Mary Brosnahan on Homelessness in New York

a certain disparity around them. Luxury apartments are going up everywhere, while a growing homeless population exists below. I live in the city and I see homeless people every day. I think about where they sleep at night, especially in the winter. My guest today, Mary Brosnahan, knows where many of the homeless sleep. We have known each other for years. Brosdahan and as the President and chief Executive of the Coalition for the Homeless, the nation's oldest organization helping homeless people

and their families. Browsed a hand cares about the people she serves. But she didn't come to the job through social work. She actually studied communications at Notre Dame. I wanted to be a director. Actually you know, it's sister was the most exciting interesting thing I could imagine. Was I love film and I did premed for three years and you know, I had very good, great point average. And I remember having to tell my dad that I wanted to switch to communications then going to see the

dean because you had to switch colleges. And he looked at my transcript and said, okay, I know you're breaking someone's heart. And it took my dad about a week. At first he was like, you're going to be bagging groceries at Kroger. You know I went through the same thing. Yeah. Um, yeah, because they're practical, right they my dad was born in twenty seven, They did my dad was born. And I believe my father was also someone who did not follow his own dreams well exactly, very he was very open

minded about that. Yeah, I think my father should have been a football coach or or you know, done something like that that would have you know, fed his heart, so to speak. Um, but yeah, so it took him all of a week. And then you know, he actually played football in a small college called Saint Joe's in in Indiana. So the fact that I was going to

Notre Dame. I think fulfilled some dream, right, it was this sort of Catholic it's still just a tremendous place, but anyway, loved it, loved iterience and um, you know, but it was actually my mother had taken me to Belfast,

where her family was from the sort of the Catholic ghetto. Um. And I think, well, I was sixteen and visiting my aunt aunt an uncle at great aunt and uncle and just remembering these moments first day, like uh, jeeps with soldiers with machine guns, getting out under an overpass and thinking, you know, I'm a kid from the suburbs, and soldier

looking at me and saying it's dry underhair. Just realizing, you know, and seeing just the huge gap in an experience of kids my age growing up in either the Protestant or in my case, the Catholic side of the Falls road. And I think that that really politicized me in a way that you know, sort of shock immersion. So then coming back sort of planted a seed that probably came up once I came to New York. Now you've finished at Notre Dame. Did you go there more

than four years? Because you said you were premed No, And that was the thing I just this dean saying, okay, um, you know, uh, embryology, that can be a philosophy. They say, how much, yeah, how much your good student would hold on you? Right now? You come to New York And what did you do originally when you were here? And

why did you come to New York? Why? Well, I thought I'd wind up in Chicago because I'm such a Rabbit Bears fan, and uh um, but my dad actually had lung cancer and was getting treatment here in New York, and so coming to New York. My brother had lived here at the time, and just you know, walking around this is still the upper center of the universe as far as I'm concerned. Um, my dad died a few months later. But then, oh well, he died in eighty three,

so he was in his fifties. You want us something that's amazing. My dad was born in nine and he died of lung cancer in And now that we're our age, we realized how young that was. Rights I outlived my dad and I'm only fifty seven years old. You worked somewhere else when you first came here. The head of the film department actually introduced me to a woman who ran Universal Pictures Publicity. So I got right in on the tail end of you know, the old studio, working

at Universal Pictures on Park Avenue. And I remember the first day sitting at my desk with my IBM S electric and uh Chevy Chase walks over and sits down on my on the corner of my desk and orders lunch from the Delhi downstairs, and I thought, this is it. You know, Yeah, it was a great first job because here and I don't know how the subway subways worked, I don't know, you know, uptown from downtown. So it was just a terrific first job to get to know

New York and also meet very cool people. How many years did you do that? Just a few years, and you know how it works. The she left and went to MGM, so I followed her right there little packs that move around. And the last film I worked on was a fish called Wanda with Young Clice and to amazing right. So I got out at the right time because when that was a eight. So I did presidential advanced work. So as Ducacus, where were you? Well know that the great thing about advances they throw you into

a different town every three days. It really took sort of leaving and coming back for me to you know, realize how out of control is the homeless situation. And so that's my question when the Ducacus, when Ducacus loses the election in you returned to New York and this begins the path off you're getting involved in the homeless. Yeah, I think that, you know, I had this sort of almost spiritual awakening where I thought, let me try to do something with my life that would amount to something

