How To House Everyone in Your City
How To! with Mike Pesca
Peach Fish Projects
4.3 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 13 December 2022
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, Los Angeles' newly elected mayor Karen Bass declared a state of emergency to help address the city's homelessness crisis. It's an overwhelming issue that has left a lot of Angelenos wondering how they can help, including this week's listener Alex. On this episode, host Amanda Ripley brings on two people who have experience fighting housing insecurity. Theo Henderson is an activist and host of the podcast, We the Unhoused, which sheds light on the struggles faced by the unhoused community in Los Angeles. Larry Morrissey is the former mayor of Rockford, Illinois. During his tenure, the city functionally ended veteran and chronic homelessness – by doing something altogether different than what most cities have tried. Together Theo and Larry explain what needs to change in order to properly address this crisis.
If you liked this episode, check out: "How to (Really) Help Refugees."
LA organizations mention: J-Town Action and Solidarity as well as The Reclaimers.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Jonathan Braylock, I'm Dra. Milligan, and I'm James III. And we're those of Black |
| 0:09.2 | MacGene Jump in Hollywood. It's a comedic podcast that reviews films with leading actors |
| 0:13.6 | of color and analyze them in the context of race and Hollywood's diversity issues. |
| 0:17.7 | Yeah. Listen to new episodes on Mondays. Find us wherever you get your podcasts. I don't |
| 0:22.7 | care where you get them. I just want you to listen. Don't threaten the people we need |
| 0:26.9 | them to listen. Okay. Okay. Okay. Sorry, guys. Listen. Listen to us. Yeah. Yeah. Put |
| 0:32.1 | on the happy voice. And it's either we put in these clearly just gargantuan amount |
| 0:45.5 | of resources to really get to people, understand where everyone's at, work person by person, |
| 0:51.7 | give up with any single person, or we just live with an atrocity and keep kind of like |
| 0:57.8 | pointing fingers and, you know, just blaming people. You're listening to how to, I'm |
| 1:05.8 | Amanda Ripley. If you live in just about any city in this country, you're probably familiar |
| 1:11.9 | with the issue of homelessness or houselessness as it's increasingly being called as you'll |
| 1:17.3 | hear. And it can feel like a never ending problem with no solution. One that's especially |
| 1:23.5 | hard to reconcile in the winter and around the holidays. There's been a lot of politics |
| 1:29.1 | and fear swirling around this subject for a long time. But what if we put all that noise |
| 1:35.8 | on pause and just asked what works and what doesn't? What can we do? Are there tangible |
| 1:43.5 | ways to make a difference in the lives of people who are unhoused? That's what our listener |
| 1:48.6 | this week wants to know. My name is Alex. I'm 35. I've lived pretty much my whole life |
| 1:55.6 | in Los Angeles. And growing up, there's always homeless people, which is, I don't say that |
| 2:03.1 | lightly, but it was just a fact of life. But within the last, I don't know, five or ten |
| 2:09.0 | years, the problem is just at least seemingly or just visibly as exploded. And it just seems |
| 2:17.6 | like it's only getting worse and worse. But it's just very unclear what needs to happen |
... |
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