Episode 148

full
Published on:

23rd Dec 2025

Why Fixing Homelessness is Bad Business (Full)

America dumps eighty billion dollars a year into "solving" homelessness, but the tents keep multiplying. Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley team up with entrepreneur David Jacob and nutrition whiz Leslie Bobb to expose the grift. Personal gut-punches from the streets, the mental health black hole, and why the system cashes checks on endless misery. It's not broken—it's rigged to stay that way. Buckle up for stories that stick and fixes that might actually work.

Timestamps:

  • (00:00) $80 Billion spent, zero progress – the stat that breaks brains
  • (03:19) Personal stories that hit harder than any headline
  • (08:31) Root causes nobody wants to say out loud
  • (14:20) Why every “solution” quietly protects the problem
  • (21:07) Community fixes that actually move the needle
  • (28:49) Nutrition and the gut-brain link nobody funds
  • (32:07) How sleep deprivation keeps people stuck
  • (46:28) The bureaucracy that eats your tax dollars
  • (01:05:09) What Singapore got right that America ignores
  • (01:09:01) Entrepreneurs turning real estate into exits
  • (01:14:33) Final gut-check and what you can do tomorrow

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Transcript
Alex:

Solving America’s Problems.

Alex:

Jerremy and Dave just laid out the truth everyone ignores.

Alex:

They’re with choice psychologist David Jacob and nutrition expert

Alex:

Leslie Bobb when the number hits: America spends EIGHTY BILLION

Alex:

dollars a year on homelessness — and the crisis keeps growing.

Alex:

Eighty.

Alex:

Billion.

Alex:

That’s more than $100,000 per homeless person — every year

Alex:

— funneled into a system with zero reason to ever solve the problem.

Alex:

Because fixing homelessness is terrible business.

Alex:

Shelters, nonprofits, grant machines — they all stay in business only if

Alex:

the tents stay on the sidewalk.

Alex:

Jerremy doesn’t blink: Finland ended it.

Alex:

Houston crushed it.

Alex:

We know exactly how — we just refuse to do it.

Alex:

And the gut-punch stat?

Alex:

... 771,000 Americans are homeless tonight… while the industry built to “help”

Alex:

them quietly cashes the checks…

Jerremy Newsome:

Dave, the requests keep flooding in from all over the

Jerremy Newsome:

world, but most specifically the US of A, and they need to know what we are

Jerremy Newsome:

solving and addressing in this episode.

Dave Conley:

In this week's episode of solving America's Problems,

Dave Conley:

we're tackling homelessness head on.

Dave Conley:

It's not just about housing, mental health or hard times, but what if it's fixable

Dave Conley:

and we're just missing the real issues.

Dave Conley:

Joining us today, David Jacob, a choice psychologist expert who's

Dave Conley:

transformed lives by rethinking decisions, sees homelessness as a

Dave Conley:

societal choice, not a personal choice, and we need to choose differently.

Dave Conley:

And Leslie Bob, an integrative nutrition expert who seen nutrition,

Dave Conley:

lift people up from despair to hope.

Dave Conley:

Together, they challenge how we see this crisis and how we can change lives.

Dave Conley:

And that's this week on Solving America's Problems from apathy to

Dave Conley:

Action with David, Jacob and Leslie Bob.

Jerremy Newsome:

We feel very few people are appropriately talking about this.

Jerremy Newsome:

We know how to end homelessness slash it by over 50%.

Jerremy Newsome:

Finland totally wiped it out, but here's the thing.

Jerremy Newsome:

Every solution starts with a choice America again, we're

Jerremy Newsome:

kind of choosing a failing path.

Jerremy Newsome:

I'm Jerremy Alexander Newsom alongside my co-host Dave Conley, and this

Jerremy Newsome:

is solving America's problems.

Jerremy Newsome:

Today we are sitting down with two incredible voices.

Jerremy Newsome:

David Jacob is a choice psychology expert who believes homelessness

Jerremy Newsome:

isn't just about housing, about the choices we make as a society.

Jerremy Newsome:

Baum is an extraordinary nutrition coach who's worked with people in transition.

Jerremy Newsome:

She knows that something as simple as proper nutrition.

Jerremy Newsome:

Can lift people up.

Jerremy Newsome:

Both David and Leslie have joined me at the abundance summit, at the aerial

Jerremy Newsome:

BVI, and they have worked consciously and continuously on just becoming the

Jerremy Newsome:

best versions of themselves as possible.

Jerremy Newsome:

And they truly do feel that they can work on creating a solution, even if

Jerremy Newsome:

it's just one, two, and homelessness.

Jerremy Newsome:

So David Leslie, welcome to the show.

Jerremy Newsome:

@DavidJacob_1: Thanks for having us.

Leslie Bobb:

Thanks Jerremy.

Jerremy Newsome:

Absolutely.

Jerremy Newsome:

Both David, myself, and our thousands of listeners would love to know.

Jerremy Newsome:

And David, I'll have you go.

Jerremy Newsome:

Nope.

Jerremy Newsome:

Leslie, I'll have you go first.

Jerremy Newsome:

Ladies first.

Jerremy Newsome:

was a moment in your life?

Jerremy Newsome:

Perhaps it was a personal encounter or a story that you heard that made

Jerremy Newsome:

homelessness feel real and human to you.

Leslie Bobb:

The more I think about that, the further back I go.

Leslie Bobb:

Uh, my, I think my mom's just always had a real open heart and open door.

Leslie Bobb:

Uh, as a teenager I was living in Los Angeles County and I was, uh, part

Leslie Bobb:

of the bad crowd, so can't see my air quotes there, but I had a lot of

Leslie Bobb:

friends that were crouch surfing or getting kicked out or running away, and

Leslie Bobb:

my mom just always welcomed them in.

Leslie Bobb:

And it was a really nice feeling to be able to provide some safety in a, in

Leslie Bobb:

the storm of adolescence for these kids.

Leslie Bobb:

And I remember traveling with my mom and stepdad one year for the

Leslie Bobb:

holidays, and we went to a Denny's or something on Thanksgiving.

Leslie Bobb:

There were a few homeless guys outside.

Leslie Bobb:

And my stepdad, instead of giving them a couple bucks, invited them in

Leslie Bobb:

to join us for our meal at the table.

Leslie Bobb:

So we sat there and, and talked with them and learned about their lives and

Leslie Bobb:

how normal they were and that they had may or may not have had family, some of

Leslie Bobb:

them had family they were estranged from.

Leslie Bobb:

And it was just a really pivotal moment for me to see someone bravely welcoming

Leslie Bobb:

in some people that are normally sort of avoided or, um, feared by society.

Jerremy Newsome:

Yep.

Leslie Bobb:

And, uh, it just really helped my heart expand, seeing my

Leslie Bobb:

parents have such big open hearts.

Leslie Bobb:

So I think that must have probably locked me in there.

Jerremy Newsome:

Yeah, I love that.

Jerremy Newsome:

I love that.

Jerremy Newsome:

And again, it kind of sounds like David will talk about in a second, most likely

Jerremy Newsome:

is your parents made a conscious choice.

Jerremy Newsome:

And I love how you said, as a society, almost as a collective

Jerremy Newsome:

choice, a lot of people just ah, they pretend homelessness isn't there.

Jerremy Newsome:

It's almost like this terrifying, scary group of people that has

Jerremy Newsome:

leprosy that no one wants to talk to or touch or interact with.

Jerremy Newsome:

parents, again, made that choice to kind of bring them in you the

Jerremy Newsome:

humanity, which I really admire that.

Jerremy Newsome:

And your parents, David, did you have a similar situation, or

Jerremy Newsome:

how did it become real to you?

Jerremy Newsome:

@DavidJacob_1: So when I was at college, I worked at a. Like a craft beer bar, uh,

Jerremy Newsome:

in the center of Manchester in the uk.

Jerremy Newsome:

there was a guy who used to sit just off to the right of

Jerremy Newsome:

where the bar front door was.

Jerremy Newsome:

and he was there like every time I used to finish, finish work.

Jerremy Newsome:

And eventually we as bartenders, we'd get tips pretty, pretty frequently, much less

Jerremy Newsome:

than in the us but we still got tips.

Jerremy Newsome:

And I was already getting paid a fairly reasonable hourly wage, so the tips were

Jerremy Newsome:

kind of neither here nor there for me.

Jerremy Newsome:

So I used to give him the tips.

Jerremy Newsome:

And after a few times I ended up, like, sat down with him and we were chatting

Jerremy Newsome:

and kind of, I got to know his story and I made a point of every time I went to

Jerremy Newsome:

work and every time I finished, I used to sit down and I, I'd give him my tips and

Jerremy Newsome:

we'd kind of talk about his life and how he ended up there and all the rest of it.

Jerremy Newsome:

And after probably it would've been end of the summer, so three or four months of me

Jerremy Newsome:

sat down with him one day he disappeared.

Jerremy Newsome:

I was like, oh, you know, maybe you know the situation got the better of him

Jerremy Newsome:

and that was the end of it or whatever.

Jerremy Newsome:

I see him probably a year later and he's completely different.

Jerremy Newsome:

He's dressed in kind of quote unquote regular people clothes.

Jerremy Newsome:

He's cleaned up.

Jerremy Newsome:

He's completely an otherwise normal looking human being.

Jerremy Newsome:

And this guy runs up to me while I'm walking down the street

Jerremy Newsome:

with a couple of my friends and he goes, David, David, David.

Jerremy Newsome:

And I was like, I didn't even recognize who he was.

Jerremy Newsome:

it was this same homeless guy that I used to sit down and talk to after work.

Jerremy Newsome:

And he said, honestly.

Jerremy Newsome:

The conversations that we had, and you just sitting down and talking

Jerremy Newsome:

to me for all of those times, even if it was for 10, 20 minutes, made

Jerremy Newsome:

me feel like I could actually go out and, you know, reclaim my life.

Jerremy Newsome:

and that was the first time that I kind of really saw homelessness for what it

Jerremy Newsome:

was, which is people just don't care.

Jerremy Newsome:

And as a result, it continues.

Jerremy Newsome:

And that's a hard thing to swallow because there are so

Jerremy Newsome:

many, organizations that do care.

Jerremy Newsome:

But the average person really struggles with that empathy idea.

Jerremy Newsome:

And then, you know, a bunch of other stories.

Jerremy Newsome:

When I was again at college, a friend of mine did an open mic night.

Jerremy Newsome:

There was a homeless guy who performed, he was probably, I don't know, 17, 16,

Jerremy Newsome:

17 at the and he said, you know, I'm raising money so I can sleep at a shelter.

Jerremy Newsome:

And without really thinking about what that meant, I was like, oh, it's fine.

Jerremy Newsome:

Like, we've got a couch, just come and sleep on our couch and.

Jerremy Newsome:

I wake up the next morning and my housemates are furious because all

Jerremy Newsome:

of like the, you know, you're a student, you've got laptops, you've

Jerremy Newsome:

got, PlayStations, TVs, whatever.

Jerremy Newsome:

It's all in the living room where this kid was sleeping.

Jerremy Newsome:

And I didn't consider that.

Jerremy Newsome:

I just was like, well, I mean, I'd much rather you on my couch than

Jerremy Newsome:

in like a homeless shelter with a bunch of much older dudes who

Jerremy Newsome:

probably have substance abuse issues, potentially mental health issues.

Jerremy Newsome:

And you are just a kid who doesn't have a house like sleep on my couch, dude.

Jerremy Newsome:

Like, it's okay.

Jerremy Newsome:

So I kind of saw it when I was at college and then even now homelessness I think is

Jerremy Newsome:

a blight on the modern society as a whole.

Dave Conley:

David, do you think that that's how most people see homelessness

Dave Conley:

through this, this lens of apathy?

Dave Conley:

@DavidJacob_1: I think apathy is a, is a tough word.

Dave Conley:

I think and this is, I guess how I've, I've learned to conceptualize it.

Dave Conley:

I. It's more as a result of the normalcy bias.

Dave Conley:

So the normalcy bias is the idea that if see something frequently

Dave Conley:

enough, and that is the basis point or the idea by which we understand

Dave Conley:

the world, it just becomes normal.

Dave Conley:

It is normal that, for example, you know when you turn the tap on in

Dave Conley:

your kitchen, right when you turn the faucet on, water comes out.

Dave Conley:

If one day water didn't come out, you wouldn't start to, you

Dave Conley:

know, think the world was ending.

Dave Conley:

You'd be like, oh, maybe there's a problem with my plumbing.

Dave Conley:

I. But the way that we view homelessness is that, you know, now,

Dave Conley:

I mean that just happens, right?

Dave Conley:

Some people get down on their luck, some people are behind on bills.

Dave Conley:

So it just, the way the world works and I think that the average person doesn't

Dave Conley:

really conceptualize it as a problem.

Dave Conley:

They just see it as normal.

Dave Conley:

It is just simply a thing that people end up sleeping in the streets or homeless

Dave Conley:

or whatever, and you know, that boils down to another cognitive faculty and the

Dave Conley:

whole thing just compound and compound.

Dave Conley:

So like the would, would you say that most people think

Dave Conley:

that way given like that person is successful and that's just how it is?

Dave Conley:

Like the converse.

Dave Conley:

@DavidJacob_1: Yeah, a hundred percent.

Dave Conley:

Right.

Dave Conley:

So that's the, the second cognitive bias is the idea of a just world, right?

Dave Conley:

We believe you look at every different culture across the planet and there's

Dave Conley:

this idea of like karmic balance, right?

Dave Conley:

Or something that is similar that we live in a just world where bad people,

Dave Conley:

you know, get their just desserts and good stuff happens to good people.

Dave Conley:

So when you take that as the basis, well, if someone is homeless, then they must

Dave Conley:

have deserved it in some way, right?

Dave Conley:

It is their own choices or their own faults, or the problems that

Dave Conley:

they have that led them there.