that would feed me, feed my soul. And I was going to work one morning at MGM and the phone rings and they said, can you be in Boston by noon? And I said, yes, Boston and noon, and then I was out in Montana that afternoon suddenly swept up. And when I came back to New York again that same

you're just completely depleted. But coming back and living in the East Village there were like sixty guys living in that little Triangle park by Cooper Union and working up the courage to talk to those guys and just realizing some of them are trying to get cleaned up to get day labor and others are you know, let me just you come to New York, You're involved in in something that I have every right to call you know, this in incredibly phony business that we're in, you know,

the movie business, and then New York becomes something else for you why, you know, probably my dad's influence on me. He was UM. I used to joke with him when we would go to vote, I'd call him a yellow dog Democrat, but you know he was a card carrying member of the U a W. And just talking politics

and actually going out on the Ducacus campaign. Because you're in a different city every three days, you meet the most incredible people, you know, union bus drivers and coal miners and waitresses, and you know, from me, it was very stark that split in the road that our nation was facing, even back then between are we going to continue on the Reagan dynasty or are we gonna actually

get back to providing economic opportunity to people? Um? And so then coming back point well absolutely, yeah, I mean I think everybody agrees on one side or the other opinion. I was wondering, well, you know, and especially living in place like Dearborn, right. I mean you've seen the Michael Moore movies with Flint, but you see it. You know, I went to um, you know, my family was on the wealthier side of town, but sort of not as homeowners,

sort of hanging on to the bottom wrong. So my a lot of my classmates were uh, kids of auto executives. But even then you could sort of see the unfield, yeah, and you could see the unspooling as it were, of you know, where those kids going to wind up. And then other kids who were lucky to get a job at the rouge factory that to them if they could put in twenty years. So it really you know, as you get older, things do crystallize more. And I I think coming back to New York, I mean, what tremendous

difference between being housed and homeless. I mean, it's like a precipice that people fall off. And my boyfriend at the time had actually followed this issue much more closely on a on a policy level, and he said, if

you're serious, he wasn't sure. If I was, you should go work at the coalition because even then there was this sort of stratified industry that had arisen around homelessness in New York, right with all the large nonprofits sort of getting huge contracts to provide shitty shelter and not really dedicated to ending the problem was in charge of the city. Then, well that was the tail end of Ed Coach in the beginning of Dave Dinkins and uh, you know, and then of course once we got into

the Giuliani years, it was just full on. Now when you look at that, how do you map what homelessness was and where it changes? One of the the big strong marks in terms of the watersheds going back to after the war list. Yeah, well you you just see the you know, up until that mid seventies point, you know, homelessness was largely confined in every major metropolitan area to the Bowery type of situations where you had people with mostly alcohol problems right and then, and the area wanted

to corral them there in a skid row. Yeah. And um, you had de institutionalization that was taking place across the nation, so large state run institutions which were hell holes that should be closed down. But the promise of de institutionalization was that all that money that was being misspent, you know, basically imprisoning people, was going to follow people into the

community for some sort of housing based model. And instead in New York City is such a dark example of this people would be typically discharged from UH state psychiatric institutions even if they only had a bottle of prescription pills and a few dollars. When their lease would run out or they would start acting out, they could literally walk around the corner and find another cheap place to go to. But at the end of the seventies, we lost well over a hundred thousand units of s R

O housing. And suddenly, why who was in charge when that happened? Well, that just the market forces, you know. Um, it was people realized they could make a lot more money. Uh, he did, and it was and I knew it was an s r O. But but so when well, then it's built out onto the streets. So seventy nine is significant certainly in terms of UH coalition UH Ellen. Back during Kim Hopper were young anthropologists out on the streets and they wrote a brilliant report called private Lives Public Spaces.

And then the young lawyer Bob Hayes sued and based on a clause in the state constitution to establish a right to alter in New York City, And um, you know, ed Coach was such a great guy. We had to do it a second time for women and then a third time for kids. And in the process, you know, I think it was Hopper came up with the name Coalition for the Homeless. You call yourself Coalition for the Homeless. People are going to start showing up at your door

saying I need help. So then we started rolling out a whole series of direct service programs. So described for people who aren't familiar with it. What is the guarantee the city's guarantee for shelter. Basically, if you or I were to become homeless tonight, uh, you could go to the thirtieth Street Men Shelter and you should be afforded a decent bed, a stable bed that's three ft apart from any other bed, and clean linens and variety of services.

