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political spectrum. today, we welcome stephen eide, he is from the manhattan institute, author of the book, homelessness in america, the history and tragedy of an intractable social problem. stephen eide, there's a quote in your book, quote, people do not become homeless when they run out of money, they become homeless when they run out of relationships. explain what you mean. >> well, i think that, you know, many of us have not personally experienced homelessness. we think about, we have a lot of economic anxiety, you know, what we would do if we lost our job. if things really went south for us economically, instinctively we think, well, we would rely on friends and family, that would be the social safety net before we had to turn to the government safety net. well, the people who are on the streets and san francisco or los angeles, living in a subway system in new york, in many cases that was once the

situation that they faced. at a certain point they lost access to that social safety net, sometimes, as we say, they burned their bridges with friends and family. had to rely on the government. some of them even fell through that safety net as a result. so, you know, what i'm trying to do with my book a sort of rethink this concept of homelessness. one concept that i press that one point is placed listen us. people who are homeless don't have a defined place, any known social order. in some ways, it captures a little bit better on the problem that we're facing that we're talking a lot of people who don't have access to permanent housing. >> one show or viewers some nueron homelessness in america, and have you talk us through them little bit. th is from the department of housing and urban development. their numbers from december, a single night in 2022, approximately 58,000 people were experiencing homelessness in the united states.

60% of those who are in shelter locatis. 40% i'm sheltered. 28% experiencing homelessness did so as part of a family with children. on a single night, more than 30,000 homeless people were under the age of 25. people who identify as black make up just 12% of the total u.s. population, but comprised 37% of all people experiencing homelessness. veterans experiencing homelessness declined in 2022 by 11%. what do you see is most important in those numbers? >> well, there's a lot there. i mean, what i appreciate about what you're doing there is to illustrate the complexity of the problem. we're talking about this umbrella term homelessness that groups under it a lot of different groups. all of whom were struggling, most of them struggling with a few different problems. but in order to make some progress, we really need to

make more of an effort to break it into its parts and talk about what we can do individually with some of these different groups instead of just trying to talk abstractly about this group as a whole, the homeless. >> can we shelter all the homeless in this country if we wanted to do that tonight? why is so many of that group unsheltered? >> well, when we talk about building housing for the homeless programs, we can build them permanent housing, give them a unit that they can live in for the rest of their lives, or we can set up some sort of shelter program, meaning temporary housing, a program, it's expected you, you know, you're not gonna stay in it for the rest of your life, but it's not the streets. shelters have a bad reputation. lots of survey data in which people on the street explain why they don't go into shelters. but you're always gonna be

better in shelters and you are on the streets. the streets, it's impossible to exaggerate on how vulnerable you are, how much more likely you are to be victimized in the story then in a shelter. but it's very difficult to persuade everybody on the street that they're going to be in a shelter. so, frustratingly, a lot of times, what happens in the expend shelter programs, in new york city, for example, expended shelter programs dramatically. there is even a right to shelter in new york city. there is a hard-core who insist on remaining on the street. a lot of the problems, a lot of the public outcry stem from that small but very significant, very troubled population. >> the book is homelessness in america, the history and tragedy of an intractable social problem. that's what we're talking about with stephen eide, author and senior fellow at the manhattan institute. here's how you can call in, it's 202, 748, 8000. if you live in eastern central time zones in this country, 202,

74, 8001 if you're in a manner pacific time zone. and then a special line for those who have experience with homelessness, 202, 748, 8003. go ahead and start calling in. stephen eide, as folks are calling in to the sub head of your title, the intractable social problem, this i you write in the book, americans react to homeleness with a mix of anger, compassion, perplexity, and frustration. little pgrs ever seems to be made. homelessness perst despite years being a top priority of politicians in major cities, and despite the billions and public resources devoted to it. ideally, one spending on a social problem goes up, public concern over that problem goes down. homelessness in america, has not followed that trajectory. why? >> well, we seem to have a problem of not making a better use of the resources where

devoting to it. rnmentyou know, this cannot be a study of government neglect. the places that are the wealthiest, also with the most political commitment to taxing and spending those resources on homelessness, new york in california in particular, they've made the least amount of progress. california is a place whose reputation really is defined by its homelessness crisis. more than any state in america. the resources devoted to homelessness in california are simply staggering. i think that in california in particular, you have a problem with lack of enforcement. there's been a drawing back on the criminal justice dimension of the response as we're investing more in social programs. those two elements need to be going, moving along separate tracks together. and so, if you're just, if the idea is just that, you know,

