Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at Breaking Points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Speaker 2: let's get to the show.
Speaker 4: A month ago, I was in Las Vegas with fellow
Speaker 4: Breaking Points contributor James Lee. We were there attending various
Speaker 4: political events, met some very nice people. What is not
Speaker 4: to love about Las Vegas, the nightlife, the residents. In
Speaker 4: just two hours, I was able to turn forty dollars
Speaker 4: into twenty five dollars and this permanent error message portending
Speaker 4: good fortune. But one of the first things I noticed
Speaker 4: flying in sports facilities football, baseball, golf. To me, golf
Speaker 4: always seemed more like an immersive board game for rich people.
Speaker 4: But Las Vegas actually has a good amount of sports teams.
Speaker 4: The Golden Knights, the Aviators for minor league. In twenty twenty,
Speaker 4: the Raiders moved into Allegiant Stadium and in twenty twenty eight,
Speaker 4: just in time for the Harris DeSantis presidential debates, or
Speaker 4: maybe Newsom Haley or maybe Tulsey Liz Cheney is a Democrat.
Speaker 4: That's the one I'm gonna go with. I'll be reposting
Speaker 4: anyone in the comments who can conceive of a more
Speaker 4: cursed presidential showdown than that? Just in time for that
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty eight, Vegas might just be adding the
Speaker 4: Oakland Las Vegas Athletics.
Speaker 5: To the roster.
Speaker 6: But here's the thing.
Speaker 4: The move is unpopular, expensive, and has resulted in the
Speaker 4: athletics suing, of all people, Nevada State teachers. This is
Speaker 4: where the A's currently play, the Oakland Coliseum. It holds
Speaker 4: fifty seven thousand people and it's been the home of
Speaker 4: the Athletics since nineteen sixty eight. Now, it was two
Speaker 4: thousand and two when Brad Pitt and Jonahill moneyballed the Athletics,
Speaker 4: and so they were coming off playing some great seasons.
Speaker 4: This is what John Fisher inherited in two thousand and
Speaker 4: five when he bought the team for one hundred and
Speaker 4: eighty million dollars. But things have changed in the last
Speaker 4: few years. The team's attendance never recovered after COVID. They
Speaker 4: finished last season with the worst record in baseball, and
Speaker 4: now John Fisher is trying to move the team out
Speaker 4: of Oakland.
Speaker 7: All I can do is say I give everything I
Speaker 7: had to try and make things work.
Speaker 4: Oakland actually offered them quite a nice deal, which included
Speaker 4: four hundred and ninety five million dollars in property tax
Speaker 4: kickbacks and two hundred and seventy nine point five million
Speaker 4: dollars from the state. Oakland also made one hundred and
Speaker 4: eighty million dollar requests for a federal megagrant from Joe
Speaker 4: Biden's Infrastructure bill. But note the Mega program supports large,
Speaker 4: complex projects that are difficult to fund by other means
Speaker 4: and likely to generate national or regional economic, mobility, or
Speaker 4: safety benefits, which to someone like John Fisher, who is
Speaker 4: worth two point nine billion dollars and whose parents founded
Speaker 4: the Gap. Of course, a new stadium for his baseball
Speaker 4: team for him would qualify as critical infrastructure. But as
Speaker 4: a turn out, the Department of Transportation disagrees and didn't
Speaker 4: award the grant, And so what else could you do
Speaker 4: but pick up and move to Las Vegas, So the
Speaker 4: new ballpark would be where the current Tropicana Hotel and
Speaker 4: Casinos stands. Tropicana's doors are going to close in April
Speaker 4: of this year, and they had limited time left on
Speaker 4: this earth to begin with, so the stadium only sped
Speaker 4: up the process. And there are a bunch of reasons
Speaker 4: why this particular site is probably a bad plan, not
Speaker 4: least of which is this. The team currently resides in
Speaker 4: the Bay Area, which has eight million people in it. Yes,
Speaker 4: they have to share the Bay Area with the San
Speaker 4: Francisco Giants, but still in Las Vegas. On the other hand,
Speaker 4: they would be the only major League team and Las
Speaker 4: Vegas would have no choice but to root for the A's,
Speaker 4: Except there are only two million people in Las Vegas,
Speaker 4: so they are moving to a much smaller market. And
Speaker 4: then there is the size of the stadium itself. The
Speaker 4: new ballpark will hold about thirty thousand people, the smallest
Speaker 4: park in baseball, and they on eight thousand of those
Speaker 4: people being tourists. That's eight percent of all the tourists
Speaker 4: who come through Vegas in a day, all going to
Speaker 4: a baseball game. And what's really crazy, actually they are
Speaker 4: currently averaging about eight thousand people to a game in
Speaker 4: total in Oakland. To make this plan work, they would
Speaker 4: need to match their average attendance in tourists every game
Speaker 4: in a market a quarter the size. Now, the reason
Speaker 4: I'm talking about it is because the public is going
Speaker 4: to have to help pay for it. How do you
Speaker 4: feel about three hundred and eighty million dollars of taxpayer money.
Speaker 1: Going to build a stadium?
Speaker 5: Well, i'll tell you about that.
Speaker 6: I hate it. I don't agree with any of them.
Speaker 6: Overrated sports anyway, what.
Speaker 4: A stadium, baseball stadium?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's good.
Speaker 3: Don't support sports in general?
Speaker 8: Okay, right, beneficial purpose In the long run, I think
Speaker 8: it'll be good.
Speaker 6: That's my opinion.
Speaker 7: I don't agree what taxpayers getting the rip for what
Speaker 7: rich guys are going to make. Probably shouldn't be spending
Speaker 7: tax payer money on it.
Speaker 4: And the public doesn't have to help pay for it,
Speaker 4: because one, there is no evidence that stadiums bring the
Speaker 4: kind of economic development that they always claim. And two,
Speaker 4: he's a billionaire who could do it himself, and we
Speaker 4: know this because he said so. Fisher said he and
Speaker 4: his family have the equity to finance the more than
Speaker 4: one point one billion dollars in private funds needed for
Speaker 4: the stadium's construction. Now, let's remember something. A budget is
Speaker 4: a list of priorities.
Speaker 7: We have never prioritized education the way that other states do.
Speaker 7: Our funding formula up until a few years ago was archaic.
Speaker 7: It hadn't been updated since the nineteen fifties. We finally
Speaker 7: did update it in the twenty nineteen twenty twenty one
Speaker 7: legislative sessions. Unfortunately, updating the plan didn't come with any
Speaker 7: new funding or revenue. Basically, you're just cutting a pie
Speaker 7: in a different way than you would normally cut a pie.
Speaker 4: Nevada is one of the worst states in the country
Speaker 4: in terms of K through twelve education, and for Alexander
Speaker 4: Marx this is a familiar.
Speaker 7: In twenty sixteen, we got distracted with the Raiders Stadium,
Speaker 7: which is now the Allegiance Stadium. That was a seven
Speaker 7: one hundred and fifty million dollar giveaway for a stadium.
Speaker 4: Now fast forward a couple of years. There was a
Speaker 4: bill that proposed smaller class sizes, no hearing, universal lunches
Speaker 4: got vetoed, a summer school bill got vetoed, a school
Speaker 4: safety bill got vetoted, But when it came to building
Speaker 4: a stadium, a special session was convened to vote on
Speaker 4: SB one, which committed three hundred and eighty million dollars
Speaker 4: to the new A stadium.
