WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.560 You know, I was walking to the studio this morning, 00:00:01.600 --> 00:00:05.179 cutting through the park, and I saw a guy asleep 00:00:05.179 --> 00:00:08.119 on a bench. He had the layers of coats, the bags, 00:00:08.220 --> 00:00:11.279 the whole image. And I did what I think 99 % 00:00:11.279 --> 00:00:14.800 of us do. I clocked him. I felt a quick pang 00:00:14.800 --> 00:00:18.160 of, I don't know, pity, maybe a little discomfort. 00:00:18.420 --> 00:00:21.100 And then I kept walking. I just... I filed him 00:00:21.100 --> 00:00:23.260 away in my brain under the single category of 00:00:23.260 --> 00:00:26.059 homelessness. It's a reflex, isn't it? We have 00:00:26.059 --> 00:00:28.519 this mental snapshot, almost like a stock photo 00:00:28.519 --> 00:00:31.620 of what homelessness is. Right. It's the rough 00:00:31.620 --> 00:00:34.820 sleeper, the tent under the overpass, the person 00:00:34.820 --> 00:00:36.700 asking for change at the intersection. That's 00:00:36.700 --> 00:00:39.399 the folder it goes into. Exactly. But after reading 00:00:39.399 --> 00:00:41.119 through the stack of research for today's deep 00:00:41.119 --> 00:00:43.759 dive, I realized that my mental snapshot isn't 00:00:43.759 --> 00:00:47.939 just incomplete. It's actually profoundly misleading. 00:00:48.039 --> 00:00:50.780 That guy on the bench. Yeah. He's the exception, 00:00:50.960 --> 00:00:53.119 not the rule. He's what we're allowed to see. 00:00:53.240 --> 00:00:55.759 He is the visible tip of a massive submerged 00:00:55.759 --> 00:00:58.899 iceberg. I mean, if you only look at the street, 00:00:58.979 --> 00:01:01.179 you are missing the vast majority of the crisis. 00:01:01.399 --> 00:01:04.219 It's not even close. So today, we are going to 00:01:04.219 --> 00:01:06.700 look under the water. We are going to completely 00:01:06.700 --> 00:01:09.239 dismantle this idea that homelessness is just 00:01:09.239 --> 00:01:11.400 about rooflessness. We're going to talk about 00:01:11.400 --> 00:01:14.780 net cafe refugees in Japan who go to work every 00:01:14.780 --> 00:01:17.909 day in suits, but... you know, sleep in these 00:01:17.909 --> 00:01:19.969 tiny little cubicles. Or the families living 00:01:19.969 --> 00:01:22.430 out of their cars in a Walmart parking lot. Exactly. 00:01:22.829 --> 00:01:25.870 Or the hidden homeless, the families couch surfing 00:01:25.870 --> 00:01:28.170 through the suburbs, hoping they don't wear out 00:01:28.170 --> 00:01:30.370 their welcome. And we are going to tackle the 00:01:30.370 --> 00:01:33.109 uncomfortable why. We're moving away from the 00:01:33.109 --> 00:01:36.189 sad news story frame. I think we have to. We 00:01:36.189 --> 00:01:38.670 need to look at this as a systemic engineering 00:01:38.670 --> 00:01:42.250 failure. A system failure. Not a person failing. 00:01:42.329 --> 00:01:44.969 For the most part, yes. Homelessness isn't usually 00:01:44.969 --> 00:01:47.409 a character flaw. It's a process. It's a slope 00:01:47.409 --> 00:01:50.030 that people slide down, often triggered by things 00:01:50.030 --> 00:01:52.030 that happened to them decades before they ever 00:01:52.030 --> 00:01:53.629 lost their keys. And we're going to get into 00:01:53.629 --> 00:01:57.090 the economics, which, spoiler alert, just blew 00:01:57.090 --> 00:02:00.569 my mind. The math suggests it is literally more 00:02:00.569 --> 00:02:03.769 expensive for us, for society, to keep people 00:02:03.769 --> 00:02:06.030 on the street than to house them. It's fiscally 00:02:06.030 --> 00:02:08.830 irresponsible to not solve it. It's a wild thought. 00:02:09.580 --> 00:02:12.639 Completely wild. But OK, before we get to the 00:02:12.639 --> 00:02:14.979 solutions, we have to define what we're actually 00:02:14.979 --> 00:02:18.599 looking at, because even the word homeless is 00:02:18.599 --> 00:02:21.740 it's really tricky. It is. And language matters 00:02:21.740 --> 00:02:24.300 here because it shapes policy. It shapes how 00:02:24.300 --> 00:02:27.560 we think. If you think homelessness equals sleeping 00:02:27.560 --> 00:02:30.800 outside, then your solution is just, well, build 00:02:30.800 --> 00:02:33.120 a shelter. Problem solved. Check the box. Right. 00:02:33.280 --> 00:02:36.800 But the United Nations has a much, much wider 00:02:36.800 --> 00:02:39.599 definition. I have the UN definition right here. 00:02:39.879 --> 00:02:43.139 In 2004, the UN Department of Economic and Social 00:02:43.139 --> 00:02:46.580 Affairs defined a homeless household as one without 00:02:46.580 --> 00:02:48.680 shelter that falls within the scope of living 00:02:48.680 --> 00:02:51.740 quarters. That sounds surprisingly bureaucratic. 00:02:51.800 --> 00:02:53.740 It is, but look at how they break it down. In 00:02:53.740 --> 00:02:56.520 Europe, they use a typology called ethos. It's 00:02:56.520 --> 00:02:58.520 a framework that frames homelessness not as a 00:02:58.520 --> 00:03:00.860 static state like you are or you aren't, but 00:03:00.860 --> 00:03:04.099 as a spectrum of exclusion. A spectrum, not a 00:03:04.099 --> 00:03:05.919 light switch. Exactly. Think about it physically, 00:03:06.139 --> 00:03:07.939 legally, and socially. So you have rooflessness, 00:03:08.080 --> 00:03:09.639 which is the street. That's the obvious one. 00:03:09.719 --> 00:03:11.819 The guy on the bench. The guy on the bench. But 00:03:11.819 --> 00:03:15.000 then you have houselessness. This is where you 00:03:15.000 --> 00:03:16.599 have a place to sleep, but it's a shelter or 00:03:16.599 --> 00:03:18.439 a temporary institution. You don't have a key. 00:03:18.539 --> 00:03:20.360 You don't have autonomy. So you have a roof, 00:03:20.379 --> 00:03:22.099 but you don't have a home. You have no control. 00:03:22.580 --> 00:03:25.960 Precisely. Then there's insecure housing. Maybe 00:03:25.960 --> 00:03:27.960 you're renting illegally or you're under threat 00:03:27.960 --> 00:03:30.039 of eviction or there's domestic violence in the 00:03:30.039 --> 00:03:32.939 home. You have a roof and you have a key, but 00:03:32.939 --> 00:03:35.939 you have zero safety. Ethos counts that as a 00:03:35.939 --> 00:03:39.500 form of homelessness. And that just, it massively 00:03:39.500 --> 00:03:41.879 expands the numbers. I mean, the scale changes 00:03:41.879 --> 00:03:43.840 completely when you define it that way. It does. 00:03:44.439 --> 00:03:46.159 And I noticed in the reading there's a distinct 00:03:46.159 --> 00:03:48.300 shift in how we talk about the people involved. 00:03:48.800 --> 00:03:52.259 We are trying really hard not to use the homeless 00:03:52.259 --> 00:03:55.560 as a noun. Right. And for good reason. The Associated 00:03:55.560 --> 00:03:57.500 Press, for instance, changed their style book 00:03:57.500 --> 00:04:00.460 on this in 2020. When you say the homeless, it 00:04:00.460 --> 00:04:02.719 sounds like a different species, like the birds 00:04:02.719 --> 00:04:06.520 or the trees. It implies a permanent monolithic 00:04:06.520 --> 00:04:10.020 identity. It effectively dehumanizes them. It 00:04:10.020 --> 00:04:13.500 groups everyone, the veteran with PTSD, the teenager 00:04:13.500 --> 00:04:16.339 who aged out of foster care, the family fleeing 00:04:16.339 --> 00:04:19.399 abuse. It just lumps them all into one category. 