we're going to get everyone off the streets, you don't run out of tents, providing them with permanent housing, california, you see that experiment that in recent years, and the success has been very modest because it's been unable to stop the flows, even as they've been expanding resources and programs. so, we really need to do more rethinking of our response to the problem. that's been going on in recent years. >> on the response, traditionally, whose job is it to lead that response? the local level? the state level? the federal level? >> yeah, well, i think the modern homelessness crisis developed in the early 1980s. it was thought of as a local problem. essentially, it's a cities responsibility for it. as our knowledge of the nature

of the crisis shifted, we understood about state governments probably hold some responsibility. for example, if you talk about the mental health dimension of homelessness, state governments always have the lead on mental health. so, if there's a mental health problem there, we have to talk about the state role. perhaps the county rule. those are big players in some states. the housing rule, like -- that has a lot to do with local policy, regulations on housing, we lost a lot of quality of cheap housing that the homeless used to rely on. a lot to do with local policy. so, who is responsible? who created these problems? it points directly to the local and state authorities. the federal government does get involved in the 19 80s. substantially as someone who writes checks. we have a system where there are a lot of state and local resources devoted to the problem. big spending jurisdictions,

particularly new york in california. but the federal government's role has expanded in terms of its funding. california, new york, they do land federal government. you especially see the federal governments influence in places that don't spend a lot of their own resources. places in the south, midwest, where the problem is smaller than on the coast. and because they devote so little resources, they're very affected by the federal government, very depend on the federal government, very influenced by with the federal government wants to deal. and so, it's actually a little bit different in different parts of the country what type of state, local, federal mix you're talking about behind this homeless services system. >> has there ever been a homelessness czar, a cabinet level position? and do you think that would help fix this problem? >> well, the position that sometimes referred to as a

homelessness -- head of the federal agency called the united states interagency council for homelessness. what that agency does, it's a very small, its job is to sort of coordinate the other agencies, health and human services, hud, the veterans administration. who have some sort of responsibility for homelessness. and so, usages supposed to coordinate that. in itself, it doesn't have a big budget, it doesn't have a lot of resources, it's exclusively responsible for, and in practice, it mostly functions as a -- for what the current administration needs to be done on homelessness. it's a mess of a problem. because, you know, it's not just about housing, it's about behavioral health, it's about law enforcement. prisoner reentry. so, we do, you know, try to develop these individual

programs that are just sort of for homeless funding, homeless grant programs, homeless services, agencies rep a city level. but that then sort of compounds the bureaucratic complications that it was supposed to be a solution to fix things. you know, in response to your question, in this case, it's a lot of these questions, with centralization and help. well, theoretically, centralization would help at least as far as providing more accountability. however, are you really talking about taking away authority from these other agencies? that's probably unlikely to happen. >> what solution on any level do you think would help the most homeless people in this country right now? >> well, i have been a critic of the current approach that the most influential -- housing first, it certainly the approach that's most influential at the federal level, which maximizes the

amount of research that goes towards permanent health, saying without any expectation of service participation, sobriety of work, participation and services, that's where the action is these days. we've invested a lot of those types of solutions, low barrier solutions. and not as much work and sobriety oriented programs for the homeless population. i think that was a mistake. and i think it would help the homeless themselves, the communities facing this problem, if we did a certain rebalancing of programs that were where we devoted more resources than currently towards homeless people who were capable more than just sort of, you know, being in a private apartment, not up to much else. people who are capable of work, people who are capable of sobriety. those people really have

trouble accessing programs that can support them. in those efforts right now. so, that's the type of, you know, flip the switch recommendation that i can spend most of my time focusing on right now. >> stephen eide, author of homelessness in america, -- here to talk about it during our authors week series. with us for about the next 40 or 45 minutes, taking your phone calls. jeff is up first in the segment in frederick, maryland. on that line for those with experience with homelessness. good morning, jeff. >> good morning, how are you doing? >> i'm doing well. you are on with stephen eide. >> stephen, i was just actually the first, the first comment that resonated was when you classified it as a loss of relationships rather than, you know, a loss of just the physical place to stay. that really, you know, it boils

down to the root cause. that brought up, you know, a few different ways that i see it happening. ways that, you know, one of which i had, i mean, more than one of which i've experienced. and whether you're in a relationship, as far as in a spousal, you know, in spousal function, like a significant other living with a family. and that goes south, all of a sudden, you know, whether it's courts, living arrangements, or being from a different city, you know, all of a sudden you're left without a home. there is also what i have begun to think about recently is, you

know, a lot of people growing up, you see inherit, you know, a parent to stay, even just a home. more and more, i think, i have been seeing the generation that's, you know, that's our parents now, i'm in my 30s, and this is dependent upon income class. a lot of our parents are taking equity out against their homes, you know, whether it's because they don't get enough from retirement or whatever their living situation is, maybe they're having to support their children that are now having a higher cost of living, harder to make it is a single person or single parent. and that is drawing from them. for every reason but maybe, you know, when your parent, your last living media family, that may put you out, it might come

