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Now to learn more about Thorn, go to episode 323 of the Behind the Shield podcast with Joel Totoro and Wes Barnett. Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast. As always, my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show the founder of Miracle Messages and author of When We Walk By, Kevin Adler.
So in this conversation we discuss a host of topics from multi-generational trauma in his own family, his uncle's experience with homelessness, addiction, the foster system, corrections, how San Francisco housed a quarter of a million victims of the 1906 earthquake, how you yourself can be part of the solution, some of the systemic challenges, the power of humanity and community and so much more.
Now before we get to this powerful and important conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment. Go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and leave a rating. Every single five-star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for other people to find. And this is a free library of over 850 episodes now.
So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so I can get them to every single person on planet Earth who needs to hear them. So that being said, I introduce to you Kevin Adler. Enjoy. Well, Kevin, I want to start by saying firstly, this is the beautiful thing about social media. It is kind of looked down upon and held as the toxic trait of many, but it also to me is a beautiful way of building community.
I came across and it was probably one of the kind of good news type pages that I follow, but it was miracle messages. Reached out to them and here we are having a conversation. So firstly, I want to give a shout out to the positive side of social media and secondly to welcome you onto the podcast today. Should we give a hat tip to Mark Zuckerberg? Thank him for connecting us here. Absolutely. I'm sure this was his ultimate goal was just altruism.
Yeah, I'm sure. So Mark, thank you for your efforts here. All right. Very first question then where on planet Earth we find you this afternoon. I am just north of San Francisco and Sausalito, which is just over the Golden Gate Bridge and live here with my wife, our crazy golden doodle. So, yeah, I'm in the Bay Area. Beautiful. Well, I would love to start at the very beginning so we can learn about you before we get to the topic itself.
So tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what your parents did, how many siblings? Yeah, great question. So I was born and raised in a small town about an hour east of San Francisco, but probably a world away, you know, culturally. And my parents' name is called Livermore, home of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, second largest lab in the country and the world's longest burning light bulb, which is actually at the firehouse.
You can go to CentennialBulb.org and see the bulb cam at any time. So, and we're a wine producing region. So I grew up in Livermore. And, you know, the way I put it, James, is that I was raised by, you know, my mom and dad couldn't have asked for better parents, except when they were together. You know, they did not find a way to overcome the traumas that they had experienced in their childhoods, in their relationship.
But what they did manage to do is they agreed probably on one thing, which is how to love my brother and I. So I grew up a lot of trust, openness. You know, I was definitely the kid that like, you know, I'd go out with my friends on a Friday night, Saturday night, but I'd come home early because I knew my mom was like up worrying for me. But, you know, if I needed a ride, she'd come pick me up. Like it was just a very open, loving environment.
And so, you know, went to college and then grad school. I was at Occidental College in Los Angeles, Cambridge, you know, in your neck of the woods in the UK for grad school. And, you know, I think for me where I connect a little bit of my childhood and upbringing to what I ended up doing in my first area of kind of research, which is around social capital.
And so I'm in college and, you know, a lot of people discover random things in college. I think what I discovered was that civic life in the United States has been declining since about the late 1960s, according to Robert Putnam. You know, and that's in terms of like trust, civic engagement, norms of reciprocity.
And so I found growing up in such a small but very supportive and nurturing home environment and neighborhood and classmates and neighbors all knowing each other, I felt like that change in our country or the kind of trend is at odds with the kind of place I grew up in and the kind of environment I'd want to raise kids in someday.
You know, starting point in this area around community social capital was trying to understand how social capital fluctuates, why we've been, according to Robert Putnam and Bowling Alone, less civically engaged, less connected since the late 1960s. And that research brought me to look at the role disasters and shared traumas can act as a catalyst to either bring people together or tear people apart.
So if you look at like, you know, World War II, you know, greatest generation, Rosie the Riveter and Boy Scout scrap metal drives and people kind of coming together feeling like there is a kind of shared sense of identity, of solidarity.
And then you have the Vietnam War in 1960s and civil rights, you know, civil rights movement, time of a lot of great progress in our country, but also a time where, you know, there was less of a kind of sense of who we are in terms of kind of like the national zeitgeist, we're more fragmented.
And so I ended up doing research in these two small towns, one in New Zealand, one in Northern California, on how civic life may have increased or decreased and whether I could find people who really exemplified what Putnam described as these social capital changes.
And I would go very short, basically would find that there'd be these occasional people who you could not explain by the, you know, current theories and they're older and you'd expect them to be incredibly trusting and civically engaged but wouldn't trust anyone or someone who's in a younger demographic and, but they
would not trust everyone. And when I asked people why is that it was because they'd cite well, you know, 1955 1964 we had floods in town. And even though no one was killed. This was a time everyone came together and you know this person boarded up the windows of my shop and my cat was fighting fighters and, you know, it was a time of coming together. And then other folks who disconnected and distrustful were like well I my house was robbed. And even though no one was killed.
I feel like someone you know was probably the perpetrator in the neighborhood, the police weren't really responsive, and I just can't look at people the same way. But yeah that I think connected me to this journey of thinking about how the experiences we go through, Trump traumatic or otherwise can either bring us together as people are terrorists apart.
And I know in my, you know, my upbringing and you know we're all kind of pause my my upbringing story is you know I lost my mom at a pretty young age I was 23. And she, you know, had breast cancer. We thought we got it. Stage one, did the lumpectomy but it was still growing and ended up coming backstage for. And so I took a leave of absence from Cambridge to go home to live or more. Spend the last couple weeks of her life, you know, in the ICU at her bedside hospice care and the whole thing.
And then, you know, finished up at grad school went back and then you know return to my childhood home. You know at this moment in my life, it was the most isolated I had been, you know, I was finished grad school ready to take on the world back in my childhood home getting it ready for rental my parents had divorced, going through boxes.
And you know I was very isolated and it was a hard time in my, you know, early life. I never felt by myself because I literally had keys to three neighbors houses, you know friends I could couch surf with or stay with, you know, just to just to have someone to spend time with at this moment of grieving. And I think throughout my life since I've always been interested in this idea of in times of crisis times of trauma.
Do you feel like you have people that come together and got your back, or are you trying to go it alone, and how that forever shifts how we view people and how we view ourselves as part of a wider community. You know, I was in New Zealand, when I traveled the world in 2000, and found it to be such a friendly beautiful country.
What was the town that you studied and did you find any similarities or dissimilarities between the California town and the Kiwi town or mandel town in Coromandel Peninsula, not too far from Auckland is where I was. When compared Coromandel town with Ferndale, California, which is not too far from Eureka up north, along the lost coast California.
