The Forgotten

Left Behind

Homelessness is not a choice. It is the end result of a series of failures — personal, systemic, economic, and social — that compound until a person has nowhere left to go. And once someone is on the street, the systems designed to help them often make it harder to get back.

Castaway Warriors approaches homelessness not as a statistic but as a story — and every story is different. Veterans who came home to nothing. Women fleeing violence who had nowhere safe to land. People whose mental illness went untreated until the streets became the only option. Children who grew up in shelters and knew nothing else.

The camera does what the system often fails to do: it stays. It listens. It sees the person rather than the circumstance.

The Numbers

580K+
People experiencing homelessness in the United States on any given night — a number that has grown every year since 2017
30%
Of people experiencing homelessness are families with children
11%
Of homeless adults are veterans — people who served the country and came home to inadequate support
30%
Of unhoused people have a serious mental illness — untreated and without adequate community support

Why People End Up on the Street

There is no single cause of homelessness. But there are patterns — and those patterns reveal systemic failures that are preventable.

  • Housing costs have outpaced wages for decades in most American cities
  • Mental health services have been chronically underfunded since the deinstitutionalization movement of the 1970s
  • Substance use disorders — often rooted in trauma — are criminalized rather than treated
  • Domestic violence forces people — disproportionately women — to choose between danger and the street
  • A single medical crisis or job loss can tip a family that was one paycheck from stability into homelessness

What Makes It Harder to Get Back

  • Many shelters have strict rules, limited capacity, and waiting lists that stretch months
  • Employers require an address. Landlords require employment history. Banks require an address. The system is circular.
  • ID documents — driver's license, Social Security card, birth certificate — are often lost or stolen on the street, making re-entry nearly impossible without specific help
  • Mental health and addiction services are fragmented, under-resourced, and often require stable housing to access

What Works

  • Housing First — giving people stable housing before addressing other issues — has the strongest evidence base of any homelessness intervention
  • Coordinated entry systems that match people to services based on vulnerability rather than first-come-first-served
  • Peer support workers — people with lived experience of homelessness — as navigators and advocates
  • Decriminalization of homelessness — making it illegal to sit on a sidewalk does not reduce homelessness, it just moves it

What You Can Do

Homelessness Is Not Inevitable

The research on what works is clear. What is missing is the political will to fund it and the public pressure to demand it. Start by seeing the people in front of you.

Partner With Us All Missions