Stuff You Should Know - How Homelessness Works

Episode Date: December 23, 2010

Today, millions of people around the world are homeless. In this episode, Josh and Chuck take a look at homelessness in the United States, discussing everything from the factors that lead to homelessness to what you can do to help alleviate the situation. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner, the residue-free, fast-drying solution especially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like stone, tile, laminate, vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff, stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging?

They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Fresh off of the Stuff You Should Know Facebook page, where we've been discussing all manner

of interesting stuff like Bob Ross has come up. Have you been posting Bob Ross videos? I did. He's the best. He is. I posted it. I posted it. I posted the peanuts Christmas times here, little segment. You've been posting some pretty good stuff too, but what's one of your favorite things that have gotten people buzzing lately? Did I post about Bonnie Prince Billy or was that on my own Facebook page? I don't know. Did you? No, because you would have taken it down. I would not have. I would respect your posts. I'm sleepy today because of Bonnie Prince Billy last night. I would scoff at it, but I wouldn't take it down. I love that that's become a running gag is me loving him and you making fun of him. Yeah. Go ahead. Okay. You ready for me to make

fun of him? Yeah. I'm not going to. He seems like a nice guy. Okay. So Chuck. Yes, Josh. Chuckers. I wrote a blog post actually recently on homelessness. I read it. Did you read it? Yeah. Really? I read your stuff, man. Are you kidding? I'm a fan. Really? Yes, really. So the whole thing then, you know, this already was centered around, well, it started around this this news that came out in July that the homeless, the population of homeless school children had risen dramatically to about 1 million kids in US schools, public schools, I would imagine, who are homeless. Yeah. Right. And in one particular area, I think by the number, statistically speaking in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, that's a homeless kid per

classroom. Yeah. They had a huge increase, didn't they? There? Oh, yeah. Something like in that state period. Yeah. In Sioux Falls School District, it's jumped 44% over the last five years. And what in Texas? Like 100 plus percent? Yeah. So across the US, there's been an increase of 41% nationwide, right? Of school children. Yes. Of homeless school children. And so Texas has seen an increase of 139%, Iowa 136%. The lowest of the highest five is New Jersey with an 84% increase. And this is, of course, all due to the great recession that's going on right now, right? Yeah, of course. And somebody actually posted, I haven't read the links, but somebody actually posted a comment on the blog that said, you know, it's bad enough, you know, homeless

school children are depressing enough. But, you know, there's plenty of homeless kids out there who aren't in school. Well, yeah, sure. I didn't think about that. So the economic recession is clearly to blame for this 41% increase in homeless school children. And there's a lot of other factors that over the years have contributed to homelessness, which we'll talk about. But Chuck, let's talk about homelessness in the United States, shall we? And we should say we're just going to concentrate in the United States. Actually, I've got a few stats. Do you have? Well, just some stats. Okay. So let's go ahead and talk about this and get the around the world out of the way. Worldwide, they they approximate. And we should go ahead and say that

counting homeless people is a tough bag. Because they it changes drastically, week to week, sometimes. Well, we should say that there's two ways of doing it. One is it's called a point in time count. Yeah, where it's basically like, all right, everybody go count the homeless people in your area today, right for on this one particular night, and then reported in and then we'll tally the numbers. And then the other way to do it is basically over a year. And that's like a huge undertaking, usually done by the Census Bureau, that identifies, you know, how many people have used homeless shelters, how many of them have been different. And it comes up with a pretty rough number. Well, yeah, but one of the reasons it's difficult is because fortunes change rapidly

in this crazy fast moving world, right? And homeless people sometimes are in cars and campgrounds and places where you can't find them. So it's tough to get the dead accurate numbers. But having said all that, my friend, I do have some stats worldwide. Approximately 100 people around the world are homeless. The UN, what did you say 100 million people in the world? It sounds like you said 100. That 100 million. Okay. The UN says there's about 30 million displaced indigenous people. I don't know if they count that as homeless necessarily. I would imagine. So that might be a part of that larger number. And then I started thinking about like, are there homeless everywhere? And of course there are. But I said, what about places like