Dave Conley:

And the idea of a just world is a fallacy, right?

Dave Conley:

Like, as I'm sure you guys know, and as many of the listeners will know.

Dave Conley:

Bad stuff happens to good people, right?

Dave Conley:

There's kids that are born with cancer, like it's a, there is no justice in terms

Dave Conley:

of like dumb luck and randomness and chaos theory and all the rest of it, right?

Dave Conley:

Some people just have really tough stuff happen to 'em and if we work under

Dave Conley:

the idea that, there is a just world where, you know, whatever you've done

Dave Conley:

leads to some consequence, that means that if you are in insert situation

Dave Conley:

here, you deserve it by some mechanism, then yeah, it's really easy to look at

Dave Conley:

that as a system and go makes sense.

Dave Conley:

There has to be something they've done that has led them to this point.

Jerremy Newsome:

Yeah, but

Jerremy Newsome:

Point is there, there are.

Jerremy Newsome:

There is a lot though that do end up homeless

Jerremy Newsome:

I don't know the exact percentage, but our last episode we probably settled

Jerremy Newsome:

on somewhere around 70% of homelessness is due to addiction and mental health.

Jerremy Newsome:

I think Leslie kind of touched on that quickly.

Jerremy Newsome:

Yeah.

Jerremy Newsome:

Leslie, what's, what's your take on that percentage and just on a general

Jerremy Newsome:

basis, do you think most people also rationalize or view most homelessness

Jerremy Newsome:

is probably because of addiction of some kind, or is it laziness

Jerremy Newsome:

and I'm just getting it all wrong?

Leslie Bobb:

I, that was a couple of different questions there, but I

Leslie Bobb:

hesitate to speak to, too much about the logic fallacies because we have

Leslie Bobb:

a like real psychologist on the line.

Leslie Bobb:

So I don't, I don't want 'em to be like, well, actually you're wrong.

Leslie Bobb:

I, I think the, the just world fallacy, I wonder how much that still applies because

Leslie Bobb:

all I see is the like millionaire villain fallacy and that doesn't really apply

Leslie Bobb:

to good things happening to good people.

Leslie Bobb:

But I would say as far as your question Jerremy about the statistics of how

Leslie Bobb:

much is men, I don't know the statistics either, but I think there is definitely

Leslie Bobb:

a large portion of substance abuse issues and men untreated mental health

Leslie Bobb:

issues in the homeless population.

Leslie Bobb:

And I think that contributes to people's aversion to interact with

Leslie Bobb:

the homeless because there is a safety element and we are innately.

Leslie Bobb:

Averse to dangerous situations.

Leslie Bobb:

And when someone isn't behaving in what we would consider a normal way talking

Leslie Bobb:

to themselves or yelling at light poles or, you know, whatever the case may be,

Leslie Bobb:

our instinct is to protect ourselves or our children and stay away from them.

Leslie Bobb:

There's obviously something illogical or irrational about them,

Leslie Bobb:

and you can't expect normal agreed upon safe behavior from them.

Leslie Bobb:

And I, I think just trying to be a little bit more fair to society, um,

Leslie Bobb:

that's a pretty legitimate aversion to people experiencing homelessness,

Leslie Bobb:

even if it isn't necessarily.

Leslie Bobb:

I think that I have heard somewhere that most of them do have mental health

Leslie Bobb:

problems, but they are not dangerous.

Leslie Bobb:

But we don't know that.

Leslie Bobb:

And if there's one of them that is dangerous, that could cost us everything

Leslie Bobb:

dear to us and we can't really risk it.

Leslie Bobb:

So I think that also contributes to our tendency to wanna look away

Leslie Bobb:

and maybe there is a, a, a, an.

Leslie Bobb:

In kind of inner knowledge that it could happen to us.

Leslie Bobb:

And we don't wanna look at not, not many people wanna go look at cancer

Leslie Bobb:

patients in the hospital either because it could happen to us and we're afraid

Leslie Bobb:

of our vulnerabilities in that way.

Leslie Bobb:

So I think, uh, I think we're all in agreement on this, uh, this group, that

Leslie Bobb:

this is an issue that we are really, really poorly dealing with and, and it's

Leslie Bobb:

something that should be eradicated.

Leslie Bobb:

But I'm just trying to kind of balance a little bit.

Leslie Bobb:

I think some of our versions are just natural and fair.

Leslie Bobb:

I think I steered way away from your question though, so you

Leslie Bobb:

could redirect me if you want to.

Jerremy Newsome:

No, this, it is great.

Jerremy Newsome:

It's a great open conversation, but that's really the goal is

Jerremy Newsome:

just to have, know, a non-scripted dialogue about how do we solve this

Jerremy Newsome:

relatively egregious problem, right?

Jerremy Newsome:

In the United States of America, there's over 700,000 homeless, and we

Jerremy Newsome:

brought David in because one of his discussions about, Hey, if you have

Jerremy Newsome:

all the money in the world, what's the problem that you're gonna solve?

Jerremy Newsome:

Right?

Jerremy Newsome:

He stood in front of a bunch of entrepreneurs and said, I'd

Jerremy Newsome:

love to solve homelessness.

Jerremy Newsome:

again, the reason that I brought him on the show and this podcast, but ultimately,

Jerremy Newsome:

you guys can all tell from Zach that he lives in London, and guess what?

Jerremy Newsome:

England has homelessness too.

Jerremy Newsome:

And so you can you go country to country to country.

Jerremy Newsome:

Go, wait a minute, this is like very global.

Jerremy Newsome:

So it's not just us.

Jerremy Newsome:

Yeah.

Jerremy Newsome:

We get it wrong for sure.

Jerremy Newsome:

But any general idea, David, on how much your country spends on homelessness?

Jerremy Newsome:

And then Dave Conley is gonna throw a really surprising statistic,

Jerremy Newsome:

it's you on how much we poorly spend on our homeless problem.

Jerremy Newsome:

@DavidJacob_1: I wouldn't even be able to hazard a guess, but I

Jerremy Newsome:

would assume it would be billions.

Jerremy Newsome:

Yeah.

Jerremy Newsome:

Well, I mean, so the UK most likely, but in the United

Jerremy Newsome:

States it's 80 billion annually.

Jerremy Newsome:

Right down the

Jerremy Newsome:

@DavidJacob_1: Good.

Jerremy Newsome:

Right down the garbage disposal because

Jerremy Newsome:

they're doing something with it.

Jerremy Newsome:

And I just, I just don't know what like are they getting, a hundred

Jerremy Newsome:

thousand oranges and just throwing 'em at the homeless hoping they eat them?

Jerremy Newsome:

I'm not sure what they're doing with the money.

Jerremy Newsome:

I don't see I. How many cities have homeless shelters?

Jerremy Newsome:

Like the big ones, but very, very, they're not well marked.

Jerremy Newsome:

They don't have a lot of signs.

Jerremy Newsome:

They don't have like a lot of open invitation on, Hey,

Jerremy Newsome:

who would like to help us?

Jerremy Newsome:

Who would like to spend time?

Jerremy Newsome:

I just feel like it's a very underrated, underserved issue, especially with all

Jerremy Newsome:

of that money flooding to an annual.

Leslie Bobb:

So we actually have an advocate here in our city that works

Leslie Bobb:

with the homeless, and she's been battling our city council for years on

Leslie Bobb:

this, particularly during COVID when we as a city, were receiving millions

Leslie Bobb:

of dollars in grants for homeless.

Leslie Bobb:

And she couldn't find it anywhere.

Leslie Bobb:

The shelters are never open.

Leslie Bobb:

Uh, the, the call sent the call hotline numbers never answer.

Leslie Bobb:

There's an organization that's sponsored by the city that's supposed to tie all

Leslie Bobb:

the resources together and does annual homeless counts, and she can't ever get

Leslie Bobb:

them to account for the money because they say some of their funding is private.

Leslie Bobb:

So they don't have to have like, freedom of Information Act.

Leslie Bobb:

Rules applied to it so they don't have to tell her where the money goes.

Leslie Bobb:

So it, it really is a problem and we're just one, fairly small city.

Leslie Bobb:

So I imagine the bigger cities, it's just, it's just an open bucket.

Leslie Bobb:

There's just no one will be able to find that money.

Leslie Bobb:

@DavidJacob_1: But I think the really interesting part of that,

Leslie Bobb:

and I think this is where a lot of my frustration comes from, is that

Leslie Bobb:

solving homelessness is bad business.

Leslie Bobb:

There are entire industries built around treating homelessness.

Leslie Bobb:

The symptom not dealing with the cause of homelessness.

Leslie Bobb:

Right.

Leslie Bobb:

And even the ones that are trying to address the cause require the

Leslie Bobb:

problem itself to continue in order to then keep being funded.

Leslie Bobb:

Like it's the same reason when you hire a personal trainer, their goal is not

Leslie Bobb:

to get you fit in the shortest amount of time possible because then you're not a

Leslie Bobb:

client anymore when you've got, emergency shelters or I dunno, transitional housing

Leslie Bobb:

programs or drug rehab contracts, or, I dunno, even Leslie, to your point, like

Leslie Bobb:

grant writers and people that are in the process of being able to pull that

Leslie Bobb:

money from, you know, communal coffers.

Leslie Bobb:

all of those people have jobs.

Leslie Bobb:

of those people work for someone that has a business.

Leslie Bobb:

Those businesses.

Leslie Bobb:

If they solved the problem, now cease to exist, and now

Leslie Bobb:

all of that money goes away.

Leslie Bobb:

It's the whole idea of, I I, I'll relate it to something probably very, very, very

Leslie Bobb:

far away, but when I worked in consulting, we would have massive, billion dollar

Leslie Bobb:

corporations who would come to us in the final three weeks of a quarter saying,

Leslie Bobb:

Hey, we have budget that we need to spend, otherwise it goes away next, next quarter.

Leslie Bobb:

And we don't need to do this work right now.

Leslie Bobb:

But I know that if we don't spend this money, then we're not gonna

Leslie Bobb:

get it next quarter, and we might actually need it next quarter.

Leslie Bobb:

It's the same problem, right?

Leslie Bobb:

If you don't spend the money, the money goes away.

Leslie Bobb:

Well then it has to be spent with someone.

Leslie Bobb:

And those people don't want the problem to go away either.

Leslie Bobb:

'cause otherwise the money dries up.

Leslie Bobb:

Right.

Leslie Bobb:

So it's, it's you, this is the definition of an economy built

Leslie Bobb:

around a problem never being solved.

Leslie Bobb:

So why would you ever then solve it?

Leslie Bobb:

It's a fallacy because if you solved it, the money dries up.

Leslie Bobb:

If the money dries up, then those people don't have jobs.

Leslie Bobb:

And those businesses done.

Leslie Bobb:

Yeah.

Dave Conley:

That's the perverse incentive, right?

Dave Conley:

Like we, we've talked to somebody who had been homeless and, uh, Cara, Kara candid,

Dave Conley:

and with the amount of, we have more and more homeless people every single year.

Dave Conley:

You know, last year alone it was 771,000 people that were homeless.

Dave Conley:

We're spending 20 billion, that's $26,000 per person, it

Dave Conley:

keeps on getting worse, right?

Dave Conley:

So we already know that that money is not being spent to reduce homelessness.

Dave Conley:

There are some exceptions, right?

Dave Conley:

Like Houston and Finland, like we started this with, but in talking

Dave Conley:

with Kara, that was exactly the case.

Dave Conley:

The resources that she needed, which was different than somebody

Dave Conley:

who was in addiction, which was different than somebody who was had

Dave Conley:

mental illness, which was different.

Dave Conley:

I mean, she was just down on her luck and she was with a small child

Dave Conley:

and she was really struggling to just get through nursing school.

Dave Conley:

She needed different things.

Dave Conley:

And yet there was this one size fits all, most of it went to, supporting

Dave Conley:

businesses you know, like NGOs and organizations that didn't have

Dave Conley:

an incentive to get people off.

Dave Conley:

They had an incentive to keep people on.

Dave Conley:

That's the tragedy I think we learned last week, don't you?

Dave Conley:

Don't you think Jerremy

Jerremy Newsome:

Yeah.

Jerremy Newsome:

Yeah.

Jerremy Newsome:

Like it's essentially the people who do need it.

Jerremy Newsome:

To David's point, if something happens to them just, or unjust, they need help,

Jerremy Newsome:

they need assistance, they can go apply for these grants or these loans or these

Jerremy Newsome:

applications, these things to help.

Jerremy Newsome:

And it just doesn't truly like, it just kind of falls through the cracks.

Jerremy Newsome:

Right.

Jerremy Newsome:

She was a veteran

Dave Conley:

Right?

Jerremy Newsome:

United States there's 32,000 veterans.

Jerremy Newsome:

Veterans who are homeless, which again, seems like that should,

Jerremy Newsome:

that number should just be

Dave Conley:

It should be zero.

Dave Conley:

Yeah.

Jerremy Newsome:

or 10.

Jerremy Newsome:

It should be 10 people.

Jerremy Newsome:

Like it shouldn't be that high.

Jerremy Newsome:

32,000 is like a city.

Jerremy Newsome:

so that's very, very tragic.

Jerremy Newsome:

But yeah, there, there's definitely a lot of things falling through the cracks.

Jerremy Newsome:

And this is a joint question for anyone who would like to ask it 'cause it

Jerremy Newsome:

also came up in our last conversation.

Jerremy Newsome:

would you feel, or what do you feel is the difference between

Jerremy Newsome:

homelessness houselessness?

Jerremy Newsome:

What are the two differences or two distinctions there?

Jerremy Newsome:

I'll start with David.

Jerremy Newsome:

@DavidJacob_1: What is the difference between homelessness and houselessness?

Jerremy Newsome:

I guess homelessness is, is the physical sorry, houselessness

Jerremy Newsome:

is the physical element, right?

