Speaker 1: We go out, I record a video of him to
Speaker 1: his family. Within three weeks, all four of his siblings
Speaker 1: had recorded messages back, and they all flew from across
Speaker 1: the country on their own dime. Sitting there there, sitting
Speaker 1: on a bed, all surrounding him, and he's looking me
Speaker 1: in the eye and says, you know, thank you for
Speaker 1: giving me the family back. Yeah. At that point, all right,
Speaker 1: there's something here. I got a player with.
Speaker 2: Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney.
Speaker 2: I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, I'm a father,
Speaker 2: I'm an entrepreneur, and I've been a football coach in
Speaker 2: Inner City Memphis, which that last part somehow led to
Speaker 2: an oscar for the film about our team.
Speaker 1: That movie is called Undefeated.
Speaker 2: I believe our country's problems are never going to be
Speaker 2: solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice suits
Speaker 2: using big words that nobody ever uses on CNN and Fox,
Speaker 2: but rather by an army of normal folks. Guys, that's us,
Speaker 2: just you and me deciding, Hey, you know what, maybe
Speaker 2: I can help.
Speaker 1: That's what Kevin.
Speaker 2: Adler, the voice you just heard, has done. Kevin is
Speaker 2: the founder of Miracle Messages, which is reunited over one
Speaker 2: thousand individuals experiencing homelessness with their loved ones. And that's
Speaker 2: just the beginning of what they've done. I cannot wait
Speaker 2: for you to meet Kevin right after these brief messages
Speaker 2: from our general sponsors, Kevin F Adler, Welcome to Memphis.
Speaker 1: It's going to be.
Speaker 2: Usually I just say Kevin Adler, right, but with you
Speaker 2: have to say Kevin F.
Speaker 1: Well, you could say Kevin or well.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna say Kevin the rest. I'm not gonna sit
Speaker 2: here and call you Kevin f the whole thing, but
Speaker 2: the F. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Farrington was my mom's maiden name. She passed away when
Speaker 1: I was twenty three. She was fifty nine. She had
Speaker 1: breast cancer. I gotta give her as much credit as
Speaker 1: I can, So you drop the FM just to make
Speaker 1: just to give her them and just to make awkward
Speaker 1: moments like this to start. I think that's beautiful. Oh
Speaker 1: is it okay?
Speaker 2: Sure? All right? Kevin man loving his mama. Yeah, that
Speaker 2: he wants to make sure she's remembered.
Speaker 1: She was pretty remarkable. Yeah. She was both the strongest
Speaker 1: and the kindest person I ever met, So she wouldn't
Speaker 1: It was warm everyone's friend in the neighborhood. You know,
Speaker 1: the house was the Sunday evening dinner spot, classmates, neighbors,
Speaker 1: and if you messed with her values, if you did
Speaker 1: some real out aligned, you knew where she stood. I
Speaker 1: can answer questions now, nearly twenty years since she passed
Speaker 1: on where she'd stand on issues. She's both the rose
Speaker 1: and the one. Yeah. Yeah, and there was a playful
Speaker 1: side too, because I can get real cerebral, but she'd
Speaker 1: kind of bring it to a little straighten that out.
Speaker 2: Let's get real about this, all right. So, given that,
Speaker 2: where are you from? I grew up in Livermore, California.
Speaker 2: It's about an hour.
Speaker 1: East of San Francisco. Yeah, small, it's grown a lot,
Speaker 1: but I grew up, grew up there with my actually
Speaker 1: do a business and living, do you really Yeah, the
Speaker 1: lumber business.
Speaker 2: Yeah there. It's kind of an industrial area.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is agricultural, the Livermore cowboys. Yeah, growing up.
Speaker 2: So it's actually pretty conservative out there, oddly.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Culturally it's a world away from you know, San Francisco,
Speaker 1: but it's about an hour east driving.
Speaker 2: So you grew up there, Yeah, I grew up there.
Speaker 2: Brother sisters, what you know what was life like, you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of exploring the world. Pretty idyllic.
Speaker 1: You know. My my parents, I'd say they were the
Speaker 1: best mom and dad I could have asked for, except
Speaker 1: when they were together. They never figured out how to
Speaker 1: make it work as a couple. You know. My dad
Speaker 1: had a lot, has a lot of you know issues.
Speaker 1: Hey Dad, good to see you. You know, but I
Speaker 1: don't know where the camera is. He's not gonna watch this.
Speaker 3: But hey, he doesn't understand it either.
Speaker 1: All the things you're thinking, coach. Now he's you know,
Speaker 1: he's a wonderful dad. I saw him cry many more
Speaker 1: times than I saw my mom cry. He showed me
Speaker 1: that true masculinity is synonymous with emotional forthrightness, saying and
Speaker 1: doing the right thing. But he also grew up in
Speaker 1: a very broken home and also escaped the war at
Speaker 1: home in his household when he was seventeen to go
Speaker 1: fight the war in Vietnam. Was a door gunner and
Speaker 1: has PTSD from you know, his time and two tours
Speaker 1: in Vietnam. So you know, he has his issues. But
Speaker 1: I never questioned where my brother and I stand with
Speaker 1: him as unconditionally loved.
Speaker 2: So Mom work out of the home, or she's saying.