Sweden and Norway, like where you would not expect homeless people, they have them there. But Sweden only has about 17,000 homeless out of 9.3 million people. It's a pretty small percentage. Yeah. Norway, though, has 1.4 homeless people per every 1000 people, which is right. It's not too far off America's percentage. Really? Because we have about 1%, right? About three to 3.5 million people is the latest number I saw. The latest number I saw is actually less than that. What was it? And this doesn't make sense because the homelessness population has increased in the US since the recession. Yes. So the 2005 number, I think, was 2.3 and 3.5 million between those two, right? Like you just said. But then there's another one from

2009. It's 1.56. So the numbers are all over the place. I bet that's not right. Yeah. So that's a little bit from around the world. Russia, China, Africa, Canada, it happens everywhere. But most of this is US-based because that's where we are. What we can say, though, is that percentage-wise, there's a disproportionate number of minorities that are homeless. Minorities in this country make up about 12% of the population. And African-Americans make up about 50%. And another 13% are Hispanic. Right. Homeless in the United States. Right. African-Americans are the account for between 38% and 50% of the homeless population, right? But they only make up about 12% of the US population? Yeah. Right. And this is, you know, obviously you'll see most of this in big cities, but it's a problem

in rural areas as well. As well. Yeah. And typically, homeless families make up a greater proportion of the homeless in rural areas. Which is that any kind of homelessness is sad, but an entire family being homeless is really tough. Chuck, we talked about what was driving homelessness right now. Driving the increase is the recession. But in the late 20th and this century as well, 21st, right? There's been a combination of factors. And the two biggest drivers are poverty and increase in poverty. And a decrease in the availability of affordable housing. Yeah. Two huge factors, in addition to others that we'll talk about later, that have contributed to people not having a home. That's the saddest stat. What is? Well, because we'll talk about all the other

factors like drugs and alcohol and mental health and stuff like that. But it's sad that the reason why people don't have homes is they can't afford housing. Right. And here's something. I just want to put this out there now. I was reading a history of homelessness in the US. And the author was basically saying, homelessness has been around forever. Yeah. Like apparently 14th century England had vagrancy laws. Right. Sure. Yeah. People have been homeless have been not necessarily living on the streets, but don't have a permanent residence. And that's an important point too. When we talk about homelessness, we're not just talking about people sleeping on the streets. We're not just talking about people sleeping in emergency shelters or even in their cars.

The true genuine definition of homelessness is you don't have a home. Right. You don't have a place that's your own. You're staying with family. You live in a weekly motel. Right. That's homeless as well. Yeah. True. Right. But back to the history of homelessness, the author was saying, you know, we've had homeless in the US since we've been here. Yeah. The difference is we used to have homeless because we couldn't afford to give them work. Right. Right. Couldn't afford to take care of them. Right. Now we can afford to take care of them. We just don't. Right. You know. Well, yeah, that's interesting. You brought that up because I was reading about other countries and America seems to be unique in a very bad way in that a lot of Americans feel like it's deserved

and because you messed up by doing something really bad or you're on alcohol or drugs. Yeah. And a lot of Americans take that attitude that homeless people deserve to be homeless. And then most of the rest of Americans just don't think about it at all. Exactly. And it's a very invisible problem. Right. Or there are, you know, people that do care and don't think they deserve it. Right. And they're what we call good people or advocates. Yeah. Advocates. The war on drugs impacts everyone whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without

any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil answer for that. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Dr. Laurie Santos, host of the Happiness Lab podcast, the show that presents the latest science based strategies to help us live

happier, more joyful lives. In a special New Year season of the Happiness Lab, I look at the pressures we all feel to change for the better in 2023 and how if we're not careful, those pressures can make us feel worse. If I'm honest, it's just hard, man. It's really, it's really, it's really hard to be present. With the help of my favorite scientists and experts, we look at overwork and explore whether striving for career success is really the route to happiness. Too many of us bring the best of ourselves to work and then bring the leftovers home. And we'll see why latching on to fat New Year's diets and exercise plans may not be the best way to give our bodies what they're really craving. When I look back now, I think how unrealistic of me to think that an issue