as a surprise to some, oh no, the bank is actually -- that may, that may be something you don't figure out until you see a will or lack thereof. >> jeff, let me pause there and let stephen eide jump in. what are you hearing? >> yeah, well, you know, when we talk about the sort of intersection of the social, economic factors that some people have homelessness within the family. we are talking about how he re-distributor share resources. within the family community. in some cases, dependency can bring family members together. you know, too much independents or too much of a fall sense of independence separates families and makes it harder to repair those bonds. but if you don't think about how you're going to be sharing resources long term and have,

you know, a very clear eyed approach to that, that can really create a lot of strain and ultimately lead to less resources being available to you then you thought. so, these are very, you know, like, discreet, intimate, these are problems that are hard for government policy makers to get out these problems in families. how do you keep families together? how do you make families better at sharing resources among themselves? so, that's one reason why, even though we know that there are problems, but are at play in some of these household crises, you know, what could government do to make those situations better? i think that the hard question to answer. >> dorian's and washington. good morning, you are next. >> good morning. i hope you will let me finish.

i have watched c-span, all of your channels for years. i believe one thing that's a big problem, i would like to see you do a program on it. when everybody had to go online, older people do not know how to do that, the phone books don't even list all the phone numbers and i. you cannot, you can hardly use a phone book. and if you do get online and you manage to order something from somebody else, their smartphone, they'll try to call you back, you don't have a phone, you don't know how to use it, then they don't even come to your house. >> bring me to the issue of homelessness. >> yes, i tried, for instance, i tried to get an insurance policy for my daughter in california, trying to call,

just make a phone call, and trying to find out something about it, i could not even do that for her because they referred her to the website. i would like you to do a program on the change -- >> why does that connect to the issue of homelessness? >> because people cannot get service. they cannot do anything without a credit card and a smartphone and knowing how to use it. i would love to see you do a program on that. >> thanks for the call. stephen eide on the other shoe? >> well, yeah, i mean, i remember earlier on you rattled off statistics about, i think you had one portion of seniors that were homeless. sometimes you see articles about elderly people, part of the homeless population, perhaps it's increasing in some places. you know, when we're trying to divide this up into different kinds of problems, there is the problems that are

administrative in nature and then there's the ones that are political in nature. and dealing with encampments as a heavily political very fraud issue. it's not just a question of how we organize -- in the case of seniors, it should really be just more an administrative problem. if you have a problem with seniors falling into homelessness in your community, you probably have something organized poorly in terms of your service system. because they qualify for entitlements. the neighborhood citing problem of providing housing for people, many neighborhoods are not enthusiastic about the idea of hosting a shelter for 75 to 100 mentally ill single man. most neighborhoods are much more comfortable with the idea of hosting senior housing. that should be less of an issue. so, whether you're not prioritizing it appropriately or just oversight, maybe your community is distracted elsewhere, reducing any senior

related homelessness challenges, seniors becoming homeless, that should be something that government, even in america, when it seemed so just functional a lot of times should be able to wrap its arms around. >> your book is about the history as well of homelessness in this country. you just mentioned shelters, there is a shelter just a few blocks from where c-span is in this building on capitol hill. the mitch snider shelter. who is mitch schneider? >> mitch schneider is the most famous and almost certainly the most influential homelessness advocate in american history. the advocacy organizations play a really outsized role in shaping homelessness policy. if it seems to you that a city where we as a nation are doing something different with homelessness than what most people would support, that is because most people don't follow the issue as intensely as certain advocacy organizations, for whom it's

their job. just to follow homelessness policy. they're broadly supportive of accommodating encampments, certainly has been first policies. they're critical of any sort of behavioral requirements exchange for the result of housing benefits. mitch schneider was the most important advocate in history. he was active in the d.c. scene in the 19 80s. he's staged a lot of spectacular protests in lafayette square and elsewhere in d.c.. i would say that one major impact he had, although he had a number, was to federalize the issue very quickly. it was not obvious that homelessness needed to become the responsibility of the federal government as it did. there's a lot of reasons, i alluded to earlier, why thinkinges ts was essentially a problem created by states and cities. th suld be responsible with dealing with it but because he was so active on

the d.c. scene, he relatively rapidly, i would say, convince federal lawmakers to pass legislation, authorize funding. as a result, ronald reagan left office with what was in place, what remains the most important federal program on homelessness. that is what i would say mitch neither's main legacy was. >> tacoma, washington, sean on the line. for those with experience with homelessness. good morning. >> good morning. >> go ahead, you are on with stephen eide. >> hi, i just wanted to share my experience in homelessness. actually, my homelessness darted from when i was 14. i was removed from my mom's home, from abuse, personal abuse. from my mom's husband. i have been involved with human trafficking, sexual abuse. i have domestic violence, gun