Speaker 7: We've got the Alegiance Stadium up the street. When that
Speaker 7: stadium was being proposed, they said public education would receive
Speaker 7: about thirteen million dollars in revenue from that, while we're
Speaker 7: two billion dollars behind each year. Cannabis brings in one
Speaker 7: hundred and twenty million dollars annually, so POTT gives more
Speaker 7: money to public schools than the Raiders.
Speaker 4: But one fortunate thing came from this, and that was
Speaker 4: an unlikely alliance between Nevada educators and fans in Oakland
Speaker 4: who don't want to see their team leave.
Speaker 7: So during the regular and special session, the phone lines
Speaker 7: were flooded with a lot of California folks calling in.
Speaker 7: They started reaching out to me and colleagues and other
Speaker 7: educators in Nevada, going, how can we help? How can
Speaker 7: we do whatever you guys are doing. So we formed
Speaker 7: this like really unique partnership of Oakland sports fans and
Speaker 7: Nevada educators to try to kill this stadium deal.
Speaker 4: Unfortunately, the bill passed, and that money is available for
Speaker 4: the stadium. But that's not quite the end, they are
Speaker 4: looking at two different paths for fighting this that would
Speaker 4: both hopefully default the team back to Oakland and say
Speaker 4: four hundred million dollars or close to it for the
Speaker 4: people of Nevada. One is a constitutional challenge to the
Speaker 4: vote on the ACE stadium, the idea being that the
Speaker 4: bill that made the stadium money available violates the Nevada
Speaker 4: state Constitution in various different ways. The other is to
Speaker 4: actually ask the people of Nevada what they want. So
Speaker 4: Nevada Educators filed for a referendum to be put on
Speaker 4: the ballot.
Speaker 7: The goal was to put a statewide voter initiative to
Speaker 7: the people, so we did that through a ballot referendum.
Speaker 7: We filed last ball It's very expected that somebody would
Speaker 7: file a referendum challenge. It usually happens to everybody, so
Speaker 7: it's expected that we got sued. We honestly weren't expecting
Speaker 7: the a's to sue.
Speaker 4: Yes, the a's are suing to keep the referendum off
Speaker 4: the ballot so that people don't have the option to
Speaker 4: choose whether or not they want to pay for the stadium. Because,
Speaker 4: as we've seen elsewhere, when you put tens of millions
Speaker 4: of dollars on the ballot and ask people if they
Speaker 4: want to build a stadium with it. Sometimes they say no.
Speaker 4: This move is probably a bad deal. People of Oakland
Speaker 4: don't want it. Educators in Las Vegas don't want it.
Speaker 4: They want money for education. The mayor of Las Vegas
Speaker 4: said the a's should stay in Oakland. The only person
Speaker 4: who really seems to want it is the billionaire in
Speaker 4: the equation. And for the Nevada legislators who approve this stuff.
Speaker 4: You have a professional hockey team, a professional football team,
Speaker 4: maybe soon a professional baseball team. You have f one
Speaker 4: racers on Last Vegas city streets. You've made hundreds of
Speaker 4: millions of dollars available for these sports venues, but ranked
Speaker 4: toward the bottom in education. I mean, if the most
Speaker 4: complicated thing people in your state know how to read
Speaker 4: is the scoreboard, that's negative. But you know, my dad's
Speaker 4: a Mets fan. He taught me to hate sports, so
Speaker 4: I'm a little biased and that is probably where I
Speaker 4: should leave it. My name is Spencer Snyder. If you
Speaker 4: found this video interesting, make sure you are subscribed to
Speaker 4: Breaking Points. You also can check out my YouTube channel
Speaker 4: where I talk all about media and politics and things
Speaker 4: link in the description liking and sharing always help. Thank
Speaker 4: you to Breaking Points, Thank you so much for watching,
Speaker 4: and I will see you in the next one.
Speaker 3: This is not normal market forces at play.
Speaker 6: Something else is happening here, and it's Wall Street.
Speaker 5: This is one of the neighborhoods that investors have really targeted.
Speaker 5: They're coming in, they're buying it at cash, and then
Speaker 5: they're going to hold them as rentals.
Speaker 9: In January, thirty three percent of all homes purchased in
Speaker 9: the US were bought by investors, often Wall Street backed
Speaker 9: companies with multi billion dollar funds, and rent them out,
Speaker 9: in some cases to the very families who dreamed of
Speaker 9: owning them.
Speaker 1: Because the American dream officially dead, my name is James Lee,
Speaker 1: and your watch beyond the headlines on Breaking Points. In
Speaker 1: the aftermath of World War Two, the United States witnessed
Speaker 1: an unprecedented era of prosperity and growth. The GI Bill
Speaker 1: and other government incentives made home ownership not just a possibility,
Speaker 1: but a cornerstone of the American dream. A home wasn't
Speaker 1: just a physical space, it was a symbol of success, stability,
Speaker 1: and a better future. But as the decades passed, this
Speaker 1: dream began to drift out of reach for many, and
Speaker 1: today the landscape of home ownership is storically different. Skyrocking prices,
Speaker 1: increased competition from institutional investors, coupled with stagnant wages, and
Speaker 1: increasing debt have transformed the housing market into a challenging
Speaker 1: battlefield for the average middle class family aspired to buy
Speaker 1: their first home.
Speaker 3: This is why first time home buyers are so frustrated
Speaker 3: in today's market, because what has happened in the past
Speaker 3: five years is devastating. In twenty nineteen, the median household
Speaker 3: income in this country was sixty eight thousand dollars. The
Speaker 3: median home price was only two hundred and sixty. You
Speaker 3: could put down just eight thousand dollars to get this house,
Speaker 3: and the payment out the door was only sixteen hundred
Speaker 3: a month including property taxes, homew insurance in PMI. In fact,
Speaker 3: you could actually make fifty thousand dollars if you had
Speaker 3: zero debt and qualify for this home with just eight
Speaker 3: grand down. What a great time. This is why millennials
Speaker 3: weren't whining and complaining in twenty nineteen. But why is
Speaker 3: it difficult in twenty twenty four. Well, because the income
Speaker 3: has gone up to eighty thousand for the median household income,
Speaker 3: but now the median home price in this country is
Speaker 3: four hundred thousand. You now need to put down eighty
Speaker 3: thousand dollars to have a shot at qualifying for this
Speaker 3: and have zero debt.
Speaker 1: Joining us today to break down the future of home
Speaker 1: ownership and the American Dream is Freddie Smith. He is
Speaker 1: a realtor in the Greater Orlando area and also a
Speaker 1: prominent creator on TikTok and YouTube.
Speaker 6: Freddie, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 8: So.
Speaker 6: First question kind of a broad one.
Speaker 1: Is the American Dream dead at least in terms of
Speaker 1: home ownership?
Speaker 6: And if so, how did it die?
Speaker 1: And why does it feel so psychologically damaging?
