How Homelessness Works

Today, millions of people around the world are homeless. In this episode, Josh and Chuck take a look at homelessness in the United States, discussing everything from the factors that lead to homelessness to what you can do to help alleviate the situation.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from house Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is Charles W.
Chuck Bryant. Fresh off of the Stuff you Should Know

(00:22):
Facebook page, where we've been discussing all manner of interesting
stuff like Bob Ross has come up. Have you been
posting Bob Ross videos? He's the best? Yes? I posted.
I posted the Peanuts Christmas Times here a little segment. Uh,
you've been posting some pretty good stuff too, but thank you?
What what's some what's one of your favorite things that

(00:43):
have gotten people buzzing lately? Did I posted about Bonnie
Prince Billy? He was that on my own Facebook page?
I don't know. Yeah, did you know? Because you would
have taken it down? I would not have. I would
respect your post. I'm sleepy today because of Bonny Prince
Billy last night. I would scoff at it, but I
wouldn't take it down. I love it. That's become a
running gag. Is me loving him and you're making fun

(01:05):
of him? Go ahead, Okay, you're ready for me to
make fun of him. Yeah, I'm not going to. He
seems like a nice guy. Okay, So Chuck Chucker's um.
I wrote a blog post actually recently on homelessness. I

(01:25):
read it. Did you read it? Really? I read your stuff? Man?
Are you kidding? I'm a fan? Really? Yes? Really? So
the whole thing, then, you know, this already was centered
around well, it started around this, um this news that
came out in July that the homeless, the population of

(01:48):
homeless school children had risen dramatically to about one million
kids in US schools, public schools, I would imagine who
are homeless? Yeah? Right? And uh in one particular area,
I think by the numbers statistically speaking, in Sue Falls,

(02:10):
South Dakota, that's a homeless kid per classroom. Yeah. They
had a huge increase, didn't they there? Oh yeah, something
like that in that state period. Yeah. In uh, in
Sioux Falls school district, it's jump over the last five years.
And what in Texas like a hundred plus percent? Yeah,

(02:31):
So across the across the US, there's been um an
increase of forty one percent nationwide, right of school children, Yes,
of homeless school children and um the so Texas has
seen an increase of a hundred and thirty nine percent, um,
Iowa a hundred and thirty six percent. The lowest of

(02:51):
the highest five is New Jersey with an increase. And
this is, of course, i'll due to the great recession
that's going on right now out right, of course. And
somebody actually posted I haven't read the links, but somebody
actually posted a comment on the blog that said, um,
you know it's bad enough. You know, homeless school children

(03:11):
are depressing enough, but you know there's plenty of homeless
kids out there who aren't in school. Well yeah, sure,
thinking about that. So with the economic recession is clearly
to blame for this increase in homeless school children. Um.
And there's a lot of other factors that over the
years have contributed to homelessness, which we'll talk about. But Chuck,

(03:31):
let's talk about homelessness in the United States, shall we?
And we should say we're just going to concentrate in
the United States. Actually, I've got a few stats, do
you have, Well, just some stats, Okay, so let's go
ahead and talk about this and get the around the
world out of the way. Worldwide, They they approximate, and
we should go ahead and say that counting homeless people

(03:53):
is is a tough bag because they changes drastically week
to week sometimes. Well, we should say that there's two
ways of doing it. One is it's called a point
in time count, where it's basically like, all right, everybody,
go count the homeless people in your area today, right
on this one particular night, and then UM reported in

(04:14):
and then we'll tally the numbers. And then the other
way to do it is UM basically over a year,
and that's like a huge undertaking UM usually done by
the Census Bureau. UM that identifies, you know, how many
people have used homeless shelters, how many of them have
been different, and it comes up with a pretty rough number.
Well yeah, but one of the reasons it's it's difficult

(04:36):
is because fortunes change rapidly in this crazy fast moving world,
and homeless people sometimes are in cars and campgrounds and
places where you can't find them, so it's tough to
get the dead accurate numbers. But having said all that,
my friend I do have some stats worldwide, approximately one
people around the world are homeless. Uh the u n

