Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 143 - America's Homeless Epidemic

Episode Date: June 10, 2019

Really hope you enjoy this one. One of my favorite episodes so far. Such a big topic that touches so many lives. What is the history of homelessness in America? Why are people homeless now? Who is homeless now? What is being done to help the homeless? What COULD be done to help? I touch on mental health issues, substance abuse, economic conditions, good ol' fashioned laziness, and more. I also share a lot of personal homeless encounters and really try to look at this issues from as many sides as possible, and as fairly as possible, on this little edition of Timesuck that feels almost, dare I say it, important. Hail Nimrod! Thanks for allowing us to donate $2400 this month the National Alliance to End Homelessness:https://endhomelessness.org/ Yip, yip, yaw! Happy Murder Tour Standup dates: (full calendar at dancummins.tv) June 13-15th Raleigh, NC Charlie Goodnight's CLICK HERE for tix! July 26-27 Cincinnati, OH West Liberty Funnybone CLICK HERE for tix! August 1-3 Charlotte, NC The Comedy Zone CLICK HERE for tix! August 4 Richmond, VA The Funny Bone CLICK HERE for tix! August 9-10 Orlando, FL The Improv CLICK HERE for tix! *** LIVE TIMESUCK *** Orlando, FL The Improve CLICK HERE for tix! Listen to the best of my standup on Spotify! (for free!) https://spoti.fi/2Dyy41d Timesuck is brought to you by the following sponsors: For Hims: Try Hims for just $5 a month at ForHims.com/timesuckED Great Courses Plus: Get a FREE month of unlimited access to their entire library when you sign up now at thegreatcoursesplus.com/SMART Watch the Suck on Youtube: https://youtu.be/v62lLAEg-Ng Merch - https://badmagicmerch.com/ Want to try out Discord!?! https://discord.gg/tqzH89v Want to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever current page hasn't been put in FB Jail :) For all merch related questions: https://badmagicmerch.com/pages/contact Please rate and subscribe on iTunes and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG, @timesuckpodcast on Twitter, and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcast Wanna become a Space Lizard? We're almost 5000 strong! Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast Sign up through Patreon and for $5 a month you get to listen to the Secret Suck, which will drop Thursdays at Noon, PST. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. You get to vote on two Monday topics each month via the app. And you get the download link for my new comedy album, Feel the Heat. Check the Patreon posts to find out how to download the new album and take advantage of other benefits.

I've been shocked if anyone listening to this episode had neither experienced homelessness known to someone who's experienced homelessness or encountered someone who is homeless. Even if that only means you drove by them on the road, some of you I'm sure have been homeless yourself. According to nHolmusness.org on any given night last year, roughly 552,000 people were homeless in the U.S. and over 180,000 of those people were homeless with other family members. Over 35,000 of them were children. Not even close to all of them were lazy drug addicts who chose not to work and preferred

to just aggressively yell insanity at strangers and shit on the sidewalk. Those homeless for sure exist. I've encountered them many, many times, but they're not the only type of homeless person, which is why this suck is worth digging deep on. How many of you would be homeless right now? Or would have been homeless at some point in your adult life if you didn't have family to stay with somebody to help growing up. My parents got divorced when I was eight.

My two year old sister and I and my mom moved in with my grandparents. My grandparents fed us, gave us a place to stay, bought our clothes and more when my mom got back on her feet. What would have happened to us if they hadn't been there to help or if other family members hadn't been around to possibly help, would we have been homeless? Maybe, certainly possible. Honestly, don't know.

I'm not sure my dad had enough money to put a roof over our heads at that time. What I do know is that my mom got a full-time job, they paid either minimum wage or close to it and got another part-time job on top of that so we could move into one of my grandparents, tiny rental houses directly across the street from my grandparents home for what I'm sure was a very friendly family rate. I know the only reason we got our back to school clothes at either came out or shopgo instead

of a thrift store was because my grandparents continued to help impossible to raise two kids as a single mom with a low income job or jobs if your family or friends or the government or somebody isn't helping in some way. It's like Joe Cocker saying a woodstock. Oh baby, I get by with a little help from my friends. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, right? What are you fucking help? I think about how many people are very, very close to being homeless right now. Some people I know seem pretty damn close to being homeless or at least having to find some

friend or family member who's going to take them in or help in some way. Check out this little bit of scary economic information. A June 2018 report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition, which bases their info on federal data, states that a minimum wage worker would have to put in a weekly total of about 122 hours working 52 weeks per year. That's 122 hours a week to afford an average two bedroom apartment in this country. That leaves 46 hours a week total to not be at work.

Six and a half hour, six and a half hour days, six and a half hours a day, excuse me, goddamn, to sleep, spend time with family, relax, maybe even occasionally have sex or masturbate. Why are so many people who do in fact work and work even more than full time? Why are they still on government assistance in this country? Because they'd be homeless if they didn't get that help. The federal minimum wage hasn't kept up with the cost of living since the 1960s, the late 60s.

And you don't need an economic to read to understand that that is not good, not good for people who end up on the street, not good for the rest of society who can either figure out how to help those people get off the street or deal with desperate people, possibly willing to take desperate measures so they, you know, don't die. I wondered how hard is it to raise a family and not be homeless where I live right now in Cordillay, Idaho? Small Small city just over 50,000 people. Much much cheaper to live here than it is to live in a Portland or Seattle or San Francisco, Los Angeles Boston someplace. Get ready for this with more scary numbers. Let's look at how

hard life is for a family of four trying to not be homeless. If both adults work full-time, but both only make minimum wage. Let's call this family the McFoo bars. Idaho's minimum wage is currently the same as the current US federal minimum wage, 725 an hour. That hasn't changed since July of 2009, even though the median price of a home in America has jumped from little over 140,000, 2009 to just over 180,000 now, not that anyone is going to be buying

home on minimum wage as a whole other issue. Two people working full time at minimum wage with no weeks off would each make 15,000, 80 bucks a year combined. That's 30,000, 160 bucks a year before taxes. An Idaho in addition to having federal taxes also has state taxes. An Idaho just under 8% of your minimum wage check would go to taxes, leaving you with $27,853 a year or $2,321 a month. So under $2400 a month to pay for your life.

Based on examining local real estate ads rent for a two bedroom apartment here in Cordal Lane is anywhere from 710 to 1795 a month. I can only find one two bedroom unit that was offered at $710, 865 square feet, two bedrooms, two baths. However, that price is based on a two person occupancy. The unit charges an additional $125 a month for a third person and another $125 a month for a fourth person.

So really for a family of four, rent is $906 a month, which is about the average cost for most of the other two bedroom apartments in Cordelaine, Idaho. Air condition is free. There's no in-unit washer and dryer, water and electric, not included. Electric and water combined can cost around another hundred bucks. The average total utilities bill for a two bedroom apartment in Coralaine is $120 for even numbers and to estimate on the very low end, let's say this hypothetical family looks into the mother of all deals mother. And they get a two bedroom apartment for eight hundred and fifty dollars a month utilities included, which is

cheaper than the cheapest deal that I can actually find right now. That leaves them with 1471 a month for all other bills. Now, I'll talk about food. No point in having a roof over the McFoubar's heads if they don't have bread and their bellies. According to a recent USA Today article, kind of recent, it's from 2013, feeding a family of four in American costs anywhere from $146 to $289 a week. I'm sure it's more now, right? Just with the way inflation goes.

On the low end, in a 30-day month, that's $625 a month. Now you have $846 bucks left for the month. And again, I'm going really low on all these costs. Very hard to buy four people's monthly groceries for about $600 a month unless they're also poaching meat, shooting to fucking squirrels, forging for berries and mushrooms and shit in the woods with their copious amounts of free time. Less than $900 a month now, left, and we have infected in a car, insurance, clothes, savings, technology, or luxuries of any kind, no cell phone, no PS4, no fucking frappuccinos.

And what about daycare for the McFoo bars? The cheapest low income daycare in Cordelaine as far as I can tell starts at 70 bucks a week. Per kid, if both kids are in preschool, that would roughly be $600 a month for both kids. This is by far the cheapest low income daycare I can find. Now you're down to $246 a month. Still haven't made a car payment or bought gas or paid for you know, Auto or renters or health insurance or clothes or smokes to have something to take the fucking edge off And when you're in this kind of situation, you're dealing with a rough amount of edge in your life You're on the edge of being homeless now. Let's say the McFoubar's have a car just one

Hard to live around here and get to work and get kids a daycare and get the groceries etc If you don't have a car cheapest auto auto insurance I could find was 73 bucks a month. They're down to $173 now for everything else for the month. And that's if they have a perfect driving record and a really shitty car. So let's say the McFoubar's do have a really shitty car, just one, 1982 Chevy citation. Maybe they have their last working Geometro still in the road and they own it outright so they don't have to have a car payment. We can have maintenance, maintenance costs,

gonna cost at least an average of about $1200 a year, tire, shit falling apart, oil change is a mission test. That's what the AAA says it costs to keep a new car running, probably more for the average beater. They're down to $156 or $146 a month now. And then gas, gas is at least another $1500 a year based on national averages, based on the averages, based on

the current prices. Fuck, that's super confusing, right? Why gas would cost so much? Anyway, that's a whole other thing. That's $225 a month now. Now the McFoolbars are running at a monthly deficit of $79. Now they're in the hole, and that's when they own the car. That's when they live in the cheapest, a part, actually cheaper than any apartment I can

currently find. That's when they work full time all year long, never take a week off, never get injured, never get sick. What about medicine? What about doctors and dental visits? What if one of them, if food bars needs glasses or has special needs? Right, they're already in the hole

and apparently they're naked because we still haven't factored in clothes yet. These poor fuckers just wandering around naked in the hole, not ever eating out, not ever having a fucking McDonald's happy meal. They don't have a cell phone. Who works and raises kids without a cell phone? How is Mr. McFoubar supposed to find something to jerk off to and give himself a few minutes

of joy in the rotting pile of shit that is his life without a cell phone? What about the internet? Any retirement, any savings, any meal outside their home, a fucking single bottle of bottom shelf vodka to try and drown some sorrows in. Without grandparents like mine, helping out other family or friends watching the kids, without government assistance, a family like the McFoubar's is almost guaranteed to become homeless at some point. Even when both McFoubar parents work 40 hours a week, and a lot of people are in the same boat as the McFoubar's.

The Foubar boat, the fucked up beyond all recognition boats, over two million Americans make seven, 25 an hour or less according to Bureau of Labor Statistics. And they're not all high school kids. Now they're not all just high schoolers doing that for some disposable income. So they can blow it on condoms and lead. They're working families on the edge of being homeless.

Homelessness is what we're talking about today, the history of it, the reasons for it, drug abuse, unfortunate economic situations, mental illness. Sometimes could all fashion laziness. Lot of different people sleeping on a lot of different streets for a lot of different reasons. It's a complex issue, not fun to be homeless, not fun to be mentally ill.

No way to easily, you know, with no way to easily access needed treatment or to be addicted to opioids or to be a kid out in the street, live and breathing collateral damage to a series of decisions that somebody else has made. Also not fun to have to worry about blatant drug users, you know, camping in your neighborhood. I get that aspect of the argument,

we're gonna talk about that too. You don't have them near your kid's school or wanting to departing garage when you're walking to your car alone at night. We're gonna look into what some people have been doing to fight homelessness, what we could do to help out with homelessness and more on a social awareness, possibly perspective shifting eye opening edition of Time Suck.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You listening to Time Suck? Happy Monday, meat sacks. I know that was the longest opening of all time, but time suck. Welcome to June, Dan Cummins. Sir Saksalat, Suckmaster, the mush-mouthed Mafioso, who now knows that poisonous and venomous are not synonymous. Mm-hmm. Got a lot of emails.

It's good. Hopefully he'll stick now. Time's like editor Jesse Dobner, quick to point out that he literally told me this difference two years ago. Me it'll stick now. Time's like editor Jesse Dobner quick to point out that he literally told me this difference two years ago. Me slow learner some time. Hopefully my incorrect usage of poisonous doesn't become a situation akin to my inability to correctly pronounce Newg there.

Confident shattered. And that is based on the Darwin award suck when I talked about poisonous snakes. They're venomous. All right. All right. Hope you're enjoying the start of your summer. More than Albert Fish loved having a bloody button, a mustache full of peanut butter. That's how they do it.

Hollywood Chobbys. Hail Nimrod, hell loose, the name of praise about Jangles, glory be to triple them. Recording in the suck dungeon here in CDA with Reverend Dr. Joe motherfuckin Paisley and the script keeper, Zach Flannery, as Queen of the Suck manages every other aspect of my life right now. A good news, given $2,400 to charity this month, hail Nimrod. All things to the space, those are to support the show for five bucks a month on Patreon,

allowing us to hire full time employees, reinvest and record an equipment and much more. The space, those are to have even made some new podcasts possible. The suck keeps me so busy. It's taken a while to get ready to launch them. But this summer, we are launching the first of two new podcasts that will not replace time suck.

Just be some different audio candy, some different audio entertainment for your earholes to hopefully enjoy greatly. Launching a horror podcast will give more details later, including the launch date, but it's going to be me telling my wife and coworker, Queen of the Suck Lindsey, a variety of tales that people claim to be true. Horrible tales I found either on the web or in a lot of old books. I got four episodes worth already put together because I don't sleep as much as human supposed to.

When will I become a robot and not need sleep? Hopefully soon. Come on, scientists, figure it the fuck out. But Lindsey and I are going to record these scary tales in the dark every week. The ones I've found spooky as shit, hopefully going to scare her, hopefully scare you as well, probably going to scare myself. We'll see how terrified we both are when I hit the road and then she's home alone. I'm in a hotel somewhere alone. We're out fit in a new recording studio with multiple cameras, Deluxe Soundboard, and much more

right now get ready for a whole lot of shadow people level to fear coming your way soon. They're meat sex. Space Lichards also get 20% off all merch. A subscription to the Secret Suck where they have all kinds of fun on Thursdays at noon, Pacific time. They get a digital download on my Secret stand-up album, Field of Heat, and a portion of their donation goes to a different charity every month, all hail to Space Lists. And this month, Time Suck is giving $2,400 to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, founded in 1983. The National Alliance to End Homelessness is a non-partisan, nonprofit organization whose sole purpose is to end homelessness in the US.

They use research and data to find solutions to homelessness, working with federal and local partners to create a solid base of policy and resources that support those solutions and help the communities implement them. One of the solutions they support is the housing first homeless eradication strategy we'll be talking about later in this suck.

