Throughout the last 18 years of interviewing homeless on the downtown streets of San Diego, HUMANE EXPOSURES has discovered that there is a large population of homeless who refuse to live inside shelters. The homeless have shared: “I can’t live with 400 people around me,” “I can’t follow the rules and regulations required inside shelters,” “Something is wrong with me, I do better on the street that I do inside,” ” I want to sleep on the pavement.” With the homeless crisis in downtown San Diego today, HUMANE EXPOSURES is interested in your thoughts and opinions.

HUMANE EXPOSURES’ second Call to Action event on March 1 was enlightening, occasionally sobering, and once again productive. Eighty-five attended—politicians, business owners, service providers, and downtown residents. It’s good to see so many people turning out to discuss and seek solutions to the crisis of homelessness in our city.

This past Sunday, PARADE magazine featured an intriguing article—Compassion Counts More Than Ever—exploring “how and why so many Americans are working to improve our communities and the world.”

PARADE asked 1,000 Americans how, if given $100,000 to donate to charity, they would spend it. What do you think of the results of the poll? Is the breakdown based more on the immediate than the long term? It’s encouraging that “Food and shelter for the needy” tops the list, garnering 16% of the hypothetical pie; is it discouraging that literacy received only 4%, when improved literacy would help stave off future homelessness and hunger?

At our Call to Action event, we explored ways to help the chronically mentally ill on the streets of San Diego. According to the PARADE poll, Americans clearly feel compassionate toward the homeless. Do you think that compassion is directed more at people “down on their luck” than those with serious disabilities?

If you were given $100,000 to help manage and support the chronically mentally disabled on the streets of San Diego, how would you spend it?

Join in! Share your thoughts—on the PARADE poll, on the subjects discussed at the March 1 event, or on anything else that would help spread awareness of these important issues.

HUMANE EXPOSURES will be hosting our second “Call to Action” event, bringing together community activists, politicians and their staff, business owners, and residents to explore solutions to the crisis of homelessness in downtown San Diego.

Topics of discussion:

• Promoting permanent solutions instead of temporary shelter
• Promoting supportive housing as a proven, safe, cost-effective and cost-saving way to end long-term homelessness
• Promoting best practices for preventing and ending family homelessness
• Promoting a regional plan for family homelessness

“The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.” -George Bernard Shaw

Humane Exposures is a socially driven project geared toward public awareness and education about the graphic needs and frail values of a society at risk. Humane Exposures takes a penetrating look at society’s disenfranchised and castaways—the denizens of our streets and the homeless, and the emotionally and physically incarcerated—by looking at the underlying social issues leading up to the incarceration of women, children in foster care, and youths in juvenile hall caught up in the cycle of institutionalization.