host: we continue with our annual authors week program on the washington journal. each day of this week, featuring top authors from across to the political spectrum. today we welcome a stephen eide. he is from manhattan institute, author of the book “homelessness in america: the history and tragedy of an intractable social problem.” there is a quote in your book, people don't become homeless when they run out of money, to become homeless when they run out of relationships. what do you mean? guest: i think that many of us have not personally experience homelessness, but we think about

-- we have a lot of economic anxiety, what we can do if things really went south for us economically. and we rely on friends and family, that would be the social safety net, for we had to turn to the government safety net. the people who are on the streets in san francisco or los angeles who are living on the subway system in new york, in many cases, that was once the situation that they faced, but at a certain point they lost the social safety net, they sometimes as we say burned their bridges with friends and family and had to rely on government programs. and some of them even felt throughout safety net as a result. what i'm trying to do with my book is rethink this concept of homelessness. one concept at one point in time is place looseness. people who are homeless don't

have that defined place in any known social order. in some ways it captures a little bit better the problems we are facing then simply we are talking about people who don't have access to permanent housing. host: we are showing our viewers at some numbers on homelessness in america and have you talk us through it. this from the department of housing and urban development, december of 2022, approximately this many people expernc homelessness in the united states. 60% in a shelter location, 40% unfiltered. 28 percent of people experiencing homelessness have families with children. and th my were under5. black people are 38% of people disgracing homelessness, veterans declined in 2022.

what do you see in those numbers? guest: there is a lot there. what i appreciate about what you are doing they are, to illustrate the complexity of the problem, you are talking about this umbrella term homelessness that brings under it a lot of different groups. all of whom are struggling, most of whom struggling with different problems. but in order to make some progress we need to make more of an effort to break it into its parts and talk about what we can do individually for some of these different groups instead of just trying to talk abstractly about this group as a whole, the homeless. host: can we shelter all of the homeless in this country if we wanted to do that tonight? why is so many of that group unsheltered? guest: when we talk about building housing, providing

housing for the homeless programs, we can build them permanent housing given the units they could live in for the rest of their lives, or we can set up some sort of shelter program. temporary housing. you not going to stay in there for the rest of your lives but it is better than the streets. shelters have a bad reputation. there is survey data in which people on the street explain why they don't like to go to shelters. but you are always going to be better in shelters then you are on the streets. it is impossible to exaggerate how vulnerable you are on the streets, how much more likely you are to be victimized in the streets than in a shelter. but it is difficult to persuade everybody on the street that they are going to be initialed to her. frustratingly, a lot of time what happens when you expand shelter programs, in new york city for example there is a right to shelter.

in new york city, there is a hard-core who insist on remaining on the streets and a lot of the problems and public outcry stem from that small but significant, troubled population. host: the book is “homelessness in america: the history and tragedy of an intractable social problem.” that is what we are talking about with stephen eide, author and senior fellow at the manhattan institute. you can call in at (202) 748-8000 if you live in eastern or central time zones, (202) 748-8001 if you are in the mountain or pacific zones and a special line for those who have experience with homelessness, (202) 748-8003. as folks are calling in, the subheading of your title, the intractable social problem. right in the boo "americans react toomessness with a mixture of anger, perplexity and

little progress is made. it is a top priority of politicians in major cities and despe the billions public resources have devoted to it, ideally come when spending on a social problem goes up public concern goes down. homelessness in america has not followed the trajectory to why -- trajectory." why? guest: we seem to have a problem of not making better use of the resources we are devoting to a. this can be a story of government because the places that are wealthiest and have the most political commitment to taxing and spending those resources on homelessness, new york and california in particular, have made the least amount of progress. california is the place whose reputation is defined by its homeless crisis. more than any state in america,

and the resources devoted toward homelessness in california are simply staggering. in california in particular, you have a problem with lack of enforcement. there has been a drawing back on sort of criminal justice dimension of the response as we are investing more and more in social programs. those elements need to be moving along separate tracks together. if the idea is that we are going to get everyone off the streets, we are going to provide them with permanent housing, in california you have seen that experiment that in recent years, and the success has been very modest. because they have been unable to stop the flows even as they have been expanding resources and programs. so we really need to do more

