Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing,
Speaker 1: My chance to talk with artists, policymakers, and performers, to
Speaker 1: hear their stories, what inspires their creations, what decisions change
Speaker 1: their careers, what relationships influenced their work. Times Square and
Speaker 1: Central Park are the two biggest tourist destinations in the
Speaker 1: United States. Visitors who come to the city, eager to
Speaker 1: take in the sights and sounds, will also inevitably notice
Speaker 1: a certain disparity around them. Luxury apartments are going up everywhere,
Speaker 1: while a growing homeless population exists below. I live in
Speaker 1: the city and I see homeless people every day. I
Speaker 1: think about where they sleep at night, especially in the winter.
Speaker 1: My guest today, Mary Brosnahan, knows where many of the
Speaker 1: homeless sleep. We have known each other for years. Brosdahan
Speaker 1: and as the President and chief Executive of the Coalition
Speaker 1: for the Homeless, the nation's oldest organization helping homeless people
Speaker 1: and their families. Browsed a hand cares about the people
Speaker 1: she serves. But she didn't come to the job through
Speaker 1: social work. She actually studied communications at Notre Dame. I
Speaker 1: wanted to be a director. Actually you know, it's sister
Speaker 1: was the most exciting interesting thing I could imagine. Was
Speaker 1: I love film and I did premed for three years
Speaker 1: and you know, I had very good, great point average.
Speaker 1: And I remember having to tell my dad that I
Speaker 1: wanted to switch to communications then going to see the
Speaker 1: dean because you had to switch colleges. And he looked
Speaker 1: at my transcript and said, okay, I know you're breaking
Speaker 1: someone's heart. And it took my dad about a week.
Speaker 1: At first he was like, you're going to be bagging
Speaker 1: groceries at Kroger. You know I went through the same thing. Yeah. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: because they're practical, right they my dad was born in
Speaker 1: twenty seven, They did my dad was born. And I
Speaker 1: believe my father was also someone who did not follow
Speaker 1: his own dreams well exactly, very he was very open
Speaker 1: minded about that. Yeah, I think my father should have
Speaker 1: been a football coach or or you know, done something
Speaker 1: like that that would have you know, fed his heart,
Speaker 1: so to speak. Um, but yeah, so it took him
Speaker 1: all of a week. And then you know, he actually
Speaker 1: played football in a small college called Saint Joe's in
Speaker 1: in Indiana. So the fact that I was going to
Speaker 1: Notre Dame. I think fulfilled some dream, right, it was
Speaker 1: this sort of Catholic it's still just a tremendous place,
Speaker 1: but anyway, loved it, loved iterience and um, you know,
Speaker 1: but it was actually my mother had taken me to Belfast,
Speaker 1: where her family was from the sort of the Catholic ghetto. Um.
Speaker 1: And I think, well, I was sixteen and visiting my
Speaker 1: aunt aunt an uncle at great aunt and uncle and
Speaker 1: just remembering these moments first day, like uh, jeeps with
Speaker 1: soldiers with machine guns, getting out under an overpass and thinking,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm a kid from the suburbs, and soldier
Speaker 1: looking at me and saying it's dry underhair. Just realizing,
Speaker 1: you know, and seeing just the huge gap in an
Speaker 1: experience of kids my age growing up in either the
Speaker 1: Protestant or in my case, the Catholic side of the
Speaker 1: Falls road. And I think that that really politicized me
Speaker 1: in a way that you know, sort of shock immersion.
Speaker 1: So then coming back sort of planted a seed that
Speaker 1: probably came up once I came to New York. Now
Speaker 1: you've finished at Notre Dame. Did you go there more
Speaker 1: than four years? Because you said you were premed No,
Speaker 1: And that was the thing I just this dean saying, okay, um,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, embryology, that can be a philosophy. They say,
Speaker 1: how much, yeah, how much your good student would hold
Speaker 1: on you? Right now? You come to New York And
Speaker 1: what did you do originally when you were here? And
Speaker 1: why did you come to New York? Why? Well, I
Speaker 1: thought I'd wind up in Chicago because I'm such a
Speaker 1: Rabbit Bears fan, and uh um, but my dad actually
Speaker 1: had lung cancer and was getting treatment here in New York,
Speaker 1: and so coming to New York. My brother had lived
Speaker 1: here at the time, and just you know, walking around
Speaker 1: this is still the upper center of the universe as
Speaker 1: far as I'm concerned. Um, my dad died a few
Speaker 1: months later. But then, oh well, he died in eighty three,
Speaker 1: so he was in his fifties. You want us something
Speaker 1: that's amazing. My dad was born in nine and he
Speaker 1: died of lung cancer in And now that we're our age,
Speaker 1: we realized how young that was. Rights I outlived my
Speaker 1: dad and I'm only fifty seven years old. You worked
Speaker 1: somewhere else when you first came here. The head of
Speaker 1: the film department actually introduced me to a woman who
Speaker 1: ran Universal Pictures Publicity. So I got right in on
Speaker 1: the tail end of you know, the old studio, working
Speaker 1: at Universal Pictures on Park Avenue. And I remember the
Speaker 1: first day sitting at my desk with my IBM S
Speaker 1: electric and uh Chevy Chase walks over and sits down
Speaker 1: on my on the corner of my desk and orders
Speaker 1: lunch from the Delhi downstairs, and I thought, this is it.