Jerremy Newsome:

Like you literally do not have a roof over your head.

Jerremy Newsome:

That is, the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Jerremy Newsome:

You literally need somewhere to rest your head so you don't feel like

Jerremy Newsome:

you're gonna die when you go to sleep.

Jerremy Newsome:

Go all the way back to evolutionary psychology.

Jerremy Newsome:

That was the one thing that allowed us to, you know, thrive as a species.

Jerremy Newsome:

How homelessness is, way more psychological than that.

Jerremy Newsome:

I guess it's the idea of you don't feel like you belong, you don't feel safe.

Jerremy Newsome:

You don't have like a community.

Jerremy Newsome:

There's no identity based in, your ability to survive in and of yourself.

Jerremy Newsome:

And I think that's, you know, a way harder problem to deal with.

Jerremy Newsome:

What do you think, Leslie?

Leslie Bobb:

Based on the, the way I've seen the terms.

Leslie Bobb:

I would agree.

Leslie Bobb:

Houselessness is the unhoused.

Leslie Bobb:

It means sleeping on the streets.

Leslie Bobb:

No roof over your head.

Leslie Bobb:

Look, if you look at the statistics, it presents homeless

Leslie Bobb:

versus unsheltered individuals.

Leslie Bobb:

So not all homeless are unsheltered, but I think on a, on a. Simpler level

Leslie Bobb:

than David went with homelessness.

Leslie Bobb:

I would just call homelessness, just not having stable housing.

Leslie Bobb:

So you might be couch surfing, um, maybe even living in your car or

Leslie Bobb:

shelters, temporary housing hotel vouchers, living with relatives or

Leslie Bobb:

moving around from place to place, but not having a stable home versus

Jerremy Newsome:

Yeah,

Leslie Bobb:

unhoused is just literally shelterless.

Jerremy Newsome:

exactly.

Jerremy Newsome:

Yep.

Jerremy Newsome:

'cause I think, uh, in the US right, there's some hundred 71,000.

Jerremy Newsome:

Total homeless.

Jerremy Newsome:

But the shelter, to your point, like using that term, is half a million.

Jerremy Newsome:

So 522,000 approximately.

Jerremy Newsome:

And then she unsheltered million, 250,000 people are unsheltered Finland solved

Jerremy Newsome:

the issue essentially by saying, I think there's two solutions in Finland, like

Jerremy Newsome:

if you're houseless too long, you die.

Jerremy Newsome:

'cause it's really cold in Finland.

Jerremy Newsome:

And so they're like, listen, you've gotta get a house.

Jerremy Newsome:

And so they went out and just built houses.

Jerremy Newsome:

And essentially, I don't believe they made it illegal, but it was essentially

Jerremy Newsome:

like, listen, single person in this country is required to live somewhere.

Jerremy Newsome:

they built a bunch of small homes that didn't have any requirement

Jerremy Newsome:

other than someone had to live in them per the capital, like per person.

Jerremy Newsome:

And that helped decrease homelessness because again, they had a place

Jerremy Newsome:

to stay that didn't have any.

Jerremy Newsome:

Requirements.

Jerremy Newsome:

There wasn't any minimums or maximums that need be met.

Jerremy Newsome:

I go, Hey, everyone has a house.

Dave Conley:

Like it's a,

Jerremy Newsome:

something will, oh, go ahead, Dave.

Dave Conley:

like it's a,

Jerremy Newsome:

yeah,

Dave Conley:

I mean, it makes, it makes some

Jerremy Newsome:

you're a

Dave Conley:

sense, like,

Jerremy Newsome:

whoa, you're a human.

Jerremy Newsome:

Let's, but let's put you in shelter.

Dave Conley:

Yeah.

Jerremy Newsome:

So you give you and your family protection

Jerremy Newsome:

from the freezing fenland cold.

Dave Conley:

Yeah.

Jerremy Newsome:

But it's like that in a lot of places in the us

Jerremy Newsome:

like North Dakota, South Dakota, Michigan gets cold in the winter.

Jerremy Newsome:

So ultimately the cities and the states with the largest homeless population are

Jerremy Newsome:

gonna be the warmer clients climates.

Jerremy Newsome:

California, Florida.

Jerremy Newsome:

But a lot of people in the US they're wondering, is that a

Jerremy Newsome:

choice that they're making?

Jerremy Newsome:

Or I guess how many of these unsheltered just can't find shelters?

Jerremy Newsome:

A quarter million people in the US who just can't find shelters, are they

Jerremy Newsome:

choosing not to find shelters or do you think they just can't, Leslie, is

Jerremy Newsome:

it like a choice that they're making?

Jerremy Newsome:

Like, I just wanna not a house, I don't wanna pay taxes, I just wanna go live on

Jerremy Newsome:

the beach and just like have a tent for the rest of my life and be kind of Ivy.

Leslie Bobb:

I have met quite a few individuals who did choose, they have

Leslie Bobb:

some QAC lifestyle in their head, and they did choose to be nomadic.

Leslie Bobb:

The majority of the chronically homeless that, that I've seen, though it's not

Leslie Bobb:

necessarily a choice, but they aren't always, shelters fill up really quickly.

Leslie Bobb:

They're not always open.

Leslie Bobb:

They're difficult to find, like we discussed before, but a lot of people

Leslie Bobb:

are not comfortable in shelters.

Leslie Bobb:

You have to split up from your friends or your partners.

Leslie Bobb:

They're not safe, they're crowded, they're nasty.

Leslie Bobb:

And a lot of these people, they, they do have an issue.

Leslie Bobb:

Functioning in society, so the rules being stuck inside, all of that sort of stuff.

Leslie Bobb:

They they can't do it.

Leslie Bobb:

They have, they do have some of these mental health issues that prevent them

Leslie Bobb:

from functioning in an institutionalized setting or in normal societal settings.

Leslie Bobb:

And that's why they're homeless.

Leslie Bobb:

They can't hold a job, so staying in a shelter, just, it just

Leslie Bobb:

psychologically doesn't work for them.

Leslie Bobb:

And they would rather be outside than in a shelter.

Leslie Bobb:

They would not rather be outside than in a home.

Leslie Bobb:

Although we have seen some of those too.

Leslie Bobb:

They, they get housing and they can't, they just can't stay inside.

Leslie Bobb:

They have to come back out.

Leslie Bobb:

But I think that's treatable psychological trauma.

Leslie Bobb:

And it's not necessarily like just who they are, the choice they're making.

Jerremy Newsome:

Yeah.

Jerremy Newsome:

Well I really like your focus there on that comment about the shelter.

Jerremy Newsome:

'cause I don't think we really, truly have do dove into that too much in the

Jerremy Newsome:

sense of, okay, if you were to solve homelessness by placing people in a.

Jerremy Newsome:

Location, giving them shelter, right?

Jerremy Newsome:

How safe is it?

Jerremy Newsome:

And having the homeless shelters presently reorganized, restructured,

Jerremy Newsome:

audited, cleaned, made it like a primary focus on our government to go listen.

Jerremy Newsome:

Okay?

Jerremy Newsome:

More people probably would take advantage of this resource if it

Jerremy Newsome:

wasn't overcrowded, if it wasn't gross, if it was sanitary, if it was

Jerremy Newsome:

a nice, kind, safe, welcoming place.

Jerremy Newsome:

Uh, David, any opinions or thoughts on the homeless shelters any neck of the woods?

Jerremy Newsome:

@DavidJacob_1: Yeah, the, from any conversation I've ever had with anyone

Jerremy Newsome:

that's homeless in the uk, the, the consensus is that shelters are exactly

Jerremy Newsome:

to Leslie's point, unsafe, overcrowded, particularly enjoyable environments to be

Jerremy Newsome:

in, but they were never, at least from my understanding, they were never designed

Jerremy Newsome:

to be long-term housing solutions.

Jerremy Newsome:

They were short term housing solutions.

Jerremy Newsome:

when you turn what was meant to be one very temporary solution

Jerremy Newsome:

into a much longer, again, going back to the same idea, like that's

Jerremy Newsome:

just kind of how it is, right?

Jerremy Newsome:

Like this.

Jerremy Newsome:

Idea of determinism that, oh, well that's just how the world works.

Jerremy Newsome:

Some people get the short end of the stick.

Jerremy Newsome:

Oh well, when you use a solution that was designed to basically lift

Jerremy Newsome:

people out of that initial slump and get them back on their feet and you

Jerremy Newsome:

turn it into a longer term solution, that is a problem in and of itself.

Jerremy Newsome:

Right.

Jerremy Newsome:

And I'm, I would be almost certain that if you looked at the data, the

Jerremy Newsome:

higher the capacity IE, the higher the amount of people who are in a

Jerremy Newsome:

shelter, the slower those people end up actually solving for their homeless.

Leslie Bobb:

I would bet on that.

Leslie Bobb:

@DavidJacob_1: Yeah,

Jerremy Newsome:

Wild.

Leslie Bobb:

I think shelters might have been a good solution decades ago,

Leslie Bobb:

@DavidJacob_1: hundred

Leslie Bobb:

know?

Leslie Bobb:

But it, it's the, the problem continued to grow and the

Leslie Bobb:

solution never evolved with it.

Leslie Bobb:

Yeah.

Jerremy Newsome:

Fascinating.

Jerremy Newsome:

And that's a really, really cool perspective.

Jerremy Newsome:

So Leslie, using that word, you said the word solution, what's

Jerremy Newsome:

a way, in your opinion, right?

Jerremy Newsome:

Communities could use health support better nutrition to help

Jerremy Newsome:

people experiencing homelessness.

Leslie Bobb:

I love that you asked about communities, because I was

Leslie Bobb:

thinking a minute ago I really like play, I go down some rabbit holes in

Leslie Bobb:

my head with devil's advocate stuff, and I tend to be on the, i I fight all

Leslie Bobb:

the time about, well, we don't just.

Leslie Bobb:

Make people comfortable that are choosing, you know, laziness or distraction or

Leslie Bobb:

whatever, that doesn't solve anything.

Leslie Bobb:

But also it's kind of proven people need a house before they can fix anything else.

Leslie Bobb:

So I go in back and forth and I was thinking, you know,

Leslie Bobb:

as far is housing a right?

Leslie Bobb:

A long time ago, throughout history, we would've created our own shelter,

Leslie Bobb:

but we also would've been allowed to do so, and we're not really allowed

Leslie Bobb:

to just go find a plot of land and build a shelter on it anymore.

Leslie Bobb:

So we're preventing that natural order that we used to have.

Leslie Bobb:

So when people talk about personal responsibility.

Leslie Bobb:

We're not really allowed, in some cases, to be responsible

Leslie Bobb:

in the same way we used to be.

Leslie Bobb:

But we would've had communities that would've helped the widows or

Leslie Bobb:

the children, the orphans, whoever couldn't, the disabled that couldn't

Leslie Bobb:

build their own shelter, their community might have helped them.

Leslie Bobb:

Uh, and we don't have that anymore either, especially in la New York,

Leslie Bobb:

these massive city, London, you know, these are massive cities.

Leslie Bobb:

You can't, community doesn't operate on such a large scale.

Leslie Bobb:

But to your question, as far as nutrition support, there are definite, and I

Leslie Bobb:

like that David brought up Maslow's hierarchy because, uh, when I was

Leslie Bobb:

talking to Dave, I also mentioned that there, I mean, you legitimately

Leslie Bobb:

have to feel safe before you can do anything else, like physically safe.

Leslie Bobb:

So I, I'm not saying if you eat right, it's gonna fix all your problems,

Leslie Bobb:

but there are some nutritional deficiencies that can cause.

Leslie Bobb:

Mental health problems that can mimic substance abuse, that

Leslie Bobb:

can mimic psycho psychopathy.

Leslie Bobb:

Like if you have B12 deficiencies, if you're severely dehydrated or have

Leslie Bobb:

protein deficiencies, your brain will not function and you can expect someone

Leslie Bobb:

whose brain is not functioning to be able to handle the same types of steps that

Leslie Bobb:

you or I might take if we were down on our luck and needed to rebuild our lives.

Leslie Bobb:

So, yeah, it's a simple thing.

Leslie Bobb:

Go down to the Social Security Office, apply for benefits you know,

Leslie Bobb:

go do this, go get a job, whatever.

Leslie Bobb:

But if, if your brain is not functioning, if you are actually

Leslie Bobb:

intellectually disabled now, you're not gonna be able to follow those

Leslie Bobb:

steps the way someone else might.

Leslie Bobb:

So I would say communities can help fill those nutrition gaps, and not by

Leslie Bobb:

giving them, bless Panera's heart for giving all of their old pastries to

Leslie Bobb:

the homeless, but not by giving them sugar filled pastries, but by giving

Leslie Bobb:

them actual nutrition, not just.

Leslie Bobb:

Cast off leftover junk food.

Jerremy Newsome:

Yeah.

Leslie Bobb:

I don't think, I mean, it's calories, it's keeping them

Leslie Bobb:

alive and it may be providing a little bit of joy and a dismal life,

Leslie Bobb:

but it's not helping them heal or, or, um, you know, return to society.

Leslie Bobb:

It's not helping them function.

Leslie Bobb:

So if we have an actual interest in feeding the homeless, we need to be

Leslie Bobb:

feeding them nutrition and not just like Disneyland, adding it like,

Leslie Bobb:

oh, we're the best group 'cause we go on Sundays and give you donuts.

Leslie Bobb:

Like that's not helping anything.

Leslie Bobb:

@DavidJacob_1: But like bouncing off that idea of like the health

Leslie Bobb:

implications of homelessness, like the one that immediately pops

Leslie Bobb:

into my head is lack of sleep.

Leslie Bobb:

Yeah,

Leslie Bobb:

@DavidJacob_1: on the street, you are not sleeping

Leslie Bobb:

absolutely.

