Latest / We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits / 498. Walking With, Not Walking By: Helping Unhoused Neighbors Rebuild Social Support Systems - Kevin F. Adler, Miracle Messages

Transcript

498. Walking With, Not Walking By: Helping Unhoused Neighbors Rebuild Social Support Systems - Kevin F. Adler, Miracle Messages · We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Hey, I'm John.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: And I'm Becky.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: And this is the we Are For Good podcast.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Non-profits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: So welcome to the Good Community.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: We're non-profit professionals, philanthropists, world changers and rabbit fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: So let's get started.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Welcome, friends, to the we Are For Good podcast.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: You probably noticed that you don't hear John's voice and it's because John is not here today.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: I have invited a special guest into our conversation today because we are going to go deep into the conversation and the topic of the Unhoused today and the Homeless Crisis, and it's all based on the concept of relationship poverty, and that's probably a term you haven't heard today.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: But I am telling you that the guest you are about to meet today, Kevin Adler, is absolutely going to blow your socks off with what he has done and how he is taking on the Homeless Crisis through his incredible organization, Miracle Messages.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: But before Kevin comes in, I need to introduce our special guest, and her name is Julia Jo Indicott.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: Hi, Julia, Welcome to the podcast.
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: Hi Mom.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: You know, I decided to bring Julia on today we had a conversation because Julia is nine and she has, ever since she was three, has had a real passion for the Homeless Community, and this is her podcast debut.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: Julia, welcome to the we Are For Good podcast, thank you, okay.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: So we're going to get right into it, me and my co-host, because Kevin Adler is in the house.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: So today is the day we're going to talk about how to connection community, storytelling and kindness.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: They're going to converge to address the Homeless Epidemic and how kids are going to help us rediscover our humanity.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: So Kevin is an award-winning social entrepreneur and the author of the new incredible book that I hope everybody listening will go by, called when we Walk by.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: It is a must read guide for ending homelessness in America and since 2014, kevin has been serving as the founder and CEO as Miracle Messages, which helps people experiencing homelessness rebuild their social support systems and financial security through family reunification services, this incredible phone buddy program we're going to talk about, and the first basic income pilot for unhoused individuals in the United States that was backed by Google as a part of a $2.1 million randomized controlled trial led by researchers at USC.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: That was one sentence, and that's just one piece of Kevin's story.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: He is pioneering this work on homelessness and relational poverty.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: He has this master's in sociology from the University of Cambridge and a BA in politics from Occidental College, where he was the 2018 young alumnus of the year and where President Obama's favorite professor said in 40 years of teaching, kevin is the single best student I've ever had, motivated by his late mother's work teaching at underserved adult schools and nursing homes, and his late uncle's 30 years living on the streets.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: You're about to hear why my friend Kevin believes in a future where everyone is recognized as invaluable and interconnected.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: And before I hand the microphone over to you, kevin, finally, I just want to say that you said a sentence to me the first time we ever met, and it was a sentence that made me think this person is going to be my friend for life, because I believe this too.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: And you said everything in my life has been leading me to this point where I never want to know a stranger, and that's me too.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: And then welcome to the we're For Good podcast.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: Julia and I are so excited that you're here.
• 3:59
  Speaker 4: It's so good to be here with you, Becky and Julia.
• 4:02
  Speaker 4: I'm hopeful that our conversation is even more rich than any school lessons you were making today, but I'm going to try to do my part.
• 4:13
  Speaker 4: But it really is an honor to be here with you, Julia and Becky.
• 4:16
  Speaker 4: I'm just grateful for our friendship and have a chance to talk today.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: I cannot wait to introduce this mission to our community.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: But we want to go back.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: We want to meet little Kevin.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: We go into the formative experiences every time on the podcast, because how we grow up and the way in which we grow up so much informs our life, and you are definitely one of those people that has a story.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: We want to know about your mom.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: We want to know about what led you to this work today.
• 4:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well, to start with my mom, I hit the lottery 10 times over with really the best mom I could have asked for.
• 4:52
  Speaker 4: She was both the strongest person I've ever met as well as the kindest person I've ever met.
• 4:59
  Speaker 4: She worked at older adult school nursing homes, working with developmentally disabled individuals, much like her younger sister who had brain damage at birth, and she just was a kindhearted person who had gone through a lot in life.
• 5:18
  Speaker 4: She had many traumas in her life and coming from growing up and all sorts of stuff, but she didn't allow what happened to her to define who she was in the world.
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: She defined herself by how she treated people and her phrase, which I'll share just really is resonant, I think, to both of us in the work we do is she'd always say people are people and I'd kind of make fun of her.