You know the folks in New Zealand overwhelmingly were just so hospitable. There was a member of parliament, who I reached out to as this, you know, 20 year old undergraduate in the US and told her about my research send an email, and she wanted me to change to have like a car pick me up at the airport, and bring me to Coromandel town. You know, because you know you got to watch out for those sheep right like you don't want to mess with them. Yeah, the gangs of sheep.
Yeah, people were incredibly friendly and hospitable overwhelmingly, but again there'd be these occasional individuals I'd meet in Coromandel town and in Ferndale who just did not fit the mold, you know, and in, in the case of Coromandel town there was one individual. As I kind of mentioned his house was robbed and just didn't look at people the same way even though he was super engaged like president of all the clubs and activities.
So I do think you know there can be kind of this, as Robert put them describes it like this kind of rising tide of social capital this kind of public good that many people can tap into. But if you feel like you're outside of that, or you feel like you haven't benefited you know the rest of the community has returned to normal life after the flood, but you're still mucking and gutting your house.
And if you feel like you're still trying to reel and you didn't have the job security or the family support or the connections with local elected officials to know about flood lines, then it creates more of a disconnect over time. So yeah, but overwhelmingly I found people in both communities to be really welcoming.
I think most people are, and this is the problem and I was funny when you were talking an analogy popped in my head because I use that phrase at all you know the rising tide lifts all ships. I sat and had coffee in London next to the canal, and they have locks, so you have to close each side of the lock and then you either raise the water up or down, and then you open it to that level and then the other boat is that the lower level and then vice
versa. And I think the problem that we're seeing at the moment is that most people are in that massive part of the canal where we're all raised up. But through my eyes. The cameras are all faced at the lock, the people that extremely higher extremely low, and they are projecting that's how the rest of the community feels, which then bleeds into how the rest of the community feels.
We have altruistic kind and compassionate people in leadership positions, they can elevate us they can bring us together they can forge community. But I think what we've seen if we've been blatantly honest the last eight plus years is the opposite this kind of division this nastiness the self serving which I think has bled into the average person who is probably a good person, but is having this kind of death by 1000 cuts from the negativity.
Yeah, well said, and you know the way I put it in and I uncovered this data while researching for my book you know when we walk by. It was. I think the status one out of every two Americans are one paycheck away from not being able to pay rent and 47% of people in the United States, say they don't know where they get $400 for an unexpected emergency.
And I think why that data is important to look at is we have this question all the time like why are there so many people experiencing homelessness and that's a really important question like we could talk about it. But given that there's one out of two people, one paycheck away from not paying rent. You also have to ask, why aren't 10s of millions of people experiencing homelessness.
What's making up the difference, you know, and what we're finding is family, friends, community, church, synagogue mosque like informal economy it's relationship social capital. And I think why that's important is to your point James, who talks about that, like the heroes. The everyday heroes who are looking after each other and helping their friends their family members a loved one, a classmate. Get by, like doubled up tripled up offering alone, little support.
To me the fact that we don't have half the country homeless right now is a testament to the resilience and the goodness of the vast majority of people in the United States. And I think we often, you know, tend to look at homelessness in very binary terms, you know, homeless or housed. And yet, it really is a spectrum, you know, there's a level of precarity and vulnerability that a lot of folks are facing.
But I have been having done the work at Miracle Messages for the last decade. I've been constantly had my faith in humanity reaffirmed by everyday people reaching out wanting to get involved in this work and saying hey, you know I'm from left leaning right.
I'm a Trump supporters, Biden, apolitical, Christian, atheist, agnostic, Jewish, Muslim, like it really I think there's a basic goodness and what we're not often asked enough in this country is we have to, we put up with a lot in terms of failing institutions and with a lack of, you know, accountability for our elected officials. And I think what people really want is not only, you know, people they can have faith in and trust and level with, but also to be asked to give for a greater good.
Like, you know, there's a part in my book that that I'll just kind of paraphrase is, you know, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, you know, the Terminator. He said this great commencement speech, and I'm going to try my best to do my governator impression. He said something along the lines of, you know, you can call me Arnold, you can call me Schwarze, you can call me the Terminator, but the only thing you can call me is a self made man.
And he said, like, mentors, coaches, gym buddies, weightlifting buddies, fellow actors, like every step of his way as an immigrant, having nothing, coming into the US, following his dreams. The only way he's had any modicum of success is because of other people helping him out.
And so if the Terminator, who I think is often seen as this like paragon of like self made resilience, pull yourself up by the bootstraps, individual initiative, if he's able to say, yeah, everything I am is because of others.
I think we also have to look in the mirror for ourselves and acknowledge that our neighbors experiencing homelessness are probably not responsible, you know, having for their situation. I think there's systems and there's, you know, brokenness that far extends beyond the individual.
I agree completely. I'm actually, I've written a book and I'm writing a second one out, which is a fiction and I'm trying to tell the multi generational story and through a first responders eyes, you know, we get to see the last domino, but what about the 10 prior? So you have a very interesting story in your family as far as law enforcement. So let's just make sure that we cover that obviously with the audience. I'm sure it'd be pretty interesting for them to hear.
Sure. So yeah, my, my great grandfather was was actually was the first person who was killed in the line of duty in Milton, Massachusetts. He in the Milton, Massachusetts police, police force. He served in Milton. He was his, his title, I guess, was patrolman, Emory Farrington. And he was ambushed responding to, you know, an emergency call for a carjacking.
And I think it was in the woods and ended up being shot and killed. And, you know, the suspects were never were never apprehended. So, you know, Emory Farrington, who just, you know, his end of watch anniversary was just in the last year or two, his 100th, 100th anniversary of his, his being killed in line of duty.
You know, that, that trauma of for my grandpa, you know, Ralph Farrington losing his father as, as just a, you know, small boy. It had, it had generational trauma, my family, you know, you know, things, challenges that he faced in his life, things that I'm sure he regrets and problems that existed in my family. You know, with him with, with, with, then my mom and, and some of the challenges she, you know, experienced and survived and overcame and just, it has ripple effects.
So, for me, doing this work and having my own family history intertwined with our nation's law enforcement, I have tremendous respect for people who put on a uniform of any sort. And I also think we owe it to them to make sure that they're doing jobs that are not impossible.
Like we are, we are right now not setting up our nation's law enforcement for success on the issue of homelessness. We are asking way too much. We are expecting them to be in the words of one law enforcement officer, armed social workers, without the training, without the time, the bandwidth, the expertise.
But, you know, I'll just say that law enforcement in general, you know, police, fire, paramedics, emergency responders, they understand the work we're doing at Miracle Messages, almost without explanation, because they're in relationship. They're seeing the same people on a daily, weekly basis. You know, Hey Steve, Hey Joe, what's going on? You know, how can we help you?
So I think a lot of what I talk about in the book is really common sense solutions that hopefully will save time, money, and make our law enforcement officials have a more, you know, a better opportunity to succeed in the positions that they're in.