Leslie Bobb:

@DavidJacob_1: Sleep rep. Sleep deprivation is probably one of the

Leslie Bobb:

most dangerous like forces that we have very little control over.

Leslie Bobb:

Right?

Leslie Bobb:

Like, I don't know the exact statistics, so don't quote me on it, but I think

Leslie Bobb:

it's 24 hours without sleep is the equivalent of being like actually

Leslie Bobb:

drunk, like over the legal limit.

Jerremy Newsome:

like that.

Jerremy Newsome:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jerremy Newsome:

@DavidJacob_1: So you expect people to rack up sleep debts of probably

Jerremy Newsome:

24 plus hours in the course of realistically what, like a week them to

Jerremy Newsome:

be able to make reasonable decisions?

Jerremy Newsome:

They're probably gonna be emotionally volatile.

Jerremy Newsome:

I'm annoyed when I have six hours of sleep, let alone six hours of sleep

Jerremy Newsome:

on one night, let alone three and a half hours of sleep across months.

Jerremy Newsome:

David.

Jerremy Newsome:

That's weird.

Jerremy Newsome:

@DavidJacob_1: Like you the impact of sleep on something like this.

Jerremy Newsome:

That's really

Leslie Bobb:

You're absolutely right.

Leslie Bobb:

Yeah.

Leslie Bobb:

@DavidJacob_1: And, and the other factor, right?

Leslie Bobb:

So let's say that, we take the shelter stuff that we were talking about

Leslie Bobb:

before and you apply the same logic.

Leslie Bobb:

Running a shelter, it's probably not gonna be conducive to great sleep.

Leslie Bobb:

You've got, however many people are inside the shelter, it's probably gonna

Leslie Bobb:

be fairly well lit 'cause they wanna be able to like, see what's going on there

Leslie Bobb:

and not gonna be, you know, pitch black, which is the ideal conditions for sleep.

Leslie Bobb:

They're constantly terrified that they're either gonna be,

Leslie Bobb:

assaulted or robbed or otherwise.

Leslie Bobb:

You've got people with, you know, mental health problems who are probably

Leslie Bobb:

not exactly the soundest sleepers on the planet, let's be honest.

Leslie Bobb:

All of that then, coupled with historically poor sleep is probably gonna

Leslie Bobb:

lead to a massive decline in people's mental health, and that's without even.

Leslie Bobb:

Truly addressing the, the, the quote unquote real problems of

Leslie Bobb:

homelessness with it, which is the tr the threat of violence.

Leslie Bobb:

And as Leslie was saying, poor nutrition and everything else, we didn't need

Leslie Bobb:

sleep, we would've evolved out of it.

Leslie Bobb:

Over the thousands of years of human evolution, we need it.

Leslie Bobb:

And this is probably arguably one of the most impacted elements of it.

Leslie Bobb:

And honestly, like you also have people, especially the veterans

Leslie Bobb:

who are suffering from hyper alertness.

Leslie Bobb:

And I've never even been in combat and I struggle with this.

Leslie Bobb:

So you can put me in a perfectly comfortable, perfectly cool, dark,

Leslie Bobb:

safe room, and it's gonna take me several nights to be able to

Leslie Bobb:

actually sleep through the night.

Leslie Bobb:

Like any sound I feel like in my entire neighborhood wakes me

Leslie Bobb:

up with like my heart pounding.

Leslie Bobb:

So people who are actually in danger, whereas I've never really

Leslie Bobb:

been in my life and I still have a hard time, like it's gonna take

Leslie Bobb:

them a while to rewire, to safety.

Leslie Bobb:

So even if the shelter was nice, they still might struggle getting that

Leslie Bobb:

adequate sleep because their nervous systems are just so wired to keep,

Leslie Bobb:

you know, they're hypervigilant.

Jerremy Newsome:

So here's a question that popped in my mind as David and Leslie.

Jerremy Newsome:

You were talking about the sleep perspective.

Jerremy Newsome:

What would be the benefits if we did solve homelessness?

Jerremy Newsome:

What, is there a benefit like to the society, to communities?

Jerremy Newsome:

Like what is it if Boom, hums is no longer here tomorrow,

Jerremy Newsome:

how does society get better?

Jerremy Newsome:

Exactly.

Leslie Bobb:

You wanna start David?

Leslie Bobb:

@DavidJacob_1: What are the benefits of solving, solving homelessness?

Leslie Bobb:

I don't know.

Leslie Bobb:

Being able to say that we've, we're not actively failing as

Leslie Bobb:

a society would be the big one.

Leslie Bobb:

I don't know.

Leslie Bobb:

That's, that's probably the biggest one.

Leslie Bobb:

I mean, based on Jerremy, the numbers that you gave about, like

Leslie Bobb:

the cost of homelessness, every year we'd say billions of dollars or

Leslie Bobb:

pounds every single year, just on.

Leslie Bobb:

There's a, probably less than acceptable English way of phrasing

Leslie Bobb:

this that I will refrain from.

Leslie Bobb:

We like throwing money down the toilet for want of a better phrase.

Leslie Bobb:

If we are just throwing $80 billion of government spending at homelessness, and

Leslie Bobb:

it's, I assume getting worse year on year.

Leslie Bobb:

What could you do with $80 billion?

Leslie Bobb:

Right?

Leslie Bobb:

Jerremy, that's your, your favorite question is what are you

Leslie Bobb:

gonna do with X amount of money?

Leslie Bobb:

I think you'd, you'd, you'd have a pretty decent shot of doing a

Leslie Bobb:

lot of stuff with $80 billion.

Leslie Bobb:

I guess the other side of it is.

Leslie Bobb:

Homelessness, and I think this is where a lot of people's gripes with homelessness

Leslie Bobb:

come from is it's not nice to look at people in your local community or society

Leslie Bobb:

and see them struggling with mental health and, houselessness and seeing

Leslie Bobb:

them deal with drug addictions and you know, alcohol problems and all manner of

Leslie Bobb:

other things and all of the associated problems like crime and whatever.

Leslie Bobb:

All of those things will slowly start to decline across the board.

Leslie Bobb:

There's a, this is taking me back to now my, like high school sociology classes.

Leslie Bobb:

There's a, there's an idea called the broken windows Theory of Policing, where

Leslie Bobb:

if you fix all of the small problems, the bigger problems don't tend to show up as

Leslie Bobb:

frequently because people don't want to mess up the environment that they live in.

Leslie Bobb:

Well, if you're constantly seeing homelessness around you, you're

Leslie Bobb:

probably gonna assume that that area is also quite negative.

Leslie Bobb:

You flip that on its head when you fix the biggest visible, I guess societal

Leslie Bobb:

dysfunction, which is homelessness.

Leslie Bobb:

It's the thing that we see every day.

Leslie Bobb:

Believe that, you know, the government is enacting reasonable change.

Leslie Bobb:

The government probably can be trusted.

Leslie Bobb:

So focus, or at least faith in the people that govern you, probably increases.

Leslie Bobb:

At the very least, people are more inclined to invest in different

Leslie Bobb:

neighborhoods because they don't, they aren't fearful of, a homeless

Leslie Bobb:

encampment popping up around the corner randomly because insert A,

Leslie Bobb:

B, c, reason, whatever, Vagrant of now taken a whatever plot of land.

Jerremy Newsome:

Sure.

Jerremy Newsome:

@DavidJacob_1: Probably gonna see an increase in entrepreneurship

Jerremy Newsome:

and businesses because they don't worry about their shops

Jerremy Newsome:

getting robbed or whatever it is.

Jerremy Newsome:

Like there's mass societal benefits that just come from fixing something

Jerremy Newsome:

that is very visible in front of mind to a lot of communities.

Jerremy Newsome:

I'm sure if you ask people in LA why would solving homelessness be a

Jerremy Newsome:

problem they're gonna come up with so I don't have to see it all the time.

Leslie Bobb:

I would, uh, I would agree with that.

Leslie Bobb:

And I, I was thinking additionally.

Leslie Bobb:

With a less pragmatic lens.

Leslie Bobb:

Earlier when you were talking about, again, the, the biases people have that

Leslie Bobb:

keep them from looking at homelessness.

Leslie Bobb:

It occurred to me to me, my son went through adolescence really struggling

Leslie Bobb:

because he's so intense and anytime he would see a problem, it just felt

Leslie Bobb:

way too big to do anything about it.

Leslie Bobb:

So I think solving homelessness would probably do good to restore our faith

Leslie Bobb:

in humanity a bit because we're not glaring at this huge failing problem

Leslie Bobb:

that we can't do anything about or we feel so powerless to do something about.

Leslie Bobb:

But also back to the money, I don't think, the economic benefits in neighborhoods

Leslie Bobb:

I think is a very solid point, but also Jerremy, I don't think that $80 billion

Leslie Bobb:

includes unpaid medical expenses, lost wages, all of the talent that we're

Leslie Bobb:

losing out on from those almost a million people that are not able to like.

Leslie Bobb:

Step in their purpose in this life because of all the other things in the way.

Leslie Bobb:

I mean, those people might be visionaries, they might be brilliant engineers.

Leslie Bobb:

They might have the cure for, whatever.

Leslie Bobb:

They might be able to colonize Mars before Elon does.

Leslie Bobb:

Like, there might be some real gifts, there are some real gifts out there

Leslie Bobb:

and people who are buried under life.

Leslie Bobb:

So I think just on a human scale with my girl heart, I'm just gonna say

Leslie Bobb:

like the the cost is, or the benefit is immeasurable in restoring that

Leslie Bobb:

many humans to their purpose in life.

Dave Conley:

So both of you are experts in helping people change,

Dave Conley:

from wherever they are, whether it's their health and wellness, or

Dave Conley:

just the choices that they make.

Dave Conley:

How do we get people excited about this, overcoming this acceptance in society?

Dave Conley:

What do you think, Dave?

Dave Conley:

What do you think Leslie?

Leslie Bobb:

How do we get housed people excited about

Leslie Bobb:

helping or how do we get okay.

Dave Conley:

You know, like there's, it's, I mean, it's a, it's a partnership, right?

Dave Conley:

Somebody's gotta want to change.

Dave Conley:

And based on the conversations we've already had with people who've

Dave Conley:

been homeless, they do want that.

Dave Conley:

So how do we get society excited about this?

Dave Conley:

How do we change society around this?

Leslie Bobb:

I, I, I think the, some of the first ingredients to to

Leslie Bobb:

getting someone to change is they have to believe in a different future.

Leslie Bobb:

And I think that's a big one that we would battle against nowadays

Leslie Bobb:

because people are so distracted and they're so cynical that just getting

Leslie Bobb:

people to look and believe that it could be different is gonna be hard.

Leslie Bobb:

They've been lied to and let down so many times just in our short lives

Leslie Bobb:

that we have here, and there's so much vying for their attention that that

Leslie Bobb:

would be the huge, the biggest hurdle.

Leslie Bobb:

So believing that there's a different future, believing that.

Leslie Bobb:

You can have the different future.

Leslie Bobb:

So in our case, believing that you can impact, you can pitch in on this problem,

Leslie Bobb:

that it does matter what you do would be another hurdle once we can actually get

Leslie Bobb:

them to believe in a different future.

Leslie Bobb:

So I think those are like two huge, huge like things to overcome,

Leslie Bobb:

@DavidJacob_1: Yeah.

Leslie Bobb:

I think building on that the fundamental problem is at least from public

Leslie Bobb:

perception that I understand it to be in, trying my best to continually

Leslie Bobb:

understand human behavior and psychology.

Leslie Bobb:

I think at its core society views homelessness as like

Leslie Bobb:

an individual tragedy.

Leslie Bobb:

It's really sad that that person is homeless, but I didn't cause it, and

Leslie Bobb:

I've got my own problems, but like, it sucks to suck for them, it, we

Leslie Bobb:

need to shift to this idea that it's like a collective failure stewardship.

Leslie Bobb:

Like, that's how I view it, that as a society, we are failing.

Leslie Bobb:

We are failing at the basis form of like societal function,

Leslie Bobb:

which is everyone has a home.

Leslie Bobb:

That is what a society is.

Leslie Bobb:

We grouped we, we collected in groups so that we would be more

Leslie Bobb:

collectively safe than as a whole, or sorry, than as individuals.

Leslie Bobb:

Right?

Leslie Bobb:

We would be more collectively safe as a whole than as individuals.

Leslie Bobb:

But now it's kind of reversed, right?

Leslie Bobb:

And you, you now have the tragedy of the commons where it's

Leslie Bobb:

always someone else's problem.

Leslie Bobb:

And so long as I'm getting mine, that's all that I care about.

Leslie Bobb:

So if we work under the premise that like our societies are shared resources,

Leslie Bobb:

well, we all have to feel collectively responsible for those shared resources.

Leslie Bobb:

And if at the point in which we don't, which I think is the point that we've

Leslie Bobb:

gotten to now, the individual palms it off to their local government.

Leslie Bobb:

The local government palms it off to the state government.

Leslie Bobb:

The state government palms it off to the federal government, and now

Leslie Bobb:

everyone points at everyone else.

Leslie Bobb:

And it's like the Spider-Man meme in real life, right?

Leslie Bobb:

Nobody wants to take ownership of it because it's too big for

Leslie Bobb:

them to solve as an individual.

Leslie Bobb:

If it's too big for an individual, then it's too big for a small group.

Leslie Bobb:

And if it's too big for the small group, then it's bad for the bigger

Leslie Bobb:

group and the bigger group and the bigger group and so on and so forth,

Leslie Bobb:

like the commons end up rotting because the individuals don't care enough.

Leslie Bobb:

So like, how do you do it?

Leslie Bobb:

Like the, to combat like the almost the shared paralysis of it all.

Leslie Bobb:

The, I write about this in my book, right?

Leslie Bobb:

The, a lot of people take on what I call problem conflation, they group lots of

Leslie Bobb:

problems into one big problem and then go, oh, well it's too difficult, so

Leslie Bobb:

I'm not gonna even bother doing that.