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: I'd say what does that even mean, mom?
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: People are people.
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: And she'd say, well, we just have to understand where people are coming from and try not to judge them, because maybe you would have thought or felt similarly if you had gone through that experience.
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: So she unfortunately passed away when I was 23.
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: She had breast cancer and passed away at the age of 59.
• 6:09
  Speaker 4: And so I think I had this interesting combination in my life of both having the wonderful privilege of having a very nurturing, supportive kind of nuclear family unit and my dad and I are close, and my younger brother and really a place where my neighbors and friends and classmates would gather, congregate but also, early in my life, right at the threshold of going from grad school at Cambridge, ready to take on the world, to moving back into my childhood home in Livermore, california, and sleeping on a mattress in the living room for eight months while I got it ready for rental.
• 6:47
  Speaker 4: And I think that for me was a period where I relied on my extended network of friends and neighbors to get by, to not be so isolated and lonely.
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: So I've both felt the beauty and the benefits of that tightness of relationships and social support and nurturing and love, and also this kind of longing that it's never necessarily going to be permanent and life can be short and unpredictable, so just really appreciating it for what it is.
• 7:17
  Speaker 4: So, yeah, that's a little bit about my upbringing and my dad is a Vietnam veteran.
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: I saw him cry many more times than I saw my mom cry and he taught me that true masculinity, true strength is synonymous with emotional forthrightness and vulnerability, and I've tried to live my life because he went through a lot of traumas, growing up and in the war, and if it wasn't for 30 years of therapy, he would have probably ended up on the streets or passed away, just like his younger brother, my uncle Mark.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: I mean, what a story.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: And we need to name your mom and your dad.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: Can you put their names out here?
• 8:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah, of course my name is Joan Farrington.
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: Her name and I actually use my middle initial is my mom's maiden name, Farrington, so I go by Kevin F Adler to give her as much credit as I possibly can, because she deserves all of it.
• 8:57
  Speaker 4: And then my dad is Paul, so Joan and Paul, and then my younger brother, Chris with a K, so that's my family.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: Joan, paul, chris, I mean already you're talking about this expression of community that is around you and this love that's embedded, and you're taking on this epidemic in such a unique way.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: And I want to kick it to Julia real quick.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: I want to ask you talk to me about your thoughts on homelessness.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: How does it make you feel and what do you notice?
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: It makes me feel like really bad for them and I feel like that they're not going to live much longer if we don't do something to help them.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: So we were a little nervous at first when we saw people on the streets and then we just started like talking to them and giving them things.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: And now you're talking to them.
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: How does that make you feel?
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: It makes me feel good for them, because I know that it's good for health when people talk about sad things.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so too.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: It probably makes us like be more human.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: So that's what Kevin, I feel like, has discovered, and before we talk about miracle messages, we have to talk about your empathy and curiosity that's been leading you into this work, and you are the first person to talk to me about relational poverty, and to me, it is the antithesis of the final core value of we are for good, which is community is everything, and so we want to know how do we move more toward?
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: Community is everything, and all this emerging research indicates that we're sitting in the loneliest epidemic ever.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: So what does it mean when we're disconnected, and how does it?
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: How does it far does it go to like help people you know, be stable and find their people and find their humanity again?
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: We'd love your thoughts on this.
• 10:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I take a page from what Julia said.
• 10:57
  Speaker 4: You know it's.
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: It's not just good for unhoused neighbors, it's actually good for us.
• 11:03
  Speaker 4: It makes us feel better when we can connect to our unhoused neighbors in meaningful ways.
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: Early in the pandemic, I heard an unhoused neighbor say something that stuck with me.
• 11:15
  Speaker 4: He said I'm.
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: You don't need to teach me about social distancing.
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: That's my life already and we all, as housed people, have gone through a period recently where we've experienced a glimpse of what it feels like to not be together, can't congregate.
• 11:37
  Speaker 4: The best thing you can do is maybe stay at home, and we've found ways online, you know social media, video calls, you know wearing masks, outdoor activities to spend time and to connect, even with everything going on.
• 11:54
  Speaker 4: For our neighbors experiencing homelessness, there's tremendous barriers that make connection of even that type very difficult Not having a home, not having a place to gather people, not having a phone, having digital literacy access, access to, you know, charging stations.
• 12:14
  Speaker 4: When we look at the causes of homelessness in the Bay Area where I'm based here in San Francisco Bay Area, one out of every three people who are experiencing homelessness attribute the reason for their homelessness to some form of relational brokenness.
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: So that could be getting kicked out of the house because the family doesn't agree with something about who that person is.