(04:58):
what did you say? A hundred million people in the world.
It sounds like you said a hundred one. Uh, the
u N it says there's about thirty million displaced Indigenous people.
I don't know if they count that as homeless necessarily,
I would imagine, so that might be a part of
that larger number. Um. And then I started thinking about,
like are there homeless everywhere? And of course there are,

(05:19):
But I said, what about places like Sweden in Norway,
like where you would not expect homeless people, they have
him there. But Sweden only has about seventeen thousand homeless
out of nine point three million people. It's this pretty
small percentage. Uh. Norway though, has one point for homeless
people for every one thousand people, which is it's not

(05:40):
too far off America's percentage really because we have about
one percent. Right two About three to three point five
million people is the latest number I saw. The latest
number I saw, it was actually less than that. What
was it? And this this doesn't make sense because it's
it's to the homelessness population has increased right right in

(06:01):
the US since the recession. So the two thousand five
number I think was two point three and three point
five million between those two, right, like like you just said.
But then there's another one from two thousand nine, it's
one point five six. So the numbers are all over

(06:21):
the place this, right, So that's a little bit from
around the world, Russia, China, Africa, Canada. It happens everywhere,
but most of this is U S. Base because that's
where we are. What we can say though, is that
percentage wise, there's a disproportionate number of minorities that are homeless.

(06:41):
Minorities in this country makeup about twelve percent of the population,
and African Americans make up about fifty and another are
Hispanic right, homeless in the United States, right, African Americans
are the account for between thirty eight and of the

(07:01):
homeless population, right, but they only make up about twelve
percent of the U. S population, right, And this is
you know, obviously you'll see most of this in big cities,
but it's a problem in rural areas as well as
well as well. And typically homeless families make up a
greater proportion of the homeless in rural areas, which is

(07:24):
that's any kind of homelessness is sad, but an entire
family being homeless, that's really tough. Chuck. We we talked
about what was driving homelessness right now, driving the increase
is the recession, but UM in the late twentie and
this century as well, right, UM, there's been a combination

(07:49):
of factors and the two biggest drivers are poverty, an
increase in poverty, and UM a decrease in the availability
of affordable housing, two huge factors in addition to others
that we'll talk about later, UM, that have contributed to
people not having a home, which is the saddest stat

(08:11):
well because we'll talk about all the other factors like
drugs and alcohol and mental health and stuff like that,
but it's sad that the reason why people don't have
homes because they can't afford housing. Right. And here's here's
something I just want to put this out there now.
I was reading a history of homelessness in the US
UM and the author was basically saying, homelessness been around forever,

(08:35):
like apparently, UM, fourteenth century England had vagrancy laws. Right,
people have been homeless, have been um not necessarily living
on the streets, but don't have a permanent residence. And
that's an important point too. When we talk about homelessness,
we're not just talking about people sleeping on the streets.
We're not just talking about people sleeping in emergency shelters

(08:57):
or even in their cars. The true genuine definition of
homelessness is you don't have a home, you don't have
a place that your own, you're staying with family, you
live in a weekly motel, that's homeless as well. Yeah, true, right, Um,
the but back to the uh, the history of homelessness.
The author was saying, you know, we've had homeless in

(09:19):
the US since we've been here. Um, the differences. We
used to have homeless because we couldn't afford to give
them work. I couldn't afford to take care of them.
Now we can't afford to take care of them. We
just don't write. You know. Well, yeah, that's interesting you
brought that up because I was reading about other countries,
and America seems to be unique in a very bad way,

(09:42):
and that a lot of Americans feel like it's deserved
and because you messed up by doing something really bad
or you're on alcohol or drugs, and a lot of
Americans stick that attitude that homeless people deserve to be homeless,
and then most of the rest of Americans just don't
think about it at all, and it's a very invisible

(10:03):
problem or there are you know, people that do care
and don't think they deserve it, and they're what we
call good people or advocates. So how do people get homeless? Josh, Well, Chuck,
let's talk about it. We we said that poverty and
UM the lack of affordable housing are two of the