violence, everything. i'm 62 now and, like i said, i have been homeless pretty much 90% of that time. the resources are out, there there's so many resources. but you have to fit a certain criteria. you need to be actively using, we need to be sleeping in your car out in the rain, in a tent to get any resources. then, what i'm finding with our resources here in tacoma, washington, we have the housing resources that get homeless mail, they're out there. they have all these plans to has people. but instead, were being stolen from, we're being lied to. numbers are being lied about. and we have nobody that we can turn to that i have been

looking for. the leader of the d.c. will i.s. program, the leader of the homelessness. who runs this? who runs that? i have nothing, i have children. i've been homeless with my child. i get no resources because they don't fit their criteria and because i've done 17 years in prison. so, what is it? what are these programs set for? what are they designed for? what i'm finding out is the programs in our government is doing exactly what they're supposed to do. what they're designed to do. and that is to keep as homeless, because where their job security. >> thank you for sharing your story. stephen eide? >> sean, thank you also for sharing your powerful story. there is a lot in what you just said.

i think, when we talk, the system is very often people who are homeless currently, or have been homeless in the past, say that the system is impossibly complicated to navigate. why am i shuffled around through these different programs? who do i talk to? who do i even hold responsible if something went wrong for me? someone broke a promise to me. people often feel lied to all the time. so, in terms of trying to build a better system, we have to think about some of that complicated-ness of the system. does it have a legitimate reason or an illegitimate reason? sometimes, some of those with that complicated, is that fragmentation is there because we are trying to design programs for people in a specific situation. we want programs, let's say,

for ex offenders. but we also want programs for people with substance abuse who have no major prison record in their background. sometimes people get taught caught between. which ones for me? what if i fit both criteria? but it makes sense to have different types of programs. what is less legitimate it's one government creates more bureaucracy in response to its existing bureaucracy. creating another agency, another program. that makes adjust more bewildering for people to think about what they need to be pursuing, but they need to be focusing on. when you are talking, we need to build the systems that are optimally responsible to people who are sincerely motivated to improving their, lives making their way out of homelessness. whatever happened in their past, right now, they are locked in. they're trying to move up the ladder. can we be confident that we are

meeting those people where they are? doing everything we can to help those people? because of the fragmentation, because sometimes, this is another thing that shawn alluded to, it seems to be the case that we are overly focused on the people who are the worst, off the hardest cases. and the people who are trying actually get taken for granted. as if they are the ones, similarly to any school classroom, where the kids who are just doing okay, they can be motivated to do more, they get overlooked because of the trouble cases getting all the attention. that is also something that we are grappling with. and the state of washington is another place, like california, where, as she alluded to, resources are just so staggering. how do you bring those resources to bear, said approach brent program with them to make systems that are not too complicated for people to navigate and really beat people where they are? in a way that isn't biased

against the people who are the most motivated to improve their lives. >> about halfway through our discussion with stephen eide, joining us as part of our authors week series on the washington journal. his, book homelessness in america, the tragedy of an intractable social problem. but stephen eide, also senior fellow at the manhattan institute. what is the manhattan institute? >> manhattan institute is a new york city-based public policy think tank. it's a center-right think tank. and we are focused on domestic policy and particularly the problems that cities face. >> new york city, facing its own problems with homelessness. it was earlier this month that new york city mayor adams announced a new policy on homelessness, when it comes to those dealing with mental health issues i in voluntarily, getting them help if needed. this is about a minute from his

announcement from earlier this month. >> no more walking by or looking away. no more passing the buck. going forward, we are focused on action, care and compassion. if severe mental illness is causing someone to be unsheltered and a danger to themselves, we have a moral obligation to help them get the treatment and care they need. today, we are embarking on a long term strategy to help more of those suffering from severe and untreated mental illness find their way to treatment and recovery. it begins with an immediate shift and how we interpret our obligation to those in need. and calls upon our outreach workers to take deeper actions and more intensive engagement.

can no longer deny the reality that untreated psychosis can be a cruel and all consuming condition that often requires involuntary intervention. supervise medical treatment and long term care. we will change the culture from the top down, and take every action to bring care to those who needed. >> stephen eide, that announcement from eric adams office. what was your reaction to that? and what has been the policy that led to that announcement? >> it's something that i followed closely. i've written in support of mayor adams's initiative. what he's getting at is one thing i talked about in my book, which is sort of the paradoxes of compassion. the paradoxes of compassion in modern american society. we take ourselves often, i think, as more compassionate than previous generations.