00:04:19.579 --> 00:04:23.139 Exactly. The preferred term now is people experiencing 00:04:23.139 --> 00:04:27.399 homelessness or unhoused people. It uses person 00:04:27.399 --> 00:04:30.040 first language. It reminds us that this is a 00:04:30.040 --> 00:04:32.959 situation happening to a human being, not the 00:04:32.959 --> 00:04:36.060 definition of that human being. Speaking of definitions 00:04:36.060 --> 00:04:38.480 and history, I have to take us on a little detour 00:04:38.480 --> 00:04:40.620 here because I fell down a total rabbit hole 00:04:40.620 --> 00:04:42.899 on the historical terms. I always thought hobo, 00:04:42.920 --> 00:04:46.379 tramp, and vagrant were just old tiny insults. 00:04:46.620 --> 00:04:48.620 Synonyms for being poor and on the move? Yeah, 00:04:48.660 --> 00:04:50.060 I thought they were all the same thing. Most 00:04:50.060 --> 00:04:52.220 people do. If you call someone a tramp today, 00:04:52.300 --> 00:04:54.459 it's just an insult. But if you were riding the 00:04:54.459 --> 00:04:57.680 rails in America in 1890, getting those terms 00:04:57.680 --> 00:04:59.860 mixed up could actually get you into a fistfight. 00:05:00.269 --> 00:05:02.910 No way. Oh, yeah. There was a strict class system 00:05:02.910 --> 00:05:05.550 on the road. A real hierarchy. Okay, so lay out 00:05:05.550 --> 00:05:07.829 the hierarchy for me. Who was at the top of the 00:05:07.829 --> 00:05:10.250 freight train food chain? That would be the hobo. 00:05:10.350 --> 00:05:13.230 Really? The hobo is the aristocrat. That's not 00:05:13.230 --> 00:05:15.509 what I would have guessed. Absolutely. The hobo 00:05:15.509 --> 00:05:17.769 was an itinerant worker. That is the crucial 00:05:17.769 --> 00:05:20.829 distinction. Hobos were often skilled laborers 00:05:20.829 --> 00:05:22.730 who traveled the country following the work. 00:05:23.269 --> 00:05:25.050 So they're not avoiding work. They're chasing 00:05:25.050 --> 00:05:27.050 it. They're chasing it. They followed the harvest. 00:05:27.250 --> 00:05:29.430 They worked on construction. They laid railroad 00:05:29.430 --> 00:05:31.750 track. They often carried their own tools. They 00:05:31.750 --> 00:05:33.889 called themselves the Knights of the Road. Knights 00:05:33.889 --> 00:05:36.269 of the Road. I love that. So they had a kind 00:05:36.269 --> 00:05:39.470 of a professional pride. A huge amount of pride. 00:05:39.589 --> 00:05:41.610 They were a vital part of the industrial economy. 00:05:41.769 --> 00:05:44.509 They had a code of ethics. And they definitely 00:05:44.509 --> 00:05:47.050 looked down on the other groups. Okay, so that 00:05:47.050 --> 00:05:49.810 brings us to the tramp. The tramp travels, just 00:05:49.810 --> 00:05:53.129 like the hobo. But the tramp chooses not to work. 00:05:53.209 --> 00:05:57.029 He wanders. Ah, the classic, I dream of a life 00:05:57.029 --> 00:05:59.089 of travel and leisure, but I have zero dollars. 00:05:59.310 --> 00:06:02.350 Right. I wander, but I do not toil. And then 00:06:02.350 --> 00:06:04.310 at the very bottom of this social ladder, you 00:06:04.310 --> 00:06:07.850 had the vagrant or the bum. Okay. The bum neither 00:06:07.850 --> 00:06:10.170 travels nor works. They stay in one place and 00:06:10.170 --> 00:06:13.009 typically rely on begging or drinking. So if 00:06:13.009 --> 00:06:16.069 you called a hardworking hobo a bum, you were 00:06:16.069 --> 00:06:18.889 insulting his entire work ethic, his whole identity. 00:06:19.399 --> 00:06:21.720 You were saying he'd given up. And historically, 00:06:21.759 --> 00:06:24.339 this matters because the public perception shifts 00:06:24.339 --> 00:06:27.300 between these archetypes. In good economic times, 00:06:27.480 --> 00:06:31.300 we tend to see unhoused people as tramps or bums, 00:06:31.420 --> 00:06:34.939 lazy people refusing to work. Individual moral 00:06:34.939 --> 00:06:38.399 failing. Right. But in bad economic times like 00:06:38.399 --> 00:06:40.439 the Great Depression, we start to see them as 00:06:40.439 --> 00:06:43.740 hobos, as victims of the economy just looking 00:06:43.740 --> 00:06:46.019 for a chance. That brings us right back to the 00:06:46.019 --> 00:06:49.069 present day. We aren't dealing with people hopping 00:06:49.069 --> 00:06:51.230 steam trains anymore for the most part. We're 00:06:51.230 --> 00:06:53.430 dealing with a modern crisis. And going back 00:06:53.430 --> 00:06:55.709 to that iceberg analogy, the research divides 00:06:55.709 --> 00:06:59.209 this into primary and secondary homelessness. 00:06:59.610 --> 00:07:01.589 This is the data distinction that explains why 00:07:01.589 --> 00:07:03.870 the counts are always, always wrong. Primary 00:07:03.870 --> 00:07:05.829 homelessness is what you saw in the park this 00:07:05.829 --> 00:07:08.629 morning. Rough sleeping, no shelter, the visible 00:07:08.629 --> 00:07:11.310 tip. Right. Secondary homelessness is the hidden 00:07:11.310 --> 00:07:13.490 mass beneath the water. This is couch surfing. 00:07:13.649 --> 00:07:15.730 This is staying in emergency accommodation. This 00:07:15.730 --> 00:07:17.769 is living in your car. And then there's the hidden 00:07:17.769 --> 00:07:20.050 homeless, the people who never even show up in 00:07:20.050 --> 00:07:22.360 the stats. These are the people who are terrified 00:07:22.360 --> 00:07:24.879 of the system, often for very good reasons. They 00:07:24.879 --> 00:07:27.300 might be squatting in an abandoned building or 00:07:27.300 --> 00:07:28.980 staying on private property where no one can 00:07:28.980 --> 00:07:31.379 see them. Because they aren't on a street corner, 00:07:31.579 --> 00:07:34.000 they aren't counted in the census or the point 00:07:34.000 --> 00:07:36.519 in time counts that cities conduct. The point 00:07:36.519 --> 00:07:38.600 in time count. That's where volunteers go out 00:07:38.600 --> 00:07:40.439 for one night a year and literally try to count 00:07:40.439 --> 00:07:44.360 heads, right? Yes. And just think about how flawed 00:07:44.360 --> 00:07:47.980 that methodology is. If you are a woman fleeing 00:07:47.980 --> 00:07:50.430 domestic violence, are you going to be? sleeping 00:07:50.430 --> 00:07:52.790 on a park bench where you can be easily seen 00:07:52.790 --> 00:07:55.350 and counted. Absolutely not. You are going to 00:07:55.350 --> 00:07:57.870 make yourself as invisible as humanly possible. 00:07:57.930 --> 00:08:00.250 Exactly. You are going to hide. Which brings 00:08:00.250 --> 00:08:02.529 up a huge demographic surprise for me in the 00:08:02.529 --> 00:08:05.509 research. The stats say homelessness is overwhelmingly 00:08:05.509 --> 00:08:08.410 male, something like 70 percent in the U .S. 00:08:08.410 --> 00:08:10.810 I saw one stat for Dublin that was 85 percent 00:08:10.810 --> 00:08:13.529 male. Yeah. But looking at this hidden definition, 00:08:13.790 --> 00:08:17.079 are we just. Are we just missing the women? We 00:08:17.079 --> 00:08:18.660 are absolutely missing the women. It's not even 00:08:18.660 --> 00:08:21.319 a question. Women's homelessness is often invisible 00:08:21.319 --> 00:08:24.240 because it relies on what researchers call transactional 00:08:24.240 --> 00:08:28.220 relationships. That sounds ominous. It is survival. 