Being houseless is an ongoing crisis in America, but one group of formerly unhoused singers hoped their time on America’s Got Talent would make a difference.

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Not only did The Freedom Singers give an angelic performance of a song that directly showcases a Los Angeles devoid of glamour, but it garnered four enthusiastic yeses from the Judges and brought AGT Host Terry Crews to tears.

The Freedom Singers are comprised of eight singers from Skid Row, a neighborhood in downtown Los Angeles. The group’s core members came together in the Arts and Culture department at the Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN), an organization aimed at helping the impoverished.

“Skid Row is in the heart of downtown Los Angeles where five people per day die on the streets, houseless people,” said one of the male singers. “So, for us, Freedom Singing brings us close together; it is that medium that we’ve always used to come together as America.”

One of the female singers described her and her mother’s “traumatizing” experience of being unhoused on Skid Row, explaining how city officials came and took all their personal belongings and left them with nothing.

Continue reading (via NBC.com)

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