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, it was a great first job because
Speaker 1: here and I don't know how the subway subways worked,
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, uptown from downtown. So it
Speaker 1: was just a terrific first job to get to know
Speaker 1: New York and also meet very cool people. How many
Speaker 1: years did you do that? Just a few years, and
Speaker 1: you know how it works. The she left and went
Speaker 1: to MGM, so I followed her right there little packs
Speaker 1: that move around. And the last film I worked on
Speaker 1: was a fish called Wanda with Young Clice and to
Speaker 1: amazing right. So I got out at the right time
Speaker 1: because when that was a eight. So I did presidential
Speaker 1: advanced work. So as Ducacus, where were you? Well know
Speaker 1: that the great thing about advances they throw you into
Speaker 1: a different town every three days. It really took sort
Speaker 1: of leaving and coming back for me to you know,
Speaker 1: realize how out of control is the homeless situation. And
Speaker 1: so that's my question when the Ducacus, when Ducacus loses
Speaker 1: the election in you returned to New York and this
Speaker 1: begins the path off you're getting involved in the homeless. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that, you know, I had this sort of
Speaker 1: almost spiritual awakening where I thought, let me try to
Speaker 1: do something with my life that would amount to something
Speaker 1: that would feed me, feed my soul. And I was
Speaker 1: going to work one morning at MGM and the phone
Speaker 1: rings and they said, can you be in Boston by noon?
Speaker 1: And I said, yes, Boston and noon, and then I
Speaker 1: was out in Montana that afternoon suddenly swept up. And
Speaker 1: when I came back to New York again that same
Speaker 1: you're just completely depleted. But coming back and living in
Speaker 1: the East Village there were like sixty guys living in
Speaker 1: that little Triangle park by Cooper Union and working up
Speaker 1: the courage to talk to those guys and just realizing
Speaker 1: some of them are trying to get cleaned up to
Speaker 1: get day labor and others are you know, let me
Speaker 1: just you come to New York, You're involved in in
Speaker 1: something that I have every right to call you know,
Speaker 1: this in incredibly phony business that we're in, you know,
Speaker 1: the movie business, and then New York becomes something else
Speaker 1: for you why, you know, probably my dad's influence on me.
Speaker 1: He was UM. I used to joke with him when
Speaker 1: we would go to vote, I'd call him a yellow
Speaker 1: dog Democrat, but you know he was a card carrying
Speaker 1: member of the U a W. And just talking politics
Speaker 1: and actually going out on the Ducacus campaign. Because you're
Speaker 1: in a different city every three days, you meet the
Speaker 1: most incredible people, you know, union bus drivers and coal
Speaker 1: miners and waitresses, and you know, from me, it was
Speaker 1: very stark that split in the road that our nation
Speaker 1: was facing, even back then between are we going to
Speaker 1: continue on the Reagan dynasty or are we gonna actually
Speaker 1: get back to providing economic opportunity to people? Um? And
Speaker 1: so then coming back point well absolutely, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I think everybody agrees on one side or the other opinion.
Speaker 1: I was wondering, well, you know, and especially living in
Speaker 1: place like Dearborn, right. I mean you've seen the Michael
Speaker 1: Moore movies with Flint, but you see it. You know,
Speaker 1: I went to um, you know, my family was on
Speaker 1: the wealthier side of town, but sort of not as homeowners,
Speaker 1: sort of hanging on to the bottom wrong. So my
Speaker 1: a lot of my classmates were uh, kids of auto executives.