Speaker 3: Well, I think the biggest question of why we have
Speaker 3: this debate is people's definition of what is the middle
Speaker 3: class and what is the American Dream is kind of
Speaker 3: different for many people, But I would see what I'm
Speaker 3: seeing from my comment section is that, in my opinion,
Speaker 3: the American dream the middle class is a working family
Speaker 3: working forty hours a week and being able to comfortably
Speaker 3: afford the average home in America. And that was true
Speaker 3: from nineteen seventy to twenty twenty for fifty years. No
Speaker 3: matter when you can pick nineteen seventy nine, you can
Speaker 3: pick eighty eight, you can pick ninety seven, no matter
Speaker 3: when you pick a date, the media and household income
Speaker 3: could qualify for the average home. So that was the
Speaker 3: heartbeat of the American dream of getting that house, building
Speaker 3: a family, white picket fence, entire swing. As of twenty one,
Speaker 3: going into twenty twenty two, the price is shot up
Speaker 3: thirty to forty percent on houses and the interest rates
Speaker 3: now went up to seven percent. So this has now
Speaker 3: closed the door and moved the goalpost where in most
Speaker 3: cases you need over one hundred thousand dollars of income
Speaker 3: with very little debt to have a shot at the
Speaker 3: average house. So this is shocking to a lot of
Speaker 3: first time home buyers because this didn't happen over ten years,
Speaker 3: fifteen years we saw it coming. This happened drastically in
Speaker 3: just the past two to three years. So everyone's kind
Speaker 3: of just catching their balance, going I just want to
Speaker 3: buy a house. I've been working for fifteen years. What happened?
Speaker 3: So to answer your question, is the American dream dead?
Speaker 3: I wouldn't say it's dead, but it's definitely on life
Speaker 3: support if we don't make a change.
Speaker 1: So then I know the interest rates have gone up significantly.
Speaker 1: But other than that, why has there been this shock
Speaker 1: in terms of the housing prices, Because this historically has
Speaker 1: been you know, housing always goes up historically, but not
Speaker 1: to this type of degree this acutely.
Speaker 3: The interest rates played a huge part because in twenty twenty,
Speaker 3: when the pandemic hit, they decided, hey, let's, you know,
Speaker 3: lessen this burden and let's lower interest rates so individuals
Speaker 3: can refinance, lower their housing payment. That's going to be
Speaker 3: really good for us. So they lowered the interest rates
Speaker 3: to two and a half percent, which created a massive demand.
Speaker 3: So there were so many people, individuals and investors all
Speaker 3: buying properties in twenty twenty one. That much demand rose
Speaker 3: the price by thirty forty percent of most homes. So
Speaker 3: we went from only having a fifteen hundred dollars payment
Speaker 3: in twenty nineteen to now thirty five hundred dollars for
Speaker 3: the average house, So it jumped about two thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: And that's putting so much pressure on individuals because if
Speaker 3: you're spending three thousand on mortgage or even two thousand
Speaker 3: on rent, that's eating into a lot of your income
Speaker 3: that people need for groceries, for daycare, to try to
Speaker 3: pay off their student debt. So that's what's putting pressure
Speaker 3: on Americans is the three layered cake, housing, day care,
Speaker 3: in college debt.
Speaker 6: So I know you touched on some of the numbers there.
Speaker 1: Can you help us break down a little bit of
Speaker 1: how much money do you actually need to make to
Speaker 1: buy the average house, also considering some factors like debt,
Speaker 1: other expenses that people might have, say let's say in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, five years ago versus now in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: just in this time span.
Speaker 3: Sure, And I think this is really important for people
Speaker 3: to know. When it comes to qualifying for a loan,
Speaker 3: there's a difference on what you can qualify for and
Speaker 3: what you can afford. I want to say that one
Speaker 3: more time. What you can qualify for and what you
Speaker 3: can afford is sometimes two different things.
Speaker 6: And I always talk about how you don't want to be.
Speaker 3: House por but let's talk about the qualifying aspect first.
Speaker 3: So typically, if you're a W two employee, a lender
Speaker 3: is going to use about forty percent of your debt
Speaker 3: to income ratio. So that means they're going to use
Speaker 3: forty percent of your gross income minus your debt payments,
Speaker 3: your student loans, your car payments, and your credit card payments.
Speaker 3: Those monthlies work against you and come off your monthly allowance.
Speaker 3: So back in twenty nineteen, if you had very little debt,
Speaker 3: the average house was two hundred and sixty thousand. At
Speaker 3: three percent, you could make about sixty thousand dollars as
Speaker 3: a family and have a shot at qualifying for the
Speaker 3: average house.
Speaker 6: That's amazing.
Speaker 3: Two people working together for sixty k in America in
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen is very doable. Fast forward to late twenty
Speaker 3: twenty two to twenty twenty three and now here in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four, you do need about one hundred thousand
Speaker 3: dollars if you want to have a shot at getting
Speaker 3: into that four hundred k house. The only thing you
Speaker 3: could do to help yourself is if you put a
Speaker 3: large down payment. If you are making eighty thousand, but
Speaker 3: you do have one hundred thousand dollars to put down,
Speaker 3: and you get a three hundred thousand dollars loan, you're
Speaker 3: going to have a shot at qualifying. But in today's world,
Speaker 3: the twenty five to forty year olds, it's very unlikely
Speaker 3: that they're debt free or have one hundred and twenty
Speaker 3: thousand dollars laying around to invest in a house. So
Speaker 3: that's really what's been the biggest change in the past
Speaker 3: five years.
Speaker 1: I want to jump to the bill to rent communities,
Speaker 1: specifically this single family home community popping up all over
Speaker 1: the country.
Speaker 6: Florida.
Speaker 1: I know is a big market for this. There's huge
Speaker 1: development in this type of housing. But I'm wondering if
Speaker 1: you can explain to the viewers here the economics behind that.
Speaker 1: It's still the same single family house, So why are
Speaker 1: people able to ford to rent and live there but
Speaker 1: not able to buy these homes?
Speaker 3: Well, the rent price is actually way cheaper. So even
Speaker 3: if you look at some of these new build communities,
Speaker 3: the houses are four hundred and fifty thousand, so your
Speaker 3: payment if you were going to own it is going
Speaker 3: to be about four thousand out the door with property taxes,
Speaker 3: homewns and insurance, HOA and everything. But they're being rented
Speaker 3: for twenty eight hundred, so it's actually cheaper to rent
Speaker 3: right now. But you're still spending twenty eight hundred dollars
Speaker 3: on rent, which just years ago you could have a
Speaker 3: mortgage for fifteen hundred, So that's kind of the position
Speaker 3: we're in. But if these investors are buying them in cash,
Speaker 3: they're able to cash flow at these prices individually. Like
Speaker 3: if you were to invest as just as an everyday person,
Speaker 3: it would be four thousand dollars, so you would have
Speaker 3: to rent it for four thousand for it even to
Speaker 3: make sense. But if you're paying cash, you can actually
Speaker 3: make a cash flow by offering a little bit lower
Speaker 3: rent there. So that's what people are doing because if
Speaker 3: they know the average American can no longer buy a home,
Speaker 3: what are they going to be stuck doing renting? So
Speaker 3: all the institutional investors go, oh, we're going to have
Speaker 3: a nation of renters. Let's get into the housing market
Speaker 3: and buy up a bunch of communities because we know
Speaker 3: we're going to have customers. So that's a problem that
Speaker 3: if you want to talk on a policy level, or
Speaker 3: if Americans can get behind, I don't think the individual
Speaker 3: investor who wants to buy twenty homes in their life
Speaker 3: should be criticized. I think that's part of the American dream.
Speaker 3: But when you have institutions spending three billion dollars buying
Speaker 3: out companies and taking over tens of thousands of rentals,
Speaker 3: and you're drying up the supply. Continuing to raise the
Speaker 3: price on everyday Americans is unfair and it needs to
Speaker 3: be looked at quickly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, let's talk about that for a second. Maybe
Speaker 1: this is veering into conspiracy, maybe it's not. But some
Speaker 1: say that home ownership as a as a pillar of
Speaker 1: the American dream itself was a syop so banks could
Speaker 1: make money writing mortgages, selling mortgage backed securities, financializing housing basically,
Speaker 1: and now today maybe banks are at the point they
Speaker 1: figured out, oh, perhaps it's just more lucrative to buy
Speaker 1: and own these buildings and we'll rent them out. So lately,
Speaker 1: in the past few years, I've seen more of this
Speaker 1: narrative that you just talked about. Renting is actually better
Speaker 1: in many ways a nation of renters. You have more flexibility,
Speaker 1: they say, less to do, save on some of the
Speaker 1: other costs of home ownership that maybe people don't talk about.
