tv The Stream Al Jazeera December 30, 2020 10:30pm-11:01pm +03
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mr benjamin netanyahu at the airport he was caught passing on classified military information or working as a u.s. navy intelligence analyst at the pentagon last month a large 5 year parole term ended paving the way for him to leave the u.s. could the money always catch up on a website address about his al-jazeera dot com. and one of the top stories on entre syria that is $26.00 people have been killed and dozens have been injured in yemen after an explosion struck the airport in aden it's hack a pit target a plane carrying members of the newly formed saudi backed government all of whom were evacuated safely the international committee of the red cross says one of its employees was killed. the u.k. health regulator has approved the oxford astra zeneca coronavirus vaccine for emergency use the government has already preordered 100000000 doses it paves the
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way for huge expansion of the government's inoculation program millions more people in the u.k. will join the toughest hear of covert 19 restrictions from thursday after more than 50000 infections recorded for a 2nd day we have to face the fact that we've got 2 big things happening at once in our fight against copd one's working for us and one working against us on the plus side we've got to valid vaccines and we're racing as i say to get them out or on the downside there is a new strain of the virus which is spreading much faster and surging across the country. germany's coronavirus daily deaths passed a 1000 for the 1st time on wednesday the health ministry is schrans says the spike in deaths shows things are far from returning to normal germany has started vaccinating the elderly and health care workers the country is in lockdown until
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january 10th but it's thought that's likely to be extended. argentina has become the largest country in latin america to legalize abortion the senate passed the bill by a margin of 9 votes thousands of pro-abortion rights activists separation the victory in a region that has some of the world's most restrictive terminations list. and we several aftershocks in central croatia a day after a $6.00 magnitude quake killed at least 7 people many people whose houses have been damaged spent the night in tents the latest tremors were felt throughout the region including bosnia serbia and slovenia. the stream is next asking if they could have arse can be defeated without addressing homelessness is telling us we can't want to .
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be ok you are watching the stream on today show coverage 19 pandemic and homelessness in america one of the richest countries in the world now i am sure that wherever you're watching the world you have your own stories and your own experiences about homelessness and kovac 19 you know what to do if you're on you tube jumping to the charts and you tube can be part of the conversation. i'm going to say hello to this and maison panel and begun to introduce themselves to you the ticket shall great savvy tell everybody who you are. nice to be here my
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name is marcus shallow and i'm a physician and researcher at university of california san francisco where i have devoted my career to try to recognize that housing is the best medicine and i u.c.s.f. direct the c.s.f. center for all of our populations like a great to have you mark with an h. you have too much today doubly lucky luck with an h. tell everybody who you are what the h. stands for. i mark or bath and i'm the founder of invisible people 25 years ago i lived homeless on the streets of los angeles and now i run a nonprofit called invisible people were we focus on education journalism and advocacy to help end homelessness we are going to see some of the incredible work they do today oh i forgot the dare and this is my last coleridge here live i'm getting. me feel so lucky thank you for saving the lone hand for us. how do you know. ok this show's going to be trouble you'll have luck with
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a team up the detail of what he what he stands for welcome to the story. thanks for having me my name is mark there are a psychiatric apologist and i've spent the last 2 years really focused on the intersection of policy and anti-racism trying to get the united states to finally not be racist so i sleep real well. great great to have you everybody all right let me start with something that i remember seeing 3 months ago so this is a headline here in the guardian newspaper so many newspapers picked it up that's fake it's turned into a homeless shelter with social distancing and marcus you can see that this is an old headline but this was the this was the image that truly truly shocked me look at this is this the way to treat people during a global pandemic oh i was stunned what are you seeing is or was this is for social distancing it's crazy. i mean i think it's
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a really. damning statement of where the united states is with homelessness right now that kind of a pandemic hasn't changed anything but it is really shown us and exploited the fault lines in our community the way that racism shows up in everything that we do you know it has really been a crisis upon a crisis that created this massive health crisis that that place people who are homeless at extremely high risk because they're living in crowded places they 'd don't have access to to hygiene we've seen terrible outbreaks in shelters and i think that that non-response response of placing people outside and painting a line 6 feet apart just shows how far we have to go as so many people have suffered from this pandemic. i mean like margaret embarrassing. we have
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a nation should be embarrassed by how we have historically interacted with folks experiencing homelessness this should be frankly the final nail in the coffin with regard to seeing really clearly that what we do is unconscionable and tomorrow when about racism right i think that like it's really important to know that the majority of people experiencing homelessness in this nation are black and brown and that frankly the reason why we have been able to get away with the treatment that we have is because of that right like it is that it is this huge and of america's quest for them and raised that simultaneously allows us to say to people you don't exist and what you need doesn't matter. let's took. a few half an approach it could invisible people he spent a lot of time with people on the streets he talked to them they tell me a story what happened. i 1st want to address the las vegas photo
