SYSK Selects: How Homelessness Works

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

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everyone, Chuck here and welcome to the Saturday Stuff
you Should Know Select episode. I picked this one out
this week. It's ah well, it's our famous homelessness episode
and for those of you don't know, we recorded this
and released it around Christmas time December ten. We thought
it would give everyone the warm fuzzies and make people
want to go help those in need. But no, actually

(00:24):
it did do that for some of you. But we
actually got a lot of flak over this one, and
very disappointingly, a lot of people wrote in and said,
you know what, people deserve to be homeless. They put
themselves there. I am not supposed to help them if
they can't help themselves, screw it. And that was really
disappointed to hear. But we stand by the show. I
think it's a good one. So please to enjoy our

(00:45):
episode on homelessness from two thousand ten and have a
great Saturday. 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.

(01:08):
Fresh off of the Stuff you Should Know Facebook page,
where we've been discussing all manner of interesting stuff like
Bob Ross has come up. Have you been posting Bob
Ross videos? He's the best? Yes? I posted. I posted
the Peanuts Christmas time? Is here a little segment? Uh,
you've been posting some pretty good stuff too, but thank you?

(01:28):
What's what's some what's one of your favorite things that
have gotten people buzzing lately? Did I post about Bonnie
Prince Billy or was that on my own Facebook page?
I don't know. 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 Bunny Prince
Billy last night. I would scoff at it, but I
wouldn't take it down. I love that. That's become a

(01:50):
running gag. Is me loving him and you're making fun
of him? Go ahead, okay, you ready for me to
make fun of him. 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 read it.

(02:14):
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

(02:36):
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,

(02:58):
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,

(03:19):
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

(03:39):
the highest five is New Jersey with an eight percent increase.
And this is, of course, i'll due to the great
recession that's going on right now, 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 ChIL
children are to pressing enough. But you know there's plenty

(04:02):
of homeless kids out there who aren't in school. Well yeah, sure,
you think 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,
let's talk about homelessness in the United States, shall we?

(04:23):
And we should say we're just going to concentrate in
the United States. Actually, I've got a few stats. Do
you have, Well, just some stats, Okay, so let's go
ahead and talk about this and get the around the
world out of the way. Worldwide, they they approximate, and
we should go ahead and say that counting homeless people
is is a tough bag because they changes drastically week

(04:47):
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 for picular night. And then um reported
in and then we'll tally the numbers. And then the
other way to do it is UM basically over a year,

(05:08):
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
is because fortunes change rapidly in this crazy, fast moving world,

(05:30):
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
hundred people around the world are homeless, uh the u N.
And what you say, a hundred million people in the world.
It sounds like you just said a hundred one million,

(05:52):
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 to be
a part of that larger number. UM. And then I
started thinking about, like, are there homeless everywhere? And of
course there are, but I said, what about places like
Sweden and Norway, like where you would not expect homeless people,

(06:14):
They have them 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 per every one thousand people, which is
it's not too far off America's percentage really because we
have about one percent right two About three to three

(06:37):
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 the the homelessness population has increased
right in the US since the recession. So the two
thousand five number I think was two point three and

(06:57):
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 the place. A bet this not 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

(07:20):
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. Minorities in this country make up about
twelve percent of the population, and African Americans make up
about fifty and another are Hispanic right, homeless in the

(07:42):
United States, right, African Americans are the account for between
thirty eight and of the homeless population, right, but they
only make up about twelve percent of the US population. Right,
And uh, 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

(08:05):
homeless families make up a greater proportion of the homeless
in rural areas, which is that's any kind of homelessness
is sad, But an entire family being homeless, iss, that's
really tough. Chuck. We we talked about what was driving
homelessness right now. Driving the increase is the recession, but um,

(08:27):
in the late twentie and this century as well. First, right, UM,
there's been a combination 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.

(08:50):
In addition to others that we'll talk about later, um,
that have contributed to people not having a home. The
saddest stat what a 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 aren't have homes because they can't afford housing. Right.

(09:11):
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, like apparently, um, fourteenth century England
had vagrancy laws, right, people have been homeless, have been um,

(09:32):
not necessarily living on the streets, but don't have a
permanent residence. And that's an important point too. When we
talk about homelessness, we're not just talking about people sleeping
on the streets. We're not just talking about people sleeping
in emergency shelters or even in their cars. The true
genuine definition of homelessness is you don't have a home,

(09:52):
you don't have a place that's your own, you're staying
with family, you live in a weekly motel. That that's
homeless as well. Yeah true, right, Um, But back to
the uh the history of homelessness. The author was saying,
you know, we've had homeless in the US since we've
been here. Um, the differences. We used to have homeless

(10:13):
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. In America seems to be unique in
a very bad way, and that a lot of Americans
feel like it's deserved and because you messed up by