(10:24):
biggest drivers UM with with poverty. Okay, right now, when
you when you quantify poverty and the poverty line, you
basically figure out how much the average person pays in
a state or in a nation or something like that
for housing, utilities, food, that kind of thing. Then you

(10:46):
set a line and say anything below this is you're
eligible for government assistance. Right, your your poverty stricken. UM.
In the US, the poverty line is somewhere around seventeen
grand a year for family of three. Right. The problem
is there's a big disparity between the poverty line and
the minimum wage. So the federal minimum wage is seven

(11:09):
dollars and twenty five cents an hour. Right, for a
person to work forty hours a week, it's a normal
work week, UM fifty two weeks a year, vacation none,
like they work five days a week every week, they
would gross fifteen thousand eighty dollars. That's not very much money, right,

(11:31):
So you're actually falling below the poverty line making the
federal minimum wage. Right, and then consider that actually too
afford a two bedroom apartment. This is the median across
the states. UH to afford a two bedroom apartment at
thirty percent of your income, which is the definition of

(11:51):
affordable housing. UM at seven making seven, you'd have to
work eighty seven hours a week. Iculous. So there's a
big part of the problem right there. Well, yeah, it
said one of the stats in here that was shocking
was about fiftcent of homeless people actually have jobs. So, um,
I saw actually not in this article, but and I

(12:14):
just across the internetteresting. Well, what is clear is that
a lot of people end up homeless that I don't
think they would ever end up homeless. They live paycheck
to paycheck. They have a job and they're getting by,
but then something happens, either lose a job, or they
have some outrageous medical bills, or some catastrophe happens, and
then your average Joe or Jane with a job can

(12:37):
find themselves homeless, like pretty easily. Sometimes it's not always
just some schizophrenic who has a heroin problem, you know, right,
In fact, most of the time, I would say it's not. Um.
We also talked about a lack of affordable housing. Right,
we said, the definition of affordable housing is of your income.

(12:59):
M A. Apparently there are five million that you're shooting for. Yeah, yeah,
five million US households pay more than half of their
income in rent. Right, that is unbelievable. That's called worst
case scenario. And the rule of thumb is if you
pay a quarter, you're doing good. Yeah yeah, so yeah,

(13:24):
half of your income in rent, you're in a bad,
bad way. Um, that should be living in whatever big
city you're living in. Well, that also encompasses that worst
case scenario. Also encombs as people who live in substandard
housing as well. So, um, it's not just how much
you're paying out, it's what you're paying for, right, or
a combination of the two, right, Um, part of the problem, Chuck,

(13:47):
Do you remember tech Wood, Yeah, tech Wood housing, Techwood housing,
US Street. No, it's not that and that um the
demolished Remember they demolished tech Wood, which is like the
projects and Atlanta right before the Olympics. They were just
gone and it was like Okay, all you poor people,
you don't have to go home because you don't have

(14:07):
one anymore, but you can't stay here. And that was that.
And apparently there's a there there. That was a nationwide
trend since the eighties. Yes, between eight and two thousand three,
more than two million low rent housing units were basically
either demolished or turned into you know, high rise, expensive
high rises. And during that same period, from eighty to

(14:29):
two thousand three, government assistance for housing um fell by half,
decreased by half. That's gonna be cool a lot of homeless,
So it's not. And not only are we not helping
the homeless, we're actually creating homeless. Right. Well, so, uh,
we talked about obviously pay and being down on your
luck to temporarily living paycheck to paycheck, else would you

(14:52):
become home? Well, you you kind of hit the the
nail on the head a little bit when you talked
about heroin addicted schizophrenics. Those those can be a combination
of those two or separately. Mental illness and addiction are
two big factors in homelessness as well, with mentally ill
um Apparently about twenty of all homeless people have some

(15:15):
type of mental illness. That brings up a really interesting point.
Have you ever heard the urban legend that Ronald Reagan
is responsible for the increase in homelessness because he closed
down all of the mental institutions. Yes, I have heard that.
That's actually not too far off the mark. When he
was governor of California from like sixty seven to seventy four,
he shut down a lot of these state run psychiatric hospitals.