00:08:28.439 --> 00:08:30.680 Yeah. It's a woman staying with a man she doesn't 00:08:30.680 --> 00:08:32.480 want to be with or even a man who is abusive 00:08:32.480 --> 00:08:35.460 because it provides a roof. She is trading her 00:08:35.460 --> 00:08:38.590 safety, her bodily autonomy. For shelter. Because 00:08:38.590 --> 00:08:41.049 the alternative is so much more dangerous. The 00:08:41.049 --> 00:08:43.389 alternative sleeping on the street opens her 00:08:43.389 --> 00:08:45.750 up to an almost certain risk of extreme sexual 00:08:45.750 --> 00:08:48.549 violence. So she doesn't look homeless on paper. 00:08:48.610 --> 00:08:51.889 She has an address. But she is absolutely unhoused 00:08:51.889 --> 00:08:55.230 in terms of safety and freedom. That's a sobering 00:08:55.230 --> 00:08:57.850 reality check. It makes the numbers we do have 00:08:57.850 --> 00:09:00.029 feel even heavier. Yeah. What are the global 00:09:00.029 --> 00:09:01.990 estimates we're looking at? It's staggering. 00:09:02.110 --> 00:09:04.529 And honestly, the numbers feel almost too big 00:09:04.529 --> 00:09:07.610 to comprehend. In 2005, the UN estimated about 00:09:07.610 --> 00:09:10.110 100 million homeless people worldwide. Which 00:09:10.110 --> 00:09:12.250 is already a huge number. A huge number. But 00:09:12.250 --> 00:09:14.850 looking at the trajectory of urbanization, displacement, 00:09:15.049 --> 00:09:17.470 and economic inequality, the estimate for 2025, 00:09:17.850 --> 00:09:20.409 that's next year, is around 330 million people 00:09:20.409 --> 00:09:23.549 experiencing absolute homelessness. 330 million. 00:09:23.669 --> 00:09:26.129 That's basically the entire population of the 00:09:26.129 --> 00:09:28.210 United States without a home. And that's just 00:09:28.210 --> 00:09:31.110 absolute homelessness. If you expand the definition 00:09:31.110 --> 00:09:34.250 to include insecure housing people living in 00:09:34.250 --> 00:09:37.889 slums or dangerous overcrowded conditions, the 00:09:37.889 --> 00:09:41.029 number balloons to 1 .6 billion. 1 .6 billion. 00:09:41.169 --> 00:09:43.690 A fifth of the planet. Yeah. This feels like 00:09:43.690 --> 00:09:46.169 a good moment to ask the big philosophical question 00:09:46.169 --> 00:09:48.730 that keeps coming up in all the texts. Is housing 00:09:48.730 --> 00:09:52.470 a human right? If you look at the founding documents 00:09:52.470 --> 00:09:55.490 of our modern world, the answer is an unequivocal 00:09:55.490 --> 00:09:58.080 yes. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 00:09:58.240 --> 00:10:01.500 Article 25, passed in 1948, explicitly lists 00:10:01.500 --> 00:10:03.720 housing as part of the right to an adequate standard 00:10:03.720 --> 00:10:05.720 of living. Right alongside food and clothing. 00:10:05.899 --> 00:10:08.539 Yes. It's considered a fundamental building block. 00:10:08.799 --> 00:10:11.000 But I feel like there is a big terms and conditions 00:10:11.000 --> 00:10:13.360 asterisk next to that, especially in the U .S. 00:10:13.419 --> 00:10:15.799 There is a massive cultural disconnect. Former 00:10:15.799 --> 00:10:17.620 President Jimmy Carter did an interview back 00:10:17.620 --> 00:10:20.240 in 2017 where he touched on this. He said, and 00:10:20.240 --> 00:10:22.700 I'm paraphrasing, a lot of people don't look 00:10:22.700 --> 00:10:25.509 at housing as a human right, but it is. In the 00:10:25.509 --> 00:10:27.870 US, we culturally view housing as a commodity. 00:10:28.149 --> 00:10:31.289 It's an asset, an investment. It's a reward for 00:10:31.289 --> 00:10:33.870 working hard. It's a marker of success. It's 00:10:33.870 --> 00:10:36.309 not viewed as a baseline requirement for being 00:10:36.309 --> 00:10:39.330 alive, like clean water. Which explains why our 00:10:39.330 --> 00:10:42.490 history of dealing with this is so, well, so 00:10:42.490 --> 00:10:45.129 punitive. I was reading about the UK history 00:10:45.129 --> 00:10:47.309 in the source notes, and it seems like for 600 00:10:47.309 --> 00:10:50.149 years, the basic strategy has been... Make it 00:10:50.149 --> 00:10:52.889 illegal and painful to be poor. It really has 00:10:52.889 --> 00:10:55.590 been. And go back to the English poor laws of 00:10:55.590 --> 00:10:59.769 1383. 1383. We are talking medieval times after 00:10:59.769 --> 00:11:02.070 the Black Death. Right. And the law basically 00:11:02.070 --> 00:11:04.389 said that if you were a vagabond, someone wandering 00:11:04.389 --> 00:11:06.210 without visible means of support, you were a 00:11:06.210 --> 00:11:09.750 criminal. The assumption was idleness. By 1547, 00:11:09.950 --> 00:11:12.690 the law was so harsh that vagrants could be branded 00:11:12.690 --> 00:11:15.409 with a V on their chest and sentenced to two 00:11:15.409 --> 00:11:18.490 years of servitude. Branded. Like cattle. for 00:11:18.490 --> 00:11:20.870 being poor it established a deep legal precedent 00:11:20.870 --> 00:11:23.629 homelessness is a moral failing it is a character 00:11:23.629 --> 00:11:25.809 defect that needs to be punished out of you and 00:11:25.809 --> 00:11:27.950 that led to the workhouses right yes the workhouses 00:11:27.950 --> 00:11:30.049 and bridewells these places gave you shelter 00:11:30.049 --> 00:11:32.129 but they were intentionally designed to be miserable 00:11:32.129 --> 00:11:35.360 the principle was called less eligibility The 00:11:35.360 --> 00:11:37.519 condition of the pauper must be less desirable 00:11:37.519 --> 00:11:39.679 than the condition of the lowest paid laborer. 00:11:39.700 --> 00:11:41.840 Exactly. They were terrified that if charity 00:11:41.840 --> 00:11:43.740 was too nice, people would just stop working. 00:11:43.860 --> 00:11:47.519 And that fear, that idea of moral hazard, still 00:11:47.519 --> 00:11:50.340 underpins a lot of policy debates today. But 00:11:50.340 --> 00:11:52.700 in the U .S., didn't the Great Depression change 00:11:52.700 --> 00:11:55.919 that? At least for a while. Briefly, it had to. 00:11:56.080 --> 00:11:59.080 When 25 % of the country is unemployed, you can't 00:11:59.080 --> 00:12:02.059 blame it all on individual laziness. The structural 00:12:02.059 --> 00:12:05.269 failure was just too obvious to ignore. That's 00:12:05.269 --> 00:12:07.690 when FDR and the New Deal brought in public housing 00:12:07.690 --> 00:12:10.350 on a large scale. It was a clear admission that 00:12:10.350 --> 00:12:13.730 the market had failed. But then, then we hit 00:12:13.730 --> 00:12:16.470 the 1980s. The 1980s were the pivot point. We 00:12:16.470 --> 00:12:19.009 saw massive cuts to federal affordable housing 00:12:19.009 --> 00:12:21.230 budgets. The federal government essentially stepped 00:12:21.230 --> 00:12:23.330 back and said, let the market handle it. And 00:12:23.330 --> 00:12:25.990 the market did what markets do. It maximized 00:12:25.990 --> 00:12:28.990 profit, not housing security. Exactly. And that's 00:12:28.990 --> 00:12:31.090 when the modern era of visible street homelessness, 00:12:31.429 --> 00:12:34.149 the crisis we see today. really began to spike. 00:12:34.309 --> 00:12:36.509 Which leads us directly to the structural causes. 00:12:36.669 --> 00:12:39.029 We can't talk about homelessness without talking 00:12:39.029 --> 00:12:41.470 about gentrification. It's the classic story 00:12:41.470 --> 00:12:44.190 we see in every major city. Wealthier people 00:12:44.190 --> 00:12:47.250 move into a low -income neighborhood. It's revitalized. 