as complex as an eating disorder or a disordered eating or body image could just be fixed because it's a date on the calendar. Listen to the Happiness Lab on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. So how do people get homeless, Josh? Well, Chuck, let's talk about it. We said that that poverty and the lack of affordable housing are two of the biggest drivers. With poverty, okay? Yeah. Right now, when you quantify poverty and the poverty line, you basically figure out how much the average person pays in a state or in a nation or something like that for housing, utilities, food, that kind of thing. Then you set a line and say, anything below this is you're eligible for government assistance. You're poverty stricken. In the US, the poverty line is

somewhere around 17 grand a year for a family of three. The problem is there's a big disparity between the poverty line and the minimum wage. So the federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. Right? Yep. For a person to work 40 hours a week, that's a normal work week, 52 weeks a year. Yeah, no vacation. None. Like they work five days a week every week. They would gross $15,080. That's not very much money. Right. So you're actually falling below the poverty line, making the federal minimum wage, right? And then consider that actually to afford a two-bedroom apartment. This is the median across the states. To afford a two-bedroom apartment at 30% of your income, which is the definition of affordable housing. Yeah, 30%.

At making $7.25 an hour, you'd have to work 87 hours a week. Ridiculous. So there's a big part of the problem right there. Well, yeah, they said one of the stats in here that was shocking was about 15% of homeless people actually have jobs. So I saw 44% actually. Oh, really? Not in this article, but just across the internet. Well, what is clear is that a lot of people end up homeless that don't think they would ever end up homeless. They live paycheck to paycheck. They have a job and they're getting by, but then something happens. They either lose a job or they have some outrageous medical bills or some catastrophe happens and then your average Joe or Jane with a job can find themselves

homeless pretty easily sometimes. Yeah. It's not always just some schizophrenic who has a heroin problem. Right. In fact, most of the time I would say it's not. We also talked about a lack of affordable housing, right? We said the definition of affordable housing is 30% of your income. Right. Apparently, there are 5 million. Is that what you're shooting for? Yeah. Yeah, 5 million US households pay more than half of their income in rent. Right. That is unbelievable. That's called worst case scenario. Yeah. And the rule of thumb is if you pay a quarter, you're doing good. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, half of your income in rent, you're in a bad bad way. Yeah. That should be living in whatever big city you're living in. Well, that also encompasses

that worst case scenario also encompasses people who live in substandard housing as well. Oh, yeah, true. So it's not just how much you're paying out. It's what you're paying for. Right. Right. Or a combination of the two, right? Part of the problem, Chuck, do you remember Techwood? Yeah. Techwood housing? Techwood housing. Right across the street. No, it's not. Uh-huh. And that demolished, remember they demolished Techwood, which is like the projects in Atlanta right before the Olympics. They were just gone. That's right. And it was like, okay, oh, you poor people, you don't have to go home because you don't have one anymore, but you can't stay here. Right. And that was that. And apparently, there was a nationwide trend

since the 80s. Yes. Between 80 and 2003, more than 2 million low rent housing units were basically either demolished or turned into, you know, high-rise, expensive high-rises. Right. And during that same period from 80 to 2003, government assistance for housing fell by half. Yeah. Decreased by half. So that's going to equal a lot of homeless. So it's not, and not only are we not helping the homeless, we're actually creating homeless. Right. Well, so, uh, we talked about obviously pay and being down on your luck temporarily, live in paycheck to paycheck. Right. Why else would you become homeless? Well, you kind of hit the nail on the head a little bit when you talked about heroin-addicted schizophrenics.

