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Why Fixing Homelessness is Bad Business (Full) · Solving America's Problems

• 0:00
  Alex: Solving America’s Problems.
• 0:02
  Jerremy and Dave just laid out the truth everyone ignores.
• 0:06
  They’re with choice psychologist David Jacob and nutrition expert
• 0:09
  Leslie Bobb when the number hits: America spends EIGHTY BILLION
• 0:13
  dollars a year on homelessness — and the crisis keeps growing.
• 0:17
  Eighty.
• 0:18
  Billion.
• 0:19
  That’s more than $100,000 per homeless person — every year
• 0:23
  — funneled into a system with zero reason to ever solve the problem.
• 0:28
  Because fixing homelessness is terrible business.
• 0:30
  Shelters, nonprofits, grant machines — they all stay in business only if
• 0:35
  the tents stay on the sidewalk.
• 0:37
  Jerremy doesn’t blink: Finland ended it.
• 0:40
  Houston crushed it.
• 0:41
  We know exactly how — we just refuse to do it.
• 0:45
  And the gut-punch stat?
• 0:46
  ... 771,000 Americans are homeless tonight… while the industry built to “help”
• 0:51
  them quietly cashes the checks…
• 0:54
  Jerremy Newsome: Dave, the requests keep flooding in from all over the
• 0:57
  world, but most specifically the US of A, and they need to know what we are
• 1:04
  solving and addressing in this episode.
• 1:09
  Dave Conley: In this week's episode of solving America's Problems,
• 1:11
  we're tackling homelessness head on.
• 1:13
  It's not just about housing, mental health or hard times, but what if it's fixable
• 1:18
  and we're just missing the real issues.
• 1:20
  Joining us today, David Jacob, a choice psychologist expert who's
• 1:23
  transformed lives by rethinking decisions, sees homelessness as a
• 1:27
  societal choice, not a personal choice, and we need to choose differently.
• 1:31
  And Leslie Bob, an integrative nutrition expert who seen nutrition,
• 1:34
  lift people up from despair to hope.
• 1:37
  Together, they challenge how we see this crisis and how we can change lives.
• 1:41
  And that's this week on Solving America's Problems from apathy to
• 1:44
  Action with David, Jacob and Leslie Bob.
• 1:47
  Jerremy Newsome: We feel very few people are appropriately talking about this.
• 1:53
  We know how to end homelessness slash it by over 50%.
• 1:59
  Finland totally wiped it out, but here's the thing.
• 2:04
  Every solution starts with a choice America again, we're
• 2:10
  kind of choosing a failing path.
• 2:13
  I'm Jerremy Alexander Newsom alongside my co-host Dave Conley, and this
• 2:18
  is solving America's problems.
• 2:21
  Today we are sitting down with two incredible voices.
• 2:25
  David Jacob is a choice psychology expert who believes homelessness
• 2:29
  isn't just about housing, about the choices we make as a society.
• 2:35
  Baum is an extraordinary nutrition coach who's worked with people in transition.
• 2:41
  She knows that something as simple as proper nutrition.
• 2:45
  Can lift people up.
• 2:47
  Both David and Leslie have joined me at the abundance summit, at the aerial
• 2:51
  BVI, and they have worked consciously and continuously on just becoming the
• 2:55
  best versions of themselves as possible.
• 2:58
  And they truly do feel that they can work on creating a solution, even if
• 3:02
  it's just one, two, and homelessness.
• 3:05
  So David Leslie, welcome to the show.
• 3:09
  @DavidJacob_1: Thanks for having us.
• 3:10
  Leslie Bobb: Thanks Jerremy.
• 3:11
  Jerremy Newsome: Absolutely.
• 3:12
  Both David, myself, and our thousands of listeners would love to know.
• 3:15
  And David, I'll have you go.
• 3:16
  Nope.
• 3:17
  Leslie, I'll have you go first.
• 3:18
  Ladies first.
• 3:19
  was a moment in your life?
• 3:22
  Perhaps it was a personal encounter or a story that you heard that made
• 3:27
  homelessness feel real and human to you.
• 3:31
  Leslie Bobb: The more I think about that, the further back I go.
• 3:34
  Uh, my, I think my mom's just always had a real open heart and open door.
• 3:38
  Uh, as a teenager I was living in Los Angeles County and I was, uh, part
• 3:45
  of the bad crowd, so can't see my air quotes there, but I had a lot of
• 3:49
  friends that were crouch surfing or getting kicked out or running away, and
• 3:55
  my mom just always welcomed them in.
• 3:57
  And it was a really nice feeling to be able to provide some safety in a, in
• 4:04
  the storm of adolescence for these kids.
• 4:06
  And I remember traveling with my mom and stepdad one year for the
• 4:10
  holidays, and we went to a Denny's or something on Thanksgiving.
• 4:13
  There were a few homeless guys outside.
• 4:15
  And my stepdad, instead of giving them a couple bucks, invited them in
• 4:18
  to join us for our meal at the table.
• 4:21
  So we sat there and, and talked with them and learned about their lives and
• 4:26
  how normal they were and that they had may or may not have had family, some of
• 4:31
  them had family they were estranged from.
• 4:34
  And it was just a really pivotal moment for me to see someone bravely welcoming
• 4:40
  in some people that are normally sort of avoided or, um, feared by society.
• 4:46
  Jerremy Newsome: Yep.
• 4:46
  Leslie Bobb: And, uh, it just really helped my heart expand, seeing my
• 4:49
  parents have such big open hearts.
• 4:52
  So I think that must have probably locked me in there.
• 4:55
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah, I love that.
• 4:56
  I love that.
• 4:56
  And again, it kind of sounds like David will talk about in a second, most likely
• 5:00
  is your parents made a conscious choice.
• 5:03
  And I love how you said, as a society, almost as a collective
• 5:08
  choice, a lot of people just ah, they pretend homelessness isn't there.
• 5:11
  It's almost like this terrifying, scary group of people that has
• 5:16
  leprosy that no one wants to talk to or touch or interact with.
• 5:20
  parents, again, made that choice to kind of bring them in you the
• 5:23
  humanity, which I really admire that.
• 5:26
  And your parents, David, did you have a similar situation, or
• 5:29
  how did it become real to you?
• 5:31
  @DavidJacob_1: So when I was at college, I worked at a. Like a craft beer bar, uh,
• 5:37
  in the center of Manchester in the uk.
• 5:40
  there was a guy who used to sit just off to the right of
• 5:44
  where the bar front door was.
• 5:47
  and he was there like every time I used to finish, finish work.
• 5:51
  And eventually we as bartenders, we'd get tips pretty, pretty frequently, much less
• 5:55
  than in the us but we still got tips.
• 5:57
  And I was already getting paid a fairly reasonable hourly wage, so the tips were
• 6:02
  kind of neither here nor there for me.
• 6:03
  So I used to give him the tips.
• 6:05
  And after a few times I ended up, like, sat down with him and we were chatting
• 6:08
  and kind of, I got to know his story and I made a point of every time I went to
• 6:12
  work and every time I finished, I used to sit down and I, I'd give him my tips and
• 6:16
  we'd kind of talk about his life and how he ended up there and all the rest of it.
• 6:19
  And after probably it would've been end of the summer, so three or four months of me
• 6:25
  sat down with him one day he disappeared.
• 6:28
  I was like, oh, you know, maybe you know the situation got the better of him
• 6:32
  and that was the end of it or whatever.
• 6:34
  I see him probably a year later and he's completely different.
• 6:40
  He's dressed in kind of quote unquote regular people clothes.
• 6:44
  He's cleaned up.
• 6:45
  He's completely an otherwise normal looking human being.
• 6:49
  And this guy runs up to me while I'm walking down the street
• 6:51
  with a couple of my friends and he goes, David, David, David.
• 6:53
  And I was like, I didn't even recognize who he was.
• 6:56
  it was this same homeless guy that I used to sit down and talk to after work.
• 7:00
  And he said, honestly.
• 7:03
  The conversations that we had, and you just sitting down and talking
• 7:06
  to me for all of those times, even if it was for 10, 20 minutes, made
• 7:10
  me feel like I could actually go out and, you know, reclaim my life.
• 7:15
  and that was the first time that I kind of really saw homelessness for what it
• 7:18
  was, which is people just don't care.
• 7:20
  And as a result, it continues.
• 7:22
  And that's a hard thing to swallow because there are so
• 7:25
  many, organizations that do care.
• 7:28
  But the average person really struggles with that empathy idea.
• 7:32
  And then, you know, a bunch of other stories.
• 7:34
  When I was again at college, a friend of mine did an open mic night.
• 7:38
  There was a homeless guy who performed, he was probably, I don't know, 17, 16,
• 7:43
  17 at the and he said, you know, I'm raising money so I can sleep at a shelter.
• 7:48
  And without really thinking about what that meant, I was like, oh, it's fine.
• 7:52
  Like, we've got a couch, just come and sleep on our couch and.
• 7:56
  I wake up the next morning and my housemates are furious because all
• 7:59
  of like the, you know, you're a student, you've got laptops, you've
• 8:01
  got, PlayStations, TVs, whatever.
• 8:03
  It's all in the living room where this kid was sleeping.
• 8:06
  And I didn't consider that.
• 8:08
  I just was like, well, I mean, I'd much rather you on my couch than
• 8:12
  in like a homeless shelter with a bunch of much older dudes who
• 8:16
  probably have substance abuse issues, potentially mental health issues.
• 8:19
  And you are just a kid who doesn't have a house like sleep on my couch, dude.
• 8:23
  Like, it's okay.
• 8:24
  So I kind of saw it when I was at college and then even now homelessness I think is
• 8:28
  a blight on the modern society as a whole.
• 8:31
  Dave Conley: David, do you think that that's how most people see homelessness
• 8:34
  through this, this lens of apathy?
• 8:37
  @DavidJacob_1: I think apathy is a, is a tough word.
• 8:40
  I think and this is, I guess how I've, I've learned to conceptualize it.
• 8:45
  I. It's more as a result of the normalcy bias.
• 8:50
  So the normalcy bias is the idea that if see something frequently
• 8:56
  enough, and that is the basis point or the idea by which we understand
• 9:01
  the world, it just becomes normal.
• 9:04
  It is normal that, for example, you know when you turn the tap on in
• 9:09
  your kitchen, right when you turn the faucet on, water comes out.
• 9:12
  If one day water didn't come out, you wouldn't start to, you
• 9:15
  know, think the world was ending.
• 9:15
  You'd be like, oh, maybe there's a problem with my plumbing.
• 9:18
  I. But the way that we view homelessness is that, you know, now,
• 9:22
  I mean that just happens, right?
• 9:24
  Some people get down on their luck, some people are behind on bills.
• 9:26
  So it just, the way the world works and I think that the average person doesn't
• 9:32
  really conceptualize it as a problem.
• 9:35
  They just see it as normal.
• 9:37
  It is just simply a thing that people end up sleeping in the streets or homeless
• 9:43
  or whatever, and you know, that boils down to another cognitive faculty and the
• 9:46
  whole thing just compound and compound.
• 9:49
  Dave Conley: So like the would, would you say that most people think
• 9:52
  that way given like that person is successful and that's just how it is?
• 9:58
  Like the converse.
• 9:59
  @DavidJacob_1: Yeah, a hundred percent.
• 10:00
  Right.
• 10:00
  So that's the, the second cognitive bias is the idea of a just world, right?
• 10:05
  We believe you look at every different culture across the planet and there's
• 10:09
  this idea of like karmic balance, right?
• 10:11
  Or something that is similar that we live in a just world where bad people,
• 10:16
  you know, get their just desserts and good stuff happens to good people.
• 10:20
  So when you take that as the basis, well, if someone is homeless, then they must
• 10:24
  have deserved it in some way, right?
• 10:26
  It is their own choices or their own faults, or the problems that
• 10:29
  they have that led them there.
• 10:31
  And the idea of a just world is a fallacy, right?
• 10:35
  Like, as I'm sure you guys know, and as many of the listeners will know.
• 10:40
  Bad stuff happens to good people, right?
• 10:42
  There's kids that are born with cancer, like it's a, there is no justice in terms
• 10:47
  of like dumb luck and randomness and chaos theory and all the rest of it, right?
• 10:51
  Some people just have really tough stuff happen to 'em and if we work under
• 10:56
  the idea that, there is a just world where, you know, whatever you've done
• 11:00
  leads to some consequence, that means that if you are in insert situation
• 11:04
  here, you deserve it by some mechanism, then yeah, it's really easy to look at
• 11:08
  that as a system and go makes sense.
• 11:11
  There has to be something they've done that has led them to this point.
• 11:14
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah, but
• 11:15
  Point is there, there are.
