about two thirds struggle with mental illness track addiction or both but it wasn't always this way. i came to skid row it was more like skid row's we identified only drunks only drunks on the street. it used to make terrible he's old krystle incarnation of 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 it was a war and for people who are unable to live in the world and they moved given the tried to move again and again but just moved into a different area when big money developers 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 troops operating those two things and i'm cruising where there's nothing separating those two things i was. going over to. skid row this is a newer through my stilts. back here would have been 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 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 generation. just same potential real estate story of a ground for its fear that people are interested in not much interest on 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 specialty 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 in 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 head 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 we 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 the military down here i was amazed at where some of the people had come from. well.

the 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 and 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 big 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 in this period 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 fall. from lofty heights if you want to use that word yeah it's humbling. the area has always attracted outsiders. some stay for a. 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. in nursery school i beat my teacher with a chair i was thrown out of every school with a want to have been seen to loose natan and hearing voices ever since i was a kid i guess i'm one of those cases where i'm bipolar schizoaffective i have anti-social personality disorder p t h 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 marilyn down to carve their good spot to summon a festering want to give old. crack a band of weed man the next block i came down here following most two years ago this halloween to be two years for me so i spent a good two years down. the jet i think i'd ever do again there commit suicide next time for the ostriches being so nasty horrible and everything's all over the place it makes you you know makes you want to do something with your life size doing this because this is really rough to do this and i went to the service i got from out of the service for bad conduct one thing is really stinks the fact it doesn't rain here doesn't wash the urine in the pool the way it's a smell just gets worse and worse i beat up my mother and my sisters and i took my kid and by losing my kid and everything else i really really really was smart and i

was when i first became homeless because i couldn't rationally. deal. with where my life had gone i've been electrician for all these years or always. back in the mid seventy's through the mid eighty's we didn't call them the homeless back then we were emptying our mental hospitals by basically saying now we have the man 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 they've got melanoma a serious mental illness because the institutions don't exist anymore breaking close down all of those places they took all the mental people and they gave it to society and then where do we go you either get committed and get locked in and

smoke a cigarette three times a day and when they tell you or you sit 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 in our prisons l.a. county twin towers jail is the largest mental institution in the united states. because we no longer hospital arms 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 to come. so that people had a place to stay at night. to sound too we had a hundred employees use half of them were members we also set up. i came in contact with some of the most beautiful people that one could ever know we're. a family. you know we could eat together we play cards to gather we sing together karaoke underclass and deal with all types of people. first city and never 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 is out seven years ago a lot of the hour was. i do it in a way every task i do i have. this. where there are two little girl in and out around the city nurses. my body. i know my of. my body i had my breast 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 it.

stories others refused to notice. faces changed the world lights never. told pictures of today's events no longer from around the globe. up to. interview.

live. live live. live

. more news today bolland says once again flared up. these are the images cold world has been seeing from the streets of canada. showing corporations are on the day. sure. stewart.

very good. very good. street. are. very wise to life and people. bitterness where you. are not. the trailer house over here in san pedro my father was in the service in world war two then i was raised in new mexico where my grandmother was born.

rich and powerful clan in new mexico it. four years altogether in arkansas and i put the last twenty years in jail but. i had my first cats when i was three years old leaving i've been feeding these for over five years now i had to pay for fifty kept food i couldn't get to keep get food but you forget that i had to pay two and three and four dollars a night for stuff from containers and a body like eight dollars for just a few thing that struck me worst when i saw this. was there was no clean fresh water for the birds and cats they let caustic. solutions and all kinds of poisons go and cite drugs in the waters to camps on the verge of drinking and no clean food supply for them we should know by now are those in my german in here to scare food

with a whopper more compact and then they can. get a kink in to get again see if you know there is them this is now this is a problem the uniform know this no this is the one that had the signs can right here. the month in kitty and it looks like a rat well this last race i got it to a marine. corps we hopefully will have more. they were and had a lot of red in her war it really is yeah that meeting fell careful anything red moon or a room that was so purple to sort their group of the cast of cats are going to be for now at the end with that ransom was lulu last final moulin and a lot of purple k. and less than last night. and guys a psycho a little insight and someone i don't miss out on like out of a license around and lou let alone a law and

a rifle rule sexually harassing. the sex of the press yes thank our no one no star carolyn is out psycho level or anything like. that and our way the round unless they're not here so no. to really what i meant of address the guy was bothering her one day and i just don't like. people who take advantage of oh people. when he was taken advantage of or sawyer intervened and she for 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 who she is right here in her. mental illness with the collection of trash she has stored just full of cash like three different ones just completely piled up to she pay every minute nothing but.

