Homeless GoPro offers 1st-hand look on S.F. homeless

(04-14) 08:48 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- Adam Reichart and his newfound friends want you to walk a few miles in his homeless shoes. Virtually. Through a video camera strapped to his chest.

Reichart is taking part in an experiment being launched full time Monday by a team of altruistic young techies in San Francisco who want to show what homeless life is really like, through the eyes of the homeless themselves.

The idea is to increase compassion for the down-and-out by letting the housed see what the un-housed go through every day as they scrabble for food, shelter and relief from the tedium of street life.

To do this, team members are doing what so many innovators of their generation are doing - bending technology to their needs.

That means finding a new use for the oh-so-cool, $300 GoPro Hero3+ camera, a tiny rig normally used by extreme athletes, surfers and the like to show off their exploits. The team believes mounting a camera on a homeless person's chest and posting edited footage on their website - www.homelessgopro.com - will give that "you are there" perspective to help people understand what it's like to walk around asking for spare change.

That's where 44-year-old Reichart, the first homeless participant, comes in.

Homeless GoPro's first homeless participant is Adam Reichart, a handyman from Florida, who will wear the GoPro Hero3+ camera as he goes about his daily life. Homeless GoPro's first homeless participant is Adam Reichart, a handyman from Florida, who will wear the GoPro Hero3+ camera as he goes about his daily life. Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 17 Caption Close Homeless GoPro offers 1st-hand look on S.F. homeless 1 / 17 Back to Gallery

Reaching out

He was approached over the winter by the effort's founder, Kevin Adler of San Francisco, a 29-year-old sociologist and education technology entrepreneur. He calls the project Homeless GoPro.

Adler had wanted to do something meaningful about street poverty since blogging last year about the 2004 death of his homeless, schizophrenic uncle in Santa Cruz. The camera idea evolved out of talks with homeless people and fellow tech innovators.

"This project is about building empathy," Adler said. "We walk by the homeless every day, and sometimes we smile, sometimes we give a dollar, sometimes we do nothing. But what do most people really know about those they are walking by?

"I just thought, 'Why not use the same technology that affluent young people use to capture their story, like snowboarding, for homeless people to share their stories the same way? Why not do more to build understanding?' "

Help with teeth

He met Reichart through people he knew at HandUp, a new fundraising site for homeless people. Reichart had turned to the site's coordinators in hopes of getting money for dental work to replace his mouthful of broken or missing teeth.

Joining Adler on the Homeless GoPro team are a lawyer and a couple of students, none older than 32, who have histories of working for uplifting causes. The GoPro camera is donated and everyone works for free.

Reichart, a handyman from Florida, has been living on and off the streets in San Francisco for six years. He kicked a methamphetamine habit four years ago with the help of counselors - who say he's still clean - but he's had trouble staying in shelters long enough to be routed into permanent supportive housing.

"This is a very hard way to live, out here like this, but I would love to learn how to sleep inside again," Reichart said last week as he and Adler's team prepared to take their concept for a test spin. "I'm working on that.

"As for these guys, anything that helps people understand the homeless, maybe see us more as real people, is a good thing," Reichart said. "So I'm in."

Last week's test outing proved what anyone who's ever spent hard time in the gutter knows in his chilled or baked bones: Hanging out on the street is mostly boring, lonely and full of rejection, broken by moments of kindness.

'Take care of myself'

On this particular afternoon, Reichart took up his usual spot in front of Mollie Stone's grocery near Castro Street. With a disarming smile, he held out his sheaf of the Street Sheet, the homeless-activist written newspaper that sells at $1 apiece and is printed for indigents like Reichart to hawk as an alternative to panhandling.

Reichart is one of the more active salesmen. "I don't do handouts, and I take care of myself," he said.

He got his usual reaction - almost all stone-set faces.

"Hi, I'm getting my teeth surgically extracted next week, and I want to get some money together so I have a month's rent so I can move inside while I recuperate," Reichart said, over and over and over.

One man snorted in disgust. A woman pulled her little daughter close and hurried by.

In a half-hour, only one person handed over $1 for a Street Sheet.

Reichart shook his hand. Then he went back to his spiel. The whole afternoon netted about $10.

"It's hard when so many people act like they don't see you, like you don't exist," Reichart said. "It's disrespectful. I mean, I am a human being. So are they. We shouldn't ignore each other."

Adler and his fellow techies aren't sure what will come from their venture, but at the very least they want to connect more homeless people to the non-homeless world. That may mean strapping cameras onto a half-dozen more indigents. Or just arranging for those with money to spend a few bucks taking homeless people out for coffee.

For now, they plan to post footage on the website and enlist more volunteers to connect with the homeless. Maybe they'll turn the videos into a documentary. They'll see what develops as they go, they say.

"Anything that reminds us of the humanity of homeless people and helps us engage with them is helpful," Bevan Dufty, the mayor's point person on homelessness, said when told of Adler's venture. "Using technology like this is a great idea - it's dynamic and immediate."

Such a project must be done carefully to avoid exploitation, Dufty added: "It's all in the execution."

Friendship matters

So far, Reichart said, he doesn't feel exploited. He's billed on the Homeless GoPro project as a co-producer. It's friendship with the team that has made the most difference, he said.

Reichart was recently diagnosed with possible lung cancer, and the first person he called with the news was Adler. They end every meeting with a hug and call each other brother.

"These guys actually give a damn, and I appreciate that," Reichart said, after finishing the test run last week. "They are decent people. That means a lot."