more tolerant. don't use corporal punishment as much as previous generations did, we seem like a gentler society that one in the past. but one big exception to that is just the indifference with which we passed by as we go by people suffering in the street. some people suffering with serious mental illness living on the street, in the subway system, obviously deteriorating. obviously not getting better. what mayor adams is saying is that you don't need to wait until that person is actively suicidal, actively attacking someone to intervene. to initiate some sort of clinical intervention and start the process towards involuntary treatment. these people on the streets, in the subways, they have been

approached by a reach workers. they have certainly been offered services, they have declined those services. there you might call service resistant cases. the case of those people who are seriously mentally ill, and that is the cause of their service forces tense. of their inability to pursue the services offered to them, we need to be talking about involuntary treatment. and what he is saying is that the law does not -- there's a popular misconception among many frontline workers that they need to wait until this person is really troubled. essentially violent. you don't need to wait, the law allows you to intervene just well someone is deteriorating. if that deterioration is severe enough to bring that person in for a clinical intervention. so, it's trying to move away from an overly passive and essentially in different, neglectful approach to peoples untreated serious mental illness, who are living on the

streets. to one that is more proactive. >> like it to the state of washington. this is bob into coma, you are on with stephen eide. >> how is it going today? >> going, we'll go ahead, with your question? >> i'm looking at the numbers and according to the numbers it's close to 13% minorities in america. and it's over 39, 40% minorities who are homeless. this doesn't really seem like a -- it seems like a minority homeless problem. i'm wondering, how did redlining play into? this had systemic racism play into this? that is a criminal justice system play into this? because i know that a lot of people, once they left from the criminal justice system, certain things they don't have access to because they are denied those things. , so i'm wondering, are we looking at this as a overall thing? i re-looking at this as basically minorities not being housed? because of the history of

america. because even the has been a community, i think they're at 18% and they're like at 25% of the homeless. so, it seems like it's mostly the minorities. i was wondering -- >> bob, let's take up that issue. stephen eide? >> good question. there is no question that homelessness is disproportionately minorities, disproportionately black especially. what's weird about the history of the phenomenon, that's what i spent a lot of time researching, is that homelessness used to be actually disproportionately white. when we are talking, we didn't use the term homeless back in the 50s or the 1890s, but the population who was sort of very poor, not attached to families or communities, a place-less population, if you will. used to call them hobos, vagrants, traps, et cetera. there were people who primarily

live in the schedule area, white guys. the black population of america was certainly extremely poor that time and they also experienced an enormous amount of social oppression, social discrimination. but for whatever reason, that did not lead them into the homeless population, essentially. that starts picking up and completely flipping, actually, in the latter decades of the 20th century. when you start seeing more and more black people comprising the population, living out of the subways, living on the streets and so forth. there is no question, as he eludes to in his call, his question, that this intersects with the higher rate of involvement in the criminal justice system and other social problems that we see with the black population. so, when it gets that just what

type of problem you're talking about. talking about somebody with a long involvement in the criminal justice system and who is now homeless, which of those is the underlying problem? that's very difficult to disentangle. maybe, certainly if we had that crime in america, if we had less criminal justice involvement, we would have less homelessness, almost certainly. but is that an easier problem to get at the end to get at the taking homelessness had on or crime head-on? i don't know. but it's the same question that we ask in all these different policy areas. and it's just very difficult to disentangle. but i do want to emphasize that racial dimension of it, because i think it is lost sometimes in the debate, in terms of the history of the thing. >> just north of new york city, west harrison, new york, this is russell.

good morning. >> hi, stephen, you seem very well informed and i have a question about the relative cost of housing compared to the ability of the population to pay, how it's changed over the years. that's the first question. the second one is, do you think by the federal government putting money into housing, it actually increases the cost of housing? it causes an inflationary spiral, making housing less affordable. you're very honest about the right center institute, the manhattan institute. but i wonder. usually, i think you'd support getting government out and helping people. when the government helps, you watch out, that's what reagan said. i wonder if you think almost people will be targeted for management because of the high anxiety felt with serious mental illness. because you're living in an insecure united states where there's animate for everyone. the disease and everything. i think the left foot pointing at that local people are way

and whether the government increases the cost of housing. thank you very much, stephen. >> to take your first question, they focus on in my book, i focus on the four main causes. unstable, families untreated serious mental illness, lack of law enforcement and also housing. in all four of those cases, we're talking about big changes over the last decades of the 20th century. i think those best explain the problem that we face right now. housing, if you look at the places with the highest homelessness rates, it's not a coincidence that new york and california's difficult to find low right departments for housing. it's expensive for everybody in those places. expensive for the middle class. in terms of the way that hasn't

dynamics make it different and drive homelessness, it's just a scarcity of very low rent departments that somebody with very little income can pay for on their own. this didn't used to be the case in america. we just have a lot more bad quality has-ing, but that was also very cheap and, as a consequence, back in the 50s, it was not that much more difficult for a very, very poor person in san francisco or new york to pay for their own housing. nowadays, you can pay for very other consumer goods. not so much housing. something really really went wrong with housing. particularly over the latter decades of the 20th century. we're still living with that now. and we don't have very good solutions for that, because the standard solution, to have government essentially replace the role of the sort of small scale landlords and providing lower and housing to very poor people, you're just chasing the