00:12:47.490 --> 00:12:50.970 Property values go up. New coffee shops and boutiques 00:12:50.970 --> 00:12:53.669 open. But the people who lived there for generations, 00:12:53.850 --> 00:12:55.629 the people who made the neighborhood distinct 00:12:55.629 --> 00:12:57.889 in the first place, see their rents double or 00:12:57.889 --> 00:12:59.889 triple, they get pushed out. And this brings 00:12:59.889 --> 00:13:02.669 us to that San Francisco study from 2019. I read 00:13:02.669 --> 00:13:04.990 this part three times because it felt like a 00:13:04.990 --> 00:13:07.269 complete logic puzzle. It's about rent control. 00:13:07.429 --> 00:13:10.450 This is where economics gets really, really counterintuitive. 00:13:10.710 --> 00:13:12.549 OK, so the premise of rent control is simple. 00:13:12.909 --> 00:13:15.590 Freeze the rent or limit increases so people 00:13:15.590 --> 00:13:19.200 don't get displaced. And the study said. It worked. 00:13:19.379 --> 00:13:22.259 In a very specific way, yes. It worked for the 00:13:22.259 --> 00:13:24.759 people inside the apartments. If you were a tenant 00:13:24.759 --> 00:13:26.940 in a rent -controlled unit in San Francisco in 00:13:26.940 --> 00:13:30.500 1994, you were roughly 20 % less likely to be 00:13:30.500 --> 00:13:33.360 displaced over the next few years. For you, individually, 00:13:33.620 --> 00:13:36.360 you were safe. Great. Mission accomplished. Problem 00:13:36.360 --> 00:13:40.100 solved. Not quite. Enter what economists call 00:13:40.100 --> 00:13:42.940 the Cobra Effect, the unintended consequence 00:13:42.940 --> 00:13:46.200 that makes the problem worse. While the tenants 00:13:46.200 --> 00:13:49.480 stayed put, The landlords reacted. They aren't 00:13:49.480 --> 00:13:52.179 charities. They are running a business. They 00:13:52.179 --> 00:13:54.639 looked at their buildings and said, I can't raise 00:13:54.639 --> 00:13:56.940 the rent to market rates, so this is now a bad 00:13:56.940 --> 00:13:58.759 investment. So what did they do with their bad 00:13:58.759 --> 00:14:01.879 investment? They utilized a loophole in the law. 00:14:02.240 --> 00:14:05.659 They converted their rental units into condos 00:14:05.659 --> 00:14:08.399 or tix tenancy in common. I see those tick signs 00:14:08.399 --> 00:14:10.679 everywhere in cities. What does that actually 00:14:10.679 --> 00:14:13.279 mean? It's a way of selling a building to a group 00:14:13.279 --> 00:14:15.460 of people who own it together, rather than one 00:14:15.460 --> 00:14:18.379 person renting it out to many people. Essentially, 00:14:18.539 --> 00:14:20.779 the landlord takes the unit off the rental market 00:14:20.779 --> 00:14:23.200 and puts it onto the sales market. They cash 00:14:23.200 --> 00:14:26.019 out. So the apartment still exists, but it's 00:14:26.019 --> 00:14:29.179 no longer available for rent. It's for sale to 00:14:29.179 --> 00:14:31.320 someone wealthy enough to buy it. Precisely. 00:14:31.320 --> 00:14:33.320 And the study found that because of this loophole, 00:14:33.399 --> 00:14:35.779 the overall supply of rental housing in San Francisco 00:14:35.779 --> 00:14:38.799 dropped by 15 percent. 15 percent. That is a 00:14:38.799 --> 00:14:41.320 massive chunk of inventory to just vanish from 00:14:41.320 --> 00:14:44.139 the rental market. It's huge. And when supply 00:14:44.139 --> 00:14:46.940 drops that hard and demand stays high or even 00:14:46.940 --> 00:14:49.539 increases. Prices explode for everyone else, 00:14:49.600 --> 00:14:52.320 for every apartment that's left. Right. So while 00:14:52.320 --> 00:14:55.200 rent control protected the incumbents. the people 00:14:55.200 --> 00:14:57.820 lucky enough to already be inside, it pulled 00:14:57.820 --> 00:15:00.860 up the drawbridge for everyone else. It fueled 00:15:00.860 --> 00:15:04.120 the citywide rent increase. It actually accelerated 00:15:04.120 --> 00:15:06.700 the gentrification it was trying to fight by 00:15:06.700 --> 00:15:09.320 making the remaining market rate apartments incredibly 00:15:09.320 --> 00:15:12.059 expensive. That is maddening. It's like squeezing 00:15:12.059 --> 00:15:14.620 a balloon. The problem just bulges out somewhere 00:15:14.620 --> 00:15:17.200 else even bigger. That's the structural side. 00:15:17.440 --> 00:15:19.759 But I want to zoom in on the individual level 00:15:19.759 --> 00:15:21.779 because there is a statistic in these sources 00:15:21.779 --> 00:15:23.820 that fundamentally changed how I view the person 00:15:23.820 --> 00:15:26.379 on the street. We need to talk about traumatic 00:15:26.379 --> 00:15:29.860 brain injury or TBI. This was the biggest aha 00:15:29.860 --> 00:15:33.159 moment for me in all the reading. We assume that 00:15:33.159 --> 00:15:34.620 if someone has a brain injury on the street, 00:15:34.700 --> 00:15:36.580 it's because they got beat up or fell down while 00:15:36.580 --> 00:15:38.259 they were homeless. It's a result of their situation. 00:15:38.759 --> 00:15:40.820 That's the common assumption. It's a consequence. 00:15:41.340 --> 00:15:44.360 But a major Canadian survey completely flipped 00:15:44.360 --> 00:15:47.179 the causality on its head. They found that TBI 00:15:47.179 --> 00:15:49.879 is incredibly widespread among homeless populations, 00:15:50.080 --> 00:15:53.620 far, far higher than in the general public. But 00:15:53.620 --> 00:15:56.399 the key finding was the timing. For around 70 00:15:56.399 --> 00:15:58.740 % of the respondents, the brain injury happened 00:15:58.740 --> 00:16:01.779 before the onset of homelessness. So the injury 00:16:01.779 --> 00:16:04.500 might be the cause, not the effect. It's a massive 00:16:04.500 --> 00:16:07.379 potential cause, a smoking gun. We need to walk 00:16:07.379 --> 00:16:09.940 through... what a TBI actually does to a person. 00:16:10.080 --> 00:16:12.679 It's not just headaches or memory loss. It strikes 00:16:12.679 --> 00:16:15.360 at the very core of what we call executive function. 00:16:15.559 --> 00:16:18.019 Executive function. That's like the brain's CEO. 00:16:18.820 --> 00:16:23.299 It's the ability to plan, to organize, to regulate 00:16:23.299 --> 00:16:26.299 your emotions, to foresee consequences, to manage 00:16:26.299 --> 00:16:29.000 time. Think about the administrative burden of 00:16:29.000 --> 00:16:31.480 modern life. Oh, it's huge. Paying bills on time, 00:16:31.620 --> 00:16:34.399 showing up to work every day, navigating a dispute 00:16:34.399 --> 00:16:37.100 with a landlord without screaming at them, filling 00:16:37.100 --> 00:16:40.250 a... complex forms all the invisible tasks of 00:16:40.250 --> 00:16:42.490 just being a functional adult right if you have 00:16:42.490 --> 00:16:45.509 a severe tbi that part of your brain is compromised 00:16:45.509 --> 00:16:47.809 it's damaged you might have the money for rent 00:16:47.809 --> 00:16:50.590 but you simply cannot organize the multi -step 00:16:50.590 --> 00:16:53.169 task of getting the check and mailing it on time 00:16:53.169 --> 00:16:55.570 you might lose your job because you have poor 00:16:55.570 --> 00:16:58.549 impulse control and lashed out at a manager and 00:16:58.549 --> 00:17:01.210 if you don't have a strong safety net a family 00:17:01.210 --> 00:17:03.710 that understands what's happening you unravel 00:17:04.460 --> 00:17:06.759 Your support network burns out because you're 00:17:06.759 --> 00:17:09.740 suddenly difficult or unreliable. Eventually, 00:17:09.779 --> 00:17:12.579 you end up on the street. It reframes homelessness 00:17:12.579 --> 00:17:15.519 not as a moral failing or a lifestyle choice, 00:17:15.640 --> 00:17:19.279 but as a potential medical outcome. If a person 00:17:19.279 --> 00:17:21.579 had a broken leg, we'd offer a crutch. If they 00:17:21.579 --> 00:17:23.940 have a broken executive function, we evict them. 00:17:24.119 --> 00:17:26.440 And that ties into the childhood predictors too. 00:17:26.619 --> 00:17:29.460 The data on foster care is just heartbreaking. 