(15:40):
When he became president, one of the major things he
cut funding too was the treatment of mental illness. And
because of this cut and funding, a lot of mental
hospitals shut down and a lot of mentally ill people
found themselves homeless. So kind of indirectly in that sense,
he he definitely contributed to increase in homelessness. Well, should

(16:02):
we go ahead and talk about the McKinley Vento Act, then, yes,
we're talking Reagan. Well, yeah, now that here we go.
He also signed the first, it says, only significant Homeless
Act of Congress. Yeah, the McKinley McKinney Vento Act that

(16:22):
was had a different name, but than they named it
after Stuart McKinney and Bruce Vento, who were two of
the biggest champions and it had all sorts of cool
programs in it, right, Yeah, emergency shelter, transitional housing, healthcare, food,
job training, substance abuse services, all kinds of cool stuff. Yeah.
And it's really ironic that he he was the president
that signed that in the law, because he is also

(16:45):
widely credited in this kind take off so many Republican listeners.
He is widely credited as creating the homeless problem in
the US, not just through the institutionalization, but through the
creation of the wealth gap that we've seen between nineteen
eighty and now. You talked about substance abuse, and about

(17:07):
two thirds of homeless people struggle with some kind of
alcohol or drug problem, not surprisingly. And then uh, sadly,
domestic violence has a big part to do with it,
especially with women. About half the women are battered women,
and they oftentimes don't have anywhere to go. They'll flee
there if if they're brave enough to actually flee, they're

(17:28):
jerk husband, abuse of husband, then there they have nowhere
to be because their husband might be the sole breadwinner
and and that kind of circumstance. So they have battered
women shelters that God for just for women, that that
suffer from abuse and kids too. I think half of
a runaway homeless runaways, um, we're fleeing domestic abuse or

(17:52):
homeless kids on their own. I guess we're fleeing domestic abuse,
and about we're fleeing sexual abuse. But it doesn't stop there. Unfortunately,
when you are homeless on the street, you encounter even
more abuse. Many times you leave home, you leave an
abusive situation at home, you live on the street. Then

(18:12):
you get attacked on the street for being homeless, or
you are forced into doing really bad things for food
and shelter and stuff like that. On toward things at
the bus station. At the bus station and veterans, Josh,
are a big part of our homeless problem. And that
I can't say satisfy of all because it's all really sad.
But when you're veterans, when you've got to fight for

(18:34):
this country and you end up one of the two
hundred thousand homeless single men, usually with mental illness, substance
abuse problems because of maybe post traumatic stress disorder, that
is heartbreaking. Yeah, and and again you just keep kidding
that nail right on the head man. There's a lot
of overlapping problems or factors of in homelessness, like you know, veterans,

(18:58):
maybe homeless veterans maybe more prone to having a substance
abuse problem or suffering from a mental illness like PTSD
or substance abuse and mental illness overlap and other people
as well. Uh. And part of the problem is you
get to get into a vicious cycle. There are far
few services, far fewer services available easily accessible on the street. Um,

(19:23):
then there are if you have a house and an
income and an address and a number and all the
normal stuff that that you just kind of need to
be able to get by in the US these days.
And you know, you you look at something like the
Department of Veterans Affairs, which does as good a job
as they can as far as I know, but they
can only accommodate about of homeless veterans. But what's so

(19:46):
frustrating is that they could accommodate all of them. They
could if they wanted, if they had not, if they
wanted to, if they had the funding. So you see
these record bonuses for CEOs on one hand, and then
you hear about homeless veterans the and he's out there, yes,
and I'm glad it was veterans that got you. I
hope it's homeless school children that get somebody else. I

(20:06):
hope somebody hears this and realizes that we have all
the money we need to get it's just some of
the wealthiest are gonna have to give up a little
bit of it so that some of the poorest have
a house. It's as simple as that. We have the means,
just not the will. Yeah, and we're not talking about
just some social program with these alcoholics living off my dime.

