you. do. with. this new rule basically. and that still. is it's good in big question things here that you've been experiencing

shit that there is just no way i mean it's no movie it is no book this disses a real life experience to see people get beat up every night people don't rob a bus ticket because. i seen people get. paid don't try to nurse you don't pay a car you have no responsibilities were not here because where homeless just less of a home baby my reality was that i was there you know skid row is the last house on the block at g.o.p. with just in my neighborhood you know i am. basically almost left on every street down here at one time or another i think i would never ever live in a way else you know skid row is my home. as many as eleven thousand men and women make their home on l.a. skid row. about two thirds struggle with mental illness track addiction or both but it wasn't always this way. when. i came to skid row it was more like

skid row's we identified only drunks only drunks on the street. it used to look terrible he told presumed garnishes drunks. and when it was really safe because they were not very aggressive now we have young strong crack addicts who are many times are willing to take a chance of rolling stone to get their money to get some more crack it's a different addition. there's always been efforts to get rid of skid row in their war and for people who are unable to live in the world and they were given the trend to move again and again but just moved into a different area when big money to fellow purse began to revitalize downtown the flop houses got new neighbors and penned houses and high end lofts. there are not many places where the gap between rich and poor is a striking as it is here. literally there is just

a block or two separating those two things and i cruising where there's muscles are pretty close to thanks i was. really over to. skid row just for the new improved nice filter back here were to be robbed if people didn't come down to see into downtown to swell the air when it's leo and of all this is dirt fields and burn barrels it and they will cut your throat down to your people to come past main street you doing dishes call the pit spec the down. the people are told the difference and also a whole new generation of. skid row's now just seem. ground troops here where people are interested in learning much interest from the people who are on the ground everyone who lands on skid row has a story to tell about how they got there for many it's the last stop after losing everything for sun the fall is the specially term magic my life you know prior to

coming to skate road was. in some ways like most people in other ways it was a little bit different you know i was born in compton grew up there with five brothers and sisters lost my dad when i was three my mom when i was fourteen at that point i moved out to california and i was an athlete in high school and decent student and started smoking weed you know at high school at the age of fourteen after my mom passed away yet and still you know i was good enough athletically to earn a full scholarship to university of iowa state university where i was a national champion in track and field and also i was able to go and qualify for the olympic games in eighty four where i actually competed in one of so medal so the eighteen years old you know obviously going into the olympics a year out of high school was very exciting i had a lot of emotion going on. you know one nine hundred eighty eight i started to

experiment with other drugs i ended up you know getting involved with cocaine i freebasing cocaine and that was the beginning of a twenty year journey for me as an addict i had lost everything i had lost my shoe contract i had lost my house i had lost all the financial means that i had was really on the street. sleeping on the street for the first time and actually laying down on the sidewalk you know and trying to close your eyes and next to go to sleep when you're outdoors those are the things as an addict that most people don't really talk about so the first time i came down to skid row i was pretty much our five. i was amazed at the number of e-mail we're down here i was amazed and where some of the people had come from. the midnight mission first opened its doors and nine hundred fourteen cents and

thousands have passed through its drug and alcohol treatment program. two hundred forty four men occupy this space here at the mission then we're going to go and see where i got my humble beginnings in recovery this is the residence when you first come into the midnight mission everyone that comes in has to come through this dormitory first. so this was my bed c three up and you can see this in the this is just the way it was when i when i got here i did a lot of soul searching this bit right here i had to make up my mind whether or not i was going to try to stay sober what the program was for me what i was really doing here you know at forty one years old what are you going to do i mean at that point for me it was either you go forward you know what the other lifestyle or you try to pull back and do something different. any time you can fall from grace or you fall from from lofty heights if you want to use that word. it's humbling.

the area has always attracted outsiders. for free. some stay for awhile. while others never. come albert olsen but everybody calls me bam bam i'm a punky ex new yorker my story starts way back when i was a kid unfortunately. nursery school would be my teacher would a chair i was thrown out of every school ever want to have been seeing elucidating and hearing voices i was since i was a kid i got i'm one of those cases where i'm. schizoaffective i have anti-social personality disorder p.t.s.d. i have intimate rage just sort of major nightmare disorder i also have a gender identity disorder where i'm taking hormones for a transgender issue for sexual reassignment to get my heroine down the corner

they're good spot to summon a festering want to give old. crack a fair that we demand the next block and i came down here following most two years ago this howling to be two years for me so i spent a good two years down. the general take i never do again there commit suicide next time. being it's so nasty horrible and everything's all over the place it makes you you know makes you want to do something which a life size doing is because this is really rough to do this and i went to the service i got from out of the service for a bad conduct one thing is really stinks the fact it doesn't rain here doesn't wash urine in the way it just smells just gets worse and worse i beat up my mother my sister and i took my kid and by losing my kid and everything else i really really really lost my mind.