Leslie Bobb:

And it's, it's the whole idea of the guardian knot.

Leslie Bobb:

Alexander the Great found the Gordian Knot, which was, you know,

Leslie Bobb:

unsolvable for however many centuries.

Leslie Bobb:

And the law was that whoever solved the Gordian knot would

Leslie Bobb:

become the ruler of Asia.

Leslie Bobb:

So he pulled out his sword and cut it in half.

Leslie Bobb:

And we have to take the same approach here.

Leslie Bobb:

Whatever we're doing now is categorically failing.

Leslie Bobb:

The approaches that we're currently taking are broken.

Leslie Bobb:

They do not work, and it has been proven year on year.

Leslie Bobb:

So instead of trying to sit and untangle one corner of the knot and hope that

Leslie Bobb:

that has a collective benefit, we have to look at this much more holistically

Leslie Bobb:

and say, okay, well take the entire framework that we view this in, or

Leslie Bobb:

view this through and put it in a bin.

Leslie Bobb:

Instead of trying to enact massive societal change from the top down

Leslie Bobb:

at a highly bureaucratic level where everything takes 87 meetings and

Leslie Bobb:

a hundred different note takers to figure out how to do something best.

Leslie Bobb:

How can one individual help one individual?

Leslie Bobb:

How can one person help?

Leslie Bobb:

One person?

Leslie Bobb:

Because if one person helps one person times hundred thousand people, you

Leslie Bobb:

eradicate, what did you say Jerremy?

Leslie Bobb:

It was seven 50,000 people.

Leslie Bobb:

Okay, cool.

Leslie Bobb:

We've solved 15% of the problem

Jerremy Newsome:

Yep.

Jerremy Newsome:

@DavidJacob_1: it took you helping one person.

Jerremy Newsome:

Okay, cool.

Jerremy Newsome:

How do you expand that out?

Jerremy Newsome:

So go down that train of thought a little bit more, David,

Jerremy Newsome:

because you're, you're touching on this and what I'm hearing you say,

Jerremy Newsome:

and kinda what it's making me ask is what's a business like approach?

Jerremy Newsome:

Say rethinking how we fund solutions.

Jerremy Newsome:

would that make that dent?

Jerremy Newsome:

I mean, you're very close to it, but what would be that one extra

Jerremy Newsome:

loop or connection that tie in?

Jerremy Newsome:

@DavidJacob_1: Yeah, so I think the there's a, the life of me, I

Jerremy Newsome:

can't remember what it's called, but collec small collective funds, right?

Jerremy Newsome:

Where let's say you and everyone on your street puts in 50 bucks.

Jerremy Newsome:

That 50 bucks buy however many houses are on a street, let's call it 20 for

Jerremy Newsome:

argument's sake, is a thousand dollars.

Jerremy Newsome:

That a thousand dollars doesn't go very far when you try and tackle homelessness.

Jerremy Newsome:

if you know that there's one person who's constantly homeless on your street,

Jerremy Newsome:

picking up trash or whatever else.

Jerremy Newsome:

You gave that thousand dollars that person a month, it costs you 50 bucks a month.

Jerremy Newsome:

That thousand dollars changes that one person's life very easily.

Jerremy Newsome:

If every street in the US did that, I'm assuming there's more

Jerremy Newsome:

than 750,000 streets in the us.

Jerremy Newsome:

Congratulations.

Jerremy Newsome:

It costs $50 a month.

Jerremy Newsome:

Can everyone contribute that?

Jerremy Newsome:

Probably not.

Jerremy Newsome:

Probably not.

Jerremy Newsome:

there people are.

Jerremy Newsome:

there people who can contribute a hell of a lot more than 50 bucks a month?

Jerremy Newsome:

Yeah, but it's small collective groups solving small, collective

Jerremy Newsome:

group problems, right?

Jerremy Newsome:

It's a whole basis of community.

Jerremy Newsome:

But the moment that you turn it into a massive bureaucracy and it turns

Jerremy Newsome:

into a business, well now the business needs to survive and the business

Jerremy Newsome:

needs to exist for however many years to earn back any investment that went

Jerremy Newsome:

into it, and the whole cycle repeats.

Jerremy Newsome:

It has to be on a small scale.

Jerremy Newsome:

Leslie, what part of that caused the physical

Jerremy Newsome:

smile that's on your face?

Leslie Bobb:

Well, I would say the, uh, the American answer would

Leslie Bobb:

be, well, I am, it's called taxes.

Leslie Bobb:

I already am giving that money, and the government is supposed

Leslie Bobb:

to be giving it to that person,

Leslie Bobb:

@DavidJacob_1: It isn't the

Leslie Bobb:

so I.

Leslie Bobb:

@DavidJacob_1: feel that you don't trust the government

Leslie Bobb:

as far as you can throw them,

Leslie Bobb:

Well, I, yes, I'm a libertarian, so yes.

Leslie Bobb:

And I would rather give that $50 to my neighbor than the government.

Leslie Bobb:

But the fact is the government takes it from me for this problem, and I

Leslie Bobb:

don't have a, a voice in the solution.

Leslie Bobb:

So I would say that that would be an insta argument to your ideal.

Leslie Bobb:

@DavidJacob_1: But

Leslie Bobb:

very logical.

Leslie Bobb:

@DavidJacob_1: But what if you did have a voice in it?

Leslie Bobb:

What if it was exactly that?

Leslie Bobb:

It was a voluntary, on your street, in your street alone.

Leslie Bobb:

There was one homeless guy that lived nearby your street, and you and the

Leslie Bobb:

collective citizens of your street, in your street alone decided out of the

Leslie Bobb:

goodness of your heart and nothing else.

Leslie Bobb:

There was no mandate you were gonna give 50 bucks a month to, Brian,

Leslie Bobb:

who lives at the end of the road.

Leslie Bobb:

I mean, I think that would, would be beautiful like most.

Leslie Bobb:

Beautiful solutions.

Leslie Bobb:

The way it plays out in real life might not work.

Leslie Bobb:

There's been, most of my life, I wouldn't have been able to afford 50 bucks.

Leslie Bobb:

So I might have gone and like cleaned Brian's house for him

Leslie Bobb:

instead or whatever, because I didn't have the 50 bucks to pitch in.

Leslie Bobb:

But I think it's a beautiful idea.

Leslie Bobb:

But then say we give Brian a thousand bucks every month and he drinks it

Leslie Bobb:

away instead of paying his rent.

Leslie Bobb:

Which is where you get into the paternalistic governmental, like,

Leslie Bobb:

I'm gonna solve this problem for you because you're not smart

Leslie Bobb:

enough to do it by yourself.

Leslie Bobb:

So I think there's a lot of potential holes to be poked, but then we

Leslie Bobb:

get back into the, it's too solve, it's too big to solve problem.

Leslie Bobb:

And I do agree with your, you know, let's just take a sword and slice what

Leslie Bobb:

we're doing right down the middle.

Leslie Bobb:

Start over.

Leslie Bobb:

Uh, maybe with an outcome centered approach instead of a a, just, or.

Leslie Bobb:

Accountability philosophy or whatever, if we just focus on the outcomes that

Leslie Bobb:

we're looking for, we can just maybe set aside for just a moment whether

Leslie Bobb:

it's fair to give Brian a thousand dollars even though I have to work

Leslie Bobb:

for my rent or any of that situation.

Leslie Bobb:

But the reality is it's, it's people don't always do what they're supposed to do.

Jerremy Newsome:

So the system is broken.

Jerremy Newsome:

Do we have to break the whole thing?

Jerremy Newsome:

Sounds like a yes.

Jerremy Newsome:

One of the situations or determinations that we were kind of discussing in

Jerremy Newsome:

the last episode was taking some of the individuals who didn't wanna be

Jerremy Newsome:

homeless, a consensus, and then placing them in other parts of the US that need

Jerremy Newsome:

that need population, that need people to come in with fresh perspectives.

Jerremy Newsome:

Fresh thoughts, fresh ideas.

Jerremy Newsome:

you think that has any relevancy?

Jerremy Newsome:

Is that even remotely possible?

Jerremy Newsome:

Leslie,

Leslie Bobb:

I think that would answer a small portion of the

Leslie Bobb:

homeless population's problems.

Leslie Bobb:

I think if you, uh, just offered to relocate certain

Leslie Bobb:

people to where there was work.

Leslie Bobb:

Some of them would take it, take you up on it.

Leslie Bobb:

Many of them would not.

Leslie Bobb:

They wouldn't wanna relocate, they wouldn't wanna work, they

Leslie Bobb:

wouldn't be capable of it.

Leslie Bobb:

As we discussed before, with the mental illness and substance abuse problems.

Leslie Bobb:

I, I think it, Dave mentioned earlier, one size fits all approach not working here.

Leslie Bobb:

And I think that's, I think that's really what we have to keep in mind is

Leslie Bobb:

people are homeless for unique reasons and we're not gonna be able to just

Leslie Bobb:

make one path to get them out of it.

Leslie Bobb:

I don't think so.

Leslie Bobb:

I think that would work for some of them, but not probably the majority of them.

Leslie Bobb:

@DavidJacob_1: But, so this is where I struggle with this idea, right?

Leslie Bobb:

So I agree with you, Leslie, that it's, it's not, you know, a one size fits all

Leslie Bobb:

isn't gonna work at solving the whole thing, will it solve a portion of it?

Leslie Bobb:

If the goal is to keep chipping away, then let's keep chipping away.

Leslie Bobb:

Let's not cast out solutions because they don't solve it in its entirety.

Leslie Bobb:

That's the entire problem of the Gordian Knot.

Leslie Bobb:

Is that you have to solve it piece by piece or do what Alexander

Leslie Bobb:

did and cut it down the middle.

Leslie Bobb:

Well, if cutting it down the middle is not applicable, then we have to

Leslie Bobb:

solve it piece by piece by piece.

Leslie Bobb:

And if it is, you know, yeah.

Leslie Bobb:

Some people are more than happy to relocate and go to an area with jobs

Leslie Bobb:

and they're happy to be, essentially government mandated shelters until they've

Leslie Bobb:

worked for a period of time and then they have enough money to get themselves

Leslie Bobb:

into housing and their lives restart.

Leslie Bobb:

Fantastic.

Leslie Bobb:

If we can knock off a hundred thousand people because of that

Leslie Bobb:

initiative alone, we've solved it by plus minus 15% overnight.

Leslie Bobb:

obviously it's not overnight, but the point still remains.

Leslie Bobb:

Sure.

Leslie Bobb:

@DavidJacob_1: But like, just because it doesn't solve the whole thing doesn't mean

Leslie Bobb:

that it's not a solution in approaching.

Leslie Bobb:

And I think that's where like the whole Gordian knot analogy really comes into

Leslie Bobb:

play because if we try and solve all of it, we'll try and solve nothing.

Leslie Bobb:

How do you eat an elephant?

Leslie Bobb:

One bite at a time.

Leslie Bobb:

Yeah, for sure.

Leslie Bobb:

I, I hope I didn't sound like I was saying it wasn't a worthwhile approach, but I

Leslie Bobb:

do think 5%, 15%, it's worth solving, especially if they're people that just

Leslie Bobb:

need an opportunity and they're gonna be back on their feet, then heck yeah,

Leslie Bobb:

let's help 'em find an opportunity.

Leslie Bobb:

That's just stupid not to do that, honestly.

Leslie Bobb:

Uh, then there's people that have mental illness that can be treated, and then

Leslie Bobb:

there's people that have substance abuse that may not be ready to be

Leslie Bobb:

treated, but we keep working on that.

Leslie Bobb:

So yeah, definitely.

Leslie Bobb:

Just because there's no one size fits all doesn't mean none of

Leslie Bobb:

the sizes fit anybody for sure.

Jerremy Newsome:

I can see that you're ready to jump in on this.

Dave Conley:

No, our guests are making me think.

Dave Conley:

Right, and I'm just thinking it through because, you know,

Dave Conley:

that one size doesn't fit all.

Dave Conley:

Just a quick back of the napkin math, we're being taxed, $57 per person in

Dave Conley:

the United States for these, three quarters of a million homeless people.

Dave Conley:

And to me that's nothing right?

Dave Conley:

Over the course of a year, you know, like the price of a meal, you know,

Dave Conley:

like a dinner here, half a dinner here in Miami, you know, that's not enough.

Dave Conley:

Uh, I, I feel like, you know, like we need to be spending a lot more and just

Dave Conley:

saying, look, this is unacceptable.

Dave Conley:

It is cruel to have people treated like this.

Dave Conley:

Why would, as a society we be doing this?

Dave Conley:

And it is different from every person, right?

Dave Conley:

For somebody who has, you know, severe mental illness.

Dave Conley:

Yeah.

Dave Conley:

They're gonna be like in one camp for somebody who is a victim of domestic

Dave Conley:

violence, which most women are homeless because of domestic violence.

Dave Conley:

That's a whole different ball of wax.

Dave Conley:

You know, getting them safe and in a position where that they can have a

Dave Conley:

job and take care of their kids like, uh, like our guests, uh, last week.

Dave Conley:

I, I don't know.

Dave Conley:

I, I feel like it's one thing to talk about, like solutions, what isn't

Dave Conley:

working, what is working, but I just know we're not doing enough and that

Dave Conley:

it, I don't know, it pisses me off.

Leslie Bobb:

So Dave or Dave and Jerremy, the guests that you've spoken to before?

Leslie Bobb:

I wonder like in certain situations, I know here I can't speak to the whole

Leslie Bobb:

country, but I know that there are a lot of resources for women escaping

Leslie Bobb:

domestic violence and obviously they're not matching, they're not

Leslie Bobb:

finding the women that need them.

Leslie Bobb:

In a lot of cases, if, if that's true that most of the women that

Leslie Bobb:

are homeless are homeless because of fleeing domestic violence.