00:17:29.759 --> 00:17:32.220 It is a pipeline. A history of being in foster 00:17:32.220 --> 00:17:34.700 care and frequent moving during childhood are 00:17:34.700 --> 00:17:37.839 massive predictors of adult homelessness. If 00:17:37.839 --> 00:17:40.460 you age out of the foster care system at 18 with 00:17:40.460 --> 00:17:43.380 no family support, no accumulated wealth and 00:17:43.380 --> 00:17:46.160 no safety net. You're on your own at 18. You 00:17:46.160 --> 00:17:48.660 are statistically incredibly vulnerable to falling 00:17:48.660 --> 00:17:51.420 through the cracks. So we have these huge structural 00:17:51.420 --> 00:17:53.700 forces like the housing market and we have these 00:17:53.700 --> 00:17:57.099 deeply personal triggers like TBI and childhood 00:17:57.099 --> 00:18:00.339 trauma. But I feel like we have to address this. 00:18:00.359 --> 00:18:03.240 choice argument because you hear it all the time. 00:18:03.279 --> 00:18:04.839 Oh, some of them just want to live like that. 00:18:04.880 --> 00:18:06.920 They don't want rules. They prefer being free. 00:18:07.019 --> 00:18:10.160 Look, does that person exist? Sure. There is 00:18:10.160 --> 00:18:12.579 an exceedingly small sliver of the population 00:18:12.579 --> 00:18:16.240 that consciously rejects societal norms and chooses 00:18:16.240 --> 00:18:19.660 a nomadic lifestyle. But the research is overwhelming 00:18:19.660 --> 00:18:23.140 on this point. For the vast, vast majority, homelessness 00:18:23.140 --> 00:18:25.599 is what's called involuntary displacement. It's 00:18:25.599 --> 00:18:27.579 not a choice. It's a lack of choices, a lack 00:18:27.579 --> 00:18:29.819 of options. Exactly. It is a game of musical 00:18:29.819 --> 00:18:31.839 chairs where the music stopped and there wasn't 00:18:31.839 --> 00:18:33.900 a chair left for them. It's not a preference 00:18:33.900 --> 00:18:36.180 for sleeping in the rain. So let's talk about 00:18:36.180 --> 00:18:38.160 that experience, sleeping in the rain. We have 00:18:38.160 --> 00:18:40.390 a segment here we're calling... the daily battle. 00:18:40.549 --> 00:18:43.329 And honestly, it sounds like a war zone. It's 00:18:43.329 --> 00:18:45.690 not just the elements. It's the city itself that's 00:18:45.690 --> 00:18:48.410 actively fighting you. We call this hostile architecture. 00:18:48.809 --> 00:18:51.809 It is urban design that is specifically engineered 00:18:51.809 --> 00:18:55.390 to exclude certain human bodies and certain human 00:18:55.390 --> 00:18:58.069 behaviors. I've seen this. And once you see it, 00:18:58.150 --> 00:19:01.369 you can't unsee it. Benches that are slanted 00:19:01.369 --> 00:19:03.990 so you slide off if you try to lie down. Or benches 00:19:03.990 --> 00:19:06.430 with that third armrest bolted right into the 00:19:06.430 --> 00:19:08.839 middle. It looks like a convenience, but its 00:19:08.839 --> 00:19:10.960 only purpose is to prevent someone from lying 00:19:10.960 --> 00:19:15.079 down. And the spikes, the metal studs in doorways. 00:19:15.259 --> 00:19:18.519 The London spikes in 2014 were a real turning 00:19:18.519 --> 00:19:20.960 point in public awareness. A luxury apartment 00:19:20.960 --> 00:19:23.299 building installed these metal studs in the ground 00:19:23.299 --> 00:19:25.480 level alcoves to stop people from sleeping there. 00:19:25.579 --> 00:19:27.940 And it caused an uproar because it was just so 00:19:27.940 --> 00:19:30.519 visually aggressive. Just so blatant. It was 00:19:30.519 --> 00:19:33.039 the city saying you are vermin. We will make 00:19:33.039 --> 00:19:35.400 this space physically painful for you to occupy. 00:19:35.640 --> 00:19:38.220 But this goes back further than 2014. The notes 00:19:38.220 --> 00:19:41.779 mention Robert Moses, the legendary and controversial 00:19:41.779 --> 00:19:45.039 New York urban planner. Moses was a master of 00:19:45.039 --> 00:19:47.099 exclusion through infrastructure. He designed 00:19:47.099 --> 00:19:49.160 the parkways leading out to Jones Beach on Long 00:19:49.160 --> 00:19:51.980 Island with intentionally low overpasses. Too 00:19:51.980 --> 00:19:54.859 low for. Too low for public buses. He wanted 00:19:54.859 --> 00:19:57.079 the beach to be for people who owned cars, the 00:19:57.079 --> 00:19:59.640 white middle and upper classes. He physically 00:19:59.640 --> 00:20:02.299 engineered the poor who relied on public transit 00:20:02.299 --> 00:20:05.680 out of the space. Hostile architecture today 00:20:05.680 --> 00:20:08.640 is just the modern. smaller scale evolution of 00:20:08.640 --> 00:20:11.759 that same idea. And if the architecture doesn't 00:20:11.759 --> 00:20:14.960 get you, the bureaucracy will. The ID catch 22. 00:20:15.460 --> 00:20:17.440 This sounds like a nightmare loop from a Kafka 00:20:17.440 --> 00:20:20.259 novel. It's a perfect trap. To get a home, you 00:20:20.259 --> 00:20:23.200 need a job. Okay. To get a job, you need a government 00:20:23.200 --> 00:20:26.099 issued ID. Makes sense. To get an ID, you need 00:20:26.099 --> 00:20:28.599 a permanent address to have it mailed to. And 00:20:28.599 --> 00:20:31.039 often you need other documents like a birth certificate. 00:20:31.279 --> 00:20:32.880 But you don't have an address. That's the whole 00:20:32.880 --> 00:20:34.839 problem. So you're stuck. And here's the kicker. 00:20:35.400 --> 00:20:38.759 When cities conduct sweeps, when they raid homeless 00:20:38.759 --> 00:20:42.319 camps to clear them out, what happens to people's 00:20:42.319 --> 00:20:44.299 possessions? It all gets thrown in a dumpster. 00:20:44.900 --> 00:20:47.779 Tents, sleeping bags, everything. Including their 00:20:47.779 --> 00:20:50.480 backpacks, which often contain their documents, 00:20:50.759 --> 00:20:52.420 their birth certificates, their Social Security 00:20:52.420 --> 00:20:55.039 cards, their old IDs. When you lose those, you 00:20:55.039 --> 00:20:57.799 effectively cease to exist in the system. You 00:20:57.799 --> 00:21:00.960 lose your citizenship in a practical sense. You're 00:21:00.960 --> 00:21:03.950 erased. And physically. I need to ask you about 00:21:03.950 --> 00:21:06.170 street feet. I had never heard this term before, 00:21:06.269 --> 00:21:09.170 and the description was just horrific. It's a 00:21:09.170 --> 00:21:11.890 condition that soldiers in World War I knew as 00:21:11.890 --> 00:21:14.869 trench foot, and it is a medical crisis caused 00:21:14.869 --> 00:21:18.049 by a simple solvable problem, a lack of dry socks. 