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: It could be that they have someone who's in the house that's doing not nice things to them, who's violent, or it's otherwise doing stuff that doesn't make them feel safe, and it also can be a death or a loss of a loved one or an argument.
• 12:57
  Speaker 4: You know, if folks are getting by by couchsurfing, doubling up, tripling up, and you get into a fight or an argument and get kicked out, you just have that much less wiggle room before falling over the edge into homelessness.
• 13:12
  Speaker 4: And then, once a person is experiencing homelessness, it's an incredibly isolating and otherizing experience.
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: You know, when we think of the issue, we think of, well, what did they do wrong?
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: What's wrong with them Versus, well, gosh.
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: You know, when we see someone who just went through a wildfire or a flood or an earthquake, you would never say, well, what did they do wrong?
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: Did they not buy flood insurance?
• 13:38
  Speaker 4: Or gosh, that was, they should have evacuated earlier.
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: No, we say, oh, that poor person, and maybe, but for the grace of God, go I, but for homelessness.
• 13:47
  Speaker 4: We don't see it in that sense, and so that's part of the work to do is to see not any kind of individual failing, but to see the systems that are broken and also how the disconnectedness can lead to homelessness as well.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: I mean that's such a profound and yet simple concept and yet I mean we're going to talk about your book.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: When we walk by, we do, we walk on by and I just think that this issue of relational poverty and the stigma around it is something that's been fed generation over generation, and I want you to talk to the audience because this is a mindset, for that's an ingrained mindset, and we want to start shifting people away from this sort of us versus them thinking.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: Talk to us a little bit about how we can start to do that and how we can start honestly opening our eyes and stopping not walking by.
• 14:44
  Speaker 4: Okay, well, I'm going to give you some neuroscience here.
• 14:47
  Speaker 4: So there were some neuroscientists who study the brain at Princeton and Duke so two universities most folks you aware of good universities and they did research and found that the part of our brain that activates when we see a person, compared to, say, like an inanimate object so you see a person versus you see like a book the part of our brain that activates when we see a person has been found not to activate when we see a person experiencing homelessness.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: Oh, Kevin.
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: And the regions of our brain that do activate is that this part of the brain is called the medial prefrontal cortex.
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: The part that does activate is the regions.
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: I think it's called the left insula, the right amygdala.
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: Those are the regions that are associated with disgust.
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: So the implications of this research and this finding a few years ago, the New York City Rescue Mission did an experiment where they had individuals dress up to look homeless, as unsuspecting members of their very own families walked.
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: By Each instance of this experiment.
• 15:58
  Speaker 4: Not a single person recognized their own mom or dad, brother or sister, husband or wife, son or daughter as they walked by them on the streets.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: Julia, can you believe that she's shaking her head now?
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: We're starstruck, yeah.
• 16:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah, like, can you imagine, like your mom, who you love and is just such a wonderful person, if she was dressed up to look homeless?
• 16:21
  Speaker 4: You may not even recognize her, you may not even see her as you walk by her on the streets?
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: It's a painful thought, like you'd like to think oh my gosh, I'd see my mom, I'd reach down, I'd give her a hug, I'd help.
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: No one recognized their own loved one.
• 16:36
  Speaker 4: And so I start with that as where we're coming from, because this is more than just let's use person-centered language, which is important.
• 16:46
  Speaker 4: We talk about people experiencing homelessness, not the homeless.
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: You know, we would never call ourselves the housed.
• 16:52
  Speaker 4: So we talk about, you know, not just people defined by what they're lacking, but neighbors who are currently experiencing homelessness and will not forever be homeless Words matter.
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: Words matter, but it's beyond just words because it's really at a neurological level.
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: We are otherizing people who we see as experiencing homelessness, and that just means we have to go even further to connect as people, to see someone.
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: As our shirts say, at miracle messages, everyone is someone, somebody that's someone's son or daughter, brother or sister or, in my case, some kids' beloved uncle or aunt.
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: Wow, kevin.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: I mean this work is so deep and so important, and I think the thing that I value so much about what you're able to do is you're able to balance your head and your heart in this, because you use data in such insightful ways to really drive home the points that we just don't know.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: And, of course, we don't know what our brain is telling us in the way that it's lighting up, and so, like my therapist would call that a left-handed move.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: We have to do a left-handed move against that sensation, which means to me I interpret as I've got to make an effort, I've got to make a special effort to go over, to humanize, to see the one person, and I think that takes a lot of bravery.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: And I want to go further into this research because you did something extraordinary and I want you to talk about what happened when you put GoPros on individuals who are experiencing homelessness in your community.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: What happened?
• 18:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: So what a teaser, my gosh, Okay.