Speaker 1: But even then you could sort of see the unfield, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you could see the unspooling as it were, of
Speaker 1: you know, where those kids going to wind up. And
Speaker 1: then other kids who were lucky to get a job
Speaker 1: at the rouge factory that to them if they could
Speaker 1: put in twenty years. So it really you know, as
Speaker 1: you get older, things do crystallize more. And I I
Speaker 1: think coming back to New York, I mean, what tremendous
Speaker 1: difference between being housed and homeless. I mean, it's like
Speaker 1: a precipice that people fall off. And my boyfriend at
Speaker 1: the time had actually followed this issue much more closely
Speaker 1: on a on a policy level, and he said, if
Speaker 1: you're serious, he wasn't sure. If I was, you should
Speaker 1: go work at the coalition because even then there was
Speaker 1: this sort of stratified industry that had arisen around homelessness
Speaker 1: in New York, right with all the large nonprofits sort
Speaker 1: of getting huge contracts to provide shitty shelter and not
Speaker 1: really dedicated to ending the problem was in charge of
Speaker 1: the city. Then, well that was the tail end of
Speaker 1: Ed Coach in the beginning of Dave Dinkins and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, and then of course once we got into
Speaker 1: the Giuliani years, it was just full on. Now when
Speaker 1: you look at that, how do you map what homelessness
Speaker 1: was and where it changes? One of the the big
Speaker 1: strong marks in terms of the watersheds going back to
Speaker 1: after the war list. Yeah, well you you just see
Speaker 1: the you know, up until that mid seventies point, you know,
Speaker 1: homelessness was largely confined in every major metropolitan area to
Speaker 1: the Bowery type of situations where you had people with
Speaker 1: mostly alcohol problems right and then, and the area wanted
Speaker 1: to corral them there in a skid row. Yeah. And um,
Speaker 1: you had de institutionalization that was taking place across the nation,
Speaker 1: so large state run institutions which were hell holes that
Speaker 1: should be closed down. But the promise of de institutionalization
Speaker 1: was that all that money that was being misspent, you know,
Speaker 1: basically imprisoning people, was going to follow people into the
Speaker 1: community for some sort of housing based model. And instead
Speaker 1: in New York City is such a dark example of
Speaker 1: this people would be typically discharged from UH state psychiatric
Speaker 1: institutions even if they only had a bottle of prescription
Speaker 1: pills and a few dollars. When their lease would run
Speaker 1: out or they would start acting out, they could literally
Speaker 1: walk around the corner and find another cheap place to
Speaker 1: go to. But at the end of the seventies, we
Speaker 1: lost well over a hundred thousand units of s R
Speaker 1: O housing. And suddenly, why who was in charge when
Speaker 1: that happened? Well, that just the market forces, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: it was people realized they could make a lot more money. Uh,
Speaker 1: he did, and it was and I knew it was
Speaker 1: an s r O. But but so when well, then
Speaker 1: it's built out onto the streets. So seventy nine is
Speaker 1: significant certainly in terms of UH coalition UH Ellen. Back
Speaker 1: during Kim Hopper were young anthropologists out on the streets
Speaker 1: and they wrote a brilliant report called private Lives Public Spaces.
Speaker 1: And then the young lawyer Bob Hayes sued and based
Speaker 1: on a clause in the state constitution to establish a
Speaker 1: right to alter in New York City, And um, you know,
Speaker 1: ed Coach was such a great guy. We had to
Speaker 1: do it a second time for women and then a
Speaker 1: third time for kids. And in the process, you know,
Speaker 1: I think it was Hopper came up with the name
Speaker 1: Coalition for the Homeless. You call yourself Coalition for the Homeless.
Speaker 1: People are going to start showing up at your door
Speaker 1: saying I need help. So then we started rolling out
Speaker 1: a whole series of direct service programs. So described for
Speaker 1: people who aren't familiar with it. What is the guarantee
Speaker 1: the city's guarantee for shelter. Basically, if you or I
Speaker 1: were to become homeless tonight, uh, you could go to
Speaker 1: the thirtieth Street Men Shelter and you should be afforded
Speaker 1: a decent bed, a stable bed that's three ft apart
Speaker 1: from any other bed, and clean linens and variety of services.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, exactly, there's food, three meals a day,
Speaker 1: and um, you know that was pretty much all the
Speaker 1: Coalition could. Um. Actually it's there now. It's a former
Speaker 1: and how ironic it's the old Bellevue Mental Hospital. So
Speaker 1: when you go there it can house how many people? Well,
Speaker 1: there's eight hundred and fifty men there tonight. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's packed, and you know, and then you can stay indefinitely.
Speaker 1: But the point being and this is the big what
Speaker 1: we've put so much energy into. When we've had some
Speaker 1: movement recently, you know, let's downsize this insane shelter system
Speaker 1: and put people into housing, because you know, at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, they want what you and I want, Alec,
Speaker 1: they want a door that locks, and they want that
Speaker 1: oasis where they can go and rebuild themselves. Well, there's
Speaker 1: a great model supportive housing model housing with on site
Speaker 1: support services, or you can do it in a sort
Speaker 1: of scattered site model where you can rent housing on
Speaker 1: the private market and go and provide services. Um. So
Speaker 1: my husband John actually worked for one of the pioneers
Speaker 1: that started that model. And you just see, you go
Speaker 1: to work and you provide services for who are you
Speaker 1: talking about, the coalition or people. If I'm a homeless
Speaker 1: person and I'm in a shelter of the old Belleview
Speaker 1: and I want to get out of there and go
Speaker 1: to an apartment and I have money, how do I
Speaker 1: do that? Well, up until recently, there was no way
Speaker 1: out unless you could earn a living wage. Right. This
Speaker 1: was Bloomberg's plan, which obviously was no plan at all,
Speaker 1: which was you'd have to find your own way out.