Speaker 6: What are your thoughts about this?
Speaker 3: If if we had rent control, I would be a
Speaker 3: lot less concerned, because if you could rent, if the
Speaker 3: average apartment or the average home in America was a
Speaker 3: thousand bucks and you could no longer buy a home.
Speaker 3: It was going to take you ten years longer to
Speaker 3: buy a home, but you could rent for one thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: It's kind of like, Okay, it's frustrating, but that's not bad.
Speaker 3: When you are blocking people from buying a home but
Speaker 3: also taking forty percent of their in come for rent,
Speaker 3: that's a double edged sword. That's when it becomes a problem.
Speaker 3: But it is cheaper in some instances to rent. But
Speaker 3: if you look back even historically, anyone who bought a home,
Speaker 3: even if you bought a home in two thousand and
Speaker 3: six before the crash of eight, if you never sold
Speaker 3: your home, you'd be positive right now. So over the
Speaker 3: past one hundred years, when you bought a house, your
Speaker 3: house is going to be worth more. And some people
Speaker 3: will debate that, and I understand from both ends, like
Speaker 3: why would you pay off your house and tie up
Speaker 3: five hundred thousand when you should put that money to work.
Speaker 3: But it's also really nice if your property taxes and
Speaker 3: homeown insurance is only six hundred a month and that's
Speaker 3: your housing bill, like that's amazing. It frees up your
Speaker 3: income to be able to do other things. So it
Speaker 3: just depends on what path you want to take in life.
Speaker 3: But I do advise people, even as a real estate agent,
Speaker 3: I say, some of you should be renting.
Speaker 6: You really should.
Speaker 3: Some people should be renting to save money, but make
Speaker 3: it count and try to put a plan together. Because
Speaker 3: I don't think you're going to want to rent forever.
Speaker 3: But if you have to rent the next two to
Speaker 3: five years, that's okay, But try to make the most
Speaker 3: of that, just so you can set yourself up for
Speaker 3: the future.
Speaker 1: So if we do turn into this kind of nation
Speaker 1: of renters, is it a possibility that we could see
Speaker 1: kind of an erosion' That's what goes into my head,
Speaker 1: is an erosion the neighborhood, because we we know numerous
Speaker 1: studies have shown that home ownership has some really positive
Speaker 1: effects on the community itself. Right, if we own something,
Speaker 1: we're more likely to take good care of it. So
Speaker 1: as a whole, what do you think the impact of
Speaker 1: that is on society?
Speaker 3: I think it's twofold. I mean one, with these institutional investors,
Speaker 3: they're buying up entire communities, so the entire community is renters.
Speaker 3: So that way when it comes to the quality. But
Speaker 3: even in my neighborhood. There's probably only ten percent of
Speaker 3: people who are renting here, and it's a beautiful neighborhood
Speaker 3: and people take care of it. But I think the
Speaker 3: main concern for the renters' economy is that where are we?
Speaker 3: And I don't want to sound like dystopian or anything,
Speaker 3: but I lived in Los Angeles for fifteen years and
Speaker 3: I saw the one bedroom apartment go from one thousand
Speaker 3: to thirty seven hundred over a fifteen year period. So
Speaker 3: I'm like, if is this a foreshadow? Even in Canada
Speaker 3: the same thing's happening. Is this a foreshadow to all
Speaker 3: the medium cities in the country, like is Orlando it
Speaker 3: once was twelve hundred it's now nineteen hundred? Is it
Speaker 3: going to be thirty two hundred and ten years? What
Speaker 3: happens to the individuals in ten years if they keep
Speaker 3: raising the rent that's my only concern. So will they
Speaker 3: create rent control? Are people going to be forced to migrate?
Speaker 3: So that's kind of the thing that I can't really
Speaker 3: put my finger on because I can't think. If there's
Speaker 3: one hundred million renters and they keep raising the price,
Speaker 3: what does that do?
Speaker 6: You know?
Speaker 3: It's it's okay if La and Miami's expensive because if
Speaker 3: you can't hang, you got to move. But if Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Raleigh, Austin, Phoenix, Orlando,
Speaker 3: you know, if every city starts to become two three
Speaker 3: thousand for a studio, what does that do to our country?
Speaker 3: So that's the thing I'm just kind of waiting to
Speaker 3: get more data on in the next few years to
Speaker 3: kind of see where we're headed.
Speaker 1: You brought up rent control a couple of times, so
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you where why are you in
Speaker 1: terms of letting the market dictate prices versus having some
Speaker 1: kind of I mean, rent control is a government intervention.
Speaker 3: Well it's twofold because again, if you're a landlord and
Speaker 3: your property is going up in value, that means your
Speaker 3: insurance is probably going up, your property taxes are going up,
Speaker 3: So all of a sudden, what you thought you were
Speaker 3: going to cash flow is being eaten away, and you
Speaker 3: want to be able to raise the rent because that
Speaker 3: is fair market value. I understand the supply and demand aspect,
Speaker 3: but there are places that do have rent control, so
Speaker 3: it's not a new concept. There are states that are
Speaker 3: rent controlled where they can only raise it maybe three
Speaker 3: percent a year. And that's I guess a little more
Speaker 3: fair if you want to look at it that way.
Speaker 3: But again, this wasn't a problem four years ago. So
Speaker 3: with all this new discussion, there's really nothing to point
Speaker 3: to because we've never had such a sharp uptick of
Speaker 3: rent prices with housing prices. So we're all just trying
Speaker 3: to figure out in this new world, how do we
Speaker 3: manage this so that people aren't stressed out because everyone's
Speaker 3: trying to buy a home. Even when I'm reading my comments,
Speaker 3: we're treating primary home owners like timing bitcoin, like everyone's
Speaker 3: on they're going at seven percent interest rate at six
Speaker 3: and a half percent, No, it's six point two today,
Speaker 3: it's back up to eight. I'm gonna buy. It's like,
Speaker 3: for fifty years, you just worked hard. It was hard.
Speaker 3: You had to work hard, save a down payment, pay
Speaker 3: off your debt. You know, it was a serious thing
Speaker 3: to buy house, but it was possible. Now it's become
Speaker 3: this like we're like betting on our primary residence, which
Speaker 3: is unfortunate because most of the wealth that people hold
Speaker 3: is in real estate. The boomers hold most of the
Speaker 3: wealth of this country, I think over fifty percent, and
Speaker 3: their biggest asset is their home. So we should look
Speaker 3: at that as a government and say, well, what do
Speaker 3: we want for young people? How about a thirty year
Speaker 3: fixed rate so they can build their life and not
Speaker 3: have to wait every year for their apartment to put
Speaker 3: a letter on the door and say hey, you can
Speaker 3: renew your lease for just forty seven hundred and then
Speaker 3: you got to keep moving. It's like we need to
Speaker 3: we need to help first time home buyers in our
Speaker 3: young generation to alleviate the stress of the cost of living.
