Factually! with Adam Conover - Homelessness, Building Empathy and the Lizard Man of Hollywood Blvd with Mark Horvath

Episode Date: June 26, 2019

As the founder of Invisible People, Mark Horvath conducts intimate, groundbreaking interviews with people experiencing homelessness. This week he joins Adam to talk about homelessness as a symptom not a cause, the stress and anxiety of sleeping rough, and how he survived homelessness himself. This episode is brought to you by Kiwi Co (www.kiwico.com/FACTUALLY) and Helix Sleep (www.helixsleep.com/factually). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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I'm Adam Conover, and look, humans are amazing, astonishing even, in our capacity to not see what is right in front of our faces. Like, you know when you can't find your keys when they're literally the only thing on your coffee table? Or when you confidently declare that you looked in the fridge and there's no mustard in there, and then your partner looks at you with pitying eyes as they point out that it was right in the center of the front shelf? Finding new and exciting ways to refuse to see things that are directly in our field of vision

is trivial for us, but when we do the same thing with other humans, and we do almost every day, it can be a crisis. And this crisis is evident in our treatment of our homeless neighbors, or maybe I should say non-treatment, because for the average person, let's be honest, most of our interactions with the homeless involve trying to avoid them at all costs. Every time we pass a person who we even suspect might be experiencing homelessness, we deploy an elaborate arsenal of avoidance. Eyes to the ground, phone to the ear for pretend conversation, or you just start humming. Just hum so you don't have to pay attention to the human misery right in front of you. Like here's another human being in our own city with no bed to sleep in, no toilet to piss in, living and perhaps dying on the street, and we pass them by.

And our excuse is what exactly? Our podcast just got really good and we can't take our earbuds out? Look, I know we all have stuff to do. I know we can't stop and help everyone. I know that homelessness is not a problem that any of us can solve on our own. I'm not judging you for this behavior. I do the exact same thing. But our refusal to really see and engage with this problem

is unconscionable when we consider the fact that there are over half a million homeless people in this country, the richest country on earth, and those numbers are rising. That is indefensible. And we know it's indefensible, and I'm sure that everyone listening to my voice right now wants to stop it.

But that strong moral feeling we have simply does not match up with how we respond in the real world to actual homeless people around us. This split shows up in research. An academic survey found that 65% of people support subsidized housing for the homeless, and 60% support direct aid. Hey, that's good!

But that same survey also found strong support for policies that actually make being a homeless person illegal. It found a majority of 52% supports banning panhandling, and a plurality of 46% supports banning sleeping in public, policies that, if enacted, would send people to prison just for the crime of not having a home. And you can see the same schism at play in Los Angeles where I live. LA is one of the homelessness capitals of the country. And so the caring, forward-thinking people of LA voted

to pass a sales tax that will raise $3.5 billion for homeless services over a decade. We literally voted to tax ourselves to help our homeless neighbors. That's great. The flip side, though, is that whenever the city tries to actually use those funds to build housing, they face protest rallies from citizens who don't want the housing located in their communities. The message seems to be, sure, we'd love to solve homelessness, but only if we can do it without having to live near any of those icky homeless people. So, why the contradiction? Well, the study I mentioned before gives a one-word explanation.

Disgust. According to the authors of the study, quote, Disgust motivates the desire for physical distance, leading to support for policies that exclude homeless people from public life. In other words, as much as we want to believe that we're compassionate, empathetic people, we all too often allow the fact that homeless people make us uncomfortable to profoundly interfere with our efforts to end homelessness. And frankly, with our ability to even see them as people. But look, we are not powerless in bridging this gap

because once we're aware of it, there are a million ways to get over it. And my guest today has found a seemingly magical method for doing just that. An idea so crazy, it just might work. He talks to homeless people. That's right. He goes up to folks on the street and asks them about themselves. Incredible. I know. Not only that, he records what they have to say, posts it on YouTube, and gives them a chance to talk to us through them. His channel is called Invisible People, and I can't recommend enough that you check it out, because his videos are perhaps the most effective empathy pumps I have ever seen on the internet for this issue. His name is Mark Horvath, and along with the YouTube channel, he also runs a non-profit of the same name, Invisible People, which is an organization dedicated to amplifying

the voices of homeless Americans and providing them with a support network online. And as you will hear in this interview, he is incredibly passionate on this issue. I couldn't be happier to have him on today. Please welcome Mark Horvath. Mark, thank you so much for being here. It's an honor. Thank you for having me. It's an honor to have you. I've been such a huge fan of your work ever since I found it. I want to, before we start, play a clip so that folks who haven't been to your YouTube channel can see what you do. The channel is called Invisible People. Let's just play about a minute of this clip here. Luke, we're here in Los Angeles. You're homeless. Tell me about it.

Well, there's a lot to tell. Los Angeles is a very, very crazy place. I came here with my wife. Her family said, come on. We got on the Greyhound bus. We were on our way. We started calling the first day we left and no answer. We figured just a fluke. Called the second day, no answer.

And from then on, no answer. We haven't spoke to them since you come here and you come here you get stuck and if you got nowhere to go and no real family to bail you out which means my wife don't have you kind of are forced to go to Skid Row now Skid Row is by the bus station it's where all the shelters are it's where all the food is it's where all the shelters are. It's where all the food is. It's where all the resources are located. But Skid Row is a very nasty place. Is it? Yeah.

Go on. It will make it so you are constantly just worried about what you need to survive because everything is being taken from you. You're being taxed for living on certain streets. You have to pay. Basically, drugs run most of Los Angeles itself, but especially Skid Row. Skid Row hurt me in ways that I can't ever explain.

It made me do things. It made me see things that I wish I never would have seen. It's amazing what people can do to other people. So this is what you do. You fly all over the world. You interview people who are living with homelessness, and you throw the videos up on YouTube. How did you get started doing that work?

So many years ago, I had a great job in the television industry making sure the world got Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, Married with Children, a bunch of wonderful, culturally enriched shows. Now, great shows. It was television syndication. I never met Vanna White, but I was one of a group of people that was directly involved in getting syndication shows to your TV set. Right. And I ended up homeless on Hollywood Boulevard.

Really? Yeah. It's interesting because, you know, there's no homelessness for dummies. There's no instruction manual. And here, you know, I was this television guy, and all of a sudden, I'm homeless. guy and all of a sudden I'm homeless. So at the time I had a six foot iguana named dog and, you know, back years ago there, uh, it's, I think it's, you know, a wax museum now right next to the Chinese theater. It used to be a t-shirt shop and a fence. Right. Um, and I was sitting there an offense. And I was sitting there completely hopeless. I mean, one of the reasons I love Luke's story, I mean, I hate homelessness, but in Luke's voice and face, you can feel

the hopelessness. So here I was, I had my head down in my hands. I was depressed. I had dog, my six foot iguana on my shoulder. And back then there was a huge influx of Asian tourists coming into Los Angeles. A bus pulled up, they surrounded me and, you know, my head's still down. And I hear, can we take a picture of your iguana? And I said, sure, with my head still down. And I look up and they're all handing dollar bills.

