Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's Bill Courtney with an army of normal folks.
Speaker 1: And we continue now with part two of our conversation
Speaker 1: with Kevin Adler right after these brief messages from our
Speaker 1: general sponsors. So it's one interaction led to kind of
Speaker 1: a light bulb moment. I guess for you, is that
Speaker 1: we can serve this way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, I mean, and again, the backstory that you
Speaker 2: know isn't often shared on this on the on the website,
Speaker 2: and the backstory of it is for about three or
Speaker 2: four months, I.
Speaker 1: Did nothing more.
Speaker 2: Why besides, you have a life. I didn't have much
Speaker 2: of a life. You didn't get the good bio there.
Speaker 2: I did not have much of a life. I was
Speaker 2: walking down the street. Stop that was you know what
Speaker 2: it was is I can be my own worst critic,
Speaker 2: probably like many of us. And I was like, I
Speaker 2: don't know if I'm cut out for this. I don't
Speaker 2: know if I'm the right person. When I think of
Speaker 2: a person who does homeless outreach work, I think of
Speaker 2: Little Angel some of the people I work with now,
Speaker 2: to be honest, who go out with you know, no publicity,
Speaker 2: no cameras, no intention of growing anything, and they're just
Speaker 2: loving on people and not only do they know, you know,
Speaker 2: giving out shoes today and the whole thing, I know
Speaker 2: your shoe size, right, like you're a fan. I was like,
Speaker 2: I felt like an impostor, right, that was not my life.
Speaker 2: But what I realized was, it's not so much homelessness
Speaker 2: that I care about, Like I care about the issue now,
Speaker 2: you know, I dedicated to the last decade of my
Speaker 2: life to it. But it's really not homelessness that kept
Speaker 2: me going and drew me to this. It's my core values,
Speaker 2: which believe that every single person is intrinsically valuable and
Speaker 2: that we're all interconnected, right, And it was just I
Speaker 2: think that's a fact, that's a value.
Speaker 1: I get that's your value, but I don't think anybody
Speaker 1: can argue that every single human being has value and
Speaker 1: that scientifically our DNA is one hundred percent connected. Those
Speaker 1: are facts, right, So there are values, but they're they're
Speaker 1: so facts.
Speaker 2: There are facts and values that we don't live into
Speaker 2: as a society.
Speaker 1: Agreed one hundred percent, Thus the need for an army
Speaker 1: and normal folks. But yes, agreed completely. And that was
Speaker 1: for me, the rub that got me back out there.
Speaker 1: That's what did because.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I was like in San Francisco, and you know,
Speaker 2: you were like, if I'm going to live my value,
Speaker 2: I'm going to live my values. I gotta go talk
Speaker 2: to people because I know something that other people don't know.
Speaker 2: It's a virtue of this little stuff I've over with
Speaker 2: my goro. And the wildest thing is it's just through
Speaker 2: conversations with people, just going out having interacting, you know,
Speaker 2: hearing their stories and then hearing the barriers of why
Speaker 2: the person's unhoused. Suddenly it makes sense. It's not just
Speaker 2: this abstraction. It's too big. How are we ever going
Speaker 2: to handle this thing? It's like, oh, that's Johnny, who
Speaker 2: was the next person I met. Went down to Saint
Speaker 2: Anthony Foundation in San Francisco. I don't know that they've
Speaker 2: been serving daily meals there for about the downtown so
Speaker 2: it's kind of a faith, you know, origin affiliation. But yeah,
Speaker 2: they've been doing daily meal services, right, so Souper Kitchen.
Speaker 1: So you go down there.
Speaker 2: I go down there, make this announcement saying hey, I'm here.
Speaker 2: You know, Kevin's here. I'm gonna help people reconnect to
Speaker 2: the camera. Kevin f Adler, the impostor, is here. Y'all right, yes,
Speaker 2: grumbles right, and yeah, I basically say, you know, you
Speaker 2: want to want to reconnect to their family. And it goes
Speaker 2: over about as well as you think, which is crickets right,
Speaker 2: people just for me, and I'm walking out it just
Speaker 2: like great, I don't have to do this anymore. This
Speaker 2: is this is my nobody wants that, no one, no
Speaker 2: one gives who right, like, this is my deal with God.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna do it one more time and then if
Speaker 2: this doesn't, you know, done. And of course this guy
Speaker 2: comes up to me as I'm walking out the door,
Speaker 2: you know, bright blue eyes, and he's like, Hi, I'm Johnny.
Speaker 2: I haven't seen my family in a long time, in
Speaker 2: about thirty years. And I was like, God, right now,
Speaker 2: I got it. Now I gotta do this thing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So we go out. I record a video of him
Speaker 2: to his family. Within three weeks, all four of his
Speaker 2: siblings had recorded messages back to Johnny, and they all
Speaker 2: flew from across the country on their own dime to
Speaker 2: reunite with Johnny in a hotel room in San Francisco.
Speaker 2: And I'm sitting there. They're sitting on a bed almost
Speaker 2: forming like this v formation like birds do with Johnny
Speaker 2: at the front, all surrounding him and he's looking me
Speaker 2: in the eye and he says, you know, thank you
Speaker 2: for giving me the family. And yeah, at that point,
Speaker 2: all right, there's something here. I got play a role
Speaker 2: in it. I gotta ask how that story about Johnny
Speaker 2: has done really well. Johnny has done really well. So
Speaker 2: at that time, I didn't realize that he was in
Speaker 2: the throes of some addiction and it was reconnecting to
Speaker 2: his family that gave him a new reason for a living.
Speaker 2: So he was able to get the support treatment he needed.
Speaker 2: He was able to beat that addiction. So he you know,
Speaker 2: is he now housed And he's now housed.
Speaker 1: So what happened? Years saved alive years later, You're gonna
Speaker 1: have to stop for a minute.
Speaker 2: All right, you saved a live. You don't want to
Speaker 2: do that day. I think that puts too high of
Speaker 2: a expectator. Yes, his life probably was saved through this work.
Speaker 1: No doubt. He was on the streets doing addictive stuff.
Speaker 1: He was going to end up dead before fifty or
Speaker 1: by fifty. Yeah, that's what the that's what the facts saying.
Speaker 1: You're a fact based person. Well, well no, I just
Speaker 1: like data, and it's your facts. I'm just repeating back
Speaker 1: to you what you told me.
Speaker 2: And I think my only discomfort with and that's true
Speaker 2: is there's the ones who we aren't able to save.
Speaker 2: Hit me hard, real hard.
Speaker 1: I get that. Yeah, but I've said this before. Another
Speaker 1: shows something that dawned on me probably five years into
Speaker 1: my work in the Inner City, is that if you
Speaker 1: take a piece of paper and draw a line down
Speaker 1: the middle of it, and then a little line across
Speaker 1: the top of it, and you put a plus in
Speaker 1: the left margin and a minus in the right, and
Speaker 1: you start listing all the pluses against all the minuses,
Speaker 1: if the minuses outwigh the pluses, and you see that
Speaker 1: as a failure, which in school or business is how
Speaker 1: you ledge your success. If you do that, when you're
Speaker 1: working in a community like you and I have worked in,
Speaker 1: and like you're working in, you'll be the most oppressed
Speaker 1: hman being on the planet. Which you've got to realize
Speaker 1: is most of those pluses never happen without your engagement,
Speaker 1: so each of them are one hundred percent successes, and
Speaker 1: you can't measure the pluses against the minuses.
Speaker 2: And that kind were you a coach in a previous
Speaker 2: life might have been good pep talks. That's a good
Speaker 2: one and I and that's true.
