Ed Gold has had several series published by the BBC, but he can’t afford a home – so he sleeps outside as he travels the globe for his work

Ed Gold, a British photographer, is currently living in central Australia, in an Aboriginal community amid an expanse of heat-baked red earth and whirls of waving grass. But he is not spending much time photographing: instead he is keeping himself afloat by refueling cars and planes and working in a store.

Despite having had numerous series published by the BBC on subjects ranging from the Afghan war to a day in the life of a Polish nurse, Gold, 48, is homeless and, much of the time, penniless. He has lived on the streets while working on shoots in Alaska, Vancouver and Haida Gwaii, an archipelago off British Columbia. When he’s back in the UK, he sleeps in doorways or in tents pitched behind his motorbike. The brutal economic realities of photojournalism leave him “in a situation where I’m poverty-stricken, but I’m not going to give up”, he said by phone recently.

As employers increasingly offer temporary contracts and minimal benefits instead of traditional full-time roles, the security of many occupations has been eroded. Labor experts define such jobs as “precarious employment”. Adjunct teaching positions are a prime example, as we revealed recently. Facing shrinking newsroom budgets and the devaluing of their profession, photojournalists like Gold are also confronted by difficulties.

He knows he can’t go on like this forever. He has a heart murmur and says he’s almost a decade overdue for a heart valve replacement. “I’m already starting to feel the symptoms of it, which is increased tiredness” and severe double vision, he said. Sometimes mere subsistence is a struggle. “I never eat properly,” he said.

Yet Gold thinks in grander terms. “How many other people are doing this?” he said. “I’m giving people a voice who don’t normally have a voice, and that’s what’s the most important thing to me.”

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What we published

The US spends twice as much on a tax break for rich homeowners as it does on rent for the poor

As a polygamist community crumbles, “sister wives” are forced from their homes

Film: the 300 people who live in pitch-black tunnels underneath the Las Vegas glitz

“We met on OKCupid and live in a tent”: homeless people tell their love stories

Homeless residents of RVs are pushed out near the future site of a school funded by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan

Behind the scenes

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Another side of Las Vegas. Photograph: The Guardian

In October, the Guardian film-maker Adithya Sambamurthy saw a side of Las Vegas that is unimaginable to those visiting the city’s spangled, cacophonous casinos. He ventured into the storm-drain tunnels beneath the city and met some of the 300 homeless people estimated to be living there, in the silent darkness.

Sambamurthy was told a moving story that never made it into the film we ran recently. When the horrific mass shooting that claimed 58 lives near the Mandalay Bay hotel began, a Swat team went to an entrance to the tunnels. “They were just yelling: ‘Get up, get out or you’re gonna die,’” a man named Joel said. He and others were brought out into the daylight. It was like an “apocalypse”, he said.

Another tunnel-dweller, Dan, was aboveground when the shooting started, and heard gunfire. “It was like it wasn’t even Vegas at that moment,” he said. Although the streets were blockaded, he managed to get back home – he knew a secret route, he said. “If you know the tunnel system, you can get around wherever you want to get to,” he confided.

Bookmarked

A new business has emerged in Los Angeles: renting RVs to homeless people [KPCC]

Outbreak of hepatitis A flares to 87 cases [The Salt Lake Tribune]



San Francisco supervisor:

What if we just stopped building office space to attract high-wage workers who are imported by companies that don’t hire San Franciscans?” [48 Hills]

What if we just stopped building office space to attract high-wage workers who are imported by companies that don’t hire San Franciscans?” [48 Hills] In the wake of the Wine Country fires, a UC Berkeley professor considers the Bay Area housing shortage [The New York Times]

“Student homelessness in Seattle growing at New York City rates” [The Seattle Times]

This month in gentrification: Denver coffee shop puts up a questionable sandwich-board [The Guardian]

Last but not least

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Skid Row’s community refresh spot. Photograph: The Skid Row Community Improvement Coalition

One of the most appalling aspects of homelessness in America is the refusal by cities to provide toilets for those living outside, forcing them to relieve themselves in circumstances that would be deemed intolerable in a refugee camp. As we’ve written, conditions on Skid Row in Los Angeles are some kind of nadir: at night there are only nine toilets for almost 2,000 people sleeping on the street.

There, at least, a small shift is on the horizon. On Monday, the Skid Row Community Improvement Coalition is unveiling a cheery, temporary hygiene center with toilets and showers. Initially, it will only be open during the daytime, but in the near future it plans to expand to nights.

“There is no negotiation when it comes to basic needs,” said an activist who is known in the community as Louise Mbella “Sinai” (Frenchy). “People may say: ‘Oh, this hygiene center will bring more homeless.’ Well, it doesn’t matter whether there are homeless or no homeless – it is our duty as a society to provide clean public toilets and showers to those who do not even have a roof over their head. That should not even be a debate.”

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