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because yes that one is that article in those photos came out it was shocking and there was a lot of uproar about it and there should be but that's how las vegas is treated all melissa missed far before kovac 19 the city uses what a courtyard model where people are sleeping on a sidewalk in a courtyard before for her. 19 came about so yeah everybody's screaming about this but we've been treating homelessness like that for decades. yeah exactly right but we've always in the back right like we've you know we've never actually had an actual humanitarian dignity centered approach to the homeless and so i think that what you know is remarkable is how little have changed to mark's point right like we see the sort of you know sort of before and after but if
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it's just the same before i guess as you're speaking i just want to pull back up this picture because as you're speaking it becomes so clear to every single one of those bundles these are human beings these are people mark i was going to take i had. you know i think as mark and mark were saying that you know the pandemic really hasn't has just amplified the problems that we've had with homelessness it hasn't actually changed things it's increasing danger dramatically but the underlying problems have been there for a long time i think a lot of people with the enormous racial disparities that we're seeing in who lives and who dies with kind of it have suddenly become awakened to what we've always known and has always been true in this country i mean maybe what's different here is the painted lines but unfortunately the overall reality isn't that different from what we've lived with in the united states for far too often. this is that this is some news to some people who live in communities where there are homeless
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people but they to your point mark h. invisible people i want to show a page from your website of invisible people the stories of people from around the world not just from the u.s. and he spoke to brant not too long ago. he is living on the streets right now he's looking for work right now and he explained to you how can you us not to be homeless and also the impact of traffic 19 it's going isn't right. really like a place to lock up my stuff take a shower and just a little piece of the world to close close the door on so that people can go through your stuff and. earlier the coronavirus it closed on the master. that no place to get to i don't hard to go hard to go to the bathroom it is but everybody has now shut the bathrooms down all the fast food restaurants is really where you go or the supermarket or service station and they're always always closed
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even before they're always there under repair or not working or whatever it's very difficult to go to the restroom you almost have to go into a construction site and one of those. it's real practical difficulties right now i will improve ember about a month or 2 months ago we had a toilet paper shortage snow imagined you're homeless and you can't get toilet paper nor can you get access to a bathroom and where it is a real crisis is water. and hygiene i mean with code you have to wash your hands but also you you know homeless people use drinking water. that they get from public bathrooms and you need water to live i think there's something interesting also about brant story that in los angeles a city you know right now the c.d.c.
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has come out with guidelines that are against homeless. so in los angeles advocates and thank god for that they were able to push this have really slowed down the sweeps so now brant in that story if you watch the whole video brant can stay in one place they don't have to move every day they don't have the threat of police every day but to be perfectly clear los angeles denver and many cities even though it's against c.d.c. guidelines are still being homeless camps. yes ma'am. well i was there was there. you know i think why folks in the housing and homes in fact there actually do have to have a who's decision on polling thing and we sent
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a raft right again if cone the fact that the majority of folks experiencing homelessness in the us are folks of color like police interactions are not a. neutral thing right like the police violence and brutality that has been documented in the demonstrations has been you know sort of really lifted so the 4 of the conversation last week is stuff that we have seen folks experiencing almost undergo for years there are tons of headlines right who are least interacting the folks home with that and the brutality that comes out of that and so i think that like we actually again have to have to really clear racism as a core of that and right like i just i want to say really really candidly clearly the police budgets right that comprise like 30 to 50 percent of us the whole budget that's the money that could have people i'm sick of having conversations with mayor of my own mayor right mayor get there and i'm sick of these these conversations we
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don't have the money to provide that they would have the money to do the right thing went to 50 percent of your budget i mean we have 6 helicopters in columbus ohio columbus ohio why do we need to put in los angeles last year 30000000 dollars was spent on homeless leaves 40 sleeps a day now they're stuck i get an e-mail every day from los angeles advocates trying to predict other advocates and people that care or know about the sweet sweets or still happen 30000000 dollars a year they're building bridge shelters and $2000000.00 those sweeps if you took the budget away for sweeps you could build 15 shelters and. that money that they're spending it makes no sense to me but that's the response to homelessness and you want to get gross yes conversation happening on you tube i want to share with