• 11:17
  There is a lot though that do end up homeless
• 11:22
  I don't know the exact percentage, but our last episode we probably settled
• 11:26
  on somewhere around 70% of homelessness is due to addiction and mental health.
• 11:33
  I think Leslie kind of touched on that quickly.
• 11:34
  Yeah.
• 11:35
  Leslie, what's, what's your take on that percentage and just on a general
• 11:40
  basis, do you think most people also rationalize or view most homelessness
• 11:46
  is probably because of addiction of some kind, or is it laziness
• 11:52
  and I'm just getting it all wrong?
• 11:54
  Leslie Bobb: I, that was a couple of different questions there, but I
• 11:57
  hesitate to speak to, too much about the logic fallacies because we have
• 12:03
  a like real psychologist on the line.
• 12:05
  So I don't, I don't want 'em to be like, well, actually you're wrong.
• 12:09
  I, I think the, the just world fallacy, I wonder how much that still applies because
• 12:13
  all I see is the like millionaire villain fallacy and that doesn't really apply
• 12:18
  to good things happening to good people.
• 12:20
  But I would say as far as your question Jerremy about the statistics of how
• 12:26
  much is men, I don't know the statistics either, but I think there is definitely
• 12:30
  a large portion of substance abuse issues and men untreated mental health
• 12:34
  issues in the homeless population.
• 12:36
  And I think that contributes to people's aversion to interact with
• 12:41
  the homeless because there is a safety element and we are innately.
• 12:44
  Averse to dangerous situations.
• 12:46
  And when someone isn't behaving in what we would consider a normal way talking
• 12:51
  to themselves or yelling at light poles or, you know, whatever the case may be,
• 12:56
  our instinct is to protect ourselves or our children and stay away from them.
• 13:00
  There's obviously something illogical or irrational about them,
• 13:05
  and you can't expect normal agreed upon safe behavior from them.
• 13:09
  And I, I think just trying to be a little bit more fair to society, um,
• 13:14
  that's a pretty legitimate aversion to people experiencing homelessness,
• 13:18
  even if it isn't necessarily.
• 13:20
  I think that I have heard somewhere that most of them do have mental health
• 13:25
  problems, but they are not dangerous.
• 13:27
  But we don't know that.
• 13:28
  And if there's one of them that is dangerous, that could cost us everything
• 13:32
  dear to us and we can't really risk it.
• 13:34
  So I think that also contributes to our tendency to wanna look away
• 13:39
  and maybe there is a, a, a, an.
• 13:42
  In kind of inner knowledge that it could happen to us.
• 13:45
  And we don't wanna look at not, not many people wanna go look at cancer
• 13:49
  patients in the hospital either because it could happen to us and we're afraid
• 13:53
  of our vulnerabilities in that way.
• 13:55
  So I think, uh, I think we're all in agreement on this, uh, this group, that
• 14:03
  this is an issue that we are really, really poorly dealing with and, and it's
• 14:07
  something that should be eradicated.
• 14:08
  But I'm just trying to kind of balance a little bit.
• 14:11
  I think some of our versions are just natural and fair.
• 14:15
  I think I steered way away from your question though, so you
• 14:17
  could redirect me if you want to.
• 14:19
  Jerremy Newsome: No, this, it is great.
• 14:20
  It's a great open conversation, but that's really the goal is
• 14:22
  just to have, know, a non-scripted dialogue about how do we solve this
• 14:28
  relatively egregious problem, right?
• 14:29
  In the United States of America, there's over 700,000 homeless, and we
• 14:35
  brought David in because one of his discussions about, Hey, if you have
• 14:39
  all the money in the world, what's the problem that you're gonna solve?
• 14:42
  Right?
• 14:42
  He stood in front of a bunch of entrepreneurs and said, I'd
• 14:44
  love to solve homelessness.
• 14:46
  again, the reason that I brought him on the show and this podcast, but ultimately,
• 14:52
  you guys can all tell from Zach that he lives in London, and guess what?
• 14:55
  England has homelessness too.
• 14:57
  And so you can you go country to country to country.
• 14:59
  Go, wait a minute, this is like very global.
• 15:02
  So it's not just us.
• 15:03
  Yeah.
• 15:03
  We get it wrong for sure.
• 15:05
  But any general idea, David, on how much your country spends on homelessness?
• 15:12
  And then Dave Conley is gonna throw a really surprising statistic,
• 15:15
  it's you on how much we poorly spend on our homeless problem.
• 15:19
  @DavidJacob_1: I wouldn't even be able to hazard a guess, but I
• 15:22
  would assume it would be billions.
• 15:24
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah.
• 15:25
  Well, I mean, so the UK most likely, but in the United
• 15:28
  States it's 80 billion annually.
• 15:31
  Right down the
• 15:32
  @DavidJacob_1: Good.
• 15:34
  Jerremy Newsome: Right down the garbage disposal because
• 15:37
  they're doing something with it.
• 15:39
  And I just, I just don't know what like are they getting, a hundred
• 15:42
  thousand oranges and just throwing 'em at the homeless hoping they eat them?
• 15:46
  I'm not sure what they're doing with the money.
• 15:48
  I don't see I. How many cities have homeless shelters?
• 15:51
  Like the big ones, but very, very, they're not well marked.
• 15:56
  They don't have a lot of signs.
• 15:57
  They don't have like a lot of open invitation on, Hey,
• 15:59
  who would like to help us?
• 16:00
  Who would like to spend time?
• 16:01
  I just feel like it's a very underrated, underserved issue, especially with all
• 16:06
  of that money flooding to an annual.
• 16:08
  Leslie Bobb: So we actually have an advocate here in our city that works
• 16:11
  with the homeless, and she's been battling our city council for years on
• 16:15
  this, particularly during COVID when we as a city, were receiving millions
• 16:19
  of dollars in grants for homeless.
• 16:21
  And she couldn't find it anywhere.
• 16:23
  The shelters are never open.
• 16:25
  Uh, the, the call sent the call hotline numbers never answer.
• 16:30
  There's an organization that's sponsored by the city that's supposed to tie all
• 16:33
  the resources together and does annual homeless counts, and she can't ever get
• 16:38
  them to account for the money because they say some of their funding is private.
• 16:42
  So they don't have to have like, freedom of Information Act.
• 16:45
  Rules applied to it so they don't have to tell her where the money goes.
• 16:49
  So it, it really is a problem and we're just one, fairly small city.
• 16:53
  So I imagine the bigger cities, it's just, it's just an open bucket.
• 16:57
  There's just no one will be able to find that money.
• 17:01
  @DavidJacob_1: But I think the really interesting part of that,
• 17:03
  and I think this is where a lot of my frustration comes from, is that
• 17:09
  solving homelessness is bad business.
• 17:12
  There are entire industries built around treating homelessness.
• 17:17
  The symptom not dealing with the cause of homelessness.
• 17:20
  Right.
• 17:20
  And even the ones that are trying to address the cause require the
• 17:26
  problem itself to continue in order to then keep being funded.
• 17:31
  Like it's the same reason when you hire a personal trainer, their goal is not
• 17:35
  to get you fit in the shortest amount of time possible because then you're not a
• 17:39
  client anymore when you've got, emergency shelters or I dunno, transitional housing
• 17:45
  programs or drug rehab contracts, or, I dunno, even Leslie, to your point, like
• 17:51
  grant writers and people that are in the process of being able to pull that
• 17:55
  money from, you know, communal coffers.
• 17:58
  all of those people have jobs.
• 18:02
  of those people work for someone that has a business.
• 18:04
  Those businesses.
• 18:06
  If they solved the problem, now cease to exist, and now
• 18:08
  all of that money goes away.
• 18:10
  It's the whole idea of, I I, I'll relate it to something probably very, very, very
• 18:14
  far away, but when I worked in consulting, we would have massive, billion dollar
• 18:19
  corporations who would come to us in the final three weeks of a quarter saying,
• 18:23
  Hey, we have budget that we need to spend, otherwise it goes away next, next quarter.
• 18:28
  And we don't need to do this work right now.
• 18:29
  But I know that if we don't spend this money, then we're not gonna
• 18:33
  get it next quarter, and we might actually need it next quarter.
• 18:36
  It's the same problem, right?
• 18:37
  If you don't spend the money, the money goes away.
• 18:39
  Well then it has to be spent with someone.
• 18:42
  And those people don't want the problem to go away either.
• 18:44
  'cause otherwise the money dries up.
• 18:45
  Right.
• 18:45
  So it's, it's you, this is the definition of an economy built
• 18:49
  around a problem never being solved.
• 18:51
  So why would you ever then solve it?
• 18:54
  It's a fallacy because if you solved it, the money dries up.
• 18:57
  If the money dries up, then those people don't have jobs.
• 18:59
  And those businesses done.
• 19:00
  Yeah.
• 19:01
  Dave Conley: That's the perverse incentive, right?
• 19:03
  Like we, we've talked to somebody who had been homeless and, uh, Cara, Kara candid,
• 19:10
  and with the amount of, we have more and more homeless people every single year.
• 19:16
  You know, last year alone it was 771,000 people that were homeless.
• 19:22
  We're spending 20 billion, that's $26,000 per person, it
• 19:27
  keeps on getting worse, right?
• 19:28
  So we already know that that money is not being spent to reduce homelessness.
• 19:32
  There are some exceptions, right?
• 19:34
  Like Houston and Finland, like we started this with, but in talking
• 19:38
  with Kara, that was exactly the case.
• 19:41
  The resources that she needed, which was different than somebody
• 19:45
  who was in addiction, which was different than somebody who was had
• 19:48
  mental illness, which was different.
• 19:50
  I mean, she was just down on her luck and she was with a small child
• 19:55
  and she was really struggling to just get through nursing school.
• 19:59
  She needed different things.
• 20:00
  And yet there was this one size fits all, most of it went to, supporting
• 20:07
  businesses you know, like NGOs and organizations that didn't have
• 20:12
  an incentive to get people off.
• 20:14
  They had an incentive to keep people on.
• 20:16
  That's the tragedy I think we learned last week, don't you?
• 20:19
  Don't you think Jerremy
• 20:21
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah.
• 20:22
  Yeah.
• 20:22
  Like it's essentially the people who do need it.
• 20:26
  To David's point, if something happens to them just, or unjust, they need help,
• 20:30
  they need assistance, they can go apply for these grants or these loans or these
• 20:34
  applications, these things to help.
• 20:35
  And it just doesn't truly like, it just kind of falls through the cracks.
• 20:39
  Right.
• 20:39
  She was a veteran
• 20:40
  Dave Conley: Right?
• 20:40
  Jerremy Newsome: United States there's 32,000 veterans.
• 20:43
  Veterans who are homeless, which again, seems like that should,
• 20:47
  that number should just be
• 20:48
  Dave Conley: It should be zero.
• 20:49
  Yeah.
• 20:49
  Jerremy Newsome: or 10.
• 20:50
  It should be 10 people.
• 20:51
  Like it shouldn't be that high.
• 20:52
  32,000 is like a city.
• 20:55
  so that's very, very tragic.
• 20:57
  But yeah, there, there's definitely a lot of things falling through the cracks.
• 21:00
  And this is a joint question for anyone who would like to ask it 'cause it
• 21:04
  also came up in our last conversation.
• 21:07
  would you feel, or what do you feel is the difference between
• 21:11
  homelessness houselessness?
• 21:15
  What are the two differences or two distinctions there?
• 21:17
  I'll start with David.
• 21:20
  @DavidJacob_1: What is the difference between homelessness and houselessness?
• 21:24
  I guess homelessness is, is the physical sorry, houselessness
• 21:28
  is the physical element, right?
• 21:29
  Like you literally do not have a roof over your head.
• 21:33
  That is, the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
• 21:37
  You literally need somewhere to rest your head so you don't feel like
• 21:40
  you're gonna die when you go to sleep.
• 21:41
  Go all the way back to evolutionary psychology.
• 21:43
  That was the one thing that allowed us to, you know, thrive as a species.
• 21:47
  How homelessness is, way more psychological than that.
• 21:51
  I guess it's the idea of you don't feel like you belong, you don't feel safe.
• 21:55
  You don't have like a community.
• 21:57
  There's no identity based in, your ability to survive in and of yourself.
• 22:01
  And I think that's, you know, a way harder problem to deal with.
• 22:06
  Jerremy Newsome: What do you think, Leslie?
• 22:07
  Leslie Bobb: Based on the, the way I've seen the terms.
• 22:10
  I would agree.
• 22:11
  Houselessness is the unhoused.
• 22:14
  It means sleeping on the streets.
• 22:17
  No roof over your head.
• 22:18
  Look, if you look at the statistics, it presents homeless
• 22:21
  versus unsheltered individuals.