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: So my uncle was homeless for about 30 years and he lived on and off the streets of Santa Cruz and I never thought of him as a homeless man because he was just a beloved member of my family.
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: So when he passed away at the age of 50 on the streets in Santa Cruz, I just started thinking, gosh, everyone I'm walking by, that's someone's son or daughter, that some kids, beloved uncle or aunt.
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: But at that time I didn't see people experiencing homelessness as people to be loved.
• 19:00
  Speaker 4: I saw them as problems to be solved and I wanted in my own heart to feel differently.
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: I wanted to feel the same or similarly as I would feel about my uncle, who I loved very much.
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: I wanted to have the same warmth and empathy for my unhoused neighbors.
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: So for one year I had it on my heart.
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: I had this question, that kind of landed there, which was how would Jesus use a smartphone?
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: Love it.
• 19:32
  Speaker 4: You know, and I was like, okay, well, you know, cat videos are fun.
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: I'm not sure that's how Jesus did.
• 19:39
  Speaker 4: How about?
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: For a year, I invite 24 individuals who are experiencing homelessness to wear GoPro cameras around their chests and narrate their experience of what life is like on the streets.
• 19:51
  Speaker 4: And the basic premise was pretty simple I just walked by you, you're still here, what's it like to be you?
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: And I had, you know, all these individuals record hours of footage.
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: I watched all the footage and it was really heartbreaking.
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: And two things stood out in the footage, and one of them, julia, is going to connect directly to you.
• 20:13
  Speaker 4: Actually, both of them connect to you, but one is really connected to you.
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: So first, every single time I'd see a young person walk by, usually with their mom or their dad, you know a child every single time that a kid would never just walk by.
• 20:32
  Speaker 4: They always look, point, stare, ask questions, tug on their mom or dad's sleeve and say you know why is that man on the streets Like, is there anything we can do?
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: And half the time you'd see the parent scold the kid and say no, that's bad, that's implied, dangerous, don't do that.
• 20:51
  Speaker 4: The other half the time you'd almost see the kid guide the parent to the person, and it made me think what have we forgotten as adults, as grownups, that we just knew so instinctively as children like Julia?
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: And so I really honor Julia, yourself and other young people, because I think you remember something that us, your mom and I have forgotten of who our neighbors are and the right and wrong that, hey, that person shouldn't be on the streets and we should do some about it.
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: And the second insight that really struck me was every single person at some point in the conversation would talk about somebody else a mother or a friend, a brother or a loved one, anyone that and oftentimes that person was no longer in their life, but they were still talking about them.
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: And in one of the clips I heard someone say something that changed my life and they said I never realized I was homeless when I lost my housing, only when I lost my family and friends.
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: And it's like you hear that and it's so intuitive and I was like, oh yeah, like that makes tons of sense.
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: I've never heard anything articulated about that from any government agency homeless service provider.
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: So you know, the story concludes and really the journey of miracle messages begins with me walking down the street, going up to everyone and she was visibly homeless, sitting down with everyone I saw and just asking a simple question, which was do you have any loved ones you want to reconnect to?
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: And turned out first person I met was a man named Jeffrey.
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: He said he hadn't seen his family in 22 years.
• 22:34
  Speaker 4: I got down with him, invited him to record a short video to his sister and his niece and his nephew and his dad.
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: I got the video, gathered some information from Jeffrey about where his family was based and you know last known addresses and things of that sort.
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: I went home, got on social media, did a Facebook search for Jeffrey's hometown, found a Facebook group connected to the hometown, posted the video there with a short note and within one hour the video went viral, made the local news that night as the leading story.
• 23:12
  Speaker 4: Classmates started commenting saying hey, I went to high school with Jeffrey, I work in construction, does he need a job?
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: I work at the congressman's office, does he need health care?
• 23:23
  Speaker 4: And in the first 20 minutes of the post his sister got tagged and we got on the phone the next day and it turned out that Jeffrey had been a missing person for 12 years.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: I mean, how many Jeffries are in all of our communities just waiting for one of us to not walk on by?
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: We got to get into miracle messages because I just think the simple question of is there anyone that you would like to call is a game changer for the way that we tackle this issue, and it's such a great first step.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: And so talk to us about this incredible organization that you have founded, and I definitely want you to break down the four programs that you have that I think are so groundbreaking, innovative and brilliant that I'm hoping others on this podcast will listen to and think about how they can help you and think about how they can retool some of their programs.
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: Go ahead.
• 24:14
  Speaker 4: Well, thank you, becky, and the best part for me, about miracle messages.
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: So our mission is twofold.