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he said i am in kumar 946 and it says we can't depend on the government for or is this we should help the homeless at an individual level mark. i mean look i think that that is speaking for the united states to say the government hasn't had a role in this on sort of the dispossession for black and brown people of their ability to buy housing by into quote unquote american dream has been a major contributor to them by the way that was sanctioned by the government for many years major contributor to the enormous wealth gaps that we see and that is an enormous cause of homelessness the lack of the lack of affordable housing affordable housing doesn't just support itself affordable housing needs to be supported by the government if we if we get you know come to things and think that magically the market is going to fix this you wind up seeing what we see in the
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united states that numbers don't have so out we have a minimum wage that hasn't kept up with the cost of living we have had a traumatic disinvestment in in housing supports in most parts of the world housing is something that is supported by governments and we don't really have that to the extent that we need that so i guess i would counter that that the market has failed here that you know the living wage in the bay area where i live right now is that what we call the housing range where people could actually afford very modest housing would be $40.00 to $50.00 an hour we're fighting like heck to get the minimum wage up to $15.00 an hour something has to give and that i think i'm afraid to say is gonna need to federal investment or investment in housing investment in increase in our minimum wage that we pay people the job that they do and the recognition that some people will always and have always needed
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support you know it's just that we have different you know we just are in a country where people take this individual view and don't actually believe they sort of have the sense that everything is everyone's individual fault when it just really isn't. i guess i will have and think about this if i may because when we are all talking about an issue that has been an issue in the united states for a very long time also an issue around the world for israel i am wondering if covert 19 could change that i want to have a look at this this is analysts. on twitter doubling has outperformed even best scenarios for travel 1000 mortality among the homeless and drug using populations and leaf is a group that looks after people who use drugs helps them to get out of their drug he's totally duffin says 63 how most people would diagnose because of the 19 and there was one death a fraction of what was predicted in dublin we feel that we were like tell me we
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need to talk this is what he told us a little bit. more in government we have and are very poor as. decisive leadership from the state partnership approach from n.g.o.s are working together. we have. increased housing provision and improved access to drugs like methadone. benzodiazepine and. many other supports in place so combined joint working meant that we were able to reduce the spread of one thing and to drill a hole. ok. i think what we've seen is that this is doable right this is not rocket science there are in fact some parts of the country i think of the state of connecticut that very
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quickly moved a large proportion of the people experiencing homelessness into hotels which it suddenly become abandoned because of the loss of the tourism industry and then moved many of those folks into permanent housing we see in california not as many but i large number of people moved into hotels and we are doing things like i am showing that you can move people into housing this idea that people don't want to be housed it's never been true i do fear though that we're facing an on coming train we have been successful in living some people into hotels we need to get them into permanent housing but but you know i just read this morning in the washington post said an estimated 44 percent of right next folks in renters in the country and 41 percent of black renters country are at high risk of have it shut and if we don't act quickly all of our efforts to move people out of homelessness into housing are going to be overwhelmed by all of the new people who are going to fall into homelessness because of the economic collapse but this is not rocket science
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we know how to keep people safe we've always known how to house people we just need to do it. the idea. about moving people into how that was a promise that. we have a story that's new invisible people cite. you know people. missed it we've got to tell means we're going to give hotel rooms and. homeless people and a phone to keep up on his and he raised 8 talking to devote about what he did. now when. the most famous musician and i'm in town for probably benefit concert. body god there for me i have a stylist had a group you know and we had a woman caught in the asian woman caught in a police. as i get in the wrong sees on a actually i'm not home. oh i've come home as well actually i'm not famous i'm
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homeless and i live and i go far and i'm not leaving this hotel and i may go said come visit every room is hotel for homeless people in a state of emergency. yeah and i want to and i'm glad you transition this because one thing kovac showed that we can take action as a government and have impact prior to go cold they had there was not a lot of inner engine see all of a sudden you know governor newsome is buying hotels townspeople that's amazing so we can't we can't they should have done it before but we have to keep going and if you look at advocates in l.a. had something if you go to project ruki tractor they list daily and inserting 3 days there has been no change meeting right now there are 3601 rooms operational there are 50000 homeless people they've only housed put you