(10:38):
doing something really bad or you're on alcohol or drugs,
and a lot of Americans take that attitude that homeless
people deserve to be homeless, and then most of the
rest of Americans just don't think about it at all,
and it's a very invisible problem, right 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. Yeah,

(11:20):
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 biggest
drivers um with with poverty. Okay, right now, when you
when you quantify poverty and the poverty line, you basically

(11:42):
figure out how much the average person pays in a
state or in a nation or something like that for housing, utilities, food,
that kind of thing. Then you set a line and
say anything below this is you're eligible for government assistance.
Right your your poverty stricken. UM. In the US, the
poverty line is somewhere around seventeen grand a year for

(12:05):
a 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 dollars and twenty
five cents an hour. Right, for a person to work
forty hours a week, that's a normal work week, UM,
fifty two weeks a year, vacation none, like they work

(12:29):
five days a week every week. Uh, they would gross
fifteen thousand, eighty dollars. That's not very much money, right,
So you're actually falling below the poverty line making the
federal minimum wage. Right, and then consider that actually too
afford a two bedroom apartment. This is the median for

(12:51):
across the states. Uh, to afford a two bedroom apartment
at thirty of your income, which is the definition of
affordable housing. UM at seven, making seven, you'd have to
work eighty seven hours a week. Ridiculous. 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

(13:11):
about fiftcent of homeless people actually have jobs. So, um,
I saw actually not in this article, but I just
across the internet. 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.

(13:31):
They have a job and they're getting by, but then
something happens. They either lose a job, or they have
some outrageous medical bills, or some catastrophe happens, and then
your average Joe or Jane with a job can find
themselves homeless, like pretty easily. Sometimes it's not always just
some schizophrenic who has a heroin problem, you know, right.

(13:53):
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. UM.
Apparently there are five million that you're shooting for. Yeah, yeah,

(14:14):
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,
half of your income in rent, you're in a bad,
bad way. Um, that all shouldn't be living in whatever

(14:36):
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, do you remember tech Wood? Yeah, techwood housing,
techwood housing. Uh no, it's not. And that, um, the

(15:02):
demolished Remember they demolished tech Wood, which is like the
projects in 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
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,

(15:24):
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
two thousand three, government assistance for housing UM fell by half,
decreased by half. So that's gonna equal a lot of homeless.

(15:44):
So it's not and not only are we not helping
the homeless, we're actually creating homeless. Right. So, uh, we
talked about obviously pay and being down on your luck
temporarily living paycheck to paycheck, why else would you become home? Well,
you kind of hit the the nail on the head
a little bit when you talked about heroin addicted schizophrenics.

(16:06):
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 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

(16:29):
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. When
he became president. One of the major things he cut

(16:49):
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 an increase in homelessness. Well, should
we go ahead and talk about the McKinley Vento Act then,

(17:11):
since we're talking Reagan, Well, yeah, now that here we go.
He also signed the first and it says only Significant
Homeless Act of Congress. Yeah, the McKinley McKinney Vento Act
that was had a different name, but then they named
it after Stuart McKinney and Bruce Vento, who were two

(17:33):
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 into law because he is also widely
credited in this kind of take off so many Republican listeners.

(17:55):
He is widely credited as creating the homeless problem in
the US, not just through de 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
two thirds of homeless people struggle with some kind of

(18:16):
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
jerk husband, abuse of husband, then there they have nowhere

(18:38):
to be because their husband might be the sole breadwinner
and in 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
homeless kids on their own. I guess we're fleeing domestic abuse,

(19:01):
and about we're fleeing sexual abuse. Yeah, right, But it
doesn't stop there. Unfortunately, when you are homeless on the street,
you encounter even more abuse. Many times you leave home,
you leave an abusive situation at home, you live on
the street. Then you get attacked on the street for
being homeless, or you are forced into doing really bad

(19:23):
things for food and shelter and stuff like that, untoward
things at the bus station. At the bus station, and veterans, Josh,
are a big part of our homeless problem. And that
I can't say saddest of all because it's all really sad.
But when you're veterans, when you've got to fight for
this country and you end up one of the two

(19:43):
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 hitting
that nail right on the head man. There's a lot
of overlapping problems or factors of in homelessness. Like you know, veterans,
Maybe homeless veterans may be more prone to having a

(20:07):
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

(20:27):
the street. Um then there are if you have a
house and an income and an address and a fine
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.

(20:51):
But what's so frustrating is that they coul 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 money's out there, yes,
And I'm glad it was veterans that got you. I
hope it's homeless school children that gets somebody else. I

(21:12):
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 that the will. Yeah, and we're not talking about
just some social program with these alcoholics living off my dime.