Donate more yourself to find out where to donate. Check it out. It's going to be in the episode description. It's nhomelessness.org. Again, the link will be in the episode description. Thanks, everyone, for the continued reviews, various online, reviewable places. Thanks to all you street team sticker all stars, blanketing much of the world and time sucks stickers. You can see the pictures on our social media at time suck podcast Twitter Instagram Facebook Instagram is easiest place in my opinion to check it all out Follows there. It's amazing to watch Thanks also to those who came out to Omaha recording this and advanced those shows I'm gonna assume I had fun. I know I had fun in Jacksonville my first time at the comedy zone there had a lot of cool suckers come out to the shows

One even this lady even brought two baby monkeys, not joking. This is the first that I know of. The monkeys seemed happy. I think I found a new audience demographic. I want to do shows for baby monkeys now. They seem to enjoy themselves. Looking forward to Rowley, North Carolina this weekend, Thursday through Saturday, June 13th to the 15th, 18th and up at this venue. Get in there, young suckers. Get the fuck in there. Last happy murder tour standup shows until the end of July when I hit Cincinnati on the 26th and 27th at the West Liberty funny bone.

What if I just went door to door to show it up in towns? What are you doing tonight? Just knock on doors and various, what are you doing later tonight? I got a comedy show. Hey, okay, okay, get the fucks in my show! God, I should try that at least once. I don't know, probably not.

I shouldn't try that. I tell him I'm gonna end up on the street. Let's get back to our topic, too, by homelessness. A phenomenon that hundreds of thousands of meat sacks are experiencing right now. It's very moment for a variety of reasons. That's just counting homeless in the United States, few of whom are time suckers.

I've read their emails over the past years. We do have some homeless listeners. The last time a global survey of homelessness was attempted by the United Nations in 2005, Illuminati, a disturbing estimated 100 million people were homeless worldwide. And as many as 1.6 billion people lack adequate housing of any kind.. I know a lot

more people experience it in a different way. Maybe you're losing customers because you operate a business near a food bank or shelter and you've had it with a less than hygienic non-customers scaring off the pain customers to the point that you're worried about losing your business. Being angry about a growing homeless population in your neighborhood or near where you work doesn't make you a monster. Hopefully though, you don't think all of those homeless people are just on the street because of a lack of work ethic or poor character qualities. If only life were that simple.

Again, it's a complex issue. And if we ever hope to solve the homelessness crisis, we need to first understand it. So let's get smarter. You know, it's thirst and beautiful motherfuckers. Let's start by defining what it even means to be homeless. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What exactly is classified as homelessness? Might seem obvious.

Might someone's sleeping on the sidewalk, right? Not necessarily. I slept on the sidewalk for a while one night, after doing not doing the proper math, when it came to factoring in how altitude affects personal alcohol consumption limits. When I was at a comedy festival in Aspen, Colorado, I had a home, that night I had a hotel.

I was just too drunk to find it. I think God I was lied enough at that time for a comic named Chad Daniels to literally carry me to my room and then make sure I didn't die. He has a new fantastic comedy special by the way called Dad Chaniels. The Amazon Prime, check it out.

But seriously, homelessness has a lot of different looks. In the US homelessness is defined officially in several different ways. The definition varies between regions and has to conform to different government assistance program requirements. Health centers funded by the US Department of Health and Human Services, HHS,

use the following description. Defining homelessness as a homeless individual is defined in section 330H5A as an individual who lacks housing without regard to whether the individual is a member of a family, including an individual whose primary residence during the night is a supervised public or private facility, for example, shelters that provides temporary living accommodations and an individual who is a resident in transitional housing. A homeless person is an individual without permanent housing who may live on the streets, staying a shelter,

mission, single-room occupancy facilities, abandoned building, or vehicle, or in any other unstable or non-permanent situation. The HRSA, the Health Resources and Services Administration, an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, defines homelessness as an individual may be considered to be homeless if that person is doubled up. A term that refers to a situation where individuals are unable to maintain their housing situation and are forced to stay with a series of friends

and or extended family members. In addition, previously, homeless individuals who are to be released from a prison or hospital may be considered homeless. If they do not have a stable housing situation to which they can return, a recognition of the instability of an individual's living arrangements is critical to the definition of homelessness. A program funded by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, HUD, used a different, more limited and frankly, pretty outdated definition of homelessness. In my opinion, they define homelessness as anyone who wraps a couple of baloney and American cheese sandwiches and an old hankerchief and then ties it to the end of a stick, throws

that stick over their shoulder and runs away from home eventually making it to some lonely train tracks where they eventually encounter some elderly hobos who teach them how to open cans of bean with their teeth, play the harmonica, and how to jump in and out of moving freight trains. And of course, that is not how HUD defines homelessness. That is just the result of me watching too many cartoons as a kid. There are six aspects in HUD's definition. An individual who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence, that's one, two, an individual who has a primary nighttime residence that is

public or private place not designed for or ordinarily used as a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings, including a car, park, abandoned building, bus or train station, airport, or campy ground. Three, an individual or family living in a supervised, publicly or privately operated shelter designed to provide temporary living arrangements, including hotels and motels paid for by the federal state or local government programs for low income individuals or by charitable organizations, congregate shelters and transitional housing. For an individual who resided in a shelter or placed not meant for human habitation and who is exiting an institution where he or she temporarily resided.

Five, an individual or family who will imminently lose their housing as evidenced by a court order resulting from an eviction action that notifies the individual or family that they must leave within 14 days. Having a primary nighttime resident that is a room in a hotel or a motel where they lack the resources necessary to reside there for more than 14 days, or credible evidence indicating that the owner or renter of the housing will not allow the individual or family to stay for more than 14 days. And any oral statement from an individual

or family seeking homeless assistance that is found to be credible shall be considered credible evidence for purposes of this clause has no subsequent residence identified, lacks the resources or support networks needed to obtain other permanent housing. Then six, unaccompanied youth and homeless families with children and youth defined as homeless under other federal statutes who have experienced a long-term period without living independently

in permanent housing have experienced persistent inability or instability as measured by frequent moves over such period and can be expected to continue in such status for an extended period of time because of chronic disabilities, chronic physical health or mental health conditions, substance addiction, histories of domestic violence or childhood abuse, the presence of a child or youth with the disability or multiple barriers to employment. I like how specific the 14 days part was. Like they for sure had numerous meetings to figure that out. Lots of emails, lots of scrutinization, someone pitched shale months, someone pitched a year or months, someone pitched a week, they don't probably arguments.

But listen, Jeremy, if we define homelessness, is anyone who might be on the street in a month, according to the goddamn nation's gonna be homeless? There's no way in the month, hard no. Now I'm a shawl, a week feels heartless. Can't get anyone, any of some kind of assistance program, if we only got a week, we need at least two weeks.

14 days, that's the definition, right at down corner. Now that's settled, let's get back to what we hear in this government department do best, creating a bunch of convoluted, unnecessary frustrating paperwork for American citizens to be able to never fucking figure out how to access the programs we've been hired to create. Let's go lunch.

A lot of legal definitions necessary to prove that one qualifies for various social programs. Basically, you're homeless when you or if you're a kid when your parents don't own or aren't paying for some sort of permanent residence or aren't staying with someone who owns or is paying for a permanent residence and it's cool letting you live there as long as you need. If you're sleeping in the street or in a park or in a shelter because you've got no other place to go, if you crash on a crash on a buddy's couch for a few days, don't know where you're gonna go after that. You are fucking homeless.

And like I said earlier, way too many Americans, either homeless or real close to being homeless, new study from the Federal Reserve says, four and 10, four and 10 Americans cannot afford to handle a single $400 emergency. 400 bucks separates them from having to get help from a family, friends, or the government, or being out on the street.

Now, let's check out the history of homelessness. And the US, at least, if we looked at the history of the, yeah, we're going to look at the US because if we looked at the world, well, once you go back to the time before the ancient Samarians and other Mesopotamian cultures, the world's first known civilizations, everyone was kind of homeless. And that kind of weird to think about. I also know him was homeless because no one really had homes in the way we think of them now. You know, you go far enough back the ancient version of being homeless or being homeless,

excuse me, just having to find a new cave. Have you get forced out of a current cave? Maybe a bear comes in there and you're like, fuck, I gotta find, I'm homeless now. It's bear is going to take this cave. God damn it. I just bear is gonna take this cave. God damn it, I just had to vacate another cave because of a saber-toothed tiger. Or maybe you gotta find some new leaves

to build a rudimentary tantra fort, you know, with because you happen to do something to your old leaf. Maybe you ate them. Maybe you decided to eat your original home. Simpler times. One life was arguably much harder, but when there was also, you know, no such thing as economic disparity.

Okay, let's talk about the current situation. Let's talk about for today's time suck timeline, when you get into it right after a quick word from one of today's sponsors. Today's time suck is brought to you by him, sexual performance issues, more common than you think. Luckily for him is calm. He's here with a discreet and effective way to help. Whittle your wood into something magnificent,

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time suck ed. That's F-O-R-H-I-M-S dot com slash time suck ed forehimns.com slash time suck ed. Link in the episode description button on the time suck app. Now, let's talk about bonus and get back to talking about homelessness those two probably do not go hand-in-hand I imagine it is easier to focus on your bonus if you have a private residence to beat them inside time for today's time suck timeline strap on those boots soldier we're marching down a time suck timeline Let's head back to 1607. The year I was born, highlander! That can be only one!

No, 1607 is the year the Jamestown colony was settled in America's first colony that survived anyway. Jamestown tried to initially incentivize their colonists with the common good mantra, sharing land like some kind of crazy communists. Sounded good in theory, it's all share of the land for the colony and farm it together. And guess what happened? Famine setting. Why? Partly because in a group setting like that, in my opinion, and the opinion of many historians,

some people tend to not pull their fucking weight if they think other group members will pick up their slack and then the whole group suffers. And this is going to relate to homelessness, I promise. You know what, assignments I hated far, far more than any other kind of assignments back in school, group assignments. Why? Because for some reason, I almost always got stuck with some fucking deadbeats who cared far less about what score the group project was, gonna get than I did.

Free loaders! For more than happy to just let me do all the work, my hatred of communism has early roots. Yamoldo don't work! Ho ho ho ho! Yamoldo don't work! Don't keep forgetting, it only works in theory. Don't keep forgetting communism really works in theory. Don't keep forgetting communism really. So Hux asks, triple-amd spent too long.

You just got McDonald's new listener kind of. You got McDonald's parody. It did. Something. But for real, the land of Jamestown lush and fertile yet within three years, many of the colonists died during what came to be known as the starving time. And some historians think that only the establishment of private property saved Yet within three years many of the colonists died during what came to be known as the starving time. And some historians think that only the establishment of private property saved Jamestown.

And it wasn't just because some people were lazy. It was because people just tend to work harder if they know they will be rewarded for that hard work. Most meat sex need incentive to do their best. I firmly believe that British economist historian conservative political journalist Tom Betel wrote in a book called the noblest triumph property and prosperity through the ages. The colonists were indolent because most of them were indentured servants, expected to toil for seven years and contribute to fruits of their labor to the common store. And

Tom feels that since the first men of James down knew they wouldn't benefit from their hard work, they just tend not to work very hard. And I agree with Tom. Then in 1611, a new governor, Thomas Dale showed up. He arrived to find people bowling in the street rather than working the land that clearly needed working and expanding fortifications. And he decided to cancel their little communal experiment, open up the colony to private ownership, and it was a great decision. Dale allowed it every man, three acres of land, freed them from a dentured servitude to

work the land for themselves, keep the fruits of their labor for genious story and Matthew Page Andrews wrote, as soon as the settlers were thrown upon their own resources and each Freeman had acquired the right of owning property. The column is quickly developed what became the distinguishing characteristic of Americans and aptitude for all kinds of craftsmanship

coupled with an innate genius for experimentation and invention. The Jamestown colony became a success largely due to the concept of private ownership and people from all over Europe flock to America. Tom Bethel, many other historians and economists feel that private property ownership is essential for optimal overall economic growth

and I agree strongly. A few people might not care about owning their own home or business, but I sure as hell do. And so do most of my friends. The thrill of owning your own business part of what keeps me fired up about this podcast. Sure, I love learning all of this truly, but I also love not having a boss,

make my own business decisions, and owning this baby. So what does this have to do with homelessness? Nothing, I decided to change the topic. Now we're doing a Jamestown suck. Fucking deal with it. Anyway, let's talk about Jamestown for the next hour and a half. No, be gone, Mr. Fina. No, this has a lot to do with homelessness.

The decision virtually, or this decision, back in 1611, virtually guaranteed a future that would include homelessness. Now, if communism were to work, no one would be homeless. If the community were to survive, everyone would have a place in it. But not so with private ownership, a natural negative side effect to transitioning from communal living to private property ownership is homelessness. Some of the people pointed from Europe didn't do a good job work in their acres or whatever, you know, deal kind of brought them over and you know, they couldn't work it for some reason. Maybe they maybe they ended up selling or bartering away their property

and then they lost whatever they got in exchange for their property and then they became some of America's first homeless people known as vagabonds. Early American settlements like James found it inherited an English legal system when it came to how to deal with these vagabonds. Constables in England had been authorized under early 14th century English poor laws to arrest vagabonds, force them to prove employment or show a permanent residence. And if they could not, they were imprisoned and punished. Initially vagabonds should be, could be sentenced to the stocks for three days and nights.

And 1530 whipping was added. Showbiz. The presumption was also that vagabonds were beggars in many war. And 1547, a bill was passed that subjected vagrants to some of the most extreme provisions of the criminal law, namely two years of indentured servitude, and being branded, physically branded with a V as a penalty for the first offense. criminal law, namely two years of indentured servitude and being branded, physically branded with a V as a penalty for the first offense and then death was the penalty for the second. Can you imagine if we started branding people for crimes again, I don't know, I was thinking

about that. Like what a bummer. It would be if you were wrongly convicted for a really socially heinous crime like pedophilia. Then even though you ended up being found innocent, right? After the initial convict, you get back out, but now you're still stuck with like a giant pee or something on your forehead. Oh my God.

First words to every new person you meet for the rest of your life, or just I didn't do it. It was overturned. I'm not a peed-o. I'm not a peed-o. I know, I know. I got a giant pee on my forehead.

I did not do it. Then you just pull out this bunch of court papers that you just always have in like a little satchel just on your person at all times. Just read this, not here. Let's look at this one. This is my appeal. This is the overturned conviction paperwork.

If you take just 20 or 30 minutes, just to get a little bit familiar with the case, you will clearly see that little Jimmy's mom, Sandra, who I used to date, had a grudge against me, scorned woman, all that stuff. She used Jimmy as a pawn to malign my and then people are just like, dude, dude, dude, it's fine. I don't care, man.

I'm just here to deliver the pizza. Anyway, shortly after the American colonies got going in the 18th century, large numbers of British vagabonds among the first convicts transported to the colonies. So now, homeless people are actually being exported to America. Vagabonds with no place to call their own, often no steady source of income, dependent on the mercy of strangers to survive. Still for years, Vagabons, pretty rare,

weren't really recognized by anyone as being a major social or cultural problem. Just kind of here and there, some wanderers. Homelessness, as we recognize it today, didn't really get going in the US until the 1820s. And it had urbanization created by the Industrial Revolution to think. Prior to the 1820s, fewer than 7% of Americans lived in cities. That number would more than double to 15% by 1850.

