Ashland journalist traveling West Coast to document homeless

Portland, Ore. – One Ashland woman is on a mission to learn the stories of homeless people using just her iPhone and a borrowed sedan.

According to Portland NBC affiliate KGW, lifelong journalist Julie Akins has traveled up and down the West Coast taking portraits of the homeless.

“I’m not trying to solve this problem,” Akins said. “Let me be clear about that because that’s not what I’m charged with doing.

“But I am trying to hear what people are saying and where that intersection exists between homeless people. What’s the common ground, so that we as communities can look at it, and people smarter than me can perhaps come up with solutions collectively,” she said.

Akins has been covering the homeless since the 1980s. She says she recently got tired of reading coverage at a local level without looking at the bigger picture.