Speaker 1: That's one hundred percent called the Ben Franklin clothes. Ben
Speaker 1: Franklin used to make decisions by drawing a plus and
Speaker 1: a nag. Yeah, he drew a plus and a minus
Speaker 1: on top of a page. You're lying down it thought
Speaker 1: about all of the positives and all the negatives that
Speaker 1: would occur as a result of what he was about
Speaker 1: to engage in, and if the minuses o wigh the positives,
Speaker 1: he did, and he found something else to do. And
Speaker 1: that's effective, except when you're dealing with a ledger that
Speaker 1: doesn't start even, but it starts with a metric ass
Speaker 1: ton full of minuses.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Johnny's story his life was say from their
Speaker 2: reconnection and years later as a kicker, he was housed
Speaker 2: but as he was talking about, four walls and a
Speaker 2: roof don't always make a house a home, and he
Speaker 2: was feeling super isolated, lonely, getting depressed. Gained a lot
Speaker 2: of weight after beating the drugs, but put on a
Speaker 2: ton of weight, and he told me, you know, years later,
Speaker 2: he's like, I was getting very depressed and started having
Speaker 2: suicidal thoughts. But what saved me two things. Started seeing
Speaker 2: a therapist made a big difference. Second was he signed
Speaker 2: up for our second program that we created, Miracle Messages
Speaker 2: as a phone buddy program, so we match folks every
Speaker 2: day volunteers, people who are housed for weekly phone calls
Speaker 2: and text messages, kind of like a digital pen pal.
Speaker 2: Johnny signed up for that program, unbeknownst that he was
Speaker 2: signing up for this thing that he had already done
Speaker 2: with the reunions. He got with a friend who they
Speaker 2: started having weekly phone calls and text messages and just
Speaker 2: having that person to talk to.
Speaker 1: He said, just a little bit of encouragement from another
Speaker 1: event being goes along one that was it? All right?
Speaker 1: So Johnny's two Johnny was the second one. But we
Speaker 1: don't really have an organization at this time. We have
Speaker 1: a goofy dude walking around with a GoPro on the
Speaker 1: street talking to homeless people. That's all we got at
Speaker 1: this point. So what happens?
Speaker 2: So I quit my job. I had been Okay, now
Speaker 2: you're ridiculous.
Speaker 1: And what did you do?
Speaker 2: I was working in the education technology space, so kind
Speaker 2: of the startup Silicon Valley in San Francisco, you know,
Speaker 2: but I was always more driven by like mission than profit,
Speaker 2: and I'd let the mission interfere with profit. Sometimes that's
Speaker 2: all another story. But this whole idea of like social entrepreneurship,
Speaker 2: I didn't know what that means, but that was kind
Speaker 2: of like who what I was.
Speaker 1: Neither did I and I'm not sure I still actually
Speaker 1: know what it means. Yeah, Yeah, I mean we call it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what it means to me is finding needs like
Speaker 2: you would in business, but instead of optimizing for you know,
Speaker 2: making money, you're optimizing for changing lines.
Speaker 1: That's a really good way to define it, really is,
Speaker 1: And we'll be right back. You quit your job, yes,
Speaker 1: because you're well balanced, and you decide I'm going to
Speaker 1: spend my time walking around talking to homeless people with
Speaker 1: a GoPro.
Speaker 2: Yeah, raised a little bit of money on like online
Speaker 2: crowdfunding to travel across the country, and I had this
Speaker 2: thing called the one hundred Stories campaign where I was
Speaker 2: just going to talk to one hundred people, offer this
Speaker 2: service to one hundred people, and if they took it
Speaker 2: up grade, If not, that's it. And at the end
Speaker 2: of it, evaluate my life decisions.
Speaker 1: And see if in the meantime you can connect some
Speaker 1: housed people with some family.
Speaker 2: And went to Burlington, Vermont, where I met Harry and
Speaker 2: he hadn't seen his son.
Speaker 1: Burlington, Vermont.
Speaker 2: Of all places, you know, I think there's a few places.
Speaker 2: Like the reaction you just had is why I wanted
Speaker 2: to go to places off the beach to track. That's
Speaker 2: a good point, that's really well said.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I get it, yeah, right, because we anybody can
Speaker 1: go to Angeles.
Speaker 2: New York, or DC or you know, Miami or what
Speaker 2: San Francisco. But like homelessness, we're at the tip of
Speaker 2: the iceberg. And I'm even now getting emails every day
Speaker 2: through miracle messages from folks who are unhoused asking for
Speaker 2: services or seeking some help in places I've never heard
Speaker 2: of in this country, right, small towns all across. So
Speaker 2: this would get a lot worse before it's better. So
Speaker 2: you go to Burlington, I go to Burlington, I go
Speaker 2: to Portland, Maine. You know, I go to Manchester, New Hampshire,
Speaker 2: go to Miami at one point in Fort Lauderdale, and
Speaker 2: I'm just offering these services and meeting people.
Speaker 1: Literally just walking down the street.
Speaker 2: Sometimes go into like a local homeless service org and
Speaker 2: saying Hey, can I camp out here for a bit
Speaker 2: and offer these services? Right, And people are generally pretty
Speaker 2: receptive to it, and had a lot of powerful conversations
Speaker 2: and occasionally would meet someone who wanted to reconnect to
Speaker 2: their loved ones and would do my best to try
Speaker 2: to facilitate that reconnection. At the time, it was more
Speaker 2: posting things on social media, doing searches, and those posts
Speaker 2: would go viral, news covers it, people would get tagged.
Speaker 2: Because I didn't realize this until later, but family is
Speaker 2: often looking for the homeless relatives but don't know where
Speaker 2: to where to turn. And every day we get family
Speaker 2: members reaching out to us saying, hey, my brother's missing.
Speaker 2: This is kind of like America's most wanted enough homeless.
Speaker 2: It is. It's like reverse kind of feel good it
Speaker 2: really is. Yeah, yeah, so yeah, I started doing that
Speaker 2: and you know, one hundred stories in just had had
Speaker 2: people you know, reconnect get off the streets, powerful homecomings,
Speaker 2: some you know, big ones that didn't work out too right.
Speaker 2: I can talk about the successes and there there's going
Speaker 2: to be yeah, but there were more pluses than minuses
Speaker 2: on that doing it. Yeah, So, and and got down
Speaker 2: to a place where I was barely getting by, Like
Speaker 2: I'm not coming from tons of family money, and you know,
Speaker 2: like I just got you know, trust fund that I'm
Speaker 2: now It was like, yeah, I'm privileged in the sense
Speaker 2: that rock bottom for me is just going to go
Speaker 2: move in with my dad, right, I can go live
Speaker 2: at his house. But it was never going to be
Speaker 2: so I could take these risks. But also, you know,
Speaker 2: if you're in your mid to late twenties at a
Speaker 2: point getting down to like six hundred dollars in a
Speaker 2: savings account, there's not much he can do to sustain
Speaker 2: after that. So twenty sixteen twenty seventeen, briefly stepped away
Speaker 2: from mere messages. I started working outside of that, and
Speaker 2: I was like, I'm just going to make money here
Speaker 2: and then subsidize it there, right, And kind of that
Speaker 2: was the play. I could have used a little more
Speaker 2: coaching than that. And my dad's like, what are you doing?
Speaker 1: Well? You are twenty six. Yeah, he's a very good
Speaker 1: friend of mine. Told my son when he went to
Speaker 1: d C. People need to understand a thirteen hundred square
Speaker 1: foot apartment in d c's four or five thousand dollars, right,
Speaker 1: so you pile five or six people in a one
Speaker 1: bedroom and just live and put A buddy of mine
Speaker 1: told my son, great advice is you can be young,
Speaker 1: single and broke once in your life. Do what you
Speaker 1: want to do. Why you can be young, single and.
Speaker 2: Bro that's if you're lucky too. Yeah that's true. Yeah
Speaker 2: it's a lucky one. But that feels like that's what
Speaker 2: you were. Yeah, I mean I kept I both wasn't
Speaker 2: making much, but I kept my costs real well. So
Speaker 2: I found a five bedroom house in the outskirts of
Speaker 2: San Francisco. I was the master tenant. Everyone had a
Speaker 2: good rent. I had a great rent, right, like.
Speaker 1: The same thing that's sent in DC.
Speaker 2: That's what say, you figure it out and so but
Speaker 2: you know, it got to the point where it's just
Speaker 2: like this is not sustainable. And I go and I'm
Speaker 2: working on a political campaign for about one week, and
Speaker 2: I'm learning all the organizing and campaign work and marketing
Speaker 2: and the whole thing. And everything I'm learning, I'm applying
Speaker 2: back to miracle messages. So I'm like, all right, I
Speaker 2: can't continue with this. I sent them an email. I'm
Speaker 2: saying sorry, I can't do this. Go to bed that night,
Speaker 2: I turn off my phone. I hate that feel of
Speaker 2: letting people down, like disappointing. So I'm thinking I'm going
Speaker 2: to get this, you know, angry email morning. They didn't care.