You know. Yeah, exactly, there's food, three meals a day, and um, you know that was pretty much all the Coalition could. Um. Actually it's there now. It's a former and how ironic it's the old Bellevue Mental Hospital. So when you go there it can house how many people? Well, there's eight hundred and fifty men there tonight. Yeah, it's it's packed, and you know, and then you can stay indefinitely. But the point being and this is the big what

we've put so much energy into. When we've had some movement recently, you know, let's downsize this insane shelter system and put people into housing, because you know, at the end of the day, they want what you and I want, Alec, they want a door that locks, and they want that oasis where they can go and rebuild themselves. Well, there's a great model supportive housing model housing with on site support services, or you can do it in a sort of scattered site model where you can rent housing on

the private market and go and provide services. Um. So my husband John actually worked for one of the pioneers that started that model. And you just see, you go to work and you provide services for who are you talking about, the coalition or people. If I'm a homeless person and I'm in a shelter of the old Belleview and I want to get out of there and go to an apartment and I have money, how do I do that? Well, up until recently, there was no way

out unless you could earn a living wage. Right. This was Bloomberg's plan, which obviously was no plan at all, which was you'd have to find your own way out. But now we do have a number of rental assistance programs and there are some nightsha or federal funds that are being put aside to help people get out, So it would depend on and more recently we got both the mayor separately and the governor to commit tens of

thousands of units of housing with support services. So, like, we ran into a kid the other night who had an Italy shirt, you know, La Mario Batali, and he had been woken up at three in the morning and his bed was given away to someone else's. Poor kid. His dream was to be a chef and he was working as a you know, just clearing dishes at this place Italy, and you know, we see so many young kids. You know, we had a job and go to a homeless shop. Yeah, that's where we stay. And he was

getting completely screwed over. Fortunately we're there, We're able to get him a different bed. But the point being that I just see so many of these young bus boys, young guys with that glazed look in their eyes, like how the hell did I wind up here? Are out on Wards Island, So it really runs the Gamuts facility in Wards Island. Yeah, there's how many facilities are there in the five boroughs, well, they're over ninety for single

adults and then for the families many more. And I just want to make the point like, either you're working, or you have some psychiatric diagnosis, maybe you're in denial, maybe or not, maybe you're elderly, but all these things now, at least the Doblasio administration is cobbling together avenues so that you can get a flexible support system and get out, whether that's into a new apartment that's being newly constructed or through a rental assistance foucher. Let me let me

ask you. I'm wondering, why is it that even in less desirable neighborhoods in the city, it doesn't necessarily have to be you know, on Park obviously, but we're not building more facilities where we're not building more homes for people to live in like this. And I'm wondering to me, that always happens as a result of some political pressure. Why do you think that that doesn't happen. Well, I

think it is it chalked up to political will. In other words, I think that you know, if you go back to what worked, I think one of his deathbed conversions politically speaking with that coach was his massive commitment to building uh, low income or modal income housing. In the beginning, Oh, it was horrible. It fought us tooth and nail um and uh, you know his even after Callahan was cemented, he opened up this drill floor up in Washington Heights with Okay, that's what you want, We'll

put the cops three ft apart. Like. The point being that his deathbed conversion was he realized that he needed to to do something, and he had a billion dollar, hundred thousand unit program and he set aside ten percent of the units for homeless families and individuals, and that combined with a subsequent agreement between Dinkins and and Mario Cuomo, you start seeing the numbers diminish. And so it's clear what the solution is. It's housing, some form of housing

for the families. It's almost always an economic issue. For single adults, you have a much higher preponderance of substance abuse or mental health issues. But the point is it's far cheaper than Congregan shelters. And going back to your question, so why don't we have more of it? I think that it is that political will and you see that sort of dueling now between uh Andrew Cuomo and and build a Blasio. Uh. You know, maybe they can get together on the same page and get some traction and

get more I think that. You know, Bill de Blasio used to work for Andrew directly. He was Andrew's regional rep here in New York City. I don't know if um, if it's just he's stunned that this guy is the mayor. I don't, I don't know, but it's it's so visceral, and then you see impacting people that have absolutely nothing, um and and but Andrew's nature to impulsively collaborate with you. Well you can say that, okay, um, yeah, So trying

