From Prince to dirt: the American mayor spent three days in the skin of a homeless man and was unpleasantly amazed

Ben McAdams, the mayor of the American district of Salt Lake, Utah, personally conducted an important social experiment. The politician spent three days and two nights in the image of a city tramp. So he hoped to gather information for the upcoming reform to improve the quality of life of the homeless. Mr. McAdams has collected a lot of information, and now, obviously, the reform will be much more fundamental than planned.

(8 photos in total)

Source: The Salt Lake Tribune

Ben McAdams, not him in the rest of the photos

The mayor went out to meet adventures without a passport and wallet. He took with him only a bag of clothes, a phone and a large piece of tarpaulin. In dirty jeans and an old elongated sweater, McAdams was no different from a standard homeless man. During the entire experiment, no one recognized him.

The false tramp spent the first night on the street to find out why many of his "colleagues" prefer to sleep in the open air rather than in a flophouse. Having settled down on one of the lawns on Rio Grande Street (it was in Salt Lake City), the mayor managed to sleep for a total of no more than four hours.

This area turned out to be a very popular place to spend the night. Even before dusk, "several hundred people" gathered within a radius of two blocks from the experimenter. Fights broke out every now and then. Drug dealers poked around in the crowd, openly offering heroin (which is cheaper than tobacco in the USA).

In a word, the reasons for the lack of demand for flophouses by morning remained undetected. The situation became clear the next night when McAdams settled down for the night in one of these establishments. At the entrance, he was immediately given two friendly tips. Do not take off your shoes when you sleep, so that they are not stolen. And if possible, do not go to the toilet. To avoid rape.

Lying down in his shoes on the top bunk of the three-tier bed, the mayor felt a distinct smell of marijuana. In the semi-darkness, he saw used syringes and empty bags on the floor, obviously from under the spice. Before McAdams could fall asleep, a scuffle began somewhere below. There was an incomparable sound of the collision of the skull and the cement floor…

"I was extremely shocked," the mayor said at the end of the experiment. "The reports that are provided to me do not even give an approximate picture of what is happening in the flophouses. Now I understand why people avoid them. We have a lot of work to do."