Speaker 2: I was a nobody on the campaign, but I did
Speaker 2: have two emails in my inbox this true story. First
Speaker 2: email was from Ted Heed Residency saying, congratulations. We'd like
Speaker 2: to invite you to come to New York, live here
Speaker 2: for six months, incubate your idea at TED headquarters, and
Speaker 2: then give it Ted time on this one.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: Second email, Hey, there, we're producing this digital platform called
Speaker 2: now This like a BuzzFeed kind of thing. We love
Speaker 2: your work. We would like to tell your story. That
Speaker 2: video at twenty six million views, one million shares online.
Speaker 2: That plus the Ted talk led to some funders getting
Speaker 2: introduced to us get in our first funding at Miracle Messages,
Speaker 2: and twenty seventeen we got that funding. Since then, we've
Speaker 2: never missed a payroll and we've grown the team. We're
Speaker 2: about twelve thirteen full time. We just hired my successor
Speaker 2: last year as a new seat. So it's now become
Speaker 2: a legit thing. Didn't start that.
Speaker 1: Way though, So tell me what this legit thing does.
Speaker 2: So Miracle Messages we help people experience from a normal
Speaker 2: guy who was a little bit nutty who decided to
Speaker 2: film some homeless people to connect them because he knew
Speaker 2: how much the connection from his uncle meant to him.
Speaker 2: And that's where it comes from. How Jesus had a
Speaker 2: smartphone and the whole weird origin, the whole thing and
Speaker 2: the origin of the name was. I asked Jennifer, who
Speaker 2: reconnected to Jeffrey, which we call this thing? Like there's
Speaker 2: nothing here, Like people are asking, what's this thing called.
Speaker 2: I was like, dude, goofy guy walks with the phone's
Speaker 2: you know, that's very catchy. And she's like, well, you know,
Speaker 2: we're here in Monteursville, and locally people have called it
Speaker 2: the miracle of Monteursville, so maybe we could call it.
Speaker 2: It's like a miracle message. That makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was like, great, it's a miracle message. So we
Speaker 2: help people were nonprofit five oh one c three. We
Speaker 2: help people experiencing homelessness rebuild their social support systems and
Speaker 2: their financial security. So we do a couple of things.
Speaker 2: We do family and friend reunification services. So instead of
Speaker 2: just random people walking down the streets blasting things on
Speaker 2: social media, we now have caseworkers, social workers, outreach workers,
Speaker 2: local chapters around the country, folks who are going to
Speaker 2: partner sites offering services. We also get folks who are
Speaker 2: unhoused reaching out to us directly, often through our either
Speaker 2: the website, you know, Miracle Messages dot org, or we
Speaker 2: set up a hotline. The phone number is really easy
Speaker 2: to remember, one eight hundred, miss you right, we all
Speaker 2: met we.
Speaker 1: You right.
Speaker 2: So we get messages coming in, and when a message
Speaker 2: comes in, we have a network of volunteer digital detectives.
Speaker 2: So these are everyday people who are just like feeling
Speaker 2: frustrated and helpless on this issue, and like, what can
Speaker 2: I do? I want to do something right. I don't
Speaker 2: want to just see people living and dying on the
Speaker 2: streets in front of me.
Speaker 1: So let's do someone listening to us who wants to
Speaker 1: get involved. Yeah, exactly, here's.
Speaker 2: One way to do it. You could be a digital detective.
Speaker 2: You can do digital sleuthing for good and you're going
Speaker 2: online making phone calls, writing letters, doing digital searches, locate
Speaker 2: loved ones, deliver messages. That process has led to about
Speaker 2: eleven hundred reunifications.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I read a stat that by the end of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, So now we're a little bit ahead
Speaker 1: of that. But by the end of twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: one thousand people had been reunited with loved ones via
Speaker 1: Americal messages. Eighty percent of reunions have led to what
Speaker 1: you call positive outcomes. That's a lot more than negatives,
Speaker 1: with fifteen to twenty percent leading to homeless family members
Speaker 1: actually getting off the streets. That's phenomenal. We were always about,
Speaker 1: what are we going to do about this problem? Well,
Speaker 1: here's one.
Speaker 2: Problem, reconnecting again. It's a first step to family reunification
Speaker 2: and love one reunification not a last step. So there
Speaker 2: are programs where it's like, all you need is bus
Speaker 2: fare to get a one way bus ticket to go
Speaker 2: live with your loved ones. We say, well, maybe a
Speaker 2: first you know, if you're reconnecting after years, if not decades,
Speaker 2: the starting point might just be I I'm still alive,
Speaker 2: I love you, I miss you, I'm sorry, I want
Speaker 2: you back in my life, and that's where we start
Speaker 2: the miracle messages. We also have it where families reach
Speaker 2: out to us looking for their missing relatives who are
Speaker 2: unhoused in a city, and we've done about one hundred
Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty of those very hard needle in
Speaker 2: a haystack. Find them cases is what we call it.
Speaker 2: But we also have learned that for some people, families
Speaker 2: part of the problem, not part of the solution. You know,
Speaker 2: there's violence, there's unsaved home environment, there's reasons abuse, reasons
Speaker 2: not to reconnect. That's totally in Appermai way. I have
Speaker 2: a family goes to foster care, and some don't have
Speaker 2: family of foster car and often, and we've got to
Speaker 2: talk about this, sometimes the family is not that much
Speaker 2: better off than the person experiencing homelessness. You know, we
Speaker 2: got a country right now where one out of every
Speaker 2: two people are one paycheck away from not being able
Speaker 2: to pay rent, and forty percent of people say they
Speaker 2: don't know where they'd get four hundred dollars for an
Speaker 2: unexpected emergency. So you know the goal of this is
Speaker 2: not let's let's put the entire burden on families and
Speaker 2: that's the solution. You got to build housing, you gotta
Speaker 2: have a lot of other services. But now, I consider
Speaker 2: myself a pragmatic idealist. This is I'm very pragmatic. It's
Speaker 2: a step and we all need we all need that
Speaker 2: kind of social support. So for folks who don't have
Speaker 2: family to reconnect to. That's where we created our Phone
Speaker 2: Buddy program where we match every day volunteers.
Speaker 1: Maybe some of your listeners know the opportunity for people
Speaker 1: just and it doesn't take that much time.
Speaker 2: You're talking once a week twenty minutes, thirty minutes a
Speaker 2: week for three months is our initial commitment we asked for.
Speaker 2: And it's a digital phone calls and if you're not
Speaker 2: comfortable phone calls, you do text messages.
Speaker 1: Josh check.
Speaker 2: You don't have to meet if you're not wanting to
Speaker 2: meet in person. It's just checking on you, right, being
Speaker 2: a neighbor, how you doing right? And we say you're
Speaker 2: not trying to be a lightweight case worker a social worker,
Speaker 2: because for many folks who are on housed, including also
Speaker 2: some of our volunteers are housed, this may be the
Speaker 2: only person that they have to talk to.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: We have a real crisis right now where loneliness disconnection
Speaker 2: all time high. So we have Miracle Friends is that
Speaker 2: program where we match people for weekly calls and texts.
Speaker 2: Those volunteers have logged over three hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 2: conversation minutes and you know, lives get changed on both
Speaker 2: sides of the legend.
Speaker 1: That eyes open.
Speaker 2: I get that that eyes get open. Oh yeah yeah,
Speaker 2: And you think like Bruce and Nathaniel. You know, Bruce,
Speaker 2: someone who works, invents your capital. He's got a ton
Speaker 2: of resources. He's great. Nathaniel, he's been in and out
Speaker 2: of jail, he's lived on the streets, he's had substance issues.
Speaker 2: What value could Nathaniel possibly remind group as well as
Speaker 2: Bruce would tell it? First, eye's hearts get open right
Speaker 2: on this issue, learn more about his community, decide that
Speaker 2: he doesn't interact with you often. And not too long ago,
Speaker 2: Bruce's father passed. The first person called them was Nathaniel,
Speaker 2: as he said, I lost.