00:21:18.329 --> 00:21:20.569 Just wet socks. That's the cause. That's it. 00:21:20.710 --> 00:21:23.009 If you are walking all day in a city and your 00:21:23.009 --> 00:21:25.309 feet get wet from rain or sweat, and you cannot 00:21:25.309 --> 00:21:27.650 take your shoes off for days or weeks at a time 00:21:27.650 --> 00:21:28.970 because you're afraid they'll be stolen while 00:21:28.970 --> 00:21:31.970 you sleep, the tissue begins to macerate. It 00:21:31.970 --> 00:21:35.150 breaks down. It leads to fungal infections, open 00:21:35.150 --> 00:21:38.769 ulcers, nerve damage, and eventually gangrene 00:21:38.769 --> 00:21:41.309 and amputation. All because of a lack of laundry 00:21:41.309 --> 00:21:43.710 and a safe place to sleep. It's a completely 00:21:43.710 --> 00:21:46.009 preventable problem that leads to permanent disability. 00:21:46.670 --> 00:21:49.809 And the victimization stats also blew my mind. 00:21:50.220 --> 00:21:53.259 We are taught to be afraid of the dangerous hobo 00:21:53.259 --> 00:21:56.039 from the time we're kids. The data flips that 00:21:56.039 --> 00:21:58.519 narrative entirely. People experiencing homelessness 00:21:58.519 --> 00:22:02.180 are far far more likely to be victims of violent 00:22:02.180 --> 00:22:04.859 crime than perpetrators. They are incredibly 00:22:04.859 --> 00:22:07.660 vulnerable. There's a concept in psychology called 00:22:07.660 --> 00:22:10.500 desanitizing. Desanitizing? What's that? It's 00:22:10.500 --> 00:22:12.680 when we stop viewing another human being as a 00:22:12.680 --> 00:22:14.940 person and instead see them as a pathogen, a 00:22:14.940 --> 00:22:18.500 dirty thing, a threat to hygiene and order. When 00:22:18.500 --> 00:22:20.559 you view someone as a germ, you don't feel empathy 00:22:20.559 --> 00:22:23.220 for them. You feel disgust. And that disgust 00:22:23.220 --> 00:22:25.970 can license violence. It's why hate crimes against 00:22:25.970 --> 00:22:28.049 the homeless are often so brutal and random. 00:22:28.170 --> 00:22:30.549 This is a heavy picture. But I think it's important 00:22:30.549 --> 00:22:32.769 to realize this isn't just a US problem or a 00:22:32.769 --> 00:22:35.990 UK problem. I want to take this global tour we've 00:22:35.990 --> 00:22:37.930 mapped out because the way different cultures 00:22:37.930 --> 00:22:40.609 handle this or hide this is fascinating. Let's 00:22:40.609 --> 00:22:44.009 start in Asia, Japan. Japan is unique. After 00:22:44.009 --> 00:22:46.750 their economic bubble burst in the 90s, homelessness 00:22:46.750 --> 00:22:48.829 became more visible in the traditional sense. 00:22:49.269 --> 00:22:51.769 But more recently, we've seen the rise of these 00:22:51.769 --> 00:22:54.690 net cafe refugees. I've read about this. These 00:22:54.690 --> 00:22:56.670 are people with jobs, right? They're not unemployed. 00:22:57.029 --> 00:22:59.630 Often, yes. They are the working poor. They can't 00:22:59.630 --> 00:23:02.029 afford the massive upfront costs of a Japanese 00:23:02.029 --> 00:23:05.130 apartment. the key money, the security deposit, 00:23:05.289 --> 00:23:08.390 the guarantor fees. So they live in 24 -hour 00:23:08.390 --> 00:23:11.170 internet cafes. What does that actually look 00:23:11.170 --> 00:23:13.670 like on a day -to -day basis? Imagine a small 00:23:13.670 --> 00:23:16.369 cubicle, maybe six feet by four feet, with a 00:23:16.369 --> 00:23:18.289 reclining chair, a computer, and a door that 00:23:18.289 --> 00:23:20.890 locks. It's quiet. It's relatively safe. You 00:23:20.890 --> 00:23:22.690 can buy instant noodles from a vending machine. 00:23:22.930 --> 00:23:25.029 You can pay a few extra dollars for a shower. 00:23:25.170 --> 00:23:28.069 It costs maybe $15 or $20 a night. But it's not 00:23:28.069 --> 00:23:30.269 a home. It's not a home. You have no privacy, 00:23:30.450 --> 00:23:32.880 no space for possessions beyond a small... bag. 00:23:33.160 --> 00:23:35.680 It's a form of invisible homelessness. If you 00:23:35.680 --> 00:23:37.400 saw them on the subway in their work suit, you 00:23:37.400 --> 00:23:39.180 would never, ever know. And then there are the 00:23:39.180 --> 00:23:41.500 McRefugees. Right. People who spend their nights 00:23:41.500 --> 00:23:44.180 in 24 -hour McDonald's restaurants, nursing a 00:23:44.180 --> 00:23:46.640 single coffee just to have a warm, well -lit 00:23:46.640 --> 00:23:49.240 place to sit until morning. Moving to China, 00:23:49.339 --> 00:23:53.299 the system there seems to enforce a kind of a 00:23:53.299 --> 00:23:55.839 caste system based on where you were born. The 00:23:55.839 --> 00:23:58.680 Huku system. It's a household registration system. 00:23:58.900 --> 00:24:00.900 If you are born in a rural village, you have 00:24:00.900 --> 00:24:04.240 a rural Huku. If you move to Beijing or Shanghai 00:24:04.240 --> 00:24:07.140 for a construction job, you are physically in 00:24:07.140 --> 00:24:09.619 the city, but legally you are still a villager. 00:24:09.720 --> 00:24:11.779 So you don't get the city perks. You're an outsider. 00:24:11.940 --> 00:24:14.539 You don't get access to subsidized housing, to... 00:24:15.150 --> 00:24:17.809 urban health care or to public schools for your 00:24:17.809 --> 00:24:20.150 children. You are a migrant in your own country. 00:24:20.349 --> 00:24:23.410 It creates this massive floating population of 00:24:23.410 --> 00:24:26.009 hundreds of millions people that live in precarious 00:24:26.009 --> 00:24:28.789 substandard housing on the literal and figurative 00:24:28.789 --> 00:24:31.049 edges of the city. Then you go to India and the 00:24:31.049 --> 00:24:34.150 sheer scale of it all just explodes. India challenges 00:24:34.150 --> 00:24:36.529 our Western definitions because the numbers are 00:24:36.529 --> 00:24:39.210 so vast. We are talking about pavement dwellers, 00:24:39.230 --> 00:24:42.430 entire families who live, cook, sleep and raise 00:24:42.430 --> 00:24:44.349 children entirely on the sidewalk. It's their 00:24:44.460 --> 00:24:48.259 And there's this bizarre phenomenon of slum tourism. 00:24:48.599 --> 00:24:51.819 The slumdog millionaire effect. Tourists paying 00:24:51.819 --> 00:24:54.779 money to take walking tours of the Dharavi slum 00:24:54.779 --> 00:24:58.099 in Mumbai. That feels, I don't know, gross. Like 00:24:58.099 --> 00:25:01.470 a human zoo. It's ethically very complex. Supporters 00:25:01.470 --> 00:25:03.769 say it brings money and awareness to the area 00:25:03.769 --> 00:25:06.150 that wouldn't get there otherwise. Critics say 00:25:06.150 --> 00:25:08.609 it fetishizes poverty and turns human suffering 00:25:08.609 --> 00:25:11.789 into an attraction. But it highlights how visible 00:25:11.789 --> 00:25:14.690 and integrated poverty is there compared to how 00:25:14.690 --> 00:25:16.869 we try to hide it and push it to the margins 00:25:16.869 --> 00:25:19.809 in the West. What about Russia? The Soviet history 00:25:19.809 --> 00:25:21.690 is really interesting here. Well, the Soviet 00:25:21.690 --> 00:25:23.710 Union claimed to have abolished homelessness. 00:25:24.619 --> 00:25:26.599 How do you just abolish homelessness? Did they 00:25:26.599 --> 00:25:29.099 build enough houses for everyone? No, they made 00:25:29.099 --> 00:25:31.779 it a crime to be homeless. Everyone had to have 00:25:31.779 --> 00:25:34.259 a propiska, which was a residency permit stamped 00:25:34.259 --> 00:25:37.160 in their internal passport. If you were stopped 00:25:37.160 --> 00:25:39.119 by the police and didn't have one, you could 00:25:39.119 --> 00:25:41.799 be prosecuted for social parasitism. So if you're 00:25:41.799 --> 00:25:44.680 homeless, you go to jail. Problem solved. Essentially. 00:25:45.099 --> 00:25:47.539 It hid the problem by criminalizing the victim. 