Speaker 3: So there's got to be some sort of intervention. But
Speaker 3: that also doesn't you create too much problems for the
Speaker 3: for the mom and pop landlords.
Speaker 6: I think that's a good point.
Speaker 1: And before we wrap, I wanted to ask you about
Speaker 1: the economy in general. Just over the last few years,
Speaker 1: I've come across many narratives everything from there's going to
Speaker 1: be a certain recession to oh we're going to have
Speaker 1: a soft landing to a vibe session. The economy is
Speaker 1: doing well, it's just that people aren't feeling good about it.
Speaker 1: I think that's maybe a potentially a Biden talking point
Speaker 1: that they've lashed onto.
Speaker 6: There's also the silent depression.
Speaker 1: I know you've talked about this where traditional economic indicators
Speaker 1: are positive, but it's not capturing the daily struggle of
Speaker 1: the masses of people who are just trying to make
Speaker 1: ends meet.
Speaker 6: You're on the ground. So what do you see.
Speaker 1: As the reality of economy, specifically in the past couple
Speaker 1: of years, but also maybe projecting the next twelve to
Speaker 1: twenty four months.
Speaker 3: This is the best way to paint the picture of
Speaker 3: our economy. And I wish a leader or politician would
Speaker 3: actually say this. For half the country, the economy is
Speaker 3: wonderful and that is good for our country. But for
Speaker 3: the other half, they are struggling. So what differentiates differentiates
Speaker 3: between these two? If you bought your home, this is
Speaker 3: how wild this is. If you bought your home before
Speaker 3: the year twenty twenty, you most likely have a three
Speaker 3: percent interest rate and your payment is probably around fifteen
Speaker 3: hundred for your house. Somebody who bought after twenty twenty
Speaker 3: probably has a three thousand dollars payment or is spending
Speaker 3: twenty five hundred on rent. If the people before twenty
Speaker 3: twenty have no college debt or their children are out
Speaker 3: of daycare, they also don't have those expenses. So you
Speaker 3: can have two neighbors living right next to each other
Speaker 3: in the same neighborhood, and one person's house is fifteen
Speaker 3: hundred and their payment is thirty five hundred plus twenty
Speaker 3: five hundred for daycare, plus one thousand for student loans.
Speaker 3: So this person saying I can't make it off a
Speaker 3: one twenty, while their neighbors being like, you're over spending.
Speaker 3: I make sixty five and I'm crushing it. Well, your
Speaker 3: payment's fifteen hundred, you got no college debt, and your
Speaker 3: kids are grown. They're spending seven thousand on those three things.
Speaker 3: You're only spending fifteen hundred. So that's why you're go
Speaker 3: into Applebee's, you're traveling. So the economy's booming, but that's
Speaker 3: where we're pinched. We basically are living in two different worlds.
Speaker 3: It was the people who set theirselves up before twenty
Speaker 3: twenty and the people basically after twenty twenty. Unless you're
Speaker 3: a multiple six figure and er, then that's you know
Speaker 3: you're doing well. But those are the two economies we're in,
Speaker 3: and I just haven't seen people address that correctly because
Speaker 3: we are living in a dual economy of good and bad,
Speaker 3: and we just have to try to figure out a
Speaker 3: way to help the people who are struggling and make
Speaker 3: it more aware as a talking point.
Speaker 1: And I know we've talked this whole segment about the
Speaker 1: American dream dying, but obviously housing transactions are still happening
Speaker 1: every day. So if one of your clients, I know,
Speaker 1: I think you alluded to this earlier, you talked a
Speaker 1: little bit about this. But if one of your clients
Speaker 1: still has this aspirational goal of buying a home, what
Speaker 1: kinds of advice would you give them in terms of
Speaker 1: financial planning and building a strategy around being successful in
Speaker 1: today's economic environment.
Speaker 3: The number one thing if you ever want to buy
Speaker 3: a house is to become edgy on the topic. I
Speaker 3: always recommend, even before talking to a real estate agent,
Speaker 3: talking with a lender so you can understand your options.
Speaker 3: What are your down payments, what kind of loan are
Speaker 3: you going to get? What are you gonna need? Do
Speaker 3: you need to pay off your vehicle? Do you need
Speaker 3: to pay off debt? Do you need to make more money? Like,
Speaker 3: understanding exactly what you need makes it easier for you
Speaker 3: to make a plan, So you just don't want to
Speaker 3: put your head in the stand and go, ah, this
Speaker 3: is frustrated. It's like figure out what it is so
Speaker 3: you can work towards it. Or this is not popular, don't, don't,
Speaker 3: don't come at me. This is just the truth. I
Speaker 3: think we're going to see a massive migration into different
Speaker 3: parts of our country if home ownership is important to you,
Speaker 3: Because if you and your family are making eighty ninety
Speaker 3: one hundred thousand dollars a year and you can work remote,
Speaker 3: or you can transfer to Michigan or Ohio or some
Speaker 3: other places in the south, you can get a nice, charming,
Speaker 3: white picket fence home for two twenty two fifty in
Speaker 3: different parts of the country. But are people going to
Speaker 3: want to uproot their whole life? At least it's an option.
Speaker 3: So I tell people start looking at different places around
Speaker 3: the country. On your spare time, I'm work on paying
Speaker 3: off your debt and really focus on where's my career
Speaker 3: going to be in five years? Am I going to
Speaker 3: continue to make money? If not, and I want a home,
Speaker 3: what do I have to do at this point? So
Speaker 3: it's just being educated and writing down on a piece
Speaker 3: of paper with your family, what are your goals and
Speaker 3: what are your obstacles that you can put a plan together.
Speaker 1: Okay, I think that's sound advice. So if viewers want
Speaker 1: to hear more of you, Freddie, where can they find you?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've Instagram or TikTok's probably my two. I try
Speaker 3: to post as much educational stuff every day.
Speaker 6: Seven.
Speaker 3: If you spend twenty minutes on one of my pages
Speaker 3: and look through I kind of give advice more nuanced
Speaker 3: on all of this and see what kind of works
Speaker 3: for you. But myself and there's many others who give
Speaker 3: advice on lending, on buying homes, So just kind of
Speaker 3: take advice from all of us and put a plan
Speaker 3: together what best suits you and your family.
Speaker 1: Awesome, well, Freddie, thank you for coming on the show today.
Speaker 1: Really appreciate your time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks, James, I appreciate it.
Speaker 6: That's it for me this week.
Speaker 1: If you like the learn more about housing in America,
Speaker 1: I've done an investigative deep dive on the private equity
Speaker 1: takeover of entire neighborhoods of single family homes in America.
Speaker 1: The video is posted on my YouTube channel fifty one
Speaker 1: to forty nine with James Lee. Head on over check
Speaker 1: that out, give me a follow. The link will be
Speaker 1: in the description below. As always, I'd like to thank
Speaker 1: you for your time and I'll see you in the
Speaker 1: next one.
Speaker 8: Hi. I'm Maximilian Alvarez. I'm the editor in chief of
Speaker 8: the Real News Network and host of the podcast Working People,
Speaker 8: and this is the art of class war on Breaking Points.
Speaker 8: We're recording this on March eighth, twenty twenty four, five
Speaker 8: months after the Hamas led attacks on October seventh that
Speaker 8: killed over eleven hundred people, five months into Israel's genocidal
Speaker 8: assault on the open air prison that was Gaza, which
Speaker 8: is killed to date at least thirty thousand people, seventy
Speaker 8: five years into Israel's US backed occupation of historic Palestine.