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: First is no one goes through homelessness alone, and I'll share our work to make sure no one goes through homelessness alone.
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: And then I wish I could end that a word earlier so we could just say no one goes through homelessness but, given where things are at, we want to make sure it's not an isolating.
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: Other rising experience and very exciting.
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: Second part to our mission is no one should feel helpless on this issue.
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: There's way too much good work to be done and what we do is we try to make everyday people who have good hearts part of the we are for good podcast community.
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: I'm sure is included to give them every day, give them very simple ways to make a difference in the lives of our unhoused neighbors.
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: So I'll share a little bit about what that looks like.
• 25:04
  Speaker 4: So first program is really building off of the reunion that happened with Jeffrey, where he reconnected to his family.
• 25:11
  Speaker 4: It's our family and friend reunification services.
• 25:15
  Speaker 4: So the way it works now is a person who's experiencing homelessness or a case worker or social worker or volunteer or member of our staff on their behalf can record a message and that could be a video or an audio message, but it can also just be going to our website, miraclemessagesorg and filling out our get involved or our referral form.
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: If folks want to volunteer, you can fill out the get involved form as well.
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: We also have a hotline phone, a hotline number, so if someone would like to refer an unhoused neighbor or a person experiencing homelessness wants to read us, they can call 1-800-MISS-YOU M-I-S-S-Y-O-U-1800-MISS-U.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: We'll link that up in the show notes for sure.
• 26:02
  Speaker 4: Oh, great, yeah, that reaches a member of our staff and we can take down some information From there.
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: We get the message, we get the information.
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: We have a network of volunteer digital detectives.
• 26:15
  Speaker 4: Oh, I love this.
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: Every day, folks all around the country, led by a staff member who has 30 plus years as a professional private investigator.
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: They make phone calls and they write letters and they do digital searches to locate loved ones, deliver messages, help people reconnect to their family and friends.
• 26:38
  Speaker 4: Those efforts have led to just over 800 reunifications with our on-house neighbors.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: Extraordinary.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: That's one program.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: That's one program we keep going.
• 26:49
  Speaker 4: Yes, we work it in both directions.
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: If it's a family member looking for an on-house loved one who may be experiencing homelessness and they're missing, we have a program called Find them where we work and it's like a missing person search.
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: We've done over 100 of those types of reunions.
• 27:08
  Speaker 4: They're hard, it's like a needle in a haystack, but we do that as well.
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: Our second program is our phone buddy program.
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: Basically, we had folks say early on on-house neighbors said well gosh, this whole idea of relational poverty is poverty.
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: I get it, that's my life.
• 27:26
  Speaker 4: But for me family is not an option.
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: They may be part of the problem, not part of the solution.
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: So how do you help me if I can't reconnect to my family or they don't want anything to do with me?
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: And that's where we launched our phone buddy program, kind of like a big brother's, big sister's for our on-house neighbors.
• 27:43
  Speaker 4: So we take volunteers from around the world, train them, support them, give them a phone number through either our partnership with Dialpad or Google Voice, so that they can make phone calls and send text messages to an on-house neighbor that they're going to be paired with one-to-one in a relationship, all phone and text space.
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: You don't have to get together in person.
• 28:08
  Speaker 4: There's a call log that you fill out.
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: If there's things that you're not sure how to handle, caseworker or staff member will follow up and we do trainings and support.
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: It's a great community that right now has about 350 pairs all around the world Folks in.
• 28:25
  Speaker 4: There's a guy in Bahrain and he's paired with an on-house person in Los Angeles.
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: We have folks in Chile and they're having calls with folks in Florida.
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: I mean it's all over the world and we right now have a wait list of on-housed individuals of 36 on-house folks waiting for volunteers.
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: 20 minutes, 30 minutes a week and if you're curious you can go to miraclemessagesorg and fill out the get-involved form.
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: And then our third program is building off of each of these programs.
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: So of the phone buddies we heard from our volunteers pretty clearly.
• 29:00
  Speaker 4: They said well gosh, I love my friend, I trust them, but it's very hard for us to be on equal footing in a relationship if they don't know how they're going to pay for their next meal or how they're going to get gas in their car to get back to work on Monday, because half of our on-house neighbors have jobs.
• 29:18
  Speaker 4: So how do we create some kind of?
• 29:21
  Speaker 4: Should I give them money.
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: Is that appropriate?
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: What does that look like?
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: And we decided to create a basic income pilot where we raised initially $50,000 to give $500 a month for six months, no strings attached to 14 people in our phone buddy program who are nominated by their volunteer friends, and within six months two-thirds of those on-house neighbors were able to secure stable housing.
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: They used the money better than I could have used it for them.