Yeah. Those can be a combination of those two or separately. Mental illness and addiction are two big factors in homelessness as well. With the mentally ill, apparently about 20 to 25% of all homeless people have some type of mental illness. Right. That brings up a really interesting point. Have you ever heard the urban legend that Ronald Reagan is responsible for the increase in homelessness because he closed down all of the mental institutions? Yes, I have heard that. That's actually not too far off the mark. When he was governor of California from like 67 to 74, he shut down a lot of these state-run psychiatric hospitals. Oh, really? When he became president, one of the major things he cut funding to was the treatment of mental illness.

And because of this cut in funding, a lot of mental hospitals shut down, and a lot of mentally ill people found themselves homeless. So, kind of indirectly, in that sense, he definitely contributed to an increase in homelessness. Well, should we go ahead and talk about the McKinley-Vento Act then? Yeah. Since we're talking Reagan. Well, yeah. Here we go. He also signed the first, and it says only, significant homeless act of Congress. Right. 1987. Yeah. The McKinley-Vento Act that had a different name, but then they named it after Stuart McKinney and Bruce Vento, who were two of the biggest champions. Right. And it had all sorts of cool programs in it, right?

Yeah. Emergency shelter, transitional housing, healthcare, food, job training, substance abuse services, all kinds of cool stuff. Yeah. And it's really ironic that he was the president that signed that into law because he is also widely credited, and this is going to take off so many Republican listeners. Yeah. He is widely credited as creating the homeless problem in the U.S. Really? Not just through deinstitutionalization, but through the creation of the wealth gap that we've seen between 1980 and now. You talked about substance abuse and about two-thirds of homeless people struggle with some kind of alcohol or drug problem. Right. Not surprisingly. And then, sadly, domestic violence has a big part to do with it, especially with women. About half the women are battered

women, and they oftentimes don't have anywhere to go. If they're brave enough to actually flee their jerk husband, abusive husband, then they have nowhere to be because their husband might be the sole breadwinner in that kind of circumstance. So they have battered women shelters, thank God, just for women that suffer from abuse. And kids too. I think half of homeless runaways were fleeing domestic abuse or homeless kids on their own, I guess, were fleeing domestic abuse and about 20 percent were fleeing sexual abuse. Yeah. Right. But it doesn't stop there. Unfortunately, when you are homeless on the street, you encounter even more abuse many times. You leave home. You leave an abusive situation at home. You go live on the street, then you get attacked on the street

for being homeless, or you are forced into doing really bad things for food and shelter and stuff like that, untoward things. At the bus station. At the bus station. And veterans, Josh, are a big part of our homeless problem. And that, I can't say saddest of all, because it's all really sad. Yeah. But when you're veterans, when you've got a fight for this country, and you end up one of the 200,000 homeless single men, usually with mental illness, substance abuse problems, because of maybe post-traumatic stress disorder, that is heartbreaking. Yeah. And again, you just keep hitting that nail right on the head, man. There's a lot of overlap in problems or factors in homelessness, like, you know, veterans may be, homeless veterans may be more prone to having a substance abuse

problem or suffering from a mental illness like PTSD, or substance abuse and mental illness overlap in other people as well. Yeah. And part of the problem is you get to get into a vicious cycle. There are far fewer services available, easily accessible on the street than there are if you have a house and an income and an address and a phone number and all the normal stuff that you just kind of need to be able to get by in the US these days. Yeah. And you know, you look at something like the Department of Veterans Affairs, which does as good a job as they can, as far as I know, but they can only accommodate about 25% of homeless veterans. But what's so frustrating is that they could accommodate all of them. Good. If they wanted, if they, not if they wanted to,

if they had the funding. Right. So you see these record bonuses for CEOs. Yes. On one hand, and then you hear about homeless veterans, the money's out there. Yes. And I'm glad it was veterans that got you. I hope it's homeless school children that get somebody else. I hope somebody hears this and realizes that we have all the money we need to take care of everybody. Sure. It's just some of the wealthiest are going to have to give up a little bit of it so that some of the poorest have a house. Right. It's as simple as that. We have the means, just not the will. Yeah. And we're not talking about just some social program with these alcoholics living off my dime. We're talking about homeless veterans and children and abused women. Right. And even if it is alcoholic