Speaker 1: But now we do have a number of rental assistance
Speaker 1: programs and there are some nightsha or federal funds that
Speaker 1: are being put aside to help people get out, So
Speaker 1: it would depend on and more recently we got both
Speaker 1: the mayor separately and the governor to commit tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of units of housing with support services. So, like,
Speaker 1: we ran into a kid the other night who had
Speaker 1: an Italy shirt, you know, La Mario Batali, and he
Speaker 1: had been woken up at three in the morning and
Speaker 1: his bed was given away to someone else's. Poor kid.
Speaker 1: His dream was to be a chef and he was
Speaker 1: working as a you know, just clearing dishes at this
Speaker 1: place Italy, and you know, we see so many young kids.
Speaker 1: You know, we had a job and go to a
Speaker 1: homeless shop. Yeah, that's where we stay. And he was
Speaker 1: getting completely screwed over. Fortunately we're there, We're able to
Speaker 1: get him a different bed. But the point being that
Speaker 1: I just see so many of these young bus boys,
Speaker 1: young guys with that glazed look in their eyes, like
Speaker 1: how the hell did I wind up here? Are out
Speaker 1: on Wards Island, So it really runs the Gamuts facility
Speaker 1: in Wards Island. Yeah, there's how many facilities are there
Speaker 1: in the five boroughs, well, they're over ninety for single
Speaker 1: adults and then for the families many more. And I
Speaker 1: just want to make the point like, either you're working,
Speaker 1: or you have some psychiatric diagnosis, maybe you're in denial,
Speaker 1: maybe or not, maybe you're elderly, but all these things now,
Speaker 1: at least the Doblasio administration is cobbling together avenues so
Speaker 1: that you can get a flexible support system and get out,
Speaker 1: whether that's into a new apartment that's being newly constructed
Speaker 1: or through a rental assistance foucher. Let me let me
Speaker 1: ask you. I'm wondering, why is it that even in
Speaker 1: less desirable neighborhoods in the city, it doesn't necessarily have
Speaker 1: to be you know, on Park obviously, but we're not
Speaker 1: building more facilities where we're not building more homes for
Speaker 1: people to live in like this. And I'm wondering to me,
Speaker 1: that always happens as a result of some political pressure.
Speaker 1: Why do you think that that doesn't happen. Well, I
Speaker 1: think it is it chalked up to political will. In
Speaker 1: other words, I think that you know, if you go
Speaker 1: back to what worked, I think one of his deathbed
Speaker 1: conversions politically speaking with that coach was his massive commitment
Speaker 1: to building uh, low income or modal income housing. In
Speaker 1: the beginning, Oh, it was horrible. It fought us tooth
Speaker 1: and nail um and uh, you know his even after
Speaker 1: Callahan was cemented, he opened up this drill floor up
Speaker 1: in Washington Heights with Okay, that's what you want, We'll
Speaker 1: put the cops three ft apart. Like. The point being
Speaker 1: that his deathbed conversion was he realized that he needed
Speaker 1: to to do something, and he had a billion dollar,
Speaker 1: hundred thousand unit program and he set aside ten percent
Speaker 1: of the units for homeless families and individuals, and that
Speaker 1: combined with a subsequent agreement between Dinkins and and Mario Cuomo,
Speaker 1: you start seeing the numbers diminish. And so it's clear
Speaker 1: what the solution is. It's housing, some form of housing
Speaker 1: for the families. It's almost always an economic issue. For
Speaker 1: single adults, you have a much higher preponderance of substance
Speaker 1: abuse or mental health issues. But the point is it's
Speaker 1: far cheaper than Congregan shelters. And going back to your question,
Speaker 1: so why don't we have more of it? I think
Speaker 1: that it is that political will and you see that
Speaker 1: sort of dueling now between uh Andrew Cuomo and and
Speaker 1: build a Blasio. Uh. You know, maybe they can get
Speaker 1: together on the same page and get some traction and
Speaker 1: get more I think that. You know, Bill de Blasio
Speaker 1: used to work for Andrew directly. He was Andrew's regional
Speaker 1: rep here in New York City. I don't know if um,
Speaker 1: if it's just he's stunned that this guy is the mayor.
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't know, but it's it's so visceral,
Speaker 1: and then you see impacting people that have absolutely nothing,
Speaker 1: um and and but Andrew's nature to impulsively collaborate with you.
