Knock LA52%
‘Crushing Wheelchairs’ Brings Stories of Homelessness and the Unhoused to Light 61%
By Mohammed Ahmad77%
7/16/2026, 6:26:06 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 27 faulty reasoning types, including Hasty Generalization, Anecdotal, and Indoctrination, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 28.4% saturation with 382 hits. Analysis detected 2,447 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,343 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 57.1% and a BS Rank of 61% (7,721 of 19,414 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 60.20% of the article peer group.
Los Angeles has arguably the worst housing crisis in the country, with man-made barriers to housing keeping staggering homelessness rates high.
Accessibility to benefits, opportunities, and shelters seems impossible to many of those on the streets.
The social justice film Crushing Wheelchairs was created with an intention to highlight the experiences of unhoused individuals, provide them with creative agency, and focus on stories that many housed folks overlook.
The narrative film, which features an all unhoused cast, dives deep into the effects of gentrification, policy violence, and encampment sweeping, all of which have devastated the lives of millions of unhoused folks across the country.
Adapted from a play by the same name, the film was produced by POOR Magazine and directed by “Tiny” Lisa Gray-Garcia and Adrian Diamond, the film premiered at Vidiots on June 25.
Prior to the film’s showing, the cast started the event with an indigenous chant and dance, introduced themselves, and explained their intentions with the film.
Once the film began, the audience was immediately transported to the Bay Area and bore witness to the reality of homelessness and its long-term, detrimental effects.
The film blurs the boundaries between the living and the dead, drawing spirits and mythic beings into the character’s journeys.
The audience was confronted with powerful and devastating visuals — including the murder of an unhoused person, a woman undergoing displacement due to selfish landlords, and the intentional ignorance of bystanders and housed folks.
Behind each character’s journey is a major obstacle — tied to political violence and gentrification — that changed their environment or circumstances, trapping them in a vicious cycle of homelessness.
Although recent data has reported a decline in homelessness across Los Angeles County, many unhoused individuals and advocates argue that the statistics do not illuminate the reality of the problem.
There has been an increase in barriers that make it more challenging for unhoused folks to access affordable housing, healthcare, and other essential needs.
According to CalMatters , the Trump administration suspended all federal funding for the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) due to allegations of mismanagement of public funding and failure to track unhoused clients receiving services.
This comes after reports claim that only few people are actually housed through LAHSA’s program, as hundreds of tax-funded apartments remain empty.
In places like Los Angeles and the Bay Area, the high — and increasing — cost of living is a recurring obstacle for many residents.
Getting people off the street is one thing, but what happens to them afterward?
That is a question that the majority of the public often ignores.
Crushing Wheelchairs sheds light on this reality through raw and authentic experiences.
One example of this that the film does well with portraying is the rise of money-hungry landlords that prioritize property value and money over people’s shelter and lives.
This example was a prevalent part of one character’s journey through the film.
During a panel after the film, “Aunti” Frances Moore, who played the character of Reggie, stated that most of the experiences we witnessed on screen were not fiction, but the actors’ lived realities.
“The character that I portrayed, actually I went through a lot of those things that you saw on the screen — being displaced and being approached by greedy landlords that wanted to displace me because they wanted that prime piece of property.
But if it wasn’t for the people that lived there — because I’m telling you at the time one of my solutions I thought would be suicide,” she said.
“But the people were not gonna have that.
They lifted me up, they supported me, and now I can stand on my own two feet.”
When it comes to applying for housing, even people who qualify wait months to years in order to just have the opportunity to get the housing process going.
Many of these individuals are also in need of mental health and substance use treatment, an issue that has plagued LA’s streets.
With sparse guidance or care from the local government, many individuals do not get the help and support they need.
The systemic roots of homelessness and housing crises need to be fixed, not just the issue’s symptoms, because the cycle continually repeats itself.
Many of the cast members also expressed the importance of “the people” and having each other’s backs in all of this while working to create a system that actually benefits the people.
“There is absolute responsibility on the housed relatives so the conversations we want to see are how can we ‘degentrefuck’ our lives,” Tiny said.
“How can we actively liberate?
That is literally a whole decolonial project, to us that is an emergency education because we have all been lied to in capitalism.”
Moore emphasized the importance of community and how it was the people around her who ultimately saved her life.
“This movie shows us that in present day time, that it’s places like Homefullness, where it’s people-led, it is the people that will carry us through,” she said.
“It’s us, it’s you, it’s me, together.
We cannot depend on the government, because we see which way that’s going.
When we say ‘all power in the people,’ there is power in the people.”
“Homefulness” is a concept adopted by many unhoused folks as well as housing and outreach organizations.
The concept centers on the profound feeling of safety, peace, and belonging in a home, but goes beyond than just having a roof over your head.
The idea is that all individuals should feel welcomed, secure, and surrounded by a loving community to constantly lift them up in addition to having a physical space to live.
One character in the film — the mother of a teenage son — also dealt with a difficult journey while stuck in an abusive relationship just so she could have a roof over her and her son’s head.
Domestic violence is intrinsically tied to the homelessness crisis.
A USC report by Viji Sundaram shows that at least 181,000 people were homeless in California in the year 2023, thousands being women stuck in domestic violence situations.
Muteado Silencio, who played Carlos, the abusive husband, said, “We know that a lot of people stay in domestic violence situations, in harmful relationships because of the high cost of living.
It happens a lot to women.
It happened to my mom, to my sisters.”
Throughout the film, there are also segments of poetry narrated by the cast members.
The poetry provided subtext and foreshadowing regarding the characters’ journeys with displacement and homelessness.
“The poetry was written and performed by all of these folks up here,” Diamond said.
“The folks at POOR Magazine are poets and performance artists.
During the course of editing the film together, most of the poetry wasn’t in the script, but it ended up being a way in the editing room for me to create this glue that held the stories together.
By using the poetry we were able to let the audience in on some context about the life of this person and hear their voice and allow you to know more about where they are.”
When asked about what conversations the cast and crew all hope that Crushing Wheelchairs will bring to the general consciousness, Tiny emphasized the importance of having the hard conversations and putting in the work to decolonize our minds.
“Let’s have that conversation about decolonization and how we can bring that into our lives,” she said in the post-screening panel.
As you watch Crushing Wheelchairs , it is crucial that you do so with an open heart and empathy towards the lives and ambitions of every one of these characters — who have dreams like any other person.
Tiny closed out the event with a heartwarming statement.
“A lot of times our stories are one-dimensional.
We’re just seen as the victim, just holding on by a thread.
Which we are… but we are also beautiful, and we also create life and beauty.”
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