• 22:25
  So not all homeless are unsheltered, but I think on a, on a. Simpler level
• 22:31
  than David went with homelessness.
• 22:34
  I would just call homelessness, just not having stable housing.
• 22:39
  So you might be couch surfing, um, maybe even living in your car or
• 22:43
  shelters, temporary housing hotel vouchers, living with relatives or
• 22:48
  moving around from place to place, but not having a stable home versus
• 22:53
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah,
• 22:54
  Leslie Bobb: unhoused is just literally shelterless.
• 22:57
  Jerremy Newsome: exactly.
• 22:57
  Yep.
• 22:58
  'cause I think, uh, in the US right, there's some hundred 71,000.
• 23:02
  Total homeless.
• 23:03
  But the shelter, to your point, like using that term, is half a million.
• 23:07
  So 522,000 approximately.
• 23:09
  And then she unsheltered million, 250,000 people are unsheltered Finland solved
• 23:16
  the issue essentially by saying, I think there's two solutions in Finland, like
• 23:21
  if you're houseless too long, you die.
• 23:24
  'cause it's really cold in Finland.
• 23:26
  And so they're like, listen, you've gotta get a house.
• 23:29
  And so they went out and just built houses.
• 23:31
  And essentially, I don't believe they made it illegal, but it was essentially
• 23:35
  like, listen, single person in this country is required to live somewhere.
• 23:42
  they built a bunch of small homes that didn't have any requirement
• 23:46
  other than someone had to live in them per the capital, like per person.
• 23:50
  And that helped decrease homelessness because again, they had a place
• 23:55
  to stay that didn't have any.
• 23:57
  Requirements.
• 23:58
  There wasn't any minimums or maximums that need be met.
• 24:00
  I go, Hey, everyone has a house.
• 24:04
  Dave Conley: Like it's a,
• 24:04
  Jerremy Newsome: something will, oh, go ahead, Dave.
• 24:05
  Dave Conley: like it's a,
• 24:06
  Jerremy Newsome: yeah,
• 24:06
  Dave Conley: I mean, it makes, it makes some
• 24:08
  Jerremy Newsome: you're a
• 24:08
  Dave Conley: sense, like,
• 24:09
  Jerremy Newsome: whoa, you're a human.
• 24:11
  Let's, but let's put you in shelter.
• 24:14
  Dave Conley: Yeah.
• 24:14
  Jerremy Newsome: So you give you and your family protection
• 24:16
  from the freezing fenland cold.
• 24:19
  Dave Conley: Yeah.
• 24:20
  Jerremy Newsome: But it's like that in a lot of places in the us
• 24:22
  like North Dakota, South Dakota, Michigan gets cold in the winter.
• 24:26
  So ultimately the cities and the states with the largest homeless population are
• 24:32
  gonna be the warmer clients climates.
• 24:34
  California, Florida.
• 24:37
  But a lot of people in the US they're wondering, is that a
• 24:40
  choice that they're making?
• 24:42
  Or I guess how many of these unsheltered just can't find shelters?
• 24:49
  A quarter million people in the US who just can't find shelters, are they
• 24:52
  choosing not to find shelters or do you think they just can't, Leslie, is
• 24:56
  it like a choice that they're making?
• 24:57
  Like, I just wanna not a house, I don't wanna pay taxes, I just wanna go live on
• 25:01
  the beach and just like have a tent for the rest of my life and be kind of Ivy.
• 25:05
  Leslie Bobb: I have met quite a few individuals who did choose, they have
• 25:10
  some QAC lifestyle in their head, and they did choose to be nomadic.
• 25:16
  The majority of the chronically homeless that, that I've seen, though it's not
• 25:20
  necessarily a choice, but they aren't always, shelters fill up really quickly.
• 25:25
  They're not always open.
• 25:26
  They're difficult to find, like we discussed before, but a lot of people
• 25:29
  are not comfortable in shelters.
• 25:31
  You have to split up from your friends or your partners.
• 25:33
  They're not safe, they're crowded, they're nasty.
• 25:36
  And a lot of these people, they, they do have an issue.
• 25:40
  Functioning in society, so the rules being stuck inside, all of that sort of stuff.
• 25:46
  They they can't do it.
• 25:48
  They have, they do have some of these mental health issues that prevent them
• 25:53
  from functioning in an institutionalized setting or in normal societal settings.
• 25:57
  And that's why they're homeless.
• 25:59
  They can't hold a job, so staying in a shelter, just, it just
• 26:02
  psychologically doesn't work for them.
• 26:03
  And they would rather be outside than in a shelter.
• 26:06
  They would not rather be outside than in a home.
• 26:08
  Although we have seen some of those too.
• 26:10
  They, they get housing and they can't, they just can't stay inside.
• 26:13
  They have to come back out.
• 26:15
  But I think that's treatable psychological trauma.
• 26:19
  And it's not necessarily like just who they are, the choice they're making.
• 26:24
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah.
• 26:24
  Well I really like your focus there on that comment about the shelter.
• 26:27
  'cause I don't think we really, truly have do dove into that too much in the
• 26:31
  sense of, okay, if you were to solve homelessness by placing people in a.
• 26:37
  Location, giving them shelter, right?
• 26:40
  How safe is it?
• 26:42
  And having the homeless shelters presently reorganized, restructured,
• 26:50
  audited, cleaned, made it like a primary focus on our government to go listen.
• 26:57
  Okay?
• 26:58
  More people probably would take advantage of this resource if it
• 27:02
  wasn't overcrowded, if it wasn't gross, if it was sanitary, if it was
• 27:05
  a nice, kind, safe, welcoming place.
• 27:09
  Uh, David, any opinions or thoughts on the homeless shelters any neck of the woods?
• 27:14
  @DavidJacob_1: Yeah, the, from any conversation I've ever had with anyone
• 27:18
  that's homeless in the uk, the, the consensus is that shelters are exactly
• 27:22
  to Leslie's point, unsafe, overcrowded, particularly enjoyable environments to be
• 27:27
  in, but they were never, at least from my understanding, they were never designed
• 27:31
  to be long-term housing solutions.
• 27:33
  They were short term housing solutions.
• 27:36
  when you turn what was meant to be one very temporary solution
• 27:44
  into a much longer, again, going back to the same idea, like that's
• 27:48
  just kind of how it is, right?
• 27:50
  Like this.
• 27:50
  Idea of determinism that, oh, well that's just how the world works.
• 27:54
  Some people get the short end of the stick.
• 27:56
  Oh well, when you use a solution that was designed to basically lift
• 27:59
  people out of that initial slump and get them back on their feet and you
• 28:03
  turn it into a longer term solution, that is a problem in and of itself.
• 28:08
  Right.
• 28:08
  And I'm, I would be almost certain that if you looked at the data, the
• 28:14
  higher the capacity IE, the higher the amount of people who are in a
• 28:18
  shelter, the slower those people end up actually solving for their homeless.
• 28:26
  Leslie Bobb: I would bet on that.
• 28:27
  @DavidJacob_1: Yeah,
• 28:28
  Jerremy Newsome: Wild.
• 28:29
  Leslie Bobb: I think shelters might have been a good solution decades ago,
• 28:33
  @DavidJacob_1: hundred
• 28:33
  Leslie Bobb: know?
• 28:34
  But it, it's the, the problem continued to grow and the
• 28:37
  solution never evolved with it.
• 28:40
  Yeah.
• 28:40
  Jerremy Newsome: Fascinating.
• 28:41
  And that's a really, really cool perspective.
• 28:43
  So Leslie, using that word, you said the word solution, what's
• 28:47
  a way, in your opinion, right?
• 28:49
  Communities could use health support better nutrition to help
• 28:56
  people experiencing homelessness.
• 28:58
  Leslie Bobb: I love that you asked about communities, because I was
• 29:02
  thinking a minute ago I really like play, I go down some rabbit holes in
• 29:06
  my head with devil's advocate stuff, and I tend to be on the, i I fight all
• 29:10
  the time about, well, we don't just.
• 29:13
  Make people comfortable that are choosing, you know, laziness or distraction or
• 29:19
  whatever, that doesn't solve anything.
• 29:22
  But also it's kind of proven people need a house before they can fix anything else.
• 29:26
  So I go in back and forth and I was thinking, you know,
• 29:29
  as far is housing a right?
• 29:31
  A long time ago, throughout history, we would've created our own shelter,
• 29:35
  but we also would've been allowed to do so, and we're not really allowed
• 29:39
  to just go find a plot of land and build a shelter on it anymore.
• 29:42
  So we're preventing that natural order that we used to have.
• 29:46
  So when people talk about personal responsibility.
• 29:50
  We're not really allowed, in some cases, to be responsible
• 29:53
  in the same way we used to be.
• 29:55
  But we would've had communities that would've helped the widows or
• 29:58
  the children, the orphans, whoever couldn't, the disabled that couldn't
• 30:01
  build their own shelter, their community might have helped them.
• 30:05
  Uh, and we don't have that anymore either, especially in la New York,
• 30:08
  these massive city, London, you know, these are massive cities.
• 30:11
  You can't, community doesn't operate on such a large scale.
• 30:14
  But to your question, as far as nutrition support, there are definite, and I
• 30:20
  like that David brought up Maslow's hierarchy because, uh, when I was
• 30:23
  talking to Dave, I also mentioned that there, I mean, you legitimately
• 30:26
  have to feel safe before you can do anything else, like physically safe.
• 30:30
  So I, I'm not saying if you eat right, it's gonna fix all your problems,
• 30:33
  but there are some nutritional deficiencies that can cause.
• 30:37
  Mental health problems that can mimic substance abuse, that
• 30:40
  can mimic psycho psychopathy.
• 30:42
  Like if you have B12 deficiencies, if you're severely dehydrated or have
• 30:47
  protein deficiencies, your brain will not function and you can expect someone
• 30:51
  whose brain is not functioning to be able to handle the same types of steps that
• 30:56
  you or I might take if we were down on our luck and needed to rebuild our lives.
• 31:01
  So, yeah, it's a simple thing.
• 31:02
  Go down to the Social Security Office, apply for benefits you know,
• 31:05
  go do this, go get a job, whatever.
• 31:08
  But if, if your brain is not functioning, if you are actually
• 31:12
  intellectually disabled now, you're not gonna be able to follow those
• 31:15
  steps the way someone else might.
• 31:17
  So I would say communities can help fill those nutrition gaps, and not by
• 31:23
  giving them, bless Panera's heart for giving all of their old pastries to
• 31:28
  the homeless, but not by giving them sugar filled pastries, but by giving
• 31:32
  them actual nutrition, not just.
• 31:34
  Cast off leftover junk food.
• 31:37
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah.
• 31:38
  Leslie Bobb: I don't think, I mean, it's calories, it's keeping them
• 31:41
  alive and it may be providing a little bit of joy and a dismal life,
• 31:44
  but it's not helping them heal or, or, um, you know, return to society.
• 31:51
  It's not helping them function.
• 31:52
  So if we have an actual interest in feeding the homeless, we need to be
• 31:57
  feeding them nutrition and not just like Disneyland, adding it like,
• 32:02
  oh, we're the best group 'cause we go on Sundays and give you donuts.
• 32:04
  Like that's not helping anything.
• 32:07
  @DavidJacob_1: But like bouncing off that idea of like the health
• 32:09
  implications of homelessness, like the one that immediately pops
• 32:12
  into my head is lack of sleep.
• 32:15
  Leslie Bobb: Yeah,
• 32:15
  @DavidJacob_1: on the street, you are not sleeping
• 32:19
  Leslie Bobb: absolutely.
• 32:20
  @DavidJacob_1: Sleep rep. Sleep deprivation is probably one of the
• 32:22
  most dangerous like forces that we have very little control over.
• 32:26
  Right?
• 32:27
  Like, I don't know the exact statistics, so don't quote me on it, but I think
• 32:30
  it's 24 hours without sleep is the equivalent of being like actually
• 32:34
  drunk, like over the legal limit.
• 32:36
  Jerremy Newsome: like that.
• 32:37
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 32:38
  @DavidJacob_1: So you expect people to rack up sleep debts of probably
• 32:42
  24 plus hours in the course of realistically what, like a week them to
• 32:47
  be able to make reasonable decisions?
• 32:49
  They're probably gonna be emotionally volatile.
• 32:51
  I'm annoyed when I have six hours of sleep, let alone six hours of sleep
• 32:54
  on one night, let alone three and a half hours of sleep across months.
• 32:59
  Jerremy Newsome: David.
• 32:59
  That's weird.
• 33:00
  @DavidJacob_1: Like you the impact of sleep on something like this.
• 33:04
  Jerremy Newsome: That's really
• 33:05
  Leslie Bobb: You're absolutely right.
• 33:06
  Yeah.