rethinking of our response to the problem that has been going on in recent years. host: on the response, traditionally, whose job is it to leave that response? the local level, the state level, the federal level? guest: yeah. the modern homelessness crisis developed in the early 1980's and it was thought as a local problem. the cities were responsible for it. and as our knowledge of the nature of the crisis shifted, we understood that state governments probably bore some response ability. if you talk about the mental health dimension of homelessness, state governments always took the lead on mental health. so there are mental health problems there, you need to talk about the state role. as well as the county. those are big players in some states. the housing role, why are they not more -- why are there not more housing for people, regulations on housing, we lost

a lot of cheap housing the homeless used to rely on and that is local policy. so who is responsible? and points directly to the local and state authorities. the federal government does get involved in the 1980's. substantially, an industry that writes checks. we now have a system where there are a lot of state and local resources devoted to the problem and the spending jurisdictions, particularly new york and california, but the federal government's role has expanded in terms of funding, california and new york to align with the federal government. but you especially see the federal government's influence in places that don't spend a lot of their own resources. places in the south or the midwest where the problem is smaller than on the coasts. because they dilute -- they devote so little resources, they are very affected by the federal government, very dependent on the federal government, very

influenced by what the federal government wants to do. so it is actually a little different in different parts of the country, what type of state, local, federal mix you are talking about in steady behind this homeless services system. host: has there ever been a homelessness czar, a cabinet level position? do you think that would fix this problem? guest: the position sometimes referred to as the homelessness czar is the head of a federal agency called the united states interagency council of homelessness. what that agency does, it is small but it's job is to coordinate the other agencies, health and human services, the veterans administration, who have some sort of responsibility for homelessness. so they are supposed to coordinate that. but it itself does not have a lot of big budget or resources

it is exclusively responsible for and in practice it mostly functions as a bully pulpit for what the current administration thinks needs to be done on homelessness. it is a problem and because it is not just about this, it is about behavioral health and law enforcement, prisoner reentry. we do try to develop these individual programs that are just sort of for the homeless funding, homeless grant programs and homeless services, these agencies at the city level. but that compounds the your credit complications that it was supposed to be a solution to fix things. in response to your question, the case with a lot of these questions, what centralization help? theoretically, it would help at least to provide more accountability.

however, are you really talking about taking away authority from these other agencies? and that is probably unlikely to happen. host: what solution on any level do you think would help the most homeless people in this country right now? guest: well, i have been a critic of the current approach. the most influential approach to the homeless crisis which is housing first. it is certainly the most influential at the federal level, which maximizes the amount of resources that goes toward permanent housing without any expectation of service participation, sobriety, work participation services. that is where the action is these days. we have invested a lot of those types of solutions, sort of low barrier solutions. and not as much work in sobriety oriented programs for the homeless population.

i think that was a mistake and i think it would help the homeless themselves on the community's agenus problem if we did a certain rebalancing of programs that were where we devoted more resources than currently toward homeless people are capable of more than just being in a private apartment. not up to much else. people who are capable of work, sobriety. those people have trouble accessing programs that could support them. and there are efforts right now. so that is the type of flip the switch recommendation i tend to spend most of my time focusing on right now. host: stephen eide is the author of “homelessness in america: the history and tragedy of an intractable social problem.” he will talk about it for our authors week series it is with us for the next 45 minutes. jeff is up on that line from

frederick maryland for those experiencing homelessness. caller: good morning. host: good morning, you are on with stephen eide. caller: stephen, the first of your information that resonated was what you are classifying as a loss of relationships rather than a loss of just the physical place to stay. and that boils down to the root cause. it brought up a few different ways that i see it happening and ways that -- one of which -- more than one of which i experienced. whether that is you are in a relationship as far as innate spousal -- in a spousal

