To view the documentary click the image below.

“Homeless: Four Telling Stories”
Demonstrating how this could me, you or anyone!
Filmed as part of portraying the exemplary work of the Asheville Poverty Initiative, including its 12 Baskets Cafe, in Asheville, North Carolina.

To learn more view our full-length documentary (29:21) portraying the work of the Asheville Poverty Initiative by clicking the image below.

PLEASE DONATE

To make a donation to any or all of the 4 persons portrayed, or to the work of the Asheville Poverty Initiative, use the button below & in your optional “note” specify to whom you want your donation to go. 100% of your donation will go to the recipient(s) you choose.

For film credits for “Homeless” click here.

PERSONAL NOTE—A Confession

This work was animated, in part, by what I often refer to as my biggest regret in my professional life. It was 1993 and I had just got into documentary filmmaking and was working on a project to portray life in an order of nuns, the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, Kentucky. Several sisters were involved in running a shelter for homeless men in Louisville, Kentucky. I was so moved by some of the stories of homeless men I met there, like the late Larry Driggers, that I created a short piece on that shelter called “Streetlife”. I wanted to develop those stories further and had a meeting with a  potential donor, a wealthy citizen of Louisville, who offered me $25K to take those stories further. Since I had just completed my first film for public broadcast with a budget of over $200K, I didn’t think I could carry that work far enough with such limited funding, so I didn’t take the offer–my biggest regret. The stories of those homeless men were so telling, that I realized later, after trudging the hard road of documentary film funding, that I should have taken what they offered and worked to bring those stories further to light. Twenty four years later, portraying the lives of Papa J, Thomas, Ticia and Eddie, whom I met at the Asheville Poverty Initiative’s 12 Baskets Cafe, has provided some redemption. FYI, here is the short piece “Streetlife” I produced back then: 

To view the “Streetlife” roughcut (9:50) click the image below