Speaker 1: Well you can say that, okay, um, yeah, So trying
Speaker 1: to encourage them both. But I was stunned. I was
Speaker 1: actually in your neighborhood earlier today and it's sort of
Speaker 1: gone back. You know that Bullmore building, the best Delhi
Speaker 1: remember the best sandwich breakfast sandwich place. I was stunned
Speaker 1: a month ago when that was gone. And now they
Speaker 1: ripped down the whole. If you walk by that block,
Speaker 1: it's going to be a story apartment builder. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: I live north of you, and the same thing on
Speaker 1: my street corner. Um, you just you see it eating
Speaker 1: into the old New York white I assume you came
Speaker 1: here right to have that vibrancy. More from Mary Brosnahan
Speaker 1: on our Changing City coming up. This is Alec Baldwin
Speaker 1: and you were listening to. Here's the thing I'm talking
Speaker 1: with Mary Brosnahan, President and chief executive of the Coalition
Speaker 1: for the Homeless. Mary's late husband, John Sullivan, also spent
Speaker 1: years in the trenches fighting homelessness in New York City.
Speaker 1: At the end of last year, New York City Mayor
Speaker 1: Bill de Blasia announced the city will fund the creation
Speaker 1: of fifteen thousand units of supportive housing over fifteen years.
Speaker 1: This should go a long way in helping with the
Speaker 1: city's homeless crisis, but Brosnahan says more funding is needed.
Speaker 1: And now tonight there are people in the municipal shelter system,
Speaker 1: well over two thirds or family these with young kids.
Speaker 1: They're almost twenty five thousand kids in the shelter system.
Speaker 1: So of course are as we run the gauntlet in
Speaker 1: the city, these are the poor folks that we see.
Speaker 1: They go to special shelters which allowed children and it's
Speaker 1: like yes, and and it's almost always economic forces, you know,
Speaker 1: coupled with unfortunately DV and other things. But it's primarily
Speaker 1: they can't they can't make a go of it on
Speaker 1: their own. But then we have the street homeless, um,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it's super unpleasant. And I just remember when
Speaker 1: when John was working at a place called Pathways to
Speaker 1: Housing and they would engage people on the street and
Speaker 1: bring them directly into housing. And there was a nurse
Speaker 1: up in the eighties who was living on that median
Speaker 1: strip on Broadway Broadway and she and she was living
Speaker 1: in a little pop tent and um, you know, John
Speaker 1: had worked with her sister. It turned out that she
Speaker 1: had had a psychiatric, you know, psychotic break when she
Speaker 1: was in her twenties. Long story short, He finally convinced
Speaker 1: her right because first they think it's some sort of scam, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're gonna give me my apartment right away. So he
Speaker 1: brings her, he shows her the apartment, convinces her to stay,
Speaker 1: and then he gets ready to leave and he said,
Speaker 1: can I get you anything? And she said, yeah, I
Speaker 1: need a tent, And he went out and got her
Speaker 1: a tent and set it up, and you know what,
Speaker 1: three weeks later, having visit her every day and she
Speaker 1: started taking her medication. The tent came down. So no
Speaker 1: matter how extreme the situation, there are solutions, and I
Speaker 1: think that the coalition is all about getting people to
Speaker 1: invest in those solutions. Do you believe that people who
Speaker 1: want to live in New York should be able to
Speaker 1: stay in New York? Or do we stay to homeless people?
Speaker 1: You don't get to live where you want to live,
Speaker 1: meaning we'll give you a home, but that home is
Speaker 1: going to be up in Austinting. We've got a facility.
Speaker 1: We found a federal facility. We found that abandoned college dormitory.
Speaker 1: We made a deal. We've got a place for you
Speaker 1: to go, and you guys have to all get shipped
Speaker 1: up there. Do you think about that? Well, it's a
Speaker 1: good point because actually part of the McKinney Vento Act
Speaker 1: was that homeless groups would have first access to these
Speaker 1: decommissioned military basis. And you know, it's sort of you
Speaker 1: have to be careful what you wish for, because, uh,
Speaker 1: when you put people there and isolate them so they
Speaker 1: don't have any access to transportation or jobs or that
Speaker 1: kind of thing, you're creating a whole different series of problems.
Speaker 1: For them. Most of the people that you see on
Speaker 1: the streets here in New York, the vast, vast majority,
Speaker 1: grew up in New York, and so they're sort of
Speaker 1: clinging to what they know. Um, we say at the Coalition,
Speaker 1: if people come to us and they have relatives and
Speaker 1: have a situation that they can go to, will help
Speaker 1: them get there. Of course, we're not in business to
Speaker 1: say everybody has a right to live quote unquote in
Speaker 1: New York. I do think that the Coalition is different,
Speaker 1: that it's less of a charity than a than a
Speaker 1: human rights group. I mean, we do believe that housing
Speaker 1: is a human right, you know, you know, and it
Speaker 1: sort of cuts both ways. If you want to talk
Speaker 1: about the Scripture and you know Jesus saying that the
Speaker 1: poor will always be with us, Yes, they will be
Speaker 1: with us. I've reconciled myself to that. But that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that they have to live in squalor on university
Speaker 1: place and and just die a slow death like that.