Wow. And it was that moment I became the Lizard Man of Hollywood Boulevard. So those overweight guys in Spider-Man outfits, you know, I don't know if I started that vocation, but let me apologize right now. You know, but that was my game. That's how I survived homelessness at that period of time. And literally, Los Angeles Police Department called me Lizard Man. Wow. So I was Lizard Man of Hollywood Boulevard. Anyways, I

rebuilt my life back to a three-bedroom house and a new car in the garage and a pool in the backyard and a cushy marketing job and this thing called the economy tanked in 2008. I heard about that. Yeah, yeah. It kind of hit the news cycle for a little bit. And I lost everything again, except my sobriety. I have 24 years sober. And so I'd get a job layoff, get a job layoff. It was a really dark time. And one day I just went, you know what? I need purpose. So I want to tell you that my goal was to change the world. But really, I was giving myself a reason to get up in the morning. That's the first step is to find what is going to motivate you

and what's going to make you feel like your life is worth living. And when I was producing television, I was doing some shows on homelessness. In fact, I even produced my story. And it was my story, but it was spun to raise money. Nonprofits have to raise money. That's not a bad thing, but it wasn't really my story. So that was the foundation of Invisible People. And then I grabbed a camera and I went out and I started interviewing homeless

people and the rest is history I mean it's I've been to over 300 cities uh nine different countries um I'm still unemployed without income I have not you don't have you have a patreon yeah I have a Patreon, but that basically pays enough to run invisible people. I believe in this work because, so the story of formerly homeless people is important because it validates the work. Yeah. of people still experiencing homelessness builds empathy and it creates a desire for people to take action. One says, look, oh my gosh, we housed that person. That's great. The other one says, look at Luke. Oh my gosh, we got to help Luke. How come Luke is still outside? And that's what's so incredible about your work, because I think that my feeling is that the primary gap that we have with folks experiencing homelessness is empathy. That, you know, just a couple months ago here in Los Angeles, you know, we've got all this money for new homeless shelters, and there was a huge protest against one being erected in Venice.

You and I were talking about this before recording it was it was like front page news how you know uh virulent this this protest was people said we don't want the homeless in here and they're criminals and etc etc and the gap there in my mind is fundamentally empathy is is not those folks not having a sense of what the lived experience is of the people who they are talking about. And your videos, through the simplest of methods, your videos are as simple as possible. There's no cuts.

You don't have fancy questions. You go up and you ask people, the ones I've watched, you ask them, hey, how long have you been out here? How'd you get here? What would you do if you had three wishes? Like very simple questions. And through that, you get – it's just an empathy shot straight to the heart just because suddenly through YouTube, you're having a conversation with these people that –

I feel like I'm having a conversation that I've never had before in my life, despite having passed by how many thousands of homeless neighbors throughout my life. Well, empathy is important, but I think it's more than empathy. I think it's education. So, you know, bad messaging on homelessness has been reinforced for decades. How so? You have nonprofits that use need-based images showing homeless people as helpless. And, you know, they're reinforcing this message that for $1.99, buy a meal. And, you know, especially around, you know, turkey season, I mean, you know,

they flood your direct mail and your Facebook ads, and people see that. Nonprofits themselves often will message homelessness in a way that actually works against what they're trying to do. Then you have news media that normally is changed a lot. that normally tell it's changed a lot. You know, media is more taking an active role, but years ago, it was just that they were, you know,

showcasing the horrors of homelessness, but blaming the homeless person. So here's, what's being reinforced is that it's, it's called individualism that it's called individualism, that it's that person's fault. So he's a bum. All they need is a job. Why didn't they go into the shelter? It's bad choice. If homelessness was a punishment for bad choices, we would all be on the streets. Yes. You know what I mean? Very much so. So the leading cause of homelessness is lack of affordable housing.

Yeah. I got in an argument last night. So one thing that drives me crazy is people want to connect now the immigration conversation to homelessness, and they want to blame homelessness on immigration. And I'm like, well, you know, they're really crossing the border renting those high-end condos, you know? Right. You know, come on.

Yeah. But it's a lack of education. And the bad messaging has been reinforced for years. So if you go to Venice or Koreatown or all over this country, the people are responding out of their fears. So you talk about homelessness and they're like, oh my gosh, you're going to let drug addict bums next to whatever. They're already there. You know what I mean? We have to help these people. And then I know you've done some shows on Housing First. I have a great video on Housing First, Invisible People.tv forward slash Housing First, where, you know, Housing

First as a model saves lives and saves taxpayer money. Housing First being the idea that rather than before we say, hey, let's get people sober or get them even fed, let's get them in housing because housing is the thing that they actually lack. And once they have it, all those things become easier to solve and cheaper to solve for the city. Yeah. How do you get better when you're going to the bathroom behind a dumpster in a McDonald's parking lot? Yeah. You know what I mean? How do you – there's no dignity.

And without dignity, there's no healing. Yeah. I mean, how do you, there's no dignity. And without dignity, there's no healing. Yeah. And so for me, housing first saves lives. That's what's important. But maybe you don't have a heart like I do. Well, it also- Saves money. Helps your wallet.

Yeah. You know? The problem is, so we know how to end homelessness. We've known for years how to end homelessness. The public support and the will is not there, which is a big reason I do the work I do and why invisible people is so important because we have to educate the public. So what happens is, and you said it yourself, is people are driving down any street USA and they see street homelessness. And I believe they say, gosh, I wonder what their story is, but they're not going to walk down Skid Row with me. They're just not. But in the comfort of Starbucks on their laptop,

they're going to watch Luke's story and say, man, wow, we have to do something. We have to help Luke and people like him. Which is what they would say if they had a conversation with any one of these folks. And you, I mean, you're really doing it in such a targeted way. You told me before we started taping that you were brought in by the city council member in Venice to help make videos in Venice to try to educate the population. And one of your videos is, one of your recent videos is an interview with a woman in Venice. What's her name? Alicia. Alicia.

And she, she lived in, she says, the first thing she says is I lived in this apartment for 15 years. And then due to, I think she said, a domestic incident, she ended up homeless. And she now lives in front of the same building that she lived in for 15 years. And man, those folks in Venice, they think, I know what they think at those meetings. They think, oh, the homeless are being bussed in from other towns and they're all drug users and they're yada yada. They don't realize this is, no, these are their neighbors who have fallen on hard times or have had something, you know, happen to them, or maybe made a bad choice,

just like you might make a bad choice in your own life. But this is a person just like you, you get that feeling, oh, this is a person just like me. And you can't possibly maintain that same position if you, if you, I don't believe that you can, if you take in that empathy. Venice is an interesting place. And I mean, it's a party town. When Abbot Kenny started it, it was a party town. And it has this bohemian, Grateful Dead, Jim Morrison, hippie artist vibe. That's what makes Venice so amazing. And there are people, I call it nomadic lifestyle. They're not homeless because it's a choice. True homelessness is absence of choice. So you have somebody like Alicia who loses her apartment, she would love to get out of homelessness, but instead she is stuck there. So the city of Los Angeles brought me in to help with Prop HHH, and then the county brought me in and Measure H, those are the, these are these new initiatives that the voters passed in Los Angeles that is we actually decided to tax ourselves to raise money to build housing for homeless.