• 33:07
  @DavidJacob_1: And, and the other factor, right?
• 33:08
  So let's say that, we take the shelter stuff that we were talking about
• 33:11
  before and you apply the same logic.
• 33:13
  Running a shelter, it's probably not gonna be conducive to great sleep.
• 33:17
  You've got, however many people are inside the shelter, it's probably gonna
• 33:22
  be fairly well lit 'cause they wanna be able to like, see what's going on there
• 33:25
  and not gonna be, you know, pitch black, which is the ideal conditions for sleep.
• 33:30
  They're constantly terrified that they're either gonna be,
• 33:32
  assaulted or robbed or otherwise.
• 33:35
  You've got people with, you know, mental health problems who are probably
• 33:38
  not exactly the soundest sleepers on the planet, let's be honest.
• 33:41
  All of that then, coupled with historically poor sleep is probably gonna
• 33:46
  lead to a massive decline in people's mental health, and that's without even.
• 33:51
  Truly addressing the, the, the quote unquote real problems of
• 33:55
  homelessness with it, which is the tr the threat of violence.
• 33:57
  And as Leslie was saying, poor nutrition and everything else, we didn't need
• 34:02
  sleep, we would've evolved out of it.
• 34:03
  Over the thousands of years of human evolution, we need it.
• 34:07
  And this is probably arguably one of the most impacted elements of it.
• 34:11
  Leslie Bobb: And honestly, like you also have people, especially the veterans
• 34:15
  who are suffering from hyper alertness.
• 34:18
  And I've never even been in combat and I struggle with this.
• 34:22
  So you can put me in a perfectly comfortable, perfectly cool, dark,
• 34:25
  safe room, and it's gonna take me several nights to be able to
• 34:29
  actually sleep through the night.
• 34:31
  Like any sound I feel like in my entire neighborhood wakes me
• 34:34
  up with like my heart pounding.
• 34:35
  So people who are actually in danger, whereas I've never really
• 34:39
  been in my life and I still have a hard time, like it's gonna take
• 34:42
  them a while to rewire, to safety.
• 34:44
  So even if the shelter was nice, they still might struggle getting that
• 34:50
  adequate sleep because their nervous systems are just so wired to keep,
• 34:54
  you know, they're hypervigilant.
• 34:57
  Jerremy Newsome: So here's a question that popped in my mind as David and Leslie.
• 35:01
  You were talking about the sleep perspective.
• 35:03
  What would be the benefits if we did solve homelessness?
• 35:09
  What, is there a benefit like to the society, to communities?
• 35:13
  Like what is it if Boom, hums is no longer here tomorrow,
• 35:17
  how does society get better?
• 35:18
  Exactly.
• 35:20
  Leslie Bobb: You wanna start David?
• 35:21
  @DavidJacob_1: What are the benefits of solving, solving homelessness?
• 35:23
  I don't know.
• 35:24
  Being able to say that we've, we're not actively failing as
• 35:27
  a society would be the big one.
• 35:29
  I don't know.
• 35:30
  That's, that's probably the biggest one.
• 35:32
  I mean, based on Jerremy, the numbers that you gave about, like
• 35:35
  the cost of homelessness, every year we'd say billions of dollars or
• 35:38
  pounds every single year, just on.
• 35:41
  There's a, probably less than acceptable English way of phrasing
• 35:44
  this that I will refrain from.
• 35:46
  We like throwing money down the toilet for want of a better phrase.
• 35:50
  If we are just throwing $80 billion of government spending at homelessness, and
• 35:55
  it's, I assume getting worse year on year.
• 35:58
  What could you do with $80 billion?
• 35:59
  Right?
• 36:00
  Jerremy, that's your, your favorite question is what are you
• 36:02
  gonna do with X amount of money?
• 36:03
  I think you'd, you'd, you'd have a pretty decent shot of doing a
• 36:06
  lot of stuff with $80 billion.
• 36:08
  I guess the other side of it is.
• 36:11
  Homelessness, and I think this is where a lot of people's gripes with homelessness
• 36:14
  come from is it's not nice to look at people in your local community or society
• 36:21
  and see them struggling with mental health and, houselessness and seeing
• 36:26
  them deal with drug addictions and you know, alcohol problems and all manner of
• 36:31
  other things and all of the associated problems like crime and whatever.
• 36:35
  All of those things will slowly start to decline across the board.
• 36:40
  There's a, this is taking me back to now my, like high school sociology classes.
• 36:45
  There's a, there's an idea called the broken windows Theory of Policing, where
• 36:49
  if you fix all of the small problems, the bigger problems don't tend to show up as
• 36:53
  frequently because people don't want to mess up the environment that they live in.
• 36:59
  Well, if you're constantly seeing homelessness around you, you're
• 37:01
  probably gonna assume that that area is also quite negative.
• 37:04
  You flip that on its head when you fix the biggest visible, I guess societal
• 37:09
  dysfunction, which is homelessness.
• 37:11
  It's the thing that we see every day.
• 37:13
  Believe that, you know, the government is enacting reasonable change.
• 37:16
  The government probably can be trusted.
• 37:19
  So focus, or at least faith in the people that govern you, probably increases.
• 37:23
  At the very least, people are more inclined to invest in different
• 37:26
  neighborhoods because they don't, they aren't fearful of, a homeless
• 37:31
  encampment popping up around the corner randomly because insert A,
• 37:34
  B, c, reason, whatever, Vagrant of now taken a whatever plot of land.
• 37:39
  Jerremy Newsome: Sure.
• 37:39
  @DavidJacob_1: Probably gonna see an increase in entrepreneurship
• 37:41
  and businesses because they don't worry about their shops
• 37:44
  getting robbed or whatever it is.
• 37:46
  Like there's mass societal benefits that just come from fixing something
• 37:50
  that is very visible in front of mind to a lot of communities.
• 37:53
  I'm sure if you ask people in LA why would solving homelessness be a
• 37:56
  problem they're gonna come up with so I don't have to see it all the time.
• 38:01
  Leslie Bobb: I would, uh, I would agree with that.
• 38:02
  And I, I was thinking additionally.
• 38:05
  With a less pragmatic lens.
• 38:08
  Earlier when you were talking about, again, the, the biases people have that
• 38:12
  keep them from looking at homelessness.
• 38:15
  It occurred to me to me, my son went through adolescence really struggling
• 38:20
  because he's so intense and anytime he would see a problem, it just felt
• 38:23
  way too big to do anything about it.
• 38:26
  So I think solving homelessness would probably do good to restore our faith
• 38:31
  in humanity a bit because we're not glaring at this huge failing problem
• 38:36
  that we can't do anything about or we feel so powerless to do something about.
• 38:40
  But also back to the money, I don't think, the economic benefits in neighborhoods
• 38:45
  I think is a very solid point, but also Jerremy, I don't think that $80 billion
• 38:49
  includes unpaid medical expenses, lost wages, all of the talent that we're
• 38:54
  losing out on from those almost a million people that are not able to like.
• 39:01
  Step in their purpose in this life because of all the other things in the way.
• 39:05
  I mean, those people might be visionaries, they might be brilliant engineers.
• 39:10
  They might have the cure for, whatever.
• 39:13
  They might be able to colonize Mars before Elon does.
• 39:16
  Like, there might be some real gifts, there are some real gifts out there
• 39:20
  and people who are buried under life.
• 39:24
  So I think just on a human scale with my girl heart, I'm just gonna say
• 39:27
  like the the cost is, or the benefit is immeasurable in restoring that
• 39:32
  many humans to their purpose in life.
• 39:35
  Dave Conley: So both of you are experts in helping people change,
• 39:41
  from wherever they are, whether it's their health and wellness, or
• 39:44
  just the choices that they make.
• 39:46
  How do we get people excited about this, overcoming this acceptance in society?
• 39:54
  What do you think, Dave?
• 39:55
  What do you think Leslie?
• 39:57
  Leslie Bobb: How do we get housed people excited about
• 40:00
  helping or how do we get okay.
• 40:02
  Dave Conley: You know, like there's, it's, I mean, it's a, it's a partnership, right?
• 40:06
  Somebody's gotta want to change.
• 40:07
  And based on the conversations we've already had with people who've
• 40:10
  been homeless, they do want that.
• 40:13
  So how do we get society excited about this?
• 40:17
  How do we change society around this?
• 40:19
  Leslie Bobb: I, I, I think the, some of the first ingredients to to
• 40:23
  getting someone to change is they have to believe in a different future.
• 40:28
  And I think that's a big one that we would battle against nowadays
• 40:31
  because people are so distracted and they're so cynical that just getting
• 40:37
  people to look and believe that it could be different is gonna be hard.
• 40:41
  They've been lied to and let down so many times just in our short lives
• 40:45
  that we have here, and there's so much vying for their attention that that
• 40:48
  would be the huge, the biggest hurdle.
• 40:50
  So believing that there's a different future, believing that.
• 40:55
  You can have the different future.
• 40:57
  So in our case, believing that you can impact, you can pitch in on this problem,
• 41:02
  that it does matter what you do would be another hurdle once we can actually get
• 41:07
  them to believe in a different future.
• 41:08
  So I think those are like two huge, huge like things to overcome,
• 41:15
  @DavidJacob_1: Yeah.
• 41:16
  I think building on that the fundamental problem is at least from public
• 41:21
  perception that I understand it to be in, trying my best to continually
• 41:24
  understand human behavior and psychology.
• 41:28
  I think at its core society views homelessness as like
• 41:35
  an individual tragedy.
• 41:38
  It's really sad that that person is homeless, but I didn't cause it, and
• 41:43
  I've got my own problems, but like, it sucks to suck for them, it, we
• 41:48
  need to shift to this idea that it's like a collective failure stewardship.
• 41:54
  Like, that's how I view it, that as a society, we are failing.
• 41:58
  We are failing at the basis form of like societal function,
• 42:03
  which is everyone has a home.
• 42:06
  That is what a society is.
• 42:07
  We grouped we, we collected in groups so that we would be more
• 42:11
  collectively safe than as a whole, or sorry, than as individuals.
• 42:15
  Right?
• 42:16
  We would be more collectively safe as a whole than as individuals.
• 42:19
  But now it's kind of reversed, right?
• 42:21
  And you, you now have the tragedy of the commons where it's
• 42:24
  always someone else's problem.
• 42:26
  And so long as I'm getting mine, that's all that I care about.
• 42:29
  So if we work under the premise that like our societies are shared resources,
• 42:35
  well, we all have to feel collectively responsible for those shared resources.
• 42:39
  And if at the point in which we don't, which I think is the point that we've
• 42:42
  gotten to now, the individual palms it off to their local government.
• 42:47
  The local government palms it off to the state government.
• 42:50
  The state government palms it off to the federal government, and now
• 42:52
  everyone points at everyone else.
• 42:54
  And it's like the Spider-Man meme in real life, right?
• 42:57
  Nobody wants to take ownership of it because it's too big for
• 43:00
  them to solve as an individual.
• 43:02
  If it's too big for an individual, then it's too big for a small group.
• 43:04
  And if it's too big for the small group, then it's bad for the bigger
• 43:06
  group and the bigger group and the bigger group and so on and so forth,
• 43:09
  like the commons end up rotting because the individuals don't care enough.
• 43:14
  So like, how do you do it?
• 43:15
  Like the, to combat like the almost the shared paralysis of it all.
• 43:23
  The, I write about this in my book, right?
• 43:25
  The, a lot of people take on what I call problem conflation, they group lots of
• 43:32
  problems into one big problem and then go, oh, well it's too difficult, so
• 43:36
  I'm not gonna even bother doing that.
• 43:37
  And it's, it's the whole idea of the guardian knot.
• 43:39
  Alexander the Great found the Gordian Knot, which was, you know,
• 43:42
  unsolvable for however many centuries.
• 43:44
  And the law was that whoever solved the Gordian knot would
• 43:48
  become the ruler of Asia.
• 43:49
  So he pulled out his sword and cut it in half.
• 43:52
  And we have to take the same approach here.
• 43:54
  Whatever we're doing now is categorically failing.
• 43:57
  The approaches that we're currently taking are broken.
• 44:00
  They do not work, and it has been proven year on year.
• 44:04
  So instead of trying to sit and untangle one corner of the knot and hope that
• 44:08
  that has a collective benefit, we have to look at this much more holistically
• 44:13
  and say, okay, well take the entire framework that we view this in, or
• 44:18
  view this through and put it in a bin.
• 44:21
  Instead of trying to enact massive societal change from the top down
• 44:25
  at a highly bureaucratic level where everything takes 87 meetings and
• 44:29
  a hundred different note takers to figure out how to do something best.
• 44:33
  How can one individual help one individual?
• 44:36
  How can one person help?