veterans, we've already learned, have we not learned already that alcoholism and all addiction is a brain disease that follows the brain disease model these days. You need treatment. Well, that's that whole stupid American idea that I talked about was that some people feel like they deserve to be homeless. They see him on the street and they think, what did you do to get here? Yeah. Instead of, what can I do to help you? Yeah. Well, this is touching the nerve today. It's homelessness. Well, I'm not shocked, but I'm glad I'm angry. That's what I'm saying. Okay. I'm glad you're angry too, Chuck. So, Joshers, let's talk about some of the effects. And a lot of these you can file under duh, but it bears saying. Well, you're talking about

women's shelters. Yeah. Well, women's shelters only let in women. And if you have a teenage son, you can kiss him goodbye. Yeah. So bye-bye family unit. Yeah. Yeah. Physical attacks. Homeless people are attacked, beaten, kicked, chained, peed on, urinated, spray painted. Yeah. Pied on. Lid on fire. Pied on is pretty bad. Yeah. Just because they're homeless people will go out and beat up homeless people. Yeah. The war on drugs impacts everyone whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I was being charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without

any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Dr. Laurie Santos, host of the Happiness Lab podcast, the show that presents the latest

science based strategies to help us live happier, more joyful lives. In a special new year season of the Happiness Lab, I look at the pressures we all feel to change for the better in 2023, and how if we're not careful, those pressures can make us feel worse. If I'm honest, it's just hard, man. It's really, it's really, it's really hard to be present. With the help of my favorite scientists and experts, we look at overwork and explore whether striving for career success is really the route to happiness. Too many of us bring the best of ourselves to work and then bring the leftovers home. And we'll see why latching onto FAD New Year's diets and exercise plans may not be the best way to give our bodies what they're really craving.

When I look back now, I think how unrealistic of me to think that an issue as complex as an eating disorder or a disordered eating or body image could just be fixed because it's a date on the calendar. Listen to the Happiness Lab on the iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, there's like a whole line of thinking that like serial killers practice on drifters. Yeah, sure. Health effects for kids. If you're homeless, you're going to have a higher rate of stomach problems, asthma, ear infections, depression, anxiousness. PTSD is pretty prevalent. Yeah. Yeah. It's a cause of and is caused by homelessness and not just adults, but kids as well.

Right. Like you can actually start to develop PTSD because you don't know where you're going to sleep the next night. I mean, think about it, Chuck. Like, have you ever been without a home? No. Like, I would think it can be really weird to not know where you're going to stay or to not just, you know, have a hard day at work or a hard day at school and to go to know that at the end of this day, you have no idea where you're going to sleep. Maybe you're going to sleep in your car, maybe you're going to sleep in the woods, but you don't get to just rest. You don't get to just take a shower, pop a beer and watch, you know, TV or whatever it takes to unwind. So your stress level is heightened constantly without any resolution to it. And of course, you're going to

suffer PTSD or at least stomach aches or something bad. Right. Adults too, it's not just kids. They can get frostbite, leg ulcers, respiratory infections, HIV and AIDS and diabetes. Yeah, apparently that's way more common in the homeless population. So lots of health effects going on. Josh. I agree, Chuck. So Chuck, we talked about Reagan as both creator and alleviator of homelessness. You talked about some of the programs that the McKinney-Vento Act created. Some of the other programs that have been developed in the United States are like Section 8 housing. Yeah. Right. Do you know about this? Oh, yeah. That's, well, there's homeless shelters, which are like the emergency beds when it's cold, that kind of thing, where you can go

temporarily. Right. And a lot of those are, I would say most. I don't have any numbers on this, but I would say most of those are privately operated. Oh, really? Yeah. Interesting. And then there is the Section 8 thing that you were talking about, which is not public housing. It's when you fill out a Section 8 voucher and you can go find just a regular private apartment to rent from a landlord. It's got to fit certain requirements. And if you meet all those requirements, you only have to pay 30% of the rent and bills. And then the government pays the other. Straight to the landlord. So that's Section 8. But Section 8, you know, there are huge waiting lists. And I read that a lot of cities have shut it down until the list gets smaller. And they're