Leslie Bobb:

So.

Leslie Bobb:

With the $80 billion we are spending, and that probably doesn't count.

Leslie Bobb:

That probably doesn't include, maybe it does include charitable

Leslie Bobb:

NGOs and things like that, that aren't getting federal funding.

Leslie Bobb:

I'm not sure.

Leslie Bobb:

But with the 80 billion plus that is going into these types of resources,

Leslie Bobb:

I really feel like a question to be asked in the solution would be, how are

Leslie Bobb:

we better combining these resources, aligning them so they're not all

Leslie Bobb:

doing the same thing and not reaching anybody and nobody's doing this thing.

Leslie Bobb:

Like, I feel like there's a better way to, to coordinate resources and disseminate

Leslie Bobb:

them to the people that need them.

Leslie Bobb:

If, if all of these numbers are true.

Dave Conley:

Again, I love that.

Dave Conley:

And I keep on coming back to a question I asked earlier was, how do

Dave Conley:

we get society excited about this?

Dave Conley:

Like what's the how?

Dave Conley:

Because I, I lived in San Francisco and I, I think homelessness, you know,

Dave Conley:

the programs was I think the second largest, budget item in San Francisco.

Dave Conley:

There were so many services, so many organizations, and I, you know, and

Dave Conley:

everybody was like, wring their hands of like, oh, we spend all this money and

Dave Conley:

yet we keep on getting more homelessness.

Dave Conley:

Well, it's clearly not working.

Dave Conley:

But everybody sort of felt better about it because they were paying a ton of taxes.

Dave Conley:

So that disconnect, I want to know what you really think about

Dave Conley:

people getting excited about this and maybe getting pissed off like

Dave Conley:

me, like, this is unacceptable.

Dave Conley:

Like we, we've gotta, we've gotta stop, stop doing stupid stuff,

Jerremy Newsome:

do.

Jerremy Newsome:

Like how angry you're about this and we've had so many topics already in the past.

Jerremy Newsome:

You're f fever energy towards this is similar towards

Jerremy Newsome:

mine with school shootings.

Jerremy Newsome:

But I think the answer, Dave.

Jerremy Newsome:

Ready, Leslie Ray.

Jerremy Newsome:

David, a really good president.

Jerremy Newsome:

I think that's the solution to this, right?

Jerremy Newsome:

Where you have someone who's actually championing this and yelling at it

Jerremy Newsome:

from the rooftops, where it's like, listen, and again, this is my policy.

Jerremy Newsome:

My policy is all internal.

Jerremy Newsome:

I love Gaza, love Israel, love Iran High five.

Jerremy Newsome:

You guys gotta figure that stuff out yourself.

Jerremy Newsome:

Here's what we're gonna do, right?

Jerremy Newsome:

America's almost, we're gonna stop policing the world and we're gonna,

Jerremy Newsome:

we're gonna come internal for a while and fix all of the stuff that's

Jerremy Newsome:

happening here because we as a nation are the watchdog for the entire globe.

Jerremy Newsome:

Just 'cause we wanna be, and to be really, really fantastic for someone in

Jerremy Newsome:

a position of extreme authority on every debate stage, on every, address to fix

Jerremy Newsome:

education, is where homelessness starts.

Jerremy Newsome:

And to fix homelessness and what's currently existing and to just let

Jerremy Newsome:

society know that this is a standard that's just simply not acceptable.

Leslie Bobb:

So

Jerremy Newsome:

very easy,

Leslie Bobb:

there's an identity shift then that we need to,

Leslie Bobb:

to encourage instead of.

Jerremy Newsome:

and identity system shifts.

Dave Conley:

When I was growing up, right, like there were all of these.

Dave Conley:

ads on about litter.

Dave Conley:

I mean, like, so like, if, if you're, if you're under, you know,

Dave Conley:

if you're under 40, you'll, you'll never even know that this existed.

Dave Conley:

But there were crying, you know, crying Native Americans.

Dave Conley:

There were bears.

Dave Conley:

Like it was constant.

Dave Conley:

There were signs everywhere that, you know, on litter bugs, like we shamed like

Dave Conley:

the entire country into stop littering.

Dave Conley:

Now it, I would say, you know, like, this isn't like the number one thing

Dave Conley:

anymore, but not like all of our communities are like really clean,

Dave Conley:

but they're way cleaner than what they were in the seventies and eighties.

Dave Conley:

Like, it was filthy.

Dave Conley:

People would just throw stuff out of their car.

Dave Conley:

That all stopped, you know, like, I, I want that.

Dave Conley:

I want this to be like a public shaming, like

Leslie Bobb:

It, it worked.

Leslie Bobb:

Dave, because I am so angry, like littering makes me blow my top.

Leslie Bobb:

Rednecks still litter.

Leslie Bobb:

So they need a little bit longer of the social conditioning and the brainwashing

Leslie Bobb:

than the normal urban populations do.

Leslie Bobb:

Because I live out here in Virginia and they will throw stuff in the back of

Leslie Bobb:

their pickup because when they drive, it blows out and then they didn't mean to.

Leslie Bobb:

But I feel like there is something to be gained from public shaming

Leslie Bobb:

campaigns to change identity shifting.

Leslie Bobb:

So,

Dave Conley:

now I come from 300 years of redneck, so like, I

Dave Conley:

don't know I'm not much of a re

Leslie Bobb:

but you moved to San Francisco, so I feel like.

Dave Conley:

education back to what Jerremy was talking about.

Jerremy Newsome:

That's good.

Jerremy Newsome:

Yeah.

Jerremy Newsome:

Well, Dave, I mean that's really what it would take, man, and that, I think

Jerremy Newsome:

that's what it takes with any change have to have some type of authoritative

Jerremy Newsome:

focus and really direct messaging around a particular topic, whatever it is.

Jerremy Newsome:

And then you gotta get the media behind it.

Jerremy Newsome:

And everyone just focuses on it.

Jerremy Newsome:

Like right now in the US the big one is immigration.

Jerremy Newsome:

I mean, that's high on the list.

Jerremy Newsome:

So people are like.

Jerremy Newsome:

Get 'em out of the country versus let's make sure everyone who's in

Jerremy Newsome:

the country has a place to live.

Jerremy Newsome:

It's like if, do you belong here?

Jerremy Newsome:

No.

Jerremy Newsome:

Get out.

Jerremy Newsome:

Like no one cares about who's here presently.

Jerremy Newsome:

So I think immigration right now is a higher priority.

Jerremy Newsome:

US based value, system based, identity based versus homelessness.

Jerremy Newsome:

And again, that's just my opinion, but I think probably most listeners would agree.

Jerremy Newsome:

But the shift there would be if you have a president or an

Jerremy Newsome:

administration who goes, you know what?

Jerremy Newsome:

Okay, yes, immigration, it's a problem.

Jerremy Newsome:

However, you know, it also is a problem.

Jerremy Newsome:

Everyone who goes to fight immigration or to change immigration, or who is

Jerremy Newsome:

a veteran, a large percentage of our veteran population becomes homeless.

Jerremy Newsome:

Let's fix that instead.

Jerremy Newsome:

you're probably gonna get is more people who want to actually serve the military

Jerremy Newsome:

because they know, oh, wait a minute, when I go through the military and

Jerremy Newsome:

potentially get PTSD and potentially have an addiction problem, and most likely

Jerremy Newsome:

maybe form some type of mental health fear, challenge, stress, frustration.

Jerremy Newsome:

I'm not just gonna get kicked outta the street.

Jerremy Newsome:

I'm actually gonna have a place that's gonna take care of me.

Jerremy Newsome:

Oh, that place is safe and it's not overcrowded, and they're

Jerremy Newsome:

gonna serve me good food.

Jerremy Newsome:

So you know what my worst case scenario is?

Jerremy Newsome:

I'm actually gonna be taken care of by the country that I'm serving.

Jerremy Newsome:

I

Dave Conley:

I.

Jerremy Newsome:

that whole system with a small little, just a little

Jerremy Newsome:

flake of rebranding and ReLove could make some massive changes.

Dave Conley:

And also policies that don't leave people in that donut

Dave Conley:

hole that our last guest ran into.

Dave Conley:

Like, she could either live in absolute poverty on her veterans benefits fits,

Dave Conley:

or she would have to give up her veterans benefits in order to get, you know,

Dave Conley:

slightly better homeless benefits.

Dave Conley:

But she was like stuck in, stuck in this middle hell of, you know,

Dave Conley:

bureaucratic policy nightmare.

Dave Conley:

Hey David just sitting here thinking, you know, what do you

Dave Conley:

think is different or the same?

Dave Conley:

I don't know what's different about the uk.

Dave Conley:

Like you, you do have healthcare, you know, universal healthcare,

Dave Conley:

we don't education system.

Dave Conley:

Like what, what do you see as far as parallels or, you know, things

Dave Conley:

that are different where you live?

Dave Conley:

@DavidJacob_1: It goes back to the same question that you asked at

Dave Conley:

the start, which was about apathy.

Dave Conley:

And it speaks to a collective consciousness that is focused on the

Dave Conley:

idea that if people are homeless, it's 'cause they did something to deserve it.

Dave Conley:

themselves into this situation, they're probably not a great person.

Dave Conley:

Yeah.

Dave Conley:

Sometimes.

Dave Conley:

And now in the UK the one thing that we don't have as a cause

Dave Conley:

is massive medical bill issues.

Dave Conley:

Like people aren't necessarily in homelessness because they have massive

Dave Conley:

amounts of debt and their house has been repoed and they don't have a

Dave Conley:

community around them that will allow them to, get back on their feet.

Dave Conley:

That's not really a thing here.

Dave Conley:

It most likely is mental health drugs or, you know, yeah.

Dave Conley:

Tough times for whatever reason, disability, et cetera.

Dave Conley:

But the problem still exists and the solutions that we are trying

Dave Conley:

so far, as I'm aware, very similar to yours, shelters, remedies across

Dave Conley:

the board, across, you know, mental health and and whatever else.

Jerremy Newsome:

Leslie, and then David, is there anything in

Jerremy Newsome:

this current environment, current situation, even gives you a glimmer

Jerremy Newsome:

of hope, comma, or even a semicolon?

Jerremy Newsome:

Is there something that you see is working or could work that if

Jerremy Newsome:

implemented soon, would really actually make a shift for a dent?

Leslie Bobb:

Great question.

Leslie Bobb:

Uh, I, I always have a glimmer of hope, so yes.

Leslie Bobb:

I, we see, we do see some things work and we do see some things

Leslie Bobb:

that are promising, but maybe not applied in just the right way.

Leslie Bobb:

Um, I have seen a lot of these little tiny home villages.

Leslie Bobb:

I, not a lot, I've seen them pop up these little tiny home

Leslie Bobb:

villages that pop up in the news.

Leslie Bobb:

Our city has been trying to have one, but they just aren't zoned for it.

Leslie Bobb:

And so they've been meeting a lot of barriers that people that are trying

Leslie Bobb:

to start these kinds of things.

Leslie Bobb:

But in other areas, I've seen apartment buildings or tiny

Leslie Bobb:

homes be used for this housing.

Leslie Bobb:

As it sounds like we all kind of agree.

Leslie Bobb:

I mean, that was kind of Finland's main thing was like, let's put a roof

Leslie Bobb:

over everybody's head first and then we can kind of get to the problem.

Leslie Bobb:

So I always have a glimmer of hope.

Leslie Bobb:

I think that our society, particularly in America, but I would guess as humans we

Leslie Bobb:

tend to swing really far on the pendulum.

Leslie Bobb:

America may be more than most.

Leslie Bobb:

Um, so we swing really far one way, but then we self-correct and

Leslie Bobb:

swing really far the other way.

Leslie Bobb:

And I think we're close to an upswing on the pendulum and we're

Leslie Bobb:

gonna be self-correcting soon.

Leslie Bobb:

And I think part of that is the population size.

Leslie Bobb:

So as David was pointing out on a smaller community level, we can,

Leslie Bobb:

we can kick this in the arts, we can like get it out of the way.

Leslie Bobb:

So I think if we can start shifting solution I identity I guess to

Leslie Bobb:

community based again, rather than this.

Leslie Bobb:

Larger society responsibility issue, I think that we could

Leslie Bobb:

really start solving some problems.

Leslie Bobb:

So I am, I'm hopeful there that we can look, we can look next door

Leslie Bobb:

instead of looking to Washington, um, more immediately and start solving

Leslie Bobb:

the problems on smaller scales.

Leslie Bobb:

And that'll spread.

Leslie Bobb:

So that, that gives me hope.

Leslie Bobb:

Getting someone in the administration that likes to look towards solution, uh,

Leslie Bobb:

based ideas is, is also always hopeful.

Leslie Bobb:

We get a new president every four to eight years, so there's always

Leslie Bobb:

something different to look forward to.

Leslie Bobb:

So I definitely think that is a down the line hope, but I'm really

Leslie Bobb:

excited about, about community focus.

Leslie Bobb:

@DavidJacob_1: I guess to, to focus on the, the inverse, right?

Leslie Bobb:

So kind of going against everything that I've said today and, and targeting the big

Leslie Bobb:

macro versus the micro, I don't think that necessarily we need to look forward to

Leslie Bobb:

find something that resembles a solution.

Leslie Bobb:

I think we probably actually need to look backwards.

Leslie Bobb:

So my dad was born in Singapore in the sixties, and one of the big success

Leslie Bobb:

stories of complete and societal reprogramming is Singapore, right?

Leslie Bobb:

Like in 1960 odd, I don't know the actual date.

Leslie Bobb:

Qua Yu, who was the, the.

Leslie Bobb:

President Prime Minister of of Singapore completely revitalized

Leslie Bobb:

this country from essentially a giant swamp in between, Eastern powers

Leslie Bobb:

that weren't exactly happy post World War II and turned it into a massive

Leslie Bobb:

geopolitical center in the far East.