Speaker 1: He was older adult school exercise instructor. So she'd go
Speaker 1: down and do teaching the aerobics and physical fitness and
Speaker 1: wellness to folks in nursing homes. It's what everybody did
Speaker 1: in the eighties or so. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was like mom.
Speaker 1: Kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: There was once or twice where I'd walk into the
Speaker 1: kitchen and she'd be rocking out playing put in a
Speaker 1: cassette tape together for the class, and I was just like, Mom,
Speaker 1: I have friends. I want to keep those friends for
Speaker 1: a living. He's a material scientist. What does that mean?
Speaker 1: So he Yeah, he is an interesting story. So I
Speaker 1: mean he went he was he got kicked out of
Speaker 1: all the schools he went to in middle school, high school,
Speaker 1: went to war, came back, worked at gas stations for year.
Speaker 1: There's nothing wrong with that. But he was just like,
Speaker 1: there's something more for me, you know. And he started
Speaker 1: taking a class at a time at a community college
Speaker 1: and had a teacher there who recognized his potential in
Speaker 1: the math and sciences. Took another class another class, ended
Speaker 1: up transferring to Berkeley than Mit became a pop scientist
Speaker 1: in his field, and so he does work on Smart Dude,
Speaker 1: Smart Guy a lot. That was the phrase Talent is universal,
Speaker 1: opportunity is not. You know, that was kind of his thing.
Speaker 1: So he was most recently he just retired, but he
Speaker 1: was working at a medical device company for quite a
Speaker 1: few years looking at the corrosive properties of the stints
Speaker 1: kind of go into your heart, make sure that that
Speaker 1: doesn't corrode and cause issues later on.
Speaker 2: So what a neat story for him? Yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: some gas station guy. To that guy, the point is
Speaker 2: Livermore mom not making a ton of money, but living
Speaker 2: her best life, being a great mom, dad doing what
Speaker 2: he's doing. You're a normal guy, kind of grew up
Speaker 2: in an idyllic Robby on this podcast versus A Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean that's it. But the point is establishing kind
Speaker 2: of nothing overly remarkable, just.
Speaker 1: The most remarkable thing. Maybe my childhood was the relative freedom,
Speaker 1: but still with like respecting rules and constraints on that.
Speaker 1: So the example, you know, I think we were talking
Speaker 1: before the show that we share a faith. You know,
Speaker 1: when I was I wasn't raised religious, and when I
Speaker 1: was twelve, I felt like someone was missing in my
Speaker 1: life besides puberty, and I asked my mom and dad
Speaker 1: if we could start going to local churches and through
Speaker 1: that process we all got baptized. That's cool and just
Speaker 1: that encouragement of a twelve year old say yeah, you
Speaker 1: want to explore that, we're going to do that, and
Speaker 1: then you know, my dad and brother and I all
Speaker 1: getting baptized through that process, right.
Speaker 2: No kidding? Yeah, So you know there's that kind of
Speaker 2: is remarkable. But again, it's not like you were ordained
Speaker 2: to go do something in the world. You just grew
Speaker 2: up a.
Speaker 1: Life, live in my life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so everybody Kevin fer Adler is the last time
Speaker 2: I was saying that, it's just Kevin is the founder
Speaker 2: of Miracle Messages. Living in Salcilito, San Francisco area. You know,
Speaker 2: your bio says your award winning social entrepreneur and the
Speaker 2: founder of Miracle Messages, which we'll get into social entrepreneurship
Speaker 2: here in a minute. His work is with the homelessness
Speaker 2: and relational poverty. He's been featured in The New York Times,
Speaker 2: the Washington Post, the PBS News Hour, Los Angeles Times, CNN,
Speaker 2: a billboard on Tom Square which we also share that
Speaker 2: and in his ted talk and his groundbreaking book. When
Speaker 2: we walk by forgotten humanity, broken systems, and the role
Speaker 2: we can each play in ending homelessness in America. He
Speaker 2: talks constantly about what he's spent many of the last
Speaker 2: years of his life learning, and that's what we're going
Speaker 2: to dive down into. But I was afraid if I
Speaker 2: read all that first before explaining where you came from,
Speaker 2: people would think, oh, he's a big wig. And the
Speaker 2: truth is, he's just a guy who found a passion
Speaker 2: and who ripped over an idea one time, which we're
Speaker 2: going to explain, and it's led to all of this,
Speaker 2: but much much more so and all those there's a
Speaker 2: difference between I think resume items and eulogy virtues and
Speaker 2: all that.
Speaker 1: You know, that's the resume side. But you know, I
Speaker 1: define myself more by how I try to, you know,
Speaker 1: live my life and show up for people. And that's
Speaker 1: what I call, like more the eulogy virtue side of things.
Speaker 1: So I can I can rewrite that and yeah, I
Speaker 1: get that completely. Yeah, yeah, So tell me about Uncle Mark.
Speaker 1: So Uncle Mark was my favorite member of my extended family.
Speaker 1: This guy come over for Thanksgiving, Christmas. He's my dad's
Speaker 1: younger brother. He grew up with a lot of the
Speaker 1: same traumas and issues at home that my dad faced.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, you know, he never was able to get
Speaker 1: on his own two feet. You know, got schizoph game
Speaker 1: schizophrenic kind of his late teens, early twenties, yours of
Speaker 1: drug use, of a lot of you know, harmful behavior,
Speaker 1: and he spent thirty years of his life living on
Speaker 1: and off the streets of Santa Cruz, California. So he
Speaker 1: ended up passing away when I was in college. He
Speaker 1: was fifty years old, which I found out later is
Speaker 1: about the average life expectancy person who's on how's chronically
Speaker 1: almost But Mark, every year he was on the streets,
Speaker 1: he never missed a birthday sending me a birthday card.