00:25:48.380 --> 00:25:51.119 When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the 00:25:51.119 --> 00:25:53.460 whole system fell apart. The Propiska system 00:25:53.460 --> 00:25:56.140 was gone. State housing guarantees vanished. 00:25:56.359 --> 00:25:58.460 And there was a massive explosion of homelessness. 00:25:58.720 --> 00:26:01.019 People were selling their apartments for vodka 00:26:01.019 --> 00:26:03.359 or getting scammed out of their deeds by organized 00:26:03.359 --> 00:26:05.960 crime. The mortality rate for homeless people 00:26:05.960 --> 00:26:09.380 in Russia in the 90s was just horrific. And finally, 00:26:09.400 --> 00:26:12.380 let's look at Europe. We see a really stark contrast 00:26:12.380 --> 00:26:14.990 between North and South. Scotland is often held 00:26:14.990 --> 00:26:17.329 up as the gold standard right now. They have 00:26:17.329 --> 00:26:20.089 a right to housing that is actually legally enforceable. 00:26:20.349 --> 00:26:22.750 If you are unintentionally homeless, the local 00:26:22.750 --> 00:26:24.829 government must find you a permanent home. It's 00:26:24.829 --> 00:26:26.730 right, not a charity. It's a legal entitlement. 00:26:26.890 --> 00:26:28.609 Yeah. And in Greece, they have a term I'd never 00:26:28.609 --> 00:26:32.359 heard. Seismopathous. Earthquake struck. It refers 00:26:32.359 --> 00:26:35.059 to people made homeless by natural disasters. 00:26:35.420 --> 00:26:38.619 In Greece, you have entire communities of formerly 00:26:38.619 --> 00:26:41.180 middle -class people living in these container 00:26:41.180 --> 00:26:44.259 cities for years, sometimes decades, after an 00:26:44.259 --> 00:26:46.859 earthquake. It's a powerful reminder that nature 00:26:46.859 --> 00:26:49.380 doesn't care about your bank account. You can 00:26:49.380 --> 00:26:51.380 do everything right in your life and still lose 00:26:51.380 --> 00:26:53.720 your home in 10 seconds. Okay, so we've defined 00:26:53.720 --> 00:26:55.859 the problem. We've toured the world. We've seen 00:26:55.859 --> 00:26:58.460 the history. Now we have to talk about solutions. 00:26:58.599 --> 00:27:00.990 Yeah. Because the most frustrating thing about 00:27:00.990 --> 00:27:04.029 reading these sources is the realization that 00:27:04.029 --> 00:27:06.450 we know what works. We just don't seem to want 00:27:06.450 --> 00:27:08.730 to do it. We have the cure. We just struggle 00:27:08.730 --> 00:27:10.670 with the political will to administer the prescription. 00:27:11.130 --> 00:27:13.329 Love walk about housing first. This seems to 00:27:13.329 --> 00:27:15.690 be the big revolutionary shift in thinking. For 00:27:15.690 --> 00:27:19.009 decades, the model was treatment first, or what's 00:27:19.009 --> 00:27:21.029 sometimes called the staircase model. Explain 00:27:21.029 --> 00:27:23.920 that. What's the staircase? The idea was you 00:27:23.920 --> 00:27:26.019 are homeless because you have problems, drug 00:27:26.019 --> 00:27:28.339 addiction, alcoholism, mental health issues. 00:27:28.859 --> 00:27:31.839 So before you deserve a house, you have to fix 00:27:31.839 --> 00:27:34.079 those problems. You have to get sober while living 00:27:34.079 --> 00:27:36.599 in a shelter. Then maybe you graduate to transitional 00:27:36.599 --> 00:27:39.180 housing. Then if you're good, if you follow all 00:27:39.180 --> 00:27:41.220 the rules, you finally get a key to your own 00:27:41.220 --> 00:27:45.079 apartment. Each step is a reward. It sounds logical 00:27:45.079 --> 00:27:47.519 to a certain Puritan part of the brain, you know, 00:27:47.519 --> 00:27:50.279 earn your keep. You have to prove you're ready. 00:27:50.619 --> 00:27:53.160 But practically, it fails constantly. Imagine 00:27:53.160 --> 00:27:55.839 trying to recover from a heroin addiction while 00:27:55.839 --> 00:27:58.480 sleeping in a crowded room with 50 other strangers, 00:27:58.720 --> 00:28:00.559 guarding your shoes so they don't get stolen, 00:28:00.680 --> 00:28:02.900 and getting kicked out onto the street at 7 a 00:28:02.900 --> 00:28:05.059 .m. every morning. It's impossible. You cannot 00:28:05.059 --> 00:28:07.880 build a life on quicksand. So Housing First just 00:28:07.880 --> 00:28:10.019 flips the entire script. Completely. It says, 00:28:10.059 --> 00:28:12.259 give them the apartment first, no conditions, 00:28:12.440 --> 00:28:16.069 no sobriety tests, just... Here is a safe, lockable 00:28:16.069 --> 00:28:18.630 door. Then once they are stable, once they are 00:28:18.630 --> 00:28:21.410 in survival mode 247, you bring in the social 00:28:21.410 --> 00:28:23.690 workers, the addiction counselors, the job training. 00:28:23.809 --> 00:28:26.410 You offer help, but you don't mandate it. And 00:28:26.410 --> 00:28:28.670 does it actually work? The retention rates are 00:28:28.670 --> 00:28:32.470 massive. In study after study, people stay housed 00:28:32.470 --> 00:28:36.390 at rates of 80 or 90 percent. It turns out it's 00:28:36.390 --> 00:28:38.769 a lot easier to stop drinking when you aren't 00:28:38.769 --> 00:28:41.890 freezing to death under a bridge. Stability is 00:28:41.890 --> 00:28:44.650 the foundation for recovery. Not the reward for 00:28:44.650 --> 00:28:46.750 it. OK, I'm going to play devil's advocate here. 00:28:46.970 --> 00:28:50.130 I'm the skeptical taxpayer. I work 40 hours a 00:28:50.130 --> 00:28:52.829 week to pay my mortgage. It's a struggle. And 00:28:52.829 --> 00:28:54.410 you're telling me the solution is to take my 00:28:54.410 --> 00:28:57.349 tax dollars and just give a free apartment to 00:28:57.349 --> 00:29:00.549 someone who is actively using drugs. How is that 00:29:00.549 --> 00:29:03.769 fair? It's a completely valid emotional reaction. 00:29:03.910 --> 00:29:06.549 It feels unfair. But if we can put our feelings 00:29:06.549 --> 00:29:08.329 aside for a moment and just look at the wallet 00:29:08.329 --> 00:29:11.289 test, the argument completely flips. OK. Show 00:29:11.289 --> 00:29:13.410 me the math. Let's look at that big Central Florida 00:29:13.410 --> 00:29:15.750 study. They tracked the actual costs. When a 00:29:15.750 --> 00:29:17.650 person is chronically homeless, they aren't free 00:29:17.650 --> 00:29:19.490 to the system. They're constantly interacting 00:29:19.490 --> 00:29:21.869 with the most expensive public services we have. 00:29:22.089 --> 00:29:25.049 Emergency rooms and police cars. Exactly. The 00:29:25.049 --> 00:29:27.150 most expensive ride in the city is an ambulance. 00:29:27.549 --> 00:29:30.190 The most expensive hotel room is a jail cell 00:29:30.190 --> 00:29:33.509 or an ER bed. The study found that maintaining 00:29:33.509 --> 00:29:36.509 one person on the street, the cycle of ER visits, 00:29:36.670 --> 00:29:39.930 police calls, jail stays, court costs, costs 00:29:39.930 --> 00:29:43.529 the public. Roughly $31 ,000 a year. The $31 00:29:43.529 --> 00:29:46.269 ,000 a year just to manage their misery and keep 00:29:46.269 --> 00:29:49.490 them moving. Yes. Now compare that to permanent 00:29:49.490 --> 00:29:52.109 supportive housing. You pay their rent. You pay 00:29:52.109 --> 00:29:54.210 a case manager to check on them and connect them 00:29:54.210 --> 00:29:57.809 to services. The total cost. $10 ,051 a year. 00:29:57.970 --> 00:30:00.190 So it is literally three times cheaper to just 00:30:00.190 --> 00:30:02.190 give them the house. It is fiscal conservatism 00:30:02.190 --> 00:30:04.950 disguised as social progress. You are saving 00:30:04.950 --> 00:30:08.250 the taxpayer $20 ,000 per person per year by 00:30:08.250 --> 00:30:11.170 ending their homelessness. But politically, it's 00:30:11.170 --> 00:30:13.150 poison to try and sell. Because it looks like 00:30:13.150 --> 00:30:15.690 a reward for bad behavior. We would rather pay 00:30:15.690 --> 00:30:19.250 $31 ,000 to punish someone than pay $10 ,000 00:30:19.250 --> 00:30:21.309 to help them and save ourselves money. That is 00:30:21.309 --> 00:30:23.230 the central paradox of American homelessness 00:30:23.230 --> 00:30:25.720 policy. And speaking of punishment. The legal 00:30:25.720 --> 00:30:27.900 landscape in the U .S. just shifted dramatically 00:30:27.900 --> 00:30:29.799 in the other direction, away from solutions. 