And I bring it up just to show how powerful individual stories are. For Prop HHH, seven of the top 10 posts shared during the campaign came from invisible people. Far above LA Times, who has 2.2 million Twitter followers, you know, and far above the celebrity video. You know, seven of the top 10 posts came from invisible people. Now, there was, you know, door knocking and phone calls and letter campaigns and in-person events. So there was a lot of moving parts that helped pass that.

You know, Bond, Invisible People was the digital side of it. Yeah. It totally, totally works. And then I give, you know, Mike Bond huge credit because there were locals in Venice that were trying to paint the narrative that all homeless people are criminals. And they were quite effective of doing that. And Mike brought me in and he just let me go. There was no, okay, we want you to do this, this, and this for this campaign.

No, he just wanted me to share authentically the stories of Venice residents. They just don't have a home. Right. You know, these are just members of your community that don't have homes and we just want to hear from them why. And there's something behind the scenes of Alicia's story that's so important. So I don't know how familiar you are of the prioritizing chronic homeless people. That's the idea that if you are getting, is that part of the housing first approach? That if you're choosing who to house? In a way, because what they're doing is triaging. They're saying, well, we don't have a – there's no housing in LA. Or any place.

The Housing First, because I've done work with Housing Works California, which is an organization that – Great organization. Yeah, and they do the Housing First approach. They help run permanent supportive housing. And I've been to one of these, you know, residencies and they're wonderful. They're like apartment buildings, an apartment building that you would be happy, you or I or anybody listening would be happy to live in. And they take folks off the street.

They put them in this permanent supportive housing. They are not, they're in there unconditionally. They don't have to pass a drug test. They don't have to do anything else. They do have to, I believe they have to pay a little bit of rent or at least in some cases. So I have to, I have to stop you because we know you're, you're spot on, but we have to add to that. It saves taxpayer money because the people view housing as a commodity. Yeah. I pay my rent. I pay more and more. You're telling me that they got a nice apartment. You know what I mean? so there has to be that where i was talking about messaging when

we message housing first and permanent supportive housing we have to do it in a way that shows taxpayers they're saving money well it's a benefit to them and the reason you're saving money is because uh the amount of services that the that we would all agree that the city is obligated to provide to those folks when they're on the street is vastly more expensive. Because then they're in and out of the ER room every day, which is obviously massively expensive. Not to mention the amount of money that we'd be spending on, I don't know, police and all these to manage the issue. It is actually cheaper simply to put someone in housing for the city generally. And this has been proven again and again. The actual savings is around $18,900 per, this is United States average, $18,900 per

homeless person per year if we housed them. Wow. Now, if you multiply that by all the homeless people, that's billions of dollars of savings every year. It's billions of dollars of savings, but we have to get past, we have to get the public support and the big roadblock is, I'm not paying for their apartment. Yeah. I got to pay mine.

You need to spread that message. Oh, you're telling me that it's nice? I'm working 60 hours a week for my apartment. You want me to pay for theirs? You know what I mean? Yeah. So the homeless sector needs to fund messaging research because we're shooting ourselves in the foot. I completely agree.

But back to the chronic homelessness with Alicia, because this is an important point. ourselves. I completely agree. But back to the chronic homelessness with Alicia, because this is an important point. So I supported what it is, is they do a vulnerability index to rate people who is the worst, closest to death. And then they place them on, prioritize them to housing. I mean, we have a moral obligation to help hurting people, I believe. Yeah, and people who are at risk of dying in the near future on the streets. I get that.

But I think the model, and Alicia helped me change this. Now I support, so I worked a temp job outreach here. And this was eight years ago. We went to Santa Monica Monica first talking about this vulnerability stuff. And I was close to homelessness myself. And I'm like, you know, you're going to pry. What about me? What about me? And they passed around this book that they shared with, you know, police, fire, emergency services of the hundred most vulnerable that they're targeting. And the book came to me, and I could only look at four or five pages.

I mean, these are people that were in such bad condition. I got it. So I advocated for just, you know, prioritizing chronic homelessness. And then Tanya Tall, who's an icon here, she is the person that, you know, really first implemented Housing First and came up with it. I went to lunch with her and she planted this seed, but I'm going to use Alicia to tell the story. So during the day, Alicia hides in Venice Beach public bathrooms. Wow. Have you ever been in one?

No. They're horrible. I mean, you take the worst truck stop in America. I've been in a city public bathroom, probably in a park or something like that. This is Venice. They're, oh my gosh. Yeah. And she used to be able to leave and hide, but now she locks herself eight to nine hours in one of those bathrooms to hide from the public.

Oh, my gosh. In her video, she'll say the public hated her the day she became homeless. Yeah. And she hides. So right now, and again in her video, she talks about how she'd like to work again. Yeah. She'd been homeless four years. If we housed Alicia right now, in about a year, she would be able to probably get her

life back and go back to work. Because she's only been recently homeless. Right. Yeah. Right. If we wait any longer till she's vulnerable, social services will be paying to support her. Taxpayers will be paying to support her for the rest of the life. So there's an argument to be enough money, ever. And we have to start thinking smarter, but we do need to have, so I got to preface this, and sorry, I have a huge passion on this topic. That's why you're here, man, and I'm very happy to be in the room with the passion.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's really wonderful. Yeah, the homelessness is a symptom, not a cause. Yeah. So until we fix the affordable housing crisis, until we fix racism, until we fix, you know, a living wage, foster care, prisons, we're never going to end homelessness. We're not. The affordable housing crisis is actually what we should all be targeting. I mean, here in Los Angeles, Measure H money, they hired, you know, a thousand more social workers and outreach workers.

And you know what? They're twiddling their thumbs because there's no, they're frustrated because there's no housing. There's nowhere to put the people. There's nowhere to put the people. I support the bridge housing. I think we can't allow people to die while we're waiting for housing to be constructed, but 72 beds in Hollywood, a hundred beds in Venice. We need more. We need more. And then there has to be a path for them to get out of the cots into housing.

So how do we connect the idea of, because when I talk about homelessness with people, it's very easy for me to say, Hey, there are people dying out there on the street. It's our moral obligation to make sure that doesn't happen, right? And anyone I talk to in Los Angeles will say yes. And I'll say, come down with me and, you know, to Housing Works or come, let's do an engagement, you know, session or something. And they'll say, you got it because I'm convinced it's a, you know, humanitarian crisis out there, right? When we talk about racism or the affordable

housing crisis, people don't have that same heat about it, right? We we talk about racism or the affordable housing crisis, people don't have that same heat about it, right? We don't say, even though it's racism and affordable housing, probably some other social ills that are causing homelessness, we don't have that connection with, with the affordable housing crisis, oh yeah, it is too expensive in California, isn't it? Not people are dying on the street as a result. And so how do we connect those more directly for folks so that they see that the one leads to the other and that, you know, the high price of housing in California is, and nationwide, it's not just a California problem, cities all over the country and suburbs too,

is killing people every day. It's a policy change. We have, it's got to be top down. The affordable housing crisis. And, you know, from what I'm seeing this year, we have it's got to be top down the affordable housing crisis and you know from what i'm seeing this year we have some presidential candidates that are talking about it for the first time for the first time that is huge yeah i mean they have to i wish they were talking about it 10 years ago maybe you know um that is so where it comes down to is people like charity because charity is sexy and it makes you feel good. And there's nothing wrong with feeling good. But charity has never solved a social crisis. You have 50 churches going down a skid row every day, opening up their trunk, feeding burritos, making a mess, trying to lay hands on people, doing the fake Hungarian, you know what I mean?