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4000 of them and it's road blocked and i understand they're still in line eating people want at one i think i don't know i sure would have to ask the cd you would have the cd in the county has to push those to make it happen and we know they can because this actually started but let's grow it let's get it so all the rooms are used and then the people are placed in a housing. i wanted it back it's cheap money and i want you to take this one this is the sea take a known addict to mali and its people and government signal homelessness during death based at times to think that gee something about eating a pandemic is delusional. i have often been called the illusion of the that's that's kind of me i mean i think like the bottom line is that we particularly in this country in the us but i think frankly
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globally are at a crossroads with regard to what is our focus and bring a fact of what. we talked about a little bit earlier right like the u.s. has operated for a long time out of the individual a stick in particular a stick notion right that mike you know it's just i gotta do it for me and everyone has to do it for themselves but that's not the only way to live and i think that one of the things that i think we're starting to see is that. point right. in this country in this moment we have to begin to pivot toward the housing justice agenda and then the gender that says like everyone gets how it's full stop and i think that actually means right that we're doing more than in the home with this when we say that we're about to have that because right like we would be talking about a livable wage you're talking about not having the ada diet be that month to month anxiety of like i can't afford it and if one thing goes wrong that's it for me and
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like we have that as a society i think globally have to begin to say it's unacceptable to continue to architect policy in a way that puts by some estimates 60 percent right of the population in a state of precarity almost every month that that's that that actually is what we're talking about right we're not necessarily talking about like oh we have to end homelessness we're talking about we have to end economic repair or for people who shouldn't have to live with that anxiety and that action compass that every. this is one more person i want to add their voice to this conversation that's peggy bailey peggy bass a vice president house and policy to the center on budget and policy priorities this is what she told us earlier whether acting at the federal state or local level policymakers have to prioritize people with the fewest resources because whether they're directly impacted by the virus or not this is a group that will feel the effects of the health and economic crisis for the
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longest. and we know that for people with low incomes housing is their biggest bill so targeting rental them for rental assistance whether medium short or longer term assistance through housing about air makes per makes all the sense in the world it will help stabilize these families and ensure that they don't fall into homelessness or other bad outcomes. this sounds like good advice to any time not just having 1000 you know a global pandemic. i mean absolutely in the united states right now it's very hard to qualify for housing assistance but even amongst those who meet that difficult sort of barrier only one in 4 households who qualify get it it's like a lottery system that you can't even get entered into the lottery and actually the true cost of fully funding those vouchers is not extend astronomical i think it's estimated to be about $41000000000.00 a year to fully fund those vouchers we spend nearly that on homeless shelters and
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frankly if you go up and down the west coast most people experiencing homelessness can even get a bed in a shelter this is doable but we just haven't had the policy energy around we know that if you give people housing vouchers they are no longer homeless and yes we would need to work on the housing production side and some other things but this is a this is a doable thing we just haven't had the energy to do it and i think you know web site is exactly right i mean the fact that that homelessness so disproportionately affects black and brown folks i mean the black community is at 3 to 4 fold risk of homelessness across the united states this speaks a lot to people who has political power who gets to make the decisions and why we have a rare type. in the last 30 seconds of this program. through a t.v. know how well that means i'm going to show you. this it will people t.v.
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because i want to see people who do not have people do not have the resources these are the faces of the people that markets to talk to you always the people who are on the streets that's 3 wishes what do you spend in mind the context of a conversation. i'm just going to go with one right now into it to wrap up. is we have to start influencing. change the black lives matter to defund the police to mean that's the american dream. i had given up that politicians listen to us but black lives matter and defun police has shown that we can speak up and change policy so when it comes to housing when it comes to providing support and solutions to end homelessness we have to speak up and if you're in the united states right now i mean there's
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a lot of advocacy you have to get involved you have to get involved at the local level and at the national at right now the emergency rental assistance and rent legalization act. contact your senators we have to do something change policy get a house. using its capital by half the chance not muck of the 3 ends thank you say much for bringing your way 7 to the string today. and thank you chief for the incompetent compensation to see an extent. business leaders want to buy no prospal.
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holding the powerful to account as we examine the us is role in the world on al-jazeera. eleanor and taylor in on the top stories on our jazeera at least 26 people have been killed and more than 140 injured in the attack in yemen it acapella to target a plane carrying members of the newly formed saudi backed government all of whom we evacuated safely barbara go purports. waving at supporters as they climbed off their flight attendant airport members of yemen's new unity government returned days after being sworn into office at a ceremony in saudi arabia. but the hopes of rebuilding the country after more than 6 years.
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