function, like a significant other that there is a family and that goes south and all of a sudden, whether it is courts or living arrangements or being in a different city, all of a sudden you are left without a home. there is also what i have begun to think about recently, a lot of people growing up, you see inherit a parents estate or even just a home. more and more i think i have been seeing the generation that is our parents -- i'm in my 30's. and this is dependent upon income class. a lot of our parents are taking equity out against their homes,

whether it is because they don't get enough from retirement or whatever their living situation is, or maybe they are having to support their children that are now having a higher cost of living and it is harder to make it as a single person or a single parent. whatever reason that may be, once you are a parent, your last living immediate family, that may put you out. and it might come as a surprise to some who don't know, the bank is actually getting the house. and that may be something you don't figure out until you see a will or lack thereof. host: let's pause there and let stephen eide jump in. guest: yeah. we talk about the intersection of the socioeconomic factors that put people into homelessness, with the family,

we are talking about how we redistribute or share resources within the family unit. in some cases, dependency can bring family members together. too much independence -- or too much of a false sense of independence separates families and makes it harder to repair those bonds. but if -- think about how you are going to be sharing resources long-term. and have a very clear eyed approach to that. that can really create a lot of strain and ultimately lead to maybe less resources being available to you then you thought. so these are very -- like, discrete, intimate. these are problems that are hard for government policymakers to get at. how do you keep families

together and make families better at sharing resources among themselves? and that is one reason why even though we know there are problems, that are at play in these household crises, what could government do to make those situations better? i think it is a hard question to answer. host: in spokane, washington, good morning. caller: good morning, i hope you will let me finish, i have watched all three channels of c-span for years. one thing that is a big problem and i would like to see them do a program on it, when everybody had to go online, older people do not know how to do that. the phonebooks don't even list all of the phone numbers in it. you can't hardly use the phone book. if you do get online and you managed to order something from somebody else's smartphone, they

will try to call you back and if they don't get you, which you don't have a phone, and don't know how to use it, then you -- they don't even come to your house. host: what about on the issue of homelessness? caller: yes, because i try to get an insurance policy from my daughter in california. and trying to call and make a phone call, trying to find out something about it, i could not even do that for her because they just referred her to the website. i would like you to do a program on the change -- host: why does that connect to the issue of homelessness? caller: people can't get service. they can't do anything without a credit card in a smart and knowing how to use it. i would love to see you do a program on that. host: guest: -- host: thanks for the call.

stephen eide on that issue. guest: yeah. of hiram early on you had some statistics, had one portion of seniors who are homeless. sometimes you see articles about about elderly people, part of the homeless population that is increasing in some places. when we are trying to divide this into different kinds of problems, there is the problem -- there are problems that are administered of in nature and then there are ones that are political in nature. dealing with in cap meds is heavily political, a very front issue. it is not just a question of how we organize. in the case of seniors it should be more a administrative problem. if you have a problem with seniors who are homeless in your community, you hope -- probably have something organized poorly in terms of services. if they qualify for entire domain -- entitlement,

neighborhood problem in providing housing for people, many neighborhoods are not enthusiastic about the idea of boosting a shelter or 75 to 100 mentally ill single men. most neighborhoods are much more comfortable with the idea of boosting senior housing. so that should be less of an issue. so whether you are not prioritizing appropriately or just oversight in your communities, you are distracted elsewhere, inducing any senior related homelessness, seniors becoming homeless, that should be something governments, even in america when it seems so dysfunctional a lot of times, should be able to wrap his arms around. host: your book is about the history as well of homelessness in this country. you mentioned shelters, there is a shelter just a few blocks from where c-span is in this building on capitol hill. the mitch snyder shelter. who is mitch snyder?