Speaker 1: I think that housing provides such dignity for people and
Speaker 1: transforms their lives. Does those people ever get taken off
Speaker 1: the streets of their laws in the city in which
Speaker 1: the city literally plucks them off the streets and puts
Speaker 1: them in a facility because they're so compromised health wise
Speaker 1: and they're just so foul in terms of their hygiene. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: one of the things that we're coming up against. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you followed this horrible incident where this
Speaker 1: former teacher was almost beheaded by somebody else in a
Speaker 1: shelter here. I don't think they've caught the man who
Speaker 1: did this heinous crime that you know, and I have
Speaker 1: said this repeatedly to people on the state level, that
Speaker 1: we don't have enough state psychiatric beds, we don't have
Speaker 1: enough long term psychiatric beds to help the people and
Speaker 1: the decision correct. Well, yeah, and now it's you know,
Speaker 1: they have it under this rubric of Mr Team, Medicaid
Speaker 1: redesign and so on. But on the bottom line, on
Speaker 1: the front lines, we we have our walk in crisis services.
Speaker 1: And let me tell you, people, there's nothing more antagonizing
Speaker 1: or scary than these people going after my colleagues at
Speaker 1: the coalition, stalking them, and you know, it doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to get through. I think that if you go back
Speaker 1: to Mario Cuomo's tenure, I think that people did hold
Speaker 1: him responsible for people with extreme psychiatric disabilities on the street.
Speaker 1: But as we get further away temporarily, I don't think
Speaker 1: people make that same causal connection with his with his son,
Speaker 1: and so we're just interested in what works. And so
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, you know, of these people,
Speaker 1: it's about housing slash housing and support services. But there
Speaker 1: is that point one percent that needs to be reinstitutionalized.
Speaker 1: And I think that that's something that for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: the folks and Albany don't want to deal. Likes my
Speaker 1: recollection of this issue. We're during the real wave of
Speaker 1: this was under Patachi where he wanted to close as
Speaker 1: facility is and put everybody on the pharmaceutical leash and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, give them drugs and just get them zapped
Speaker 1: out of their mind if we don't need staffs and
Speaker 1: therapists and security guards and parking attendants and all the
Speaker 1: infrastructure of of a state run facility. And they shuttered
Speaker 1: these facilities, and um, what happened to your cousin. My cousin,
Speaker 1: she was a pilgrim state and she died a few
Speaker 1: years ago, and but I always remember that that they
Speaker 1: took her this somebody I was very close to when
Speaker 1: I was a kid and they took her and she um,
Speaker 1: it just all became Yeah, it was it was like
Speaker 1: it was like a lobotomy and a pill. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's almost lobotomized them. But it's so fascinating because I
Speaker 1: think once you if you can, you know, get away
Speaker 1: from the rhetoric. And you know, almost everyone I speak
Speaker 1: to has someone in their family or their immediate orbit.
Speaker 1: You know, I have a brother whom you know, committed
Speaker 1: suicide when he was young, just severe severe to Russian
Speaker 1: that went untreated. And you know, I think that anybody
Speaker 1: listening to this they know somebody these these tragic stories
Speaker 1: and the weight that it or the toll that it
Speaker 1: takes on families because you just like you said, you
Speaker 1: knew this girl when she was when she was young, right,
Speaker 1: you know, and it's just like, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: what a difference I believe I never met your cousin,
Speaker 1: What a difference it would have made for somebody to
Speaker 1: caring to be on site, who would see her maybe
Speaker 1: go off from meds and intervene and have a have
Speaker 1: an apartment waiting for her when she comes back out,
Speaker 1: you know, to show her a different way to make
Speaker 1: it possible for her to have a different outcome. Well.
Speaker 1: As my friend once said, who had a severe, uh
Speaker 1: prescriptive pill addiction problem, he was completely incapacitated by that
Speaker 1: addiction for many years, and then he went into recovery
Speaker 1: when he was in his forties, let's say were late thirties,
Speaker 1: he said. He said, I took those pills because I
Speaker 1: didn't want to care about my problems in my life anymore.
Speaker 1: He said. When I got sober, I decided that I
Speaker 1: wanted to care again, that I needed to care again.