• 44:37
  One person?
• 44:38
  Because if one person helps one person times hundred thousand people, you
• 44:43
  eradicate, what did you say Jerremy?
• 44:44
  It was seven 50,000 people.
• 44:46
  Okay, cool.
• 44:47
  We've solved 15% of the problem
• 44:50
  Jerremy Newsome: Yep.
• 44:50
  @DavidJacob_1: it took you helping one person.
• 44:52
  Okay, cool.
• 44:53
  How do you expand that out?
• 44:55
  Jerremy Newsome: So go down that train of thought a little bit more, David,
• 44:57
  because you're, you're touching on this and what I'm hearing you say,
• 45:00
  and kinda what it's making me ask is what's a business like approach?
• 45:07
  Say rethinking how we fund solutions.
• 45:12
  would that make that dent?
• 45:13
  I mean, you're very close to it, but what would be that one extra
• 45:17
  loop or connection that tie in?
• 45:19
  @DavidJacob_1: Yeah, so I think the there's a, the life of me, I
• 45:24
  can't remember what it's called, but collec small collective funds, right?
• 45:29
  Where let's say you and everyone on your street puts in 50 bucks.
• 45:34
  That 50 bucks buy however many houses are on a street, let's call it 20 for
• 45:38
  argument's sake, is a thousand dollars.
• 45:40
  That a thousand dollars doesn't go very far when you try and tackle homelessness.
• 45:46
  if you know that there's one person who's constantly homeless on your street,
• 45:50
  picking up trash or whatever else.
• 45:53
  You gave that thousand dollars that person a month, it costs you 50 bucks a month.
• 46:00
  That thousand dollars changes that one person's life very easily.
• 46:03
  If every street in the US did that, I'm assuming there's more
• 46:06
  than 750,000 streets in the us.
• 46:09
  Congratulations.
• 46:10
  It costs $50 a month.
• 46:13
  Can everyone contribute that?
• 46:14
  Probably not.
• 46:16
  Probably not.
• 46:17
  there people are.
• 46:19
  there people who can contribute a hell of a lot more than 50 bucks a month?
• 46:22
  Yeah, but it's small collective groups solving small, collective
• 46:27
  group problems, right?
• 46:28
  It's a whole basis of community.
• 46:30
  But the moment that you turn it into a massive bureaucracy and it turns
• 46:34
  into a business, well now the business needs to survive and the business
• 46:36
  needs to exist for however many years to earn back any investment that went
• 46:40
  into it, and the whole cycle repeats.
• 46:42
  It has to be on a small scale.
• 46:44
  Jerremy Newsome: Leslie, what part of that caused the physical
• 46:47
  smile that's on your face?
• 46:48
  Leslie Bobb: Well, I would say the, uh, the American answer would
• 46:51
  be, well, I am, it's called taxes.
• 46:55
  I already am giving that money, and the government is supposed
• 46:59
  to be giving it to that person,
• 47:01
  @DavidJacob_1: It isn't the
• 47:02
  Leslie Bobb: so I.
• 47:02
  @DavidJacob_1: feel that you don't trust the government
• 47:04
  as far as you can throw them,
• 47:05
  Leslie Bobb: Well, I, yes, I'm a libertarian, so yes.
• 47:09
  And I would rather give that $50 to my neighbor than the government.
• 47:14
  But the fact is the government takes it from me for this problem, and I
• 47:18
  don't have a, a voice in the solution.
• 47:21
  So I would say that that would be an insta argument to your ideal.
• 47:26
  @DavidJacob_1: But
• 47:27
  Leslie Bobb: very logical.
• 47:29
  @DavidJacob_1: But what if you did have a voice in it?
• 47:30
  What if it was exactly that?
• 47:32
  It was a voluntary, on your street, in your street alone.
• 47:36
  There was one homeless guy that lived nearby your street, and you and the
• 47:39
  collective citizens of your street, in your street alone decided out of the
• 47:43
  goodness of your heart and nothing else.
• 47:45
  There was no mandate you were gonna give 50 bucks a month to, Brian,
• 47:49
  who lives at the end of the road.
• 47:51
  Leslie Bobb: I mean, I think that would, would be beautiful like most.
• 47:55
  Beautiful solutions.
• 47:56
  The way it plays out in real life might not work.
• 47:59
  There's been, most of my life, I wouldn't have been able to afford 50 bucks.
• 48:02
  So I might have gone and like cleaned Brian's house for him
• 48:05
  instead or whatever, because I didn't have the 50 bucks to pitch in.
• 48:08
  But I think it's a beautiful idea.
• 48:11
  But then say we give Brian a thousand bucks every month and he drinks it
• 48:14
  away instead of paying his rent.
• 48:17
  Which is where you get into the paternalistic governmental, like,
• 48:19
  I'm gonna solve this problem for you because you're not smart
• 48:22
  enough to do it by yourself.
• 48:24
  So I think there's a lot of potential holes to be poked, but then we
• 48:30
  get back into the, it's too solve, it's too big to solve problem.
• 48:33
  And I do agree with your, you know, let's just take a sword and slice what
• 48:37
  we're doing right down the middle.
• 48:38
  Start over.
• 48:39
  Uh, maybe with an outcome centered approach instead of a a, just, or.
• 48:47
  Accountability philosophy or whatever, if we just focus on the outcomes that
• 48:51
  we're looking for, we can just maybe set aside for just a moment whether
• 48:55
  it's fair to give Brian a thousand dollars even though I have to work
• 48:59
  for my rent or any of that situation.
• 49:02
  But the reality is it's, it's people don't always do what they're supposed to do.
• 49:07
  Jerremy Newsome: So the system is broken.
• 49:09
  Do we have to break the whole thing?
• 49:11
  Sounds like a yes.
• 49:13
  One of the situations or determinations that we were kind of discussing in
• 49:19
  the last episode was taking some of the individuals who didn't wanna be
• 49:24
  homeless, a consensus, and then placing them in other parts of the US that need
• 49:32
  that need population, that need people to come in with fresh perspectives.
• 49:36
  Fresh thoughts, fresh ideas.
• 49:39
  you think that has any relevancy?
• 49:40
  Is that even remotely possible?
• 49:42
  Leslie,
• 49:43
  Leslie Bobb: I think that would answer a small portion of the
• 49:46
  homeless population's problems.
• 49:48
  I think if you, uh, just offered to relocate certain
• 49:53
  people to where there was work.
• 49:56
  Some of them would take it, take you up on it.
• 49:58
  Many of them would not.
• 50:00
  They wouldn't wanna relocate, they wouldn't wanna work, they
• 50:03
  wouldn't be capable of it.
• 50:04
  As we discussed before, with the mental illness and substance abuse problems.
• 50:10
  I, I think it, Dave mentioned earlier, one size fits all approach not working here.
• 50:16
  And I think that's, I think that's really what we have to keep in mind is
• 50:21
  people are homeless for unique reasons and we're not gonna be able to just
• 50:27
  make one path to get them out of it.
• 50:29
  I don't think so.
• 50:30
  I think that would work for some of them, but not probably the majority of them.
• 50:35
  @DavidJacob_1: But, so this is where I struggle with this idea, right?
• 50:41
  So I agree with you, Leslie, that it's, it's not, you know, a one size fits all
• 50:44
  isn't gonna work at solving the whole thing, will it solve a portion of it?
• 50:50
  If the goal is to keep chipping away, then let's keep chipping away.
• 50:56
  Let's not cast out solutions because they don't solve it in its entirety.
• 51:00
  That's the entire problem of the Gordian Knot.
• 51:03
  Is that you have to solve it piece by piece or do what Alexander
• 51:05
  did and cut it down the middle.
• 51:06
  Well, if cutting it down the middle is not applicable, then we have to
• 51:09
  solve it piece by piece by piece.
• 51:10
  And if it is, you know, yeah.
• 51:12
  Some people are more than happy to relocate and go to an area with jobs
• 51:17
  and they're happy to be, essentially government mandated shelters until they've
• 51:20
  worked for a period of time and then they have enough money to get themselves
• 51:23
  into housing and their lives restart.
• 51:25
  Fantastic.
• 51:26
  If we can knock off a hundred thousand people because of that
• 51:29
  initiative alone, we've solved it by plus minus 15% overnight.
• 51:35
  obviously it's not overnight, but the point still remains.
• 51:37
  Leslie Bobb: Sure.
• 51:37
  @DavidJacob_1: But like, just because it doesn't solve the whole thing doesn't mean
• 51:39
  that it's not a solution in approaching.
• 51:42
  And I think that's where like the whole Gordian knot analogy really comes into
• 51:46
  play because if we try and solve all of it, we'll try and solve nothing.
• 51:49
  How do you eat an elephant?
• 51:50
  One bite at a time.
• 51:52
  Leslie Bobb: Yeah, for sure.
• 51:53
  I, I hope I didn't sound like I was saying it wasn't a worthwhile approach, but I
• 51:56
  do think 5%, 15%, it's worth solving, especially if they're people that just
• 52:02
  need an opportunity and they're gonna be back on their feet, then heck yeah,
• 52:05
  let's help 'em find an opportunity.
• 52:07
  That's just stupid not to do that, honestly.
• 52:11
  Uh, then there's people that have mental illness that can be treated, and then
• 52:14
  there's people that have substance abuse that may not be ready to be
• 52:17
  treated, but we keep working on that.
• 52:19
  So yeah, definitely.
• 52:21
  Just because there's no one size fits all doesn't mean none of
• 52:25
  the sizes fit anybody for sure.
• 52:27
  Jerremy Newsome: I can see that you're ready to jump in on this.
• 52:30
  Dave Conley: No, our guests are making me think.
• 52:32
  Right, and I'm just thinking it through because, you know,
• 52:36
  that one size doesn't fit all.
• 52:37
  Just a quick back of the napkin math, we're being taxed, $57 per person in
• 52:45
  the United States for these, three quarters of a million homeless people.
• 52:50
  And to me that's nothing right?
• 52:52
  Over the course of a year, you know, like the price of a meal, you know,
• 52:57
  like a dinner here, half a dinner here in Miami, you know, that's not enough.
• 53:02
  Uh, I, I feel like, you know, like we need to be spending a lot more and just
• 53:06
  saying, look, this is unacceptable.
• 53:08
  It is cruel to have people treated like this.
• 53:12
  Why would, as a society we be doing this?
• 53:15
  And it is different from every person, right?
• 53:17
  For somebody who has, you know, severe mental illness.
• 53:20
  Yeah.
• 53:20
  They're gonna be like in one camp for somebody who is a victim of domestic
• 53:26
  violence, which most women are homeless because of domestic violence.
• 53:31
  That's a whole different ball of wax.
• 53:33
  You know, getting them safe and in a position where that they can have a
• 53:38
  job and take care of their kids like, uh, like our guests, uh, last week.
• 53:43
  I, I don't know.
• 53:44
  I, I feel like it's one thing to talk about, like solutions, what isn't
• 53:48
  working, what is working, but I just know we're not doing enough and that
• 53:53
  it, I don't know, it pisses me off.
• 53:55
  Leslie Bobb: So Dave or Dave and Jerremy, the guests that you've spoken to before?
• 53:59
  I wonder like in certain situations, I know here I can't speak to the whole
• 54:02
  country, but I know that there are a lot of resources for women escaping
• 54:06
  domestic violence and obviously they're not matching, they're not
• 54:10
  finding the women that need them.
• 54:12
  In a lot of cases, if, if that's true that most of the women that
• 54:15
  are homeless are homeless because of fleeing domestic violence.
• 54:18
  So.
• 54:19
  With the $80 billion we are spending, and that probably doesn't count.
• 54:23
  That probably doesn't include, maybe it does include charitable
• 54:26
  NGOs and things like that, that aren't getting federal funding.
• 54:29
  I'm not sure.
• 54:30
  But with the 80 billion plus that is going into these types of resources,
• 54:35
  I really feel like a question to be asked in the solution would be, how are
• 54:41
  we better combining these resources, aligning them so they're not all
• 54:46
  doing the same thing and not reaching anybody and nobody's doing this thing.
• 54:49
  Like, I feel like there's a better way to, to coordinate resources and disseminate
• 54:55
  them to the people that need them.
• 54:56
  If, if all of these numbers are true.
• 54:59
  Dave Conley: Again, I love that.
• 55:01
  And I keep on coming back to a question I asked earlier was, how do
• 55:05
  we get society excited about this?
• 55:07
  Like what's the how?
• 55:08
  Because I, I lived in San Francisco and I, I think homelessness, you know,
• 55:15
  the programs was I think the second largest, budget item in San Francisco.
• 55:22
  There were so many services, so many organizations, and I, you know, and
• 55:27
  everybody was like, wring their hands of like, oh, we spend all this money and
• 55:32
  yet we keep on getting more homelessness.