guest: he was the most famous and the most influential homelessness advocate in american history. advocates play a outsize role in shaping homelessness policy. if it seem to like we as an asian doing somethg different from what most people would support, that is because most people don't support -- don't follow the issue as intensely as certain advocacy organizations for whom it is their job to follow homelessness policy. they are broadly supportive of accommodating encampments, housing first policies. they are critical of any sort of behavioral requirements in exchange for the receipt of housing benefits. mitch snyder -- schneider was an advocate. in the d.c. scene in the 1980's, he states a lot of spectacular protests -- staged a lot of

spectacular protests in washington square and elsewhere in d.c.. a major impact he had, although he had a number, was he federalized the issue quickly. it was not obvious it needed to become a response ability of the federal government as soon as it did. there are a lot of reasons as i alluded to early -- earlier for thinking this was for the states. but because he was so active on the d.c. scene and aggressive i would say on convincing federal lawmakers to pass legislation on funding and as a result, ronald reagan left office with what was in place and remains the most important federal program on homelessness. that is what i would say his name might do. host: in washington, on the line for those with experience with homelessness. good morning. caller: good morning. host: you are on with stephen

eide. caller: hi. i want to share my experience with homelessness. my homelessness started from when i was 14, i was removed from my mom's home -- from personal abuse. for my mom's husband. i had been involved with human trafficking, sexual abuse. i have domestic violence, gun violence. everything. i am 52 now. like i said, i have been homeless pretty much 90% of that time. the resources are out here. there are so many resources. but you have to fit certain criteria. you have to either be actively using, you have to be sleeping in your car out in the rain, inattentive, to get any kind of resources.

what i'm finding with our resources into,, washington, we have the housing -- in tacoma, washington, the housing resources, homeless males, you know they are out there. they have all of these funds to house people but we are being stolen from, we are being lied to. numbers are being lied about. and we have nobody that we can turn to that -- i have been looking for the leaders -- or the leader of the d.c. y s program. the leader of the homelessness, who runs this and that? i have children. i have been homeless with my child. i get no resources because i don't fit their criteria. and because i have done 17 years in prison. what are these programs for? what are they designed for?

what i'm finding out is the programs and our government is doing exactly what they are supposed to do. what they're designed to do. that is to keep us homeless. because we are their job security. host: thank you for sharing your story. stephen eide. guest: yes, thank you for sharing your powerful story. there is a lot in what you just said. i think -- the system is very often people who are homeless currently or have been homeless in the past say that it is the system that is impossibly complicated to navigate. while you are being shuffled around through these different programs, who do i talk to, enjoy hold responsible if something went wrong for me? if someone broke a promise to me.

people often feel they have been lied to all the time. in terms of trying to build a better system, we have to think about some of that complicated nests -- complicatedness of the system. sometimes that fragmentation is there because we are trying to divide. to design programs for people in a specific situation everyone programs, let's say for x offenders, we also want programs for people with substance abuse who have no major prison record in their background. and sometimes people get caught between which one is for me, what if i fit both those criteria? but it makes sense to have different types of programs. what is less legitimate is when government creates more bureaucracy in response to the existing bureaucracy, grading another agency, another program

that makes it more bewildering for people to think about what they need to be focusing on. we need to build the systems that are optimally responsible to people who are sincerely motivated to improving their lives and making their way out of homelessness. whatever happened in the past come out right now they are locked in, they are trying to move up the letter. can we be confident we are meeting those people where they are and doing everything we can to help those people? because of the fragmentation, because sometimes, and this is another thing she alluded to, it seems to be the case that we are overfocus on the people who are worse off and the hardest cases. the people who are trying get taken for granted. similar to a school classroom. kids who are doing ok but could be motivated to do more get overlooked because of the

trouble cases. the attention. that is something we are grappling with. what the state of washington and other places like california, the resources are so staggering. how do you bring those resources to bear, set up programs with them to create systems that are not too complicated for people to navigate and really meet people where they are in a way that does not -- that is not biased against the people who are the most motivated to improve their lives? host: about halfway through our discussion with stephen eide, joining us for this authors week. joining us with discussion of his book “homelessness in america: the history and tragedy of an intractable social problem.” also senior fellow of the manhattan institute. what is that? guest: it is a think tank, a