Speaker 1: My dad a few years ago. Two. I know what
Speaker 1: that's like.
Speaker 2: So for me, this gets us past the labels, the categories,
Speaker 2: all that nonsense into just like we're human together.
Speaker 1: We allow humanity to do its things. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: I'm going to read some numbers and then I'm going
Speaker 1: to ask you some more questions. Actually, I'm gonna tell
Speaker 1: you a story, and then I'm gonna ask you more questions.
Speaker 1: The Department of Housing and Urban Development HUD estimates that
Speaker 1: five hundred and eighty two thousand, four hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: two people experience homelessness each night.
Speaker 2: I think that's that's way low low number, and the
Speaker 2: latest number is closer to seven hundred and fifty dollars.
Speaker 1: That feels about right.
Speaker 2: But if we estimated my book, it's closer to six
Speaker 2: million over the course.
Speaker 1: Of the year with TRANSUL listeners. Of those, a handful
Speaker 1: three hundred and fifty thousand or so are sheltered. About
Speaker 1: half for those in shelters, fifty nine percent of individuals
Speaker 1: and forty one percent are with their families. That's the
Speaker 1: that's one that's start that forty percent of families are
Speaker 1: on now right.
Speaker 2: Of unhoused people are family? Are part of families? Right, yes,
Speaker 2: are part of famis.
Speaker 1: Two hundred and fifty or so are unsheltered, ninety two
Speaker 1: percent being individuals and eight percent with their families. One
Speaker 1: point one million school children are considered unhoused. That breaks
Speaker 1: my heart. The total number experiencing homeless homelessness at one
Speaker 1: moment is likely around two and a halfter three million
Speaker 1: and six men over the course of a year, which
Speaker 1: is almost two percent of our population. One in fifty.
Speaker 1: Blacks are twelve percent of the population but represent thirty
Speaker 1: percent of homelessness thirty thirty what I say, thirty seven
Speaker 1: percent and fifty percent of homeless families with children.
Speaker 2: Homelessness reveals a lot of societal issues.
Speaker 1: My brother in law, my wife Lisa, her little brother's been.
Speaker 1: I've spoken about them a handful of times on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Been a special needs and I've known been since he
Speaker 1: was four and have experienced all of the gifts and
Speaker 1: blessings that has been and all of the headaches that
Speaker 1: can go along with new special needs. And it's not
Speaker 1: an easy thing to live with special needs, I'm sure,
Speaker 1: but I can also tell you it's often not easy
Speaker 1: to be the family of someone's special needs and care
Speaker 1: for him. I mean, it's just it's it's hard work.
Speaker 1: It's work we all gladly take on, but it does
Speaker 1: not diminish the fact that it's hard oftentimes. Ben was
Speaker 1: sixteen and a half when he was given the afforded
Speaker 1: the great opportunity to go to a place in Austin,
Speaker 1: Texas called the Brown School, which really worked well with
Speaker 1: people with developmental disabilities plus behavioral issues, and it was
Speaker 1: a blessing for the family that he got in, and
Speaker 1: he was doing really well. Ben is also high enough
Speaker 1: functioning that he knows enough about how the world works,
Speaker 1: low enough functioning that he is certainly developmentally disabled, but
Speaker 1: he knows a few things, and he's a lot smarter
Speaker 1: as our most people in his situation than we think. Well.
Speaker 1: He over the course of the five or six years
Speaker 1: that he'd been going to different schools in different places,
Speaker 1: he kind of learned the rules around institutionalization. And on
Speaker 1: his eighteenth birthday he walked up the front desk and said,
Speaker 1: I would like to leave. And because of the very
Speaker 1: thing you were talking about, the hippo rules and be
Speaker 1: ensued and everything. They had twenty four hours where they
Speaker 1: legally do set him onto the streets of Austin, Texas.
Speaker 1: And they called and said, then's about to leave. We're like,
Speaker 1: what what do you mean? He's about to leave? He's
Speaker 1: got he operates on a third grade level. He can't.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just progative, it's legally his right. And
Speaker 1: he says he didn't want to stay here anymore and
Speaker 1: he is not committed here by a judge or any law.
Speaker 1: And we got there a few hours before he walked out.
Speaker 1: Had they not called us, and had he walked out,
Speaker 1: I have no idea what would have happened, but I
Speaker 1: can assure you, knowing the way Ben looks, knowing his effect,
Speaker 1: his gait is everything, thousands of people would walk right
Speaker 1: by and not given him a second thought and just
Speaker 1: tried to stay out of his way, you know. So
Speaker 1: I would say our family was hours away from experiencing
Speaker 1: a dear loved one and homelessness. So I hear all
Speaker 1: these numbers, and I give you that story to also
Speaker 1: tell you I'm really sick of my car getting broken
Speaker 1: into and having to pay five hundred dollars to replace
Speaker 1: the window, and all the change being rifled through in
Speaker 1: my console. Sick of that too. So I am a
Speaker 1: little bit of a hypocrite and certainly very conflicted as
Speaker 1: it pertains to all of this and won an answer,
Speaker 1: you know. And I think the vast majority of the
Speaker 1: people in the country have a heart for folks who
Speaker 1: are not well off, but are also sick of their neighborhoods,
Speaker 1: especially in urban areas, dealing with such a terrible circumstance,
Speaker 1: both on a human level and candidly on a societal level.
Speaker 1: For those of us living with people in this and
Speaker 1: we have all seen in your hometown of San Francisco
Speaker 1: on the news, which I am certain to sensationalized, but
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. In your area, we have
Speaker 1: all seen on the news pictures of encamped areas of
Speaker 1: San Francisco that were once beautiful roads with a bunch
Speaker 1: of pup tents and people peeing on the sidewalks and
Speaker 1: drug and some areas down by the wharf and everything else.
Speaker 1: That it's not good for society, it's not good for
Speaker 1: the people there, you know. And I'm shut in all
Speaker 1: that sensationalized, but I guess what I'm saying to you
Speaker 1: is I think this whole area provides just a lot
Speaker 1: of conflict for people. And when you hear all those numbers,
Speaker 1: you're basically talking one in fifty. This is not an
Speaker 1: isolated deal. This is everywhere. Seems to me you have
Speaker 1: stumbled across a way to start to help chip away
Speaker 1: at the problem. And after ten years, I consider experts.
Speaker 1: You know. I don't think a degree or certification makes
Speaker 1: you an expert in a certain era. I think the
Speaker 1: work there does. So I consider you an expert in
Speaker 1: this area because of the amount of time you've spent
Speaker 1: learning understanding it.
Speaker 2: What do we do well? The status quo is not
Speaker 2: working for anyone right now. It's not housed or on
Speaker 2: house people. We have to just start with that, like naming.
Speaker 2: That is actually really important because sometimes people are trying
Speaker 2: to say, oh, it's not so bad. You don't know
Speaker 2: what you're experiencing. You're like, my card just got broken
Speaker 2: into for the un teenth time. I don't feel comfortable
Speaker 2: walking down the street.
Speaker 1: With the kids.
Speaker 2: I see people living and dying on the streets. This
Speaker 2: doesn't work for them. It doesn't work for us, us
Speaker 2: them right. It doesn't look for society. It's not acceptable.
Speaker 2: It's also very costly. We spend forty to eighty thousand
Speaker 2: dollars per unhoused person per year to maintain them on
Speaker 2: the streets for one polease, fire, emergency services, sanitation. That's
Speaker 2: a lot of money. Forty eighty thousand dollars keep someone unhoused.
Speaker 2: That doesn't work, right. So I mean, even if like
Speaker 2: you're fiscally conservative and thinking about the stuff, the status
Speaker 2: quo is about the most expensive version of all this,
Speaker 2: which is why you know we'll get into the cash thing.
Speaker 2: So I think as a society, we have swung way
Speaker 2: too far to individual agency at the expense of common sense.
Speaker 2: And my views on this have only been informed from
Speaker 2: doing this for ten years, talking to thousands of people,
Speaker 2: listening to families, because when I talk to the families,
Speaker 2: they're like, this is no quality of life for my brother,
Speaker 2: my sister.
Speaker 1: I don't want them.