to encourage them both. But I was stunned. I was actually in your neighborhood earlier today and it's sort of gone back. You know that Bullmore building, the best Delhi remember the best sandwich breakfast sandwich place. I was stunned a month ago when that was gone. And now they ripped down the whole. If you walk by that block, it's going to be a story apartment builder. Yeah. So I live north of you, and the same thing on

my street corner. Um, you just you see it eating into the old New York white I assume you came here right to have that vibrancy. More from Mary Brosnahan on our Changing City coming up. This is Alec Baldwin and you were listening to. Here's the thing I'm talking with Mary Brosnahan, President and chief executive of the Coalition for the Homeless. Mary's late husband, John Sullivan, also spent years in the trenches fighting homelessness in New York City.

At the end of last year, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasia announced the city will fund the creation of fifteen thousand units of supportive housing over fifteen years. This should go a long way in helping with the city's homeless crisis, but Brosnahan says more funding is needed. And now tonight there are people in the municipal shelter system, well over two thirds or family these with young kids. They're almost twenty five thousand kids in the shelter system.

So of course are as we run the gauntlet in the city, these are the poor folks that we see. They go to special shelters which allowed children and it's like yes, and and it's almost always economic forces, you know, coupled with unfortunately DV and other things. But it's primarily they can't they can't make a go of it on their own. But then we have the street homeless, um,

and yeah, it's super unpleasant. And I just remember when when John was working at a place called Pathways to Housing and they would engage people on the street and bring them directly into housing. And there was a nurse up in the eighties who was living on that median strip on Broadway Broadway and she and she was living in a little pop tent and um, you know, John had worked with her sister. It turned out that she had had a psychiatric, you know, psychotic break when she

was in her twenties. Long story short, He finally convinced her right because first they think it's some sort of scam, like, yeah, you're gonna give me my apartment right away. So he brings her, he shows her the apartment, convinces her to stay, and then he gets ready to leave and he said, can I get you anything? And she said, yeah, I need a tent, And he went out and got her a tent and set it up, and you know what, three weeks later, having visit her every day and she

started taking her medication. The tent came down. So no matter how extreme the situation, there are solutions, and I think that the coalition is all about getting people to invest in those solutions. Do you believe that people who want to live in New York should be able to stay in New York? Or do we stay to homeless people? You don't get to live where you want to live, meaning we'll give you a home, but that home is going to be up in Austinting. We've got a facility.

We found a federal facility. We found that abandoned college dormitory. We made a deal. We've got a place for you to go, and you guys have to all get shipped up there. Do you think about that? Well, it's a good point because actually part of the McKinney Vento Act was that homeless groups would have first access to these

decommissioned military basis. And you know, it's sort of you have to be careful what you wish for, because, uh, when you put people there and isolate them so they don't have any access to transportation or jobs or that kind of thing, you're creating a whole different series of problems. For them. Most of the people that you see on the streets here in New York, the vast, vast majority, grew up in New York, and so they're sort of

clinging to what they know. Um, we say at the Coalition, if people come to us and they have relatives and have a situation that they can go to, will help them get there. Of course, we're not in business to say everybody has a right to live quote unquote in New York. I do think that the Coalition is different, that it's less of a charity than a than a human rights group. I mean, we do believe that housing is a human right, you know, you know, and it

sort of cuts both ways. If you want to talk about the Scripture and you know Jesus saying that the poor will always be with us, Yes, they will be with us. I've reconciled myself to that. But that doesn't mean that they have to live in squalor on university place and and just die a slow death like that. I think that housing provides such dignity for people and

transforms their lives. Does those people ever get taken off the streets of their laws in the city in which the city literally plucks them off the streets and puts them in a facility because they're so compromised health wise and they're just so foul in terms of their hygiene. Yeah. Well, one of the things that we're coming up against. I don't know if you followed this horrible incident where this former teacher was almost beheaded by somebody else in a

shelter here. I don't think they've caught the man who did this heinous crime that you know, and I have said this repeatedly to people on the state level, that we don't have enough state psychiatric beds, we don't have enough long term psychiatric beds to help the people and the decision correct. Well, yeah, and now it's you know, they have it under this rubric of Mr Team, Medicaid redesign and so on. But on the bottom line, on the front lines, we we have our walk in crisis services.

