HOMELESS

hi guys I'm kicking around Washington DC for the day see there's the Washington Monument on one side over here we have the World War Two memorial and there you have the Lincoln Memorial the Washington monuments directly behind you when you're looking at the Lincoln Memorial this way and I apologize to several viewers in the area that I really wanted to hook up with I have a whole date to kill right now but coming down here was a last-minute rushed thing and I just didn't really have the time to get myself together enough to contact people and say yes I'm coming down can I meet you so I'm sorry but now that I'm here I have this whole day to kick around until I go back to New Jersey so I'm down at the National Mall apparently I'm in a flight path because it's just one giant airplane after another going over I'm gonna wander around a little bit I'm gonna go see the Vietnam Memorial and the Korean War Memorial and then I'm gonna go over to the Smithsonian's because they're free and it's already freakin hot and it's like 9:00 in the morning and I figure they're air-conditioned and free so I was walking down here and I stopped to get a cup of coffee and a muffin for breakfast because I was hungry and you got to know I never go out for food and it killed me killed me to have to pay for coffee and a muffin it was over $6 for coffee and a muffin what can you do Washington DC is so ridiculously expensive you know and of course this area near Capitol Hill you have all these people making a lot of money you have all these tourists so of course the prices are ridiculous so I'm walking along with my muffin and coffee to come down here and there's this young homeless guy sitting there with his dog so of course I stopped to give him some money and I got to chatting with him a little bit nice young guy I could be his mother and I said well is there anything I can get you would you like a cup of coffee and his eyes kind of lit up and he's like I would love some coffee so I was like well what I'll get you some coffee what are you taking it you know cream sugar what do you want and he said yeah you have cream to sugar and I was like well you need a lot of cream and sugar I'm gonna put a lot of cream and sugar in it could you need the calories when you're sitting here homeless and you don't when you're gonna have your next good meal so I went back to this coffee and sandwich place and I got him a coffee I got I got him a chicken sandwich on the bag yet very fancy got him a big bottle of water I got him an Apple turnover and a bag of granola and I walked back and by then he was sitting with an older guy so I gave them the food and I sat down to talk to them for a few minutes I wanted to hear how they were doing and I wanted to see them and communicate with them a little bit and I didn't want to film them or interview them or Andy thinks if you want to exploit them for a video but I wanted to tell you about them because homelessness there's something very wrong when people on this planet are homeless it's just wrong everybody should have a home and food and clothes on their back I know there are those who would disagree with me but I think it's a basic human right personally and there are a lot of homeless people in DC and there are a lot of homeless veterans which is so wrong and again I know some people disagree with me and say what just because they served in the military we should have to take care of them for the rest of their lives but I say yeah yeah we should yeah if you served in the military yes you should not be homeless if you served in Vietnam and you're an older veteran you should not be homeless I don't know what the solution is for homelessness but I firmly believe that homelessness in America could be eradicated if there was enough will to do it and sadly I guess there's not the political will so here you know here like a block from the Capitol building where Congress meets you have these homeless people living rough and it was a father and son the older guy was the father and they told me how they came to be homeless and what their family situation was and you know the son might have some developmental issues I mean he's a young adult he's got a service dog with him and breakup of a marriage I don't know I I didn't get all the details there are reasons however however it is they got to being homeless you now have the problem of how are they going to get out of being homeless and honest to god you know there but for the grace of God go all of us most Americans are a paycheck away from losing their homes and you know anybody could be on the streets at any time matter of good luck versus bad luck good decisions versus bad decisions I mean it could happen a lot of people don't have a safety net I asked them what they do at night if there any shelters for them to go to and they said no there really aren't and they can't have their dog in a shelter and of course you don't want to get rid of your dog your dog is a part of your family and it's your protection and it's his service dog so they sleep outside they told me last night they slept down here at the mall in case people don't know do you see the mall is not a shopping mall it's the area from the Capitol building to the Washington Monument there is a like a long kind of wading pool well you know it's a wade in and I've seen deer in it going to the Lincoln Memorial you've seen him Forrest Gump you know you don't know what I'm talking about so they slept down here well it poured last night I mean they're out in the weather we all know that homeless people around the weather all the time it's hot as hell already early in the morning it poured last night thunder and lightnings of course they got soaked they talked about the problem of like being dirty and hot and sweaty and smelly and how gross that feels and how bad that is for your psyche and how little you can do about it and how people look down on you it's first thing in the morning all these people are zipping by speed walking to get to work people don't see them they don't see the homeless I mean they're they're in an area where a lot of people with money are passing by I