Well, speaking of multi-generational trauma, before we get to, because I think this is fascinating, you know, the perspective of homelessness, 100 years ago, you talk about the kind of exposure, the homeless population through a family member of your own. So let's kind of get that story told for us people to understand, you know, the up close and personal element of your own family story.
Yeah, so it's, for me, my journey on this issue of homelessness really begins with my uncle Mark, my dad's younger brother, my beloved uncle. He remembered every birthday. Every year he was on the streets in Santa Cruz. He sent a card, never missed a birthday, you know, always with just his name written in block letters to his beloved nephew or, you know, my brother and I.
So Mark also, yeah, he was on the streets for 30 years. He lived on the streets of Santa Cruz and he ended up being found deceased at the age of 50, which is the about the average life expectancy of people experiencing homelessness. It's 30 years less than if they were housed.
So after Mark passed away, you know, I got that phone call in college, my dad crying, you know, went to his funeral. It was the first time I ever saw my grandpa cry, you know, World War II, very, you know, kind of, I almost say cold, but just a very soft spoken and non emotional person. It was the first time I ever saw him cry. And so, you know, Mark meant a great deal to me and to my family, but I never thought of him as a homeless man. You know, he was just a beloved member of the family.
And so it wasn't until a few years after he passed away that I'm in San Francisco, you know, working as a social entrepreneur, trying to make the world a better place, kind of between technology, education, social impact. And I'm walking down the street and I'm seeing people, you know, who are living and dying on the streets, experiencing homelessness. And it was really the first time that I realized, gosh, everyone I'm walking by, that's someone's son or daughter.
You know, that is someone's brother or sister. That is some kid's beloved uncle or aunt. And at that time, James, I didn't see people experiencing homelessness as people to be loved. I saw them as problems to be solved. And so my journey on this issue of homelessness begins a decade ago, really trying to change my own heart and my own understanding on this issue.
And so I, you know, I'm a person of faith. I was in a church service and the pastor gets on and invites the congregation to do this kind of creative exercise, answering the question, who is Jesus? And doing so with some kind of artwork or creative expression. Okay. Now, I think a lot of people probably said, well, I'm going to write a song and that's going to be my expression.
I'm probably the worst singer. I'm not even going to embarrass myself. I did a recording the other day and I couldn't even come in on the beat. They had to like change my singing to be, I was on a children's program and they had to like change the track. So anyway, not a singer. So Jesus didn't need me to sing. And then I'm not much of an artist, probably doesn't need me to draw a picture. But I was like, well, I love using technology to show our shared humanity.
So I got this question on my heart, which was, well, how would Jesus use a smartphone? How would Jesus use social media, wearable camera and you know, person of faith or not? Like, how can we use our storytelling tools beyond just cat videos and selfies? You know, those are fun. But how do we use them to share our, you know, show our shared humanity to maybe build empathy?
And so for for a year, my response to that was I invited 24 individuals experiencing homelessness to wear GoPro cameras around their chests and narrate their experience of what life is like on the streets. And the basic premise was, hey, I just walked by you. You're still here. Like, what's it like to be you? What do you wish people like me knew that maybe we don't about what your existence and your experience is like?
And I 24 individuals where the cameras captured dozens of hours of footage, went home, watched all the footage. It's totally heartbreaking. And I think the two things that stuck out first, every time you'd see a child walk by. The kid never just walks by. They always point. Hug at the mom or dad, stare, ask questions. Why is that man on the streets? And you see half the time the parent would like school the kid say, oh, bad, dangerous, impolite.
Like, don't do that. And then you'd see sometimes the kid almost like guide the parent to the person, you know, and engage in conversation. I thought, OK, maybe there's something we we knew as children that we've we forgotten that we've kind of lost sight of, of just basic right and wrong and basic humanity. And then the second real insight was every single person I talked to experiencing homelessness who wore the camera.
They all talked about some other person at some point, you know, a loved one, a family member, a friend, a neighbor. And most of the time that person was now distant or deceased or they're otherwise separated from. And in one of the clips, I heard someone say something and it was quite profound. He said, you know, I never realized I was homeless when I lost my housing, only when I lost my family and friends.
And that insight, you know, I never realized I was homeless when I lost my housing, only when I lost my family and friends. That's what set me on this journey to create what became Miracle Messages and then eventually writing this book. Well, firstly, you can underline what I've talked about a lot.
And this is such a hypocrisy in some people that will walk out of a place of worship and then step over someone homeless or say that Narcan is a waste of money on addicts or some of these very un-Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, you know, Hebrew rhetoric. Because to me, we're all, if you go into a daycare anywhere in the world, you'll see a bunch of children, regardless of skin color, religious preference, who are just enjoying playing, enjoying looking at nature.
So that's who we all are. And that's the blank canvas. And so often, you know, there's trauma and people say, oh, nature and nurture. You know, I came from an alcoholic family. Yeah, but that wasn't always the case. And of course, there's some traits that, you know, there's the epigenetics now they're realizing that it does change you a little bit, but that can also be changed back. But your learned behavior is from probably your alcoholic family and it can be unlearned.
So, you know, viewing this entire issue with the same compassion that whichever prophet you like to read would do the same thing, you know, what would Jesus do, et cetera, et cetera, I think is so important. And understanding, you know, I love that phrase, you know, not what's wrong with you, but what happened to you.
So with that lens, when you look back now with your kind of more mature perspective, what were the elements of your uncle's early life that sent him into that position, do you think? Yeah, the way I put it is we all have wounds from a very familiar war.
And some of us are still waging that war. Some of us are still fighting it, whether it's physically, you know, the pain of disability, catastrophic injury, being on the streets, whether it's an emotional or psychological front of dealing with childhood traumas, dealing with, you know, feeling of neglect, isolation, loneliness, not wanting to be a burden, you know, feelings of shame, or whether it's, you know, interpersonal, of feeling like you don't have anyone to talk to.
We're growing understanding that loneliness is a health concern, you know, in the UK, there's a minister of loneliness, the US Surgeon General has announced, you know, public health emergency of isolation, loneliness. And even in the terms we talk about it, it's often not looking at the extremes of people who are just so isolated, lonely, might be in what we call relational poverty, you know.
So, we all have wounds from a familiar war. And I think for Mark, his wounds, you know, there was, it was a very tumultuous upbringing for my dad and my other uncle and Mark, you know, they grew up with a lot of abuse, you know, all different sorts. And, and also really a lack of like, I think, validation of what was going on, you know, like it's one thing to go through hell.
But you kind of need people to like say, yeah, you went through hell, you know, like that sucked, or your experience has legs, like, let's not overlook it. So, I don't think Mark or really even my dad, who's, you know, very close to and is still doing well and, you know, near in retirement in his 70s now is still working hard.