basically saying now we have to help you and you can also get on disability so go forth and take care of yourself the predominant population on the row at that time and continues to date are the homeless mentally ill obviously many of them are also involved with addiction and sometimes you can't figure out which came first and that doesn't even matter the fact is a serious mental illness because the institutions don't exist anymore break in closed places. mental people gave it to society and then you either get committed and get locked in and smoke a cigarette three times a day and when they tell you or you sit out on the street you become homeless and

you can at least have your own life to some point. in many ways it's an open asylum for the mentally ill we don't have closed asylums anymore except for our jails and our prisons l.a. county twin towers jail is the largest mental institution in the united states. because we no longer hospital our thoughts are mentally ill so we criminalize them because of their behavior on the streets people were really questioning me like how can you open a place just for people who are crazy isn't that really stigmatize. and i said no i think we're going to be just the most righteous best drop in center we're going to have the best food we're going to feel like a family we're going to just make it a place people want to come to. so

that people had a place to stay. by like two thousand and two we had one hundred employees half of them were members we also set up our own. i came in contact with some of the most beautiful people that one could ever you know we're. a family. you know we cook together we eat together we play cards to gather we sing together karaoke number close and deal with all types of people. first city and never in my life in any place i mean all types of people all types when i decided to come down and. i saw people just like me depression was one of my biggest things. i've been called in to this is i was seven years old i love this that i always say i'm on the pill. i do it in

a way every time i do it it would say i have no real fibro mitosis. where there are two was a girl in and out around the center nurses. my body. i know my health. my body i had my breasts removed dealing with cancer so i'm trying to be strong and i'm trying to be you know it you know and just enjoy my life what i have right now what i'm doing right now is. loving myself. or taking care of my business no matter how much pain i'm me and i got to do. wealthy british style like it's time to.

market. come to. find out what's really high. on into the global economy with mikes concert for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to cons a report on our t.v. series last chance as the dates for the geneva conference are being arranged the assad regime may sit across from an empty chair syria's rebel oppositions on the ground are hopelessly divided the syrian political opposition in exile is divorced from the brutality on the battlefield so what can geneva two point zero hope to achieve.

i was homeless for fourteen years by choice. because i couldn't get in it's because i didn't want to go you. can do funny. story came to the really become of history now so yes and he would have. come from

a home very good home you know. very good home but i want to do st be. school knox because that's what this is an issue very wise to life and people. can read right away. i mean the death bitterness way that's what everybody where the media not i just said you are saying. horns on one side of the halo and the outside. it just paints. those killed up. i was a house over here in san pedro my father. in world war two when i was released in new mexico where my grandmother was born i'm from the men of

clan to region powerful clan in new mexico it isn't i would put four years old and give her in arkansas and i put the last twenty years in jail but arizona. i had my first cats when i was three years old leaving i been feeding these for over five years now i had to pay for fifty a month or kept food i couldn't go get to cheap get food but you forget that i had to pay two and three and four dollars a night for star phone containers and a body like eight dollars for just a few those thing that struck me worst when i saw the skid row was there was no clean fresh water for the birds and cats they let caustic solutions and all kinds of poisons go in psych drugs in the waters to cats on the verge of drinking and no clean food supply for them you know by now with all the my children in here this

care food is a lot more compact the ok. kid you can't take it again say it when there is none of this now this is not a problem the uniform no this no this is the one that had the signs can right here . the one pin kitty and it looks like a rat well this last race i got it to a reader. only hopefully will have wore. yellow kill them we once had a lot of red in her war yeah that means i don't care for anything rev moon. moon. just the jets group before noah had to relearn that with lou and will last. long for various then last writing. and guys a psycho even on site then sloan only so. thank you i'm out of a lie he said surrounding the let the law a law and her rightful rule sexually harassing. effects of the press.

thank god i felt my nose tackle was a cycle or level or anything. one phone a tick that way and our way the round we're not here so no. merely to ramble but i meant ever does a guy was bothering her one day and i just don't like. people to take advantage of oh people. when he was taken advantage over so i intervened and she if you're good enough there she just kind of adopted me as her fiance and i've been her fiance or says that's been nine years ago but did i started to like her as a person and i start to understand her. mental illness with the collection of tray she has storage is full of cash like three different ones just completely piled up there she pay every month nothing but