The boom of industrialization in the 19th century brought in a steady migration of people to booming urban centers like Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and more vagrancy records rose right along with the lowest factory jobs. By the 1850s, there were early homeless shelters of a sort for these vagrants, lodging rooms, located inside police stations. Urban slums began to appear in American cities. Excuse me, plagued with overcrowding, poor hygiene, rudimentary sanitation. While its etymological origin is 1814, the term homelessness

didn't really get bounced around in the US lexicon until the 1870s. It was used to describe homeless workers referred to as tramps, traversing the country in search of jobs. The primary social concern with homelessness at that time revolved around morality. Moralists perceived an emerging moral crisis that threaten long held ideas of home life rather than focusing on people and families not having basic necessities needed to survive or permanent residents. Now who cares if they're living in squalor out of the street? They're not raising a family, they're drunk and most importantly, they're not going

to church. It's Ottoman, come on, here we come. One religious group described the problem in the 1870s as a crisis of men let loose from all the habits of domestic life, wandering without aim or home. The American Civil War also added to this new homeless problem. Former slaves now had no place to live. Former soldiers didn't always have families to return home to. Former soldiers sometimes were also psychologically traumatized by the war, so badly they didn't know how to return home and resume a normal life. Also by 1870, 20% of Americans live in urban areas. Almost four times the amount of people

live in urban areas who would live there prior to the 1820s. The construction of the national railroad system in the mid and late 19th century combined with urban industrialization led to the emergence of a new type of homeless. The whole tramps and hobos riding the rails, balanced from job to job in city to city. The word hobo first appeared in the 1880s in Western America, and it's softened the public's perception of tramps. This culture of migrant laborers was often romanticized in American literature, including being romanticized by writers such as Walt Whitman, Brett Hart, Sinclair Lewis,

Jack London wrote vivid depictions of the call of the road. It was an escape from the oppression and monotony of factory work. This new hobo army of mostly young, able-bodied men created a culture that blended the search for work with the love for the open road, a disdain for the constraint of workers in industrialized America. willing to embrace hard work, they constituted a counter counterculture of their own with unwritten rules. It's a very specific type of homeless, but for every Jack London who romanticized these hobos, there are also many others who despise them, like Francis Wayland, the dean of Yale

law school who wrote in 1877. As we utter the word tramp, there arises straight away before us, The spectacle of a lazy, shiftless, saunterine or swaggerine, ill-conditioned, irreclamable, incorrigible, cowardly, utterly depraved, savage. And that's his way of saying, I don't care for them. Very, very worthy, very verbose way of saying that. Hopefully the people who loved the hobos and those who hated them, at least all agreed that the hobo lingo was awesome, because that for sure is true. Oh, I spent way too much time learning some hobo lingo last couple of days. Let's talk about a few hobo slang terms. Just for some random trivia in this heavy episode and just some comedic lighthearted fun.

You hear about Jimmy Fish Eyes? He turned barnacle. He gave up being a boomer for a steady flop on a fat 11th poke. A barnacle was a fellow who sticks to one job a year or more. I love that someone who works the steady job is given a derogatory term. A boomer is a hobo, always on the move. A flop is a hobo term for a place to stay and a leather poke is a wallet. Look at this caclour. Ain't never hopped a hot shot a decked him a day in his life. Hey captain, you got a light for these coffin nails? Don't be puffing nails back at the hotel to gink. It's lit with rank cats and stewbumps.

A calculator is a white collar worker. Hot shot is a fast train. The deckum is to ride on the roof of a passenger train from town to town. Coffin nails are cigarettes. Captain is a hobo term for big shot. Hotel to gink is a charity house shelter. Rank cats are hobos that even other hobos look down upon and stewbums are hobos that have stopped riding the rails and just get drunk amously on the street.

Love these terms. There's pages and pages and pages of these. Let's just do one more set of them. Open up your draw strap and put some hoot and you wing dinks. Time to get a slapping and a scrap and if we we're gonna mow the lawn and stir that peanut butter. A draw strap is a zipper on a pair of pants, a hoot is an erection. Winged dings are male genitalia, slappin' in a scrap and is slang for sexual foreplay. Mow the lawn is using gasoline to burn off the pubic hair of someone.

You've just tied up and stir that peanut butter slang for anal sex. And none of that is hopeless thing. I made that last one up, but it does bring us to our next sponsor. Time suck is once again brought to you by Albert Fish Tortures the Classics. Tortures, texts and classic songs, the 1920s, 1930s. Redone in a way that only pleases Albert Fish. Check out this little hobo diddy. Re-worked.

Hello, my baby. Hello,, uh, hello, my baby. Hello, my baby. Hello, my honey. Hello, my fat bottom gal. With me until you tie, baby, my market's on fire. If you refuse me, won't go abuse me. I'll cook up your skin and bones. Oh, baby, peanut butter. It's what gives daddy moans. That is how they do it in Hollywood. Show this. And for a limited time when you are, I've been singing that so much lately. When you order this album, you can get a free Albert's creamy peanut butter t-shirt

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That is not our sponsor. I can't get the diddy out of my head. Hello, my baby. Let's get back to the late 19th century. In the late 19th century, growing concern over America's growing homeless population leads to the development of America's first rescue missions. In 1872, America's first such mission, the New York City Rescue Mission, founded by Jerry and Maria Maccali. Salvation Army was founded in 1865 in London's East End by a former Methodist

minister, William Booth and his wife, Catherine. And they started working with the homeless in America in the 1880s. They soon opened rescue missions offering soup, soap, and salvation. A phrase they introduced. In 1890, New York City Journalist and Photographic Documentarian Jacob Reese has his ground breaking book published How the Other Half Lives. While not readin specifically about homeless people, it was written about people who were damn near homeless,

living in squalid, overcrowded New York city tenements. When certain social elites had their eyes open to what life looked like in their city slums, some building codes were finally changed and improved social conditions were finally fought for. Check out this quick quote from that book. With the first hot nights in June, police dispatches, that record that record the killing of men and women by rolling off roofs and window sills while asleep, announced at the time of greatest

suffering among the poor is at hand. It is in hot weather when life indoors is well-need, unbearable, with cooking, sleeping, and working all crowded into the small rooms together, that the Tenement expands reckless of all restraint. So, Jesus, these little crowded, poorly ventilated apartments were so hot, residents would go sleep on the roof of these, you know, very tall buildings on window-sills, roll off to their deaths. Like, this was a semi-regular occurrence. And there were others who didn't even have homes that shitty to stand.

In 1892, the US government began to address homelessness directly that year, America's Congress allocated $20,000 to the Department of Labor to investigate urban slums and cities with at least 200,000 residents. Couldn't find any stats about the number of homeless in America in the late 19th century. There's a good chance those numbers officially don't exist, but to show how big of a problem homelessness was becoming, I came across some tragic info about a growing epidemic of homeless orphans in the late 19th century. According to one source, New York City had about 500,000 residents by 1850 and anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000 were specifically orphaned homeless children. Up to 30,000 homeless orphans in this one city

extrapolate that percentage on to today's New York City population. You get about 150,000 homeless orphan children running around Why so many? Well poor immigrants running from dire economic situations in their home countries were shown up in America with nothing And they do whatever they needed to to survive and that often meant taking dangerous factory jobs. And the days before workers safety measures were given a shit about plus a lot of more people died of diseases back in the days before vaccinations diseases like the flu and typhoid. And that's a recipe for orphans.

There were so many street kids that between the 1850s and the 1920s, roughly 250,000 homeless orphans, known as gutter snipes were gathered up by various charitable organizations sent to the Midwest to be raised on farms, by poor farmers who would literally buy these kids at auctions. The families needed extra farm hands, the kids needed a bedroof and food, and their bellies.

And now I have an entirely new appreciation for orphan Annie. Seriously, I didn't understand the origin of that whole tale. All those Annie films and musicals and Broadway plays are based on a comic strip, the debuted in 1924 and the New York Daily News. And that comic was based on an 1885 poem called Little Orphan Annie, written by James Whitcomb Riley. And it was written about Mary Alice,

Ali Smith, a young orphan living in the Riley home, one of New York City's many, many orphans that would have been homeless had they not adopted her. When the Great Depression hit the 1930s, there was a huge boom in the number of people experiencing homeless in America. There were so many homeless that shanty towns or tent cities started popping up on the edges of various cities, just like many of these tent cities exists today. Many of the cities then were called Hooverville's, named after President Herbert Hoover, who was

blamed for the Great Depression. There was a Hooverville outside of Seattle, Washington stood from 1931 to 1941, covered nine acres, housed roughly a 1200 people, only shut down because the government wanted the land. It was located on for a World War II shipping facility. And today, Seattle is dealing with tent cities all over again. They're now called nickel vills. Nickelsville, excuse me, tiny houses and tent encampments that were inspired by former

mayor Greg Nichols ordering massive sweeps, closures of homeless camps in 2008 and they're still around. Residents of Hooverville, lived in cobbled together, Shaxmy, cardboard, tar paper, glass, lumber, tin, whatever other materials they could find, Hoovervilleians, beg for food, would eat at soup kitchens, very interesting photos taken back. You can easily find them at the Google search online, fascinating stuff, pictures of these, people living in these Hooverville's. By 1933, one quarter of America's workers, more than 15 million people were out of work.

Many of them, either homeless or damn close to it. In response to the growing number of homeless, the number of federal policies and pieces of legislation were enacted in the 1930s to improve the overall quantity and affordability of housing. Unaffordable housing has always seemed to be the major or at least one of the major obstacles to getting off the street, which only makes sense. The Emergency Relief and Construction Act of 1932 authorized the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to lend public funds to corporations to build housing for low-income families.

Then there was the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, which allowed the public works administration a government-sponsored work program to use federal funds for slum clearance, the construction of low-cost housing, and substance homesteads. Homesteads. homesteads, close to 40,000 low income housing units were produced under this program in just that year. Now, did these programs and homelessness? No, but many historians think they went a long way, along with other FDR depression error programs to keep the US homeless problem from spiraling much further out of control.

In the 1940s, World War II actually went a long way to reducing homelessness in America. The war drafted a lot of young men, given them military employment, put a lot of men and women back to work, making all the various equipment and weaponry needed to wage war over the ensuing three decades, less and less young Americans were becoming homeless, the Hooverville's vanished, the typical individual experience in homeless can be disproportionately white and male, but became increasingly older, usually over 50, disabled, dependent on welfare or social security. And if they're able to find a roof to put over their heads, they typically resided in cheap hotels, flop houses, and in single-room occupancy hotels located in the poorest

neighborhoods in Skidrose over urban America. In the 1950s and 60s, homelessness actually declined so much overall that researchers were confident it would completely disappear by the 1970s. It didn't, but amazing that things looked so good for a while, they thought it could disappear, it gives me hope. It inspires me that maybe we could actually fix this someday. 1963, new well-intentioned legislation actually ended up adding to the type of homelessness we often see today. Homeless people who are clearly severely mentally ill. The US government put the Community Mental Health Act into effect in

1963 and under this act Long-term psychiatric patients began to be released from state hospitals into single-room occupancies and Sent to community health centers for treatment and follow-up. more Dr. Ice Pick, McBrain Stabbers, if you remember that all the way back from time sub 20, insane insane assounds. Many American psychiatric institutions used to be houses of horror where patients were essentially imprisoned, sometimes for life, and severely mistreated.

Also, remember the MK Ultra bonus suck from August of 2017, when the CIA used psychiatric patients as human guinea pigs to test possible mind control elixirs on. Well, now the government began to try to deinstitutionalize these people. Unfortunately, this led to many mentally ill people fending for themselves on the street and arguably worse fate than being locked up in questionable institutions. In terms of modern conceptions of homelessness, the Community Mental Health Act of 1963 again played a massive role. In the US during the late 70s, the continued de-institutionalization

of patients from state psychiatric hospitals increased the homeless populations of many American major urban areas such as New York City. Also, soldiers returning from Vietnam, physically whole but mentally damaged added to the ranks of America's homeless. The number of homeless continued to grow in the 1980s as housing and social service cuts increased and the economy deteriorated. The United States government determined that somewhere between 200,000 and 500,000 Americans were now homeless in the early 80s. The exact number is always very hard to nail down precisely because gathering most census

information requires knowing where somebody lives. Social workers started to notice more young homeless people in 1980s, more addicts, as America entered its so-called crack epidemic period, the last from 1994 to 1990, when the cheap, highly addictive, smokeable form of cocaine tore apart many of America's poorest neighborhoods. Bust on my crack! Bust on my crack! You remember that? In addition, homeless women and families started to become a bigger part of the picture

in the 1980s. The 80s marked the beginning of what has become known as chronic homelessness in the United States. Changing economic conditions, political policies reduced the number of low-cost rental units from 6.5 million in 1970 to 5.6 million in 1985, while the number of low cost rental units from 6.5 million in 1970 to 5.6 million in 1985, while the number of low income renter households grew from 6.2 million in 1970 to 8.9 million in 1985. In response to the ensuing homeless as crisis of the 1980s, President Reagan signed into

law the McKinney, Vento, homeless assistance act of 1987. This remains the only piece of federal legislation that allocates funding to the direct service of homeless people. The McKinney, Vento act paved the way for social service providers to work directly with homeless populations for the first time. During the 1990s, homeless shelter,

soup kitchens, other supportive services sprouted up in cities and towns across the nation. However, despite these efforts and the dramatic economic growth of the 90s, homeless numbers remained high. It became increasingly apparent that simply providing services to alleviate the symptoms of homelessness, i.e. shelter beds, hot meals, psychiatric counting, etc. wasn't able to solve the complex problem of homelessness. In 2004, the United States Conference of Mayors surveyed the mayors of major cities on the extent and causes of urban homelessness, most of the mayors named the lack of affordable

housing as the primary cause of homelessness. The next three causes identified by the mayors were mental illness, substance abuse, low-paying jobs. Other causes cited were unemployment, domestic violence, and poverty. According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's 2008 annual homelessness assessment report, the most common demographic features of all sheltered homeless people are male, members of minority groups, older than 31, single and alone, also more than 40% of sheltered homeless people have a disability. That's a high percentage, more

than 40%. In 2008, more than 66% of all sheltered homeless people were located in principal cities with 32% located in suburban or rural jurisdictions. About 40% of people entering an emergency shelter or transitional housing program during 2008 came from another homeless situation. 40% came from a house situation. The remaining 20% were split between institutional settings or other situations such as hotels or motels. Most people had relatively short lengths of stay in emergency shelters, 60% stayed less than a month, 33% stayed a week or less.

Okay, so now let's get out of the timeline and take a more in depth look and do America's current homelessness situation right after a word from today's final sponsor. Today's time suck is brought to you by the great courses plus. Been hearing from more and more time suckers after stand up and live podcast shows on the road about how much they enjoy the great courses plus and how they love the knowledge it gives them. Hail Nimrot, whether it's solving a problem at work or exchanging trade with friends, having the right answer is satisfying. And the great courses plus is a priceless source of knowledge and just about any field.