Speaker 1: And that's what I found was with my cousin, was
Speaker 1: that those that that pharmaceutical leash kind of thing, what
Speaker 1: it only does is help you not to care. She
Speaker 1: sat on the couch, she watched TV, she chained, smoked
Speaker 1: cigarettes all day and ate but you know, big bags
Speaker 1: of Doritos, and she blew up and she was unhealthy
Speaker 1: and she died. And I think to myself that that
Speaker 1: that's really I don't think that's what the system intended,
Speaker 1: but but it does want people just to disappear. And
Speaker 1: they can either disappear in a good way that they're
Speaker 1: you know, put into supportive housing, or they just disappear
Speaker 1: and wind up dead one day. But one of the
Speaker 1: things that I learned from you. I've learned a lot
Speaker 1: of things from you, but one of the things I
Speaker 1: learned from you was this idea that there are people
Speaker 1: that are hanging onto the housing they have by a fingernail,
Speaker 1: and as long as they can stay in the housing
Speaker 1: they have, there's hope for them. I don't know why
Speaker 1: the city can't bring the real estate industry to heal,
Speaker 1: knowing that it's in every one's interest to have low
Speaker 1: cost housing is something that benefits all of us. And
Speaker 1: I don't know why no mayor has been able to
Speaker 1: get the real estate business to UH to see to
Speaker 1: see at the see or have they not well? I
Speaker 1: I was in a meeting recently with Bill Ruden, who's
Speaker 1: you know, I want to talk about one of the
Speaker 1: leaders and in real estate and think he gets it.
Speaker 1: He's sure gets it. I'm sure Bruce Ratner gets it.
Speaker 1: There's there's people who are smart. I remember when I
Speaker 1: first started at the Coalition and Dave Dinkins had this
Speaker 1: great housing commissioner, Felice Machette. It was this sluttle, you know,
Speaker 1: fire hydrant, bulldog of a woman and she you know,
Speaker 1: was helping us redevelop this housing that was given to
Speaker 1: us because these slum lords were trying to terrorize the tenants.
Speaker 1: And you know, we talked about the voucher program and
Speaker 1: there were places like East New York or bed Stye
Speaker 1: that I was afraid to go to in the light
Speaker 1: of day. And um, she said, Mary, one of these
Speaker 1: fucking days, you're going to reach the end of your
Speaker 1: rope and you're not going to be will to do
Speaker 1: this anymore. And I feel like now we're on the
Speaker 1: we're sort of on the cusp of that where you're
Speaker 1: not going to be able to voucher the problem away.
Speaker 1: It really is about bricks and mortar. The problem you
Speaker 1: brought up, you know, the rent stabilization is that we're
Speaker 1: just hemorrhaging units. We lost three hundred thousand units of
Speaker 1: rent stabilized departments. You do have the lot of the
Speaker 1: commercial landlords or the residential landlords trying to make a
Speaker 1: greater profit. Um. And I understand wonder why, Well, it's
Speaker 1: it's all downstate legislators vote for that as well. No,
Speaker 1: they didn't. I think that it you know, it gets
Speaker 1: into the intricacies of these swing Democrats, these five Mason
Speaker 1: Dixon Line here in New York. Quite yeah, but there's
Speaker 1: also I'm sorry, excuse my language, these five assholes who
Speaker 1: call themselves Democrats, but then they swing over and vote
Speaker 1: with the Republicans, and then you know, you you you
Speaker 1: see how much of influence the governor is willing to
Speaker 1: exert to uh, you know, make it so that this
Speaker 1: can't can turnue on. We can't continue on down this line?
Speaker 1: What has been the toe on you? Does it ever
Speaker 1: get you down? Yeah? I you know, I I am
Speaker 1: fortunate that I am able to spend time with homeless people,
Speaker 1: and you just meet the most incredible I spent time
Speaker 1: with this young family two nights ago, and you just
Speaker 1: see the grace under under pressure. I think more and
Speaker 1: this is a whole different conversation. You know, after John died,
Speaker 1: I didn't expect but yeah, it didn't expect it to
Speaker 1: take so long to recover that sort of hope. You
Speaker 1: sort of hang in there because I have a great son, Quinn,
Speaker 1: who just turned thirteen, and you know, you have to
Speaker 1: hold it together, you know. Um, but you do see
Speaker 1: that sort of um uh you know that was that
Speaker 1: was four years ago, and it takes a long time,
Speaker 1: And I don't even I'm not being very articulate, But
Speaker 1: was John involved in the work you were doing? He
Speaker 1: he for many years did this housing homeless people, bringing
Speaker 1: them right in off the street, and then at the
Speaker 1: end of his life became an interventionist and so had
Speaker 1: had some crazy encounters with very wealthy people doing interventions
Speaker 1: to grab people and get them into recovery. Would it
Speaker 1: be fair to ask, do you think that the work
Speaker 1: took a toll on John? Oh, there's no doubt, because
Speaker 1: he was he was at the high level where he
Speaker 1: was flying from city to city with incredibly wealthy people
Speaker 1: engaging him to go into insane you know, people barricaded
Speaker 1: in um townhouses with guns and bags of pill like
Speaker 1: just insane stuff. Um. You know, I think that people
Speaker 1: often think like the work either he did or I did,
Speaker 1: is without any type of I don't know about drama,
Speaker 1: but it's fascinating in its own right. I mean the
Speaker 1: stuff that you encounter. UM, certainly more with the stuff
Speaker 1: he dealt with that towards the end of his life.