You know, trying to win the loss and then they go back to their church and whatever. And I'm making a little fun of that, but you know, it's good work, but it's not going to solve the systemic problem. We have an army of compassion that wants to do something. We need to guide them to do something. And the example that I like the best is the folks in Koreatown. I don't know if you are aware. I did a vlog on it. There is a group of Koreatown residents.

When people in Koreatown started protesting the shelter, they started protesting the protesters. Yeah. And then they said, you know what? This isn't enough. We got to do something. So they go out every Saturday and they help their neighbors and they are really frustrated. I've seen your video.

Yeah, they're frustrated. There's another group in Silver Lake that's doing the same thing going out once a month. I've been out with that group, actually. Sella, I think, is the group, right? Exactly. So you know Doreen. Yes, I just met her very briefly. And I actually went out because I had seen your videos and because I had heard about it through Hayes Davenport's podcast, LA Podcast, which is a wonderful podcast for anyone who lives in Los Angeles. And he helped found this group. But your videos really made me confront that, hey, I care about this issue. I've done work on this issue. I pass by homeless folks every day,

and I never go and speak to them. It's never happened once, right? Even if I think someone's in pain, I haven't done it. And I got on their mailing list and they said, hey, this Sunday we're going out and we're going to do engagement. And what we do is we bring socks and hygiene kits and food and we just go to a couple different encampments and we check in with folks. How are you doing today? Give them a couple supplies and see if we can help them connect with any services organizations because there's no services in that area. And I was so nervous to do this. I was so, so upset about it. Not upset, but I was, you know, the day before I was like, oh, geez, am I really going to do it? Okay, I'll go and do it. And it was the most positive experience that it really made me want to do it again very soon because it's just folks out there, you know, it's just folks. They're like,

you know, we're like, Hey, we're here. We got some food. People are like, Oh, you have some food. Oh, thank you. And then, you know, Hey, have you been, has anyone, has any, you know, service worker come by? Oh yeah. I talked to someone the other day. Uh, she hasn't gotten back to me. Okay. Well, Hey, let's, let's take down your information or whatever. You know, a couple of people didn't want to talk, you know, they didn't talk. A couple of people didn't want to stay in their tent and just hand them a water. And that little bit.

Try knocking on doors in Beverly Hills. Yeah. It's about the same thing. It's a human thing. So many times we say, well, they're homeless. Well, no, it's a human. Yeah, exactly. That's so perfect.

That's exactly how a normal person would respond, too. Some people will say, come in, would you like a cup of coffee? And some people, get out, I'm calling the police. Get the fuck off my porch. Exactly. And yeah, it was about that level of varying responses. And it just really, it made me so excited to talk to you because that gap is so huge. Right.

And it was shocking to me that it was so tough to get over when that is like the basic act of being human to each other is talking to each other. So two things. So we need more, I'm calling it New York, like they're doing in Silver Lake. How? I don't really know. They're starting grassroots. Yeah. But Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, they have a huge job.

It's insurmountable. I mean, Los Angeles County is huge and 50,000 plus, I mean, the homeless count, it's more like 80,000, but they're not going to be able to help people real quickly and there's no housing. So by communities going out, and then it adds to the education piece. So Invisible People is the only education-based nonprofit in the United States. On this issue. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's research that, well, focused on the general public.

There's lots of nonprofits that educate social workers. Yeah. Our target is the general public. My target is you. Yeah. And there's research that shows kids care. Homelessness is the third most important cause to young adults. So I looked around and, you know, for a kid who's doing a homework, like there's some ninth graders I'm taking out Saturday.

I took some college students out in Venice. There's a video where I Skyped in with a group of seven-year-olds. You know what I mean? That's where the gold is. You know, kids are saying, holy shit, they messed up the world and they're handing it to us. And they care. And so I looked around and I went, you know, for a kid that's doing a homework assignment, they have to weed through all this fundraising stuff that's spun for an agenda of raising

money, or they have to download a 46 page PDF, you know what I mean? Some with some academics. So I created the new invisible people.tv has a learn more section for young adults. And now I'm an unemployed, no funding, right? And I'm doing this. So then if you want to get involved, I looked around and there was no national campaign. There's a lot of national campaigns, but there was none for the general public to contact their legislators.

So if you're in the United States and you click on get involved, I make it easy for you to contact your state and federal legislators to tweet to them, email them and say, we need to do something about this homelessness and affordable housing crisis. Yeah.

And really attaching it to affordable housing every time and not just saying, hey, because it's not we need more soup kitchens, right? That's not what we're talking about. So there is more than enough food on Skid Row. There's more than enough. There's all kinds of videos. And this goes back to the, you know, charity is sexy. Charity makes you feel good.

Charity is easy. Cook some hot dogs. Go down, feed people. I go down with my ladle once a week and spoon from the big thing into the bowl. Right. But, you know, so what, you know, the people in Silver Lake, I always forget. CELA? I believe Selah.

Selah, yeah. Dorit's going to kill me. Well, it's a made up acronym, so there's probably no official pronunciation yet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So years ago, Dorit and I worked in a winter shelter. I was temp when all this was, and she hated me. Oh my God. We're good friends now, but she hated me.

But, you know, they're doing charity. They're bringing some, they're filling needs, but they're also trying to help homeless people connect to services, filling that gap that LASA or other service providers aren't able to do. And they're doing political action. They're going to council meetings and neighborhood council meetings. And so much of it is about going to the neighborhood council meeting. And when someone stands up to say, look, in my neighborhood, I wasn't at this meeting, but I heard about it. There is a proposal to allow folks to sleep in their cars overnight in the library parking lot and to have that be legal.

And, you know, that's something a lot of people don't realize. So much homelessness in Los Angeles, probably most places in the country, is people sleeping in their cars. Because if you lose your home while you still have your car, you can still get around. And so you sleep in the back of your car. And so that's like a really, talk about invisible. That's a really invisible form of homelessness because the people are in the backseat of their car, right? But in a lot of places that's illegal.

You'd get arrested or the, you know, the cops would come. And so the library said, hey, let's just allow, make it a safe place for people to park. And that was a proposal, went before the neighborhood council and people stood up and were like, how can we allow this? It's dangerous, da, da, da, to this very simple proposal. And so much of it is just being the person who, after the person stands up and says that, you stand up and say, actually, I think this is a very good idea.