Leslie Bobb:

Right.

Leslie Bobb:

And the way that that happened was because there was this collective

Leslie Bobb:

ideological shift of, yeah, we're a tiny country and we are very divided

Leslie Bobb:

racially and we're very divided, politically and socioeconomically, but

Leslie Bobb:

we are going to become exceptional.

Leslie Bobb:

And that was the collective goal.

Leslie Bobb:

As a result, he engineered the entire country around that ideal.

Leslie Bobb:

And everything changed as the basis of that, right?

Leslie Bobb:

It required a collective ideological shift.

Leslie Bobb:

And then the government actually followed through, right?

Leslie Bobb:

The British had governed Singapore for God knows how many years.

Leslie Bobb:

There was ethnic tension, there was poverty.

Leslie Bobb:

There were like no resources actually in the country.

Leslie Bobb:

But you now have the ability for a single leader to come in and say, no, we're

Leslie Bobb:

fixing this and we're gonna rip it down right to the roots and start again.

Leslie Bobb:

And society became something that became a system that was built with the

Leslie Bobb:

intention of, in the following decades.

Leslie Bobb:

And in the next, now 60 years later, there's something to show for it.

Leslie Bobb:

You look at what happened in Singapore and the goal was that

Leslie Bobb:

they were playing the long game.

Leslie Bobb:

Yeah, this isn't gonna be solved in the next five years.

Leslie Bobb:

It's probably not even gonna be solved in the next 10 years, but give it 10,

Leslie Bobb:

20 years and this is going to go away and we're gonna solve those problems.

Leslie Bobb:

So housing became something that became governmental, right?

Leslie Bobb:

So the whole idea behind the, oh, what was it?

Leslie Bobb:

Hd something, HDB maybe housing system was, we're going to give ownership

Leslie Bobb:

of land back to the population.

Leslie Bobb:

And if you compare that to, you know, the western world, we basically live in cdo.

Leslie Bobb:

We are not like actually owning anything.

Leslie Bobb:

We're renters, right?

Leslie Bobb:

We've, we've commoditized housing to the nth degree.

Leslie Bobb:

the government develops and subsidizes high quality housing and then actually

Leslie Bobb:

maintains it, which is the problem, the government actually has to follow

Leslie Bobb:

through on keeping it up to scratch.

Leslie Bobb:

At that point, if you've individuals who own, quote unquote, that land and it's

Leslie Bobb:

highly subsidized by the government, you now have an ability for social

Leslie Bobb:

cohesion because these people know that they're not necessarily going anywhere.

Leslie Bobb:

They have a stable base to go back to.

Leslie Bobb:

You know Leslie's point from earlier.

Leslie Bobb:

if those.

Leslie Bobb:

Government subsidized houses that are built solely for this purpose that

Leslie Bobb:

actually have affordability baked in.

Leslie Bobb:

Now you have the ability to co-create culture with your citizens.

Leslie Bobb:

And I think from a macro perspective, that's where the

Leslie Bobb:

community style of like small town Americana comes back into the fray.

Leslie Bobb:

Because if you can build that in, well now you're looking at a

Leslie Bobb:

fundamentally different idea because now all of those people are looking

Leslie Bobb:

at the government that basically pulled them out of abject poverty and

Leslie Bobb:

saying, these people actually care.

Leslie Bobb:

I exist.

Leslie Bobb:

And if you look at Singapore now, I would hazard a guess, again,

Leslie Bobb:

don't quote me, plus minus 90% of people actually own their own homes.

Leslie Bobb:

Their social cohesion.

Leslie Bobb:

The company's eco or the country's economy has boomed to the nth degree.

Leslie Bobb:

And I would have a guess that homelessness basically doesn't

Leslie Bobb:

exist, but you gotta rip, rip it out from the root and start again.

Leslie Bobb:

And that has to be a countrywide attempt at social change.

Jerremy Newsome:

Yeah.

Jerremy Newsome:

And to kinda get my semi-final thoughts.

Jerremy Newsome:

I think one very unique subset of people that we, should or

Jerremy Newsome:

could target our entrepreneurs, specifically real estate entrepreneurs.

Jerremy Newsome:

so imagine if file your taxes as a real estate professional, if you did

Jerremy Newsome:

that, a portion of your proceeds or a, a tax or a licensing fee, that did go

Jerremy Newsome:

directly into a homeless pot, if you will, because who would build houses

Jerremy Newsome:

the best for the homeless, if not those who build houses for everyone.

Jerremy Newsome:

And who make money off of that.

Jerremy Newsome:

Because when you said the word government and subsidize those

Jerremy Newsome:

two words, never work, Really.

Jerremy Newsome:

So I don't want, I don't actually want the government to build the homeless housing.

Jerremy Newsome:

fascinating is I think it should fall probably on the burden of entrepreneurs

Jerremy Newsome:

who make north of $200,000 a year say, Hey man, if you're gonna make 200,000 a year

Jerremy Newsome:

off of real estate in this country, cool.

Jerremy Newsome:

Now 5% of everything you make that is going to go directly into

Jerremy Newsome:

this homeless community pool that you mentioned earlier, David.

Jerremy Newsome:

Those are the people that we're not gonna rely on everyone to put in 50 bucks.

Jerremy Newsome:

We're gonna rely on just the people, just the ones that build houses, flip

Jerremy Newsome:

houses, build apartment complexes, build community centers, build shopping

Jerremy Newsome:

malls, real estate investors who.

Jerremy Newsome:

Prey on lower taxes, who buy depreciation, who play the game.

Jerremy Newsome:

They know the game, they've studied the game.

Jerremy Newsome:

Those are the people that fund and fuel and are almost

Jerremy Newsome:

required to have that privilege.

Jerremy Newsome:

To have that tax decrease, to have that depreciation that you're purchasing,

Jerremy Newsome:

you're gonna have to spend a little bit towards fixing the homeless issue.

Jerremy Newsome:

I think that'd be a really, really fun decision that really wouldn't

Jerremy Newsome:

impact almost any real estate investor in a negligible negative way.

Jerremy Newsome:

@DavidJacob_1: So what if then you incentivize them to

Jerremy Newsome:

actually upkeep and maintain it?

Jerremy Newsome:

Yes.

Jerremy Newsome:

@DavidJacob_1: What if?

Jerremy Newsome:

What if you have your taxes?

Jerremy Newsome:

If you actually put all of the money that you would've ordinarily paid in

Jerremy Newsome:

taxes, half of it goes to building it and the other half goes to maintaining it.

Jerremy Newsome:

Congratulations, you just wiped your tax bill.

Jerremy Newsome:

Guest.

Jerremy Newsome:

That'd be so great.

Jerremy Newsome:

Again, I think a, a blend of that would, would, again, would make a lot

Jerremy Newsome:

of sense to me, and I think that's.

Jerremy Newsome:

are the people that I do feel are, like you man, like the nearest and dearest,

Jerremy Newsome:

like you're a really great investor.

Jerremy Newsome:

Like people who are great investors, great business owners people who, who love

Jerremy Newsome:

money, they want to circulate money, they wanna give it to other people 'cause they

Jerremy Newsome:

know that it helps, but they also know that money expands whatever it touches.

Jerremy Newsome:

So if you give it to someone with a mental disease, mental health challenge, massive

Jerremy Newsome:

addiction, guess what's gonna expand it?

Jerremy Newsome:

Those aspects as well.

Jerremy Newsome:

So they know just directly giving someone the money isn't going to be

Jerremy Newsome:

the direct impact of the solution.

Jerremy Newsome:

But finding ways to have people that have money that started from a very rough like

Jerremy Newsome:

myself, to then put yourself in a position of, okay, cool, well hey, I got out.

Jerremy Newsome:

How did I do it?

Jerremy Newsome:

What did I read?

Jerremy Newsome:

Who did I surround myself with?

Jerremy Newsome:

'cause your environment is what's going to expand all of the consciousness

Jerremy Newsome:

that you have about homelessness.

Jerremy Newsome:

And what do most homeless people do?

Jerremy Newsome:

They have to spend time around guess what homeless people all the time who

Jerremy Newsome:

are again, afflicted affected and, and, uh, potentially really strain, strenuous

Jerremy Newsome:

mental disease, mental disorders, or mental, uh, health challenges.

Jerremy Newsome:

So it, it's gonna be very hard for the people who want to escape homelessness to

Jerremy Newsome:

escape because they're surrounded by it.

Leslie Bobb:

Maybe that's, that's your answer, Dave.

Leslie Bobb:

What Jerremy saying?

Leslie Bobb:

Like maybe you tap into a way that people can help doing what they love.

Leslie Bobb:

Because real estate investors love real estate, so having them work on the

Leslie Bobb:

housing issue is gonna be a fun challenge.

Leslie Bobb:

It's gonna be something they can engage in.

Leslie Bobb:

Not everyone loves real estate, but these people like Jeremy's getting

Leslie Bobb:

into need other things besides a house.

Leslie Bobb:

Two.

Leslie Bobb:

So they need, they need financial training, they need nutrition education,

Leslie Bobb:

they need, uh, job opportunities.

Leslie Bobb:

And there are other people who love geeking out on that kind of stuff.

Leslie Bobb:

And if we get everybody a way to help, I actually had started creating

Leslie Bobb:

a, a foundation in California when I was much younger, with that idea.

Leslie Bobb:

It's just matching, matching passions to needs, sort of, maybe that's how

Leslie Bobb:

you get people excited about it.

Leslie Bobb:

Dave, sorry to cut you off.

Leslie Bobb:

Jerremy.

Dave Conley:

No, that's great.

Dave Conley:

I, I'm working on actually booking.

Dave Conley:

Mayor of Newark, New Jersey, and they've done a lot in the homeless

Dave Conley:

area, but they really focused on the affordability problems of their houses.

Dave Conley:

And they changed a lot of things in their policies.

Dave Conley:

And one of the things was ensuring that that builders had, I wouldn't

Dave Conley:

say incentives, but they had or not guarantees, I don't know what the words

Dave Conley:

are, but like their bonds and their, their debt financing was protected.

Dave Conley:

What they had to do for that was ensure that a certain percentage of

Dave Conley:

their homes were whatever they built was affordable and had pathways to

Dave Conley:

people who couldn't afford, that were homeless or, you know, just couldn't

Dave Conley:

afford to live there, could live there.

Dave Conley:

And they've done a lot.

Dave Conley:

You know, I think that there's, know, there's a lot there.

Leslie Bobb:

There is a lot there.

Leslie Bobb:

That's the truest statement

Jerremy Newsome:

Yeah, exactly.

Jerremy Newsome:

Yes it is.

Jerremy Newsome:

So as we wrap this one up, let's just do a fast, little lightning round.

Jerremy Newsome:

Interesting to see what you all think.

Jerremy Newsome:

I'll give you all time to think about it.

Jerremy Newsome:

But what is one word that sums up society's view of homelessness?

Jerremy Newsome:

And it's okay if you've already said that word, but what would that one word be?

Jerremy Newsome:

Whoever wants to go first.

Leslie Bobb:

I feel like maybe disgusting is the one that comes to mind.

Leslie Bobb:

Jerremy Newsome: Disgusting by Leslie David.

Leslie Bobb:

@DavidJacob_1: Tolerated.

Jerremy Newsome:

Disgustingly tolerated.

Jerremy Newsome:

I would agree.

Jerremy Newsome:

I really like that blend.

Jerremy Newsome:

What feeling or truth about homelessness do most people overlook?

Jerremy Newsome:

David.

Jerremy Newsome:

And then Leslie,

Jerremy Newsome:

@DavidJacob_1: I, is it one word again or am I allowed a sentence?

Jerremy Newsome:

All right.

Jerremy Newsome:

you're allowed a whole sentence.

Jerremy Newsome:

@DavidJacob_1: I think there is this idea of discomfort if they really

Jerremy Newsome:

sat and thought about it for any extended period of time, they'd get

Jerremy Newsome:

really, really uncomfortable and then they'd feel compelled to act.

Jerremy Newsome:

So it's easier just to kind of cover their eyes and kind of ostrich them

Jerremy Newsome:

their head into the ground and assume that if I can't see the ghost, the

Jerremy Newsome:

ghost can't see me, just blank it out.

Leslie Bobb:

I was gonna say empathy, but then I realized,

Leslie Bobb:

I don't think that's true.

Leslie Bobb:

I think a lot of people have empathy for the homeless as long as they don't let it

Leslie Bobb:

in too big, like David was just saying.

Leslie Bobb:

But I think I would say in one word that it's fixable.

Leslie Bobb:

I think to David's point earlier, people just, it's normalized, sucks to suck you.

Leslie Bobb:

Poor thing.

Leslie Bobb:

Here's a dollar.

Leslie Bobb:

Whatever.

Leslie Bobb:

Not that this is something that is temporary in someone's life

Leslie Bobb:

and that they can get out of it if given the right support.

Leslie Bobb:

I don't think anybody really, not anybody obviously, but society

Leslie Bobb:

really looks at these people as like in a temporary situation.

Leslie Bobb:

They're homeless people, they're not people experiencing homelessness.

Leslie Bobb:

I mean, even the Bible says that there will always be poor people,

Leslie Bobb:

there will always be homeless people.

Leslie Bobb:

So just be kind to them and help them out, so it's, it's a very like permanent,

Leslie Bobb:

pervasive identity in our minds.

Jerremy Newsome:

Fascinating.

Jerremy Newsome:

Yeah, and I, again, I agree with that piece, like that's

Jerremy Newsome:

always gonna be a choice.

Jerremy Newsome:

Just like there'll always be rich people, there are always the people

Jerremy Newsome:

who don't wanna be rich and they, and consciously, at some point

Jerremy Newsome:

they have to make that choice.

