Bakersfield Mayor Harvey Hall

By Louis Medina

Bakersfield Mayor Harvey Hall, who in 2005 initiated a 10-year plan to end chronic homelessness locally, is one of several sponsors of an upcoming art exhibit at the Bakersfield Museum of Art that focuses on the plight of the homeless.

Called “Hobos to Street People: Artists’ Responses to Homelessness from the New Deal to the Present,” the exhibition opens with a 6 to 8 p.m. reception Thursday, Dec. 10, which is free to museum members and $10 for the general public. Click this link to read more about the exhibit.

“I try, whenever I’m asked, to participate in efforts to help the homeless,” Hall said. He found out about the exhibit through a letter of invitation from museum director Bernie Herman, Hall said, and decided to get involved. He also said he wanted to support his friend, Felix Adamo, a photojournalist for The Bakersfield Californian whose photographs of local homeless will also be on display as part of a complementary exhibit called “Society’s Edge.” Adamo’s photos will be on sale, with proceeds going to benefit the Bakersfield Homeless Center and the Bakersfield Rescue Mission, both local shelters.

Local photojournalist Felix Adamo’s photographs will be featured in a companion exhibit to “Hobos to Street People: Artists’ Responses to Homelessness from the New Deal to the Present.” Photo courtesy of the Bakersfield Museum of Art

Hall’s passion for the homeless began around five and a half years ago, he said. “The Department of Mental Health at the time was conducting an outreach program to accommodate the needs of the homeless with mobile helpings – food, blankets. I decided that I wanted to go on one of these rounds one morning.

“We started at East Brundage and Weedpatch Highway and we went up this culvert and here was one homeless cleaning up his (living area),” Hall said. The members of the mental health team offered him food and other items, and Hall also distinctly remembers that he asked for cigarettes, which he got. Then, they offered him some blankets, which he took gladly, Hall said, and then said, “But could you spare an extra blanket for my girlfriend companion who lives with me?” Hall was astonished to see that the woman was asleep under a clump of tumbleweeds for cover. “That told me I needed to get more involved,” the mayor said.

He said he also witnessed homeless people living underneath an overpass in Oildale, “washing their clothes in the river and hanging them up on twigs to dry.”

Around that time, Hall said, the White House called the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development office in San Francisco in an effort to ensure housing for the homeless in communities throughout the state. The San Francisco office connected with him personally, Hall said, and “that drove me to get involved in the 10-year plan” to end chronic homelessness.

The mayor said his long-term hope for the homeless in our city and county is a “housing first” approach “to get folks out of the (homeless) centers and into their own living environments.” But he also said that effort needs to be accompanied by job development and placement “so that if they do find housing they would have stability.”

Hall said he would be at the opening of the “Hobos to Street People” exhibit, which will also feature a blanket drive to benefit the homeless at the Bakersfield Homeless Center. Besides Adamo’s photographs, other works for sale will be art created by some 30 children from Bakersfield Homeless Center’s Champ Camp After-School Program for homeless children in grades K-8. Proceeds will benefit Champ Camp.

The museum is located at 1930 R St. in downtown Bakersfield, adjacent to Central Park. For more information, visit www.bmoa.org.

Louis Medina is a grant writer for the Bakersfield Homeless Center and a member of the Bakersfield Express board of directors.

Related story: Artists represent isolation, loss associated with homelessness