And, you know, these are our neighbors and they need our support and I'm in favor of this. And because what I heard was, I heard this from Hayes, Davenport spoke about it on LA Podcast, that he saw people giving up on the proposal in real time at the meeting because there were, because there were people voicing their objection, right? And if you imagine what there've been a couple more people there saying, no, I disagree with those folks. I think this is important. We have to do this. Then it would have those, those elected leaders would not perhaps give up on the proposal. Right. And so at the charity level, it's okay to feed people in the park as long as you're doing something to get them out of the park. Yeah. At the charity level, it's okay to feed people in the park as long as you're doing something to get them out of the park.

Yeah. At the top level, Congresswoman Judy Chu once said this, and God bless her. She looked, we're in her office in D.C. She looked, and Dorothy Edwards was there. We looked around. I mean, we're in her office in D.C., and she came right out and said, you know why homeless people don't have the support they need? They don't vote. She said, elderly people vote.

LGBT community vote. You look at every demographic. Yeah. And they have voting power. And that's, you know, politicians. And it's not like the homeless are, too busy on a tuesday it's that you can't register if you don't have an address right and it's survival mode you know what i mean i'm more worried about you know as luke is talking about in his video they're being taxed the gangs

are setting your tents on fire if you don't you know what i mean That's more pressing than advocacy. But my point is we need to be the advocates. We need to, since homeless people aren't voting, we need to be, like you said, at to fix the affordable housing crisis and to get the support needed to end homelessness. And that isn't just money. I spent six weeks in Venice, not consecutively, and I have not connected regularly with homeless people like that since I worked outreach here in Los Angeles. homeless people like that since I worked outreach here in Los Angeles. And it broke my heart when I left because I realized they have a better chance of dying than they do getting help. Yeah.

And that's a fact. And I'm connected. I run an online support group for homeless people. And I'm connected with homeless people directly all over the country. They have a better chance of dying than they do getting help. Something is wrong. Yeah. Something is wrong. And we need to step back and fix the bureaucracy. Yes, we need money. Yes, more money helps.

But there'll never be enough money. There's so many. The one, so I've, a little passion. Love it. So many, the one, so I've a lot, little passion. I don't know who else. And there might've been somebody as crazy as me just traveled all over the United States to interview homeless people. Right. So the one constant of every homeless person in every city that I've interviewed is the insane amount of times they tried to get help and were turned away.

Yeah. You know, I don't know any other industry that would exist, you know, if you went into the Apple store looking for a computer and they said, no, sorry, you're not vulnerable enough. You're not homeless enough. Yeah, we don't have one for you. Right, yeah. I mean, and repeatedly, so that's what creates learned helplessness.

But we need to fix homeless services. Well, let's take a quick break. We'll be right back with more Mark Horvath. Okay, so I'm back with Mark Horvath. I don't know anything. such incredible, sincere, open conversations with people, again, through the simplest of methods. What is your technique? Like when you go up, you know, if you're approaching, hey, there's someone who's, you know, clearly sleeping on the street and let me, I want to go up and talk to them. How do you go about it? And what's your, what's your style and technique for it? So I have to preface that first by saying the invisible people storytelling happens organically. Yeah.

What I mean is there's no funding for me to travel. So a great example, I get booked to keynote a conference on marketing in Dallas. They bring me in, they give me an honorarium for speaking. They paid for the flight. I take that honorarium, extend the hotel, and then walk around Venice. I mean, then I walk around Dallas, you know, and where I need to get to is where I can be more intentional, like with Prop HHH. Look, if we've got any billionaires listening to this show,

please get out your checkbook and don't make Mark write a grant application or anything. Let's just get this guy. Let's get his nonprofits in funding. And I added an option for cryptocurrency on the donation page. So you'll get all the- Bitcoin, Ripple, Litecoin, hit it. You'll get all the offshore dark web drug dealers.

But seriously, I mean, I support you on Patreon because your work is so important and it's clear you're not being funded by United Way or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. way or something like that. Yeah. So I just, you know, yesterday I walked around Hollywood. I have a bag of socks. Grateful that Hanes provides socks. Clean socks. New socks. Brand new socks. And I just love homeless people. I got a problem. I love homeless people. I got a problem. I love homeless people. I would rather hang out with homeless people than any board of directors any place else. I was just at a conference in San Diego.

Yeah. And across the street was a mom with three kids. Yeah. And there was these networking parties, live bands, probably food, you know, fun, fun, fun. And I'm out walking to a hardware store getting a tarp so that the kids don't sleep on the ground. Now, the mom has been on a housing list for four years,

so there's nobody I can call because she's already in the system. She's getting all the help the city's going to give her. Right. And that's just – And that's with a family. You hear those families get fast-tracked. Oh, yeah. That's as fast-tracked as you can be if she's got kids.

Yeah, and so it's really hard to describe – you're welcome to go with me uh but um i just i just walk up to people and i how you doing and would you like some socks and then i start asking how long have you been out here and you know some people tell me to get lost but again i could go to the nicest mall you know uh in los angeles or any and people you want some socks get lost you know it's a it's a human thing and you know then i just sit and talk to them i walking hollywood last night and there's a group of about 20 tents on one of the side streets. And I have my camera out because I want people to know right when I'm walking up what I'm about. Yeah.

You know, I don't want to, you know. Bring out the camera and surprise them. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, it's just developed over the years. And there was a transgender woman who saw the camera and she went off and she came over and she started yelling at me. And it took me a little bit to calm her down. Yeah. A normal person would just run.

But my priority is the relationship. Yeah. So I go into meeting a homeless person, not so much concerned about, am I going to make a video? But how is this relationship? Is it going to be positive for them? So we talked for a while, calmed her down, gave her my card. We talked for a wonderful conversation. And then I just walked away. And that happens more, I mean, also on Hollywood Boulevard last night,

a gentleman comes up to me, a homeless man, and he says, man, I love your videos. You know what I mean? Right. So it's rare that you get the confrontational. Yeah. But that's what everyone's worried about is the is the confrontational. And and I think that might be because, like, to the extent that we non homeless folks have have interactions with, you know, folks in the city. You know, a lot of times people who are really suffering from from mental illness, for instance, will shout.

You know what I mean? Or, you know, that sort of scary interaction, right? And because those are the folks that we only have interactions with, even though that's not most people are, you know, going to be sort of aggressively shouting, right? But we sort of end up believing, oh, that's the reaction I'm going to get from anybody. If I go up and speak to anybody, even if I go offer, you know, someone money or food or something like that, I might get yelled at. And I think that's the fundamental fear. But we never have a chance to find out, hey, that's not true. You know, what you just talked about is the other messaging that people get when, you know, you're walking down a street and there's aggressive panhandling.