center-right think take and we are focused on dementia problems. host: -- domestic problems. host: new york city focusing on its own problems. new york city mayor eric adams announced a new policy on homelessness when it comes to those dealing with mental health issues and involuntarily getting them help if needed. this is about one minute from his announcement from earlier this month. >> no more walking by or looking away. no more passing the buck. knowing 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 in how we interpret our obligation to those in need. and calls upon outreach workers to take the per actions for more intensive engagement. we can no longer deny the reality that untreated psychosis can be a cruel and all-consuming condition. it often requires involuntary intervention. supervised medical treatment and long-term care. we would change the culture from the top down and take every action to give care to those who need it. host: that announcement from eric adams office, what was your

reaction to that and what has been the policy since that lead to that announcement? guest: it is something i have followed closely. i have written in support of his new initiative. one thing i talked about is the paradox of compassion in modern american society. think of ourselves often as more compassionate of previous dutch than previous generations. we are more tolerant, we don't use corporal punishment as much as previous generations do. we seem like a gentler society then and this is -- then in the past. but one big exception to that is the indifference with which we passed by and go about our daily lives to people obviously suffering in the street. people with untreated serious mental illness, living on the street or the subway system and

obviously deteriorating. obviously not getting better. when mayor -- what mayor adams is saying is that you don't need to wait until that person is actively suicidal, is actively attacking someone, to intervene. to initiate some sort of clinical intervention and start the process toward involuntary treatment. these people on the streets, in the subways, they are approached by outreach workers. they have certainly been offered services and they have declined those services. they are what you might call service resistant people. in the case of those people who are seriously mentally ill, that is the cause of their service resistance, their inability to pursue the services offered to them, we need to be talking about involuntary treatment. what he is saying is that the law does not -- there is a popular misconception of many

front-line workers that they need to wait until this person is really troubled. you don't need to wait. the law allows you to intervene just while someone is deteriorating if the deterioration is severe enough, to bring that person infer clinical intervention. it is time to move away from an emotionally passive and neglectful approach to people with untreated mental illness living on the streets, one that is more proactive. host: to the state of washington, this is bob into coma. you are on with stephen eide's. caller: how are you doing today? host: we are well. go ahead with your question. caller: thank you. i was looking at the numbers and it was close to 13% of minorities in america and only 39 or 40% minorities that are homeless. this is not really seem -- this seems like a minorities homeless

problem. i am wondering how does redlining plan to this, how does systemic racism play into this? how does the criminal justice system play into this? a lot of people when they are left from the criminal justice system, certain things they don't have access to because they are denied those things. i am wondering, are we looking at this as an overall thing, or this is basically minorities not being housed because of the history of america? even the hispanic community, i think there are 18% and they are like 25% of the homeless. it seems like it is mostly the minorities. host: let's take up that issue. stephen eide's. -- stephen eide. guest: good question. there is no question that the homeless are disproportionately minority. this proportionately black

especially. what is made about the history of the phenomenon and i have spent a lot of time researching is that homelessness used to be disproportionately white. do not use the term homeless in the 50's or the 1890's. but the population who was very poor, not attached to families or communities, the place list population, we used to call them hobos, bones, they were the white people in the skidrow neighborhoods. white guys. the black population of america was extremely poor at that time and they also experienced an enormous amount of 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 letter decades of the 20th century. when you start seeing more black

people comprising the population living out of subways and in the streets. so forth. there is no question as he alludes to in his call that this intersects with the high rate of involvement in criminal justice system, and other social problems. that we see with the black population. i guess, what type of problem are we talking about? where talking about somebody with long involvement in the criminal justice system and is now homeless, which is the underlying problem? that is difficult to disentangle. certainly we had less crime in america and we have most middle justice involvement, we would have less homelessness almost certainly. but is that an easier problem to get at and to -- then to take

homelessness on or crime question mark -- crime? i don't know. but it is the same question in all of these different policy areas and it is very difficult to disentangle. but i want to emphasize that racial dimension of it because i think it is lost sometimes in the debate in terms of the history. host: new york city come out west harrison, new york. good morning. caller: hi. you seem very well-informed and i have a question about the relative cost of housing which is the ability of the population to pay. how it has changed over the years is the first question. in the second, you think the federal government pouring money into housing, it actually increases the cost of housing, causing an inflationary spiral, making housing less affordable. you're very honest about the right-center of the manhattan institute.

