Photo: Eric Bump Overstreet | Facebook
In September 2022, Alabama father Eric Bump Overstreet set out to do something unthinkable: live “homeless on purpose” for 90 days. “These people are talked down to all the time so when you show them a little love and respect, it changes them. I wanted to put a face on these people and just let people see that they are normal people just like me and you,” he said. Over three months, Overstreet became intimately aware of the hardships that his unhoused neighbors faced. He spent his first 40 days living under a bridge beneath a highway overpass, and the last 50 living in a small tent. He sweated through hot days, survived freezing nights, had run-ins with police officers, and witnessed new friends go through extreme medical ordeals. “Every story is different, every person’s situation is different so how you take care of this is you take one person at a time as a community and find out what they need and nudge them in the right direction,” Overstreet said. He paired his awareness campaign with a pledge to raise money for Driftwood Housing — a local nonprofit that provides no or low-income housing for Mobile’s chronically homeless; he raised over $20,000 for the organization.
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