00:30:30.140 --> 00:30:33.420 It did. In 2024, the Supreme Court ruled that 00:30:33.420 --> 00:30:36.339 cities can criminalize homeless camps even if 00:30:36.339 --> 00:30:38.380 there is no shelter space available for people 00:30:38.380 --> 00:30:41.119 to go to. Wait, explain that. even if there are 00:30:41.119 --> 00:30:44.339 literally no beds in the entire city. Yes. Previous 00:30:44.339 --> 00:30:46.299 lower court rulings had said you couldn't arrest 00:30:46.299 --> 00:30:48.400 someone for sleeping outside if they had nowhere 00:30:48.400 --> 00:30:51.220 else to go, that it amounted to cruel and unusual 00:30:51.220 --> 00:30:53.299 punishment for the status of being homeless. 00:30:53.539 --> 00:30:56.799 The Supreme Court overturned that. Now, cities 00:30:56.799 --> 00:30:59.059 have a green light to arrest and fine people 00:30:59.059 --> 00:31:01.500 for sleeping in public, regardless of shelter 00:31:01.500 --> 00:31:03.920 capacity. So we are criminalizing the act of 00:31:03.920 --> 00:31:06.500 existing in public. If you don't have a home 00:31:06.500 --> 00:31:09.440 and there's no shelter bed, your very existence 00:31:09.440 --> 00:31:12.200 is illegal. It returns us to a punitive approach, 00:31:12.420 --> 00:31:15.500 not unlike the vagrancy laws of the 1300s. It 00:31:15.500 --> 00:31:17.740 focuses on making the problem invisible by clearing 00:31:17.740 --> 00:31:20.359 the streets, not on actually solving the problem. 00:31:20.640 --> 00:31:23.140 But there is innovation happening, too, on the 00:31:23.140 --> 00:31:24.720 ground. I want to end on some of the smarter 00:31:24.720 --> 00:31:27.650 ideas that are bubbling up. Cargo texture. I 00:31:27.650 --> 00:31:30.289 love this. It's using shipping containers to 00:31:30.289 --> 00:31:32.849 build housing. They are modular, they're stackable 00:31:32.849 --> 00:31:35.970 and they're incredibly strong. The Hope on Alvarado 00:31:35.970 --> 00:31:38.450 project in L .A. is a great example. You can 00:31:38.450 --> 00:31:40.049 build apartment buildings out of them and it 00:31:40.049 --> 00:31:42.529 drastically cuts down construction time and cost. 00:31:42.809 --> 00:31:46.509 And there's also just acknowledging reality like 00:31:46.509 --> 00:31:49.720 the safe parking programs. This is such a pragmatic 00:31:49.720 --> 00:31:52.359 and humane solution. Santa Barbara has done this 00:31:52.359 --> 00:31:55.220 really well. They acknowledge that for many, 00:31:55.259 --> 00:31:58.420 many people, their car is their last asset. It 00:31:58.420 --> 00:32:00.640 is their home. And usually if you're found sleeping 00:32:00.640 --> 00:32:03.470 in your car, you get a ticket. Or you get towed 00:32:03.470 --> 00:32:05.990 and then you're really and truly screwed. Exactly. 00:32:06.049 --> 00:32:09.130 So Santa Barbara created legal designated lots. 00:32:09.269 --> 00:32:11.170 You can park there overnight. There is security. 00:32:11.369 --> 00:32:13.509 There are portable toilets and handwashing stations. 00:32:13.829 --> 00:32:16.210 You don't get harassed by the police. It stabilizes 00:32:16.210 --> 00:32:18.029 people enough so they can keep their jobs and 00:32:18.029 --> 00:32:20.250 try to get back into housing. It turns the car 00:32:20.250 --> 00:32:22.910 into a stepping stone, not a trap. And finally, 00:32:22.970 --> 00:32:26.009 empowerment. The idea of giving people a voice 00:32:26.009 --> 00:32:28.430 and a purpose. Things like street newspapers. 00:32:28.809 --> 00:32:30.490 You see these in many cities around the world. 00:32:30.809 --> 00:32:34.029 It's not begging. The person buys the papers 00:32:34.029 --> 00:32:37.049 for a small fee, say 25 cents, and sells them 00:32:37.049 --> 00:32:39.970 for a dollar or two. It's a job. It's a micro 00:32:39.970 --> 00:32:42.470 business. It requires salesmanship, money management. 00:32:42.529 --> 00:32:45.569 It builds dignity. And voting. This is huge. 00:32:46.009 --> 00:32:48.210 Ensuring people experiencing homelessness can 00:32:48.210 --> 00:32:50.849 vote gives them a voice in the very policies 00:32:50.849 --> 00:32:53.359 that affect their lives. When you have no address, 00:32:53.660 --> 00:32:56.220 registering to vote is a bureaucratic nightmare. 00:32:56.539 --> 00:32:59.299 But advocates are fighting to ensure that Park 00:32:59.299 --> 00:33:01.599 Bench, Corner of Main and First, or Salvation 00:33:01.599 --> 00:33:04.180 Army Shelter is a valid address for registration. 00:33:04.500 --> 00:33:06.319 We've covered a lot of ground today. We've gone 00:33:06.319 --> 00:33:08.839 from the hobo on the train tracks to the net 00:33:08.839 --> 00:33:12.279 cafe refugee in Tokyo to the working family living 00:33:12.279 --> 00:33:15.119 in a sedan in a church parking lot. It's a massive, 00:33:15.160 --> 00:33:17.460 complex spectrum. And the big takeaway for me 00:33:17.460 --> 00:33:19.619 at the end of the day is that homelessness isn't 00:33:19.619 --> 00:33:22.400 usually about a person failing. It's about systems 00:33:22.400 --> 00:33:24.579 failing. The housing market, the health care 00:33:24.579 --> 00:33:26.759 system, the foster care system. It is the cracks 00:33:26.759 --> 00:33:29.059 in society. And some people fall through those 00:33:29.059 --> 00:33:30.940 cracks. I want to leave our listeners with a 00:33:30.940 --> 00:33:32.539 thought from the source material that really 00:33:32.539 --> 00:33:36.119 stuck with me. It describes home not just as 00:33:36.119 --> 00:33:39.200 a shelter, but as an extension of self and identity. 00:33:39.920 --> 00:33:42.859 When we deny someone a home, we aren't just denying 00:33:42.859 --> 00:33:46.000 them a roof. We are denying them a place in the 00:33:46.000 --> 00:33:48.960 human story. It denies them the ability to be 00:33:48.960 --> 00:33:51.859 a citizen, to participate. So here's the question 00:33:51.859 --> 00:33:54.220 for you to think about. If you lost your address 00:33:54.220 --> 00:33:56.839 today, just that one line of text on your driver's 00:33:56.839 --> 00:33:59.500 license, how long would your identity survive? 00:34:00.160 --> 00:34:02.279 Without the documents, the bank accounts, the 00:34:02.279 --> 00:34:04.359 ability to receive mail, the social standing 00:34:04.359 --> 00:34:07.019 that rely on it, how long until you were erased? 00:34:07.420 --> 00:34:09.360 It's a terrifying thought. Something to think 00:34:09.360 --> 00:34:10.940 about the next time you walk past that bench. 00:34:11.599 --> 00:34:13.500 Thanks for diving deep with us today. Thanks.