A dark alley where monsters lurk; a broken-down car with shattered windows; an old refrigerator smelling of urine.
Average people avoid such things and places at all costs, but for America's less fortunate, one of these might actually be called "home.
" What keeps someone in such nightmarish conditions when there is a seeming myriad of programs designed to help the homeless? There is no simple answer.
The most commonly cited explanations are: drugs and alcohol, domestic violence, sexual abuse, and job loss.
The National Law Center on Homelessness estimates that 3.
5 million people, 1.
35 million of them children, experience homelessness every year.
Yet in most Latino communities, homelessness is hardly a hot topic.
The common perception is that Latinos are always working and never homeless, a belief that is perpetuated by the apparent lack of Latino beggars and panhandlers.
Yet the available research contradicts this assumption, and indicates there is a sizable Latino homeless population.
The misperception may be due to the fact that ending up in the gutter, having to beg for a living carries a bigger sense of shame for most Latinos, especially immigrants.
In my own experience out on streets, I found it difficult to get Latinos to talk about their situation.
The Latino homeless population therefore remains a shadow population within a shadow population.
But who are they? Why should we care? How does a person living in the richest country in the world end up sleeping on the sidewalk? Unfortunately, there may be no simple answer.
But perhaps by simply stopping to take a closer look at the lives of these human beings is a good first step towards finding some solution.
On a recent, cold winter day I did just that.
Here's what I found.
WASTED TALENT Miguel Hernandez, 50, once immigrated to the U.
S.
from Cuba with a communications degree and a heart full of hopes.
In no time he was realizing the American dream, owning two houses in Utah where he lived with his wife.
Yet who would imagine that his very success would somehow contribute to his demise and haunt him for the rest of his life? A successful real estate owner, he one day found himself facing a typical landlord-tenant dispute.
Unfortunately the conflict took a turn for the worse and suddenly spiraled out of control.
  "The woman that lived in one of the houses set out to kill me.
She tried setting me up, paying somebody to do it.
But nobody believed it.
So I got shot two times, one bullet in the shoulder, in my collarbone, and the other one in my spine.
It hit my spine-bruised my spine-ricocheted and went to my leg.
Now I have pain 24 hours a day.
The bullet is still inside.
I can't work.
I cannot do anything.
Now the only way is to be homeless.
" Hernandez has been rendered effectively powerless and homeless for the past five years due to his disability-this despite possessing an education and legal immigrant status.
When asked what he does for the pain, his response reveals how far gone he is from his past life and how resigned he is to life on the streets.
"I lost the ligaments in both of my legs and knees.
I can't work any more.
I have no insurance.
I'm smoking crack.
I'm sorry.
"   Hernandez must live with the regret of what could have been.
His homelessness has given him nothing but time to contemplate the people and the places he has left behind, "All the time I sit down thinking-thinking about a lot of things.
I think about my family that I haven't seen for 26 years," he says.
Struggling for any semblance of normalcy, Hernandez nevertheless has a bleak outlook on his future, "When you get into the bottom of a funnel, it's not easy to get out...
I cannot do anything else.
I would love to get off the streets, but I cannot do it.
"   BROKEN HEARTED For the past 20 years, Danny Lee Francisco, 51, has been without a home and abandoned by his family.
The son of a military man, Francisco, or Franz as he likes to call himself, seems almost childlike in demeanor.
Keeping to himself, he spends most days reminiscing about what once was.
He was a married man and a proud father who adored his little girl.
"I had a wife, and my daughter was born February 6, 1989.
Me and my wife got into an argument when my daughter was only six months old...
my wife left with my daughter and I've never seen them again-so I started drinking.
" The devastation of losing his wife and daughter obviously proved too much.
  Broken marriages are common among the homeless.
Francisco still dreams of his family and, especially, his little girl.
He cherishes every memory he has of the very little time he got to spend with his daughter, "Angela was born six pounds, fourteen ounces.
I haven't seen her since she was six months old, but I imagine she would be 16 now.
"   Despite all the hardships he's faced, Francisco finds pleasure in the things most of us take for granted, "Yes, for me being homeless can be depressing, but you still have your good times and your bad times.
Even when things get really bad, I go to the beach.
I still enjoy a few things: blue skies, singing birds, or just going to the park and looking at ducks.
Some of the simplest things are still mine.
"   DOWN BUT NOT OUT Alejandro Su Diaz is a man determined to make the most of his situation.
Like many others on the streets, he is paying a heavy price for the regrettable decisions of his past.
Diaz once lived in Florida and was the proud owner of six antique shops.
Homeless for the past four years, this half Cuban, half Puerto Rican man now collects cans for money.
It's his sole income source, and he earns on average only $30 to $40 a day.
Like many homeless people, drug use precipitated his downfall.
At one point, Diaz admits he was smoking about $300 worth of crack a day.
Soon thereafter he was resorting to criminal activity to support his habit.
The end result: repeat prison sentences since 1989.
He has managed to stay out of the jail for the past three years.
And he's also managed his drug habit down to about $40 dollars a week.
Diaz holds himself responsible for his condition.
"I don't think the system has nothing to do with this.
When people get into drugs, drinking alcohol, stuff like that, this is how it goes.
This is the downshift.
"   Through it all Diaz hasn't thrown in the towel-nor does he plan to.
Despite the harsh life, Diaz maintains his dignity by bathing whenever possible.
Determined to make it past life on the streets, Diaz plans to quit smoking crack entirely and hopes to enroll in trucking school.
  ABANDONED HERO You would never know from looking at Mark that he served in the Vietnam War.
Not wanting to disclose his last name, Mark suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Homeless veterans are nothing new.
People who served our country as far back as the Korean War can be found living out on the streets.
Stress disorders, mysterious illnesses, and difficulties readjusting to civilian life are just a few of the reasons why so many of America's heroes return to the States only to end up on the streets.
  The son of Mexican immigrants, Mark tried his best to rejoin society.
Mark was the manager of an auto repair shop for seven and half years.
Then one day his long-time girlfriend left him for his boss and had him fired.
"You just never know.
I trusted her.
I loved her.
She left me so suddenly.
I still don't know what happened.
"   Mark has now been homeless for 12 years, yet remains drug free.
He lives in a cubbyhole under a bridge, with a blanket that he uses to shield him from the cold and the rest of the world.
Mark makes his money by repairing neighborhood bikes.
At one point he owned up to 60 bikes, which he stored under the bridge behind a chain link fence.
But the fence was removed one day and his bikes were stolen.
He is down to just one bike, which he keeps by his side at all times.
  Having his property stolen and being stabbed are not the worst of what Mark has had to endure as a homeless man.
He was denied veterans benefits despite having been held as a P.
O.
W.
for eight months during the Vietnam War, "I can't talk about it.
I don't want to talk about it," he says with his chin quivering.
"It was more horrible than anyone could've imagined, you know, what they did to me.
There are nights when I can't sleep because of the nightmares that I still have.
It's paralyzing.
I'm sorry I just can't discuss it.
"