I was following a girl driving down Sunset, and I assumed the homeless person asked her for change. And I couldn't hear the conversation. Next thing, the homeless person is pounding on the roof of her car. And I'm like, I'm never going to be able to change that woman's mind. Yeah. She's going to hate homeless people. That's frightening, no matter who you are. And what people don't understand is that homeless person is not in right mind, obviously. Homelessness adds so much stress and anxiety and it's just horrible. And some people react funky, you know,

in a negative way. But you can also have a coworker that got a flat tire or his wife kicked him out or something, and they're going to be an asshole too. Sometimes people are jerks. You know, homeless people, you know, at least I don't want to validate it that they have a reason, but we have to, that's where empathy comes in because you got to put yourself in their shoes. And the difference is, you touched on this earlier, is we all make mistakes. We're all jerks sometimes. Some of us have mental illness or challenges in that department. Or we drink and we do drugs, right?

But it's only when someone is homeless that we say, oh, well, they deserve it because they do those things. I don't deserve to be homeless because I'm drinking and doing drugs in my home. And I'm not in a situation where if I drink or do drugs one time, I'm going to get kicked out or anything. But those folks are – they're human in equal measure to us, and so they make mistakes just like we do. But for them, we're less tolerant of it than we are of ourselves or of our close neighbors. Look at our Congress. Yeah.

Look at the politicians in this country and how they behave and react to each other. You know, I mean, come on. Sometimes humans can be challenging. One thing that you wrote on your site, you wrote a piece that I read recently that really made me think, and it was called, it's okay to give money to homeless people. And that really challenged me because when I was in my early twenties in New York, you know, I was, I didn't have much money at the time. I was, you know, I had a lot of privilege in that, you know, I, I didn't have debt and I had my,

you know, fam, I had a family who, if anything bad had happened to me, you know, I had a lot of privilege in that I didn't have debt and I had my I had a family who if anything bad had happened to me I had that safety net and everything but I was living job to job as a lot of people do at that stage and so whenever I was asked for money there's a lot of panhandlers in New York

you're hanging outside the bar smoking a cigarette and a guy comes up hey do you have any money right I would always feel I'm never going to give money to those folks. In fact, I'm never even going to acknowledge them, right? I'm just going to ignore them. And that's in fact, the most responsible thing to do because, well, you can't even tell if that person is homeless, right? I mean, a lot of, you know, and, and Hey, by the way, if you have enough energy to walk

up and down the L train for six hours a day, asking for asking for money, you know, you might not be in the most dire straits, right? So maybe those folks don't need the money the most. And hey, I should give it to an organization instead. And also what these people are doing is rude. And, and I probably shouldn't do it. And, you know, I just had this voice in the back of my head, hey, not a great policy, right? When my friend would give a dollar to, hey, here's a buck, I'd be all up in the back of my head, I, you really shouldn't do that probably, you know? And I just had that whole system of beliefs, right? And that I didn't really question. And then I read your piece and your piece says,

hey, if you want to give money to a homeless person and you feel safe, it's okay to do that. Not you should, not it's the best policy, but if you're so moved, go ahead. There's nothing wrong with it. And that was stunning to me because I was like, I actually internalized the belief that it wasn't a good idea that it wasn't okay to give money to a person who clearly needs money, who needs the money more than I do. Um, and that, that really stunned me. And it made me question, where did I get those ideas? And am I proud of it? Am I okay with the fact that I had those ideas?

I'm probably the worst person to panhandle from. Because I have a bag of socks with me always. In fact, I didn't bring it up here, but I normally carry my bag of socks always. Yesterday, I gave out 50 pairs of socks, but I also gave out $20 bill to a homeless person. Yeah. And I don't think anything bad of it. I mean, the fear, again, comes back, we believe they're a drug addict. We believe they're a bum. So when I was homeless, when I was lizard man, you know, when I was on the streets of Hollywood, I needed drugs more than I needed air. If I didn't get dope, I would have got dope

sick. If I'm dope sick, I'm vulnerable. If I'm vulnerable out on the streets, I needed air. If I didn't get dope, I would have got dope sick. If I'm dope sick, I'm vulnerable. If I'm vulnerable out on the streets, I'm dead. So the people that gave me money and I went and spent it on drugs saved my life. The other issue is there's things that only money can buy. I had a homeless friend who's standing in front of a CVS drugstore. He needs a toothbrush. He's got a sign, I need a toothbrush. And people are laying happy meals at his feet. I mean, he has, you know, a number three from Burger King,

a number four from McDonald's. He's already got more than enough food. Because people are seeing him and they're saying, well, I'm not going to give money. I'll give them some food instead. The number one thing people give to a homeless person is a half-eaten sandwich. Yeah. Ever go to a cheesecake factory? They give you way too much food.

You know? And then people go walking. I can't wait to see the first homeless person. You know? They're poor. They're going to. Yeah, they're going to eat my half a slice of cheesecake. Exactly.

You know, and in that context, why don't you buy them a whole meal? Yeah. Invite them in to eat with you. Yeah. I mean, yesterday, Erin. Erin, she's been on the streets for Hollywood for far too long. I connected with her and her partner and they have a cart. So I wanted to take them to a nice restaurant. I always allow them to pick because homelessness, true homelessness is

absence of choice. The issue was there was no place for that cart to be safe with all their belongings that would allow us in. So we had to find someplace that had a big window and seats in front of the window that we could keep our eye on the cart. Yeah. You know, and that's another, you know, people say, well, why don't they go into shelters? Everything, you know, shelters don't they go into shelters? Shelters don't allow your belongings. Like the winter shelter here in Los Angeles, you get one bag.

You might have more than one bag. You go inside, all your stuff is stolen. Yeah. That's one of many reasons why people don't go inside. And the stuff that you have is keeping you alive. Well, it's all you have. Yeah. It's all your belongings. I don't know, you know, a lot of people now, it's cool to live the minimalist lifestyle.

I wish I could. Yeah. You know what I mean? Well, the best thing I ever heard about the minimalist lifestyle is that it's actually something you can only do if you have wealth. Because living the minimalist lifestyle means you don't have possessions, right? Like, hey, I can just show up. I just leave my house and my wallet.

I don't even carry a bag, right? Well, that assumes that you can buy anything that you need on the way, right? If you don't have money, you're like, well, I got to carry a big backpack because I got to carry some water and some food from home because I can't afford to eat out. And I better bring, you know, I've got a big clunky old laptop I got to bring because I don't have an iPad or whatever. And you don't have that option to buy everything disposable and then throw it out, right?

And so, yeah, minimalism seems like, oh, I'm saving money. I'm actually helping the planet. Actually, it's coming from a place of privilege and affluence. Yeah. The other thing that people, when they see a homeless person with a laptop or they see a homeless person with a cell phone, they freak out.

Like, how could they afford that? They're homeless. They're in poverty. They shouldn't have the technology we all take for granted. How do you better your life if you cannot connect to the internet? Yeah. How?