But I don't think any of them ever got the kind of validation of their experience, let alone, you know, going through the experience. I mean, my dad went to therapy for 30 years. He survived the war and is still fighting the war. You know, he fought in Vietnam. He was two tours as a door gunner in Vietnam, you know, has 50% disability from that. He survived his childhood with a lot of abuse, you know, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and he's still fighting that war.
And the only reason I think he has survived, let alone had the, you know, very successful life by most measures that he's had and my uncle Mark who, you know, never, never really had a chance to become the full person that he could have been and really should have been was that he went to therapy for 30 years and he had a lot of support from that. He taught me that true strength and true masculinity are synonymous with emotional forthrightness.
You know, that, you know, I'm a tall six foot two guy, always been athletic. I feel very comfortable and confident, you know, my body, but that's not my strength. You know, the first time I met a person experiencing homelessness in broad daylight, I instinctively reach my hand in my pocket and grab my keys as a weapon.
Right. Because I didn't know if this person's going to lunge at me if I'd have to defend myself. But, you know, he taught me that I saw my dad cry many more times than I ever saw my mom cry. And I, as a result, am very grateful that, you know, I'm comfortable and actually encourage a kind of emotional openness and vulnerability.
And I think it connects to the mental health crisis in our country. We don't talk about what we're going through. We don't have outlets. We don't, we otherize it and stigmatize it when it really should be a conversation. You know, I've heard before in a TED talk, it was said, a great quote, they said, you know, the opposite of addiction is not recovery, it's connection. Is that Johan Hari? Yeah, it is. Yeah, great reference. A great reference. Yeah, good catch.
So I do think we are much more interdependent and we often want to fess up to and look in the mirror and acknowledge. But yeah, that was my uncle's journey. And I think having therapy for my dad probably saved his life. It's so important to hear that. And it's funny because when we started the conversation, we talked about the greatest generation, what I'm realizing now, because I'm almost 900 interviews in now, is granddad wasn't okay.
They did come back. They did roll up their sleeves. They did go back to work. But behind the scenes, there's a lot of alcoholism, domestic abuse, etc, etc. And that's not, again, the fault of the individual. These men were drafted or volunteered to go overseas and do and see some horrible, horrible things. And then they just came back. Like, all right, now we're calling you the greatest generation in the world. So don't mess it up. Don't be talking now.
You know, so and I'm actually getting to interview two Iwo Jima vets tomorrow. I'm flying out to Dallas. But but I think that's a big important part of the story is, you know, we tell ourselves a fairy tale that all this generation, they were fine. And they went to World War Two in Europe and Japan.
And they came back and they just, you know, got back to business. And that wasn't the case at all. And the impact of that war and arguably the war before that and the war before that, it does have an impact. It has a domino effect. And if we don't pull that out of the shadows and say the buck stops here, and you know, you as a parent, for example, can finally stop that and not let it bleed into your children.
That is a huge, huge element of the addiction crisis, the homelessness crisis. I mean, all these things that we see gang membership, all of that, you know, we have to address trauma and we can't shy away from it and pretend everything's rosy and romanticize about a generation and actually never really existed.
Yeah, well said. And if we really want to honor our vets and support, you know, you know, give give a pledge of allegiance to the flag, we should not only bring them home safely from war, any wars that you know, our elected officials deemed necessary and that are fought. But we should make sure they're not forgotten once they get back. We should not bring them home from war abroad, and then leave them alone to fight the war that will wage in their heads for many of them.
And we look at the numbers of, you know, Iraq and Afghanistan vets and I mean, we could talk about Vietnam vets even even more but you know, Iraq and Afghanistan vets experiencing homelessness. It's a huge number, you know, huge number of people who have fought the war.
And so I think we need to, you know, get again close enough to our own house neighbors to hear their stories. And I'm looking at the stats right now of the 582,000 people experiencing homelessness based on the HUD definition, almost 40,000 veterans are homeless so you know,
almost a little less than 10% of the HUD numbers that are put out on homelessness. And again, that's by a very narrow definition of homelessness doesn't include people who are doubled up, tripled up, might be staying in a car or in other kind of habitation not meant for human existence. So I think we owe it, we owe it to our vets as we owe to, you know, everyone in this country to make sure that they have a proper home and support network to deal with whatever challenges they may face.
So I want to give myself and everyone listening a bit of a history lesson. When I was in Anaheim, California as a firefighter they gave us incredible training and I was on a truck company so we would go on the roof with the chainsaw and cut.
And to do that you had to have a very in-depth knowledge of building construction so you knew what you're walking into or on top of. And the 1906 earthquake was a big part because that was pre-rebar, huge, you know, loss of life, fires, etc. So a very, very important chapter in the fire service here.
When I heard you talk on the other podcast and I apologize to whoever it was because I can't remember the name of it and I like to give credit, but you talked about what the nation did 120, almost 120 years ago for the homelessness, you know, people experiencing homelessness after that. So I'd love for you to educate us on what our forefathers did for people that were struggling and then we can obviously contrast it with now.
Absolutely. In fact, I just happened to have a copy when we walked by. So if it's helpful I could just read a short excerpt from the book. Is that all right? Yep. Okay, so that is the section that James you're referring to in the book is very first beginning of Chapter 13, which is our final chapter on healing our humanity. So the section begins in times of crisis.
Okay. So in the early morning hours of Wednesday, April 18 1906, a 7.9 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 28,000 buildings in San Francisco, leveling more than 500 blocks in the city center, more than 3000 people died, and about 80% of the city was destroyed.
In the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake and fire, some 250,000 residents of San Francisco were displaced, establishing makeshift camps and park areas and in burnt out ruins of buildings. For a short period of time, more than half of the city's 400,000 residents experienced homelessness. In response, the city did not pass anti camping ordinances, law enforcement was not mobilized to raise tents 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 winter approached, the city built 5300 small wooden cottages for those still in need of housing, while the army housed 20,000 refugees and military style tent camps. Camps formed play groups for kids and dining halls for individuals and families, which became the centers for social life.
Tenants paid $2 a month toward the $50 price of their earthquake cottage, many assembled in Golden Gate Park. 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 1908, just two years after one of the most devastating disasters in American history, the last camp closed. 250,000 unhoused survivors had been housed.
That's amazing. So you're talking a quarter of a million people instantly were unhoused, and then within two years, they were able to remedy the issue. So let's contrast now. Talk to me about, and I've heard lots of, you know, obviously every issue is multi multi layered. And this is the problem is that politicians will grab one and they'll die on the hill with that one issue.
I've had people talking about, if I'm not mistaken, the Reagan era, closing down mental health institutions and that adding to the homelessness. You know, there's obviously the the rising cost of housing. I actually had a great conversation with an Uber driver from San Francisco, an amazing gentleman to the point where we talked so much that Uber contacted the both of us to see if we were murdering each other.