Speaker 8: There was some vague hope this week that at least
Speaker 8: a forty day ceasefire would be implemented ahead of the
Speaker 8: beginning of the holy month of Ramadan. Maybe by the
Speaker 8: time you see this a ceasefire will be in place.
Speaker 6: But I doubt it.
Speaker 8: But whether a permanent, temporary or no ceasefire is reached,
Speaker 8: the damage, as we say, has already been done. What
Speaker 8: was once Gaza is now largely rubble. What were once
Speaker 8: so many men, women and children with lives and thoughts
Speaker 8: and futures are now pieces ash, dust and bone. The
Speaker 8: horrors rot upon Palestinians and Gaza will and must rightly
Speaker 8: remain burned into our history as one of the greatest
Speaker 8: failures of humanity. To defend life itself and whatever comes next,
Speaker 8: we need to stare directly into the darkness that has
Speaker 8: swallowed this land, this people, fueled by our tax dofar
Speaker 8: and our country's endless political support. Doctor Therahmud is a
Speaker 8: Palestinian American er physician, and he witnessed first hand the
Speaker 8: carnage in the Gaza Strip during his recent medical mission
Speaker 8: at Al Nasser Hospital in Conunis. He is here with
Speaker 8: us now, Doctor Ahmud, thank you so much for joining
Speaker 8: me today on breaking points.
Speaker 5: Thank you for having me Max. I appreciate it.
Speaker 8: I appreciate you man, and I can't imagine what you
Speaker 8: have been through and what you've seen. But we're gonna
Speaker 8: try as best we can in the next few minutes
Speaker 8: to get people to listen as closely as they possibly can.
Speaker 8: Doctor Amaud, you yourself, can you describe for viewers your
Speaker 8: journey first into Gaza, what it was like getting into
Speaker 8: the hospital and what it was like to try to
Speaker 8: provide emergency medical care in those conditions. I've interviewed healthcare
Speaker 8: workers like yourselves in so many other contexts. I truly
Speaker 8: can't imagine what it's like to try to do that
Speaker 8: kind of job, to provide that kind of care in
Speaker 8: this kind of environment. Can you just tell people what
Speaker 8: that was like?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, you know, I think you bring up
Speaker 5: an interesting point here, Max. I know, I'm a part
Speaker 5: of an NGO organization that does medical humanitarian relief called
Speaker 5: med Global, and you know, We've been to the Gaza
Speaker 5: Strip several times. I've been to the Gaza Strip prior
Speaker 5: to this occasion four times. We've been to Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Venezuela.
Speaker 5: I mean, we've seen sort of humanitarian crises all around,
Speaker 5: and when October seventh happened, we were we knew that
Speaker 5: there would be this ensuing sort of disaster that would
Speaker 5: take place in the Gaza Strip, just because we had
Speaker 5: a feel for what the situation was like. People should
Speaker 5: keep in mind that the Gaza Strip is not an
Speaker 5: easy place to access. I mean, it's been under siege
Speaker 5: for over seventeen years, and so anytime we would try
Speaker 5: to get in in the past prior to October seventh,
Speaker 5: it was always a struggle you either had to enter
Speaker 5: in through the northern border with Israel or through the
Speaker 5: southern border with Egypt, and neither of those borders were
Speaker 5: necessarily streamlined so people could get in and get out,
Speaker 5: and so it already created this sort of humanitarian tenuous
Speaker 5: situation in the Gaza Strip. So when this broke out,
Speaker 5: we've been trying for months trying to get in. We
Speaker 5: had a team of doctors who wanted to bring in supplies,
Speaker 5: but the borders from both sides were totally closed down.
Speaker 5: Nobody was getting in and barely anybody was getting out
Speaker 5: unless you could pay a fixer thousands and thousands of
Speaker 5: dollars to get you out of the Gaza Strip, and
Speaker 5: this fixer generally was Egyptian. So when we finally got
Speaker 5: word that there was a chance that we would be
Speaker 5: able to get into the Gaza Strip, this was already January,
Speaker 5: months into what was taking place. We had already heard
Speaker 5: in November about the food insecurity that was taking place
Speaker 5: on the ground. We had heard about the bombing, and
Speaker 5: we had heard about how many kids had been amputees.
Speaker 5: At that point, we had heard about how many people
Speaker 5: had fled to Rafa, the southernmost part of the Gaza Strip,
Speaker 5: and so we thought that we were ready for this journey.
Speaker 5: We thought we were prepared. We knew that there was
Speaker 5: a humanitarian catastrophe taking place in the midst of a
Speaker 5: war zone where f thirty fives are dropping bombs and
Speaker 5: tanks are rolling through neighborhoods and there is a ground
Speaker 5: invasion city by city. But what really set the stage
Speaker 5: for us is as we're approaching and we're going through
Speaker 5: the Sinai Peninsula and we're approaching that off border, we
Speaker 5: really start seeing lines and lines of trucks right outside
Speaker 5: of the border. And these are humanitarian aid trucks. I mean,
Speaker 5: they've got infant formula, they've got medicines, they've got tents,
Speaker 5: they've got winter socks, they've got blankets, and miles and
Speaker 5: miles backed up. You see them all across the side
Speaker 5: of the road, on both sides of the road. And
Speaker 5: so we really started to kind of get this sense
Speaker 5: of frustration and anger because you know that once we
Speaker 5: cross that border, what we're going to see are people
Speaker 5: who desperately need the things that are on these trucks.
Speaker 5: And so we get through the border, and the second
Speaker 5: that you cross into the Palestinian side of Rapha. You're
Speaker 5: just overwhelmed with the amount of people that are sheltering
Speaker 5: in this area. Again, I had been there prior to
Speaker 5: October seventh. This was an area that housed two hundred
Speaker 5: and fifty to three hundred thousand residents, and when we
Speaker 5: first showed up in January, there were already one point
Speaker 5: two one point three million people. There was a sea
Speaker 5: of tents and you could, you know, as it was
Speaker 5: getting darker at night. The only thing that we were
Speaker 5: able to see is just kind of was what was
Speaker 5: visualized to us by the light on the truck that
Speaker 5: was taking us to the office. It was just people everywhere,
Speaker 5: kids everywhere. There's no electricity. Anywhere you look. You look
Speaker 5: to the right, you see a tent. You look to
Speaker 5: the left, you see a bunch of kids out on
Speaker 5: the street, and so, you know, it was a very
Speaker 5: overwhelming feeling. It was not the gaza that we had
Speaker 5: seen when we had left a year earlier. I was
Speaker 5: there in March of twenty twenty two, and so it
Speaker 5: was it was quite overwhelming. The following day we were told, okay,
Speaker 5: we're going to go to Nassa Hospital. It's the largest
Speaker 5: remaining functioning hospital in the Gaza Strip. It's in carn Unis.
Speaker 5: Carn Unis is in the midst of a very heavy
Speaker 5: military assault by the Israeli military. It is essentially been deconflicted.