Speaker 1: You always just sign uncle Mark. We come over. We'd
Speaker 1: have long, elaborate conversations on our shared love of super Britos.
Speaker 1: What are you going to tell you it's twelve fourteen
Speaker 1: year old. Talk to him, my schizophrenic uncle. What do
Speaker 1: you like about the burrito? I love them Brito like
Speaker 1: me too, Mark, We got that right deep into the breed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'd have these, you know, fun conversations, and you know,
Speaker 1: and then he he'd leave from you know, Thanksgiving, Christmas,
Speaker 1: my dad would drop him off at the Greyhound station
Speaker 1: or drive him back to if you're staying in a
Speaker 1: transitional housing unit in Santa Cruz. And then months would
Speaker 1: go by. We wouldn't hear from him, you know, and
Speaker 1: my dad will said, if that collect phone call comes in,
Speaker 1: and remember what those were like, you know, answer that,
Speaker 1: make sure you accept it. And we'd hear from him
Speaker 1: from time to time, and then he disappear. And then
Speaker 1: one day, yeah, I was in college, I was got
Speaker 1: a phone call from my dad crying. He said, you know,
Speaker 1: my whole Mark had been found deceeized. So it's his
Speaker 1: not not just the time I spent with Mark, but
Speaker 1: the time I didn't spend with that kind of got
Speaker 1: me on this journey.
Speaker 2: So obviously that's a that's a huge pivot point and
Speaker 2: the trajectory of your life, that experience that love or
Speaker 2: let's just be candid, a holmost schizophrenic man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the kicker for me that that kind of
Speaker 1: pulled it together as that turning point is I never
Speaker 1: thought of him as a homeless man. He was your uncle,
Speaker 1: He's my uncle. You don't, you know, categorize people that way.
Speaker 2: Right, not in your own family, not in your own family,
Speaker 2: but you do and everybody else is.
Speaker 1: Why my shirt says everyone is someone somebody I was
Speaker 1: sitting and so I went to his funeral service, and
Speaker 1: you know, that was the last time I was at
Speaker 1: the gravesite. A few years go by, my dad and
Speaker 1: I are having Thanksgiving a dinner at a neighbor family's
Speaker 1: house not too far from Santa CRUs. We got some
Speaker 1: time before the meal was ready, so we go down
Speaker 1: to the gravesite. We sit there and we had one
Speaker 1: of those like father son conversations that just want your
Speaker 1: entire life right, about who his younger brother was, what
Speaker 1: his childhood was, like, you know, all these all the
Speaker 1: things that appear only in the dash on that gravestone.
Speaker 1: We had the conversation what happened in that dash? And
Speaker 1: you know, I was just floored and heard these stories.
Speaker 1: And then I get back in my car, you know,
Speaker 1: sitting there, my Dad's driving home, and I just start
Speaker 1: absent mindingly, you know, pull out my phone, start scrolling
Speaker 1: on social media, and I'm like, wait a second, I
Speaker 1: am learning more about my random acquaintances classmates middle school
Speaker 1: on social media than I did about my own uncle,
Speaker 1: if my dad wasn't there at his gravesite, like I
Speaker 1: wouldn't know any of this just from the the tombstone.
Speaker 1: And so I h I got this question in my
Speaker 1: heart just kind of sat with me for a while,
Speaker 1: which was, how would Jesus use a smartphone? How would
Speaker 1: Jesus use a smart How would Jesus use a smartphone?
Speaker 1: Or social media? Right? Because I was like, I like
Speaker 1: these cat videos. I like these selfies just the same
Speaker 1: as everyone else.
Speaker 2: But I wonder if he would have liked GPS the
Speaker 2: road to Nazareth and recognize there's a lot of.
Speaker 3: Traffic concerns of robbers up ahead.
Speaker 2: There's parts of the road that are washed out, and
Speaker 2: maybe take an alternate route right.
Speaker 1: And then he's he's quickly texting his disciples and they're
Speaker 1: not responding, are off and it's like, what's going on, guys,
Speaker 1: It's a mess. We might need to.
Speaker 2: Head down somewhere else.
Speaker 1: And I think it's it's it's it's a fun thought
Speaker 1: experiment to kind of sit with, like these technologies, like
Speaker 1: how would Jesus use this? And so my response to
Speaker 1: it was, gosh, everyone, I'm walking by in San Francisco,
Speaker 1: I'm not seeing them as some kids beloved uncle or aunt, right,
Speaker 1: I see them as problems to solve, not people to love.
Speaker 1: And so I basically spend a year where I invited
Speaker 1: twenty four individuals experiencing homelessness to wear GoPro cameras around
Speaker 1: their chests and narrate their experience of what life is
Speaker 1: like on the streets.
Speaker 2: And now a few messages from our general sponsors. But first,
Speaker 2: we're thinking about launching a few local chapters of the
Speaker 2: Army this year. To dive more into it, check out
Speaker 2: our recent shop Talk episode titled experimenting with local Chapters.