And we weren't. We were just having a good talk. But so talk to me about how we have devolved. You're talking about civil life and clearly there's a disconnect between altruism, community, and maybe even some of the religious texts that people are being taught and the actionable element when it comes to taking care of our fellow human beings that find themselves in this situation.
So let's let's start with the human level of this. We can also talk about the systems level, but to start with the human level. So neuroscientists at Princeton and Duke found that the part of our brain that activates when we see a person compared to an inanimate object is this is called the medial prefrontal cortex. That part of the brain has been found not to respond. When we see someone that we perceive to be in an extreme out group in our society, including people experiencing homelessness.
So the implications of that. Few years ago, the New York City rescue mission did an experiment where they had individuals dress up to look homeless as unsuspecting members of their very own families walked by. And in each instance of this experiment, not a single person recognized their own mom or dad, brother or sister, son or daughter, husband or wife as they walk by them on the streets.
And when I think and pause and say, well, would I recognize my own loved one on the streets? The answer is probably not. When we other eyes, people experiencing homelessness, even by using language of the homeless and creating this binary of who they are and referring in us versus them language. We've already lost the battle. This is so deeply rooted. It's not that people in 1906 were just better, better citizens, better human beings.
We have more knowledge, education, skills, training, health outcomes, life, life, long life expectancies. You know, it's not to look back in any kind of Pollyanna way at the past. But what they had was a recognition that, well, gosh, but for the grace of God, go I. You know, that that could have been me. In fact, that was probably me on my neighbor, my friend, my family member that just lost their livelihood. And with homelessness in the United States, we don't look at it in that sense.
We're not asking, well, what happened to them? What did they go through? Survivors of a familiar war. We're looking at them as well. What did they do? You know, and the and this is on both progressive and more conservative lenses like the conservative lens would be what bad choices did they make? You know, are they what what what? You know, there's repercussions to their actions.
Let's you know, there might be punishment or there's law and order that needs to be considered for, you know, bad behavior. Did they isolate themselves from all family members? The progressive version of that paternalism is just as pernicious. And it's much more of a savior complex of, well, those poor people look at how rough it is. Let's, you know, let's let's do what we can. But in this kind of like we know what's better for you than you do, like this self-righteous lens.
And I think both are incredibly problematic because we're assuming that we don't connect to our own house neighbors as neighbors. But then we assume we know what they need. And we speak with a lot of confidence on social media and Twitter, you know, proclaiming what what needs to be done around homelessness. So my you know, my prescription for healing our humanity is we have to get to know our own house neighbors as neighbors.
We have to recognize that the person who's experiencing homelessness that you're walking by or the people, the children, the mothers with kids, the parents, the families, the invisible homelessness, which is a major part of the population that we don't see. That it's much more accurate to look at those individuals and families as having just survived a flood or an earthquake or a fire. And the only difference is we don't see we don't smell the smoke.
You know, we see the survivors, we see the ramifications of it, but we don't see the flames. We don't we didn't experience the flood waters. We don't talk about the earthquake. But they're survivors and likely having gone through, you know, whether it's, you know, the housing affordability crisis, we have a nationwide shortage of seven million affordable housing units to meet current demand.
There's over 3000 counties in the United States, and not a single county of those 3000 plus can a person who's working full time at a minimum wage job afford the median price for a two bedroom apartment, and less than 1% were that hardworking person at minimum wage could afford a one bedroom apartment.
So we have affordable housing crisis. We have an income inequality crisis with wages, where, you know, again, there's an affordability but you know 45% of people experiencing homelessness work, have jobs, and another 40% are disabled, and are unable to work, you know, because of that disability. So there's, I think, not a housing wage that people have but a minimum wage that is less than the real, the minimum wage and real dollars was in 1968, we're making less today than we did in 1968.
Adjusted for inflation. And then we can also look at you know broken systems from criminal justice system to healthcare behavioral mental health de institutionalization which you referred to, where we recognize that we want to get away from one flew over the cuckoo's nest.
We don't want to lock people up throw away the key and put them in these horrific conditions and in institutions, but we never funded the vision of the founder of the institutionalization had for a network of local psychiatric beds and recovery programs, local services you know, mental health and substance abuse are an issue or issues that face housed and unhoused neighbors alike. The difference is do you have access to treatment.
Do you have access to any kind of care, and do you have, are you in a setting in which you're can recover versus you know someone on the streets. And I also I have to mention foster care. You know, for foster care youth, one out of every three young people who age out of foster care will experience homelessness by the time they're 26 years old.
And if we look at those numbers, just for black youth, it goes up to 60% will experience homelessness by the time they're 26 years old if they're aging out of foster care. So, when you look at the systems by system level, and see all the ways in which homelessness almost becomes an inevitability in our country, there's you know it's a game of musical chairs and there's not enough chairs for everyone in terms of housing.
And then you can't look at the folks who are experiencing homelessness with the same kind of lens of well what did they do wrong paternalism individual responsibility it's again much closer to saying well they've probably been through hell, and they're survivors of a familiar war that I may be, or someone in my family may be all too familiar with, but maybe just squeaking by, because of the support that I'm receiving from from a loved one.
So I that's that's really a counter to how we often talk about homelessness but I think is critical to actually getting on top of this issue.
The term false economy keeps coming up over and over again, and this is what I see with this issue as well. This is what I see with the crime on our streets and then we always point the law enforcement you're not doing enough you're dressed like a soldier blah blah blah well no one says, you know, why are our streets so damn dangerous why are our schools so damn dangerous.
You know the suicide epidemic the fentanyl crisis the obesity epidemic the cancer rates in this country, and to me there's plenty of money. But the problem is, it's all profit based in a lot of these are including prisons, you know there are there are
there are people in the prisons that need the prisoners to be there, they don't want them to stop coming in. And so we're paying the price for it. So this is what drives me crazy is a true leader, like they did in Portugal with their drug policy like it did in Norway with the way they
have their prisons like in Finland the way they view children in their schools and I've had guests from all these countries on talking about that is it's that proactive element that firstly hopefully comes from an element of humanity that you just want to fix the problem because
there is also a huge financial saving. And the way you get people off the streets and back into homes is you address the mental health you address you know and obviously the, you address the physical health, so now you're not draining the health care system, you know, whether it's through people's copays and they're trying to afford those as like you said hard work in Americans, or there are Medicaid or Medicare, whatever it looks like.
And you now reappropriate those funds to start fixing some of these issues so that false economy the ability for some people and I think I heard you kind of just touch on it, even in organizations that are supposedly supposed to be helping human trafficking or,
you know, the homelessness problem, or even in my profession I see people like the first respond to mental health, oh we've got this clinic and you know what they're trying to do is access the funds that are supposed to be helping us, so they can just reach in there and grab it with their grubby hands to they're not looking to actually fix it.