but usually i would think their support helping people come out when the government helps you you want out, that is what reagan said. i wonder if homeless people are targeted because of their high anxiety and severe mental owners. it is because they are living in an insecure united states where it is for everyone, disease and everything. most homeless people are white, most of the homeless people i have met are white. so those questions, the cost of housing and whether the federal government increases the cost of housing. guest: yeah. to take your first question, in my book i focus on four main causes of the homelessness crisis. unstable families, untreated serious note -- untreated serious mental illness, lack of law enforcement and all four of those, we're talking about big changes over the last decades of the 20th century.

i think those do explain the problems that we face right now. housing, if you look at the places with the highest homelessness rates, it is not a coincidence that it is difficult in new york to find low-rent apartments. that housing dynamics make it difficult -- different and drive homelessness, there is a scarcity of very low rent apartments that somebody with very little income can pay for on their own. this did not used to be the case in america. we used to have a lot more bad quality housing, but that was also very cheap and as a consequence, commit 50's, -- and as a consequence, back in the 50's, it was not unheard of for

someone in new york to pay for their own housing. nowadays they can pay for other consumer goods but not so much housing. something really went wrong with housing, particularly over the later decades of the 20th century. we don't have very good solutions because the standard solutions, have governments replace the role of the small-scale landlords. it is expensive to build, they can't bring them online fast enough and they can't give up. people keep falling into homelessness and it is a trickle in terms of a number being brought online to solve homelessness year-in and year-out. in terms of the second question of dependency, i do believe that in terms of thinking of the larger question, what kind of society do we want to build, how do we want to see families and

communities, we do need to be talking about the risk of dependency and overreliance on government benefit programs. i think that within family units, those units are most likely to stay together and stay cohesive in such a way that they will be able to help each other respond to purchases and help one another. if everyone is contributing, that creates strength. it does help the family aspect of the problem when we try to design these programs to promote things like work and sobriety. but that is what we are talking about. there is no serious question of dismantling the welfare state, cutting back on these programs, getting government out of the business of providing subsidies and income support. it is just not realistic. you are talking about a

situation with the welfare state that has not existed within anyone's lifetime. in my mind it is not do we have government benefit programs, but how big do we want them to be, what the eligibility should be and what kind of expectations do we want to come along with the receipt of government benefits. host: you mentioned your book is a lot about the history of homelessness in this country. you mentioned terms, that we did not use the term homelessness, we used vagrant, tramp, drifter. did those terms mean different things over the years or do they all just mean homeless? guest: good question. they had specific meanings. focusing on hobo, from and tramp, those were common in the

late 19th and early 20th century when we had people writing freight trains, traveling in these huge masses of migratory workers, native migratory workers who went around working the barns. the hobo was someone who was a worker who moved around. the tramp was someone who moved around but did not work so much. who sort of scrounged up and existence based upon his wits. it was particular to the jack london culture. and the tramps -- there were former tramps and hobos who did not work. and did not move. so they had specific meanings

and these were terms that these guys used amongst themselves. they were not -- sometimes people use them with a sense of pride. hobo was used as a sense of pride. now we don't use them anymore. but it was very interesting about the phenomenon as it was back then. and maybe the most interesting about them is the most obvious fact that these had nothing to do with someone's housing status. people were not defined by their house was status -- housing status as now with the term homelessness. host: this is kathy in michigan. caller: thank you and good morning, stephen. my first experience with homelessness -- homeless people was after a concert in flint in the early 1970's and a gentleman