(20:27):
We're talking about homeless veterans and children. And you have
used women. And even if it is alcoholic veterans, we've
are learned. Have we not learned already that alcoholism and
all addiction is a brain disease that follows the brain
disease model these days, you need treatment. Well that's the
whole stupid American idea that I talked about, was that
some people feel like they deserve to be homeless. They

(20:48):
see him on the street and they think, what did
you do to get here? Yeah? Instead of what can
I do to help you? Yeah? Well, this is touched
the nerve today. It's homelessness. Really should be shocked. But
I'm glad. I'm angry, That's what I'm saying. Okay, I'm
glad you're angry too, chook josher's Uh, let's talk about

(21:09):
some of the effects. And a lot of these you
can file under duh. But it bears saying you're talking
about women's shelters. Yeah, well women's shelters only let in women.
And if you have a teenage son, you can kiss
him goodbye. Yeah, so bye bye family unit. Uh. Physical

(21:29):
attacks Homeless people are attacked, beaten, kicked, chained, feted, spray
painted people, lit on fire, peton is pretty bad. Yeah,
just because they're homeless. People will go out and beat
up homeless people. Yeah. Well, there's like a whole line
of thinking that like serial killers, practice on drifters, or

(21:52):
sure health effects for kids. Um, if you're homeless, you're
gonna have a higher rate of stomach prob UM's asthma,
your infections. Depression anxiousness PTSD is pretty prevalent. It's a
cause of and is caused by homelessness, and not just

(22:13):
adults but kids as well. Right, Like, you can actually
start to develop PTSD because you don't know where you're
going to sleep the next night. I mean, think about it. Chuck, like,
have you ever been without a home like I, I
would think it can be really weird to not know
where you're going to stay or did not just you know,

(22:33):
have a hard day at work or a hard day
at school, and to go to know that at the
end of this day you have no idea where you're
gonna sleep. Maybe you're gonna sleep in your car, maybe
you're gonna sleep in the woods. But you don't get
to just rest. You don't get to just take a shower,
beer and watch you know, TV or whatever. It takes
the unwined, So you're you're stress level is heightened constantly

(22:57):
without any resolution to it, and of course you're going
to suffer PTSD or at least stomach aches something bad.
Adults too. It's not just kids. They can get frostbite,
leg ulcers, respiratory infections, HIV and AIDS, and diabetes way
more common than homeless population. So lots of health effects

(23:19):
going on, Josh, I agree, Chuck. So check we talked
about UM Reagan as both creator and alleviator of homelessness. UM.
You you talked about some of the programs that the
McKinney Vento Act created. UM, some of the other programs
that have been developed in the United States are um

(23:42):
like Section eight housing, right, do you know about this?
That's uh, well, there's there's homeless shelters, which are like
the emergency beds when it's cold, that kind of thing
you can go temporarily, right, And a lot of those
are I would say most I don't have any numbers
on this, but I would say most of those are

(24:02):
privately operated. Really yeah, interesting. Uh. And then there is
the Section eight thing that you were talking about, which
is not public housing. It's when you fill out of
Section eight vouchure and you can go find just a
regular private apartment to rent from a landlord. It's got
to fit certain requirements and if you meet all those requirements,

(24:23):
you only have to pay thirty of the rent and
bills and then the government pays the other seven straight
to the landlord. So that's Section eight. But Section eight,
you know, they're a huge waiting list, and I read
that a lot of cities have shut it down until
the list gets smaller, and they're like, there's no point
in keeping a list of four years, five years. We're

(24:45):
just gonna shut it down, get the list smaller, and
then open it back up in a couple of years.
So good luck getting Section eight if that's what you're
trying to do. And Uh, you talked about did you
did you mentioned public housing? No? So, Um, well you
talked about shelters. Apparently there were five hundred thousand beds
and two thousand five. There's now six hundred forty three

(25:05):
thousand or there where there wasn't two thousand nine and
about three million to three point five million homeless people. Yeah,
but that's a pretty significant increase in five years. Um.
But but with public housing, if if Section eight is
not an option, there is public housing, or there used
to be, at least in at tech Wood um, which
is basically like an apartment block where you go and