So, when people say well you know you just want more money it's like no we don't want more money. We just want you stop bleeding money in all the wrong ways, and take that money and proactively invest it in your people.
When they start healing. We will have fewer problems at the border we will have fewer gangs we will have fewer people, you know, living on the streets fewer addicts, the way that we used to America didn't look like this, but now there are some very very wealthy companies and some very wealthy families. We need to measure success by outcomes not outputs. We cannot measure success on the issue of homelessness by okay well let's see how many beds do we have.
How many, you know, programs did we administer how many people lined up today. We have to say well, are people getting off the streets, are they getting the help they need, are they no longer experiencing homelessness are they no longer experiencing food insecurity.
And there's way too much of a siloedness to how we're working on this issue of homelessness, you know there's government agency upon government agency nonprofits nonprofits don't cause homelessness right it's important to acknowledge it like the floodgates are open, and it's very difficult for even the government to respond to the crisis, but it's a crisis of our own making.
And to your point James like, you know right now we're spending $40,000 to $80,000 per person per year to maintain someone on the streets. Police, fire, emergency services, sanitation, shelter, and that number is goes way up when you start talking about folks who are high utilizers of the emergency department. So we're already spending tons of money on homelessness and dealing with homelessness.
The issue is less about, are we spending them. Are we spending money, but it's are we spending money in the right places. Are we actually making investments in the kinds of housing that's needed to get people off the streets in our communities, you cannot be for ending homelessness, but then also in the same breath, fight against the duplex or triplex or affordable housing units that are being proposed in your neighborhood.
You can only have one or the other. And I think most people when it comes down to it should vote, you know would vote for ending homelessness.
You know, criminal justice system right now. As you said there's prisons that are, you know, making profit that is incredibly costly keeping someone behind bars, but when they're discharged, they're discharged to the streets, you know, dropped off at a Greyhound station, maybe in a town where they have no connections, no no loved ones, no family, no job prospects with a few dollars in their name.
So I think there's a lot of efforts that can be made at the point of discharge. So, you know, when we talk about the systems, it's very, it can feel, it can start feeling overwhelming, daunting, where do we start, you know what what's this is.
This is just feels insurmountable. But the truth is like I am more hopeful on this issue of homelessness than I have been, you know, 10 years ago when I started this journey, because I've seen how small but really intentional actions can can change lives can get people off the streets I've seen people in our basic income pilot for instance, two thirds of people secure housing within six months of getting $500 a month for six months, using the money better than we could have used it for them.
I've seen over 800 individuals on the streets get reconnected to family members and many of them getting off the streets as a result and rebuilding social support systems overcoming the stigma and shame that may have kept them disconnected. And I've seen people who have, you know, worked and saved, and maybe that wasn't enough to overcome homelessness in itself, but coupling hard work with government benefit program, local faith based community helping out, you know group donating furniture.
Well, you know now Laney and Gabe who are featured in the book in the work wages and wealth chapter are housed, you know they're, they're, they're in housing. So when you're unhoused neighbors become your house neighbors. It's incredibly gratifying and hopeful. And these systems again where it's not from a lack of money, both being spent right now or that's available. It's really, I think, a lack of willpower to have the hard conversations that need to be had.
And to make the kinds of investments in our communities and in our, you know, neighbors who are homeless or housing insecure that are needed to really solve this crisis and it's not one system it's multiple systems so
you know, I think the connection before your hand Hari's quote. One of the big things that happens in my profession is, you know, military first responders were a part of this cohesive group, we are part of a tribe we have purpose you know we have shared suffering all the things that bring human beings together, and then one day you don't, you either leave the army you get her, you know you retire out the fire service you promote even.
And that isolation that lack of tried that loss of purpose I watch so many of my men and women struggle with that. I've in my first book I made the observation of how, how, how ironic is that people can be so lonely surrounded by millions of people in the middle of the city. And how about the creation of miracle messages and how you were able to start connecting some of these men and women back with their friends and or family.
Yeah, now great great observation James and we need each other. You know we need each other and when we've had that kind of support. We believe that we can do anything we can take on any obstacle in fact, we actually think about why we do what we do, whether it's, you know, serving in, in, you know, in uniform, whether it's the companies we work at, you know, the lives that we're living.
I think one of the sources of grad graded gratification and continuance is the people around us, you know we do it for each other, we do it for our loved ones we do it for our colleagues and peers. So, you know my my work with miracle messages. Even the work around the GoPros and hearing people say you know I never realized I was homeless when I lost my housing only when I lost my family. That was for me a point where I said well gosh, if that's true.
Maybe I could just walk down Market Street and go up to everyone I see who's visibly homeless and just sit down and ask a simple question like, hey, do you have any loved ones you'd like to reconnect to. And, you know, that's why I did. So December 2014 went up to everyone I saw was visibly homeless, you know and met a man named Jeffrey. Jeffrey. Initially I just walked by him, you know he was kind of talking to himself he had a bottle of some kind of alcoholic beverage open next to him.
As I kind of looked tried to smile you know barely made eye contact so I just walked by. But I thought okay today. I said I was not going to walk by anyone going to talk to every single person let me go back and talk to this guy. So I kind of sit down, introduce myself and you know at first just giving me one word responses you know what's your name, Jeffrey. You know how's your day going fine. How long have you lived in the area, long time.
Okay. And then at some point I said well you know do you do you have any loved ones that you'd like to reconnect to. And that was the first time James that he looked me right in the eye. He kind of turned and said, well, my sister, Jennifer, my niece and nephew, Josh and Rachel, my dad Harold. I haven't seen them in a long time. I'd love to reconnect to them. And you know I said well okay would you want to record a message to them you know maybe a video message for the holidays.
He said yes. Yeah I would. So I pull out my smartphone, hit record, pull it up and he records this you know really powerful message which you know still on our website miracle messages.org. And he basically says you know I would love to come home and see you guys again someday if I can and I miss you and I'm okay and I think about you all the time.
So I gather some information from Jeffrey about where his family's based when the last time he saw them was you know any last names addresses phone numbers just whatever information he can recall. I went home and you know get basically get on Facebook and just do a search and I'm like you know is this town where he says he's from even a real town like yeah that's what I did not start from a place of optimism in anything happening from this.
But it turned out when the first results was you know you're from blank if and it was the town's name you know you know you're from blank if and it's every town has a page similar to like that it turns out.
And so I go on there and I found a police department page also for the town. So I reach out to both groups, post a little message saying hey I met this guy says he's from this area. He says he'd like to reconnect with family I don't know anything personally about who he is but I'm the messenger like here's the information and posted the video with a short note. And then you know frankly what happened next was a miracle, because within one hour that video got shared hundreds of times.