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piece to this episode. A great way to help wrap one's mind around the very complex issue of how one becomes homeless and why one can remain so and what do we do about it? Why do we make the choices we make? Check out this course, and you're going to know. So now the right answers, start learning. With the great courses plus, time suckers get a full, free month of unlimited access. When you sign up today, use our URL, thegreatcoursesplus.com slash smart. That's the greatcoursesplus.com slash smart.

Link in the episode description button in the sponsor section of the time suck app and website. Get now to the time suck fuck a timeline right now. Good job soldier. You made it back. Barely. Okay, now that we've briefly touched on the history of homelessness in these United States, let's look at our current homeless situation. I worked on some of the research for this episode in Starbucks in Spokane, Washington, while

I waited to pick my son, Kyler, up from school, and right outside the window, as I'm working on this, there's a homeless guy. I've seen him many times run out of Starbucks. The majority of the time when I've ever worked working on this, there's a homeless guy. There's seen him many times around that Starbucks. The majority of the time when I've ever worked in any Starbucks, there have been homeless people around. I used to ride at a Starbucks on Santa Monica and Bundy, West LA, Los Angeles, about a mile west of the 405 freeway, spent a lot of hours there between 2011, 2016 working on jokes, writing some sitcom pitch or some episode of a sitcom or reality show I was working on as a writer or producer, I was, they're literally hundreds of times and

didn't work there a single time when someone who wasn't blatantly severely mentally ill wasn't also there who wasn't also homeless. Now it's sad. I'm not going to lie. Sometimes in addition to being sad, there were some pretty humorous moments as well. It's like, shit up again. Situation is so darkly absurd. All you can do in the moment is just really get sad or laugh.

And I usually choose laughter. This one dude, this one dude used to come to this very busy starboard on a regular basis. Screaming obscenities. Muscular dude, around 50 years old, dressed and built like he, he looked to me like he's probably ex-military, didn't look like a guy you wanted to fuck with. He would storm into the Starbucks screaming shit like, I will fucking kill whoever needs to die. You ain't gonna fuck with me, you ain't gonna fuck with me.

I fucking do what's right, I fucking do what needs doing. Like that kind of shit, like intense screaming it like I'm screaming it now. As he's screaming this, he would make his way to the counter where breezes would set people's drinks when they were done making them. And then he would carefully look over the drink, still screaming, but kind of like half-assign now, because he's distracted by trying to pick out a drink. So he's still like, I'm like, I'll fucking kill! I'm a milk moga, huh? You can't fuck with the truth! My Tula Te! Oh God, I'll kick the grim, reap it himself, that motherfucker! Oh,, this is my shit here. And then he would just take somebody's drink

and then calmly exit the Starbucks. Sometimes give like a final scream as he got near the door. Oh my God, and we'll come, motherfucker. It killed me. It killed me. How he could, I mean, so many people were so scared. He could act so insane. We'll also have a shit together enough

to carefully pick out somebody else's drink and then drink it for himself and then just watch out. Pretty fun to watch. Not funny for the people working there, or sure. And not funny to think about how sad his life actually was. You know, sure he grabbed a free coffee, but he probably also slept on the sidewalk like so many people in the neighborhood did every night.

Dude, it was homeless. How many others live like he did? It's hard to determine. Our editor, Timeslok Center, Jesse Dobner, was homeless for six months in the fall of 2000. He was staying in a car with his mom and his cat. They would sleep and turn off off of mountain roads and Georgetown and Breckenridge, Colorado, where he got really cold.

He'd ever seen a catch shiver because it was cold. It was catch shiver and cold. And he said, he just kind of happened. He said, he was supposed to move to Seattle that summer, but the plan fell through. We had no plan B. He was able to get cleaned up enough at rest stops to get a job. And he worked during the day. He'd sleep in the cart night. He could eventually, he could eventually afford either a semester at Colorado Mountain College or an apartment. He chose college, worked another month until he could afford a deposit for an apartment. So for a while, he worked full time, school

full time, slept in a cart at night. And now he's doing great by the way. He's an amazing editor who helps me confidently throughout the information I do. Love having him on the team, love that he has a home and is getting married actually. Hail Jesse Doberner. Okay, let's talk about the overall experience of homelessness.

You know, the overall estimates of homelessness hard to gather during the research for this sucks, Zach Skripke, for Flannery, talked with a friend of the show who worked for the Census Bureau who said that he estimated for every homeless person they were allowed to count. Probably two others were not counted. Take this as anecdotal for sure, but again, imagine the complications of trying to get good data on a subject like this.

That being said, here's the best data we could find. Taken from the 2018 annual homeless assessment report to Congress put together by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. According to this report, little over 550,000 Americans experienced either sheltered or unsheltered homelessness on a single night in 2017. More than a third of people experiencing homelessness on a single night were in unsheltered locations. Two-thirds of people experiencing homelessness were doing so as individuals, one-third in families with kids.

The number of people experiencing homelessness on a single night declined by 14.9% between 2007 and 2017. So that's good. Despite recent increases in unsheltered homelessness, there were 25.7% fewer people counted in places not meant for human habitation in 2017, but in 2007. In 2017, just under 1.5 million people in the US experienced sheltered homelessness at some point during the year. And that's actually a 10.8% decrease since 2007. I did find that interesting. I found it interesting that according to government studies, America's overall homeless population

is decreasing, which is the opposite of what I have noticed traveling around the country. Between 2007 and 2017, the sheltered homelessness declined 15.9% in cities, but it did increase by 6% in suburban and rural areas. I think this might be the increase I've noticed, more homeless in the suburbs and smaller cities and towns. The percentage of people experiencing homelessness to increase in cities from 76.9% to 72.5% increase in suburban and rural areas from 23.1% to 27.5.

Here's some more numbers. On a single night in January 2017, just under 370,000 people experienced homelessness as individuals, and that also is a just over 11% declines in 2007. More than half of all individuals in the one night count were staying in emergency shelters, transitional housing programs, or safe havens, while just under half were in unsheltered locations. Individuals experiencing homelessness on a single night were 4.5 times more likely to be unsheltered than people and families

with kids. Of all people in unsheltered locations, just over 89% were individuals. Half of adult individuals experiencing sheltered homelessness had a disability in 2017. There were, this was 2.5 times the rate of disability among individuals in the general US population. 1.6 times the rate of disability among individuals in the US population living in poverty overall.

Heart breaking lead, there are many people living outdoors with their kids. About a third of the homeless population in the US is part of a family, 2017, on any given night, estimated that just over 184,000 people experienced homelessness as part of a family with kids. The number of family households in the 2017 one-night estimate was 57,886. On a positive note, there are 26.3% fewer family households than the 2017 one night estimate was 57,886. On a positive note, there are 26.3% fewer family households than in 2007. Overall, estimated that almost 480,000 people and over 150,000 family households used an emergency shelter or transitional housing program between October 1, 2016

September 30, 2017. People and families used in shelters and urban areas declined by over 5% increased by just over 19% in suburban and rural areas, continuing the gradual shift from principal cities to suburban and rural areas. On a company in homeless youth, classified as anyone under 25 on their own, certainly among the most vulnerable of the homeless population on any given night in America is about 38,000 young people on the streets. 12% of them under the age of 18, that's over 4500 kids. And again, as I examine that stat, homeless person walked by the Starbucks, I was working

in a Spokane. Some guy, definitely under the age of 25, maybe as young as 18 alone, mumbling to himself, filthy and lost. Most of these youths are actually legal adults, about 87.9% of them between the ages of 18 and 24, unaccompanied youth experiencing homelessness, much more likely to be unsheltered than all the other groups. California has more kids on the street than any other state, contributing over 33% of the national total, just that one state of the

homeless population. Another big group is veterans. There are 40,000, just over 40,000 veterans experiencing homelessness in the US, or there were in 2016, that represented just over 9% of all homeless people. Over 61% of veterans experienced homelessness and un, excuse me, in sheltered locations and 38.3% were in unsheltered locations. Some very good news.

A number of veterans experienced in homelessness dropped 45% just over actually between 2009, 2017. However, the number of homeless veterans increased between 2016 and 2017. A lot of the stats kind of showed us between 2007, 2017, it was really dropping, but in the last couple of years, 2015, 2016, 2017, homelessness started to creep back up.

In estimated, 118,380 veterans used an emergency shelter or transitional housing in 2017. The share of veterans, who were elderly, more than doubled between 2009 and 2007, 2017, from 8.7% to 19.2%, elderly veterans, the only group with an increase in the number of experienced homelessness between 2009, 2017. Here are some more veteran homeless facts. U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs states that the nation's homeless veterans are predominantly male, roughly 9% being female. The majority are single, live in urban areas, suffer from mental illness, alcohol, and or substance abuse, or co-occurring disorders, about 11% of the adult homeless population, again, veteransring disorders, about 11% of the adult homeless population

again, veterans. Interestingly, roughly 45% of all homeless veterans are African-American or Hispanic, despite only accounting for just over 10% of the U.S. veteran population with African-American and just over 3% of the U.S. veteran population with the Hispanics. Homeless veterans, young grandavers in the total veteran population, approximately 9% between the ages of 18 and 30, 41% between the ages of 31 and 50. Conversely, only 5% of all veterans are between the ages of 18 and 30 and less than 23% are between 31 and 50. Again, I notice a lot of numbers, but I just want to show this isn't me just talking

shit. There's a lot of stats out there. America's homeless veterans have served in World War II, the Korean War, Cold War, Vietnam war, Grenada, Panama, Lebanon, Persian Gulf War, Afghanistan, Iraq, other military efforts, like US anti-drug efforts in South America. Nearly half of homeless veterans served during the Vietnam era. Excuse me, that's so sad. Nearly half of them served during Vietnam. How fucked up was that war? As we already know now from that previous suck. Wow. About 1.4 million other veterans, meanwhile, considered at risk of being homeless

due to poverty, lack of support networks, dismal living conditions, and overcrowded and substandard housing, almost a million and a half more. Large number of displaced and at risk veterans live with lingering effects of post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, substance abuse, compounded by lack of family and social

support networks, additionally, military occupations and training, not always transferable to the civilian workforce, placing some veterans at a disadvantage when competing for civilian employment. Now, shouldn't the government take care of veterans after they've served? Yes, and they do, to an extent, with the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, the VA. Each year, the VA specialized homelessness programs provide healthcare to almost 150,000 homeless veterans, other services to more than 112,000 veterans, and then more than 40,000 homeless veterans

receive compensation or pension benefits each month. You know, not more than a mile from that Starbucks, I used to walk to in West LA, the one on Santa Monica and Bunny, there was a huge VA hospital. So homeless vets walking in and off its grounds literally every time I drove by. Also again, to try to lighten this heavy suck up, at least a little bit. I once near the VA there.

I once saw two grown men on Wilshire Boulevard openly jerking off while standing on the sidewalk facing traffic, pants around the wrinkles. It happened on different days. Same block on Wilshire, sad sure, but I couldn't help but laugh at just the shocking absurdity of it each time. First off, let's just take a little break from the heaviness. First, I think jerking off while standing is kind of an on-choice. Like I've done it, but for sure easier to relax and just kind of focus, I think when

you're sitting or laying down, it's just my preference. Also facing traffic, that's adding another level of difficulty to the entire situation. Like me personally, I would rather not make eye contact with just random strangers when I'm trying to jerk off. Now especially if I know they can see me other than their cars, I prefer to focus on like one image or like one narrative.

Cause if I get distracted, I can't finish. I mean, staring at traffic, you might have a nice little run, make an eye contact with some hot, little blonde, awesome curves, nice cleavage sitting in a Tesla. What if the light turns green, and now you're staring at some fucking giant dude with a little fucking weird ponytail and a PT cruiser?

That's a big time boner killer. Also, how much funnier would it be? Just to make it even weirder. How much fun would it be if both of the guys I saw masturbating were jerking off at the exact same time standing side by side staring at the same traffic together. I would park my car and fucking watch that. It's not even sexual anymore. It's like they're in a weird race of some kind. Who can overcome the challenge of staring at random strangers in public while jerking off and finish first?

Showbiz. That's how they do it in Hollywood. Okay, less about sex, more about competition in that situation. Okay, yeah, let's get serious again. Okay, I needed that break. Let's talk about the chronic homeless. A chronically homeless individual is governmentally defined as a person that is not part of a family with a disability who has been continuously homeless for at least one year and has been homeless for at least four times

in the last three years. This group makes up over 23% of all homeless individuals in America. About 87,000 people currently chronically homeless, almost 70% of these people not in shelters. Nearly two-fifths experience of individuals experiencing chronic homelessness in the U.S. located in California. That's fucking over 40% of all of them located in California. No other state accounted for more than 8%.

Okay, so I've thrown out a lot of stats. Let's recap. Some good news is that there appears to be an overall decline in homelessness between 2007 and 2017, about 10.8%. However, in the past few years, this decline has slowed down, has even turned into an increase in certain areas. That's part of the bad news. The number of individuals experiencing homelessness and emergency shelters and transitional housing

programs was roughly 15% lower in 2017 than it was in 2007. Well, the number of people and families with children remains stable over that time period. Unshelter homelessness among families with children steadily declining the past decade in all parts of the country, not the case for people experiencing homelessness as an individual. The subset of individuals with chronic patterns of homelessness increased at a faster rate than all individuals with a year,

over a year increase of 12% overall and 14% for those in unsheltered locations. These increases are recent as of 2014, unsheltered chronic homelessness in the nation's largest cities had declined by nearly 40% since the data was collected. Each year after that the numbers increased and in 2017 the number of unsheltered individuals with chronic patterns of homelessness was only 9% lower than the estimate

in 2007. So again, the speaks to what I said, lately starting to really ramp back up again. In the last year alone, unsheltered chronic homelessness rose 27% in the nation's largest cities. And more or less, Angela continues to be the primary driver of fluctuations in this population. It's not alone. And man, LA, I, oh, man, I got it. If you ever want your eyes opened to what homelessness can really look like in America, drive through Skid Row. It is fucking mind blowing. The first time I just, I almost did just stop the car and be like, is this fucking real? This giant just 10 after 10 after 10. People clearly fucked up on drugs

or like in the midst of a psychotic episode, just wandering around in the middle of the street. 100, like 100, it felt like thousands of people. It was the craziest thing I've ever seen in this country. You know, as far as like, you know, anything in this kind of area. Okay, now let's look further into the why. Why are people homeless today?

What are the major factors? Easy to say like lazy, but let's, let's look way deeper than that. There are many reasons that experts in several fields say that homelessness persists in the modern era. Some of these include the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, like we talked about, an inadequate supply of affordable housing options, budget cuts to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, HUD, and other social service agencies, as well as a changing employment landscape, the high cost of healthcare and inflation.

