours away. Indianapolis could easily top Milwaukee and what they're doing.”

“The problem here and the problem, like most places around the country, is a lack of leadership. Leadership has to happen from the top in order, it has to be an agenda item that we’re going to solve this problem.”

“We're not going to just get them out of the way, we're not going to just hide them. We're not going to just build a big shelter like they're trying to do here and stick them in away from downtown so nobody wants to look at them. Those are typical responses that have been proven failures over since the 80s.”

We know what works; we need the political will and leadership to do it and to do it at scale.