Homelessness, making a human connection

[mellie]

I, like many people would see homeless people on the streets and get that overwhelming helpless feeling in the pit of my stomach and wondered what difference I could make, if any.

Since covid lockdowns ended, I have been photographing and documenting the stories of my communities homeless people ( with permission and care of course) and my desire is to create a space online from scratch ( not Facebook etc) to bring it to my fellow mans attention that the invisible beings who live on our streets, and have often had lives, a purpose, children, homes and jobs just like you and me. I want to create a space for the invisible, documenting their stories if possible.



Can anyone suggest where I might start with this, initially I began buying them coffees, food during covid, but as vacant government owned office spaces began to sprawl across our reagional city, which provided shelter out the front of these historical and older enclaved buildings facades, there's been an increasing number of people living in them. Ie Albert St Ballarat Central, formally Centrelink now empty and locked, to prevent homeless people from sheltering inside. They continue to shelter from the elements outside this building which provides some protection, despite our council placing a structure there to stop them.

Also, what are the legalities concerning hosting photographs of persons living and deceased on a website I own wherby I have only managed to get verbal consent to take their photos. Some of these people have already moved on, can I host their images on my website with their verbal consent?