. that's who she is and i take her just who for who she is and that's why she loves me and i love her for that. except for i guess that's hard to my blessings from god. you know because in the beginning was like truly i would defend her with my life you believe that i'll die behind this will lead you right here. life of. love life is a conundrum it could be a good. story and everybody down who knows that if they bother her today they're going to have to deal with me so they basically don't bother her at all. they hate that she cares all the chairs. and it took me a long time to people why you are off the street or why you don't or she won't she doesn't want that see people understand she you have to let them be who they are when she's ready to go inside she'll bortsov you she wants to live on the street

you have to let her live her slot or should i say live on the street even though she has little or. she needs a trail like lines everywhere she go. even though his mother's will send the money he she gave him he's been on drugs and these people give me one drug no one has to buy more they keep psyching him. and he almost finished a psychology course he went to yours. crackle i can end up so bad. that one back to medical school even though he has pancreatic cancer which is really. she is a lot of ways because real lot of grief. and ok well we have family who are paying for a lot. well . this. i was

sleeping and threw in a blanket. real close friends. sometimes . sleep. sometimes inside it reminds me of why the hell out of there at the sixteen. i tried to have my so committed to a hospital because i wasn't connecting with other people and healthy way i didn't feel connected to anything i remember feeling very depressed and. save the world to myself. if i go in at sixteen i never have to come back out again but they would accept me. they would be. you know i

ran away from home at seventeen years old and actually kind of. school. and. had my daughter my first twenty two. and then my last honor. their father divorced me at that point i mean. there was nothing healthy. about. everything with the stored it. was so restless. out on how to do that i don't know how i raised those three girls like that. but he said that my father passed away that hurt me really bad i lost everyone in my life that i cared about they're gone and then happy i came askin well.

i developed a real bad try again came we came here. and i read an email and never thought about it i just know when you run into a roman doing your most folk net so that's what i was going to do. but. that's what i wanted to tama nice remember saying to myself i said he had a long nap and keep doing what i'm doing is going to happen because i just knew i was a little from glad as to say enjoy it and maybe a down syndrome. road is very good to me scare me sorry oh is used down here bring through most turbulent times down. geos your situation is too short a mud dish it is a drug addiction crack cocaine also addicted to lifestyle of downtown oh we're. no one's religious no.

grew up in compton raj or some other one horse i was three years old. people were three have horses in the back yard but they've never rode i just are going to take them out no go but ya didn't ride this if you. throw you a ride or so i do like to stand to the old old why you like it so much what you did before. when they they spark me yeah that's what i want to know too that i like the smell of eleven when they spark baseball awarded to. test all our horses they spark me to sunlight my dream would be to live on the ranch. be were horses. just smell them walk ride a baby. teach people about. the horses i

believe that. don't work there's no you know if you're going to take our city after the rest of so many people you know if i left i tell. you to get by the wall of wall people up and down the whole black berry and you could hardly walk up and down the street cars could be a valid after being gone or everybody's either in jail or they all went to santa monica or venice hollywood or somewhere else we don't need more jails we have woman to institutions and we need more doctors to come down here so the more people place now sandwiches that's what we really. need more understanding we need the awareness that we're not told drug addicts three three. things impact our central nervous system the environment that we grow up in and that we live in our d.n.a. basically what we're born with our genes and drugs. don't mean is the reward neurotransmitter i mean it's what you see and release is from

our brain cells when we are sexually aroused when we smell something good that we'd like to be when. we smoke crack the brain of a schizo phrenic person country to unmedicated is awash with dope for me more cells in the brain a person that doesn't because friends. the scripture frank brain cannot filter out the noises the heat. the vibrations the other people talking to you it's all coming in at once so the medications that we give people for schizophrenia reduce to don't for me unfortunately they reduce it too much and they feel good in some states don't get to feel pleasure anymore.

these folks wake up every morning and have to face another day being a stigmatized marginal person in the world and have to make decisions about using street drugs or using prescribed drugs. street drugs or easier to get them prescribe drugs street drugs feel better prescribe drugs don't particularly feel better in their hands everywhere as mentally ill people there's always a major mileage or because we need them there it's on medication for self medicate so be it how else would one do it what else would you like me to do i can't even get my mom would answer the telephone what am i supposed to give my medication so get drugs soup on the street and be who i am trying to make it. wealthy british style sign it's time to practice my. target.

market why not. come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's cancer for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to kaiser report on our. welcome to the. show thirty fold can just bend over billion euros i'm told that says soon each one hundred fifty million degrees with some talk amount of fuel to solve from same piece back to front speech probably such a song. we've got the future covered.

and it's not enough just to say we'll have a free election and let the people decide because the history of syria and elections a little. has been the. election hillary can you speak that because we had to say we had the secretary of state at the secretary of state does say hours ago that assad has no future in syria shouldn't think about real action in two thousand and fourteen i mean who the hell was the secretary of state to say what who should be leading the syrian state and who should vote for whom there i mean again it looks like the americans are sabotaging this by determining outcomes before people even sit down and talk.

with outside to an active camp at guantanamo where patients are forced that after i'm out of the first right never turn world's attention to the ways that some. of our. aid to me loses patients that would be uncontrolled flow of illegal migrants spread by the arab spring demanding that it's fellow e.u. countries to share the burden of the countries badly hit economies barry. americans demands police are held to account for their excessive use of force swarm the streets nationwide in prague. it was right here at about two pm local time that a blast ripped through bus twenty nine. six dead dozens in hospital workers trying to flee trench a day over the volga.