Speaker 2: And if you're interested in potentially leading a chapter in
Speaker 2: your community, email Army at normal Folks dot us and
Speaker 2: Alex would love to connect with you.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back.
Speaker 2: You got twenty four folks living on the streets, and
Speaker 2: you're putting go pros.
Speaker 1: On them about an hour or two out of time,
Speaker 1: and you know they're they're joining me as homeless autobiographers, right,
Speaker 1: So it's not like I'm strapping at they're sleeping, right,
Speaker 1: they're participating. Well, what reason are they agreeing to do this?
Speaker 1: For you? The question I put forward was what do
Speaker 1: you wish people like me knew that.
Speaker 2: We don't about your existence.
Speaker 1: About you, about how you see the world and what's
Speaker 1: going on. Okay, what'd you find out? I'll bite, I'll
Speaker 1: bite yeh. Share some of the videos with you if
Speaker 1: you want.
Speaker 2: Actually, could we put some up on our yea, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 2: we need to do that. Yeah, talk about if you're
Speaker 2: okay with they're going to meet Adam for the first
Speaker 2: time before you watch the videos. Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 2: but hold it seriously, can we get some of those
Speaker 2: throw them up on our stuff?
Speaker 1: I think we need to do. I got some good videos.
Speaker 1: That's good. Okay. So all right, So I was told
Speaker 1: I had a little earpiece, you know, from the from
Speaker 1: the producer there. Yeah, so so he told you about
Speaker 1: Yeah you did? Yeah you did you hire him for?
Speaker 1: Because actually, a listener I haven't responded yet.
Speaker 2: It's a universal, it's a preview.
Speaker 1: So yesterday a listener emailed us and they said, Bill
Speaker 1: on taking away points from you because of how mean
Speaker 1: you are to Alex.
Speaker 2: You were raised better than that. They have no idea.
Speaker 2: People have no idea that stuff I put up with
Speaker 2: off microphone and off camera. So you know, that's only
Speaker 2: half the story. Everybody, Bill, You've changed that man, that
Speaker 2: listener's heart in that moment, I could feel it.
Speaker 1: I could feel it.
Speaker 2: Listen, you're not part of the show. Please go ahead,
Speaker 2: so ignore the man in the corner.
Speaker 1: Do you have the curtain you know? Like oz Oh,
Speaker 1: that's right, yeah, pull it back there. I'm down with that.
Speaker 1: The first time that I was meeting one of the
Speaker 1: individuals who's going to wear the cameras and named Adam,
Speaker 1: and I'll share this, I'm not proud of this. But
Speaker 1: as I started approaching this individual who I met through
Speaker 1: a mutual friend, like this is, I'm so nervous. Right,
Speaker 1: the whole thing's weird, right, I've got these donated go
Speaker 1: pro cameras. I'm meeting this guy in broad daylight in
Speaker 1: the Castro District downtown San Francisco. And instinctively, as I'm
Speaker 1: approaching Adam, I reached my hand into my pocket and
Speaker 1: I grab my keys and start fiddling with them and
Speaker 1: grab them as a weapon as I approached this person.
Speaker 1: I've never done that before or since. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: a six foot two guy. I'm generally pretty confident walking
Speaker 1: around the streets. That's where I started. I didn't know,
Speaker 1: if this guy was going to lunge at me, if
Speaker 1: he's you know, mentally like right, the whole thing. So
Speaker 1: that's where I started on this issue. You know, quickly
Speaker 1: realize this guy's pretty normal. Guys had some tough circumstances, right,
Speaker 1: And we start having this conversation. He says, yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: wear the camera for you and I want to participate,
Speaker 1: and he will, I'll share his videos so you'll be
Speaker 1: able to put that up. So I'm watching, you know,
Speaker 1: these videos that are coming in and it's pretty heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: And the two things that really stoock out to me.
Speaker 1: So first, you'd often see a kid walk by. The
Speaker 1: kid never just walks by. The kid always points at
Speaker 1: the person stairs, Mom, dad, why is that man on
Speaker 1: the streets? You know? Can we have them live with us?
Speaker 1: Like whatever it is? And half the time you'd see
Speaker 1: the parent kind of scold the kid or say, oh
Speaker 1: that's im play, don't do that, and then pull them back.
Speaker 1: The other half the time, the kid is almost like
Speaker 1: guides the parent to go talk to the person and
Speaker 1: they have a conversation, right, And they have this interaction.
Speaker 1: And I've always thought, which of those kids is going
Speaker 1: to twenty years later, be a little bit more trusting
Speaker 1: and open as an adults. And what have we forgotten
Speaker 1: it that we knew almost instinctive for those children, so basic,
Speaker 1: right and wrong. The other piece that stuck out is
Speaker 1: every single time you'd see a person experiencing homelessness on
Speaker 1: the camera, they'd start sharing stories of some loved family member, friend, classmate,
Speaker 1: former girlfriend, former boyfriend. Often the person was no longer
Speaker 1: in their life, but they still you know, they're talking
Speaker 1: about somebody else. And you know, in listening to this
Speaker 1: over and over again, I just started thinking, gosh, you know, like,
Speaker 1: what what do those relationships look like? And in one
Speaker 1: clip I heard sign that changed my life. The guy said,
Speaker 1: I never realized I was homeless when I lost my housing,
Speaker 1: only when I lost my family and friends.