(21:33):
We're talking about homeless veterans and children and abused women.
And even if it is alcoholic veterans, we've already learned.
Have we not learned already that alcoholism and all addiction
is a brain disease that follows the brain disease model
these days, you need treatment. Well, that's the whole stupid
American idea that I talked about, was that some people
feel like they deserve to be homeless. They see him

(21:54):
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 a nerve today.
It's homelessness. Really shocked. But I'm glad, I'm angry, That's
what I'm saying. Okay, I'm glad you're angry too, Chuck.
So Josher's uh, let's talk about some of the effects.

(22:16):
And a lot of these you can file under duh.
But it bears saying, well, you're talking about women's shelters. Yeah, well,
women's shelters only let in women. And if you have
a teenage son, do you can kiss him goodbye? Yeah?
So bye bye family unit. Uh. Physical attacks homeless people
are attacked and beaten, kicked, chained, fet on, gurnated, spray

(22:41):
painted people, lit on fire, pet on 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
sure health effects for kids. Um, if you're homeless, you're

(23:33):
gonna have a higher rate of stomach problems, asthma, ear infections,
Depression anxiousness PTSD is pretty prevalent. Yeah, it's a cause
of ang is caused by homelessness and not just um
adults but kids as well. Right, Like, you can actually
start to develop PTSD because you don't know where you're

(23:54):
going to sleep the next night. I mean think about it, Chuck, Like,
have you ever been without a home? H No? 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, 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

(24:15):
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, pop a beer and watch you know,
TV or whatever it takes the unwine. So you're you're
stress level is heightened constantly without any resolution to it.
And of course you're going to suffer PTSD or at

(24:37):
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 going on. Josh, I agree, Chuck so check.

(24:59):
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 like Section eight housing. Yeah, right, do

(25:20):
you know about this? That's uh, well, that there's there's
homeless shelters which are like the emergency beds when it's cold.
That kind of thing where you can go temporarily, right,
And a lot of those are I would say most
I don't have any numbers on this, but I would
say most of those are privately operated. Really yeah. Interesting. Uh.

(25:42):
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 vulture and you can
go find just a regular private apartment to rent from
a landlord. It's got to fit certain requirements and if
you meet all those requirements, you only have to pay
third of the rent and bills and then the government

(26:04):
pays the other 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 just gonna shut it down, get the
list smaller, and then open it back up in a
couple of years. Yeah, So good luck getting section eight

(26:26):
if that's what you're trying to do. And uh, you
talked about did you did you mentioned public housing? Know? 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 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. Yea. Um,

(26:50):
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 an apartment block where you go and live
and you pay what you can um and as long
as you follow the rules I just made air quotes, um,

(27:11):
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. We need to
talk about food banks because that's a big part of
being homeless, as getting your meal. And you know, the
United States, it's not like starvation in other countries where

(27:33):
there is no food. There's lots 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
half in the US, and the low estimate is a
quarter Wow. Yeah, I'll tell you what. Never go get

(27:53):
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 will distribute them to uh,
homeless shelters and homeless people directly sometimes, So that's a

(28:16):
big deal. You ever volunteer or anything like that. Yeah,
I've done 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 house that we can get house homeless people in.
We can go there, you go chuck squat Squatville. We

(28:36):
can put up a lean to or something that chokes.
Squatville'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
and this is where the Republicians can go. Yeah, say it.
At the same time, you don't want to support a
nation of people on the government's time without offering some

(29:00):
kind of job training and something to say, hey, let
us help you get on your feet, let us help
you get a job in data entry or on the
manufacturing line or whatever. So luckily there are groups like
the Coalition for the Homeless First Step that that you know,
provide this kind of job job training, and the veterans

(29:21):
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
taking care of people. All of them are geared towards
ending homelessness and the individual and collectively through things like

(29:43):
job training, through things like UM helping to write resumes, YEA,
rehab rehabs a huge one, mental health treatment, UM getting
people cheap drugs, like getting them to a point where
they're not homeless anymore. Like it's addressed seeing the factors
of homelessness. Not you don't feel like work, and so

(30:04):
here's some money that doesn't exist. And I suspect that
there's not really a desire to just have somebody to
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. We disagree, that's awesome. Well I don't

(30:24):
know if I disagree on 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 can give a little time. Uh.
If you do have the dough and it's not necessarily
just dough. You can donate old toys and books and

(30:48):
toiletries and clothes. That old computer that's gathering dust that
you could get seventy dollars for on craigslistuld donate that
instead write it off in your taxes, and maybe homeless
people can get trained how to use that computer. Where
you could donate your car. Yeah, oh yeah, that's a
big one. Yeah. You can be an advocate, try to

(31:10):
raise awareness, letter campaigns, all sorts of things you can
do there. You can hire homeless people. Yes, they do
have skills. As we've seen a lot of people who
um are recently recently homeless may also just be recently
unemployed as well and have job skills. And then the