A star with inflation. Inflation is a quantitative measure of the rate at which the average price level of goods, services, and property, and an economy increase over period of time. Often expressed as a percentage, inflation indicates a decrease in the purchasing power of a nation's currency. In many ways, it's the equivalent of attacks on the poor. When your $100 spent at the grocery store buys less than it did five years ago, that's inflation hurting you. Really hurts if you're not making any more than you did five years ago.

Homes that cost you is $25,000 if you'd decades ago sell it six digits or more now, inflation could easily be viewed as enemy number one to our nation's most economically challenged people and definitely a huge contributing factor to homelessness. Now, I'm going to go too deep into the economic rabbit hole of why inflation occurs because there's a lot more numbers and we've already heard enough. But check this shit out real quick. According to the US Census Bureau, average US salary, 1975, was 13,779 dollars. Four years later in 2015, 40, sorry, sorry, not 40. So you're like, what? For now, 40 years later, 2015, it was 79,263 dollars.

That sounds great, right? It's a lot more. In four decades, the average US salary went up almost six times. 5.7.5 times to be exact. But how much you make is only important when you factor in how much things cost. You know, how far does that money go? That's where inflation fucks you.

In 1975, the average price of a new car was $3800. $3800, 1975. 2015, $33,560. So in 1975, buying a new car would eat up 27.5% of the average annual income. 2015 eats up 42%. Of the average annual income, that's a big fucking difference. Big difference.

That's almost, that's just, that's basically 15% more. That's a crazy. The average cost of loaf of bread in 1975, 20 cents, 2015, $4.48. 40 years, average US salary went up 5.7.25 times, cost of bread went up 5.2, eight times. That's good, right? You can buy bread now.

You can buy more bread now. But can you live in a house while you eat that fucking bread? The average price of a home in December of 1975 was $45,900. Average price in December 2015, $352,500. Holy shit! $45,900 compared to $352,500. Huge jump, much bigger percentage of annual salary as well. And while I couldn't find a 1975 to 2015 comparison for rent, which is arguably the most important number when it comes to not living on the street, I did find a 1950 to 2000 comparison for the median cost of rent in America, already adjusted for inflation, and these are the most important numbers of the whole show to me. In 1950, typical rental cost $257 a month in today's dollars.

In 2,602, over two and a third times more expensive, what the fuck? And in some places much worse in California where many homeless live as we learned, it was 256 a month to rent your average 1950 rental in today's dollars in 2,747. Just under three times as much that's ridiculous. Could you afford your rent if it was suddenly three times as expensive as it is now? Statistically, fuck no.

And that huge jump in the cost of rent in relation to inflation is a major, major, major contributor to homelessness. Now, let's look at some other causes. Chronic masturbation has led to a lot of homelessness in the last couple of years. Roughly 40% of America's homeless are chronic masturbators. They masturbate anywhere from 20 to 40 times a day, and this is a mental illness. They cannot help it. They have to masturbate at least 20 times a day, or the world will stop moving, according

into that. So how the brains think. They're trying to help keep people from dying by constantly jerking off. That's why if you do see them on the street, do not interfere with it. It's part of a mental illness and a lot of chronic masturbators, if you try to interfere with it,

they will fucking karate chop your goddamn neck off. And none of that is true about the master. That was just, that is fucking made that up right now. No, can you imagine though, if there was studies and they're like, yeah, it's just too much masturbation. It's too much. There's a new, there's a new, what if there was like a zombie-type illness

then instead of making people want to eat brains, it just made them want to jerk off all the time? Can you imagine how the economy would collapse? If it was like there was a contagious disease the major is continually jerk off. Ha! Okay. Now let's talk about mental illness,

which I probably clearly suffer from from just having all that stuff to just pop up in my head. The de-institutionalization of the mental yield, another factor we've already talked about. It has its roots in the civil rights, civil liberties movement to the 1960s. You know, it's envisioned more fulfilling lives for those who have been languishing

in understaff psychiatric hospitals, like we talked about, you know, through new medications and robust community-based services. The number of patients living in state hospitals dropped from 535,000 in 1960 to just 137,01980. California saw dramatic reduction in state hospital beds. From 37,01950 to just 2,500 in 1983, which is a problem because there wasn't suddenly less a lot, you know, there wasn't suddenly just a lot less people who are mentally ill.

There were many more people. As the world's population has exploded, it only makes sense that so how the amount of mentally ill people funding has just gone away. Funding for the needed halogen and community based services proved inadequate. And as cheap halogen disappeared, vast numbers of previously institutionalized individuals with severe unpersistent mental illness are those who might have gone to institutions in earlier areas drifted out onto the streets and in temporary shelters. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 6.3% of the population suffers from

severe mental illness, defined as long standing mental illnesses, typically psychosis, because moderate to severe disability of prolonged duration. Given that the number of adults 18 over in the US and 2010 was estimated to be roughly 234 million, 564,000 people. That would mean roughly 14.8 million of those people had severe mental illness. Experts pulled by the treatment advocacy center estimated that about 50 beds per 100,000 people would meet needs for acute and long-term care. But in some states, the number of available beds was as low as five per 100,000 people. Thus, many people who desperately need residential psychiatric treatment just can't obtain it. There just isn't the beds. So they're out on the streets,

you know, they're shit on the fucking sidewalk. They're yelling at you when you walk by. Another factor is under employment. This is an interesting term. I had not thought about right previous to this suck. We hear about unemployment rates all the time, but what about under employment? Under employment is the condition in which people in a labor force are employed at less than full time or regular jobs or at jobs inadequate with respect to their training or economic needs. Many people that are currently experiencing homelessness fall into this group. It makes good bottom line economic sense

for a lot of major retailers and other large corporations have a lot of part time employees that they don't have to provide benefits to as opposed to full time employees. But this isn't good for homelessness, isn't good for those people. While the US employment rate was 4.7% as of May 2016, the US under employment rate at that time,

13.7%, that's a big percentage. As we've touched on a lack of affordable housing and the limited scale of housing assistance programs have contributed to the current housing crisis into homelessness, here's some additional info in that aspect of our homeless situation. Investors in low income housing developments are discouraged and even forbidden

from building low income apartments and at many major cities due to a variety of zoning and other laws. And I got it, man, I feel a little guilty about this one. I am part of this problem. I struggle with the not in my backyard mentality. Very easy to go full social justice warrior and scream about the latest and policies and how unfair this is.

However, I live near the East Sherman district in Corteil Lane, which is where the Suck Dungeons located. And we first bought our house, Lindsey and I back in 2015, there was a lot of low income transitional housing in the area and treatment centers and drug and alcohol counting centers. And guess what else? A fuck ton of addicts and sex offenders. And call me crazy, but I do not like living right down the street from some sort of pedophile sanctuary or a lot of people, you know, engage in hard drug abuse.

But the last two years, a city changed some laws such as limiting how long someone can stay in a variety of low income paid by the day, week or month motels. You know, there's a lot of them around here where a lot of sex offenders live. Thank you, National Registry website for allowing me to find them. And a lot of the transitional housing is going away, which is terrible for families and individuals using these places, trying to get back on their feet and not be homeless. But it is also awesome for other parents already living in these neighborhoods, hoping to

have less people struggling with drug addiction or people with crimes against children, you know, they're on their criminal records living in the area. Again, this is a complicated issue. It's easy to rail on about how the homeless or borderline homeless shouldn't be kicked out of a neighborhood when it's not your neighborhood. You know, back in West LA, Lindsey and I, we did not have an in- an apartment washer or dryer in our apartment building. We had to walk down to the building's laundry room. And the door to that laundry room was in a poorly lit little walkway, the shut out of an alley. So basically an alley shooting off from another alley, very kind

of hidden. And there were two dumpsters, one for our building, one for the building next door, right kind of blocking the door kind of hiding door, but just about six feet away. And guests who often slept around those dumpsters, several dudes in the area, homeless guys, clearly struggling with mental health issues and drug dependency. Did I feel bad for them? Yep, I sure did. There's one guy in particular, I'll never forget him. You know, I seem there a lot.

I gave him clothes, gave him blankets, gave him food, gave him cash from time to time. Did I like them being there when Lindsay needed to walk down to do laundry though? When I was at a town, a cash from time to time, that I liked them being there when Lindsay needed to walk down to do laundry though. When I was at a town, fuck no. I worry about her safety a lot. She eventually talked to me and did trying to do that stuff. She's like, give them money to a shelter, but not to them because they're just going to keep hanging around.

Then I got to be fucking terrified going to do the laundry. And you wind it up calling the police several times, trying to relocate them, right? So they want something happening to her. You know, I don't like to see some stranger hurting in an alley. Also, don't want to worry about that stranger high on something or having some kind of psychotic episode hurt in somebody I love. Very complicated, very complex. According to HUD, in recent years, a shortage of affordable housing has hit renters with extremely low incomes to hardest federal support for low income housing fell 49% from 1980 to 2003, about 200,000 low income rental housing units are now being destroyed annually.

That's not good. We're going to more people in the streets. Buds and cuts have also made it harder for people to either avoid becoming homeless or recover from homelessness. The recession of the 80s resulted in deep cuts to the HUD budget, which decreased from approximately 29 billion a year in 1976 to approximately 17 billion in 1990. That led directly to reductions in the budget

Authority for housing assistance from almost 19 billion in 76 to about 11 billion in 1990 and insubsidize housing for poor Americans lack of affordable health care has been a problem as well. It contributes to homelessness for families Individual struggling to pay rent a serious illness or disability can start a downward spiral in the homelessness Beginning with the lost job. Think about the McFoubar's, the completion of savings to pay for care and eventual eviction. One in three Americans or 86.7 million people are uninsured, right? Of those uninsured 30.7% are under 18 and 2007 to 2008, four out of five people that were uninsured were members of working families.

It's not just lazy bumps. Now let's talk about something that contributes to homelessness that certain social justice wars will not want to address. But it is a real factor in some cases. That's bad personal choices. Should you take heroin? In fact, no. Should you commit a bunch of crimes

so that no one will ever hire you? No. Should you decide to not do your homework and then drop out of school? Fuck no. Should you be reckless with your money, your reputation, your body? No.

In my experience, blaming society for poor personal choices doesn't seem to really help get anybody anywhere including getting somebody off the streets. For some people being homeless is a choice. We also have to consider this. Not doing the topic any justice. If we pretend this is not a contributing factor in some cases,

it's become very popular in my opinion in society and general now to deflect personal responsibility. Jesus Christ, everybody has a fucking condition. Everybody has an excuse. Very rare in my opinion for people to take responsibility for their shitty choices. You can't get a job because you're depressed and you're depressed because you came from broken home. Okay.

All right. Valid, but you know what? But outside of a small percentage of people who suffer from truly debilitating, chemical, and or severe depression, most people not too sad to work. Not saying your problems aren't real. Not saying your sadness isn't valid. I'm saying that if we all stop showing them to work and subding our jobs, because we just, you know,

fucking felt a little off that day, the whole fucking nation's gonna be homeless. Hardest moment in my adult life so far was my first wife, mother, my two kids, told me she was leaving me, and then she met somebody else she'd fallen in love with. I felt like my guts have been tore out from my body. As a child of divorce,

I was determined not to go through on myself, as my worst fear. I knew how much you would devastate Kylie and Roe, and it did devastate them. And I wanted to throw myself for my body. As a child of divorce, I was determined not to go to one myself, as my worst fear. I knew how much it would devastate Kyler Monroe, and it did devastate them, and I wanted to throw myself into a fucking pit of despair. What I did was headline a show at a club in Boise, Idaho, about an hour after getting the news, and it had a good show.

Was it fun? Didn't want to be there? It felt pretty fucking weird to be making strangers laugh, while at the same time, I felt like I was dying inside, and I was contemplating suicide, but I did it because that's what I'd been hired to do. I saw a counselor, I fought not to give up. I felt like owed that to Kyler Monroe.

Best way to not be homeless for most of a separate, you work person to life, do everything you fucking possibly can do to get a job, when you have a job work as hard as you fucking can to keep it, gut that shit out. Gut it through the hard, you know, the hard moments of your life. I was working on this suck at midnight

when I had to be up at 5 a.m. to drive in Kyler for for jazz band rehearsal because he's fucking nerd Trying to ruin my life. It was goddamn jazz drumming. He is good. I'm proud But he is but seriously though I lost sleep again because you know, that's what my job requires My heart is on this subject by the way doesn't come from just wanted like you know look down and brag or judge It comes from a place of love. I want you to kick ass in life. I really do.

Life is way more fun when shit's working out and shit has a better chance to work out when you work really fucking hard. If you want to get the most meaning and joy you can out of this life, I firmly believe they get mentally tough overcoming hardships, busting your ass the best way to do it. Get counts if you need it. Just don't sit around, feel and starve yourself and pass the buck. That is a loser mentality. I'm old enough to know people who've had that mentality

for decades, and I've known people who've had that I'm gonna do whatever it takes to get what I want for decades. And time after time, the people who hustle and grind to fight and slow to blame, you know, others are far, far happier, more successful in every discernible way than the woe is me, Debbie Downers. Sure, sometimes people who do everything right

still get fucked, but the exception to the rule in my opinion and what I've seen in life. And I know as Jesse Doughbner also pointed out, when we worked on this one, you know, worked a lot on this one, some people legit just are not wired to be hustlers. However, that's not an excuse, not to at least try and hustle. Get counseling, get meds if you need them, try, try, try.

If you're not given life, you're everything. Why the fuck should anyone feel sorry for you? And if you wanna say, oh, it must be nice, telling us how to live from your place of white male privilege. That's a popular thing that people like to throw around now. Fine, you know what? You're the one who's gonna fucking lose. If you don't do this, your life,

you wanna spend a complaining and talking about how unfair it is, you know? All right, do that if you wanna. Let me know how far that gets you. Overall, hmm, not gonna work out well. That old cliche of attitude is everything really seems to have a lot of truth and it hail fucking Nimrod.

Stepping down off my soapbox in three, two, one. Okay, we talked about a lot. I talked a lot about causes and reasons so far, but what about solutions? There are a lot of ideas out there regarding how we should try and curb homelessness. One of the major questions is, why can't we just make more affordable housing? First off, ironically, very costly to build low-income apartments and houses in a lot of urban areas where land is pretty pricey. There are federal low-income

housing tax credits that can help certain developers build 100% affordable housing, but developers compete for those tax credits. And there aren't enough to help build affordable housing, affordable, excuse me, housing for all the people who need it, much less for those who don't have homes in the first place. Another important possible solution is called housing first. I mentioned this when I talked about this month's charity. I really like this. Housing first, I had this idea first bounced around in the late 80s, early 90s, then it became supported by HUD, the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development shortly

thereafter. The idea with housing first is that the first priority, unlike many other solutions, is not to change so much nature or give them, you know, or even their economic situation, but to build homes and get them in those homes. It's such a basic human need to have a shelter of one's own. Housing first is a program that places individuals in community housing instead of shelters, along with support, such as intensive case management. Research indicates that and follow-up studies. Individuals who receive housing first were more likely to end up in permanent housing situations compared to other groups, such as those with case management alone.