who was an alcoholic i believe, he sang to us for some money. within the next year, my sister and i and a friend, he found him lying on a bridge that crossed the flint river. we took him to the hospital. currently i am working with eight young man who has some severe childhood trauma. there was enough money in the family, that was never an issue. but he is in the jail again and i support him. he has tried living out of a storage unit, but of course there is no running water. he keeps working so hard to try to make it. but his criminal record, which is nothing really serious, is stopping him from being able to rent. because he would be diligent in making those payments. but it is the saddest things and i'm quite worn out. it has been going on for years but there is no help out there. the government does not help abuse victims and overall, the

government does not help the homeless people. and there should be housing provided. and we can do it. we know how to do that. it is a matter of getting rid of the discrimination against people and really wanting to help people. and i see it here. i see it at a certain place, i will look over the water there and in the summertime they sleep there. i see it many times riding my bike in the morning and it is never addressed. and i have spoken to the authorities and the city council about it. but whether anything will ever happen, i don't know. host: thanks for the call. stephen eide. guest: thank you for that account and for your work and helping individual homeless people. i don't know if you're doing it on a professional basis or a purely volunteer basis, but it is easy to forget that when we are talking about system failure and how much the governments let people down, we have already

touched on that, government agencies are made up of individual people who often are doing the best they can in troubled circumstances. that is common and they don't get as much credit as they deserve. in places like flint where housing is, i suspect, much cheaper than in california and new york, in the midwest, in old rust belt cities, you find places that are very poor but housing is more affordable because the copulation -- population declined. more people have left and there is more housing that people can access versus san francisco where there is nothing. so you can make more progress, but often times have this mismatch where the resources are being devoted to extremely

expensive crisis jurisdictions where it seems like it would be a drop in the bucket. and some of these poor places, the smaller problems such as in the midwest amount like flint, the tragic irony, this could probably go a lot farther. but we are unable to do much about this mismatch problem it seems at the moment. host: to paris, tennessee, jeff on the line for those who have experience with homelessness. good morning. caller: yes, my name is jeff and i was homeless from about 1988 till about 2003. between those years i was married to a beautiful lady, to get off the streets she had a green card. 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 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. what happened to me was the cartel started taking over san diego and they were making homeless people you'll drugs for them and i was scared to get caught. they cut one guys hand off for stealing a spoonful. but anyway, i want to talk about the solution, for me it was basically i started going to aa. everybody that let me stay in their house, i stole from so i could get high the next day. that was another good reason i was homeless. i stole for my life. that is why we are not together -- from my wife. that is why we are not together no more. she was a beautiful lady from

italy. i was mad at god. somebody who introduced good, orderly direction. what that meant to me is not spending your money on methamphetamines and stupid stuff like that. well i had to leave san diego because of a gang problem. then i went back home. i was kind of welcome there but i wasn't because i was so screwed up. then, in a lockout, i am still a junkie but i'm sober now. but i was in a blackout at a loss every thing i had again because of my drug and alcohol problem. but my family, they are very religious and i love them. now they love me. they helped me get my disability and they helped me basically get a piece of property with my backpack and a place to live and it is paid for. host: thanks for sharing your

story. stephen eide. guest: thank you for that powerful account. i think that the more we learn about the success story, the particular success stories with recovery, the more those details of family, aa, state and social support come out. disability benefits, housing, anybody who is trying to work in recovery come out we want those to be in the picture. but to make sure that the process takes, that it holds, it seems so essential that people have something to recover for. to the point we are there with the decision of making a contribution so they can show support to their family and social network. so that the family does not have to just take their word for it that they can change. that comes up a lot in these stories of recovery and i think

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. host: just one or two of those stories. this is rj with the line for those who have experience with homelessness out of oklahoma. good morning. caller: yeah, good morning. there are so many factors to this. i was abused as a child so i started using ivy drugs at 13. you are not going to have many relationships like that. then you go up and keep doing bad things, you are an athlete, you are a good athlete and you go to college and play sports, ok. but you shoot dope for 20 years. i understand the relationship part, there are 70 factors to that. if you had never done drugs and you -- so many factors to that.