(31:32):
last one on the list in the article, which I
thought was bring at home, great respect, huge h When
you see that homeless person on the street, don't let
the first thought to be in your head, Hey jerk,
how did you mess up to get here? Maybe you
should think, hey, did you develop schizophrenia in your thirties
and lose your job because of that and get split

(31:53):
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, yeah, well it's you know,
they make a movie about it. It It was such a
big deal. Everyone knows that that that guy was homeless

(32:14):
with a son and now 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 Purtle. Yeah, he was in that respect part. He Yeah,
he was a just a regular dude, had a job

(32:35):
as a restaurant 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 d C now, and yeah,
I think he's an executive at it. Yeah, but he's

(32:56):
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, we've just

(33:17):
now used the first homeless person's name, first and 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 identity lists.

(33:40):
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 Kara th h a
c k a r A called Look or Connect and
he's talking about he's using photography to demonstrate, um, how

(34:00):
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 the shelter. Not

(34:22):
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 Schultz who's
a photographer out of Seattle, and she has a series
called Invisible Families and shell She photographs the homeless, but

(34:44):
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 a right, we
see him, and the caption is um, here Jack ahearn

(35:04):
Age nine marches with the bamboo stick while staying at
a city located in Skyway. Sometimes Jack win unless 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 cam 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. That's Jack

(35:27):
a hear in age nine. Well, and then the gentleman
from DC suggests that if you have a regular walk
to work in a city or something where you see
the same homeless person on a daily basis, then ask
them what their name is one day, call him by
their name, look him in the eye. If you don't
have to give him money if you don't want to.
Little things like that can make a big difference in

(35:50):
a person's self esteem and maybe allows him 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,
gift valcher, you know something like that. So there it
is everybody our fifth summation of the podcast, fifth and
final Yes, if you want to learn more about homelessness. Um,

(36:11):
you can type that word into the search bar. How
stuff works the blank generic genderless identity list search bar.
Very nice. And since I said that, it's time for
is it listener mailman? Yeah, And in the spirit of
this podcast, we're gonna do a big old Kiva round up.

(36:33):
You want to explain what Kiva 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 together uh to create

(36:56):
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 number four team and members on

(37:19):
all of keeping out. I know that's really something behind
atheists number one. Christians are number two. There's like so
angry and right behind the ads, and uh, Team Obama
is number three and little old US are right there
but in front of Australia. So let's go over that
list again. Go for chuck from Wonderful Atheists of America,

(37:39):
Christian Coalition, Team Obama stuff you should know Australia. So
all pretty cool and we have, as of today, we've
loaned as a collective three thousand, four hundred and six
members of loan ten thou eight hundred and thirteen loans
to the tune of three d and thirteen thousand, eight
hundred bucks. So that is not bad. Is this gonna

(38:00):
be up for Christmas? I? I I don't know, Jerry. 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 it's
stocking stuffer and they go and lend it. But ultimately
if they want, they're just postponing getting that twenty five
or bucks cash um for a month or two and

(38:23):
with that repaid. 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 make and sell jewelry and donate the profits

(38:43):
to Kiva. That is awesome. I know you guys have
your own Kiva team, and I love that you use
your power to do good. Uh. Since most people haven't
heard of Kiva, please mention this on your show, would
be so great to get some business that we can
re loan. You can see some of our jewelry and
loans at www dot tiny, u r l dot com

(39:04):
slash project raw and I went today and they have
these little earrings 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.

(39:25):
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 Uh, we usually don't plug other Kiva teams,
but we're going to because this from our our buddy,
sergeant newly promoted Staff Sergeant Walker, Mr Bryant, with your inspiration,

(39:51):
I've started my own Kiva 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
Kiva team. But it says Army in the in the
u r L. So if you're in the Marine Corps,
do not give uh. It is www dot Kiva dot org,

(40:14):
Slash Team, Slash US Underscore, Army Underscore, Kiva Underscore Team.
And he says, wondering if you could just give a
little shout out to all the Armed Forces personnel listening
to your show, and can they donate to our Army team.
And so I'm 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

(40:37):
did this without checking with me. You don't want to
support the n m D. So sorry. Anyway, good holiday
mojo come in your way if you get involved with
stuff like this. Well, congratulations 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.

(41:00):
Since it's around Christmas time and I'm about to weep,
why don't we just bring it on home, drive it
through my heart with the sweetest Christmas story you've ever
heard in your entire life, that's fact based. Have you
got one? No, 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 first a little weep, be

(41:22):
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. Send it in
an email. You can wrap it up. I have the
ribbon on tight, make sure the card is attached, and
send it to Stuff podcast at how stuff works dot

(41:43):
com for mora on this and thousands of other topics.
Is it how stuff works dot com