Jerremy Newsome:

And I think I'm a really great representation of that because I have

Jerremy Newsome:

a lot of individuals in my family who choose not to listen to this podcast.

Jerremy Newsome:

also choose not to read a lot of the books.

Jerremy Newsome:

They also make the decision to drink more than they should eat, more than they

Jerremy Newsome:

should and smoke more than they should.

Jerremy Newsome:

Therefore, their health is gonna be impacted negatively more overall than not.

Jerremy Newsome:

And therefore, my exact same genes, the exact same dad, the exact same mom are

Jerremy Newsome:

making different choices that are leading financially a different road than myself.

Jerremy Newsome:

And so ultimately, like there's always gonna be choices that we can make.

Jerremy Newsome:

Like if I became homeless and lost all of my money tomorrow.

Jerremy Newsome:

I would just, I would first of all call one of E three

Jerremy Newsome:

and just stay at your place.

Jerremy Newsome:

But ultimately, like I would make the choice just to not be in that

Jerremy Newsome:

situation for very long and I would remove my ego and start stepping into

Jerremy Newsome:

things and make some phone calls.

Jerremy Newsome:

And, if it happened to me at a younger age, I'd probably still

Jerremy Newsome:

have to make that decision.

Jerremy Newsome:

So we all make decisions, we all make choices, and I think for every listener

Jerremy Newsome:

here, we simply have to make a choice to take an action to some level.

Jerremy Newsome:

with that being stated, I think I would just love to propose

Jerremy Newsome:

for all of our listeners just think about what is an action.

Jerremy Newsome:

And I'll leave it to you, David, and you to Leslie.

Jerremy Newsome:

What's one action that we can all take today to just start chipping away at

Jerremy Newsome:

what we would call currently a prevailing problem of homelessness globally?

Leslie Bobb:

Silence a whole group of people that have a

Leslie Bobb:

lot of thoughts in their heads.

Leslie Bobb:

So that was a good question, Jerremy.

Jerremy Newsome:

Thanks.

Jerremy Newsome:

Yeah, thanks.

Jerremy Newsome:

Well, I'll, I'll, I'll rephrase it.

Jerremy Newsome:

Make it maybe even easier or more poignant.

Jerremy Newsome:

What's one step every listener could take, whether voting helping locally that

Jerremy Newsome:

could shift how we address homelessness?

Jerremy Newsome:

How about that?

Leslie Bobb:

Well, I would like to say for your listeners real quick,

Leslie Bobb:

David, and then I'll let you go.

Leslie Bobb:

I would like to say for your listeners that I am now actively seeking a million

Leslie Bobb:

dollar grant for a homelessness think tank of which you three will first be

Leslie Bobb:

invited to, as well as other experts.

Leslie Bobb:

But David, you go ahead and then I'll, I'll come up with a real answer.

Leslie Bobb:

@DavidJacob_1: I guess the way that when I. First had my first experience with, you

Leslie Bobb:

know, dealing with someone who's homeless.

Leslie Bobb:

Dealing is probably a bad word, but, just learn their name.

Leslie Bobb:

Just treat 'em like people.

Leslie Bobb:

It's really easy to see them as homelessness, or sorry as

Leslie Bobb:

homeless instead of as a person.

Leslie Bobb:

And if there's someone that you see on a really regular basis,

Leslie Bobb:

find out who they are now.

Leslie Bobb:

You don't have to do what I did and sit and listen to their story every day

Leslie Bobb:

for three months, but what's your name?

Leslie Bobb:

Remind them that humanity exists.

Jerremy Newsome:

Come on, bro.

Jerremy Newsome:

Such a great answer.

Leslie Bobb:

That is a great answer.

Leslie Bobb:

I like it.

Leslie Bobb:

I like it.

Leslie Bobb:

'cause if you're unseen as a human, how can you even start?

Leslie Bobb:

How can you even like think that?

Leslie Bobb:

Like how can you even, it's despair, right?

Leslie Bobb:

You just, you feel despair, and when you feel despair, there's no hope.

Leslie Bobb:

And when there's no hope, there's no action to be taken.

Leslie Bobb:

Sounds a good answer, David.

Jerremy Newsome:

Yep.

Jerremy Newsome:

And for you, Leslie, too, again, hey you're going out and saying, Hey,

Jerremy Newsome:

I'm trying to track down this grant.

Jerremy Newsome:

if there's listeners out there that are grant specialists or they'll

Jerremy Newsome:

wanna reach out to Leslie or myself or Dave, no, please let us know.

Jerremy Newsome:

But ultimately, I love that step for you, Leslie.

Jerremy Newsome:

I love that you're taking that action.

Jerremy Newsome:

'cause it's like, Hey, let's get a collective group of people together.

Jerremy Newsome:

Just like David said, that's how you fix problems.

Jerremy Newsome:

You get a group of individuals who care, you put 'em into an environment

Jerremy Newsome:

where change can be created.

Jerremy Newsome:

You motivate that change with thoughts, with actions, with words, with beliefs.

Jerremy Newsome:

And then you go start making those changes by putting in the time and the energy.

Jerremy Newsome:

'cause those are the only things we can really put in.

Jerremy Newsome:

And you can spend time and you can spend energy.

Jerremy Newsome:

So like we have to spend one of these three things in some version of the other

Jerremy Newsome:

to make sure that it actually happens.

Jerremy Newsome:

So I love that.

Jerremy Newsome:

That's awesome, Leslie, that's amazing.

Jerremy Newsome:

David, family, thank you for listening.

Jerremy Newsome:

And for really everyone out there, I really just wanna say our goal here,

Jerremy Newsome:

as you all can know and feel, see and hopefully understand, is to get every

Jerremy Newsome:

perspective on either side of the fence, religious or political, whatever

Jerremy Newsome:

perspectives are truly here to create change and that change to actually solve.

Jerremy Newsome:

societal problems that are here in the United States of America, and to David's

Jerremy Newsome:

point and other countries as well.

Jerremy Newsome:

what this podcast is for.

Jerremy Newsome:

Leslie, David, thank you for being here.

Jerremy Newsome:

Listeners, thank you for being here.

Jerremy Newsome:

Please subscribe to this podcast if you haven't done so already.

Jerremy Newsome:

There's an image of a star all the way to the right.

Jerremy Newsome:

Select that one.

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That means you have a five star review.

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Do that because apparently it helps the algorithm somehow let

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other people know that solving America's problems is happening.

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It's been happening for over six months.

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We have rave reviews, we have rave comment because we truly

Jerremy Newsome:

are making not only change, but deliberate, insightful, thoughtful

Jerremy Newsome:

perspectives that are creating change.

Jerremy Newsome:

They're innovating and evoking emotion, and that's what's gonna

Jerremy Newsome:

create true solutions to these massive problems that are facing an

Jerremy Newsome:

incredible country that is America.

Jerremy Newsome:

So ladies and gentlemen, tag us solve you USA pod.

Jerremy Newsome:

On X or solving America's Problems Podcast on Instagram.

Jerremy Newsome:

This has been another episode.

Jerremy Newsome:

Thank you so much for your time and your energy.

Jerremy Newsome:

you all.

Jerremy Newsome:

Great job DC Conley.

Jerremy Newsome:

Another fun one.

Jerremy Newsome:

I'm glad to see fired up, man.

Jerremy Newsome:

It gets me excited.

Dave Conley:

what did you learn on this one?

Jerremy Newsome:

I really like Leslie's perspective when she used the word

Jerremy Newsome:

that I don't think many people have used in a lot of our problems fixable.

Jerremy Newsome:

It's like, dude,

Dave Conley:

Yeah.

Jerremy Newsome:

has to be this.

Jerremy Newsome:

This has to be fixable.

Jerremy Newsome:

You know, like relatively quickly

Dave Conley:

Yeah.

Jerremy Newsome:

it seems like to me.

Jerremy Newsome:

And what inspired me in this episode is I personally feel like we are actually

Jerremy Newsome:

making legitimate tactical steps.

Jerremy Newsome:

I can begin to see right as president if I reached out and created a.

Jerremy Newsome:

A real estate investor coalition.

Jerremy Newsome:

If you are investing at this scale in one of the 50 states, please

Jerremy Newsome:

do this to end homelessness.

Jerremy Newsome:

Please contribute this, and this will reduce your taxes even more.

Jerremy Newsome:

Create some level of a program or product like that's still entrepreneur based

Jerremy Newsome:

and potentially entrepreneur run that's overseen by a board of directors or a real

Jerremy Newsome:

estate committee or an agency committee.

Jerremy Newsome:

I think that that's actually close-ish for me.

Jerremy Newsome:

That's

Dave Conley:

Mm-hmm.

Dave Conley:

Mm-hmm.

Dave Conley:

Yeah.

Jerremy Newsome:

sure.

Jerremy Newsome:

If I make $60,000 from this house flip, absolutely.

Jerremy Newsome:

Please give $4,000 to X, Y, Z location, community, shelter area so that I

Jerremy Newsome:

know exactly where money's going.

Jerremy Newsome:

There's no conduit, there's no middleman, no one's profiting off

Jerremy Newsome:

of me, and it's going right to someone that can actually help.

Dave Conley:

Yeah.

Dave Conley:

Yeah.

Dave Conley:

I like that.

Dave Conley:

Fixable.

Dave Conley:

Yeah.

Dave Conley:

That's gonna stick with me.

Dave Conley:

And you're right, I am fired up.

Dave Conley:

It's not because of homelessness and it, it isn't almost this topic.

Dave Conley:

It's because, you know, we've done incarceration and, and American justice.

Dave Conley:

We've done health and wellness, we've done education, and now this one, and.

Dave Conley:

We've gotta stop doing stupid stuff.

Dave Conley:

That's what's firing me up.

Dave Conley:

Like, we spend much money and someone is getting filthy rich on the misery

Dave Conley:

of fellow human beings all of those right down to school shooting.

Dave Conley:

Somebody is getting filthy rich and we're not solving the problem.

Dave Conley:

We, you said it, we know how to solve this.

Dave Conley:

Now I, I'm still not sure in my head, I know what we're spending

Dave Conley:

the money on and it's not working.

Dave Conley:

So we, we've gotta stop that.

Dave Conley:

And I think I've kind of come to, we've gotta stop funding this like this.

Dave Conley:

We've gotta cut it off.

Dave Conley:

And gotta change may, maybe we're funding the wrong thing.

Dave Conley:

We keep on.

Dave Conley:

Spending the money on people who are homeless.

Dave Conley:

And I'm thinking that this goes back to society.

Dave Conley:

We have to change the society first.

Dave Conley:

That was like a theme in this one.

Dave Conley:

So maybe it is about shaming or changing society, or changing people's ideas.

Dave Conley:

We shouldn't have any homelessness.

Dave Conley:

And it starts with society saying that this is not acceptable.

Dave Conley:

And then all of the programs flow from that, right?

Dave Conley:

Like we have, we're funding it the wrong direction.

Dave Conley:

We're funding all the programs and hoping for the best.

Dave Conley:

Maybe it's, it's the other direction.

Dave Conley:

know.

Jerremy Newsome:

Yeah.

Jerremy Newsome:

What I learned is, man, that there's a lot of smart people

Jerremy Newsome:

who have been closely impacted,

Dave Conley:

Yeah.

Jerremy Newsome:

by this, who really care.

Jerremy Newsome:

To David's point, he really got me fired up that he, internally, again, he's been

Jerremy Newsome:

around a lot of my very, very high-end programs and coaching and consultations

Jerremy Newsome:

and very frequently he always says like, Hey, I'd love to fix homelessness.

Jerremy Newsome:

And that's because in his mind.

Jerremy Newsome:

He was a huge contributing factor to fixing, helping, and reshifting that

Jerremy Newsome:

one individual that was homeless, that's now no longer homeless because he had

Jerremy Newsome:

a very personal, very kind interaction.

Jerremy Newsome:

Now, David's mentioned a few times that was he the only reason, probably not.

Jerremy Newsome:

But again, he doesn't, no one needs to be the only reason ever that

Jerremy Newsome:

someone's life becomes better.

Jerremy Newsome:

They can be a pivot, they can be a moment, they can be a bright light and

Jerremy Newsome:

a dark space that actually does help.

Jerremy Newsome:

And for David, he feels like he was that flashlight in a dark room for

Jerremy Newsome:

that individual, for that gentleman.

Jerremy Newsome:

And that's what really got him fired up.

Jerremy Newsome:

He's like, holy smokes.

Jerremy Newsome:

Treat these people like people.

Jerremy Newsome:

Treat these beings like human beings and love on them and care about them.

Jerremy Newsome:

Like not some disease, not some leprosy, but love on them.

Jerremy Newsome:

And they probably will no longer be homeless because they feel loved

Jerremy Newsome:

and they feel accepted by society.

Jerremy Newsome:

Holy smokes.

Dave Conley:

Isn't that sort of the summary of, of when we were talking

Dave Conley:

incarceration like, like punishing people doesn't work, but like a

Dave Conley:

Tony Robbins book kind of does.

Jerremy Newsome:

Yeah.

Jerremy Newsome:

Yeah.

Jerremy Newsome:

Really, really interesting, really fascinating, and it's again, just

Jerremy Newsome:

good to see so many people who do care and are excited and are moved

Jerremy Newsome:

and motivated by this, for sure.

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About the Podcast

Solving America's Problems
Solving America’s Problems isn’t just a podcast—it’s a journey. Co-host Jerremy Newsome, a successful entrepreneur and educator, is pursuing his lifelong dream of running for president. Along the way, he and co-host Dave Conley bring together experts, advocates, and everyday Americans to explore the real, actionable solutions our country needs.

With dynamic formats—one-on-one interviews, panel discussions, and more—we cut through the noise of divisive rhetoric to uncover practical ideas that unite instead of divide. If you’re ready to think differently, act boldly, and join a movement for meaningful change, subscribe now.