dragon. the units are very expensive to build, they can't bring them online fast enough and they just can't keep up. all these people keep falling into homelessness and it's just a trickle in terms of the number of units being brought online to solve the homelessness, year in and year out. the terms of the second question of dependency, i do believe that, in terms of thinking about the larger questions, what kind of society do we want to build. how do we want to reunite families and communities? we really do need to be talking about the risk of dependency of over reliance on government benefit programs. i think, that within family units, aisles units are most likely to stay together, stay cohesive in such a way that they will be able to help each other respond to emergencies, look after one another. if everybody is contributing. when you have somebody in your family who is just taking a lot are not contributing, that creates strain. it does i think help the family

aspect of the problem when we try to design these programs to promote things like work and sobriety. but that's what we're talking about. there is no serious question of really dismantling the welfare state. of cutting back on these programs, let it rip, get the government out of the business of providing subsidies, income support. it's just not realistic. you're talking about a situation with the welfare state that hasn't existed within anyone's lifetime. in my mind, it's not do we have government benefit programs, but how big do we want them to be. what their eligibility should be, what kind of expectations do we want to come along with the receipt of government benefits? >> you mentioned your book, homelessness in america, it's a lot about the history of homelessness in this country. and you are mentioning terms a

few minutes ago, that we didn't use the term homelessness back in the day. we used a hobo or vagrant, tramp, bomb, drifter. did those terms mean different things over the years? where did they all just mean homeless? >> good question. yeah, they had a specific meaning. if you're focusing on, for example, hobo, bum and tramp. those were particularly common in the early, late 19th, early 20th century. when we had lots of people riding the freight trains, traveling in these huge masses of migratory workers. native migratory workers who just seasonally went around working the farms. building america in many cases. the hobo was someone who was a worker who moved around. the tramp was someone who moved

around but didn't work as much. i who sort of scrounged up an existence based upon his wits. tramp swear particularly of interest to that many riders, such as jack london, who went around documenting this culture. the bombs were often retired or broken down, disabled former trump, former hoboes who didn't work and didn't move. so, they really had a specific meeting. , again these are terms these guys used to mugs themselves. sometimes people use them with a sense of pride. hobo is sometimes used with a sense of pride. now, obviously, they sander insulting and we don't use them anymore. but if you push through, that you can really capture something that's very interesting about the phenomenon as it was back then. and maybe the most interesting about them, i most obvious fact, i is that these trump had

nothing to do with anyone's housing status. people were not defined by their housing status like they are now, when we use this term, homeless to describe everybody. >> to the wolverine state, this is kathy in potosi, michigan. >> >> the task, good morning. thank you and good morning, stephen. my first experience with homeless people was after a concert in flint in the 1970s. a gentleman who was alcoholic i believe, he is saying to us for some money. within the next year, we found him, my sister and i and a friend, lying on a bridge across the flint river and we took him to the hospital. currently, i'm working with a young man who had some severe childhood trauma and there was enough money in the family that was never an issue. but he's in the kent county jail again. i support him, he's tried

living out of a storage unit. but of, course there's no running water. he keeps working so hard to try to make it, but his criminal record, which is nothing really serious, it stopping him from being able to rent. because he would be diligent in making those payments so. but it's the saddest thing, and i'm really quite worn out, because this is been going on for years. but there is no help out there. the government doesn't help abuse victims overall. so the government doesn't help the homeless people. i and there should be housing provided. and we can do it, we know how to do that. it's just a matter of getting rid of the discrimination against people and really wanting to help people. and i see it here in pataki, i see it at a certain place, and i look over the water there, in the summertime they sleep there. i've seen it many a time riding my bike in the morning. it is never addressed.

and i spoke to the authorities at the city council about it. but whether anything will ever happen, i don't know. >> kathy, thanks for the call. i stephen eide? >> thank you for that account, and thank you for your work and helping the individual homeless people. i don't know if you're doing it on a professional basis or a purely voluntary basis. but regardless, it's easy to forget, that when we talk about system failure and how much governments let people down, we've already touched on that, systems, government agencies, i made up of individual people who are often doing the best they can with very troubled circumstances. and that's a very common, they don't get as much credit as they deserve. you in places like flint, where housing is, i strongly suspect, much cheaper than in california and in new york, in the midwest,

old rust belt cities. you find places that are very poor. but housing is more affordable because the population decline partly. because so many people have left, there's more housing stock that people can access compared to san francisco, where there is nothing, so, you can make more progress. but oftentimes, we have this mitch's match where the resources are being devoted to these extremely sensitive -- or be a drop in the bucket. there's just a drop of the bucket. it is about these poor places with smaller problems, such as in the midwest, like flint, kind of a tragic irony that this research could probably go a lot farther. but were unable to do much about this mismatch problem. it seems, at the moment. >> to paris, tennessee.