Speaker 2: I don't want my uncle Mark sitting there in his
Speaker 2: own feces talking to himself and you know, being most
Speaker 2: crimes involving people experiencing homelessness, the person who's unhoused is
Speaker 2: the victim.
Speaker 1: As I'm listening to I'm reminding myself and I hope
Speaker 1: all listeners are around themselves. You're the guy that approached
Speaker 1: the first guy with your keys in your Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: that's where I started. This is an evolution for you.
Speaker 2: It's a journey. The two questions I ask when I
Speaker 2: you know, if I give a talk, and I'll even
Speaker 2: you know, ask your listeners and invite them to think
Speaker 2: about it. So, you know, raise your hand if you
Speaker 2: know if you care about the issue of homelessness. Every
Speaker 2: hand goes up. Say second question, raise your hand if
Speaker 2: you know someone that's currently experiencing homelessness. When I give
Speaker 2: that second question, it's never more than about five percent
Speaker 2: of people raise their hands. They say, well, that might
Speaker 2: be part of the problem. Imagine any other issue. You know,
Speaker 2: we're talking about racial justice. You don't know any black
Speaker 2: or brown people, right, Like, how are you even going
Speaker 2: to start? What work are you going to do? You're
Speaker 2: not going to know where to start, what the experience
Speaker 2: is like any of that. You got to have relationships,
Speaker 2: you know. Brian Stevenson, Equal Justice Initiative founder, he talks
Speaker 2: about the importance of proximity. I get proximate. I actually
Speaker 2: think you have to go further than proximity. You have
Speaker 2: to get relational. You don't have at least one friend
Speaker 2: person you know by name. That's the first step. So
Speaker 2: in my journey of doing that work, I started very
Speaker 2: you know, give you a sense of where I started.
Speaker 2: When I studied abroad in the UK in London. This
Speaker 2: was shortly after the bombings that they had in two
Speaker 2: thousand and two thousand and five, seven to seven bombings,
Speaker 2: forty eight people, fifty people killed. And my dad wants
Speaker 2: buses or the buses, Yeah, the tube and the buses,
Speaker 2: the tube and the buses. Yeah, my dad just before
Speaker 2: leaving for London, you know, study abroad that fall. He's
Speaker 2: on the computer and I go and I look what,
Speaker 2: you know what he's looking up side? He calls me over.
Speaker 2: He's like, take a look at this. I was thinking
Speaker 2: about this for you. He's looking at flack jackets where
Speaker 2: this is where this is where you start. He's like,
Speaker 2: I want you to wear because this is gonna.
Speaker 1: Make you wear a flat jacket walk around London.
Speaker 2: This is going to make a lot of friends right there,
Speaker 2: this flat jacket on the tube.
Speaker 1: Anytime I see some of an American in London wearing
Speaker 1: a flag jacket the iron right. Yeah, and of course
Speaker 1: where the cops don't even working.
Speaker 2: Anyone who looks any different than me. I'm into the
Speaker 2: next keys. I get your keys. This is where I started.
Speaker 2: This is my Unfortunately I did not as like that.
Speaker 1: But the point is that was your ethought.
Speaker 2: That was the water in which I was swimming, right
Speaker 2: and uh. And then you know, to bring it full
Speaker 2: circle to then meet an individual who reminded me of
Speaker 2: my uncle Mark most more than any person I've ever
Speaker 2: met in my twelve years of doing this work, and
Speaker 2: then asking him the question I would have liked to
Speaker 2: have asked my uncle Mark, saying, you know you're suffering
Speaker 2: from schizophrenia. You have told me about your substance abuse issues,
Speaker 2: You've told me about your mental health issues. You're in
Speaker 2: that smaller percentage. But like my uncle, what do you
Speaker 2: wish I knew that I don't know about you. And
Speaker 2: the guy looks at me and he says, I just
Speaker 2: wish people realized that I was so much more of
Speaker 2: a threat to myself than I would ever be. So
Speaker 2: my education has just come from those conversations and listening,
Speaker 2: talking and seeing people not as problems but as people
Speaker 2: to love, because I think if we love people, problems
Speaker 2: get solved, which is why I think there there is
Speaker 2: an important role in society. The book, I call for
Speaker 2: some pretty controversial things like involuntary treatment and involuntary holds
Speaker 2: where people don't have a choice in that matter.
Speaker 1: Now that's that's surprising. That flies in the face of
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff. And voluntary holds.
Speaker 2: Yep, now here's the rub, Because you know I can
Speaker 2: be abused. What first, what have you done to get
Speaker 2: to that point? Are you a threat to yourself or others?
Speaker 2: Because if not right, there's kind there is more of
Speaker 2: a live and let live also that you know there's
Speaker 2: a trade off. We I want to go back to
Speaker 2: one flew over the Cuckoo's nest right where people are
Speaker 2: just locked up, thrown away. The key in these insane
Speaker 2: as items, these institutions. We never funded the hatchwork of
Speaker 2: the nationwide network of local Community Mental Health Addiction Service started.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: The involuntary treatment and hold it's limited. It's have you
Speaker 2: done everything else in your power before getting to that point?
Speaker 2: And and here's here's the rub. So okay, so you'll
Speaker 2: hold someone for more than the forty eight or seventy
Speaker 2: two hours, which is now what a lot of places
Speaker 2: allow as max.
Speaker 1: Then what Yeah, because you talk about expense, I mean
Speaker 1: it can't go on indefinitely.
Speaker 2: Need housing, so we come it's it's a full circle
Speaker 2: thing of coming back to saying we need to build
Speaker 2: more housing. And then people say, well, what what what
Speaker 2: kind of housing are you talking about? I say, yeah,
Speaker 2: plays for it. What we do is a society because
Speaker 2: we're already painful.
Speaker 1: No, I'm asking the question.
Speaker 2: No, I so this is where my extreme this is.
Speaker 2: You know, anything you thought of me as left leaning,
Speaker 2: that probably was you know by that statement of involuntary
Speaker 2: treatment soldar.
Speaker 1: Like, what is this guy?
Speaker 2: We have in the Clinton administration? Clinton give you the paraphrase,
Speaker 2: numbers the exact ones in the book. He cut the
Speaker 2: budget for public housing by about ten eleven billion dollars.
Speaker 2: At that same time, he increased the budget or prisons
Speaker 2: by about ten eleven billion dollars. So, in a very
Speaker 2: real sense, incarceration has become our nation's public housing.
Speaker 1: That's just switched.
Speaker 2: We've switched it, and that's very expensive. That doesn't work
Speaker 2: for me, that's not a good option. That's also how
Speaker 2: a lot of people get cleaned. We'll be right back,
Speaker 2: and we have, as a society created scapegoats for all
Speaker 2: of our problems.
Speaker 1: It's easier to.
Speaker 2: Look at someone, look at a group of people and
Speaker 2: say they're to blame. If we just get rid of
Speaker 2: them or don't provide them with any services, we're all
Speaker 2: going to be better off. That's never the case. So
Speaker 2: my view is we need to build more housing of
Speaker 2: all types, and it's going to cost us a lot
Speaker 2: as a society, but the current status quo is costing
Speaker 2: us even more.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: Do we need more affordable housing? Yes, we need tiny homes. Yes,
Speaker 2: we need safe parking sites. People can sleep in their vehicle,
Speaker 2: but in a designated area with services. Yes, And you
Speaker 2: just kind of go down the list. You cannot be
Speaker 2: for ending homelessness and being frustrated by the status quo
Speaker 2: and having your car broken into, and be against developing
Speaker 2: housing in your neighbor I'm so glad you said that.
Speaker 1: That's what I was hoping to hear you say, is.
Speaker 2: Choose a side.
Speaker 1: If you're not for doing something about homelessness, quit bit
Speaker 1: about homelessness. If you're against what this is doing society,
Speaker 1: then you're going to have to embrace some answer. You
Speaker 1: can't have it both ways.
Speaker 2: Can I read something to you? Is that awkward? I
Speaker 2: mean I've already been awkward, so let's remember you being
Speaker 2: awkward at all. Well, he said, goofy, that was your word.
Speaker 1: You are goofy. I'm goofy too.
Speaker 2: I like, I mean, anybody who quits their job down
Speaker 2: the road talking about what is your job? Now?