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: And so now we have grown the Miracle Money the program, the Miracle Money Basic Income and Direct Cash Transfer work into a $2.1 million randomized control trial.
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: So that's what's funded by Googleorg.
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: We're working with USC on that and we're giving out $750 a month for 12 months to over 100 on-house neighbors, all of whom are in our phone buddy program in Los Angeles, oakland and San Francisco.
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: Kevin, you've taken the data, you've taken the humanity and you've literally made the case for why this framework is completely doable and it's a way to upend systems.
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: I'm so overjoyed that we're sharing this conversation because I want others to take it and do it in their own communities.
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: So, okay, we're down to the fourth program Bring it home.
• 30:51
  Speaker 4: The last program is really the rest of the conversation and, through the book and everything else, it's this need to change hearts and minds on this issue, it's the narrative change, it's the media work, the storytelling work, it's the stats that we shared earlier that folks don't even see our on-house neighbors as neighbors, as people.
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: So that's where we've had a lot of media coverage.
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: The book that I wrote just came out when we walked by.
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: We're working on a documentary Excellent, yeah, it's all really just meant to meet people where they're at but not leave them there.
• 31:32
  Speaker 4: When we don't see our on-house neighbors as neighbors, not only are we missing their humanity, but we're actually falling short in our own.
• 31:41
  Speaker 4: It dehumanizes us, and I think right now in the world there's so many fricking issues that it's so easy to feel just so frustrated and helpless and overwhelmed about, and we don't even need to create a list.
• 31:55
  Speaker 4: Everyone can close their eyes and just think of what those are.
• 31:58
  Speaker 4: And homelessness I truly believe and have seen it with my own eyes should not and need not be one of those issues.
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: There's so much good for us to do.
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: It is the human rights crisis in our backyards, in our neighborhoods, and whether it's how you treat people.
• 32:19
  Speaker 4: I heard someone say at an event yesterday.
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: They said well, empathy is free and a smile is cheap.
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: You can take my contact, it's a fantastic team.
• 32:30
  Speaker 4: And there's even beyond that, being in relationship with someone, a question I always ask.
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: When I give a talk, I'll say raise your hand, how many of you care about the issue of homelessness?
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: Every hand shoots up and then I say well, raise your hand if you know someone who's currently experiencing homelessness as a friend, as a family member.
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: And in every talk I've given, it's never more than about five, maybe 10% of people who raise their hand and I say well, with all due respect, I feel that that is part of the issue here is, we don't know who they are and we want to, we want to connect, but we want to do it in a safe way.
• 33:12
  Speaker 4: How do you do that?
• 33:12
  Speaker 4: And that's really what we're trying to do at Miracle Messages is create a safe, accessible way for everyday people to get involved in this human rights crisis of our time.
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: Julia, you're tapping me.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: I know you have a question you want to ask Kevin.
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, on.
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: How would you estimate on how many homeless people you've helped?
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: That's a great question.
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: Well, we've helped, we've worked with well over at this point in the thousands of people that have received our services.
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: Impressive, oh, thank you and also fully acknowledge it is a drop in the bucket, because every night in the United States we have 600,000 Americans who are sleeping on the streets or in shelters.
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: Every single night and over the course of a year, 6 million people experience homelessness at some point in the year, and about 2.5 million of those 6 million are children or under the age of 18.
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: So there's an invisible homelessness also that we don't talk enough about, and so we have a lot more work to do.
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: Julia and I'd really appreciate your help and support in helping us get there.
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: Also, what can kids do to help the homeless population?
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: You know it's a great question.
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: One of the best things I think kids can do is really ask hard questions of their parents, and you hear kids who ask why is that man on the streets?
• 34:39
  Speaker 4: What can we do about homelessness?
• 34:41
  Speaker 4: How can I make a difference?
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: That actually is really powerful, because I think parents listen to their kids a lot more than maybe the kids realize.
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: You have a lot of influence in your family, so I would start by having those conversations.
• 34:54
  Speaker 4: You know, hey, we haven't talked about homelessness as a family.
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: What's where we're doing in terms of visits, donations, handing out socks?
• 35:03
  Speaker 4: Socks are the number one requested physical item on the streets, so socks are one item that are really easy to give out on the streets.
• 35:12
  Speaker 4: It's a great conversation starter.
• 35:14
  Speaker 4: Hey, I wanted to see I'm just walking around handing out socks.
• 35:17
  Speaker 4: Would you like a pair of socks?
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: You know, very simple, and then maybe say oh hi, my name's Kevin, my name's Becky, my name's Julia.
• 35:24
  Speaker 4: You know what's your name, you know what are your plans for today.