jeff on the line for those who have experience with homelessness. good morning. >> yes, my name is jeff. i was homeless from about 1988 until about 2003. and between those years, i was married to a beautiful lady to get off the streets. she needed a green card. but i fell into drug addiction really bad. methamphetamines and i did unspeakable acts to get my drugs. most of the people i knew on the streets were basically i severely drug addicted. i knew a few mentally ill homeless people who could not manage their money and would actually get robbed by drug seekers. so, what happened to me was the cartel started taking over san diego. and they are making homeless people deal drugs for them. and i was scared to get caught. and they cut one guy's hand

offers feeling a spoonful. anyway, i want to talk about the solution. for me, it was basically i started going to aaa. everybody that let me stay in their house, i stole from so i could get high the next day. that was another reason i was homeless. i stole from my wife, that's why we're not together a more. she's in mexico. she's a very beautiful lady from italy. but basically god, good orderly direction. i was magic odd, somebody introduced good orderly direction. what that meant to me was not spending your money on methamphetamines and poor no mags and stupid stuff like that. well, i had to leave san diego because of the gang problem. i went back home. i was kind of welcomed there but i wasn't, because i was so screwed up. then in a blackout, i'm still a

junkie, but i'm sober now. but i was on a blackout and i lost everything i had again, because of my drug and alcohol problem. well, my family, they're very religious and i love them, now they love me i. they help me get my disability and they help me basically get a piece of property with my back pay and a place to live, it is paid for. >> jeff, thanks for sharing your story stephen eide? >> thank you for that powerful account. i think that the more we learn about the success stories, particular success towards with recovery, the more those details of family, a a, faith, social support come out. disability benefits, housing, anybody is trying to work on recovery would want those to be

in the picture. but to make sure that the process takes, that it holds, it just seems so essential that people have something to recover for. into the point where they're in a position to make a contribution, so that they can show to their social support, their family, their network that they've changed. so the family doesn't have to just take their word for it. that comes up a lot in these stories of recovery. i think, again what we do with that from a policy perspective may be complicated. but it really grounds us in terms of making sure that we understand clearly how this is going to look, if it is going to be successful. >> time for just one or two more of those stories. this is rj, on that line for those with experience out of homelessness. it of medulla, oklahoma. good morning. >> i -- there's so many factors to this. i was an abused child, i

started using iv drugs at 13. you're not going to have very many relationships when you start like that. then you go out and you just keep doing bad things. you'd be an athlete, you're good athlete, you go to college anyplace boards, okay. but you're staying on drugs this whole, time shooting dope for 20 years. and then, i understand the relationship part, there's so many factors to that. if you've never done drugs and if you had good role models as a child, there's so many people that get abused as children that people don't even know about. when they grow up, and intensifies. and if they don't know about, it then they just don't know. anyway, my story real quick. i played college football, got a bachelors degree. got married, still was doing drugs. she kicked me out for shooting cocaine over and over again. so, then i went to prison.

as homeless in 91 and 92. got out, was a bad fever, bad drought at it. went to prison a 95 for eight months. something happened to me in there, i don't really know what. then i went to treatment after that and i started believing in something besides myself. i'm in, i started looking at something else, you know? another light in the sky, whatever you want to say. i or power. when that happened, it changed. it wasn't just -- anyway, then i went to treatment, got out of treatment got clean and then it went back to college and got my masters degree. then as a therapist for 14 years and i just retired. there is hope, but there's so many factors to, it man. it's just really tough. >> rj, thanks for that story. stephen eide? >> yeah, he seemed, as has also come through another stories of recovery that we've talked about today, that has a lot to

do with the individual decisions that he made along the way. sometimes you talk about needing to find the right program, needed to find the right medical intervention treatment. recovery happens to peoples on individual efforts. there's nothing particularly medical, it sounds, that really makes a difference. i could be important for some people. but for a lot of people, it's just deciding to change. and how do you translate that into policy? i think it's very complicated. >> a couple callers, and that caller as well, bringing up the idea of faith. one thing we haven't talked about today is as much of the role of faith-based organizations in this effort to fight homelessness in this country. and how that intersects with some of the state, local and federal issues that we've talked about. >> yeah, faith-based groups, missions, some of whom have been around for over a century, a crucial part of the homeless service system and communities