And let me tell you, people, there's nothing more antagonizing or scary than these people going after my colleagues at the coalition, stalking them, and you know, it doesn't seem to get through. I think that if you go back to Mario Cuomo's tenure, I think that people did hold him responsible for people with extreme psychiatric disabilities on the street. But as we get further away temporarily, I don't think people make that same causal connection with his with his son,

and so we're just interested in what works. And so at the end of the day, you know, of these people, it's about housing slash housing and support services. But there is that point one percent that needs to be reinstitutionalized. And I think that that's something that for whatever reason, the folks and Albany don't want to deal. Likes my

recollection of this issue. We're during the real wave of this was under Patachi where he wanted to close as facility is and put everybody on the pharmaceutical leash and uh, you know, give them drugs and just get them zapped out of their mind if we don't need staffs and therapists and security guards and parking attendants and all the infrastructure of of a state run facility. And they shuttered

these facilities, and um, what happened to your cousin. My cousin, she was a pilgrim state and she died a few years ago, and but I always remember that that they took her this somebody I was very close to when I was a kid and they took her and she um, it just all became Yeah, it was it was like it was like a lobotomy and a pill. I mean, it's almost lobotomized them. But it's so fascinating because I think once you if you can, you know, get away

from the rhetoric. And you know, almost everyone I speak to has someone in their family or their immediate orbit. You know, I have a brother whom you know, committed suicide when he was young, just severe severe to Russian

that went untreated. And you know, I think that anybody listening to this they know somebody these these tragic stories and the weight that it or the toll that it takes on families because you just like you said, you knew this girl when she was when she was young, right, you know, and it's just like, you know, you know, what a difference I believe I never met your cousin, What a difference it would have made for somebody to caring to be on site, who would see her maybe

go off from meds and intervene and have a have an apartment waiting for her when she comes back out, you know, to show her a different way to make it possible for her to have a different outcome. Well. As my friend once said, who had a severe, uh prescriptive pill addiction problem, he was completely incapacitated by that addiction for many years, and then he went into recovery when he was in his forties, let's say were late thirties,

he said. He said, I took those pills because I didn't want to care about my problems in my life anymore. He said. When I got sober, I decided that I wanted to care again, that I needed to care again. And that's what I found was with my cousin, was that those that that pharmaceutical leash kind of thing, what

it only does is help you not to care. She sat on the couch, she watched TV, she chained, smoked cigarettes all day and ate but you know, big bags of Doritos, and she blew up and she was unhealthy and she died. And I think to myself that that that's really I don't think that's what the system intended, but but it does want people just to disappear. And they can either disappear in a good way that they're you know, put into supportive housing, or they just disappear

and wind up dead one day. But one of the things that I learned from you. I've learned a lot of things from you, but one of the things I learned from you was this idea that there are people that are hanging onto the housing they have by a fingernail, and as long as they can stay in the housing they have, there's hope for them. I don't know why the city can't bring the real estate industry to heal, knowing that it's in every one's interest to have low

cost housing is something that benefits all of us. And I don't know why no mayor has been able to get the real estate business to UH to see to see at the see or have they not well? I I was in a meeting recently with Bill Ruden, who's you know, I want to talk about one of the leaders and in real estate and think he gets it. He's sure gets it. I'm sure Bruce Ratner gets it. There's there's people who are smart. I remember when I first started at the Coalition and Dave Dinkins had this

great housing commissioner, Felice Machette. It was this sluttle, you know, fire hydrant, bulldog of a woman and she you know, was helping us redevelop this housing that was given to us because these slum lords were trying to terrorize the tenants. And you know, we talked about the voucher program and there were places like East New York or bed Stye that I was afraid to go to in the light

of day. And um, she said, Mary, one of these fucking days, you're going to reach the end of your rope and you're not going to be will to do this anymore. And I feel like now we're on the we're sort of on the cusp of that where you're not going to be able to voucher the problem away. It really is about bricks and mortar. The problem you brought up, you know, the rent stabilization is that we're just hemorrhaging units. We lost three hundred thousand units of

rent stabilized departments. You do have the lot of the commercial landlords or the residential landlords trying to make a greater profit. Um. And I understand wonder why, Well, it's it's all downstate legislators vote for that as well. No, they didn't. I think that it you know, it gets into the intricacies of these swing Democrats, these five Mason