Speaker 2: Home is where the heart is.
Speaker 1: It's not the structure four walls and a roof that's
Speaker 1: a house. A house. That doesn't make a house a home, right.
Speaker 1: And as I started digging into this concept that I've
Speaker 1: come to call relational poverty as an overlooked form of poverty,
Speaker 1: it turns out about one in three people who are
Speaker 1: experiencing homelessness attribute the immediate cause of how they ended
Speaker 1: up on the streets or in a shelter to some
Speaker 1: sort of relational breakdown or brokenness, death in the family, argument,
Speaker 1: a divorce, a suicide, a domestic violence situation where it's
Speaker 1: not safe to stay with the love one, but some
Speaker 1: kind of falling out, something that happens. And so I
Speaker 1: got it on my heart. Gosh, maybe you know, I'm
Speaker 1: just a normal guy. I'm just gonna walk down the
Speaker 1: street go hope to everyone I see who's visibly homeless
Speaker 1: and say I do you have any family you want
Speaker 1: to reconnect to for the holidays. Okay, so that's weird. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is weird.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's interesting. Yeah, you know, I can't I
Speaker 2: can't help but say this. As I listen to you,
Speaker 2: we might need to redefine vocabulary. I think there's maybe
Speaker 2: houselessness and homelessness.
Speaker 1: Say, homelessness is often seen as a binary, and it's
Speaker 1: really more of a spectrum.
Speaker 2: That's what I mean when I say that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you got folks, you have one hundred people
Speaker 1: who are on house. You got a hundred stories and
Speaker 1: reasons and context of why they're on housed and what
Speaker 1: the challenges are. And it's often never just one thing.
Speaker 1: So even with that family friend, social support, there probably
Speaker 1: was some form of tremendous you know, job loss, health issue,
Speaker 1: housing insecurity, being evicted, and then you're doubled up or
Speaker 1: you're tripled up rarely, but it's that relational thing that
Speaker 1: ends up being the kind of a straw that breaks
Speaker 1: the camel's back. But it's never just one thing.
Speaker 2: What does your We're going to get to that first person. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but as a further background, Yeah, what percent have you
Speaker 2: found among the population of these folks have a mental illness.
Speaker 1: Here's how I'd say this. What we see as the
Speaker 1: physical manifestation of homelessness is actually not the majority of
Speaker 1: people experiencing homelessness. Most people who are experiencing homelessness, they're
Speaker 1: doing whatever they can to hide the fact that they're
Speaker 1: experiencing homelessness. They don't want anyone to know it. So
Speaker 1: it's there's a kind of confirmation bias that happens. As
Speaker 1: we say, we're going down the street and that person's
Speaker 1: screen at the top of their lungs to no one
Speaker 1: in particular. Okay, that person's got some serious mental health issues.
Speaker 1: They're probably experiencing homelessness, But for every one individual we
Speaker 1: see like that, there's another three or four that we're
Speaker 1: not seen. So maybe twenty twenty five hours.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my question is and I've always thought about this.
Speaker 2: Now this is before I met you, read your background
Speaker 2: or anything else. But I live in midtown Memphis. My
Speaker 2: business is in north of downtown, so I am in urban.
Speaker 2: My world is urban. As a result, I see folks
Speaker 2: experiencing homelessness to and from work and in everything I do,
Speaker 2: because I'm in a city of a major metropolitan area
Speaker 2: of a couple of million people. And You're going to
Speaker 2: see that. Yeah, right, And look, I hate generalizations and
Speaker 2: judging books by the cover, but there are people you
Speaker 2: know are suffering from a illness that are also homeless,
Speaker 2: right often one? Or did the mental illness precede the
Speaker 2: homelessness or did the mental illness come as a result
Speaker 2: of the homelessness. I always wonder of that population the
Speaker 2: chicken or the egg, and I just because if I
Speaker 2: was on the street, dirty, stinky, nowhere to go, hopeless
Speaker 2: as hell, and everything else, I could see how that
Speaker 2: could develop mental illness. But I can also see the
Speaker 2: way the systems are, especially in foster care and some
Speaker 2: other things. Many people age out of protective systems, have
Speaker 2: nowhere to go and are dealing with mental health issues
Speaker 2: and end up homeless. So I think it's I think
Speaker 2: there's both. But have you experienced people that you think,
Speaker 2: you know, I think this mental illness as a result
Speaker 2: of the homelessness. It wasn't what started the homelessness. Football
Speaker 2: doesn't urt build character. Football reviews character.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you just quoted me. That's weird. Homelessness reveals
Speaker 1: all the things that are broken in our society.
Speaker 2: You want to talk about it, get the metaphor, so
Speaker 2: go ahead and talk on that.
Speaker 1: Foster care. One out of three kids who age out
Speaker 1: of foster care will experience homelessness by the time they're
Speaker 1: twenty six years old. For black kids, that's sixty percent.