It's a necessity today. Exactly. And the issue isn't so much hardware, because now, you know, you boost mobile, cricket mobile. There's a lot of low-end carriers. You can get a cell. I mean, what's the commodity cost of a cell phone? $20 at this point? It's so cheap. It is. The issue is bandwidth. Yeah. So being able, the low-end carriers don't, you run out of your gigabytes in a day, you know, and then you can't connect. My favorite story is James. So there's a guy and he's video blogging out of

the Apple store on 5th. And he vlogged about me and my Google alerts went off. And I was like, a homeless guy video blogging out of an Apple store. I raised the money. I went and I took them out to eat. So the Apple store on 5th is open 24 hours. Yeah. So libraries- In New York. In New York. And libraries limit you to about 45 minutes if you're lucky. And if he could blend in as a consumer, a normal person, then the security didn't kick him out and he could get on the

internet and that was escape. He was literally sleeping in Central Park. So again, I took him out to dinner, let him choose. And I'm thinking about how cool that is. And this, by the way, that Apple store, I know that Apple store and that is the fanciest Apple store. It's a big cube. And then you just send the spiral staircase and, and like the Trump hotel is right there. And it's like the ritziest, that is where the, when,

when the network flies me out, cause I got to do some big network thing for my TV show or whatever. And they're going to put me out. They don't pay me for the weekends. They put me in a nice hotel. That's where they put, that's where they put people to like make them feel like they're giving them the works. Right. By a huge arch. It's the fanci put me in a nice hotel. That's where they put, that's where they put people to like make them feel like they're giving them the works. Right. Um, by a huge arch. It's

the fanciest place in New York city. And then to be living in the park and then going into that fancy place just to be able to use the internet for free. What a stark contrast. And, and so I'm thinking about how awesome it is that James is being able to, you know, sneak in, blend in, and connect to the internet. Then I realized he's tethered to that place. Yeah. So I did a quick crowdfunding campaign. People donated, walked up to Best Buy, let him pick out a tablet. Again, choice.

And he picked out a tablet, and he was able to connect to the internet. When I went and visited him future, we would walk down. He knew every free Wi-Fi. Yeah. And I ended up buying him several tablets because, I don't know, maybe he sold it for food, maybe it got lost, maybe it got – who cares? How do you better your life if you can't connect to the internet? So Amanda, the woman from Seattle.

Yeah. Which is an amazing video that if people go to your channel, watch Amanda in Seattle under a bridge. It's an incredible video. How we first met is Haynes did a campaign where we shipped three smartphones to three homeless people and they recorded a day in their life for Instagram stories. So part of the Invisible People strategy is to connect to new networks. And partnering with Haynes allows me to do that. So Amanda did the work, but Invisible People and Hayaines bought her a cell phone for a year. Yeah.

And then she'll tell you that's what got her out of homelessness. Really? Because she was able to call and make appointments with mental health and, you know, be able to connect to the internet, to service providers. And it was the phone that made the difference. Now she did all the calling. We just provided the phone and the service. Right.

You know, and, but yet the public looks at a homeless person with a phone and. How are you even supposed to get on the city services list if you can't? I mean, so many of the steps are call or, you know, have, yeah, talk to a relative, have them, you know, go to the meeting for you or whatever. I mean, you have to, you need a phone to navigate those systems. Well, one of the, my little pet peeves, and people have great intentions that, you know, the hackathons, they all create Google. They create a directory. And homeless people already go to Google.

And if Google could end homelessness, I think they would. Like when someone, when the tech industry is trying to figure it out, they say, oh, let's make a directory of services. Right. Or service providers say, oh, they're not coming to us because they don't know we exist. You've already turned them away a hundred times. Every homeless, it's a myth that homeless people are not aware of what's out there. They are aware. Creating a directory doesn't make any sense. But they create all these apps that really, the smart move is to leverage the phone that that homeless person has in their pocket.

So now, like Jocelyn lives in an alley downtown. She has anxiety. She's never going to go to an office. I've begged outreach workers to go to her alley. So she has a tablet. She could log on and she could input all the information, pre-populate the forms. People, the pushback I get on that is they go, well, what about privacy and security? Well, it could be anybody doing that. I buy an airline ticket and they check my ID when I get there. Yeah. You know? And so Jocelyn would be able to fill out the paperwork, connect with case managers, update her own profile.

Homeless people move all the time. Yeah. Or they're forced to move. Right. And so that if they were able to, service providers, leverage the phone, it could actually reduce the burden on the social services system. The phone is one of the first, when you think about it, communication is such a need that, hey, if you're not providing with a home, the least they could have is after food and water is like a way to communicate and to reach out to people for help. Hospitals now are doing Skype with their doctors and different things.

There was actually a case study where they studied a bunch of homeless veterans and they just did them a reminder text of you have an appointment because they were always missing their appointments. And it came down that, you know, by using text in such a way, it would save millions of dollars. Did they do it? No, they just fund the research. We need more research about research. I just want to talk about some of the big picture myths about homelessness a little bit. Like one conversation I had with a person I know said, he said, hey, Adam, you know, I talked to a police officer because this is actually in my neighborhood,

and there was some folks squatting in a vacant building, right? And I have a little bit different of a perspective on that because I feel, oh, man, those people need shelter, right? And this person in my neighborhood was a little bit more like, hey, I think the police should be involved because it's unsafe to have people living in the building, which is a perspective I understand. But he says, I talked to one of the police officers, and the police officer said about homelessness, and this was a nice officer. I talked to one of the police officers and the police officer said about homelessness, and this was a nice officer. And he said, you know what? The truth is, the sad truth is that nine out of 10 people don't want help, right, who are on the street. And me having done work with some organizations and having watched your videos and having gone out and done these engagement things, I'm like, there's no way that's true. I mean, I certainly could believe that every person out of a dozen or something like that, some small number might say, might be a real hard case, right?

But nine out of 10, no way. And then I thought, you know why I think the police officer is saying that? How do homeless folks feel when a police officer comes up to them and says, hey, do you want me to be involved in your situation right now? They probably don't feel very positively about that because I feel like, you know, whenever I see police interacting with homeless here, they're usually clearing an encampment and forcing them to move somewhere, right? That's usually the encounter with the police. But from the police's perspective, they're like, hey, all the homeless people seem to hate us, so they must not want help, you know?

And that spreads that myth that homeless folks don't want health don't want help they want to be homeless that's what that's what people think they choose to be homeless but uh los angeles police department spent 30 million dollars on criminalizing homelessness year last year sweeps that's the bridge housing costs around two million so they could have built several shelters with that money instead of doing this. Instead of criminalizing and literally moving people from sidewalk to sidewalk. I saw – I don't know what happened. There's an encampment a couple blocks from me of folks on the sidewalk in front of an abandoned car dealership.

And it was there for months. And then one day I saw police. I saw trucks. I saw people. I'm like, all right, they're moving the encampment. And then a week later, it was back again. So how much taxpayer money was spent and how much misery was spent? It's stupid.

Throwing a bunch of people's stuff into a garbage truck. I mean, people, the stakeholders here in Los Angeles are publicly saying, we want to end homelessness. We love these people. And then behind the scenes, they're supporting criminalization. It just makes no sense to me. But the term that service providers use, or that's yours, is people are service resistant, that they want to be out there.