Dixon Line here in New York. Quite yeah, but there's also I'm sorry, excuse my language, these five assholes who call themselves Democrats, but then they swing over and vote with the Republicans, and then you know, you you you see how much of influence the governor is willing to exert to uh, you know, make it so that this can't can turnue on. We can't continue on down this line? What has been the toe on you? Does it ever

get you down? Yeah? I you know, I I am fortunate that I am able to spend time with homeless people, and you just meet the most incredible I spent time with this young family two nights ago, and you just see the grace under under pressure. I think more and this is a whole different conversation. You know, after John died, I didn't expect but yeah, it didn't expect it to

take so long to recover that sort of hope. You sort of hang in there because I have a great son, Quinn, who just turned thirteen, and you know, you have to hold it together, you know. Um, but you do see that sort of um uh you know that was that was four years ago, and it takes a long time, And I don't even I'm not being very articulate, But

was John involved in the work you were doing? He he for many years did this housing homeless people, bringing them right in off the street, and then at the end of his life became an interventionist and so had had some crazy encounters with very wealthy people doing interventions to grab people and get them into recovery. Would it be fair to ask, do you think that the work

took a toll on John? Oh, there's no doubt, because he was he was at the high level where he was flying from city to city with incredibly wealthy people engaging him to go into insane you know, people barricaded in um townhouses with guns and bags of pill like just insane stuff. Um. You know, I think that people often think like the work either he did or I did, is without any type of I don't know about drama, but it's fascinating in its own right. I mean the

stuff that you encounter. UM, certainly more with the stuff he dealt with that towards the end of his life. But UM, I guess I'm just saying that, you know, uh, yeah, it takes its toll. The thing that keeps you going

are both the homeless people. We just have the most incredible staff, you know, I And it's it's not it's not like dour I think we have some of the funniest, smartest people, right you gotta you gotta have, you know, I mean, you know, like like even my friend and colleague Tim Campbell, there's a homeless woman, elderly woman who just would say the most outrageous things. This poor guy was former you know, jesuit and she would just see

the most outlandish out of nowhere. Um, it's kind of hilarious. Not that she's housed, of course, but the point being, um, that it's such a vibrant place and people are all there because they want us to go out of business. We all want to go out of business, right, that's the difference, Like, let's solve this problem and go out of business. Nobody else wants to work on the front lines of the coalition other than the ones that buy into the larger uh, you know viewpoints that this is solvable,

of course, is solvable. Whether du Blasio gets another term, uh coming up next year. I said, whether he gets another term or not, what do you think is name two that we can go on and on name two things that you think are doable and budgetable, admit that I just make up that word. And budgetable, affordable and politically uh realistic that you'd like to see the city do right away. Well, one thing that has to happen in short order is the governor and the mayor need

to come together. Now they've made separate commitments and they have to do another what is called the New York New York Agreement, so this housing can get built. They've separately said that they're going to commit to fifteen thousand units a total of thirty thousand units. But the only way that that's going to get built is if there is this alignment between the two of them so that people know who's going to do the capital, who's going to do the actual serve US dollars. That has to

happen in short order. Um. The other thing is we need to downsize the shelter system. I mean, people say, again and again, why can't we make it it's safe for you know what, it's it's so much easier just to cut to the chase and get people up and out of the system and shrink the system, get people into housing. UM and heart that money elsewhere or invested elsewhere,

and then we'll reap the benefits on the back end. Well, I want to say that, um, and this is a this is an odd thing, but I want to be honest. And then is I think a lot of people walk through the city and they see the homeless versus panhandlers. There's a man that sits on a bucket out in front of a deli on my block, and he's there every morning and he wants money. He's got fresh clothes on wherever he lives, he's got a home. Then there

are the homeless. Then there are the homeless, and there are people who have fallen through uh this crevice and their lives are just And you tell me, and you tell me this key is bussing tables at Italy and going to a shelter and has about taken away at three in the morning. And you tell me this. I think to myself, I'm going to be in a restaurant one day looking at a kid and going who's clearing my table? And going do you have a home to live in? You? Are you living in a shelter? You know?

I run into these kids and I say their kids. They remind me of of my younger brothers, or you know, in a few years that will be Quinn. Is somebody going to give give out those kids the help they need. Mary Brosnahan, President and Chief Executive of the Coalition for the Homeless. This is Alec Baldwin and you were listening to here's the thing. What are you doing