In a study of veterans with mental illness, those who receive vouchers for housing plus case management had much better housing incomes than those with just case management or outreach work. And the voucher program was also more cost effective for taxpayers overall than other programs. Why is temporary housing such an important step towards getting permanent housing? Well, maybe because, you know, partly, it just keeps people away from vices that might be contributing to keeping them homeless. Like if you're no longer sleeping next to somebody smoking crack or shooting up heroin or snort and meth,

you're probably gonna be a little bit less likely to do it yourself. I do think that's kind of a common sense thing. Like I compare it to how Lindsay and I do health wise. We have a bunch of candy in the house compared to when we don't. Essentially, if it's easily accessible, I ate a lot more of it.

Sometimes it really is that simple. Like people when asked me, like, how have you lost weight lately? I've actually been working out the least amount of my entire adult life. I've been losing lie, I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie, I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie, I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie, I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie, I'm not gonna lie.

I'm not gonna lie, I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie, I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie, I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie, I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie, I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie, I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie, I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie, it's not readily available. Like literally, that alone. I say, and she fucking guilt the shit out of me about the road she checks in with me.

What do you have to eat today? She's just, you know, it's, but it works. If you're not around, you know, certain influences, it's, you can have a better outcome. You know, it's like I remember my mom being really hard on who I hung around with as a kid, and I appreciate that now. Who you choose to spend time with is important.

You have a lot of toxic influences around in your life. You're gonna make a lot more toxic choices. So how does this housing first work? Well, the homeless are given permanent housing on a normal lease that can range from the self-contained apartment to a housing block with around a clock support. Tennis pay rent are entitled to receive housing benefits. Depending on their income,

they may contribute to the cost of the support services they receive, the rest is covered by local government. This is especially important because shelters can be violent or otherwise unsustainable housing. There were 826 violent incidents in New York City homeless shelters last year, according to New York Daily News. This includes sexual assault and domestic violence. Places where housing first has worked particularly well are in Finland and Scotland and its effectiveness has currently been determined here in the United States and in Canada. Social services also an important part of the homeless solution, housing alone, not enough.

In the above model, housing is the essential thing provided, but if they don't get social support, then you just have a welfare state where taxpayers are supporting those living and subsidized housing. That's why social services also essential. And we need to make these social services more accessible. Many of today's homeless unable to navigate the maze of complicated programs and procedures intended to help them. The same bureaucracy that frustrates all of us can really utterly stimey those of us

with mental handicaps or drug-addled brains. Right, complicated governmental application process annoy the fucking shit out of me. Big private sector businesses develop user-friendly apps and websites all the time. Billions and billions in taxpayer money go into the government every year and they almost always have the shittiest websites, apps, and application processes. It's unnecessary.

Reminds me that bullshit idea with a small business owner now. So many forms, so many changing laws and codes and people with shitty attitudes after talking on the phone. So much of it, sign this and this exact spot with this exact color ink initial here exactly. Have it notarized there. Make sure the data is marked this way exactly or we will mail it back bullshit and they will mail it back as I've found.

If Lindsay and I didn't use an accounting company, I don't think we could keep up with it all. Like when we sell merch for example, we have to file sales tax information in almost every state people buy it in. Oftentimes additional info on the county's people purchase it in. Sometimes also additional info for the counties people purchase it in, sometimes

also additional info for the fucking city for every purchase. Because every place wants to cut. If we weren't able to hire someone to do all that paperwork, we would not have time. Literally, we wouldn't have time in our life for an online store. We wouldn't have time to keep it legal. Luckily, there are now some apps that are conduit to this automatically. Private apps, by the way, they have to pay subscription for it. God forbid, the government make it easy to collect their own fucking money.

And that's just for sales tax. There's employee tax, property tax, there's changing deductions, workman's, comp requirements, additional legally required insurance obligations on and on and on. Tons of offices, the talk to me like I'm a prisoner in a cell instead of a paying customer and I want to reach to the phone and I want to break their fucking necks. And then there's the, you know, the everyday stuff, the DMV and similar governmental departments. That, that stuff always confuses me.

And I'm not struggling with mental illness, at least nothing has been diagnosed. I'm not dependent on opiates or anything like that. I'm not a single mom or single dad with five kids, you know, for fuck's sake, there has to be a better way to make, accessing the correct social programs easier for the people who need them. Again, if tech startups can make apps, you can easily teach you a new language or navigate vast online tutorial libraries or make custom music and video playlists easily navigable

or edit videos and home movies with incredible production value. Why can't the government build apps for social workers to use so they can easily navigate social programs for their clients? Come on, on uncle sam step up your accessibility game. Fucking assholes supposed to work for us not vice versa. Additional welfare has also been considered a potential solution to homelessness. In a capitalist society raising welfare payouts is another option is they've done a many scan in avian nations has been tried Vancouver Canada. Another option is they've done a many Scandinavian nations. It's been tried Vancouver, Canada to raise welfare rates, simply based on the idea that it's cheaper to help people pay their rent rather than rescue them after they failed.

It's been a potential solution, possibly for years. In the US, not generally a popular idea, but what it would work depends on how it's done. It could Finland put more money into welfare in the form of housing first initiatives we talked about. So it's homeless population dropped by over 60% from 2008 to 2016. Other solutions may include better education programs, somehow miraculously ending the drug war. I don't see that happening. Better treatment centers and even universal basic income, an economic program celebrated in some economic schools of thought, currently being tried in a number of beta programs. Universal basic

income, UBI is a form of social security that guarantees a certain amount of money to every citizen within a given governed population without having to pass a test or fulfill any kind of work requirement. Every universal basic income plan can be different in terms of amount or design. For example, experiments in Canada, Finland, India, Namibia, have received international media attention. The first and only national referendum about basic income was held in Switzerland in 2016. Besides helping the homeless, many experts believe it's going to offset a future where automation will shrink the workforce. One US presidential candidate wants to adopt this approach,

wants to give every American $1,000 a month, and I'll be honest, I don't like it. I'm not sure that I totally understand it, but I don't like it. I've read several articles, I just don't see how it's going to work. Based on the current US population, given each citizen $1,000 a month comes out to just under $4 trillion a year. Roughly the same amount as the entire annual federal operating budget. How is the federal government supposed to do that and pay to keep our military going and fund agencies like the FBI, CIA, various other education programs? How is it supposed to keep our federal airports going?

Keep our interstate, freeway system from crumbling to a swamp of ponds and potholes and on and on. But it's a theory. If you want to spend some time digging into it further, other potential solutions, train more young workers, give them better job skills, give addicts time to heal. A lot of people think that treatment centers and studies are showing that 28 to 8 treatment centers just not enough. But if they had longer, you know, time to heal, they would get out of that revolving door of constantly being back in treatment centers over and over and that longer term centers will actually be cheaper, more cost effective, than constantly going in and out of short term centers. So that's something that's talked a lot.

You know, in about 2.1 million people in the US suffer from substance abuse, used disorders related to prescription opioid pain relievers in 2012. It estimated 467,000 addicted to heroin. So this is a real problem. The number of unintentional overdose deaths from prescription pain relievers soared in the US, uh, more than quadrupling since 1999. While the epidemic is notable for affecting people from any race, gender associated, non-mixed status, or other identifier,

its effects are most felt, uh felt by people who experience in homelessness. Evidence indicates that substance use disorders are known risk factors for homelessness, and data clearly shows that substance abuse and overdose is proportionally impact homeless people. 2017 survey by the US conference mayors found that 68% of cities reported the substance abuse was the largest cause for homelessness for single adults. Substance abuse also reported one of the top three causes for family homelessness. In another study, 25% of homeless people surveyed

and identified drug use as the primary reason for homelessness. 2013 study to determine leading risk factors for homelessness among veterans, indicated the substance abuse may have the highest impact on relative risk for homelessness in this population, even more than bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Recent study in Boston showed that the overdose as surpassed HIV

is a leading cause of death among homeless adults. And sadly, a lot of these drug users got their initial addiction from prescription. You know, they're not all just people who made some terrible life choice to shoot up heroin because they thought it would make their music sound better. Some just hurt their knee, playing pickup basketball, working on a construction site, or something like that. Got a powerful painkiller prescription, had the kind of brain chemistry that really likes opioids. Some of us really do get unlucky with stuff.

You know, really important to remember that. And you know, spiraled into, you know, an opioid addiction. I've tried a lot of drugs. Never felt the pull of addiction. Why? Cause I'm lucky. Addiction just doesn't run in my family. Others not so lucky like my stepbrother Jake,

who had a totally different family tree, he got addicted to heroin and it ended in suicide. Okay, so we've talked a lot about the various factors, various causes, various looks of homeless, various governmental attempts to try to like fix it. What can you personally do to help eliminate or at least reduce homelessness? I'd like to think that's what this episode is building to.

I'm going to share those thoughts that I have as far as I think what we could do right after I share today's idiots of the internet thoughts. Idiots, I'll be into that. Today we head to a message board website called Straight Dope for Idiot segment. Checking out a little thread with a variety of thoughts on the homeless. Some of them are terrible. As I'm sure you're not surprised, the first one is shared by Dan Blather. I think Blather might be asshole in some other language, not totally sure.

Dan writes, I hate the homeless. I know since I'm on the left, I'm supposed to think that the homeless are just down in their luck, but I fucking hate them. Huh, well, tell us how you really feel, dude, don't hold back. Dan continues with, the bus I took this morning, Stunk of Vomit, someone, someone's shitting our store doorway during the day for the fourth time in three weeks. The mess, the stink, constantly being harassed for money, having customers afraid to come downtown,

I'm sick of shoppers, workers, and residents, being inconvenienced by people who give nothing back to society. The crazies need to be forced to take their meds, the drunks need to sober up, and the young people with their fucking dogs can go back to whatever city they hitchhike here from. Oh, when you church-based charities providing free food, go set up shop in the suburbs someplace

rather than the middle of the historic section of town. Businesses pay an extra tax for the privilege of being downtown. Why do they have to put up with the dregs of society? Okay, more after the edit, our free public transportation zone may have to be scrapped because the homeless ride it all day to keep out of the rain. We can't have public toilets because hookers used them to turn tricks, addicts used them to shoot up, and dealers used them for bazaars. Okay, a lot of thoughts.

A lot of thoughts, Dan. I get the anger. I do. Makes me think of Lindsey trying to use that laundry room again. I think of the piles of human shit that were all over the sidewalk. And you're my West LA apartment, an apartment that cost far more every month and my mortgage in Idaho does now.

But fuck them all. I don't, I don't think that attitude is going to work here. I don't think that's the right approach. But again, you know, Dan, Dan's venting. Maybe it's just an angry moment. Maybe he's not an asshole all of the time. He sounds like he's been dealing with some frustrations for quite some, quite some time. Then Comf-Elf writes, well, the only solution I see

that isn't a huge drain in the public coffers is a return to debtors, prisons, and work farms. That might be seen as cruel and unusual though. It seems that the money that went to the maintenance of the public restrooms would pay for one portapoddy and one security guard, let him line up. How about special ID cards? It should only to landowners or leaseholders

that has a magnetic strip or mag strip to open public lavatories. Okay? Okay? Reasonable. Reasonable. I like this way more than I like Dan's comment. I'm not 100% opposed to any of this,

including a version of debtors' prison. I mean, to be shelter, way to be productive, and there's a mental health facility, a school drug rehab center attached, the way to function at a healthier level and improve your life. I like you, I like you, ComFelf. But then ComFelf writes, eh, fuck it.

Round him up and shoot him. Jeez. Oh, man. Maybe I don't like you so much now. Not sure rounding up and shooting the mentally ill or the temporarily down in their luck is like maybe the best plan overall, maybe not completely thought out. And I'm someone who's not opposed to useful violence in certain situations.

Anyone who's listened to a few episodes of this knows that to be true. But that seems excessive. Booker 57 then writes, Bullets cost money, pit graves and mass burials, shoot them in and fill and backfill the soil. Why yes, I've had problems with the homeless before. Thanks for asking. Chase Christ. Where did you write that post from?

Booker 57, some kind of Hitler youth camp? Fuck you, the homeless kids too? Or Phenany? Right, the parents down there luck a little bit, you're gonna fucking put them in mass graves too. Jesus Christ. I don't think Booker 57 is a fan of complex solutions. I don't think Booker 57 likes to think in nuance.

Robert Ligwari writes, but I'm reasonably sure we can provide warmth, shelter, and food to every person in America, and have a cost considerably less than the effects of organized, than the effects of an organized campaign of murder against the poor. I like you, I like you Robert. Can I call you Robert? You make a great point, Robert. I do think we can find a solution that doesn't involve execution that may in fact actually be cheaper than mass execution as well. I think we should at least try it.

Call me crazy. Before we go to just open graves, we just throw people in who are, you know, going to a rough patch. Maybe we could try, I don't know, just something else, anything else. Speser writes, if you did not give people an out from capitalism, what do you expect?

Why should I have to labor? Of course I should indeed have to in order to sustain myself, but why should I be forced to do it within your economic framework? I see the homeless as pioneers. And then they write, no, I don't. They stink and bother me with their laziness, but at least they're doing the only thing they can do to overthrow this tyrannical system of wealth accumulation.

So yes, in that manner, I do applaud them. Takes a lot of courage to be homeless, okay? Roll back and forth from this one. If you really want to solve homelessness, if the government really did care, we'd have kept Australia or insert your own viable island of choice as a prison colony. Don't want to contribute,

don't want to accept prison for infringing upon our ways of governance. Exile seems reasonable. Seems a lot more reasonable than just throwing unwilling people into jail who commit the same crime again, given the opportunity. Okay, you do bring up some interesting points, Spisa. I think it's a little too simplistic again, maybe not all of them are lazy, as we've learned today. Many of them severely psychologically damaged or just don't have economically valued skill

sets or support groups, thinking that they're all just lazy, convenient thinking, but I like the your throwing up some options. I like that better than the throne and mass graves. Dan Blatt doesn't like it. Dan Blatt doesn't care for where this threat is heading. He pipes back in with making this into a class thing is disingenuous. The poor, more than anyone, need good public facilities, libraries, parks, public transportation and public toilets. The problem is that all of these are in danger. When you let drunks, addicts, criminals, and teenage hobby homeless run amok. Okay, again, presentation a little harsh,

but you know what? I like you again, Dan. You do bring up a great point. Who does homeless does hurt the most other than the homeless themselves? Arguably, the working poor who live in the same neighborhoods and are trying to use the same services. So I do think that is something to think about that I had not thought about before.