It ended up making the local news that night as the leading story classmates started commenting saying hey I went to high school with Jeffrey. I work in construction, does he need a job. I work at the congressman's office, does he need health care. The town came together and within a week or so had raised over $5,000 to try to bring him home and help get him the help that he'd need. And in the first 20 minutes of the post his sister got tagged. And we got on the phone the next day.
And she told me that Jeffrey had been a missing person for 12 years. Broad daylight, downtown San Francisco, a few days before Christmas. And so they, they reconnected in for a phone call a few weeks after that. And then a few months later, reconnected in person. And I knew Jeffrey wasn't the only one, and this shouldn't be happening. And so I started doing this work full time. And that turned out to be the first Miracle Messages reunion.
So I want to get to the book and I want to ask you one other topic. Just before we do give us some other examples. I know there are so many now like you said there's 800 plus people connected now what are some of the other incredible success stories that will underlined not only the hope element of getting people back, you know, into their homes where they belong but also show us the real humanity that exists in a lot of communities.
Gosh, where to even start I mean the, the second reunion so I'll just share that one came top of mind and then maybe I'll just share a brief story still in progress of my own friend who's in our phone buddy program. So first, Johnny. He, so for the next three months, there was no more reunions not because people didn't want to reunite but because I stopped doing outreach I was like, oh my gosh, I don't know what I'm getting myself into.
I don't know if, you know, I'm, I don't know how to do this at scale I don't know, you know, I just don't feel like I'm a good emissary for this work like please, please God, have someone steal this idea and go do it themselves like I don't know let me just sing you a song instead. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that that would have that would not be a blessing into the world I guarantee that.
So, you know, but a couple months go by, and I was like, all right, I feel like I should give it one more shot. And let's see if someone else is interested and if not, I'm never doing this again, and done with it. So I go to the one of the largest soup kitchens, you know, a meal programs in San Francisco it's St. Anthony's St. Anthony Foundation, they've been operating 70 years you know never missing a meal three meals a day.
I go there, make an announcement at meal time. Hey, I'm Kevin, I'm a part of this group miracle messages. We help people experiencing homelessness reconnect to their loved ones. If anyone would be interested in trying to record a message to a loved one, we can help, please let me know.
Crickets, people are eating they kind of look at me. Okay, so I'm on my way out, I ready to ready to see the door. And then this, this gentleman comes up to me and, you know, kind of grabs my arm and says well hey I heard you are helping people reconnect to their loved ones I said yeah yeah that's, that's what I'm here for. So well I haven't seen my family and in over 30 years. So, okay. So I go outside, record his message.
Again, at that time we were using social media to find family, we now have a network of volunteer digital detectives. So I did want to mention that in case anyone who's listening, once they use their digital sleuthing skills for good we need more digital detectives. So I go on at that time social media post the video online. Within a few days his family was tagged in the post.
And within three weeks, they flew from all around the country, or brothers and sisters to reunite with with their brother Johnny, and I sitting there with him and he says you know thank you for giving me my family back. Just incredible, just absolutely incredible and again, this desire of many loved ones to help, but not knowing where the person is. We have families reach out to us. Every week, saying can you help me find my missing brother my son my husband my dad my, my daughter.
They may be experiencing homelessness in San Francisco Los Angeles South Florida. I haven't seen them in months, years, a decade two decades. So, you know, that's the work we do with our reunion services we've done over 800 now and again for folks who are interested, either as digital detectives or offering our services in their local community we work with case workers, social workers first responders.
And then who interfaces with our neighbors experiencing homelessness. They can submit online form paper form, or call our hotline which is 1800 miss you 1 800 m i s s y o u. And, and then speak to a member of our staff a volunteer and we'll take down some information and start the reunion, the search process to try to find the loved ones with our digital detectives.
So I think the, another one that I wanted to just mention as a second story is, is on dress. So, he, he is he escaped from, you know, unsafe situation is home country of Honduras ended up in the United States at a shelter in Oakland, and finding himself isolated and disconnected and not getting the kind of support that he'd need. So he signed up initially for our phone buddy program, which is another way for you know everyday folks to get involved on this issue.
We have a miracle friends phone buddy program. We match everyday folks all around the world for weekly phone calls and text messages kind of like a big brother's big sister's program for our in house neighbors, 20 minutes 30 minutes a week.
We have the training weekly support calls there's a call log, you know you're not meant to be a caseworker. It's really just meant to be a friendly ear, someone to talk to someone to kind of go through life with 20 minutes 30 minutes all virtual phone calls text.
So he signed up for that program, and I had the blessing of being matched with him, you know I lived in Mexico for a year so you know conversant in Spanish, and he's a patient guy so we got, we got matched and became a dear friend of mine we talk every week. He's, he's coming to my wedding next year.
You know I celebrated his birthday a few months ago with my dad in town so he's just become a beloved friend. And in addition to the phone buddy program he was randomly selected for our basic income pilot. So it's an expanded pilot where we have a $2.1 million randomized control trial, where we're giving out $750 a month for one year to over 100 on housed individuals in San Francisco, Oakland and Los Angeles County.
He was randomly selected for that, and is now receiving the the miracle money funds. And then through this relationship and the trust that he and I have I think built in our, in our conversations. I have one other dream that I'd love your help with, he said well I said well what's that he said, Well, 39 years ago, my mom fled from an unsafe situation in Honduras crossed into the United States, but I never found out if she made it alive across the border.
I said oh wow well, you know, let's get some information gathered, you know, anything he knew, and he could recall from his mom and been 40 years since he had heard from her. He didn't know if he was, she was alive. So we shared it with our network of digital detectives. They got to work, made phone calls wrote letters followed every lead did online searches people directories, and we're able to locate her in Texas. She was very skeptical at first, it's like who are these people.
And once we got him on the phone with her, and she started asking him questions you know who's your grandfather, like what's what's their name what what street at this and answered all the questions. And she just burst into tears. Every day. And we're hoping that we'll be able to get, get her out to the Bay Area so they can reunite in person for the first time in 40 years, but that's that's the work we do at miracle messages it's not a silver bullet for ending homelessness.
It's not for everybody. Sometimes no one someone may not have any family members we, you know, invite them to our phone buddy program. The basic income can change lives. But, you know, it's embracing our own house neighbors as people to be loved not problems to be solved, because when we love people, and we get close enough to care to see their problems from their perspective about what challenges they're facing. I think we can actually make a lot of progress in addressing those challenges.
Absolutely. Well firstly I mean those are beautiful stories and that's that's just simply people caring and I've said this even with with peer support in general, if you use just the buddy system from American summer camps or Israeli military philosophy, you know you just
use each other, if each of us just found one person to help. Imagine the impact you don't expect you know a nonprofit or this extremely altruistic member of a community to shoulder all the problems you know if we all just found one person, women, what a difference would make.
