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