• 35:28
  Speaker 4: And doing that if you don't feel comfortable on the streets, and doing it with your parents, and always, you know, going with a friend or a group and doing it in daylight.
• 35:37
  Speaker 4: You can also go to, you know, a shelter, a soup kitchen, you know, but there's a lot that kids can do, I think, on this issue.
• 35:45
  Speaker 4: So I hope, julia, that that gives you some sense of what you're capable of doing on this issue.
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: I hope so too.
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: I think we have so much to learn from kids.
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: They have such wisdom in the space of humanity.
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: And, kevin, we just love and honor story so much on this podcast.
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: I think the layers of your story are so profound and moving it's there's a story of philanthropy that has stayed with you in your life a moment of simple kindness.
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: It could be a grandiose gift or something in between that you would share with us.
• 36:20
  Speaker 4: You know, the one that comes to mind first is actually Elizabeth, who was the first recipient of our basic income pilot.
• 36:29
  Speaker 4: She got the first $500,.
• 36:31
  Speaker 4: I guess it was three years ago last December 2020, when she got her first payment.
• 36:37
  Speaker 4: And the first thing she did with the first payment is she took part of it and made a donation to Miracle Messages.
• 36:45
  Speaker 4: And I asked her Elizabeth, you didn't need to do this, like you know.
• 36:49
  Speaker 4: I kind of almost said you know, you shited her, you didn't need to do this, like that wasn't necessary.
• 36:53
  Speaker 4: She said, well, I didn't do it for you, I did it for myself, so I could once again feel the dignity of being able to support the causes that I believe in.
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: So good.
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: So we've got to wrap up, which I'm extremely sad about.
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: Are you sad too, julia?
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: Yes, we've got to get Kevin's one good thing.
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: So we end all of our conversations with a one good thing.
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: It could be a piece of advice, a life hack.
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: It looks like you have one too, but hold on one second and let's let Kevin give his one good thing first.
• 37:27
  Speaker 4: Okay, great.
• 37:27
  Speaker 4: And also, julia, you asked this really good question on how kids can make a difference.
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: I actually want to share a story as my one good thing, but I haven't shared too often in interviews.
• 37:39
  Speaker 4: So at our very first fundraising event for Miracle Messages, we have an event every year we call the Good Neighbor Awards and the basic idea is let's celebrate the unsung heroes who make a difference on the issue of homelessness and we get an award and they say a few words on why this work matters to them.
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: And so at our very first Good Neighbor Awards ceremony, towards the end of the event, we had done this fundraiser successful, raised tens of thousands of dollars, and then at the very end of the night, a young boy approached me and he came up to me and introduced himself and he said he's 11 years old.
• 38:23
  Speaker 4: He said okay, and his dad was kind of standing there behind him and he said well, you know, kevin, I was really moved by what you said and as a kid I often don't know what to do on this issue of homelessness.
• 38:37
  Speaker 4: I want to make a difference, I want to help.
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: And he said I get an allowance every week and I'd like to give you my allowance for this week, and so he gave me $7.
• 38:53
  Speaker 4: And I took the $7 in cash, $5 and then a $2.1.
• 38:59
  Speaker 4: And I said well, I'm really touched by your gift today and, with your permission, here's how I'd like to use the money.
• 39:08
  Speaker 4: I'm going to take five of those dollars and I'm going to invest it in our programs family reunifications now, the phone buddy program, basic income, work, the direct cash transfers.
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: So, with your permission, I'm going to take $5 and put it into our programs.
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: And he said, okay, that sounds good.
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: And then I said, well, with the $2, the $2.1, what I'd like to do is I'd like to keep that and I'd like to keep that in my bag, and what I want to do is be able to remember this moment and share this story that here you are, 11 years old, with your allowance, and you have an ability to make a difference, and your philanthropy here may inspire other people to give in the future.
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: And so what I have this is my bag, at the very front of the bag.
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: Open it up.
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: I have two $1 bills that I keep with me from this young boy and I share this story usually not on podcasts like this but these two $1 bills have inspired me so many times and to me it's a way of the ripple effect, of the impact that that young boy makes and really all of us can make on this issue with the generosity that I think is in so many of our hearts.
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: What a story.
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: Little kids can do big things, and I think this conversation is just a call back to our humanity.
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: I think in times such as these, when we can't tell what's real, we don't know who to trust.
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: We know how to love, we know how to be a light to others.
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: That is a constant, that is something that we can trust.
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: So, kevin, you've got to tell us how people can connect with you.
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: How can they connect with Miracle Messages?