(25:28):
live and you pay what you can um and as
long as you follow the rules I just made air quotes, um,
you can stay there as long as you like. Ideally, again,
there's not that many public housing units are not as
many as there used to be. Uh, you need to
talk about food banks because that's a big part of

(25:49):
being homeless is getting your meal. And you know, the
United States, it's not like starvation in other countries where
there is no food. There's a lot of food here,
lots of food is thrown away. So since the nineteen sixties,
do you know that there's an estimate that up to
half of the food we produced is thrown away, really

(26:12):
half in the US, and the low estimate is a quarter. Wow. Yeah,
I'll tell you what. Never go get a job in
the film industry if you want to. The food waste depresses,
you know, the craft services and just catering the whole thing.
You know, it's ridiculous. Um, But food banks have been
around since about the sixties, and that everyone knows. You
can donate can goods and non perishable items and they

(26:34):
will distribute them to homeless shelters and homeless people directly sometimes.
So that's a big deal. You ever volunteered anything like that? Yeah?
Then the Thanksgiving thing before, Ah, this makes me want
to do more than that though, you know, Yeah, that
feels like going to church on Easter. You know we
should do We should build like an addition onto your

(26:54):
house that we can get house homeless people in. We
can go there, you go Squatville. We can put up
a lean to or something that jokes squad Bill. It's
not a bad idea. Job training though, I mean, we
we talked about things like public housing and the projects,
and that's all well and good to give people a
place to be. But at the same time, you don't

(27:16):
and this is where the Republicians can go, yes, say it.
At the same time, you don't want to support a
nation of people on the government's time without offering some
kind of job training and something to say, hey, let
us help you get on your feet, let us help
you get a job in data entry or on the
manufacturing line or whatever. So luckily there are groups like

(27:38):
the Coalition for the Homeless First Step that that you know,
provide this kind of job job training, and the veterans
are doing the same thing with the Homeless Veterans Reintegration Program,
right And I should say, there isn't a homeless alleviation
program in existence in the US that's geared towards simply

(27:59):
taking care of people. All of them are geared towards
ending homelessness and the individual and collectively through things like
job training, through things like UM helping the right resumes,
rehabs a huge one. Mental health treatment, UM getting people
cheap drugs, like getting them to a point where they're

(28:21):
not homeless anymore. Like it's addressing the factors of homelessness.
Not you don't feel like work, and so here's some
money that doesn't exist, and I suspect that there's not
really a desire to just have somebody give you some
money and not do anything ever and just be poor
in anybody. I don't know. That's my that's my opinion.

(28:47):
We disagree, that's awesome. Well, I don't know if I
disagree that. I don't have enough time to think about
that right now? All right, Uh, what can you do though? Well,
you can we can build lean two's on your squatting land.
You can volunteer, like you said, right, give your time.
If you don't have the dough, you give a little time.
If you do have the dough, and it's not necessarily

(29:09):
just dough. You can donate old toys and books and
toiletries and clothes. That old computer that's gathering dust that
you could get seventy five dollars for on Craigslist, you
donate that instead write it off in your taxes. Yeah,
and maybe homeless people can get trained how to use
that computer. Where you could donate your car, yeah, oh yeah,

(29:31):
that's a big one. Yeah, you can be an advocate,
try to raise awareness, letter campaigns, all sorts of things
you can do there. You can hire homeless people. Yes,
they do have skills. As we've seen now, a lot
of people who um are recently recently homeless may also

(29:52):
just be recently unemployed as well and have job skills.
And then the last one on the list in the article,
which I thought was at home rate respect huge. Ah,
when you see that homeless person on the street, don't
let the first thought to be in your head, Hey jerk,
how did you mess up to get here? Maybe you

(30:12):
should think, hey, did you develop schizophrenia in your thirties
and lose your job because of that and get split
up from your child because you couldn't care for your
child even though you you know you want to. Because
it happened to Will Smith, I was hoping we could
make it through this without bringing up that stupid movie,
The Pursuit of Hapwitness. Yeah, well it's you know, they