like, there's no point in keeping a list of four years, five years. We're just going to shut it down, get the list smaller, and then open it back up in a couple of years. Yeah. So good luck getting Section 8 if that's what you're trying to do. And you talked about, did you mention public housing? No. So you talked about shelters. Apparently there were 500,000 beds in 2005. There's now 643,000, or where there was in 2009. And about 3 million to 3.5 million homeless people. Yeah, but that's a pretty significant increase in five years. Yeah, that's true. But with public housing, if Section 8 is not an option, there is public housing, or there used to be, at least at Techwood, which is basically like an apartment block where you go and live and you pay what you

can. And as long as you follow the rules, I just made air quotes, you can stay there as long as you like. Right. Ideally. Right. Again, there's not that many public housing units or not as many as there used to be. We need to talk about food banks, because that's a big part of being homeless, is getting your meal. And you know, the United States, it's not like starvation in other countries where there is no food. There's lots of food here. Lots of food is thrown away. So since the 1960s. Do you know that there's an estimate that up to half of the food we produce is thrown away? Really? Half. In the U.S. And the low estimate is a quarter. Wow. Yeah. I tell you what, never go get a job in the film industry if you want to, the food waste depresses you. Oh, the craft

services? And just catering the whole thing, you know. It's ridiculous. But food banks have been around since about the 60s. And that, everyone knows, you can donate canned goods and non-perishable items, and they will distribute them to homeless shelters and homeless people directly sometimes. Yeah. So that's a big deal. You ever volunteered anything like that? Yeah, I've done the Thanksgiving thing before. This makes me want to do more than that though, you know. Yeah. That feels like going to church on Easter. You know, we should do, we should build like an addition onto your house that we can house homeless people in. My squatting land. There you go. Chuck Squatville. We can put up a lean to or something. Chuck Squatville. It's not a bad idea. Job training though. I mean,

we talk about things like public housing and the projects, and that's all well and good to get people a place to be. But at the same time, you don't, and this is where the Republicans can go, yeah, say it. At the same time, you don't want to support a nation of people on the government's dime without offering some kind of job training and something to say, hey, let us help you get on your feet. Let us help you get a job in data entry or on the manufacturing line or whatever. So, luckily, there are groups like the Coalition for the Homeless first step that, you know, provide this kind of job training and the veterans are doing the same thing with the homeless veterans reintegration program. Right. And I should say there isn't a homeless alleviation program in

existence in the U.S. that's geared toward simply taking care of people. All of them are geared toward ending homelessness in the individual and collectively through things like job training, through things like helping to write resumes, rehab rehab is a huge one, mental health treatment, getting people cheap drugs, like getting them to a point where they're not homeless anymore, like it's addressing the factors of homelessness, not you don't feel like work. And so here's some money that doesn't exist. And I suspect that there's not really a desire to just have somebody give you some money and not do anything ever and just be poor in anybody. I don't know. That's my opinion. We disagree. That's awesome. Well, I don't know if I disagree or not. I don't have enough time to

think about that right now. All right. What can you do though? Well, we can build lean twos on your squatting land. You can volunteer, like you said. Right. Give your time. Yeah. If you don't have the dough, give a little time. If you do have the dough, and it's not necessarily just dough, you can donate old toys and books and toiletries and clothes, that old computer that's gathering dust that you could get $75 for on Craigslist. You donate that instead, write it off on your taxes. Yeah. And maybe homeless people can get trained how to use that computer. Yeah. Or you could donate your car. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's a big one. Yeah. You can be an advocate, try to raise awareness, letter campaigns, all sorts of things you can do there.