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: And please tell us where we can get this book, because it is an incredible gift for Christmas this year and, honestly, all any time of the year.
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: I've got my copy here at the house.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: We're excited to read that over the holiday break.
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: Give us all the ways we can connect with you.
• 41:12
  Speaker 4: That's great.
• 41:13
  Speaker 4: Well, folks who are interested in getting involved in Miracle Messages, they can follow us on Instagram or Miracle Messages and go to our website MiracleMessagesorg and fill out the Get Involved form.
• 41:25
  Speaker 4: I'm also on Instagram, social media, Facebook, Twitter you can look me up, it's Kevin F Adler, and then for the book folks can go to our website whenwewalkbycom, and this book for me is what I wish existed 10 years ago when I started this journey homelessness, answering all the questions, misconceptions, the myths and really what everyday people can do about this issue, with stories and really practical guidance and advice.
• 41:59
  Speaker 4: So if the book resonates with folks, I would invite them to get a copy, share it with their friends, leave a review, but they can get it at whenwewalkbycom and reach out to me and let me know how they like it.
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: I really want to give you the floor for the final question of what's one thing people can do to get active on this issue today, either for Miracle Messages or in their local community.
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: How would you activate our community?
• 42:23
  Speaker 4: You know I trust your heart.
• 42:26
  Speaker 4: I know, if you're listening to this, you're already someone who has a passion for making a difference.
• 42:33
  Speaker 4: That's a given.
• 42:34
  Speaker 4: The challenge is what can I do?
• 42:36
  Speaker 4: How can I get involved?
• 42:37
  Speaker 4: Where do I start?
• 42:38
  Speaker 4: And for me, I'm a big believer in what Brian Stevenson from the Equal Justice Initiative, Just Mercy, talks about of getting proximate, Getting proximate.
• 42:48
  Speaker 4: I actually think you have to even go further.
• 42:50
  Speaker 4: You have to get relational.
• 42:52
  Speaker 4: There you go and until we get to a place where we see and know our unhoused neighbors as the sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers and yes, aunts and uncles that they are, we'll never get this crisis under control.
• 43:07
  Speaker 4: So my invitation to you would be to get to know an unhoused neighbor as a neighbor, as a friend, and if that's through Miracle Messages as a phone buddy, great.
• 43:18
  Speaker 4: We have a wait list right now of unhoused neighbors.
• 43:21
  Speaker 4: If that's at a local shelter soup kitchen on the streets in your community, great.
• 43:26
  Speaker 4: But we'd love to hear about your stories of connecting with your unhoused neighbors so that, by you know, whenever you listen to this podcast, give yourself 30 days.
• 43:33
  Speaker 4: Say, if I care about the issue of homelessness, but I don't know someone who's personally experiencing homelessness within the next 30 days, I'm going to change that.
• 43:42
  Speaker 4: So I know someone by name and I know their story and I can share that in my circles as well.
• 43:47
  Speaker 4: And, if I can, as just the final thing to share, my favorite professor.
• 43:52
  Speaker 4: You gave me a very generous introduction Roger Boucher, who was Barack Obama's favorite professor.
• 43:59
  Speaker 4: He grew up in Oklahoma and he would have been 75 years old next month, in January.
• 44:08
  Speaker 4: He was an incredible human being.
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: He spent much of his life with rheumatoid arthritis absolutely brilliant political philosopher.
• 44:17
  Speaker 4: He's a beloved mentor of mine who I've missed very much.
• 44:20
  Speaker 4: He passed away a few years ago.
• 44:22
  Speaker 4: So if there's an opportunity at some point in 2024, the year that Roger Boucher would have been 75 years old, occidental College longtime professor it would mean the world to me to do an event in Oklahoma in honor of Roger.
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: We will hook you up.
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: I'm putting that out into the world, julia and I will be there.
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: Kevin Adler, you are one good human.
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: I'm so glad to know you, so glad to call you friend and ally.
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: You keep going with this great work and consider two of us allies sitting here as part of your squad.
• 44:55
  Speaker 4: Right back at you.
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: Becky, julia, thanks for some time, and if you need a permission slip, I got you.
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: You got it.
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: Have a great one y'all.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much for being here.
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: Friends, and you probably hear it in our voices, but we love connecting you with the most innovative people to help you achieve more for your mission than ever before.
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: We'd love for you to come join our good community.
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: It's free and you can think of it as the after party to each podcast episode.
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: Sign up today at weareforgoodcom.
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: Backslash hello.
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: And one more thing if you love what you heard today, would you mind leaving us a podcast rating and review?
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: It means the world to us and your support helps more people find this community.
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much, friends.
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: Can't wait for our next conversation.