Speaker 1: Sixty percent will experience homelessness for no fault of their
Speaker 1: own because they have age out of foster care. We
Speaker 1: have over three thousand counties in the United States. There's
Speaker 1: not a single county or someone who's working full time
Speaker 1: at the federal minimum wage can afford the fair market
Speaker 1: value of a two bedroom apartment, and less than one
Speaker 1: percent of counties where that same hard working person full
Speaker 1: time working can afford a one bedroom apartment at minimum
Speaker 1: at minimum wage, right, So homelessness at its core is
Speaker 1: a housing problem. There's plenty of other countries in the
Speaker 1: world with lots of folks who have mental health issues
Speaker 1: and substance abuses that does not have the homelessness problems
Speaker 1: that we have throughout the United States, And even within
Speaker 1: the US we look at it, state like say West Virginia,
Speaker 1: where they have plenty of folks who have substance abuse
Speaker 1: issues mental health issues, don't have nearly the rates of
Speaker 1: homelessness as some of the coastal cities. Well why is
Speaker 1: that cost of housing is a lot cheap, so at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, we don't have it's a
Speaker 1: game of musical chairs. Don't have enough chairs for everybody.
Speaker 1: Some people are going to be sitting on their butts literally,
Speaker 1: And when that happens as a society, as a choice
Speaker 1: that we've made from policies, then you have a whole
Speaker 1: host of other issues that can conflate, exacerbate, and as
Speaker 1: your point, Bill can be both causes of homelessness as
Speaker 1: well as effects of homelessness. And for many people it
Speaker 1: is an effect, you know, and we're talking about the
Speaker 1: systems kind of the you know, the governments and the
Speaker 1: policies and the whole thing. The whole other piece that
Speaker 1: I talk about in my book is around the human systems. Right,
Speaker 1: we have this notion of rugged individualism, right, self made man,
Speaker 1: self made woman. Well, if that's true, like to its extreme,
Speaker 1: let's just say that is the priority above everything else.
Speaker 1: That is our one truth. You can pull yourself up
Speaker 1: by our bootstraps. And if you don't, does that mean
Speaker 1: you are deservedly poor or deservedly homeless? Right? And I
Speaker 1: think most people would say, well, no, you know, people
Speaker 1: got bad luck, bad circumstances. But what we discount is
Speaker 1: all the people who have helped us get to where
Speaker 1: we're at at different key moments in our lives, as
Speaker 1: well as access and access absolutely in those resources.
Speaker 2: Former Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger has an interesting take
Speaker 2: on being a self made guy.
Speaker 1: You read that quote, Yeah, yeah, I can in the voice,
Speaker 1: or no, it's horrible in the voice.
Speaker 2: If you could do it in the voice.
Speaker 1: It's a really good kid. I mean I can't, but
Speaker 1: I'll do it anyway. So you know, you can call
Speaker 1: me Arnold, You can call me Schwatzi. You can call
Speaker 1: me the Terminada whatever ever you do. Don't you ever
Speaker 1: ever call me a self made man.
Speaker 2: Okay, First of all, that was actually really good.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to watch it back. But why don't
Speaker 1: you tell me why he says? He says, because for
Speaker 1: every you know, success I've had in politics and business,
Speaker 1: as a bodybuilder, as an actor, I've had coaches, mentors,
Speaker 1: people who believed in me, gave me a chance, you know,
Speaker 1: opened the door to me. Social capital is really what
Speaker 1: he was talking about. So here we got the last
Speaker 1: action hero telling us who's often held up as this
Speaker 1: paragon of you know, the immigrant success story self made man.
Speaker 1: He's like, don't call me that's an offense to everyone
Speaker 1: who's helped me get to where I'm at.
Speaker 2: It really illustrates an interesting level of humility from a
Speaker 2: guy who we think is full of another when you
Speaker 2: go the same guy that says girly men with speaking
Speaker 2: of people that he doesn't like. But the point is,
Speaker 2: that's an interesting take. I don't have to agree on
Speaker 2: everything he does. I think I appreciate his words there. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think he's dead right on. Yeah, we'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: So with that backdrop, which I think is really good
Speaker 2: back film. You need a guy. I walk down the
Speaker 2: streets because I'm just a normal guy, and normal people
Speaker 2: just walk down the streets on Christmas Eve, going up to.
Speaker 1: Every person who's on house and saying, do you have
Speaker 1: many fans? We are friends. You'd like to reconnect.
Speaker 2: But your uncle kind of set you down a path
Speaker 2: in your brain, and you were following it.
Speaker 1: I think in your heart. I started not wanting to
Speaker 1: change the world, not wanting to do this whole. It
Speaker 1: is so nice for somebody self interest rightly understood, because
Speaker 1: I felt like I was my own humanity, my own
Speaker 1: empathy was being undermined by the fact that I saw
Speaker 1: these people as those people rather than my neighbors. Really,
Speaker 1: I just got tired of walking by.
Speaker 2: I use it my speech all the time and quotes
Speaker 2: these people, What do you mean these people? Yeah, you're weep, that's.
Speaker 1: I know, all right? All right.
Speaker 2: So I'm walking down the street and I meet a
Speaker 2: man named Jeffrey, And at first you know, this guy's
Speaker 2: got in a bottle this is water.