hope they get some money I don't know I don't know I don't have the solutions for homelessness but we need to see them to really see them and to hear their stories and you know to talk with them and to help them we talked about dumpster diving we talked about food waste in America and how people throw food away I asked them if the tourists coming by and the people who work in the area you know talk to them engage then help them out and they said people really can't be bothered nobody ever stops to talk to them people might throw change in the cup but you know people judge the homeless everybody thinks through their cuz they're drug addicts or alcoholics true fault of their own the dad said to me you know we're not drug addicts after a hard day out here we might have a beer how are they going to ever get out of homelessness they could be homeless for years they appeared able-body they looked like men how are they ever going to get a job who is missing a lot of teeth they're not presentable dirty and I didn't smell them I mean it got in this heat I already smell it it's hot but you know when you're living on the street they live on the street so how are they ever gonna get a job that first step up of getting some income we're gonna find affordable housing I mean it's I don't know I mean our lawmakers our representatives have to walk by and see homeless people all the time these are American citizens if they were an American citizen cuman beings on this planet but these are American citizens and very often that to serve their country how do you ignore that and you know in this area there's no Aldi I couldn't just pop into a grocery store and get some $30 for groceries and $30 would have gone a lot farther in a grocery store that in a you know fancy downtown DC sandwich shop and coffee place I haven't seen the single grocery store I don't know where people get their groceries I can't even imagine where they go to get their groceries around here it's it's just it's sad and it's shameful it's shameful that in a country with as much money as we have and a political system where we are supposedly able to vote for people to effect positive change in our country how we just leave the homeless out there hanging to dry and I know a lot of people care about the homeless and and work to help them but it's obviously not enough and yes they could come to this park they could sit in the shade I have to say it's a lot more pleasant the shade there's water there there's a little pond there they can splash around in the pond I mean until the cops come and tell them not to but if they're here in the park they have no chance of getting any money from anybody walking by like there's just not the foot traffic so they're stuck there sitting on the sidewalk all day in the hot Sun trying to get enough money to get an overpriced meal they can come here at night but there's there's really there's nowhere there's really nowhere for them to bathe I mean can they go into the Smithsonian to use the bathroom and get in the air-conditioning for a few minutes homeless people can surprise you they don't always look homeless but sometimes they do and a lot of places like the Smithsonian you're not gonna welcome them because it doesn't look nice for the tourists you know tourists don't want to come to DC to go to the Smithsonian and share a bathroom with a couple of homeless men who are trying to like have a birdbath and wash their armpits you know I don't know is having a home is having a place to lay your head at night a basic human right I kind of feel like it is when people have so much why should other people have literally nothing let me also mention this they have the dog right so when I went to get the younger man a cup of coffee before the older guy was sitting down I said does your dog need anything and he said no no I have some sausages here for him in my backpack so I was like okay when I came back with the food and he was going through the bag he pulled out the Apple turnover which I had kind of intended for the young man to have as his breakfast he immediately just ripped it up and fed it to the dog he fed the whole turnover to the dog he fed the dog before he ate anything himself and I gotta say the dog looked pretty healthy the dog did not look malnourished at least you know these guys weren't mentally ill the dad did most of the talking they were both very pleasant and I'm not saying the dad has a PhD or anything you know he might lack education but he wasn't stupid he was able to carry on a perfectly intelligent coherent conversation he you know he wasn't it wasn't miss speaking or mispronouncing words I mean he's not these aren't stupid people and they're not crazy people they're down on their luck people you know someone like Jeff Bezos who has how many billions of dollars he could solve homelessness in America I'm just saying I'm not saying you didn't earn his money mister I'm the head of Amazon but I'm saying how much money does a single person actually need to have you know the question really isn't why are they homeless as if there are good reasons for being homeless and they're bad reasons for being homeless and we only help the people who have good reasons the question really is why do we as a society as a culture allow it why is it something we tolerate in our country just like when people ask why is there evil in the world why does God allow these things to happen that's not the question the question should be why are we allowing it to happen you

Channel: Freakin Frugal

Views: 23,138

Rating: 4.9444995 out of 5

Keywords: frugal living, minimalist living, Frugal minimalist, make do and mend, austerity explained, grocery haul, debt free scream, extreme frugality, how to lose weight fast, extreme cheapskates, extreme couponing, frugal aesthetic, dumpster diving, dumpster diving makeup, dumpster diving for food, dumpster diving at ulta, dumpster diving at walmart, freeganism, how to save money, free food, debt snowball, homelessness, homeless people, homeless experiment, homeless to harvard

Id: zx1KTbXJtBI

Length: 11min 56sec (716 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 16 2019