You can hire homeless people. Yes. They do have skills, as we've seen. A lot of people who are recently homeless may also just be recently unemployed as well. Yeah. And have job skills. Yeah. And then the last one on the list in the article, which I thought was Bring it home, Chuck. Great. Respect. Huge. When you see that homeless person on the street, don't let the first thought to be in your head, hey, jerk, how did you mess up to get here? Maybe you should think, hey, did you develop schizophrenia in your 30s and lose your job because of that, and get split up from your child because you couldn't care for your child, even though you want to. Because it happened to Will Smith. I was hoping we could make it

through this without bringing up that stupid movie. The pursuit of hapiness. Yeah. Well, it's, you know, they make a movie about it. It was such a big deal. Everyone knows that that guy was homeless with a son. And now he's rich. He's worth 65 million bucks. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, you know what story I like better is the one in this article. That was a guy. What was his name, David? Yeah. He's quoted David Pirtle. Yeah. He was quoted in that respect part. Yeah. He was a just a regular dude, had a job as a restaurant manager, college graduate, and for 15 years as a restaurant manager and developed schizophrenia, got fired, ended up hitchhiking and homeless for two years on the streets of DC. And now,

I think he's heading up a homeless group in DC now, isn't he? Yeah. I think he's an executive at it. Yeah. But he's quoted in this article in the respect like, what can you do? He says, most of the despair in being homeless comes from being treated like you don't exist. Right. And there's something we should point out, Chuck, throughout this, it's however many minutes into this podcast. We've just now used the first homeless person's name, first and last name, of the whole podcast. Yeah. There's a whole conception of invisibility. Yeah, the nameless. They are. They're not the nameless. You can completely interchange that with the homeless. Yeah. That's just as faceless, just as nameless, just as genderless, just as identityless. And

I just want to close and get everybody over to on design. There's this awesome blog post by a guy named John Thakara, T-H-A-C-K-A-R-A, called Look or Connect. And he's talking about, he's using photography to demonstrate how we treat the homeless and how we should treat the homeless. And there's a photography book called Shelter. And this guy roamed around Europe and took photos of homeless, like impromptu makeshift shelters, like blankets hanging over a limb in the woods or someplace under an overpass. But in every single picture, it's just the shelter. Not one homeless person appears in this whole book. Interesting. And Thakara is pointing out like, this is kind of emblematic of how we view the homeless. And then he was also kind of crediting

a girl named Erica Schultz, who's a photographer out of Seattle. And she has a series called Invisible Families. And she photographs the homeless, but then the caption, she includes captions beneath the photograph. And it's of that person. So there's one of a little kid walking through a homeless camp and he's, he's got like this bamboo stick up, right? You see him? And the caption is, here, Jack Eharn, age nine, marches with the bamboo stick while staying at a city located in Skyway. Sometimes Jack would enlist fellow Nickelodeons, that's in quotes, to help him look for worms. On other days, he'd play on a pogo stick in mud puddles or with the resident cabin kitten that had six digits on one paw. The bamboo stick was a gift. So like,

that's a person now, not a homeless kid. Right. That's Jack Eharn, age nine. Well, and the gentleman from DC suggests that if you have a regular walk to work in a city or something where you see the same homeless person on a daily basis, then ask them what their name is one day, call them by their name, look them in the eye. If you don't have to give them money, if you don't want to, little things like that can make a big difference in a person's self-esteem and maybe allows them to view themselves as human again. And you can give them, if you're worried about giving them money that they spend on alcohol or something, give them, get a little food, gift voucher, you know, something like that. So there it is, everybody, our fifth summation

of the podcast, fifth and final. Yes. If you want to learn more about homelessness, you can type that word into the search bar and how stuff works, the blank, generic, genderless, identity-less search bar. Very nice. And since I said that, it's time for, is it listener mailman? Yeah, and in the spirit of this podcast, we're going to do a big old Kiva roundup. You want to explain what Kiva is real quick? Kiva is a website where schmoes like you and me can go and donate, well, I shouldn't say donate, lend increments of $25 to entrepreneurs in developing countries and people on their way up here in the United States even. These loans are pulled together to create a larger loan, which ultimately repay a loan that's already been made to the person.