Speaker 1: But he's got a bottle of not water sitting at
Speaker 1: his side, and fowerwater. He's firewater, and he's talking to himself,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, this is the last guy who I
Speaker 1: should be sitting down talking to, right, I have a
Speaker 1: good resume. I went, what am I doing right with
Speaker 1: the thing? And I walked by him. I walk by
Speaker 1: him and I go back and I sit down next
Speaker 1: to Jeffrey and I say, I asked him all these
Speaker 1: questions and he's just out of it, not talking, you know,
Speaker 1: not talking to me. He's just talking to whoever. And
Speaker 1: finally I say, well, you know, I'm about to leave,
Speaker 1: about to step away, and you know, kind of keep
Speaker 1: my keep my walk going. And then I say, you know,
Speaker 1: I got to ask him this question. So I say, Jeffrey,
Speaker 1: do you have any family or friends you want to
Speaker 1: reconnect to? And for the first time, he looks me
Speaker 1: right in the eye. He says, I haven't seen my
Speaker 1: family a long time, my dad, Harold, my niece and nephew,
Speaker 1: my sister Jennifer. Yeah, if you could help me reconnect
Speaker 1: to them, that'd be great. It's like this Awakenings moment
Speaker 1: if you ever saw that the film, Right, it's just
Speaker 1: this level of lucidity. I wasn't expecting. And we have
Speaker 1: started having this conversation, and so I asked him. He said, Jeffrey,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm walking around today inviting folks to record
Speaker 1: messages to their family for the holidays. Here a few
Speaker 1: days from Christmas twenty fourteen, and would you like to
Speaker 1: record a message to your piece and nephew, your sister
Speaker 1: and your dad. And said, yes, I would pull out
Speaker 1: my phone, hit record, and I can share that video
Speaker 1: with you as well. But he records a video to
Speaker 1: his family.
Speaker 2: So I go home that night he saysah paraphrase, he says,
Speaker 2: he mentions all the people I just mentioned. He said,
Speaker 2: I intend to come home and see you again someday
Speaker 2: if I can.
Speaker 1: And that's about it. What are we going further?
Speaker 2: I gotta believe people are listening to this asking this question,
Speaker 2: because I'm asking it. If you have family that you
Speaker 2: love and that loves you, I sit on the street. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and even maybe more stark, candid, and even maybe a
Speaker 2: harder question, why are those people society and taxpayers problems
Speaker 2: family who have them? Which is a hard question. There's
Speaker 2: a lot in that question too, There's a lot in
Speaker 2: the English. So let's unpack it a little bit. For
Speaker 2: every one person that San Francisco gets housed, another three
Speaker 2: people fall into homelessness. So and some would argue though
Speaker 2: that they aren't falling into homeless from San Francisco, but
Speaker 2: they're shipping in because they know that San Francisco cares more.
Speaker 1: That's true for a relatively small percentage of.
Speaker 2: Folks that just because I'm not doing that job if
Speaker 2: I do, Yeah, sure, point that others do make.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The research has shown that in California, about seventy percent,
Speaker 1: seventy to eighty percent of those who are unhoused in
Speaker 1: California were previously housed in California.
Speaker 2: And you can kind of go, there's some that are
Speaker 2: seeking yep, whatever The state.
Speaker 1: Has services, whether all the things that people assume, but
Speaker 1: a lot of it it's a homegrown thing. People were
Speaker 1: county before, they're almost in Yeah. Yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: with the family. So there's three reasons that I've heard
Speaker 1: over a thousand people experiencing homelessness. Now I have offered
Speaker 1: this service to for three reasons over and over again.
Speaker 1: And why folks are disconnected? So first, digital literacy, digital access,
Speaker 1: so phones get lost and stolen, a number changes, people move,
Speaker 1: You call, no one answers did they not want to
Speaker 1: talk to me, right, and the mind can wander. The
Speaker 1: second reason is there's bureaucratic barriers. So under HIPPA in
Speaker 1: the United States, you know, it's like health and privacy,
Speaker 1: trying to make it so homelessness is protected. You don't
Speaker 1: have to reveal that to everyone and their mother, right.
Speaker 1: But shelters, I've gotten so terrified of being sued for
Speaker 1: HIPPO violations that they will refuse to confirm or deny
Speaker 1: whether someone's out of a city, or even relay a message.
Speaker 1: So when you go to a shelter, look at the
Speaker 1: bulletin board as you walk in. It's filled with missing
Speaker 1: person flyers. A family is looking for people wanting to reconnect,
Speaker 1: but people are like, we can't tell you whether they're
Speaker 1: here or not. You have to kind of do that
Speaker 1: at very informal. But the biggest reason, by far is
Speaker 1: the emotional barriers of shame. Right.
Speaker 2: I mean we because that's what I anticipated you to say,
Speaker 2: but I didn't. I wondered if you don't want We
Speaker 2: don't want to be a burden. We don't want to
Speaker 2: hurt the people we love. There's a woman I featured
Speaker 2: in the book who was in in jail. She had
Speaker 2: some substance issues, I mean the whole thing. Right, she's
Speaker 2: in prison.
Speaker 1: She gets a letter from her daughter, asn't talked to
Speaker 1: her daughter in like fifteen twenty years. It says, Mom,
Speaker 1: we you know, I found you. I've been looking for
Speaker 1: you for years. We have a place, you know, we
Speaker 1: got some land, We got a place for you. Please
Speaker 1: come live with us. She never responded to that letter.
Speaker 1: She's a shit, she.
Speaker 2: Said, a mother at my age should be taking care
Speaker 2: of her daughter, not the other way around. She just
Speaker 2: never responded. They ended up reconnecting later. We helped them,
Speaker 2: but but still, that shame is one of the bears.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Want to be a burden. You know, I want to
Speaker 1: be a burden.