• 55:33
  Well, it's clearly not working.
• 55:35
  But everybody sort of felt better about it because they were paying a ton of taxes.
• 55:40
  So that disconnect, I want to know what you really think about
• 55:43
  people getting excited about this and maybe getting pissed off like
• 55:46
  me, like, this is unacceptable.
• 55:48
  Like we, we've gotta, we've gotta stop, stop doing stupid stuff,
• 55:52
  Jerremy Newsome: do.
• 55:52
  Like how angry you're about this and we've had so many topics already in the past.
• 55:55
  You're f fever energy towards this is similar towards
• 56:00
  mine with school shootings.
• 56:02
  But I think the answer, Dave.
• 56:03
  Ready, Leslie Ray.
• 56:04
  David, a really good president.
• 56:06
  I think that's the solution to this, right?
• 56:08
  Where you have someone who's actually championing this and yelling at it
• 56:11
  from the rooftops, where it's like, listen, and again, this is my policy.
• 56:15
  My policy is all internal.
• 56:17
  I love Gaza, love Israel, love Iran High five.
• 56:19
  You guys gotta figure that stuff out yourself.
• 56:21
  Here's what we're gonna do, right?
• 56:22
  America's almost, we're gonna stop policing the world and we're gonna,
• 56:26
  we're gonna come internal for a while and fix all of the stuff that's
• 56:29
  happening here because we as a nation are the watchdog for the entire globe.
• 56:37
  Just 'cause we wanna be, and to be really, really fantastic for someone in
• 56:42
  a position of extreme authority on every debate stage, on every, address to fix
• 56:50
  education, is where homelessness starts.
• 56:54
  And to fix homelessness and what's currently existing and to just let
• 56:57
  society know that this is a standard that's just simply not acceptable.
• 57:01
  Leslie Bobb: So
• 57:02
  Jerremy Newsome: very easy,
• 57:03
  Leslie Bobb: there's an identity shift then that we need to,
• 57:06
  to encourage instead of.
• 57:08
  Jerremy Newsome: and identity system shifts.
• 57:10
  Dave Conley: When I was growing up, right, like there were all of these.
• 57:14
  ads on about litter.
• 57:16
  I mean, like, so like, if, if you're, if you're under, you know,
• 57:19
  if you're under 40, you'll, you'll never even know that this existed.
• 57:22
  But there were crying, you know, crying Native Americans.
• 57:26
  There were bears.
• 57:27
  Like it was constant.
• 57:28
  There were signs everywhere that, you know, on litter bugs, like we shamed like
• 57:33
  the entire country into stop littering.
• 57:36
  Now it, I would say, you know, like, this isn't like the number one thing
• 57:41
  anymore, but not like all of our communities are like really clean,
• 57:45
  but they're way cleaner than what they were in the seventies and eighties.
• 57:49
  Like, it was filthy.
• 57:50
  People would just throw stuff out of their car.
• 57:52
  That all stopped, you know, like, I, I want that.
• 57:55
  I want this to be like a public shaming, like
• 57:57
  Leslie Bobb: It, it worked.
• 57:58
  Dave, because I am so angry, like littering makes me blow my top.
• 58:05
  Rednecks still litter.
• 58:06
  So they need a little bit longer of the social conditioning and the brainwashing
• 58:11
  than the normal urban populations do.
• 58:14
  Because I live out here in Virginia and they will throw stuff in the back of
• 58:18
  their pickup because when they drive, it blows out and then they didn't mean to.
• 58:22
  But I feel like there is something to be gained from public shaming
• 58:26
  campaigns to change identity shifting.
• 58:29
  So,
• 58:30
  Dave Conley: now I come from 300 years of redneck, so like, I
• 58:33
  don't know I'm not much of a re
• 58:35
  Leslie Bobb: but you moved to San Francisco, so I feel like.
• 58:39
  Dave Conley: education back to what Jerremy was talking about.
• 58:41
  Jerremy Newsome: That's good.
• 58:42
  Yeah.
• 58:43
  Well, Dave, I mean that's really what it would take, man, and that, I think
• 58:45
  that's what it takes with any change have to have some type of authoritative
• 58:49
  focus and really direct messaging around a particular topic, whatever it is.
• 58:56
  And then you gotta get the media behind it.
• 58:58
  And everyone just focuses on it.
• 58:59
  Like right now in the US the big one is immigration.
• 59:04
  I mean, that's high on the list.
• 59:06
  So people are like.
• 59:07
  Get 'em out of the country versus let's make sure everyone who's in
• 59:10
  the country has a place to live.
• 59:11
  It's like if, do you belong here?
• 59:13
  No.
• 59:14
  Get out.
• 59:15
  Like no one cares about who's here presently.
• 59:17
  So I think immigration right now is a higher priority.
• 59:21
  US based value, system based, identity based versus homelessness.
• 59:27
  And again, that's just my opinion, but I think probably most listeners would agree.
• 59:30
  But the shift there would be if you have a president or an
• 59:33
  administration who goes, you know what?
• 59:36
  Okay, yes, immigration, it's a problem.
• 59:40
  However, you know, it also is a problem.
• 59:42
  Everyone who goes to fight immigration or to change immigration, or who is
• 59:46
  a veteran, a large percentage of our veteran population becomes homeless.
• 59:52
  Let's fix that instead.
• 59:55
  you're probably gonna get is more people who want to actually serve the military
• 59:59
  because they know, oh, wait a minute, when I go through the military and
• 1:00:02
  potentially get PTSD and potentially have an addiction problem, and most likely
• 1:00:07
  maybe form some type of mental health fear, challenge, stress, frustration.
• 1:00:11
  I'm not just gonna get kicked outta the street.
• 1:00:13
  I'm actually gonna have a place that's gonna take care of me.
• 1:00:16
  Oh, that place is safe and it's not overcrowded, and they're
• 1:00:21
  gonna serve me good food.
• 1:00:22
  So you know what my worst case scenario is?
• 1:00:24
  I'm actually gonna be taken care of by the country that I'm serving.
• 1:00:28
  I
• 1:00:28
  Dave Conley: I.
• 1:00:28
  Jerremy Newsome: that whole system with a small little, just a little
• 1:00:32
  flake of rebranding and ReLove could make some massive changes.
• 1:00:37
  Dave Conley: And also policies that don't leave people in that donut
• 1:00:40
  hole that our last guest ran into.
• 1:00:43
  Like, she could either live in absolute poverty on her veterans benefits fits,
• 1:00:49
  or she would have to give up her veterans benefits in order to get, you know,
• 1:00:54
  slightly better homeless benefits.
• 1:00:57
  But she was like stuck in, stuck in this middle hell of, you know,
• 1:01:02
  bureaucratic policy nightmare.
• 1:01:04
  Hey David just sitting here thinking, you know, what do you
• 1:01:07
  think is different or the same?
• 1:01:09
  I don't know what's different about the uk.
• 1:01:11
  Like you, you do have healthcare, you know, universal healthcare,
• 1:01:15
  we don't education system.
• 1:01:17
  Like what, what do you see as far as parallels or, you know, things
• 1:01:21
  that are different where you live?
• 1:01:23
  @DavidJacob_1: It goes back to the same question that you asked at
• 1:01:25
  the start, which was about apathy.
• 1:01:28
  And it speaks to a collective consciousness that is focused on the
• 1:01:32
  idea that if people are homeless, it's 'cause they did something to deserve it.
• 1:01:37
  themselves into this situation, they're probably not a great person.
• 1:01:40
  Yeah.
• 1:01:40
  Sometimes.
• 1:01:41
  And now in the UK the one thing that we don't have as a cause
• 1:01:44
  is massive medical bill issues.
• 1:01:47
  Like people aren't necessarily in homelessness because they have massive
• 1:01:51
  amounts of debt and their house has been repoed and they don't have a
• 1:01:54
  community around them that will allow them to, get back on their feet.
• 1:01:56
  That's not really a thing here.
• 1:01:58
  It most likely is mental health drugs or, you know, yeah.
• 1:02:03
  Tough times for whatever reason, disability, et cetera.
• 1:02:07
  But the problem still exists and the solutions that we are trying
• 1:02:11
  so far, as I'm aware, very similar to yours, shelters, remedies across
• 1:02:15
  the board, across, you know, mental health and and whatever else.
• 1:02:20
  Jerremy Newsome: Leslie, and then David, is there anything in
• 1:02:22
  this current environment, current situation, even gives you a glimmer
• 1:02:26
  of hope, comma, or even a semicolon?
• 1:02:28
  Is there something that you see is working or could work that if
• 1:02:32
  implemented soon, would really actually make a shift for a dent?
• 1:02:37
  Leslie Bobb: Great question.
• 1:02:38
  Uh, I, I always have a glimmer of hope, so yes.
• 1:02:43
  I, we see, we do see some things work and we do see some things
• 1:02:48
  that are promising, but maybe not applied in just the right way.
• 1:02:52
  Um, I have seen a lot of these little tiny home villages.
• 1:02:56
  I, not a lot, I've seen them pop up these little tiny home
• 1:02:58
  villages that pop up in the news.
• 1:03:00
  Our city has been trying to have one, but they just aren't zoned for it.
• 1:03:04
  And so they've been meeting a lot of barriers that people that are trying
• 1:03:07
  to start these kinds of things.
• 1:03:09
  But in other areas, I've seen apartment buildings or tiny
• 1:03:12
  homes be used for this housing.
• 1:03:15
  As it sounds like we all kind of agree.
• 1:03:17
  I mean, that was kind of Finland's main thing was like, let's put a roof
• 1:03:20
  over everybody's head first and then we can kind of get to the problem.
• 1:03:23
  So I always have a glimmer of hope.
• 1:03:25
  I think that our society, particularly in America, but I would guess as humans we
• 1:03:31
  tend to swing really far on the pendulum.
• 1:03:33
  America may be more than most.
• 1:03:35
  Um, so we swing really far one way, but then we self-correct and
• 1:03:38
  swing really far the other way.
• 1:03:40
  And I think we're close to an upswing on the pendulum and we're
• 1:03:44
  gonna be self-correcting soon.
• 1:03:46
  And I think part of that is the population size.
• 1:03:49
  So as David was pointing out on a smaller community level, we can,
• 1:03:54
  we can kick this in the arts, we can like get it out of the way.
• 1:03:58
  So I think if we can start shifting solution I identity I guess to
• 1:04:04
  community based again, rather than this.
• 1:04:07
  Larger society responsibility issue, I think that we could
• 1:04:11
  really start solving some problems.
• 1:04:12
  So I am, I'm hopeful there that we can look, we can look next door
• 1:04:18
  instead of looking to Washington, um, more immediately and start solving
• 1:04:22
  the problems on smaller scales.
• 1:04:25
  And that'll spread.
• 1:04:26
  So that, that gives me hope.
• 1:04:27
  Getting someone in the administration that likes to look towards solution, uh,
• 1:04:34
  based ideas is, is also always hopeful.
• 1:04:36
  We get a new president every four to eight years, so there's always
• 1:04:40
  something different to look forward to.
• 1:04:42
  So I definitely think that is a down the line hope, but I'm really
• 1:04:46
  excited about, about community focus.
• 1:04:52
  @DavidJacob_1: I guess to, to focus on the, the inverse, right?
• 1:04:56
  So kind of going against everything that I've said today and, and targeting the big
• 1:04:59
  macro versus the micro, I don't think that necessarily we need to look forward to
• 1:05:04
  find something that resembles a solution.
• 1:05:06
  I think we probably actually need to look backwards.
• 1:05:09
  So my dad was born in Singapore in the sixties, and one of the big success
• 1:05:16
  stories of complete and societal reprogramming is Singapore, right?
• 1:05:21
  Like in 1960 odd, I don't know the actual date.
• 1:05:27
  Qua Yu, who was the, the.
• 1:05:29
  President Prime Minister of of Singapore completely revitalized
• 1:05:33
  this country from essentially a giant swamp in between, Eastern powers
• 1:05:38
  that weren't exactly happy post World War II and turned it into a massive
• 1:05:44
  geopolitical center in the far East.
• 1:05:48
  Right.
• 1:05:48
  And the way that that happened was because there was this collective
• 1:05:52
  ideological shift of, yeah, we're a tiny country and we are very divided
• 1:05:57
  racially and we're very divided, politically and socioeconomically, but
• 1:06:02
  we are going to become exceptional.
• 1:06:04
  And that was the collective goal.
• 1:06:06
  As a result, he engineered the entire country around that ideal.
• 1:06:12
  And everything changed as the basis of that, right?
• 1:06:14
  It required a collective ideological shift.
• 1:06:17
  And then the government actually followed through, right?
