Hitting Home

WHILE MOST SAN DIEGANS CONTINUE to be fascinated by the local real estate craze, there’s one segment of our population that remains stubbornly unaffected by the price of a home in one of America’s most-expensive cities. They’re the estimated 10,000 homeless who live on our streets, eat out of Dumpsters, sleep in shop doorways and pass their days in our parks and canyons. And while they may not fit the demographic of folks who read daily newspapers and city magazines, they ought to be of vital interest to those of us who do.

That’s why investigative reporter s.d. liddick spent two weeks in late winter living among San Diego’s homeless and listening to their stories. And it’s why we’ve devoted so much space to telling their story in this month’s issue of San Diego Magazine.

Liddick has a talent for digging deep inside the stories he writes. In recent assignments for this magazine he’s crossed the border with the “coyotes” who traffic in illegal aliens; explored the controversies surrounding the local Roman Catholic Diocese (and its refusal to hold a requiem mass for a gay San Diego businessman); and interviewed dozens of insiders to get the scoop on the daily newspaper that’s served this region for nearly a century and a half. This time, liddick dug so deep he found himself sharing a jail cell with his homeless companions after police scooped them up in an early-morning raid of their Balboa Park campsite.

The chronicle of his underground adventures with these characters who’ve slipped through life’s cracks makes for fascinating reading. It also makes a compelling case for finding new solutions to a human condition that’s among society’s most-persistent social ills.

ALSO WORTHY OF ATTENTION THIS MONTH: Longtime San Diego Magazine copy editor Phyllis DeBlanche wears her reporter’s cap to show us what’s brewing at our neighborhood coffeehouses. Eilene Zimmerman shares a historical perspective on the local Japanese children who were transported to internment camps during World War II—and a San Diego librarian who looked out for them. In San Diego by Design, Tom Shess illustrates what happens when a downtown condominium is super-sized. Ron Donoho’s Journal tackles San Diego’s ever-increasing parking woes. And in a Dialogue with the editor-in-chief, Assemblyman Juan Vargas takes a tough stand on illegal immigration.

It’s all for you.

Tom Blair
Editor-in-Chief

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