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Street Fight key art

Series

Street Fight

How America chose homelessness

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Episodes

For decades, American cities have been trying to answer a question they cannot settle: what do you do about a person who has nowhere to go and no intention of leaving? Over three episodes, reporter Emma Pettit follows that question from the courts to the encampments to the city council chamber, and finds two competing visions of freedom on either side of it.

Street Fight: A photo timeline

We've called people on the margins of society by many names over the years: tramp, hobo, bum, and homeless. This is that sequence, in art and photographs.

1870s–1930s

The Hobo & Tramp Era

After the Civil War, as our country recovered and industrialized, young men took to the railroad in search of seasonal labor and occasional adventure. They were called, by others and themselves, tramps and hobos. Generally, a “hobo” was someone who wandered and worked, while a "tramp" just wandered — but the terms overlapped. Locals feared these strangers when they came to town, dirty and disheveled, sometimes perched on top of a freight car. Some laws punished their unexplained arrival. But gradually, polite society let its guard down and wrote their knapsacks and their tin cans into film, poetry, and song.

1890

Museum of the City of New York, “Lodger in Pell St. 7 cents lodging house (Happy Jack’s Canvas Palace) going to bed,” Jacob A. Riis, 1890.
Museum of the City of New York, “Lodger in Pell St. 7 cents lodging house (Happy Jack’s Canvas Palace) going to bed,” Jacob A. Riis, 1890.

1900

Library of Congress, “Hobos playing cards in a box car,” Bain News Service, N.Y.C., 1900–1909.
Library of Congress, “Hobos playing cards in a box car,” Bain News Service, N.Y.C., 1900–1909.

No known date

Library of Congress, “Two hobos walking along railroad tracks, after being put off a train,” No date or photographer known.
Library of Congress, “Two hobos walking along railroad tracks, after being put off a train,” No date or photographer known.

1907

Library of Congress, “Tramp life — how Jack London travelled on a passenger coach,” Unknown photographer, 1907.
Library of Congress, “Tramp life — how Jack London travelled on a passenger coach,” Unknown photographer, 1907.

1924

Norman Rockwell, cover of Saturday Evening Post, 1924.
Norman Rockwell, cover of Saturday Evening Post, 1924.

1948

Judy Garland and Fred Astaire as lovable tramps performing the song “A Couple of Swells” in the 1948 musical Easter Parade. Fondness for tramps and hobos, as characters in culture, grew as the reality itself faded from view.

1930s–1970s

The Bum Era

Over time, as the market for itinerant labor dried up, the men who once traveled hundreds of miles to harvest wheat and dig ditches began to stay put. They were the “bums” — older, sometimes disabled, and very often alcoholics. They lived on the rundown side of town in neighborhoods called skid rows, where housing was so cheap that a bed cost only pocket change. There they stayed, out of mind for much of the rest of society, as the police dealt with them through a strategy of containment: Stay where you belong, and, within reason, we’ll let you be.

1937

Library of Congress, “‘Skid Row.’ Howard Street, San Francisco, California,” Dorothea Lange, 1937.
Library of Congress, “‘Skid Row.’ Howard Street, San Francisco, California,” Dorothea Lange, 1937.

1937

Library of Congress, “Scene along ‘Skid Row.’ Howard Street, San Francisco, California,” Dorothea Lange, 1937.
Library of Congress, “Scene along ‘Skid Row.’ Howard Street, San Francisco, California,” Dorothea Lange, 1937.

1938

Library of Congress, “Flophouse on lower Douglas Street, Omaha, Nebraska,” John Vachon, 1938.
Library of Congress, “Flophouse on lower Douglas Street, Omaha, Nebraska,” John Vachon, 1938.

1940

Library of Congress, “Flophouse of about thirty-seven beds at fifty cents each, constantly crowded with construction workers sleeping in several shifts. Some of them had flu. Alexandria, Louisiana,” Marion Post Wolcott, 1940.
Library of Congress, “Flophouse of about thirty-seven beds at fifty cents each, constantly crowded with construction workers sleeping in several shifts. Some of them had flu. Alexandria, Louisiana,” Marion Post Wolcott, 1940.

1970s–2010s

The Dawn of “Homelessness”

Come the 1970s, the people on the sidewalk began to look different from the “bums” of skid row. They were younger. They were more likely to be black. They were sometimes women who hauled their few possessions in shopping bags — the origin of the term “bag lady.” These people were sleeping on park benches, in doorways, or on thin mattresses of cardboard for many reasons, including the demolition of cheap housing and the emptying of mental hospitals. This group began going by a different name favored by activists and journalists who wanted to draw attention to their plight and gesture toward a solution. No longer hobos or tramps or bums, they became: “the homeless.”

1985

A 1985 local news report on the state of homelessness in New York City.

1991

"A homeless woman sleeps on a park bench wrapped in blankets. Washington, DC," Joseph Sohm / Getty Images, 1991.
"A homeless woman sleeps on a park bench wrapped in blankets. Washington, DC," Joseph Sohm / Getty Images, 1991.