(30:35):
make a movie about it. It It was such a big deal.
Everyone knows that that guy was homeless with a son,
and he's rich. He's worth sixty five million bucks. Actually,
you know what story I like better is the one
in this article. The that was a guy. What's his
named David, Yeah, he's he's quoted David Peartle. Yeah, he
was that part he Yeah, he was a just a

(30:57):
regular dude, had a job as a rest front manager.
College graduate and for fifteen years as a restaurant manager
and developed schizophrenia, got fired, ended up hitchhiking and homeless
for two years on the streets of d C. And
now I think he's a heading up a homeless group
in DC nowity, Yeah, I think he's an executive at it. Yeah,

(31:20):
but he's quoted in this article in the respect like
what can you do? He says, Um, most of the
despair and being homeless comes from being treated like you
don't exist. And there's something we should point out Chuck
throughout this. It's however, many minutes into this podcast, Um,

(31:41):
we've just now used the first homeless person's name, first Dan,
last name of the whole podcast. There's a whole conception
of invisibility. The nameless they are, they're not the nameless.
You can completely interchange that with the homeless that's just
as faceless, just as nameless, just as genderless, just as

(32:03):
identity lists. And um, I just want to close and
get everybody to over to on design. There's this awesome
blog post by a guy named John the kera th
h A c k a r A called Look or Connect,
and he's talking about he's using photography to demonstrate, um,

(32:24):
how we treat the homeless and how we should treat
the homeless. And there's a photography book called Shelter, and
this guy roamed around Europe and took photos of homeless
like impromptu makeshift shelters of like blankets hanging over a limb,
in in a in the woods or some place under
an overpass, but in every single picture it's just a shelter.

(32:46):
Not one homeless person appears in this whole book, and
the care is pointing out like this is kind of
emblematic of how we view the homeless. And then he
was also kind of crediting a girl named Erica show
Bolts who's a photographer out of Seattle, and she has
a series called Invisible Families, and she'll she photographs the homeless,

(33:08):
but then the caption she includes captions beneath the the
um photograph and it's of that person. So there's one
of a little kid walking through a homeless camp and
he's he's got like this bamboo stick up right, you
see him and the caption is um here Jack Ahearn,

(33:29):
age nine, marches with the bamboo stick while staying at
a city located in Skyway. Sometimes Jack win and less
fellow Nickelodeon's quotes to help him look for worms. On
other days, he'd play on a pogo stick in mud
puddles or with the resident cab kitten that had six
digits on one paw. The bamboo stick was a gift,
so like, that's a person now, not a homeless kid.

(33:51):
That's Jack A hear In, age nine. Well and then
and the the gentleman from DC suggests that if you
have a regular walk to work in a city or something,
you see the same homeless person on a daily basis,
then ask them what their name is one day, call
them by their name, look him in the eye. If
you don't have to give them money, if you don't
want to, little things like that can make a big

(34:13):
difference in a person's self esteem and maybe allows them
to view themselves as human again. And you can give
them if you're worried about giving the money that they
spend on alcohol or something, give them, get a get
a little food, give voucher, you know, something like that.
So there is everybody. Our fifth summation of the podcast,
fit and final. Yes, if you want to learn more

(34:34):
about homelessness, um, you can type that word into the
search bar how stuff works the blank generic genderless identity
list search bar. Very nice. And since they said that,
it's time for is it listener mailman? Yeah, And in
the spirit of this podcast, we're gonna do a big
old Kiva round up. You want to explain what Keeva

(34:58):
is real quick. Kiva is a website where schmos like
you and me can go and donate well, I shouldn't
say donate lynn increments of twenty five dollars to entrepreneurs
in developing countries and people on their way up here
in the United States even uh. These loans are pulled

(35:19):
together uh to create a larger loan which ultimately repay
a loan that's already been made to the person uh,
and then that person uses it for their business, repays
the loan. You actually get your twenty five bucks back,
that's right if you want, and you can reinvest it.
And basically it's micro lending. Yes, And we have our
own loan team which we're proud to say is the

