Homeless: The Motel Kids of Orange County

Homeless: The Motel Kids of Orange County is a 2010 American documentary film directed, written, and filmed by Alexandra Pelosi. [1] The film chronicles one summer in the lives of homeless children living in Orange County, California — one of the wealthiest regions of the U.S. The documentary was filmed with a handheld digital camera over the course of one summer, when Pelosi, joined by her husband and two children, stayed in a motel in Orange County.[2] The film premiered on HBO on July 26, 2010.[3]

The New York Times praised the film for "advancing a theme of the failed American dream."[4] It goes on to describe the film this way, "Homeless presents endlessly charming children in scenes that become increasingly sad. In one of the most poignant, a group of children storm a Dumpster to scavenge the possessions left behind by an evicted family. One boy keeps returning despite his mother’s protests and finally walks away smiling with a binder and a green stuffed animal...the resilience and early maturity of children in bad situations is a familiar motif, but the 6-to-11-year-olds in “Homeless” convey a particularly heartbreaking blend of innocence and experience. They lead Ms. Pelosi around their world — room, parking lot, stairwell, Dumpster, drug dealer, sex offender — like experienced tour guides, some enthusiastic, some already defeated." USA Today praised Pelosi for taking on this subject matter, "Alexandra Pelosi uses film as a way to make political statements...'You expect to see kids in the dumpsters in Third World countries, but you don't expect it across the street from Disneyland,' says Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Pelosi." [5]

In interviews, Pelosi said that her motivation for making the film came from her children, "I live in Manhattan, I was walking down the street with my son, he said to me, “Mommy, why is that person sleeping on the street?” “Because he doesn’t have a home.” “Why doesn’t he have a home?” And I couldn’t come up with an answer." [6]

After the film debuted, kids who survived growing up in motels went public to share their stories.[7]