but that's who she is and i take her just who for who she is it and that's why she loves me and i love her for that accept that i guess that's hard to my blessings from god. you know because in the beginning was like i but i truly i would defend her with my life if you believe that i'll die behind this will lead you right here . life is love life is a conundrum it could be a good. so strange that everybody down here knows that if they bother her you very big going to have to deal with me so they basically. told. the haters she carries all the church. you see large. richard b. a long time to people while you are off the street or why you don't she won't she doesn't want to see people understand she you have to let them be who they are when she's ready to go inside sure bortsov you she wants to live almost should you have

to live her litter slots or should i still live i'm sure even though she has a board. she's a true lard once they were she grew. even though as mothers will set the money he she gave him he's been on drugs and these people giving one drug no one else to buy more they keep psyching him. and he almost finished a psychology course and with three years of medical school and a drop in medical school it crackle i can end up so bad can memory sing and now i sing about one back to medical school even though he has pancreatic cancer which is really a sick move. he is she is a lot of ways and he caused me a lot of grief. and ok we have family home paying for a la la. well i just feel bad. this is not how. i was

sleeping i was enjoying it a blanket. will close friends. sometimes i still go outside to sleep. sometimes when i'm inside it reminds me of why the hell out there at the age of sixteen. i try to have my so. committed to a hospital because i wasn't going to acting with other people healthy way i didn't feel connected to anything i remember feeling very depressed and. i thought what does save the world to myself you know a headache if i go in at sixteen then i never have to come back out again but they would accept me. they would be really separate as bad place to be you know i ran

away from home at seventeen years old and i actually got a job paid marriage and school. that mary at the age of twenty one had my daughter my first daughter. then my other daughter and then my last dollar baby heard. their father divorced me at that point i mean. there was nothing healthy about. everything with the stored it. 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 their goal much and then it happened i came askin well.

i developed a real bad drug and it quickly came became. and you never thought about it. that's what i was going to do. but. that's what i want to tom nice when i'm saying to myself i said he had a long nap in 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 down syndrome. god is my good to me you say he's used down through most turbulent times now here. in the situation is true part of my addiction is a drug addiction crack cocaine also addicted to the lifestyle of downtown will where. no one judge

a single. grew up in compton rock or southern one horse was three years old. or people or so they had horses in the back yard but they'd never oh i just are going to be forced to take them out no i didn't ride in the city you. know i do have talent for ride horses i do like the floor and i don't stand to the old old white i can still look what you did before i am they they spark me yeah that's what i want to know too that i like the smell of eleven when they spark me like a baseball awarded to. us all our horses they sport we decide what my dream would be to live on the ranch. we were horses. just to be around smell them walk ride a baby. teach people about. horses i

believe that. i know if they get it because of the cost of the rest it's only. people you know by love got yourself off. to good place to be all of wall people up and down the whole black berry and you could hardly walk up or down the street cars could be a narrow. everybody's either in jail or santa barbara venice hollywood or somewhere else we don't need more jails we need woman to institutions to lead more doctors to come down here so the more people place now sandwiches that's what we really need we 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 seems and release is from

our brain cells when we. when we smell something's good we'd like to be the winner and. we smoke crack the brain of a schizophrenia person untreated unmedicated is a wash with dope and made more sold on the brain of a person that doesn't because frankly the skin frank brain cannot filter out the noises the heat. the vibrations the other people talking to you it's all tuning it once so the medications that we give people for schizophrenia reduce the 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 prescribe drugs street drugs are 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 is always a major amount of jokes 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 mobile telephone what am i supposed to give our medication so drugs soup on the street before i am trying to make it. it was a. very hard to take

a. chance to get. a tattoo that had sex with her hair no. elin. lead lives. of. thousands of people this has been documented have been executed in libya without any trial at all for just being labeled get out of the oil is so this is the state

of justice in libya when you say that it was a good solution i wonder good for whom because success rate is transform it grounds and in some money the genocide situation into chaos yet is better now because of how i saw the crimes it's very complicated situation no must about trust. at one time i save money to hire a hitman to shoot me dead from the next building or through the open window. i searched through the internet typing things like i'm looking for you i'm waiting for you before i wrote i'm waiting for you i'm looking for you i didn't care at all what this man would be a lie deprived disabled ill. with you know you

won't know that the battery is thrown out. i love everything about him i have grown to love every here everyone interesting their tips him actually be healthy years and other guys who drink beer in a bench i've always promised that if she ever realizes it's too much for her and she decides to leave me i will accept her decision without criticism because it's her choice. deliberate torch is on its epic journey to such. one hundred and twenty three days. through two thousand nine hundred top two cities of russia. really by fourteen thousand people or six. you don't seem to live. in a record setting trip. she and others made. a living torch relay. on the.

crossing that fall in line with washington's accuse the topping of the very top in germany's snooping on chancellor merkel herself and lynn demands immediate alice's . the secrets of the detainees a safe with the wardens seek for explosives gone tunnel a day were sparkling clean rooms and nutritious contrast to that so well to inmates claiming they experience fast. you're seeing what there is just to see you know our report sends them by the u.s. military's coming out in a few minutes. on the lives of brutal deduct see who is recovering after an alleged strike on a gas pipeline knocked the power out across much of the country while rebels launch a major called the countless old.