Speaker 2: So all right, so Bro said, I got my sister,
Speaker 2: my cousins, and my dad.
Speaker 1: I think we record the video. Go online and do
Speaker 1: an online search. Get in on Facebook and found a
Speaker 1: Facebook group connected to his hometown. Now you know you're
Speaker 1: from Monteursville if dot dot dot inside knowledge this restaurant,
Speaker 1: and now you remember mister so and so from the school,
Speaker 1: and posted the video there with a short note anybody
Speaker 1: know this because anyone know this guy? Right, here's his
Speaker 1: name here, he's looking to her. Why not? And I
Speaker 1: put it out there. They know what to expect and
Speaker 1: and and I'll share it just because I was told
Speaker 1: by you know, the producer is here, be vulnerable, said,
Speaker 1: be be vulnerable. That's what normal people do. It's like,
Speaker 1: all right, Well, my vulnerable moment here is that I
Speaker 1: just sat on that video for about a week before
Speaker 1: doing anything. Really, Yeah, because I didn't know if I
Speaker 1: could trust the guy. Yeah, I didn't want to get involved.
Speaker 1: What's the backstory here? The whole thing right, yelling rape?
Speaker 1: It's just a homeless guy. I didn't know what was
Speaker 1: going on, right, I didn't know what was going on,
Speaker 1: and so I after a week of sitting on it,
Speaker 1: it's just like, burn into my pocket, find the group,
Speaker 1: post it there. Within one hour, that video goes viral.
Speaker 1: It makes the local news that night as the leading
Speaker 1: story in wherever villas. This is a real place on Toursville, Pennsylvania. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that place. Classmates start commenting in the posts and saying, hey,
Speaker 1: I went to high school with Jeffrey. I work in construction.
Speaker 1: Does he need a job? I work at the congressman's office.
Speaker 1: Does he need healthcare? The town came together and race
Speaker 1: over five thousand dollars to try to bring him home.
Speaker 1: We got on the phone the next day with jennifer sister.
Speaker 1: She got tagged in the post. In the first twenty minutes,
Speaker 1: she tells me Jeffrey has been a missing person for
Speaker 1: twelve years. Broad Daylight downtown San Francisco a few days
Speaker 1: before Christmas, and so we were able to get them reconnected,
Speaker 1: first on a phone call and then they reconnected in person.
Speaker 1: A few months later. Jennifer got on a train across
Speaker 1: the country she was afraid of flyne gone on a
Speaker 1: four day trained from Pennsylvania and saw her brother for
Speaker 1: the first time in twenty two years. So does this
Speaker 1: immediately solve Jeffrey's homelessness? Is you know the Blue Skies,
Speaker 1: everything's peachy punky door. No, like he had in his case,
Speaker 1: had some of those underlying mental health issues, addiction issues,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately he never accepted the help that was offered.
Speaker 1: It's just two in the throes of the addiction, it
Speaker 1: wasn't okay to travel, and he ended up dying on
Speaker 1: the streets a few years later. So you almost think, well, gosh,
Speaker 1: is that a good story to.
Speaker 2: It's a great story. And I'm that's a great story.
Speaker 2: His family didn't think of him as missing anymore. They
Speaker 2: had answers or whatever Jeffrey was experiencing living on the streets. Clearly,
Speaker 2: as you've stated, the connection to family still mattered to
Speaker 2: him because it was the only thing that he really
Speaker 2: mentioned to you, and in his desperate life, he at
Speaker 2: least got to know that he was loved.
Speaker 1: That's what Jennifer told me. Almost verbade him so right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I almost after he passed away, I'm like, I'm
Speaker 1: sorry we were in you know, this was years later.
Speaker 1: We had all these reunions, some got off the streets
Speaker 1: and now living with family. Oh, we're going to get
Speaker 1: into that. Yeah. But and I was like, i feel
Speaker 1: like I failed you, Jennifer, I'm sorry this never worked out.
Speaker 1: She's like, are you kidding me? Like the closure that
Speaker 1: we got, the kids got a chance to have an
Speaker 1: interaction with her uncle. They I didn't even know he
Speaker 1: knew their names. And we have a video of him
Speaker 1: recording a message to Josh and Rachel, right and just
Speaker 1: means so much to us. And yeah, he never was
Speaker 1: able to beat that devil on his shoulder. But he
Speaker 1: knew that we were there and they You know, I
Speaker 1: always thought with my uncle, would this work have been
Speaker 1: appropriate for him? And the answer I've come to Bill
Speaker 1: the best I can think of, is it depends on
Speaker 1: the day. Some days work good days sure, offered to
Speaker 1: other days not good days, fully inappropriate, no informed consent,
Speaker 1: no ability to have this conversation. But whether it was
Speaker 1: a good day or a bad day for Uncle Mark,
Speaker 1: I'd like to think that we as a society would say,
Speaker 1: here's the services of the doors open. It's up to
Speaker 1: you if you want to walk through it.
Speaker 2: There and that concludes Part one of my conversation with
Speaker 2: Kevin Appler, and guys, you do not want to miss
Speaker 2: part two that's now available to listen to him together. Guys,
Speaker 2: we can change this country, but it starts with you.
Speaker 2: I'll see in part too,