if you are never done drugs and had good role models as a child. but there are so many people who get abused as children who people don't know about. and when they grow up it intensifies. anyway, my story real quick. i played college football and got a bachelors degree. got married come still was doing drugs. she kicked me out for doing drugs over and over again. i went to prison, got out. i went to prison in 95 for eight months, something happened to me in their. then i went to treatment after that. then i started believing in something besides myself, i started looking at something else. a higher power.

then i want to treatment. when i got out of treatment, i went back to college and got my masters degree. now i am a therapist for 14 years and just retired. there is hope. there are some new factors to it. it is really tough. guest: it seems in other recovery stories that we talked about today, it has a lot to do with the individuals that he let along the way. recovery happens to -- poem own individual. for a lot of people it is when they start to change. host: a couple of callers

bringing up the idea of faith. one thing we have not talked about, as much as the role of faith-based organizations in this effort to fight homelessness in this country and how the intersex with some of the -- intersects with some of the local. guest: these places that do not have a big government, on the rural areas, there is a limit on how much you can expect them to do. you cannot realistically ask that they take that on, it really needs to be a government responsibility. someone needs to take that on. they need to work with the people they are capable of working with.

one thing that they really understand it well better than the government organization, people need something to recover for. when there is not something like faith or moral in the picture, often times it is sometimes people to go up that ladder. they relapse. that structure, that trajectory. guest: a couple of callers who have been waiting to chat with you. host: angelo in florida. go ahead. caller: i live in south florida where some people are homeless. i seem to encounter them when i go in a fast food place sometimes or outside a grocery store. not in enormous numbers like san diego. usually i will get food for the person or i would chat briefly.

sometimes they do not want anything. sometimes i had a woman who did not want a blanket or hot food. i would appreciate your thoughts on this. would it make a difference if more of us who are not in that situation would interact and in safe ways, whatever ways make since. does that connection -- would that connection on a large-scale change anything for these people? it makes me feel better, whatever little thing i do, hopefully it is helpful to that person. what if more of us were doing this? i would appreciate your thoughts. guest: that is a really good question. should more people have that sort of personal relationship?

some people paid money to support homeless programs to their taxes. that is not compassionate. it is not the developed connection. some people can be so instructive to teach someone about the nature of human society that they are more likely to ignore or not be aware of. i think it is important and probably more people do that type of stuff. when people are providing charity organs to homeless people in a way -- charity or providing grants to homeless people in and enable them to stay on the streets. it is very easy to feed yourself on the streets of san francisco. so many charitable groups are coming through.

some young person who is living on the street in san francisco, his family out in the midwest preferred he would be doing more to get out of that situation. sometimes the charitable groups are being counterproductive. i think it is important to keep that in mind, even while you stress the idea that the individual act of charity. there is something very powerful, instructive about that. host: one last call from bolingbrook, illinois. thank you for waiting. caller: thank you for taking my call. i have a quick comment and a question. the comment is about the data. one thing that you mentioned, the timeframe is mostly in the 20th century.

i am also interested in the mid 20th century all the way up to the present. you also mentioned that there has been a change. i think to some extent, a lot of the people who are homeless today are in the range of working people who cannot afford to get housing. one of the caller's earlier asked about whether or not the government is helping or hurting. my question to you, the sense that the government does help the people who are building the houses and trying to gentrified, what about the government policy that helps the investors to create housing that is so expensive and gentrified areas and push people out. where do we find data also, the

other part of the policy that helps investors. host: got your point. guest: there's a lot of discussion about the housing shortage broadly in america. the easiest way to address is allow developers to build what they want to build. that would be easiest. the government does not have to be involved. there are a number of reasons. the middle class has not kept pace. whether that will do enough to keep up within reach in a satisfactory way of the middle class, i think it is a important

question. whether or not it will be enough to produce homelessness in a community where it is so bad. we do not have to say all of the solutions are they going to fix homelessness. particularly examples for the health of the middle-class and working-class. host: we will have to end if they are. the author of the book, homeless in america. you can see his work at manhattan