Speaker 1: I bet your dad thinks you're goofy.
Speaker 2: He less. So now that we got fun, I mean
Speaker 2: when it started. But when it started, yeah, it's like,
Speaker 2: what is this?
Speaker 1: Okay? So it's your job? You know, just just kind
Speaker 1: of being familiar with you.
Speaker 2: I'm giving you hard time.
Speaker 1: That's Alex's job.
Speaker 2: You stop it my show, answer the questions and move on.
Speaker 2: Just ask myself my own question. So this is in
Speaker 2: times of crisis. In the early morning hours of Wednesday,
Speaker 2: April eighteenth, nineteen oh six, a seven point nine magnitude
Speaker 2: earthquake struck along the San Andreas Fault in northern California,
Speaker 2: with the epicenter just two miles off the coast of
Speaker 2: San Francisco. The massive quake caused a conflagration that destroyed
Speaker 2: some twenty eight thousand buildings in San Francisco, leveling more
Speaker 2: than five hundred blocks in the city center. More than
Speaker 2: three thousand people died and about eighty percent of the
Speaker 2: city was destroyed in the aftermath of the nineteen oh
Speaker 2: six earthquake and fire. Here it is some two hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty thousand residents of San Francisco were displaced, establishing
Speaker 2: makeshift camps in park areas and in burnt out ruins
Speaker 2: of buildings. For a short period of time, more than
Speaker 2: half of the city's four hundred thousand residents experienced homelessness.
Speaker 2: In response, the city did not pass anti camping ordinances.
Speaker 2: Law enforcement was not mobilized to raise tent encampments and
Speaker 2: confiscate belongings. Local residents whose homes withstood the brunt of
Speaker 2: the disaster did not join together to form anti survivor
Speaker 2: not in my Backyard protests. Instead, city officials and local
Speaker 2: residents rallied together to help. As winner approached, this is
Speaker 2: what you're getting at The city built fifty three hundred
Speaker 2: small wooden cottages for those still in need of housing,
Speaker 2: while the army housed twenty thousand refugees in military style
Speaker 2: ted camps. Camps formed playgroups for kids and dining halls
Speaker 2: for individuals and families, which became the centers for social life.
Speaker 2: Tennants paid two dollars a month toward the fifty dollars
Speaker 2: price of their earthquake cottage. Many assembled in Golden Gate
Speaker 2: Park after paying off. After paying off their new home,
Speaker 2: the owners were required to move their cottages out of
Speaker 2: the camp, leaving earthquake cottages scattered throughout San Francisco in
Speaker 2: an early example of scattered site housing. In June nineteen
Speaker 2: oh eight, just two years after one of the most
Speaker 2: devastating disasters in American history, the last camp closed, two
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty thousand unhoused survivors had been housed. We
Speaker 2: can deal with this like the current modern crisis of homelessness.
Speaker 2: It's a crisis as much of hearts and minds on
Speaker 2: who we see as responsible for this issue. If we
Speaker 2: think of homelessness more aligned with disasters that we're just
Speaker 2: not seeing. Like if there's an earthquake, if there's a flood,
Speaker 2: if there's a fire, if there's a shooting, we know
Speaker 2: how to respond as a community. We come together, we
Speaker 2: do a hashtag, and we say the NASA is strong,
Speaker 2: Memphis Strong.
Speaker 1: Whatever.
Speaker 2: With homelessness, it's equivalent to a crisis of that magnitude.
Speaker 2: The only difference is we don't see the smoke, we
Speaker 2: don't see the flood waters, we don't see the charred remains.
Speaker 2: But we see the survivors. All those people. Every person
Speaker 2: you see who is experiencing homelessness, they have survived unfathomable
Speaker 2: traumas that once you actually get close enough to have
Speaker 2: a conversation, you realize that's a mess, and often through
Speaker 2: no fault of their own. So a question as a
Speaker 2: society is are we going to respond as we would
Speaker 2: in a natural disaster, where we mobilize, make emergency ordinances,
Speaker 2: we provide housing even if it's makeschief for a couple
Speaker 2: of years, or we continue to criminalize the matter right.
Speaker 2: That to me is the choice that we have.
Speaker 1: What are the detractors from that argument is, well, if
Speaker 1: we just give everybody a house, people just quit working
Speaker 1: and start going using all the free housing, and then
Speaker 1: what you know what? I think that's horse crap because
Speaker 1: anybody that can work really wants to work, and people
Speaker 1: want to progress in their lives. That is a natural
Speaker 1: human instinct and desire. People aren't just going to quit
Speaker 1: it life and go live in a free one bedroom government.
Speaker 1: I mean, there might be a very small percentage of
Speaker 1: people who ride the dole on that, but on balance,
Speaker 1: what is the cost of that versus what we're dealing
Speaker 1: with right now?
Speaker 2: And people who are homeless have jobs. Yeah, that's the
Speaker 2: other thing we got to think about too. A lot
Speaker 2: of them are working. About forty percent have a disability
Speaker 2: where they're receiving some kind of assistance for chronic homeless
Speaker 2: individuals majority, I mean nearly half of folks have some
Speaker 2: kind of income that they're earning. It's just it's not enough.
Speaker 2: To pay rent. Right, So then someone might say, well,
Speaker 2: then move where somewhere cheaper where how I mean this
Speaker 2: is then all where you know your community or just
Speaker 2: like you.
Speaker 1: Said, I don't think there's much cheaper place than somewhere
Speaker 1: like the middle of Mississippi or West Virginia. What's there.
Speaker 1: So this leads us into yeah, we're gonna we're going
Speaker 1: to close with something direct cash. But this leads us
Speaker 1: into something that I gotta be honest with you, dude,
Speaker 1: A bristle, a pucker a little bit when I hear it,
Speaker 1: you know, go ahead and broach it.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, let me share my journey getting into this,
Speaker 2: and we're talking about it direct cash transfer. I think perspective.
Speaker 2: Match to share my perspective. So we do the reunion
Speaker 2: program at Miracle Messages, we do the phone Buddy program,
Speaker 2: and this is, uh, you know, we're looking at twenty
Speaker 2: twenty when we do the phone Buddy in the summer.
Speaker 2: By that fall, so we're talking like three or four
Speaker 2: months in. We started hearing from our volunteers, our housed
Speaker 2: volunteers all around the country saying, hey, I've been matched
Speaker 2: with this person. Now a couple of months, this person's
Speaker 2: a good, good guy, good lady. I like them, I
Speaker 2: respect them. They're telling me about the barriers and challenges
Speaker 2: they face to housing. I don't know how to get
Speaker 2: them into housing that seems almost insurmountable. What I do
Speaker 2: know is, now that you've asked me to be their friend,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to turn my face and give them
Speaker 2: a blind eye when they don't know how they're going
Speaker 2: to get food tonight to feed their kids, or how
Speaker 2: on Monday they're going to get gas in their car
Speaker 2: to get back to work because they got a job.
Speaker 2: They just can barely get by. So either you give
Speaker 2: them money or I'm going to give them money. That
Speaker 2: was the starting point. So I I was skeptical, and
Speaker 2: so I said, Okay, any amount of money we give folks,
Speaker 2: it's not just that you know, there's are they going
Speaker 2: to blow it on substances? We can have that conversation
Speaker 2: right outside of that, A couple hundred dollars a month
Speaker 2: was that going to do? How is that going to
Speaker 2: make it do for anyone?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: It's like it's Bay Area where I was based.
Speaker 1: You would almost say a couple hundred bucks a month
Speaker 1: will absolutely go into a bottle or a needle because
Speaker 1: it's not going to do anything else.
Speaker 2: I didn't know, didn't know. But again, the best thing
Speaker 2: I've done on this whole journey bill is that I
Speaker 2: started from this premise of I don't know a thing
Speaker 2: about homelessness. I've never lived a day of my life homeless.
Speaker 2: I had an uncle who was almost a lot people
Speaker 2: have had uncles who were homeless. So I was just
Speaker 2: listening to people, right, and I heard over and over
Speaker 2: again people say, I give them money. They need the money.
