Look Who it Was Random video

Struggling to live in America's Million Dollar city

336 views · Published 14 July 2015 · 2:30 · Indexed 12 November 2026

Channel: Real Thing TV · 2015 · News & Politics

Watch on YouTube

Struggling to live in America's Million Dollar city: Photographer captures lives of ordinary San Francisco residents who have been forced to live in cars, trailers, garages and tents following the tech boom
Photographer Wenxin Zhang moved to San Francisco in 2011
Discovered a group of people online that had been forced to find alternative means of accommodation
'I visited them alone with mutual trust,' she said
The subsequent photo essay is called Goodnight Stories.

A recent report said that a family needs about $200,000 a year to live comfortably in San Francisco, so long as their children go to public school.
And in June the median home price hit Million Dollars. 
Wenxin Zhang understands this better than most.
The Chinese-born, California-based photographer moved to the city in 2011 and started reaching out on internet forums to meet new people.
What she found was a community that had been displaced by a city that has been hit with skyrocketing prices following the tech boom and expansion of nearby Silicon Valley.
Zhang decided to start documenting these people and the alternative means of accommodation they had been forced to find. 


Zhang called the project Goodnight Stories.
'At first glance, Goodnight Stories seems sweet and romantic, but in reality, people who have alternative living situations can have very bitter lives as well,' she told Feature Shoot. 
'Some of them suffer from bankruptcy, poverty, health problems or depression. 
'Sometimes being different from the majority can be very hard.'
An index on Zhang's website describes the project.
'Goodnight Stories is a narrative photo project taken when I was a new comer in San Frand cisco in 2012,' it said.
'I found strangers who have alternative housing conditions through Craigslist and visited them alone with mutual trust. 
'Embedded with the photographer’s insecurity towards adult world, I has created a bittersweet fairy tale that explores the diversity of habitat choices, and the boundary between reality and fantasy.'

More from this channel