New York City counts nearly 64,000 homeless people, including 22,000 children, according to the 2013 Annual Homeless Assessment Report cited in this film, part of roughly 1.75 million homeless nationwide. An artist who paints portraits of the city's homeless becomes the film's way into their lives, walking the streets with his subjects and using the sittings to draw out their histories on camera. People describe the jobs, marriages, and health crises that preceded losing housing, and the film follows several of them through a single day of finding food, shelter, and safety. Volunteers and outreach workers appear alongside them, handing out meals and blankets and explaining what keeps their programs stretched thin. Rather than a single explanation, the interviews point to addiction, mental illness, and gaps in the social safety net working together, often over years, to push someone onto the street. The portraits the artist finishes stand in for the people themselves: specific faces attached to a statistic usually left abstract.