Speaker 2: Who's going to do it? So we raised a little
Speaker 2: bit of money, all private, right, individual philanthropy, no tax money, yeah,
Speaker 2: no public fund no, no, no, it's just you know,
Speaker 2: a little experiment. Let's try it, yeah, pilot, let's just
Speaker 2: try this out. We raised about fifty thousand dollars to
Speaker 2: give out five hundred dollars a month for six months.
Speaker 2: We could afford given it to fourteen people who are
Speaker 2: in our Phone Buddy program. All of them had been
Speaker 2: nominated by their own house friends. That's cool, vouching for right.
Speaker 2: And we had, you know, at that point, eighty people
Speaker 2: in the prom participating eighty pairs. And I think we
Speaker 2: had about fifty or sixty nominations. So the vast majority
Speaker 2: select fourteen individuals from those fifty or sixty five hundred
Speaker 2: dollars a month for six months. Within six months, two
Speaker 2: thirds of those individuals who had secured who were able
Speaker 2: to secure housing using that five hundred dollars a month,
Speaker 2: they off off the streets sixty sixty percent. Super small
Speaker 2: sample size, like let's says, not scientific, This is two
Speaker 2: thirds of them secured housing. You know, Elizabeth became eligible
Speaker 2: for senior housing, which required a minimum monthly contribution. She
Speaker 2: was able to make that. She's now in her forever.
Speaker 2: Ray was able to find a housemate, ay towards half
Speaker 2: the month's rent out of state, moved in in Kansas
Speaker 2: with a housemate, and you can kind of go on
Speaker 2: by this person was able to get into an s sorrow.
Speaker 2: This person was now not feeling like they'd be a
Speaker 2: burden to go live with their family and pay a
Speaker 2: little bit every month. Oh, they want to pay to
Speaker 2: their family. They want they wanted to participate over their
Speaker 2: portion like that, that same desire of not wanting to
Speaker 2: be a burden, that disconnection, that's because of that individual responsibility,
Speaker 2: that ethos is in our unhoused neighbors, hearts and minds too.
Speaker 2: Do you think them knowing it was six months, right?
Speaker 2: Six months five bucks?
Speaker 1: Do you think them knowing that there was a sunset
Speaker 1: date on this gift also helped? In other words, I
Speaker 1: got six months to use this money to get something done,
Speaker 1: because I think if you just say you're getting five
Speaker 1: hundred dollars a month, but if you're getting five hundred
Speaker 1: dollars a month with a sunset date, this is your shot.
Speaker 1: This is your chance to get a little bit of
Speaker 1: a hand up. This is not a handout, but a
Speaker 1: hand up. Do you think a sunset date helps for some?
Speaker 1: For some?
Speaker 2: I think it's also for some Like if you have
Speaker 2: zero dollars and then you know you're going to get
Speaker 2: five hundred dollars a month for six months, I'm immediately
Speaker 2: feeling anxious about what's happening after month six, no doubt, right,
Speaker 2: So it's not like you're just settling into your life.
Speaker 2: That's fair, that makes sense, right, And what we saw
Speaker 2: just as interesting because that again super small sample size.
Speaker 2: We wouldn't be able to replicate that two thirds game
Speaker 2: off the streets. It was an odd time also with
Speaker 2: the pandemic and things going on. But what we saw
Speaker 2: just as interesting, and to this, you know, rubbed the
Speaker 2: wrong way or this bristle at that you mentioned, looked
Speaker 2: at spending habits. Third of the money was spent on food,
Speaker 2: a third was spent on housing or rent, the last
Speaker 2: third spent on everything from childcare to emergencies, to storage,
Speaker 2: to pain down debt to close how much stylcohol about
Speaker 2: two percent, which was less than when we started.
Speaker 1: That's not what the fearmongers on the news say will
Speaker 1: happen because they want you to keep watching the news.
Speaker 1: I love you. That's right, that's exactly right. You're no
Speaker 1: longer goofy. You're brilliant.
Speaker 2: But it's true.
Speaker 1: It's It's one of the things we talk about all
Speaker 1: the time is that there's an enormous amount of power
Speaker 1: and wealth concentrated in the narrative makers. And the more
Speaker 1: that they scare you and the more they freak you out,
Speaker 1: the more you tune in. And unfortunately, the dumber we
Speaker 1: get about the issues that are really facing us.
Speaker 2: And so we because I wanted to figure out the
Speaker 2: scientific part of this, we ended up growing on this.
Speaker 2: And I was skeptical at first. Remember this whole thing
Speaker 2: direct cash just got with the gees right. The whole
Speaker 2: thing ended up getting some funding from Google dot Org,
Speaker 2: a few you know, private families, individuals, no government funding
Speaker 2: into this, but we're able to get two point one
Speaker 2: million dollars and created a randomized controlled trial where we
Speaker 2: gave out seven hundred and fifty dollars a month for
Speaker 2: twelve months to over one hundred people experiencing homelessness all
Speaker 2: throughout the state of California. We're going to be releasing
Speaker 2: the results for that pretty soon. But what I can
Speaker 2: tell you is, are you breaking news on my show?
Speaker 1: Ratios? Are you breaking some news on.
Speaker 2: My shreaking news? I got the eyeballs too.
Speaker 1: Here we go.
Speaker 2: The ratios of where money was spent is almost identical
Speaker 2: to that small little pilot about a third on housing,
Speaker 2: third on food, and the last third food or sorry
Speaker 2: childcare emergencies clothes. The first person who I we gave
Speaker 2: the money to Elizabeth. The first thing she did with
Speaker 2: the money was she made a donation to Miracle Messages.
Speaker 2: You're kidding me, and I respond. I looked at her.
Speaker 2: I was like, Elizabeth, you didn't need to do this.
Speaker 2: This wasn't part of the expectation. She looked at me
Speaker 2: and she said, I kid you not. She says, well,
Speaker 2: I didn't do it for you. I did it for
Speaker 2: my elf, so I could once again feel the dignity
Speaker 2: of being able to support the causes I believe. But
Speaker 2: to me, this is not just a question about the
Speaker 2: base of massos hierarchy, food, water, shelter, clothing, housing, which
Speaker 2: we all need. This is about love, belonging, community, dignit.
Speaker 1: So as I hear all of this, maybe this what's
Speaker 1: the catchphrase for this thing? What's the catchphrase for actually
Speaker 1: just providing money for the homeless thing? It's the not
Speaker 1: the catch phrase. What's the term university direct cash? Just
Speaker 1: direct cash transfers basic income?
Speaker 2: There, basic income, I mean basic income. Though it can
Speaker 2: get into a loaded thing that assumes like everyone's getting
Speaker 2: basic income same amount. It gets the political you know,
Speaker 2: like it just at the end of the day, we're
Speaker 2: giving people cash. Right now, we're spending cash.
Speaker 1: But we're giving them cash and not really providing a
Speaker 1: lot of oversight, but trusting that they're going to do
Speaker 1: the right things.
Speaker 2: What the base is So far, your two pilots have
Speaker 2: proven they spend it better than we could have spent it.
Speaker 2: For them. That's the point. Yeah, bottom up, not top down. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's right. And we trust people, and so if you
Speaker 2: want people to act as you'd like them to act,
Speaker 2: you treat them the way you'd want to be treated. Shocking,
Speaker 2: the golden rule still works. Really think some of us
Speaker 2: skipped kindergarten.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, I'm gonna let you sign off in
Speaker 1: a special way.
Speaker 2: But first I want you to.
Speaker 1: If those of those listening have been convinced that they
Speaker 1: can be a message friend, they can be a sleuth person.
Speaker 1: What do you call miracle messenger? What's the sleuth?
Speaker 2: People think it could be a digital detective, a digital detector,
Speaker 2: or join a chapter, a little chap chapter, all of
Speaker 2: these things. More.
Speaker 3: Other thing too is probably a lot of people listening
Speaker 3: either know people at the local homeless shelter or they
Speaker 3: volunteer with them or ready, and so there probably is
Speaker 3: a great part. I think you guys already partnering with
Speaker 3: like eighty homeless shelters around the country. That and they're
Speaker 3: local ones. If they can hook the local ones up
Speaker 3: with miracle messages, So how.