And it's one thing and I've been, it's been burning because I want to ask you this. Seven years of interviews with so many people but especially people in uniform. The common denominator when it came to suicide was a feeling of burdensome to their families
and then it's it's a broken mind it's completely. It's so hard for a healthy mind to understand an unhealthy mind but that moment that human being and that was illustrated so tragically in Florida a few months ago where we had a father, police officer, take his own life, his, I think it was girlfriend not wife but she took her own her own life literally within a week and they left behind a tiny tiny baby child.
Now, only an unhealthy mind would think that that child was better off without one or both of those parents. But I heard you talking about the shame and the sense of burden from people that are, you know, experiencing homelessness. What about overdose suicide in that population because again that lack of caring. It's not a statistic that's front and center and a lot of news agencies.
It's, it's such an important topic to talk about, you know, one thing in the book that just pulled up while we're talking that that's one segment of, you know, the, the inner intersection between homelessness and mental health but but really about not wanting to be a burden, choosing to make this, you know, tragic decision of taking, taking your own life. So LGBTQ youth are at a disproportionate risk of becoming homeless, and often that's due to, you know, being rejected by their family.
So by the numbers. LGBTQ youth make up about nine nine and a half percent 10% of the nationwide population of youth, but they make up 40% of the nation's homeless youth population. There have been multiple studies that have linked feelings of rejection, feelings of not wanting to be a burden with an increased incidence of suicidal thoughts suicidal ideation or actually committing or attempted attempting suicide.
And I believe the numbers, I'm just looking at the stat from my book right now rejected use were 8.4 times more likely to have attempted suicide 5.9 times more likely to report high levels of depression, 3.4 times more likely to use illegal drugs, and 3.4 times more likely to report having engaged and unprotected sexual intercourse.
So, when we talk about, you know, our neighbors experiencing homelessness whether it's a young person who feels rejected from their family, or, you know, many of our neighbors on the streets who perhaps weren't rejected by their families, but feel like their failures. Feel like they don't want to be a burden.
You know, I'll tell you James like the, the seven years that you've done interviews, and what you've heard around suicide closely aligns with the 10 years I've spent, and what I've heard from hundreds if not thousands of our own house neighbors. The quote that maybe offers a parallel is when someone says they want to reconnect to their family, but then they change their mind.
For whatever reason and they say I don't want to do it actually after all, the most common reason cited as they say I can't. I feel dirty. You know, this like internalized sense of worthlessness of shame. Linda, who's featured in our book in in the chapter on I believe individualism in Chapter five of when we walk by.
Linda was in prison for a while, and her daughter was looking for her and founder when she was incarcerated you know probably had like Google alerts or doing searches every week and you know trying to find her mom. And she wrote her, her daughter wrote her a letter to her behind bars, that she received. And her, you know, the letter that she summarized was basically like mom. You know, we miss you we love you please come home.
You know there's a place for you here, we have room, you know your grandkids want to meet you I want to get to know you again like you don't need to worry like come home. And she, she never responded to the letter. And she said her reason was well, I don't feel like, you know, a grown daughter should be taking care of her mother like that's, I should be the other way around, and I, I have problems you know I have substance abuse issues and I'm not proud I'm ashamed of who I am and everything
else, but I don't want to hurt them. So this idea of like staying away from the very thing that could help us, because we don't want to hurt those people, it's incredibly painful to articulate but it's it's one of the primary reasons folks are disconnected from their loved ones and it doesn't surprise me that it's, you know, also a reason people may choose to, you know, end their life.
I, you know, it's painful to talk about it's incredibly depressing but I think we can play a role in changing the stigma and the stereotypes on homelessness and see people experiencing homelessness and saying well you're not a burden. You don't deserve this no one deserves this no one should go through homelessness period, but if people go through homelessness in the richest country that ever existed.
Why don't you go through homelessness alone. Let's make sure you're not isolated disconnected feeling other eyes and not worthy by going through something that way too many people in this country are facing. Well I think, as you alluded to the beginning, as a community the way we help, partly is to reduce the guilt and shame around, you know, at that moment being unhoused.
I always talk about chasing the scream, Johan Hari's book if you really want to understand mental health and addiction through a compassionate lens. Read that book. Now yours is when we walk by so give us an overview on the book and then let's talk about where people can find that.
So having done this for 10 years and heard story after story you'd start seeing patterns emerge in those stories. And I just thought gosh, I wish there was a book that shared basically what we've been talking about in today's program and gets into it a lot deeper that
I wish I had 10 years ago when I started this journey. And that's, that's this book, it's really not meant for, you know, just exclusively an academic audience it's not just meant for activists, it's a general reader general public kind of book. And I think the core ideas in the book are pretty straightforward, it's that homelessness can be understood at some level as the most intersectional issue of our time.
You know all roads lead to homelessness from income inequality housing affordability mental and behavioral health crisis, youth development, how we other eyes. Homelessness, even if all roads that are broken in our society can lead to homelessness homelessness is not just a result of a byproduct of broken systems. It's also about brokenness in our shared humanity.
You know how we look at people. Do we know our own house neighbors as neighbors. You know exclusion we haven't talked much about that but right now in the United States one out of every two cities, make it illegal to be experiencing homelessness with anti camping, anti loitering and even sleeping even anti feeding ordinances and law enforcement are in this untenable position of whack a mole. You know with okay we're going to enforce, you know, an encampment ban or loitering ban.
Well, let's move them to the next block, or, you know, and then here we go again. So, homelessness is a byproduct of both broken systems and breakdowns in our shared humanity. And it really is incumbent on us to make to do something about it, you know to get involved. And where can people find the book. You can go to when we walk by.com, which you can order the book there which is our website learn more, but it's available anywhere books are sold. So, online retailers Amazon bookshop.org.
Any any of those as well as, you know, probably your local Barnes and Noble or your local independent bookshop. And then if they want to be part of the miracle messages community, give us the website one more time. Yeah, so it's at miracle messages.org. And we're right now again have a waitlist of folks wanting to reconnect to their loved ones we need more digital detectives, and folks wanting to be matched with a phone buddy.
So looking for more volunteers so folks can go to miracle messages.org, and then fill out our get involved form and join an orientation and see if it's right for you. Brilliant. Well, Kevin, we could have talked for a lot longer I know you gotta go and do.
This has been a pleasure though. Yeah, so thank you so much. I want to thank you, not only for storytelling and obviously for the book but also just giving us a completely different lens and when I saw some of the stories that I shared from miracle messages.
It's a beautiful reminder of the humanity that exists on our streets so hopefully people will glean not only maybe some of the push towards changing some of the systemic problems but also just remind themselves of the ability to affect them from a human perspective as well. So I want to thank you so much for being so generous with your time today.
My pleasure, James. Thanks for reaching out. Thanks again Mark Zuckerberg for connecting us and hey, I look forward to continuing our conversation in the future.