I gotta say, this is the internet, it's given me a lot of new things to think about. A lot more than I thought it would. A lot more than I thought it would come from this. Chezic Sense does not give me anything good to think about. They take the easy mental road with their posts, just writing, I don't feel one Iota of remorse for these people in my eyes It's impossible to be poor in America These guys can't get welfare checks food stamps. They can't get a pale grant to go to school

The only way to be poor is to be drugged up drunk or crazy I've got a fucking shitty view of the mentally ill. Wow, if you don't wanna be fucking homeless, then don't be crazy. You lunatic son of a bitch, that's simple. You're in America, stop being crazy. Stop being a drunk, crazy addict, and then you can have a fucking pel-brand. I don't think there's anything to be learned from Chessik's sense of commentary.

Other than maybe just a reminder that I think a lot of people think that way. Don't fight the hypothetical. Goes even harder in the same direction. Posting take a stroll through downtown Santa Cruz sometimes. These people are homeless because they are lazy. It's ridiculous to allow people to behave that way in a civilized community. The piss are they, I think you're supposed to write, they piss and shit in the streets, they vomit, they're drunks, aggressive panhandling, lack of public

toys, fuck them. A lot of anger in the swim too. I like the argument that they're shit in the street because they're lazy. If you're shitting in the street, I don't think you're doing so primarily out of laziness. I think you have a lot more going on than just a lack of work ethic. If you're just regularly taking dumps just in the street or on the side of the road. I got time to walk to a bathroom. I got time to wipe my ass. I would rather have a painful rash and a war, raw butthole, then walk a few feet to a public restroom.

I am very mentally healthy. I have no drug dependency issues. I just don't feel like working for my shits. I just go fashion lasers. That's why I throw up in the streets too. If I had a little more work ethic, I'd save my pukes for a garbage can. I think you see how absurd that logic is. So much as puking, shitting out in the streets, they're not doing so because they didn't

feel like walking a little further doing so because they're fucking at the end of their such shitty place in their life, struggling with so many things. I mean, I still get to say it's fucking annoying because I've lived in neighborhoods when there's plenty of human shit on the sidewalk. It's still not fun. It's still gonna do something about it, but it's not like they're just ass, it's too lazy to take a shit in a normal place.

User, Zofia, ads. Pfft. Oh, and don't ever believe anybody in a city who tells you they can't get enough to eat because this is bullshit. There are enough soup kitchens and food banks in every city. I've ever been. Anybody willing to take the charity is not going hungry.

Unfortunately, you can't get a fifth of whiskey at first Baptist free lunch. A lot of these guys get checks every month. You know, pension, welfare, disability, VA, whatever. The library is like a tomb with the first of the months because they hold up in a cheap hotel and drink until the check runs out. Okay, I do hear you, Sophia.

Some of them do have the money to get things going. This makes me consider work camps again for certain cases. I'm going to talk about this later. Work camps with drug treatment centers, you get arrested so many times at a month or public intoxication, vagrantry stuff, maybe often some kind of detox camp, maybe a little work can't be go. Finally, we hear from Cubs fan who seems just to be a terrible fucking human being. Cubs fan doesn't think that this is a problem any of us should have to fix that we need to deal with. He heartlessly writes or she, I guess I don't know the gender, fuck that. Just in response to the thread in general, just fuck that as a strong opening.

You tell me that if I don't like what someone is doing, is my responsibility to provide them with some else to do. Someone robbs a bank because they couldn't find a job as at my fault because I didn't give him money to find a job. Guess what? You're not a fucking dog. You know where to shit. Find a fucking bucket or something if it's that dire, but don't shit in the doorway to my business, you filthy fucker. This is clearly been out into this guy. A lot. The guys that run all over the intersections begging for money from stop cars are great examples

of this. These fucking people all caps can get jobs, washing dishes, mowing lawns, shoveling shit, whatever medial labor task you want to put here, they choose not to. They don't want to. I love not to. They don't want to. I love that argument. They don't want to. So they spend their days approaching uncomfortable people, trapped in stoplights to beg for their money instead.

Don't come in here and tell me all the ways they can't get those jobs because the matter of the, the fact of the matter is they can, but they don't want to. I wish I could hold their heads down on the sidewalk and curb stop every one of those mother fuckers and then stick my rock heart dick in their asses and tell there was nothing left of their body but a pile of fucking blood and laziness. I wish I could take their fucking babies, punt them through fucking field goal posts and then stop them to death, then find anyone who ever gave them, no, I'm going off a little, that's what I imagine them wanting to type.

They stopped it, they can't, but they don't want to. Not helping, Cubs fan. I work hard too. I've always worked multiple jobs. If you want to do insult me, the worst thing you could say is that I'm lazy. Take pride in my work ethic. But I still don't think this is a lazyness issue. Little more complicated than that.

Cubs fan truly just posted an idiots of the internet comment here. However, this little section did give me, I think the best idea I can think of, of how we might be able to solve part of the homeless problem. So very thankful for today's idiots of the internet. It is the internet. Okay, so how do we help eradicate homelessness? After immersing myself in the topic of all the ideas I've heard that are currently being tried out, I do like the concept of housing first the best. So, why we're donating to an organization that supports that concept.

You know, remove someone from a lot of the toxic influences and immediately give them something to feel good about, a place to call their home, give them something to fight for as they also get needed social services and drug rehab if necessary. And also for certain chronic homeless drug users who seem very resistant to rehab, for certain people who maybe really are lazy and just don't want to work. I mean, I know there's got to be some percentage of that in the homeless population. I do have a crazy idea taken from it to the internet. And maybe I'm an idiot for thinking it.

But what about trying to introduce a new form of labor camp, not a guleck, not a North Korean labor or reeducation camp, not exactly a debtor's prison, but close. What if if you were convicted of certain crimes, you had to work in a camp slash prison that made something that was profitable? Is that possible? Some kind of special camp with a drug rehab facility attached with mental health treatment available, and you have to go work at a factory or something of that ilk to make something

both useful and profitable. You know, you get arrested for vagrancy and public intoxication like X amount of times in a certain time period, and your sense not to prison where you're just going to add to the national tax burden, but to a center where you are essentially forced to learn a trade and work a trade. Don't want to work eight hours a day. Solitary confinement then with no books, no television, nothing, work or be punished, be given strong incentive to want to try

and contribute. And this is for people who are going to be back on the streets. I mean, I get if you're not going to have any incentive because you're going to be imprisoned for the rest of your life. But when you're just, when you're probably just not wanting, you have any job, not being able to take care of yourself, what if there was a center where you learn a trade where you get counseling, you get off drugs, where you get mental health treatment.

I don't know what you'd make there. Fucking Ritz crackers, tampons, Halloween clown masks. I don't know, peanut butter, showbiz. I don't know what, I don't know what. But could a facility like that be possible? Something that either turns a profit or costs much, much less in prison, someplace where you learn a skill, they can keep you employed once you left, someplace to clean up, you know, and also if it turned a profit, if we could figure that out, then at the end of your sense, you get some of that money.

You get a place to stay, you get some help with job placement, get a head start, so you're not just giving a bus ticket and just sending your way to, you know, having sent up to cause a problem again. I don't know if this is the best idea. But if we're thinking about this topic a lot this past week, it's the best idea I've been able to come up with in addition to programs that already exist. If you have something better, help us solve this problem. Email email time, so like a bow jangle is a time-slick podcast.com. We'd love to hear, you know, some options that you have that are hopefully better than the last guy on the internet, hopefully it's not just, fuck them.

Maybe not send that email. That doesn't get us anywhere. And finally, this is not just a US problem. I know we have a growing amount of listeners in Sweden, Norway, New Zealand, Ireland, Australia, Wales, Scotland, England, Canada, and more. And I'm sure your own nation has its homeless problems Wales, Scotland, England, Canada, and more. And I'm sure your own nation has its homeless problems as well.

In fact, I know they do. It is estimated that over 150 million people are homeless worldwide while habitat for humanity estimates that over 1.6 billion people around the world live in some form of inadequate shelter. According to most survey and census data available to nation with the worst homeless problem, at least as percentage of their population is guinea with over 68% of their people living without homes. They're not a second with 56%, Haiti's third with 23% Egypt forced with 18% Nigeria fifth with almost 17%. Next on the list, South Africa, 14% of their population estimated to be homeless followed by Honduras 12.3%

Zimbabwe at 8% and Peru at 5.6% all of those terrible percentages Poland if you count people who are primarily a Polish descent Poland has a hundred percent homeless percentage But it's kind of like there's an asterisk though because You know percent homeless percentage, but it's kind of like there's an asterisk though, because, you know, they're not humans. They're kind of a monster, a humanish thing. In any place that allows a Polish, you know, quote unquote person, you know, to sleep inside

of it can't actually be called a human home. It turns into a cave of some sort or maybe like a, like a goblin burrow or a, or a sin bunker. Uh, that's why my, my wife Lindsey, she sleeps in the tree for the night. I haven't talked about that before in the show, but there's no fucking way she's gonna sleep in the house. Why don't I let fucking Gremlins in? You know, why don't I just have a bunch of dogs just run around and shit in all over the place.

But enough about monsters. Let's just talk about humans. And that's of course an inside joke, new listeners, save your emails. As far as the sheer numbers of homeless goes, Nigeria leads the way with over 24 million total people lacking when it comes to housing, South Africa's second with seven million people. Russia is third with five million, I'm guessing some of them in Siberia, Fair Mount Indonesia is fourth with over three million people being homeless, China fifth, and over two and a half million. The United States, United States,

excuse me, ranks 12th on the list with over 550,000 people experiencing homeless at any given time right behind Germany that has over 800,000 homeless as of 2016. Okay, okay, we covered a lot of ground today. Let's recap and also learn something new with today's top five takeaways. Time, suck, top five takeaways. Number one, some good news for the first takeaway is that homelessness overall has decreased

over the past decade, starting to rise again recently, but still down overall. Overall, the United States and the number and ratio of people experiencing homelessness has dropped. That is nice to see that that is possible, but the problem still persists. Number two, another takeaway is that all of the solutions we looked at, not one by themselves, will probably be the answer. Not even my workamp idea, which I'm guessing may get shot down quickly, with over 150 million homeless in the world, and over 1.6 billion not doing great, no one solution will likely

fix this problem, especially with such high varieties of issues from nation to nation. So again, sending some thoughts better than, ha ha, fuck them. Number three, mental illness. It's not just ladies and it's to send people to the streets. Several estimates indicate that between 20 to 50%

of homeless adults have severe mental illness, which in turn is associated with adverse outcomes in terms of housing, involvement in the criminal justice system, substance abuse, and morbidity. For the mentally ill homelessness is a recipe for disaster. It is obvious that over the years we as a people will have to become more understanding and better at treating mental illness. Number four, some kind of good news. I didn't emphasize enough.

It is important to frame this topic correctly. Humans have been in povers for 99.99% of the time we've exist. Open markets, private property, basically brand new to the overall human experience. And like with anything new, we're still trying to figure out. Now, to be homeless in America, while incredibly tragic, it's also to be amongst the richest poor people in the history of the world.

And I know that sounds awful, but when you factor in the amount of services, caloric intake, lifespans of America's homeless, it is safe to say that being homeless in the US better than almost anywhere on earth, certainly better than being homeless almost any other time on earth. Also to be homeless just pretty much any place in the world, you're still living better or at least as well as 99.9% of humans have lived, you know, just as recently like 5,000 years ago. You know, really a couple thousand years ago in this most parts of the world. That's

not to say that there isn't massive amounts of work to still be done nor is it meant to diminish anyone's experiences at all. But in general, to be homeless now is to live well compared to most of humanity's existence, just trying to throw that in there to make all of this a little less sat. You know, those guys jerking off on Wilshire, I got to say, they didn't seem emaciated. They, you know, and they did seem to be having pretty good time, pretty good time. Final take away, something I just touched on at the end, volunteering. A lot can be, actually, I think I forgot to touch on it, I'm touched on it now. A lot can be accomplished by a few people with a good idea.

For example, a spell can't watch you just a few miles from a suck dungeon. There are two people who have made massive impacts on the lives of spell cans homeless. Just two people. The first is a young man named Billy Sexton. You found the direct homeless outreach group called the solution is ours as an HOURS years ago. The nonprofit organization consists of Billy a few friends and a few donors. They are literally out there on the street. Each night, handing out sandwiches, handing out pizzas

to those who need them. Billy is essentially single-handedly directly improved the lives of many of the homeless people in the Spokane region. Billy's work is not going to end homelessness, but his efforts bring a level of humanity to the streets that is sorely needed. He's improving lives greatly. Another individual in the Spokane area is Officer Jeff Getsl of the Spokane Valley Police Force. On his own, in his spare time, Officer Getsl has collected and distributed hundreds of blankets to area homeless.

Officer Getsl directly helps keep many Spokane area homeless alive by keeping them warm in the winter. Jeff's blanket gathering operation has inspired several of his fellow officers to follow suit. It's also inspired a number of benefit concerts to raise money for the homeless and it led to raise awareness regarding the homeless within the Spokane area community. And you can volunteer as well. If you want to from helping it, soup kitchens to collecting items like blankets, toiletries,

food, and yes, even money, there are organizations that always involve in tears to help build cheap housing, tiny houses, do upkeep at shelters, handout supplies, even working to spread the word on the internet and in your city, benefit concerts, community meetings, workshops, trade shows, the chronic masturbators. I talked about earlier, you can volunteer to help kind of jerk them off just to kind of keep the world from crashing. There's so many things you can do. But seriously, Mays X, you can make a big difference

in a variety of ways, hail Nimrod. Time, suck, top five takeaways. All right, another heavy topic has been sucked. Do we get to the bottom of this? Probably not. That'll help raise some awareness, spark some discussions, it could lead to some improvements, and at least one homeless person's life, fuck yeah, for sure.

Perhaps we'll, you know, be part of the generation that finally puts homelessness to bed. You never know, you never know. Big thanks, as always, to the TimeSuck team. Thanks to Queen of the Suck Lindy Cummins, high priestes of the Suck Harmony Velocamp, Jesse Gardyne of Grammar, Dobner, Reverend, Dr. Joe Paisley, Times like High Priest Alex Dugan, the guys at Biddelixer, Danger Brain and Axis Apparel, and congrats to Kate and Logan at Axis Apparel,

bringing a new little space, new little baby into the world. Mm-hmm, hailed him right. Thanks to Zach Scrippkeeper Flannery, bringing so much into the homeless discussion, so much info. We talked a lot about the homeless community today. We have our own communities here in TimeSuck. Almost 10,000 people now in the cold to the curious,

private Facebook group, they're doing good, doing things with charities, posting GoFundMe campaigns, helping each other out. Also just discussing topics, sharing memes, joking around with people with a similarly dark sense of humor and more. And if you want even more social interaction, join the roughly 2500 time suckers and spacers on Discord,

links to both places in the episode description. Next week on time, sucker, go back to Tukrime, to an unsolved mystery this time. Head into Texas. Yeah, yeah, yeah! Gonna look into a murder spree. There's last over 30 years. Known as the Texas Killing Fields,

this subject has been in the top five of the voting board for the spaces for many, many weeks. Finally one very glad to suck this topic. The Texas Killing Fields, it's an area bordering the Calder oil field to 25 acre patch of land situated in the mile from Interstate Highway 45. Since the early 70s, 30 bodies of murder victims have been found within the Killing Fields area. These are mainly the bodies of girls or young women. Many of these victims, teenagers or few of them were as young as 12.