Speaker 1: But UM, I guess I'm just saying that, you know, uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it takes its toll. The thing that keeps you going
Speaker 1: are both the homeless people. We just have the most
Speaker 1: incredible staff, you know, I And it's it's not it's
Speaker 1: not like dour I think we have some of the funniest,
Speaker 1: smartest people, right you gotta you gotta have, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, like like even my friend and
Speaker 1: colleague Tim Campbell, there's a homeless woman, elderly woman who
Speaker 1: just would say the most outrageous things. This poor guy
Speaker 1: was former you know, jesuit and she would just see
Speaker 1: the most outlandish out of nowhere. Um, it's kind of hilarious.
Speaker 1: Not that she's housed, of course, but the point being, um,
Speaker 1: that it's such a vibrant place and people are all
Speaker 1: there because they want us to go out of business.
Speaker 1: We all want to go out of business, right, that's
Speaker 1: the difference, Like, let's solve this problem and go out
Speaker 1: of business. Nobody else wants to work on the front
Speaker 1: lines of the coalition other than the ones that buy
Speaker 1: into the larger uh, you know viewpoints that this is solvable,
Speaker 1: of course, is solvable. Whether du Blasio gets another term,
Speaker 1: uh coming up next year. I said, whether he gets
Speaker 1: another term or not, what do you think is name
Speaker 1: two that we can go on and on name two
Speaker 1: things that you think are doable and budgetable, admit that
Speaker 1: I just make up that word. And budgetable, affordable and
Speaker 1: politically uh realistic that you'd like to see the city
Speaker 1: do right away. Well, one thing that has to happen
Speaker 1: in short order is the governor and the mayor need
Speaker 1: to come together. Now they've made separate commitments and they
Speaker 1: have to do another what is called the New York
Speaker 1: New York Agreement, so this housing can get built. They've
Speaker 1: separately said that they're going to commit to fifteen thousand
Speaker 1: units a total of thirty thousand units. But the only
Speaker 1: way that that's going to get built is if there
Speaker 1: is this alignment between the two of them so that
Speaker 1: people know who's going to do the capital, who's going
Speaker 1: to do the actual serve US dollars. That has to
Speaker 1: happen in short order. Um. The other thing is we
Speaker 1: need to downsize the shelter system. I mean, people say,
Speaker 1: again and again, why can't we make it it's safe
Speaker 1: for you know what, it's it's so much easier just
Speaker 1: to cut to the chase and get people up and
Speaker 1: out of the system and shrink the system, get people
Speaker 1: into housing. UM and heart that money elsewhere or invested elsewhere,
Speaker 1: and then we'll reap the benefits on the back end. Well,
Speaker 1: I want to say that, um, and this is a
Speaker 1: this is an odd thing, but I want to be honest.
Speaker 1: And then is I think a lot of people walk
Speaker 1: through the city and they see the homeless versus panhandlers.
Speaker 1: There's a man that sits on a bucket out in
Speaker 1: front of a deli on my block, and he's there
Speaker 1: every morning and he wants money. He's got fresh clothes
Speaker 1: on wherever he lives, he's got a home. Then there
Speaker 1: are the homeless. Then there are the homeless, and there
Speaker 1: are people who have fallen through uh this crevice and
Speaker 1: their lives are just And you tell me, and you
Speaker 1: tell me this key is bussing tables at Italy and
Speaker 1: going to a shelter and has about taken away at
Speaker 1: three in the morning. And you tell me this. I
Speaker 1: think to myself, I'm going to be in a restaurant
Speaker 1: one day looking at a kid and going who's clearing
Speaker 1: my table? And going do you have a home to
Speaker 1: live in? You? Are you living in a shelter? You know?
Speaker 1: I run into these kids and I say their kids.
Speaker 1: They remind me of of my younger brothers, or you know,
Speaker 1: in a few years that will be Quinn. Is somebody
Speaker 1: going to give give out those kids the help they need.
Speaker 1: Mary Brosnahan, President and Chief Executive of the Coalition for
Speaker 1: the Homeless. This is Alec Baldwin and you were listening
Speaker 1: to here's the thing. What are you doing