(35:41):
number four team and members on all of keeping out.
I know that's really something behind atheists number one. Yeah,
Christians are number two. There's like so angry and right
behind the AD and UH Team Obama is number three
and little old us are right there, but in front
of Australia. So to go over that list again, go

(36:01):
Chuck from wonderful Atheist of America Christian Coalition Team Obama
stuff you should know. Australia so all pretty cool, and
we have as of today we've loaned UH as a
collective three thousand, four hundred and six members have loaned
ten tho, eight hundred and thirteen loans to the tune
of three d and thirteen thousand, eight hundred bucks. So

(36:23):
that is not bad. Is this gonna be up for Christmas? I?
I don't know, Jared. Yes, we would suggest you can
get a Kiva gift certificate and give it to your
love one at Christmas. It's a nice little cool thing
to do it like a stocking stuffer, right, and they
go and lend it, but ultimately if they want, they're
just postponing getting that twenty five or seventive bucks cash

(36:45):
um for a month or two. And with that it's repaying. Yeah,
it's repaid, it's not a donation. And with that, here
comes a listener mail because this one really got me. Uh, hi,
two of them really quick. Um. Hi, guys, my name
is Kara and I am another one of your thirteen
year old fans. Just want to say hi, and how
much I love your show. Uh. Some friends and I

(37:05):
make and sell jewelry and donate the profits to Kiva.
That is awesome. I know you guys have your own
key to team and I love that you use your
power to do good. Uh. Since most people haven't heard
of Kiva, please mention this on your show. It would
be so great to get some business that we can
read loan. You can see some of our jewelry and
loans at www dot tiny, u r l dot com

(37:28):
slash project raw and I went today and they have
these little ear rings and little necklaces and rings and
things that these thirteen year old girls may make my hand.
And they've loaned three seventy five bucks so far. And uh,
that is Kara and Kensington, Maryland. And that is so cool.

(37:49):
I can't even talk about it. When thirteen year olds
are doing stuff like this and CEOs are getting rich
and thumbing their nose at the rest of the world.
So Karmen is gonna bite you one day, sir, and
this one. We usually don't plug other KYVA teams, but
we're going to because this from our our buddy, Sergeantly

(38:09):
newly promoted staff Sergeant Walker, Mr Bryant, with your inspiration,
I've started my own KYBA team for the Armed Forces.
With the whole Armed Forces. He started an Army team. Okay,
so it's different if you're well, he says, Armed Forces
KEYVA team, but it says Army in the in the

(38:30):
u r L. So if you're in the Marine Corps,
do not give uh. It is www dot kiva dot org,
Slash Team, slash US Underscore, Army Underscore, Kiva Underscore Team.
And he says, wondering if you could just give a
little shout out to all the Armed Forces personnel listening
to your show, and can they donate to our Army team.

(38:52):
And so I'm gonna encourage you to donate for the
Army team. Everyone else donate for the stuff you should
know team and support Project RAW. I can't believe you
did this without checking with me. You know what's supporting end.
So sorry. Anyway, good holiday mojo come in your way
if you get involved with stuff like this. Well, congratulations

(39:13):
on the promotion staff Sergeant Walker Kara, congratulations on being
a very very cool thirteen year old actually a very
very cool person in general. That's right. Uh. Since it's
around Christmas time and I'm about to weep, why don't
we just bring it on home, drive it through my
heart with the sweetest Christmas story you've ever heard in

(39:35):
your entire life, that's fact based. Have you got one? No,
I'm just saying I'm asking for them. I'm on the
verge of tears. I want to just go ahead and
have my this lit a couple of times too, Did
you really? Okay? Uh? If you have a good story
for us, a good holiday story, we want to hear it.

(39:56):
Send it in an email. You can wrap it up.
I have a ribbon on to right. Make sure the
card is attached, and send it to stuff podcast at
how stuff works dot com For more on this and
thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast

(40:17):
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