• 1:06:20
  The British had governed Singapore for God knows how many years.
• 1:06:23
  There was ethnic tension, there was poverty.
• 1:06:25
  There were like no resources actually in the country.
• 1:06:28
  But you now have the ability for a single leader to come in and say, no, we're
• 1:06:33
  fixing this and we're gonna rip it down right to the roots and start again.
• 1:06:37
  And society became something that became a system that was built with the
• 1:06:41
  intention of, in the following decades.
• 1:06:44
  And in the next, now 60 years later, there's something to show for it.
• 1:06:49
  You look at what happened in Singapore and the goal was that
• 1:06:52
  they were playing the long game.
• 1:06:53
  Yeah, this isn't gonna be solved in the next five years.
• 1:06:56
  It's probably not even gonna be solved in the next 10 years, but give it 10,
• 1:06:58
  20 years and this is going to go away and we're gonna solve those problems.
• 1:07:02
  So housing became something that became governmental, right?
• 1:07:05
  So the whole idea behind the, oh, what was it?
• 1:07:11
  Hd something, HDB maybe housing system was, we're going to give ownership
• 1:07:16
  of land back to the population.
• 1:07:19
  And if you compare that to, you know, the western world, we basically live in cdo.
• 1:07:25
  We are not like actually owning anything.
• 1:07:28
  We're renters, right?
• 1:07:29
  We've, we've commoditized housing to the nth degree.
• 1:07:33
  the government develops and subsidizes high quality housing and then actually
• 1:07:37
  maintains it, which is the problem, the government actually has to follow
• 1:07:40
  through on keeping it up to scratch.
• 1:07:42
  At that point, if you've individuals who own, quote unquote, that land and it's
• 1:07:47
  highly subsidized by the government, you now have an ability for social
• 1:07:50
  cohesion because these people know that they're not necessarily going anywhere.
• 1:07:54
  They have a stable base to go back to.
• 1:07:56
  You know Leslie's point from earlier.
• 1:07:58
  if those.
• 1:08:01
  Government subsidized houses that are built solely for this purpose that
• 1:08:04
  actually have affordability baked in.
• 1:08:07
  Now you have the ability to co-create culture with your citizens.
• 1:08:11
  And I think from a macro perspective, that's where the
• 1:08:14
  community style of like small town Americana comes back into the fray.
• 1:08:19
  Because if you can build that in, well now you're looking at a
• 1:08:22
  fundamentally different idea because now all of those people are looking
• 1:08:24
  at the government that basically pulled them out of abject poverty and
• 1:08:28
  saying, these people actually care.
• 1:08:30
  I exist.
• 1:08:32
  And if you look at Singapore now, I would hazard a guess, again,
• 1:08:35
  don't quote me, plus minus 90% of people actually own their own homes.
• 1:08:40
  Their social cohesion.
• 1:08:41
  The company's eco or the country's economy has boomed to the nth degree.
• 1:08:46
  And I would have a guess that homelessness basically doesn't
• 1:08:48
  exist, but you gotta rip, rip it out from the root and start again.
• 1:08:52
  And that has to be a countrywide attempt at social change.
• 1:08:57
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah.
• 1:08:58
  And to kinda get my semi-final thoughts.
• 1:09:01
  I think one very unique subset of people that we, should or
• 1:09:07
  could target our entrepreneurs, specifically real estate entrepreneurs.
• 1:09:12
  so imagine if file your taxes as a real estate professional, if you did
• 1:09:19
  that, a portion of your proceeds or a, a tax or a licensing fee, that did go
• 1:09:29
  directly into a homeless pot, if you will, because who would build houses
• 1:09:34
  the best for the homeless, if not those who build houses for everyone.
• 1:09:40
  And who make money off of that.
• 1:09:42
  Because when you said the word government and subsidize those
• 1:09:45
  two words, never work, Really.
• 1:09:48
  So I don't want, I don't actually want the government to build the homeless housing.
• 1:09:53
  fascinating is I think it should fall probably on the burden of entrepreneurs
• 1:09:57
  who make north of $200,000 a year say, Hey man, if you're gonna make 200,000 a year
• 1:10:02
  off of real estate in this country, cool.
• 1:10:05
  Now 5% of everything you make that is going to go directly into
• 1:10:09
  this homeless community pool that you mentioned earlier, David.
• 1:10:13
  Those are the people that we're not gonna rely on everyone to put in 50 bucks.
• 1:10:17
  We're gonna rely on just the people, just the ones that build houses, flip
• 1:10:21
  houses, build apartment complexes, build community centers, build shopping
• 1:10:25
  malls, real estate investors who.
• 1:10:29
  Prey on lower taxes, who buy depreciation, who play the game.
• 1:10:33
  They know the game, they've studied the game.
• 1:10:34
  Those are the people that fund and fuel and are almost
• 1:10:38
  required to have that privilege.
• 1:10:41
  To have that tax decrease, to have that depreciation that you're purchasing,
• 1:10:48
  you're gonna have to spend a little bit towards fixing the homeless issue.
• 1:10:50
  I think that'd be a really, really fun decision that really wouldn't
• 1:10:54
  impact almost any real estate investor in a negligible negative way.
• 1:11:01
  @DavidJacob_1: So what if then you incentivize them to
• 1:11:02
  actually upkeep and maintain it?
• 1:11:04
  Jerremy Newsome: Yes.
• 1:11:06
  @DavidJacob_1: What if?
• 1:11:06
  What if you have your taxes?
• 1:11:08
  If you actually put all of the money that you would've ordinarily paid in
• 1:11:12
  taxes, half of it goes to building it and the other half goes to maintaining it.
• 1:11:15
  Congratulations, you just wiped your tax bill.
• 1:11:18
  Guest.
• 1:11:19
  Jerremy Newsome: That'd be so great.
• 1:11:20
  Again, I think a, a blend of that would, would, again, would make a lot
• 1:11:23
  of sense to me, and I think that's.
• 1:11:25
  are the people that I do feel are, like you man, like the nearest and dearest,
• 1:11:30
  like you're a really great investor.
• 1:11:32
  Like people who are great investors, great business owners people who, who love
• 1:11:36
  money, they want to circulate money, they wanna give it to other people 'cause they
• 1:11:39
  know that it helps, but they also know that money expands whatever it touches.
• 1:11:43
  So if you give it to someone with a mental disease, mental health challenge, massive
• 1:11:48
  addiction, guess what's gonna expand it?
• 1:11:50
  Those aspects as well.
• 1:11:52
  So they know just directly giving someone the money isn't going to be
• 1:11:55
  the direct impact of the solution.
• 1:11:59
  But finding ways to have people that have money that started from a very rough like
• 1:12:06
  myself, to then put yourself in a position of, okay, cool, well hey, I got out.
• 1:12:12
  How did I do it?
• 1:12:12
  What did I read?
• 1:12:13
  Who did I surround myself with?
• 1:12:15
  'cause your environment is what's going to expand all of the consciousness
• 1:12:20
  that you have about homelessness.
• 1:12:21
  And what do most homeless people do?
• 1:12:23
  They have to spend time around guess what homeless people all the time who
• 1:12:28
  are again, afflicted affected and, and, uh, potentially really strain, strenuous
• 1:12:34
  mental disease, mental disorders, or mental, uh, health challenges.
• 1:12:38
  So it, it's gonna be very hard for the people who want to escape homelessness to
• 1:12:42
  escape because they're surrounded by it.
• 1:12:44
  Leslie Bobb: Maybe that's, that's your answer, Dave.
• 1:12:47
  What Jerremy saying?
• 1:12:48
  Like maybe you tap into a way that people can help doing what they love.
• 1:12:52
  Because real estate investors love real estate, so having them work on the
• 1:12:57
  housing issue is gonna be a fun challenge.
• 1:13:00
  It's gonna be something they can engage in.
• 1:13:03
  Not everyone loves real estate, but these people like Jeremy's getting
• 1:13:06
  into need other things besides a house.
• 1:13:08
  Two.
• 1:13:09
  So they need, they need financial training, they need nutrition education,
• 1:13:13
  they need, uh, job opportunities.
• 1:13:15
  And there are other people who love geeking out on that kind of stuff.
• 1:13:18
  And if we get everybody a way to help, I actually had started creating
• 1:13:22
  a, a foundation in California when I was much younger, with that idea.
• 1:13:26
  It's just matching, matching passions to needs, sort of, maybe that's how
• 1:13:31
  you get people excited about it.
• 1:13:33
  Dave, sorry to cut you off.
• 1:13:35
  Jerremy.
• 1:13:35
  Dave Conley: No, that's great.
• 1:13:36
  I, I'm working on actually booking.
• 1:13:39
  Mayor of Newark, New Jersey, and they've done a lot in the homeless
• 1:13:44
  area, but they really focused on the affordability problems of their houses.
• 1:13:48
  And they changed a lot of things in their policies.
• 1:13:51
  And one of the things was ensuring that that builders had, I wouldn't
• 1:13:57
  say incentives, but they had or not guarantees, I don't know what the words
• 1:14:01
  are, but like their bonds and their, their debt financing was protected.
• 1:14:06
  What they had to do for that was ensure that a certain percentage of
• 1:14:11
  their homes were whatever they built was affordable and had pathways to
• 1:14:16
  people who couldn't afford, that were homeless or, you know, just couldn't
• 1:14:20
  afford to live there, could live there.
• 1:14:22
  And they've done a lot.
• 1:14:23
  You know, I think that there's, know, there's a lot there.
• 1:14:27
  Leslie Bobb: There is a lot there.
• 1:14:28
  That's the truest statement
• 1:14:29
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:14:31
  Yes it is.
• 1:14:33
  So as we wrap this one up, let's just do a fast, little lightning round.
• 1:14:37
  Interesting to see what you all think.
• 1:14:39
  I'll give you all time to think about it.
• 1:14:40
  But what is one word that sums up society's view of homelessness?
• 1:14:48
  And it's okay if you've already said that word, but what would that one word be?
• 1:14:52
  Whoever wants to go first.
• 1:14:54
  Leslie Bobb: I feel like maybe disgusting is the one that comes to mind.
• 1:14:58
  Jerremy Newsome: Disgusting by Leslie David.
• 1:15:01
  @DavidJacob_1: Tolerated.
• 1:15:02
  Jerremy Newsome: Disgustingly tolerated.
• 1:15:03
  I would agree.
• 1:15:04
  I really like that blend.
• 1:15:06
  What feeling or truth about homelessness do most people overlook?
• 1:15:14
  David.
• 1:15:15
  And then Leslie,
• 1:15:16
  @DavidJacob_1: I, is it one word again or am I allowed a sentence?
• 1:15:19
  All right.
• 1:15:21
  Jerremy Newsome: you're allowed a whole sentence.
• 1:15:24
  @DavidJacob_1: I think there is this idea of discomfort if they really
• 1:15:29
  sat and thought about it for any extended period of time, they'd get
• 1:15:32
  really, really uncomfortable and then they'd feel compelled to act.
• 1:15:37
  So it's easier just to kind of cover their eyes and kind of ostrich them
• 1:15:41
  their head into the ground and assume that if I can't see the ghost, the
• 1:15:44
  ghost can't see me, just blank it out.
• 1:15:48
  Leslie Bobb: I was gonna say empathy, but then I realized,
• 1:15:50
  I don't think that's true.
• 1:15:51
  I think a lot of people have empathy for the homeless as long as they don't let it
• 1:15:55
  in too big, like David was just saying.
• 1:15:58
  But I think I would say in one word that it's fixable.
• 1:16:02
  I think to David's point earlier, people just, it's normalized, sucks to suck you.
• 1:16:07
  Poor thing.
• 1:16:08
  Here's a dollar.
• 1:16:09
  Whatever.
• 1:16:10
  Not that this is something that is temporary in someone's life
• 1:16:14
  and that they can get out of it if given the right support.
• 1:16:20
  I don't think anybody really, not anybody obviously, but society
• 1:16:23
  really looks at these people as like in a temporary situation.
• 1:16:27
  They're homeless people, they're not people experiencing homelessness.
• 1:16:32
  I mean, even the Bible says that there will always be poor people,
• 1:16:35
  there will always be homeless people.
• 1:16:37
  So just be kind to them and help them out, so it's, it's a very like permanent,
• 1:16:42
  pervasive identity in our minds.
• 1:16:45
  Jerremy Newsome: Fascinating.
• 1:16:47
  Yeah, and I, again, I agree with that piece, like that's
• 1:16:50
  always gonna be a choice.
• 1:16:51
  Just like there'll always be rich people, there are always the people
• 1:16:53
  who don't wanna be rich and they, and consciously, at some point
• 1:16:57
  they have to make that choice.