And then that person uses it for their business, repays the loan, you actually get your $25 back. That's right, if you want. And you can reinvest it and basically it's microlending. Yes. And we have our own loan team, which we are proud to say is the number four team and members on all of Kiva now. I know, that's really something. Behind Atheist, number one, Christians are number two. They're like so angry and right behind the Atheist. And Team Obama is number three and little old us are right there in front of Australia. So let's go over that list again. Go for it, Chuck, from one to four. Atheist of America, Christian Coalition, Team Obama, stuff you should know, Australia.

So awesome. Pretty cool. And we have, as of today, we've loaned as a collective 3,406 members of loan, 10,813 loans to the tune of $313,825. So it is not bad. Is this going to be up for Christmas? I don't know. Jerry, yes. We would suggest you can get a Kiva gift certificate and give it to your loved one at Christmas. It's a nice little cool thing to do in it, like it's stocking stuffer. Right. And they go and lend it. But ultimately, if they want, they're just postponing getting that 25 or 50 or 75 bucks cash for a month or two. And with that, it's repaid. Yeah, it's repaid. It's not a donation. And with that, here comes a listener mail, because this one really got me. Hi, two of them really quick. Hi, guys. My name is Kara.

And I am another one of your 13-year-old fans. Just want to say hi and how much I love your show. Some friends and I make and sell jewelry and donate the profits to Kiva. That is awesome. I know you guys have your own Kiva team, and I love that you use your power to do good. Since most people haven't heard of Kiva, please mention this on your show. It would be so great to get some business that we can re-loan. You can see some of our jewelry and loans at www.tinyurl.com slash projectraw. And I went today and they have these little earrings and little necklaces and rings and things that these 13-year-old girls make by hand. And they've loaned 375 bucks so far. Awesome. And that is Kara in Kensington, Maryland. And that is so cool.

I can't even talk about it when 13-year-olds are doing stuff like this, and CEOs are getting rich and thumbing their nose at the rest of the world. So, Karma is going to bite you one day, sir. And this one, we usually don't plug other Kiva teams, but we're going to because this is from our buddy Sergeant Nudley promoted, Staff Sergeant Walker. Oh, all right. Mr. Bryant, with your inspiration, I've started my own Kiva team for the Armed Forces. With the whole Armed Forces? Yeah, he started an Army team. Okay. That's different. Well, he says Armed Forces Kiva team, but it says Army in the URL. Okay. So, if you're in the Marine Corps, do not give. It is www.kiva.org slash team slash us underscore Army underscore Kiva underscore team. And he says,

wondering if you could just give a little shout out to all the Armed Forces personnel listening to your show. And can they donate to our Army team? And so I'm going to encourage you to donate for the Army team. Everyone else donate for the stuff you should know team. And support Project RAW. I can't believe you did this without checking with me, Chris. You don't want to support ENMD? I'm so sorry. Anyway, good holiday mojo coming your way if you get involved with stuff like this. Well, congratulations on the promotion, Staff Sergeant Walker Cara. Congratulations on being a very, very cool 13 year old, actually a very, very cool person in general. That's right. Since it's around Christmas time and I'm about to weep, why don't we

just bring it on home, drive it through my heart with the sweetest Christmas story you've ever heard in your entire life. That's fact based. Have you got one? No. Oh, I'm just saying. You're asking for them. I'm on the verge of tears. I want to just go ahead and have my, this one has been out first. I got a little weepy a couple of times too. Did you really? No. Okay. If you have a good story for us, a good holiday story, we want to hear it. Send it in an email. You can wrap it up, tie the ribbon on tight, make sure the card is attached and send it to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our

homepage. The HowstuffWorks iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff, stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? They just like pillaging. They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil answer for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Langston Kermit. Sometimes I'm on TV. I'm David Boreen. I'm probably on TV right now. David and I are going to take a deep dive every week into the most exciting groundbreaking and sometimes problematic black conspiracy theories. We've had amazing past notable guests like Brandon Kyle Goodman, Sam J, Quinta Brunson, and so many more new episodes around every Tuesday, many episodes out on Thursdays where we answer you, the listeners conspiracy theories. Listen to my mama told me on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.