Many other young women who have gone missing from the area with no bodies being found, so there could be many more murders that are unsolved. Authorities think these killings may be the work of a serial killer or serial killers. And combined with other murderers throughout the years, several suspects have been pursued and interviewed. There have been a few confessions only to be proven to be false. What's happening along this secluded and desolate Texas highway area with at least 30 cold cases to look at a bunch of mentally unstable suspects, strange witnesses, government conspiracies

and gun battles, lot of this topic. When the FBI put together a profile for the potential multi-murderer, they surmised that the man using the killing field as his private dumping ground was a methodical organized sexual serial killer. One was high intelligence who probably had a history of abusing animals, which makes me even more angry. I'm certainly not stoked about the killing of young women, but animal abuse as well. Well, you gotta fucking hurt the fur babies, you son of a bitch. Tune in next week for a 144th episode that Texas killing fields tune in right now to today's time-soaker updates Start off with some Idaho love From Joe David Idaho and and time-soaker Joe writes deer patron saint of mush mouth

Just want to take the time to let you know I appreciate you in the time sucked team. Born and raised in Cortalain, it's about time someone showed the world were not just a bunch of potato-humping dipshits, simple sucking. Thanks, Joe. I love this because it is part of my motivation to do a good job here.

The stereotype of about Idaho definitely seems to be that the majority of us are just a bunch of idiotic, hillbilly, country, fucking bumpkins. Try my best to not add to that stereotype that a lot of cool folks and Idaho as well. Next up, Scott Sox is one of the many time suckers who educated me on the difference between poisonous and venomous. A lot of emails. Scott writes, Lord of all that sucks, listening to the Darwin suck and you were talking about

poisonous snakes. This is something that has been a pet peeve of mine. Snakes are not poisonous. They are either venomous or non-venomous. They are not toxic to the touch. They do not produce poison. They produce venom. Ergo, they are venomous.

I hear this constantly and I cringe every time. As for why someone would keep them, I have a friend that has numerous species of venomous snakes, including a pair of black mombas. He has handled venomous snakes for 20 plus years. He milks the venom to sell to pharmaceutical and research companies. The dried venom is used to produce antivenin and in all kinds of research. He has the utmost respect for his animals and has purposely positioned himself close enough to the nearest hospital so that if he were to be bitten by any of his snakes, he has enough

time to reach the hospital for treatment. With the exception of the black mamba, you virtually need to be right next door to survive that. Anyway, love the suck, but just had to throw a little knowledge out there for you and many other folks that make the same mistake, Scott and South Carolina. Thank you for that info, Scott. And thanks for giving me an example of why someone would raise poise the snakes outside of them just being a deranged, hillbilly lunatic Would have never thought of producing anti-venon which I didn't even know was a word prior to your message I thought you just misspelled anti-venom

Which in fact is not properly word itself even though it's used a lot. It's mentioned next to anti-venon in the dictionary The proper term For an anti-syram containing antibodies against specific poisons especially those in the venom of snakes spiders and scorpions Is actually anti-venon for anti-venon. Excuse me anti-syram containing antibodies against specific poisons, especially those in the venom of snake spiders and scorpions, is actually anti-venon for anti-venon, excuse me, anti-venon. Yeah, did not, didn't I learn a couple things new there. Thank you. Next up, that guy, Dobs, sent an email saying that the main message I'm trying to spread, which is increase your critical thinking skills, is the same message as at least one college professor of his. And that makes this non-doctrart heaven, Idaho, Mushmouth, Motherfucker, feel pretty good.

Dobbs writes, dear honorable sir, Dr. Reverend Esquire, Professor Chancellor, Grand President, Lord Majesty Hainas, the holiness rabbi, excellency, the suckers of the mall. Woo! It's mouthful.

I've been listening to your standup on Pandora for years now, and you've essentially been up there with the best dark humor standups ever, like your favorite George Carlin Reston piece and that crazy son of a bitch Doug Sam. Thank you. That's high praise. Anyways, after finding out about time, so I grew pan door, I started listening a few months ago.

Now I'm completely caught up. And I am fiending for more like Charlie Sheen, like a Charlie Sheen Lucifina worshiper. Oh good, yeah. Charlie Sheen would love Lucifia. Back to the point though, I have been noticing all of the PSAs for critical thinking skills and you've been slipping into our time suck drinks. And after hearing your TED talk and doing some people watching, I'm completely on board with a fear of idiocracy.

Now to make sense of all this wackadoodleness, I'm writing you, I'm a finance major at the University of North Georgia. I've just started taking my summer semester class, which is the legal environment of business. Sounds hard, actually. With all this critical thinking, positive propaganda, you've been forcefully shoving into my tight virgin brain. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the doctor of law professor chosen to teach my class

said that, quote, without a doubt, that we will all forget most of the things we learned in this class, but, and then she said, I want more than anything for each and every one of you to walk away from my teaching, having a greater knowledge of critical thinking. Because that will continue to help you throughout your life and career.

Also, if you're still reading this long-winded book, I've written you just know that I wanna become a patron in the space lizard and get those secrets sucks going, but since I have bills in school, it just isn't feasible for me at the moment. But Nimrod knows I wanna swim around and his glorious ball sack as soon as I get the chance. Praise triple M, Hail Lucifina, Good Boy Bojangles, that guy dops.

Well, thank you dops. Keep taking that to school and keep critically thinking. Absolutely. Hail Nimrod. Next up is a Casey Anthony update from Phil Foster that will make you even less likely to be her BFF. Phil wrote just when you think you couldn't hate her more. And then he included a link to a new movie Casey is helping make about her life around the time of her daughter's

death. The daughter, Kayleigh, I think she killed Anthony N.33 told recently told the Daily News that she is already working on the flick. It's called as I was told with first time filmmakers and killed devil Hills, North Carolina. She expects the film to be finished next year. The movie is called, as I was told, because I done what I was told I had to do. I had to put on a fake persona throughout those 31 days she told the Daily Mail. I should have taken the reign and done what I felt. I should have done no matter who it hurt.

My life was in others hands from beginning to end. It's clearly, I talked to her less than the secret suck. She has taken no responsibility for at least being partly responsible for her daughter's disappearance and death. This film is going to have sex scenes in addition to her partying after Kaylee's death, leading to her in court, getting abused after a quiddle. I think it sounds like she's starring in this.

And Reverend Dr. Joe Paisley has told me that he will for sure jerk off to those scenes, because he's a dirty, dirty boy. I can't wait for film critics to rip her apart for tastelessly exploiting her daughter's death. The rotten tomato view reviews are gonna be epic. Okay, quick shout out requests from Anna Jackson. Sorry most of those, most of these, excuse me, don't get right on the air.

Anna asked to relay the following message to die hard sucker and the love of her life. Jackson, happy birthday, pumpkin. May your 31st be as spooky as Halloween all year round. I love you. And then Anna added, keep sucking those sweet topics and forcing random knowledge to my brain that I managed to wow customers at work with. We'll love it, Anna. I hope you, I hope you, that was a good enough little shout out and hail Nimrod.

Now, Karek Ford shares information on a possible future Darwin award winner. He's been working, or he worked within the past. Karak writes, dear Suck Master Deluxe, I have a future Darwin winner story for you. I just love the concept of a future Darwin award winner. I'm a brewer at a brewery in Wyoming. Somehow management hired this knuckle dragger for help in the brewing area. I love the term knuckle dragger for help in the brewing area. I love the term knuckle dragger to this guy was d.u.m. dumb and let me, let me shed light on why I believe this. This guy was a complete bro. No knock on bros because I

kind of, I kind of M one, but he is one of those slightly overweight meatheads that always carries around a protein shake tumbler. And excuse me, anyway, the first main incident was that he was fucking around with a zip tie and zip tied his finger set tight, that it turned purple. And I slowly had to cut it off with tin cutters to avoid a work related incident. Aside from hot glue gun incidents, extremely hot water incidents and various other hazards he got himself into there. There was one to stuck out and as why he has now referred to as the toothbrush guy.

He told me that he would eventually tell me the real story of how it all happened, but this is how he explained it to me after I occurred. He just got off work and went to the gym, it was brushing his teeth for some fucking reason and was quote, getting the back teeth and then he swallowed his toothbrush, a full-size fucking toothbrush. He panicked and went to the hospital where the doctors were dumbfounded and not able to extract the toothbrush. So he was taken in an ambulance to Billin's Montana to a medical center there. They were able to get the toothbrush out. And the whole time I was

receiving snapchats about his progress and I screenshot every single one. If you want, I will send you those pictures and even the zip tie ends and never proof. This guy never ceases to amaze me. Even after he was let go, he was lying on his resumes about what he did at the brewery to get other jobs and eventually kind of ran himself out of town just to give you a sense of who this dude is. We all die one day, but he might, he might not be the one who does from natural causes. Or he may surprise me, but I wanted to share with you that there are human beings out there

like this and that scares me. Love the podcast and of course you stand, and if you ever somehow end up driving through my hometown, beer is on me, keep on sucking, Karek. Thank you, Kare, for that message. Yeah, that's tricky to swallow your whole toothbrush. I just, I'm trying to think of the angle he had to have been at. Like, like looking straight up and just kind of pile drive it, like pushing the toothbrush straight down, like a like a sword swallor, like a carnival sword swallor, like who I've never, ever, ever tried to brush my teeth or even thought or seen somebody do that.

That is interesting. Yeah, he may be a Darwin Award winner, my God. A lot of the people, the first time I was like, when the fuck? I just sent you another hospital. We're not prepared for this nor should we have been. Uh, interesting creepy doll sighting coming in from Matthew Deniston. Matthew writes, Hey, Dan, huge fan of longtime listener, just thought I'd let you know that literally 15 minutes ago, I was re-listing to the Ed and Lorraine Warren episode and the weirdest creepiest thing happened.

As you were talking about Annabelle, I along with 19 other numbers, I do not know, received a text from another number. I do not know of a fucking creepy red-headed doll. I swear to God. Nothing else was sent and no one responded. I took a pic of the text. If you want to see it, once again, you are the best. I don't wake the bear is one of the funniest specials in the last 10 years.

If you respond to this, I'll be more than happy to show you the picture of the group chat. And if I don't respond, it was the fucking doll. Jesus, Matt, please send that pic. Please send it into bojanglesatimesidepodcast.com. We wanna know that you're life. That's super creepy. That will weird me out for the whole week, for sure.

I would be riding back, I'd be like, hey, it's going on. Hey, what are you guys doing? What's up with this weird doll? Why am I on some kind of death list? And thanks for the kind of words, it's very nice. Hey, what are you guys doing? What's up with this weird doll? Why am I on some kind of death list? Um, and thanks for the kind words. It's very nice. And finally an inspirational email from super sucker, you've gone otter. You've on rights, dear Dan. I'm compelled to write you a heartfelt thank you. Whether you even get this message or not, it would be too dramatic to say that you say my life, but you certainly help salvage a chunk of it and the story will be a go-to.

For me next time, I'm feeling sorry for myself. I was recently traveling through Argentina with my husband. I had gone down to Buenos Aires for a conference and thought it would be fun to rent a camper and tool about the north end of the country. We came across many anticipated and unexpected barriers, language being the least of them, everything was unfamiliar. There were numerous encounters with the police. Nothing seemed to work as we expected it to.

Everything from getting money out of a bank machine to finding a place to camp, find water, find food, power, et cetera. It is important to note that I am blind. I can operate very well at home, and it work under familiar circumstances. In fact, I often forget that I'm disabled. That said, this put an enormous amount of pressure

on my husband to have to do just about everything for his both, even flush toilets for me, what the fuck, why can't they standardize these things? Needless to say, I was feeling pretty useless and my mood started to sink lower and lower with each new challenge. But I at least had the foresight to download a couple dozen times of the episodes for our trek across the country, just when I needed it most, the episode triumph over unbelievable tragedy came on. We were on day six of a pretty intense journey.

My husband had been doing all of the navigating, cooking, driving, and sharing my comfort as best he could. I was feeling like a useless sack of shit. But when I listened to the episode, I was moved deeply. I had a very cathartic cry and a much needed attitude adjustment. It's funny because I already know all the lessons the episode had to offer first hand. I live with the disability every day of my life. Malveka Ayers words resonate with me as I too did not start living life until I was forced

to deal with the fact that I would go blind. And I have. I went back to school, got my master's in psychology, camped in the Amazon, walked the Camino, and have lived as best I can with inner consent. I was in Buenos Aires to present at a world Congress for existential analysis. Yes, Victor Frankl, ah, love it. For what it's worth, I'd rather be blind than have my limbs blown off or eaten off. And I'm certainly not comparing my situation with theirs. I guess, no matter what your fate is, there is ground to stand out and you learn to deal with it.

What you are doing is important. And I think it speaks to everyone no matter where they are at. I dare to say that it fills people's souls that the very least it touches them and makes them stir ever so slightly. Keep on sucking. I'm truly grateful to y'all on the suck dungeon and my husband of course, yeah, it's not like a great dude. Hail Nimrod Yvonne, PS, the time suck app is accessible to the blind.

Oh, that's awesome. Well, thank you so much Yvonne. The inspiration is reciprocal. I guess I inspired you and you just inspired the shit out of me and I'm guessing a lot of other people who are gonna hear this. I don't inspired you and you just inspired the shit out of me. And I'm guessing a lot of other people who are gonna hear this. I don't know you, but I love you. What a wonderful soul you seem to have.

So glad you found happiness and yeah, I fucking love Victor Frankel. Logotherapy. Focus on the future. Find meaning in the life that you do have. So important. Time near message, I felt like was fitting for this suck too. Work with what you have. Don't feel sorry for yourself and focus on the future and that's

taking to live your best life. I hope right now you are feeling far more than helpless. You sound like a borderline superhero bad-ass motherfucker to me. So Hail Nimrod, Hail Luciferina, and Hail You, Yvonne Otter. And that's all for today's time sucker updates Thanks time suckers. I need a net. We all did have a great week everybody I hope you yes, just have a good one try not to be you know out there on the street jerking off and front of traffic If you're gonna do that, you know at least at sit down. And most importantly, keep on sucking. Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my fat bottom gal, with me until you tie. Baby my muck is on fire. If you refuse me, won't go abuse me. I'll cook up your skin and bones. Oh, baby, peanut butter.

It's what gives daddy mouuuuuts. That's how I do it in Hollywood. Showbiz!