Storyteller takes look at Anchorage's homeless

by Ashton Goodell
Monday, March 8, 2010

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- It's hard to say exactly what Mark Horvath does.

"I call it reality Twittering," he says.

"I talk about, ‘Hey I'm going to do a ride along with Sgt. Allen... come along with me,'" he said of his work.

He carries a video camera and documents social problems, but he's not really making a documentary.

Maybe he's an activist, but still, he'd prefer being called something else.

"I consider myself a storyteller," he says.

Alaska's homelessness intrigued the storyteller, who describes it as a sad story of alcohol abuse.

Anchorage police took him to Lion's Park in Mountain View, where homeless camps hide in the trees just off the walking trails.

"First of all they're illegal camps. Second of all they are burning, they're cutting down trees and burning them in a burn barrel, which is definitely a no-no," Sgt. Denny Allen said of the camps.

"I see both sides to the problem. The gentleman that we met at the camp, he really has no place to go, and he points at a 12-pack of beer and says ‘This is my problem.' And he's done the shelter and timed out, so now he's out here. But it's also a safety issue," Horvath said.

Horvath lives in Southern California. The former television producer travels the country meeting homeless people.

From his travels, he's found that the face of poverty is the same everywhere.

"It's hard. You know, it could happen to anybody if you are living paycheck to paycheck. If you don't get that paycheck then you are out on the street," said Dee, one of the homeless people Horvath has talked to.

Short stories depicting deep pain are posted on Horvath's Web site, invisiblepeople.tv, and constantly promoted from his iPhone.

"A friend of mine died this winter. He was the first one to die this year;  he was a homeless inebriate. His name was Nick Cho. They found an empty bottle of Listerine next to him in the snow bank. He apparently died of hypothermia," said Kim, another of Horvath's subjects.

Thirteen of Anchorage's homeless were found dead over a relatively short span in 2009. Cho was the first.

He tells stories about health problems, drug addictions and job loss. 

The first story he ever did, now ranked at the bottom of the page, is without question his most memorable.

"Back in 1995 I lived in this park… I had two shirts, a pair of jeans. And I cared a kitchen knife, which I thought I would use for survival. But more often than not, I sat on this very park bench contemplating suicide, thinking about how I'm going to slice my wrist with this kitchen knife," Horvath says in the video titled "My Story".