We're offering them help, but they're service resistant. That's bullshit. Services are people resistant. So what happens is it's called learned helplessness. You're living in a park and you hear that there might be help over at this homeless services. So you panhandle to get bus fare to get over to that homeless services. Now you sit in their office for five to six hours to wait to see a case manager because they have to get your data because that's how they get paid. Now that homeless services

might know, oh gosh, this guy's not a fit, but we need his data. If you're really, really, really lucky at the end of this experience, you're going to get some bus tokens to get back to where you feel safe to sleep at night. Maybe you'll get on a waiting list. Now, you do that every day. Yeah. You do that every day. Yeah. You do that every day. There's a point where learned helplessness kicks in and you say, gosh, I am going to adapt. This is the way I am going to live my life.

I want to be homeless. Now you add to that, the brain is really powerful. So now the brain has to say one of two things. I'm a piece of shit. Society hates me. Or I want to be homeless. Yeah. And that is the issue right there.

It's so overwhelming. To me, because so many people have a judgmental perspective about it that people are homeless because they did something wrong or they want to be there or they weren't able to hack it. And that's why they're on the street. they weren't able to hack it, right? And that's why they're on the street. And my perspective is, even if that's true, even if every person who is homeless is there because they couldn't hack it in some way or the other, right? We've created a society where you have to hack it

to have a place to live, right? You need to work. You need to have a certain level of ability, right? You need to be able to pay your rent, you know? And some people, even if it's true that every single person on the street wasn't able to do that, right? We've created a society where you have to pass that bar in order to have a place to live and some portion of people can't, right? And they're on the street. Do we want to have a society where we let those people die on the street, where that's the

punishment? And meanwhile, we all have to like, we have to step over them as we walk to have a society where we let those people die on the street where that's the punishment? And meanwhile, we all have to like we have to step over them as we walk to work. Right. And it's it makes our cities less beautiful. It makes us confront misery every single moment, every single day. Or do we want to have a society that tries to stop that from happening? It's like it's very simple. that from happening. It's very simple. Even if that perspective is true, it's completely unconscionable to allow that to exist. And we've got to look at what's coming. The affordable housing crisis is not going to be fixed anytime soon. Yeah. It's a big ship to turn around.

It is. And we have automation coming. And in five to 10 years, trucks will drive themselves. They already do now. They just haven't been implemented. Yeah. There's 4 million truckers that will be out of work. Pharmacists are going to be one of the first jobs automated. And why I mentioned those two is because they're kind of at different spectrums. We are going to see job loss like we've never seen before since the Depression.

The other issue is you have boomers hitting 65 at 10,000 people a day. So here in Los Angeles, I believe there's 1.3 million seniors and that's projected to double in five years. So most of the, I lost everything in the 08 crash. I have nothing. I take care of my mom. When my mom goes into nursing home, they take her house to pay for the nursing home. I will be homeless again. And I only say that not to get sympathy for me, but to use that as an example, we are elder homelessness, elderly homelessness, senior homelessness is the crisis that is going to tax homeless services. Yeah.

And. That's coming. It's coming with automation. And I'm a glass half full thinker, believe it or not. There's got to be a silver lining. There's got to be. I mean, you talk about this with a smile on your face for most of this conversation. Right. Because I believe so. I believe that Los Angeles and probably any other big city needs a crisis response. I come into Los Angeles a couple of times a year and my heart is broken seeing more homeless people. And knowing that affordable housing crisis, elder homelessness, and job loss because of automation is coming, we've got to significantly

reduce numbers now. That, you know, if there was an earthquake in Santa Monica, there would be a crisis response getting all those people that lost their homes into housing. If Los Angeles doesn't deal with homeless numbers now in a way that significantly reduces the amount of people that are experiencing homelessness, they're never going to catch up. And I support the bridge housing, but it's not even close to enough. I mean, they're spending more on moving tents than they are building, you know, build more bridge. We have to reduce the numbers. If there's fit, there's 10,900 people entering into homelessness in Los Angeles County every month. Wow. 10,900 people. That means losses

and other service providers are doing a kick-ass job because 10,000 coming in would totally overwhelm them. That means they're taking people off the other end and people are entering into housing, but less than are coming in. Right, right. And so for the person listening, that's an overwhelming, those numbers are overwhelming and the problem is overwhelming. For the person listening who is, I can't imagine who could listen to this and not be moved by what you're talking about. What steps can we be taking personally, and then it's not all personal action, what steps can we be pushing our local communities to be taking to turn this around? to turn this around?

First and foremost, we need to be politically active. We need to advocate for more affordable housing and more support services. That is first and foremost. It's not as sexy as handing out a sandwich, but it is, if we don't change policy, I don't even know, advocate for more affordable housing, damn it. The rent is too damn high. Yeah, yeah. I mean, for everybody. And we need to really focus on that. And if everybody spoke up and we would influence change. And you you know, the thing is, that is the solution to the systemic problem of homelessness.

And also, it benefits everybody. Everybody, everybody except the top 10% is facing way too much, way, way too high housing prices. So, number one, advocate for more affordable housing, more support services. Number two, get involved in your local community. Now, I know not everybody is going to have a connection to homelessness. Maybe it's global warming. Maybe it's human trafficking. Maybe, you know, whatever.

Maybe that's their issue. Find it. Find whatever that cause is that moves you and help them. Yeah. So if you live anywhere in the United States, Canada, UK there, and you're listening to this,

look around your community and find people that are working to end homelessness, not maintain homelessness and homelessness and support them. Now you may go and volunteer and it's not the greatest experience. Go to a different one until you find, and it's not that nonprofits are bad. They're often taxed, and they might not have a great volunteer policy. And you have 20 people standing in a kitchen with a broom, and it's a horrible experience. Go to where you're going to find it's a win win that go to where you're going to find it's a win-win situation that you're providing value and you're getting something back yeah i i would love it if

everybody did like what the people in koreatown and silver lake are doing you know community action where you're going out and you're doing tangible actions to help your homeless neighbors. Just going to encampments and bringing them socks and hygiene and food. Yeah. And as long as you're doing something to get them out of the tent. Yeah. And saying, hey, can I help you connect with services? Or what's your biggest barrier right now?

And also having a conversation and brightening up their day a little bit and showing them a little care and just sort of, hey, how's it going? Exactly. Exactly. And third is educate yourself. Educate yourself and your neighbors. You know, wherever you're, you know, sitting in the beauty salon or your Starbucks or wherever you work, the topic of homelessness is going to come up and somebody's going to say something and you are going to have a great opportunity to say, no, it's not really like that. I was listening to this podcast.

I learned a lot. Go to Invisible People, watch some of the videos yep you know so number one advocate for more affordable housing to get involved three educate yourself and those around you thank you so much for sharing that with us mark and thank you so much for the work that you do spreading this message it's it's really there's nothing else like it and and i was so happy when i found it i'm so happy you're out there doing it and i hope i hope more people follow in your footsteps thanks for thanks for having me. Well, thank you again to Mark Horvath for coming on the show and talking to us about this. His channel

and non-profit, once again, is called Invisible People. You can find him on YouTube and Patreon. My name is Adam Conover. You can sign up for my mailing list and see my tour dates to see where I'm performing all across the country at adamconover.net. We will be back next week with another great interview. Thanks for listening. That was a hate gun podcast.