“Americans With No Address” director/producer Julia Verdin wanted her documentary to put to rest a common misconception about people who are homeless. “We wanted to show the spectrum of the different types of individuals that ended up on the streets,” she said during a recent conversation with TheWrap’s Joe McGovern. “Because one thing that struck me and one of the reasons why I wanted to make this is that there’s a general perception that everybody on the streets are drug addicts or have mental issues. And that is just not true. There are a lot of regular people on the streets who, just through bad circumstances, [like] not being able to keep up with the rent, have ended up there.”
For the conversation, which followed a virtual showing of the film as part of TheWrap Screening Series, Verdin was joined by “Americans With No Address” narrator William Baldwin and featured talent Xander Berkeley. “Our goal with the film is to share our learnings with the audience because I learned more than I ever thought I would,” Verdin said. “I had no idea of the complexity of this problem. I hope that what we learned will be helpful to others.”
“Americans With No Address” is from Robert Craig Films and is a companion to the narrative feature “No Address,” which follows a group of characters who fall into homelessness. The feature-length doc, which was initially meant to be a short educational supplement to complement the narrative film, was born after producers visited 20 U.S. major cities over a three-week span for research. A wide range of people are featured in “Americans With No Address,” from individuals living on the streets to folks in organizations helping the homeless to government officials to health care workers.
Baldwin, who stars in “No Address,” credited nonprofit organizations and programs for doing “remarkable work” in shining a light on homelessness. “Where people have to get hip to and accepting is that the only way we’re going to resolve this is looking at it more as a mental health crisis rather than a homelessness crisis,” he said.
Berkeley, who co-stars in “No Address” and is featured in the doc, said it’s crucial for all sides of the political spectrum to band together to find common ground in order to “work together to find a solution.” Noting that “Americans With No Address” is meant to be a apolitical, Verdin added, “This crisis isn’t about politics.”
Deciding who to feature in the doc was challenging, she said, because “there were so many great stories.” She and the team interviewed “way more people than you see in the film.” One of them was a woman she hugged at a homeless shelter—which brought the woman to tears. “She said, ‘You’re the first person who’s treated me as a human being,’” Verdin said. “It’s very important that we remember that these are human beings out on our streets. Most of them didn’t get there by choice… and they need to be lifted up, given the tools of recovery and helped.”
“It’s about us coming together as a society and saying we have this problem. Billy’s very right in pointing out [that] this is a mental health crisis but it’s also a crisis of broken hearts, of people who, for various reasons, have but ended up there. We as a society need to come together and find solutions.”
The filmmaker, who calls herself “the perennial optimist,” also noted, “I’m a great believer in second chances.”