Speaker 2: Do they find out all that stuff? Yeah, they can
Speaker 2: reach out to me if they want, so, my email
Speaker 2: is Kevin at Miracle Messages dot org or go to
Speaker 2: our website.
Speaker 1: We have a get.
Speaker 2: Involved form Miracle Messages dot org and then click the
Speaker 2: get involved link and then just let us know how
Speaker 2: you're interested in getting involved. We'll connect you up with
Speaker 2: other folks in your community. If you're interested in doing
Speaker 2: local outreach at a local partner site, we'll do the training,
Speaker 2: the support. But yeah, we need if there's no other
Speaker 2: lesson this book, from this conversation and what I wrote
Speaker 2: in my book, it's that we say Miracle Messages, no
Speaker 2: one should go through homelessness alone. I wish I could
Speaker 2: end that a word early. No one should go through homelessness.
Speaker 2: But well, homelessness is a thing. It should not be
Speaker 2: a fundamentally isolating, other rising thing. And second part of
Speaker 2: the mission, as we say, no one should feel helpless
Speaker 2: on this issue. There's just way too much good work
Speaker 2: for people to do.
Speaker 1: So if through our conversation you've been convinced you need
Speaker 1: to get involved, that's how you get in touch. If
Speaker 1: through my conversation on a cerebral or academic level, maybe
Speaker 1: some of your pre can conceived notions have been challenged,
Speaker 1: which I have to admit some of mine have the
Speaker 1: book When We Walk By Forgotten Humanity. The titles When
Speaker 1: We Walk By the subtitle is Forgotten Humanity, Broken Systems
Speaker 1: in the role we can each play in ending Homelessness
Speaker 1: in America by Publishers Weekly. I must read for anyone
Speaker 1: interesting and solving the problem of homelessness, and I don't
Speaker 1: know anybody walk in the face of the planet the
Speaker 1: United States that isn't interested, either from an idealistic or
Speaker 1: pragmatic stance, to understand this is an issue got solved.
Speaker 1: And so the book might challenge some preconceived notions, and
Speaker 1: for some of you it might solidify the way you've thought.
Speaker 1: But I highly suggest it because it uses data fact
Speaker 1: in real life experience to kind of open our minds
Speaker 1: to the things we can be doing differently we must
Speaker 1: be doing. So often talk in speeches about my wife Lisa,
Speaker 1: because she's hot and she's also pretty cool. I tell
Speaker 1: people she's my compass because it is when I start
Speaker 1: thinking far too great of myself that she will remind
Speaker 1: me that I'm just a jackass from Memphis who coaches
Speaker 1: football and as a lover company. And you know, if
Speaker 1: you leave d C and fly all the way around
Speaker 1: the world and land back in DC. If your compass
Speaker 1: is off only three degrees by the time you get
Speaker 1: back to d C, you would actually land in Nova Scotia.
Speaker 1: Three percent doesn't sound like a lot, but on the
Speaker 1: trip of life, if you get off off path only
Speaker 1: three degrees, you will be so far away from what
Speaker 1: you're supposed to end up. And we need a compass.
Speaker 1: Seems to me you have one too. I thought i'd
Speaker 1: let you read this and hopefully she'll listen.
Speaker 2: If I seem a bit more patient at work these days,
Speaker 2: and listen more fully before responding. If I've grown as
Speaker 2: a leader by admitting more of what I don't know,
Speaker 2: which is a lot, and bring a little more playfulness
Speaker 2: into public speaking. If I'm a better colleague, thought, partner,
Speaker 2: and friend, it's because I married my best friend.
Speaker 1: When did that happen?
Speaker 2: We had our wedding about a year ago. Yeah, this
Speaker 2: past weekend, Memorial Day weekend graduation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you, And I guess she's as vested in
Speaker 1: this as you are.
Speaker 2: Has to be her first question to me when we
Speaker 2: met through one of the dating apps. She her first
Speaker 2: question is what are your values?
Speaker 4: Asking that is enough? You know, just like, oh, okay,
Speaker 4: going there, Okay, we're going to start there's Yeah, she's
Speaker 4: the best human I've ever met. It's an incredible person,
Speaker 4: incredibly warm, and incredibly strong, like my mom. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's you know, I see a lot of those qualities.
Speaker 4: I wish they had had a chance to meet.
Speaker 2: She's she inspires me every day to be a better person,
Speaker 2: but loves me unconditionally.
Speaker 1: You and when I'm not, it's pretty awesome. Yeah, dude,
Speaker 1: I think you're doing God's work. I think you're doing
Speaker 1: God's work both for the homelessness and for families. But
Speaker 1: maybe even now, after these ten years and you have
Speaker 1: a staff doing the minutia of the daily maybe even now,
Speaker 1: the work is to is to use this platform to
Speaker 1: change minds, open eyes, challenge preconceived notions of perspective, and
Speaker 1: maybe maybe lead us as a as a culture to
Speaker 1: finding solutions for a problem that afflex us all. And
Speaker 1: so I applaud you. I'm inspired by you, and I
Speaker 1: really thank you for joining us and telling us your story.
Speaker 1: And I'll let you tease as we end the next project.
Speaker 2: It's an honor to be here with you. I Yeah,
Speaker 2: just a big fan of yours. And the work you've no.
Speaker 3: Thanks, you actually haven't mentioned that, Kevin tell Bill you've
Speaker 3: seen Undefeated like a decade ago, and if.
Speaker 2: You did a decade ago. And I even found it
Speaker 2: in my spreadsheet of the movies I've seen with a
Speaker 2: little bit of my my synopsis and takeaways. It's like
Speaker 2: terrific film of life and life lessons on and off
Speaker 2: the football field.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you? Did you say this, goofy fat read
Speaker 1: at a guy catching football? You should have said something
Speaker 1: like that better.
Speaker 2: If you're goofy, then I'll embrace that.
Speaker 1: Good.
Speaker 2: I love it. Now with the next project, let's in
Speaker 2: there so planning to start working on my next book.
Speaker 2: And that book is you know, when we walk by
Speaker 2: is really trying to answer this question why are so
Speaker 2: many people experiencing homelessness? You hear that all the time,
Speaker 2: talk about the broken systems, the broken humanity, and one
Speaker 2: hundred pages of solutions for those broken humanity, broken systems.
Speaker 2: Equally important question that just never gets asked. With one
Speaker 2: out of two Americans a paycheck away from not paying rent,
Speaker 2: forty percent of people don't know where they get four
Speaker 2: hundred bucks for emergency, Why aren't more people experiencing homelessness.
Speaker 2: Why is in half the country homeless right now? And
Speaker 2: the hypothesis is, it's family, it's friends, it's community, it's
Speaker 2: faith based groups, it's social capital doubled up, tripled up
Speaker 2: informal economy making up that difference. I don't think that
Speaker 2: gets talked about nearly enough, and I don't think that's
Speaker 2: well understood.
Speaker 1: Also, maybe part of the answer.
Speaker 2: I think if it's happening, it needs to be invested in.
Speaker 2: And then it raises questions like what does public policy
Speaker 2: need to look like? If social support is playing this
Speaker 2: critical but overlooked role, how do we make sure it's
Speaker 2: reinforced and supported? All right, well, I'm right the damn
Speaker 2: things talking to have you about? Okay, that sounds good.
Speaker 1: All right, buddy, thanks for being with us, Appreciate you.
Speaker 1: I agree, and thank you for joining us this week.
Speaker 1: If Kevin Atler has inspired you in general, or better yet,
Speaker 1: to take action by referring someone experiencing homelessness to miracle messages,
Speaker 1: becoming a digital detective, joining the phone buddy program, engaging
Speaker 1: your local shelter about miracle messages, donating to them, or
Speaker 1: something else entirely, let me know. I want to hear
Speaker 1: about it. You can write me anytime at Bill at
Speaker 1: normalfolks dot us and I will respond. If you enjoyed
Speaker 1: this episode, please share it with friends and on social
Speaker 1: Subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, Join the
Speaker 1: army at normal folks dot us. Consider becoming a Premium
Speaker 1: member there all of these things, any and all of
Speaker 1: these things that will help us grow and Army of
Speaker 1: normal Folks. I'm Bill Courtney. Until next time, do what
Speaker 1: you can.
Speaker 2: M