Margaret Morton 1998

The makeshift dwellings that the dispossessed of New York City improvise go far beyond the need for mere shelter. These structures, assembled from scavenged materials, give evidence of the profound human need to create a sense of place, no matter how extreme the circumstances. Clusters of dwellings frequently evolve into small villages, underscoring the need for community as well as privacy.

My project began in 1989, when over 150 homeless people resided in Tompkins Square Park on New York City's Lower East Side. Observing the care with which people built, furnished and decorated their temporary abodes, I realized that an important aspect of homelessness--the housing and a record of it--would be permanently lost when the buildings were inevitably demolished.

After the park was cleared by city policemen, I continued to photograph homeless builders and their habitats in vacant lots, public parks, along rivers, under bridges and highway exit ramps and in subterranean tunnels. One dwelling endured beneath the streets for twenty-six years; another existed along a sidewalk for a few hours.

This ongoing project records, through photographs and oral histories, these fragile communities as they undergo cycles of demolition, relocation and reconstruction that symbolize not only their builders' struggle for survival, but their desire for a place to call home.

The River People, the community depicted in this catalogue and exhibition, represents one of the earliest homeless encampments to evolve and one of the last to be destroyed.