• 1:16:59
  And I think I'm a really great representation of that because I have
• 1:17:02
  a lot of individuals in my family who choose not to listen to this podcast.
• 1:17:06
  also choose not to read a lot of the books.
• 1:17:09
  They also make the decision to drink more than they should eat, more than they
• 1:17:13
  should and smoke more than they should.
• 1:17:15
  Therefore, their health is gonna be impacted negatively more overall than not.
• 1:17:20
  And therefore, my exact same genes, the exact same dad, the exact same mom are
• 1:17:27
  making different choices that are leading financially a different road than myself.
• 1:17:33
  And so ultimately, like there's always gonna be choices that we can make.
• 1:17:36
  Like if I became homeless and lost all of my money tomorrow.
• 1:17:40
  I would just, I would first of all call one of E three
• 1:17:43
  and just stay at your place.
• 1:17:44
  But ultimately, like I would make the choice just to not be in that
• 1:17:47
  situation for very long and I would remove my ego and start stepping into
• 1:17:50
  things and make some phone calls.
• 1:17:52
  And, if it happened to me at a younger age, I'd probably still
• 1:17:54
  have to make that decision.
• 1:17:55
  So we all make decisions, we all make choices, and I think for every listener
• 1:17:59
  here, we simply have to make a choice to take an action to some level.
• 1:18:05
  with that being stated, I think I would just love to propose
• 1:18:10
  for all of our listeners just think about what is an action.
• 1:18:15
  And I'll leave it to you, David, and you to Leslie.
• 1:18:17
  What's one action that we can all take today to just start chipping away at
• 1:18:23
  what we would call currently a prevailing problem of homelessness globally?
• 1:18:29
  Leslie Bobb: Silence a whole group of people that have a
• 1:18:31
  lot of thoughts in their heads.
• 1:18:33
  So that was a good question, Jerremy.
• 1:18:35
  Jerremy Newsome: Thanks.
• 1:18:36
  Yeah, thanks.
• 1:18:36
  Well, I'll, I'll, I'll rephrase it.
• 1:18:37
  Make it maybe even easier or more poignant.
• 1:18:40
  What's one step every listener could take, whether voting helping locally that
• 1:18:47
  could shift how we address homelessness?
• 1:18:50
  How about that?
• 1:18:51
  Leslie Bobb: Well, I would like to say for your listeners real quick,
• 1:18:53
  David, and then I'll let you go.
• 1:18:54
  I would like to say for your listeners that I am now actively seeking a million
• 1:18:58
  dollar grant for a homelessness think tank of which you three will first be
• 1:19:03
  invited to, as well as other experts.
• 1:19:05
  But David, you go ahead and then I'll, I'll come up with a real answer.
• 1:19:10
  @DavidJacob_1: I guess the way that when I. First had my first experience with, you
• 1:19:15
  know, dealing with someone who's homeless.
• 1:19:16
  Dealing is probably a bad word, but, just learn their name.
• 1:19:21
  Just treat 'em like people.
• 1:19:24
  It's really easy to see them as homelessness, or sorry as
• 1:19:28
  homeless instead of as a person.
• 1:19:31
  And if there's someone that you see on a really regular basis,
• 1:19:35
  find out who they are now.
• 1:19:37
  You don't have to do what I did and sit and listen to their story every day
• 1:19:39
  for three months, but what's your name?
• 1:19:42
  Remind them that humanity exists.
• 1:19:45
  Jerremy Newsome: Come on, bro.
• 1:19:46
  Such a great answer.
• 1:19:48
  Leslie Bobb: That is a great answer.
• 1:19:49
  I like it.
• 1:19:50
  I like it.
• 1:19:50
  'cause if you're unseen as a human, how can you even start?
• 1:19:58
  How can you even like think that?
• 1:20:00
  Like how can you even, it's despair, right?
• 1:20:04
  You just, you feel despair, and when you feel despair, there's no hope.
• 1:20:08
  And when there's no hope, there's no action to be taken.
• 1:20:11
  Sounds a good answer, David.
• 1:20:14
  Jerremy Newsome: Yep.
• 1:20:14
  And for you, Leslie, too, again, hey you're going out and saying, Hey,
• 1:20:17
  I'm trying to track down this grant.
• 1:20:19
  if there's listeners out there that are grant specialists or they'll
• 1:20:22
  wanna reach out to Leslie or myself or Dave, no, please let us know.
• 1:20:25
  But ultimately, I love that step for you, Leslie.
• 1:20:27
  I love that you're taking that action.
• 1:20:28
  'cause it's like, Hey, let's get a collective group of people together.
• 1:20:31
  Just like David said, that's how you fix problems.
• 1:20:34
  You get a group of individuals who care, you put 'em into an environment
• 1:20:37
  where change can be created.
• 1:20:39
  You motivate that change with thoughts, with actions, with words, with beliefs.
• 1:20:43
  And then you go start making those changes by putting in the time and the energy.
• 1:20:47
  'cause those are the only things we can really put in.
• 1:20:50
  And you can spend time and you can spend energy.
• 1:20:51
  So like we have to spend one of these three things in some version of the other
• 1:20:55
  to make sure that it actually happens.
• 1:20:56
  So I love that.
• 1:20:57
  That's awesome, Leslie, that's amazing.
• 1:20:59
  David, family, thank you for listening.
• 1:21:02
  And for really everyone out there, I really just wanna say our goal here,
• 1:21:08
  as you all can know and feel, see and hopefully understand, is to get every
• 1:21:12
  perspective on either side of the fence, religious or political, whatever
• 1:21:18
  perspectives are truly here to create change and that change to actually solve.
• 1:21:25
  societal problems that are here in the United States of America, and to David's
• 1:21:29
  point and other countries as well.
• 1:21:32
  what this podcast is for.
• 1:21:34
  Leslie, David, thank you for being here.
• 1:21:36
  Listeners, thank you for being here.
• 1:21:38
  Please subscribe to this podcast if you haven't done so already.
• 1:21:42
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• 1:21:46
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• 1:21:47
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• 1:21:48
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• 1:22:00
  are making not only change, but deliberate, insightful, thoughtful
• 1:22:04
  perspectives that are creating change.
• 1:22:06
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• 1:22:10
  create true solutions to these massive problems that are facing an
• 1:22:15
  incredible country that is America.
• 1:22:19
  So ladies and gentlemen, tag us solve you USA pod.
• 1:22:23
  On X or solving America's Problems Podcast on Instagram.
• 1:22:27
  This has been another episode.
• 1:22:29
  Thank you so much for your time and your energy.
• 1:22:31
  you all.
• 1:22:33
  Great job DC Conley.
• 1:22:34
  Another fun one.
• 1:22:35
  I'm glad to see fired up, man.
• 1:22:36
  It gets me excited.
• 1:22:38
  Dave Conley: what did you learn on this one?
• 1:22:40
  Jerremy Newsome: I really like Leslie's perspective when she used the word
• 1:22:43
  that I don't think many people have used in a lot of our problems fixable.
• 1:22:48
  It's like, dude,
• 1:22:49
  Dave Conley: Yeah.
• 1:22:49
  Jerremy Newsome: has to be this.
• 1:22:50
  This has to be fixable.
• 1:22:52
  You know, like relatively quickly
• 1:22:54
  Dave Conley: Yeah.
• 1:22:55
  Jerremy Newsome: it seems like to me.
• 1:22:56
  And what inspired me in this episode is I personally feel like we are actually
• 1:23:02
  making legitimate tactical steps.
• 1:23:05
  I can begin to see right as president if I reached out and created a.
• 1:23:10
  A real estate investor coalition.
• 1:23:14
  If you are investing at this scale in one of the 50 states, please
• 1:23:18
  do this to end homelessness.
• 1:23:20
  Please contribute this, and this will reduce your taxes even more.
• 1:23:24
  Create some level of a program or product like that's still entrepreneur based
• 1:23:29
  and potentially entrepreneur run that's overseen by a board of directors or a real
• 1:23:34
  estate committee or an agency committee.
• 1:23:37
  I think that that's actually close-ish for me.
• 1:23:40
  That's
• 1:23:41
  Dave Conley: Mm-hmm.
• 1:23:42
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:23:48
  Yeah.
• 1:23:48
  Jerremy Newsome: sure.
• 1:23:48
  If I make $60,000 from this house flip, absolutely.
• 1:23:52
  Please give $4,000 to X, Y, Z location, community, shelter area so that I
• 1:23:59
  know exactly where money's going.
• 1:24:01
  There's no conduit, there's no middleman, no one's profiting off
• 1:24:04
  of me, and it's going right to someone that can actually help.
• 1:24:07
  Dave Conley: Yeah.
• 1:24:08
  Yeah.
• 1:24:08
  I like that.
• 1:24:10
  Fixable.
• 1:24:10
  Yeah.
• 1:24:11
  That's gonna stick with me.
• 1:24:12
  And you're right, I am fired up.
• 1:24:15
  It's not because of homelessness and it, it isn't almost this topic.
• 1:24:18
  It's because, you know, we've done incarceration and, and American justice.
• 1:24:23
  We've done health and wellness, we've done education, and now this one, and.
• 1:24:30
  We've gotta stop doing stupid stuff.
• 1:24:33
  That's what's firing me up.
• 1:24:35
  Like, we spend much money and someone is getting filthy rich on the misery
• 1:24:45
  of fellow human beings all of those right down to school shooting.
• 1:24:51
  Somebody is getting filthy rich and we're not solving the problem.
• 1:24:55
  We, you said it, we know how to solve this.
• 1:24:58
  Now I, I'm still not sure in my head, I know what we're spending
• 1:25:03
  the money on and it's not working.
• 1:25:05
  So we, we've gotta stop that.
• 1:25:08
  And I think I've kind of come to, we've gotta stop funding this like this.
• 1:25:12
  We've gotta cut it off.
• 1:25:14
  And gotta change may, maybe we're funding the wrong thing.
• 1:25:18
  We keep on.
• 1:25:19
  Spending the money on people who are homeless.
• 1:25:22
  And I'm thinking that this goes back to society.
• 1:25:25
  We have to change the society first.
• 1:25:27
  That was like a theme in this one.
• 1:25:29
  So maybe it is about shaming or changing society, or changing people's ideas.
• 1:25:35
  We shouldn't have any homelessness.
• 1:25:36
  And it starts with society saying that this is not acceptable.
• 1:25:40
  And then all of the programs flow from that, right?
• 1:25:42
  Like we have, we're funding it the wrong direction.
• 1:25:45
  We're funding all the programs and hoping for the best.
• 1:25:47
  Maybe it's, it's the other direction.
• 1:25:51
  know.
• 1:25:51
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah.
• 1:25:52
  What I learned is, man, that there's a lot of smart people
• 1:25:54
  who have been closely impacted,
• 1:25:57
  Dave Conley: Yeah.
• 1:25:57
  Jerremy Newsome: by this, who really care.
• 1:25:59
  To David's point, he really got me fired up that he, internally, again, he's been
• 1:26:06
  around a lot of my very, very high-end programs and coaching and consultations
• 1:26:12
  and very frequently he always says like, Hey, I'd love to fix homelessness.
• 1:26:15
  And that's because in his mind.
• 1:26:19
  He was a huge contributing factor to fixing, helping, and reshifting that
• 1:26:25
  one individual that was homeless, that's now no longer homeless because he had
• 1:26:29
  a very personal, very kind interaction.
• 1:26:32
  Now, David's mentioned a few times that was he the only reason, probably not.
• 1:26:36
  But again, he doesn't, no one needs to be the only reason ever that
• 1:26:39
  someone's life becomes better.
• 1:26:40
  They can be a pivot, they can be a moment, they can be a bright light and
• 1:26:44
  a dark space that actually does help.
• 1:26:46
  And for David, he feels like he was that flashlight in a dark room for
• 1:26:51
  that individual, for that gentleman.
• 1:26:52
  And that's what really got him fired up.
• 1:26:53
  He's like, holy smokes.
• 1:26:55
  Treat these people like people.
• 1:26:56
  Treat these beings like human beings and love on them and care about them.
• 1:27:00
  Like not some disease, not some leprosy, but love on them.
• 1:27:04
  And they probably will no longer be homeless because they feel loved
• 1:27:08
  and they feel accepted by society.
• 1:27:09
  Holy smokes.
• 1:27:11
  Dave Conley: Isn't that sort of the summary of, of when we were talking
• 1:27:14
  incarceration like, like punishing people doesn't work, but like a
• 1:27:20
  Tony Robbins book kind of does.
• 1:27:22
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah.
• 1:27:23
  Yeah.
• 1:27:24
  Really, really interesting, really fascinating, and it's again, just
• 1:27:27
  good to see so many people who do care and are excited and are moved
• 1:27:31
  and motivated by this, for sure.