1993

"Homeless Person Sleeps on a City Sidewalk," Mark Peterson / Getty Images, 1993.
"Homeless Person Sleeps on a City Sidewalk," Mark Peterson / Getty Images, 1993.

2000

"A man tows his cart down the street on Skid Row Los Angeles, CA," David McNew / Newsmakers, 2000.
"A man tows his cart down the street on Skid Row Los Angeles, CA," David McNew / Newsmakers, 2000.

2003

"A homeless man sleeps in a couch on the sidewalk of Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood," Hector Mata / AFP via Getty Images, 2003.
"A homeless man sleeps in a couch on the sidewalk of Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood," Hector Mata / AFP via Getty Images, 2003.

2007

"A homeless man walks down the street as a new day begins in the Wall Street area where the homeless have waken up before dawn to dismantle their beds and encampments before businesses open," Los Angeles, CA, David McNew / Getty Images, 2007.
"A homeless man walks down the street as a new day begins in the Wall Street area where the homeless have waken up before dawn to dismantle their beds and encampments before businesses open," Los Angeles, CA, David McNew / Getty Images, 2007.

2010s–Now

Our Current Era

Whereas the men of skid row had a bed in a flophouse and the street dwellers of the 1980s had a doorway or a heating grate, today the people on the sidewalk sometimes have a nylon structure with a zipper: a tent. They often prefer the privacy and sense of safety it affords them. And for a while, they also had something of a right to keep it there. After courts granted the homeless some constitutional protections, cities allowed tents to stay, under certain circumstances. But residents complained of fires, disease, and public spaces not being kept public. That conflict — over whether clearing an encampment is cruelty or common sense, and whose rights matter most when it comes to a five-foot-wide stretch of pavement — is the one we’re still hashing out.

2015

"Police speak with men fighting who are high on K2 or 'Spice,' a synthetic marijuana drug, along a street in East Harlem," Harlem NY, Spencer Platt / Getty Images, 2015.
"Police speak with men fighting who are high on K2 or 'Spice,' a synthetic marijuana drug, along a street in East Harlem," Harlem NY, Spencer Platt / Getty Images, 2015.

2020

"Aerial view of painted squares as temporary sanctioned tent encampment for the homeless across from the City Hall amid the coronavirus epidemic," San Francisco, CA, Liu Guanguan / China News Service via Getty Images, 2020.
"Aerial view of painted squares as temporary sanctioned tent encampment for the homeless across from the City Hall amid the coronavirus epidemic," San Francisco, CA, Liu Guanguan / China News Service via Getty Images, 2020.

2025

"Tents near White House," Washington DC, Fatih Aktas / Anadolu via Getty Images, 2025.
"Tents near White House," Washington DC, Fatih Aktas / Anadolu via Getty Images, 2025.

2026

"Aerial view of homeless encampment at 8th and Harrison streets in Berkeley, California near the UC Berkeley campus," Tayfun Coskun / Anadolu via Getty Images, 2026.
"Aerial view of homeless encampment at 8th and Harrison streets in Berkeley, California near the UC Berkeley campus," Tayfun Coskun / Anadolu via Getty Images, 2026.

2026

Skid Row Los Angeles, CA, Jacob Boll / Longview, 2026.
Skid Row Los Angeles, CA, Jacob Boll / Longview, 2026.

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Skid Row Los Angeles, CA, Jacob Boll / Longview, 2026.
Skid Row Los Angeles, CA, Jacob Boll / Longview, 2026.

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"Cleanup crews tape off a city block and give time to the unhoused to move their tents and belongings before excavating the sidewalk of needles and trash" Skid Row Los Angeles CA, Jacob Boll/ Longview, 2026
Skid Row Los Angeles, CA, Jacob Boll / Longview, 2026.

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Skid Row Los Angeles, CA, Jacob Boll / Longview, 2026.
Skid Row Los Angeles, CA, Jacob Boll / Longview, 2026.

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Skid Row Los Angeles, CA, Jacob Boll / Longview, 2026.
Skid Row Los Angeles, CA, Jacob Boll / Longview, 2026.

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Skid Row Los Angeles, CA, Jacob Boll / Longview, 2026.
Skid Row Los Angeles, CA, Jacob Boll / Longview, 2026.

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Skid Row Los Angeles, CA, Jacob Boll / Longview, 2026.
Skid Row Los Angeles, CA, Jacob Boll / Longview, 2026.

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Skid Row Los Angeles, CA, Jacob Boll / Longview, 2026.
Skid Row Los Angeles, CA, Jacob Boll / Longview, 2026.

Discussion (2)

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aengineerdu3 days ago

This was a revealing, fascinating history, giving me the beginnings of a better understanding. Bravo. I was left hungry for a more nuanced view of the current populations, with a strong suspicion that what's "right" for one population probably isn't for some or most of the others. That understanding often comes from the best academics and nonprofits, and sometimes government agencies. I wish you had a fourth episode addressing that level of complexity.

quizoid8 days ago

This was a great miniseries. I would love to learn more about how other cultures and communities have addressed this issue, what it looks like, through time and space. And if there’s any lessons we can learn from them to apply here.