Speaker 5: It's a word that we heard a lot that I
Speaker 5: found means nothing, but essentially what we're told is that
Speaker 5: the hospital is okay. There is this coordination taking place
Speaker 5: between the World Health Organization, the United Nations, the Israeli military,
Speaker 5: the Egyptian authorities. The hospital is fine, and so we
Speaker 5: made our way to the hospital and just walking through
Speaker 5: the perimeter of the NASAB Medical Complex, there are about
Speaker 5: four buildings that make up the NASA Medical Complex and
Speaker 5: the NASA Hospital. Again, it just hits you. There are
Speaker 5: ten thousand people sheltering inside of these buildings, and around
Speaker 5: these buildings there are tents everywhere. As we're trying to
Speaker 5: make it through the emergency department, you have to walk
Speaker 5: by a destroyed ambulance, an ambulance that was hit by
Speaker 5: a missile, and you cannot take two steps at the
Speaker 5: entrance without bumping into somebody. All of these families are
Speaker 5: sheltering in the hallways, in the corridors of the hospital,
Speaker 5: every single floor is occupied by people. The second I'm
Speaker 5: trying to get into the emergency department, into an area
Speaker 5: we call the resuscitation bay, where we get the sickest patients,
Speaker 5: the patients who are who have been traumatized by some
Speaker 5: sort of bomb or shelling or shrapnel. You have to
Speaker 5: make your way through families who are laying on a
Speaker 5: very thin mattress on the floor, just kind of that's
Speaker 5: where they've been sheltering for months. And I remember the
Speaker 5: first day that we get there, I put my stuff
Speaker 5: into the call room because I was going to be
Speaker 5: sleeping at Nasat Hospital, and I walk into the resuscitation
Speaker 5: bay and already there was this young man twenty some
Speaker 5: years old who was being treated on the floor. Because
Speaker 5: this hospital normally can have three hundred, maybe three hundred
Speaker 5: and fifty patients, but it was already taking care of
Speaker 5: a thousand patients, and so we didn't have any hospital
Speaker 5: carts to be able to treat people, and so we
Speaker 5: had to lay them on the floor and get to work.
Speaker 5: And you know, this particular young man was hit by shrapnel.
Speaker 5: He had been walking next to a house that had
Speaker 5: been bombed, and his whole body was sprayed with shrapnel,
Speaker 5: and I had shown up, and you know, I got
Speaker 5: down on my knees to start working with the doctor,
Speaker 5: the Palestinian doctor who was taking care of him, and
Speaker 5: it was clear that he was really, really sick. And
Speaker 5: eventually he lost the pose and we were doing chess
Speaker 5: compressions and we were working on him, doing different trauma procedures,
Speaker 5: but it was all, you know, it was all futile,
Speaker 5: and he ended up dying. But I remember looking up
Speaker 5: and realizing that his family was right next to us,
Speaker 5: was right next to his head, just kind of watching
Speaker 5: what we were doing, and they had seen us stop
Speaker 5: doing chess compressions on him, and I was just kind
Speaker 5: of taken aback by the overwhelming nature of all of this.
Speaker 5: There are you know, this this room, this resuscitation BA
Speaker 5: can normally have four patients in it, and there were
Speaker 5: twenty people in there at that time, you know, seven
Speaker 5: of which were on the floor. And then there were
Speaker 5: their families scattered in these corners, just kind of watching
Speaker 5: their loved ones being treated. And then this family saw
Speaker 5: their son die in this process, and you know, it
Speaker 5: was it was really really tough to process because you know,
Speaker 5: there was nobody there that can kind of help them
Speaker 5: take through this process. After we sort of communicated this
Speaker 5: information and they grieved for maybe a minute, they had
Speaker 5: to pick up their son in the blanket that they
Speaker 5: brought him in from the house and go and find
Speaker 5: a place to bury him. And you know, for me,
Speaker 5: that was, you know, just coming from working in Chicago
Speaker 5: and watching that sort of hit me. It was something
Speaker 5: that you know, I still struggle with. And that was
Speaker 5: sort of every day while we were at Nasset Hospital
Speaker 5: in Canunis. Every day, every few hours, you're getting a
Speaker 5: rush of fifteen to twenty people coming through our doors.
Speaker 5: Every day. You're seeing, you know, kids who have been
Speaker 5: underneath the rubble who did not survive, you know, that
Speaker 5: sort of that sort of blunt injury that they suffered.
Speaker 5: You see people who have chronic medical diseases who are
Speaker 5: dying because they didn't get the care that they needed.
Speaker 5: They didn't get the medicine that they desperately needed, they
Speaker 5: did not get enough dialysis because the dialysis facility is
Speaker 5: overwhelmed because everybody's displaced, and so it's not able to
Speaker 5: treat people. It was it was certainly something that I think,
Speaker 5: you know, I don't I don't understand how people were
Speaker 5: still able to operate in this setting. And when I
Speaker 5: looked around that my coworkers, my Palestinian colleagues, the doctors
Speaker 5: and the nurses, and just hearing their stories, it was
Speaker 5: this additional sort of layer of trauma that they were
Speaker 5: dealing with. So not only were they displaced, not only
Speaker 5: did they maybe lose their home or they lost a
Speaker 5: loved one. Not only were they hungry hoping that there
Speaker 5: would be an aid distribution in front of the hospital
Speaker 5: later in the day, or hoping that World's central kitchen
Speaker 5: or a narrow would deliver hot meal for the day,
Speaker 5: but they were also being tasked and asked to serve
Speaker 5: this community that was suffering immensely as well. And I
Speaker 5: don't know how they were able to do it for
Speaker 5: four months at that point, And now we've reached five months,
Speaker 5: and they're doing it with a shortage of everything that
Speaker 5: you can imagine, a shortage of all of the supplies
Speaker 5: that is needed for a hospital to function on any
Speaker 5: given day. They may not have the antibiotics that they needed,
Speaker 5: they may not have band aids. I remember there would
Speaker 5: be days where we would walk over to wash our
Speaker 5: hands after treating patients and there would be no water
Speaker 5: that would come out of the faucet because the tank
Speaker 5: at the top of the hospital had emptied. Because it
Speaker 5: was such a busy day, we had used all of
Speaker 5: the water that was there. We could not have scalpels,
Speaker 5: so we were using grazor blades to perform some of
Speaker 5: these procedures. We did not have pain medicines on some days,
Speaker 5: so we had to improvise. And they did a phenomenal job.
Speaker 5: They did such an incredible job because they have been
Speaker 5: in this position coutiple times and somehow the brilliance just
Speaker 5: kind of comes out in those moments. But you ask yourself, so,
Speaker 5: why are we asking them to go to this level?
Speaker 5: Why are we asking them to perform at this superhuman level?
Speaker 6: And you know, the one.
Speaker 5: Last thing I'll mention to you just about nas At
Speaker 5: Hospital is eventually the bombing came to the perimeter of
Speaker 5: the hospital and the hospital was surrounded. And on one
Speaker 5: of those days, I was evacuated from this hospital and
Speaker 5: ultimately Nasaid became just like many of the other hospitals
Speaker 5: in the Gaza strip. It was raided, it was surrounded,
Speaker 5: it was rendered inoperable. The electricity was cut off. Many
Speaker 5: people who were very sick died unnecessarily in the process,
Speaker 5: and many of the coworkers, many of the healthcare workers,
Speaker 5: were abducted, and some of them were actually injured or
Speaker 5: killed as they tried to flee the hospital or as
Speaker 5: they walked the hallways of the hospital by you know,
Speaker 5: either a drone or a sniper or who knows what
Speaker 5: it was. But just I just hope that that can
Speaker 5: be put into some perspective. That was that's the largest
Speaker 5: remaining hospital that was one of two referral hospitals. There
Speaker 5: is no other hospital like NASSET now that can accommodate
Speaker 5: the sort of trauma patients and the injuries that we see.
Speaker 5: There is no other facility that can have multiple operating
Speaker 5: rooms running at the same time. Make no mistake, this
Speaker 5: will result in hundreds, if not thousands, of unnecessary, preventable depths.
