Pittsburgh stories through photos
Howard Ramsey skips down his front steps and rings his own doorbell eight times, bobbing his head to the sound. His dreads whip out from his face as he bounds inside, grinning. He has things to show me.
Everything about the basement apartment is worth highlighting. He screws and unscrews the ceiling light, flips his finger across each pantry item, slides open closet doors to show off the breaker panel. “Better Homes and Gardens,” he smiles, and pulls his beloved water pitcher from his fridge with a Vanna White flourish. The joy of having cold water at the ready is not lost on him.
I first met Howard in June 2023 outside of Second Avenue Commons in the weeks before the shutdown of the overflow shelter at Smithfield United Church of Christ. At the time, he worked days at an industrial laundry facility, returning to the congregate shelter floor to sleep. He pointed then to the lack of housing opportunities for the county’s strained shelter population. “[We’re] waiting for people to get kicked out so we can get in,” he said.
As our Shelter Stakes reporting continued, he became a recurring source. I interviewed him at his tent Downtown as pressures to decommission encampments grew. Then at his tent on the South Side. I’d see him regularly at food distributions, and coordinating with other housing activists outside of the Allegheny County Jail.
Howard called regularly about the work he was doing with the National Union of the Homeless and the Our Streets Collective to create a homeless bill of rights for Pittsburgh’s unhoused community. I photographed him delivering a letter to Second Avenue Commons calling for the Uptown shelter to stop “exiting” people for minor infractions.
Sometimes we walked and talked together as he navigated between parts of his day while living on the streets. I’d have to trot at points to keep up with his New York-style pace. Moving into an apartment hadn’t changed his hustle. The 2Chainz quote he lettered on the back of his bedroom door serves as his morning mantra. “Work hard play hard work hard again,” he sings.
Howard’s apartment tour pays homage to the organizations he’s interacted with along the way. He loves his furniture from The Blessing Board. He showcases his “Housing is a human right” sign from Pittsburgh United. He brags about his diligent UPMC service coordinator as “an absolute beast.” He cheers Neighborhood Living Project’s help in securing his apartment and the food he gets through Peoples Oakland. His Our Streets Collective T-shirt drapes overtop of his director’s chair, which he’s labeled in gold with his childhood nickname, Zomp. “I’m very, very, very, very, very, very — did I say very? — thankful for all the people who helped me,” he says, pulling up a chair. “I just want them to see they didn’t waste their time with me.”
Howard’s main goal is to work to leave something to his two children. He pages through ideas for a book on his life at his living room table. “I wanna go forward, you know? These are chapters,” he said. “I could have been dead in the tent, but I’m here.”
Seated at his living room table, Howard pulls out a deck of cards to teach me how to play the game Tonk. He’s patient as I struggle through the first couple rounds. About 20 minutes in, I finally beat him at a round. He high fives me as we laugh over the sounds of 80s hits on my cell phone. “Good things come to those who wait,” he grins.
Photojournalists experience the city and the Greater Pittsburgh region in a unique way. They’re regularly sent out on assignments to make portraits, cover protests, document public meetings and envision people and places we talk about in PublicSource stories. But they see so much more. That’s The Glimpse.
Stephanie Strasburg is a photojournalist with PublicSource who can be reached at stephanie@publicsource.org, on Instagram @stephaniestrasburg or on Twitter @stephstrasburg.
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