across the nation. particularly those places that don't have a big government system, places up the coast, in rural areas. there's a limit to how much you can expect them to do. some of them with violence and schizophrenia, you can't realistically ask a faith-based group to take that on. that really needs to be a government responsibility. and someone does have to take that on. we need to understand that they need to work with the people they can -- they're capable of working with. but one thing that they really understand well, sometimes better than the government organizations, is that people need something to recover for. there's not something like faith or something moral in the picture, oftentimes it's hard for people to continue to move up the wrongs of that ladder. maybe they can make it the first round but they relapse and to make it further out. they structure the trajectory, faith-based groups. they understand maybe a little better than the mainstream

secular groups. >> not just a couple callers have been waiting a while to chat with you. angela, florida, go ahead. >> hi there. i live in south florida, where we have some people who are out on the street, i will call them homeless. when i encounter, them either going into a fast food play sometimes or outside a grocery store, not enormous numbers like san diego, where my daughter lives, i've seen it there. usually, i will get food for the person or at will chat briefly. i've learned sometimes they don't want anything. medical snap recently and a woman in the cold didn't want to blanket, didn't want you to bring her some hot food. developing a, theory i would appreciate your thoughts on this. wouldn't make a difference if more of us who are not in that situation would interact in safe ways, whatever ways makes sense, with people? does that connection, with that connection, on a large scale,

change anything for these people? it makes me feel better, whatever little thing i do. hopefully that's helpful to that person. but what is more of us were doing this? i appreciate your thoughts. >> well, i think that that is a really good question. it's actually a harder question that many people ask. should i give money to panhandlers? should more people have that sort of personal direct relationship? people may pay money to support almost programs to their taxes, but that's not compassion. that's not this lid, very direct connection that can develop. and that, for some people, can be so instructive. can teach someone about just the nature of human society. that they're more likely to ignore or just not be aware of. that's why, for example, many churches sponsor mission groups. i think is important and probably more people should do that type of stuff than they

do. i do want to stress that it can create complications when people are providing charity providing goods to homeless people that is in a way that doesn't lead them towards changing their lives, moving off the street. and may infect an able them to stay on the streets. it's very easy, for example, to feed yourself on the streets of san francisco, because so many charitable groups are coming through and providing it with food. but some young person who's living on the streets of san francisco, addicted, his family in the midwest may prefer that he was doing more to get out of that situation. sometimes, unfortunately, those charitable groups are actually being counterproductive towards that end. i think it's important to keep that in mind, even while you stress the idea that those individual connections, the individual act of charity,

here's something very powerful and very valuable, very instructive about that, that we probably do want to encourage more of. not less. >> one more call, from bowling brook, illinois. this is chris, thanks for waiting. >> good morning. thank you for taking my call. i have a quick comment and then a question. the comment is about the data. one thing that you mentioned is the timeframe is mostly in the 20th century. i'm also interested in a little bit of, let's, say from the big 20th century all the way up to the president. because you also mentioned that there has been a change. i think that, to some extent, a lot of the people who are homeless today or are in the range of working people who cannot afford to get housing. so, one of the callers earlier asked about whether or not the government is helping or hurting.

my question to you is, in the sense that the government also helps people building that houses in trying to gentrify, what about the government policy that helps the investors to create housing that is so expensive or? or to try areas and push people out. those two things, where we find data. the other side of the policy that helps the investors and other people -- >> got your point, chris. stephen eide on those questions? >> there's a lot of discussion now about that housing shortage broadly in america. the easiest way to address the housing shortage would simply be to allow developers to build what they want to build. that would be easiest, both because developers know their business and also because government doesn't have to be

involved. it's probably best like overnight not be involved. and there's a number of reasons why you would want to encourage housing supply. because of the middle class, because we just haven't kept pace in a way that you should keep pace. jobs are, growing population is growing in some communities, probably housing unit should be growing as well. if that hasn't been happening, that needs to be remedied. whether that will do enough to keep housing within reach in a satisfactory way of the middle class, i think it is certainly an important question. and whether it would be enough to really know to simply reduce homelessness in certain communities, where it's so bad, it's another question. but essentially, we don't have to say that all these solutions are going to fix homelessness. they might still be a good idea to pursue. particularly for example concern about the health of the middle class, the working class. which is the problem that this

color was really point against finger on. >> we'll have to end it there. stephen eide is the author of the book homelessness in america, the history and tragedy of and social problem. also a senior fellow at the manhattan institute. you can see its work at manhattan dash institute dot org. appreciate all the time this morning. >> grateful for the opportunity, it's been a pleasure. >> the update in the latest in publishing with book tv podcast, about books. with current nonfiction book releases, plus bestseller lists, as well as industry news and trend through insider interviews. good find about books on c-span now, our free mobile app, or wherever you get your podcasts. c-span shop dot org as he spends online store. both relatives collection of c-span products, apparel, books,

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