Speaker 5: The fact that NASA has now been rendered inoperable. And
Speaker 5: I also think about my colleagues who and the people
Speaker 5: who are displaced there, who have been displaced yet again,
Speaker 5: who have had to flee again, sort of continuing that
Speaker 5: cycle of trauma that they face.
Speaker 8: I know, to everyone watching and listening. This is extremely
Speaker 8: hard to hear, but I am begging you to open
Speaker 8: your ears, open your eyes, don't look away, Doctor Mott.
Speaker 8: I know we only have a few minutes left. I
Speaker 8: have so many thoughts, but it's not about me. I
Speaker 8: want to use the time we have to ask you
Speaker 8: this question. People here in the West, as you know,
Speaker 8: are seeing a lot of the pain and horror that
Speaker 8: our fellow human beings and Gaza are going through through
Speaker 8: their social media feeds. But you have seen it, experienced it,
Speaker 8: heard it, smelled it, felt it up close. I'm not
Speaker 8: asking you this question in like give us more gory,
Speaker 8: detailed sort of way, and we will not reduce these
Speaker 8: people in this humanitarian tragedy to salacious gore. But in
Speaker 8: the remaining time, I wanted to ask if you could
Speaker 8: impress upon viewers the scale, severity, reality, and human cost
Speaker 8: of the pain and horror that Israel has wrought on
Speaker 8: Palestinian men, women and children. No one who hasn't experienced
Speaker 8: it themselves can truly know this pain and horror. But
Speaker 8: if you could transfer your experience to others, if you
Speaker 8: could grab people, buy the arm and have them experience
Speaker 8: for a moment what you experienced. What would you most
Speaker 8: want them to see and understand.
Speaker 5: I mean, I think it's important to realize that every
Speaker 5: aspect of life in Gaza has been destroyed, damaged and disrupted.
Speaker 5: And I'll try to take it through a normal day.
Speaker 5: I mean, you are not able to get up and
Speaker 5: have breakfast because of the severe food insecurity. And we
Speaker 5: saw this not just at the hospital but everywhere. Everybody's hungry,
Speaker 5: everybody's concerned about where their next meal will come. There
Speaker 5: are lines around the block for the partially functioning bakery
Speaker 5: hoping that somebody can get a loaf of bread for
Speaker 5: their family. There's no ability to rely on telecommunications. I
Speaker 5: was there for eight days of a telecommunications blackout. We
Speaker 5: could not communicate with each other, We could not communicate
Speaker 5: with our families, we could not communicate with other doctors,
Speaker 5: we could not let people know this is what we needed.
Speaker 5: So many of these eight organizations are guessing what the
Speaker 5: people need because they're not able to get that feedback.
Speaker 5: In reality, the kids have not been in school for
Speaker 5: five months. They are waking up every day and they
Speaker 5: are not being able to go to school where they
Speaker 5: can learn and they can kind of start working towards
Speaker 5: their future. Nobody is able to work. Not even the
Speaker 5: doctors in the hospital were getting paid, the nurses, the doctors,
Speaker 5: None of these people are getting paid regularly. The banks
Speaker 5: are not open. You cannot go in there and just
Speaker 5: withdraw whatever money you had in your savings and try
Speaker 5: to figure something out for your family. This is all
Speaker 5: happening under the guys, under the backdrop of bombs being dropped,
Speaker 5: of houses being destroyed, neighborhoods being leveled. There are I
Speaker 5: saw a statistic yesterday that came out from UNISEF that
Speaker 5: one in six children in the Gaza Strip are severely malnourished.
Speaker 5: That means that their growth is going to be stunted.
Speaker 5: They're going to have irreversible damage to their mental development,
Speaker 5: to their physical development. They are not going to be
Speaker 5: able to be to focus or to learn like they
Speaker 5: normally would have if they were not starving to death,
Speaker 5: if they were not thirsty the way that they are.
Speaker 6: There's no clean water, so there.
Speaker 5: Is infections running ramp through some of these displaced shelters
Speaker 5: and the camps that are there. Hepatitis A that's a
Speaker 5: diarrhea illness that many kids are suffering from, and we
Speaker 5: don't have the capability to get them rehydrated to make
Speaker 5: sure that they get back on foot. It's literally going
Speaker 5: to kill some kids because we just don't have what
Speaker 5: it takes. And there are already twenty children who have died.
Speaker 5: You know, there's another statistic that came out, thirty seven
Speaker 5: mothers die every single day in the Gaza Strip. There
Speaker 5: are over twenty five thousand unaccompanied children. There are a
Speaker 5: thousand kids who've lost a limb, at least one limb
Speaker 5: in the Gaza Strip. Every single part of society has
Speaker 5: been disrupted. There's no fuel getting in, so most people
Speaker 5: are relying on donkey carts to pull them up and
Speaker 5: down to get to where they need to go. The
Speaker 5: sanitation facilities have been damaged and destroyed. An ICU doctor
Speaker 5: who I work with to me, was complaining about how
Speaker 5: his mother is in one of these internally displaced camps
Speaker 5: and that she has to walk fifteen minutes just to
Speaker 5: use the bathroom, and that she already is not stable,
Speaker 5: and that he can't get her a walker because none
Speaker 5: of that stuff is entering. You know, there are over
Speaker 5: six thousand kids under the age of six who get
Speaker 5: formula feed and that they are at risk because we
Speaker 5: hope that those trucks that are waiting outside of Raffa
Speaker 5: on the Egyptian side can get in and bring in
Speaker 5: that formula that they need. I mean, every aspect of
Speaker 5: life has been disrupted. And now we're talking about the
Speaker 5: potential ground invasion and Rapha there are one point seven
Speaker 5: million people there. You cannot cough without coughing on somebody.
Speaker 5: In Lapa, you cannot do anything without bumping into somebody.
Speaker 5: And we're talking about a ground invasion. It's going to
Speaker 5: be a bloodbath. But these people have suffered so much already.
Speaker 5: And the final thing that I'll say is that everybody
Speaker 5: has lost something. Nobody has been untouched. Everybody has been
Speaker 5: affected by this, but they haven't even gotten the chance
Speaker 5: to sort of process that, to grieve the loved ones
Speaker 5: that they've lost, to think about the homes that have
Speaker 5: been destroyed, and we keep pushing more and more trauma
Speaker 5: on them. There's a war after the war. That's what
Speaker 5: everybody in Gaza says. There's a war after the war.
Speaker 5: And it's because just if there is a ceasefire, and
Speaker 5: I hope there's one tomorrow, the work doesn't stop. In fact,
Speaker 5: The work is just beginning, and it's going to require
Speaker 5: all of us to do everything we can to provide
Speaker 5: some relief for people who are immensely suffering and who
Speaker 5: have not been given a chance at life.
Speaker 8: So that was doctor Thayer Ahmad. Doctor Ahmad is a
Speaker 8: Palestinian American er physician here in the United States who
Speaker 8: witness first hand the carnage and the Gaza strip during
Speaker 8: his recent medical mission at Al Nasser Hospital in Conunis.
Speaker 8: I want to thank doctor Ahmad for joining us, and
Speaker 8: I want to thank you all for watching this segment
Speaker 8: with breaking points. Please do subscribe to my news outlet,
Speaker 8: The Real News for more coverage like this. You can
Speaker 8: find links in the description of this video. I'll see
Speaker 8: you soon for the next edition of the Art of
Speaker 8: Class War. Take care of yourselves, take care of each other,
Speaker 8: Fight hard however you can to stop this solidarity forever