Homelessness: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

[Music] moving on our main story tonight concerns homelessness and i know that we are by no means the first show to cover this subject many have tried and perhaps not more memorably than the criminally cancelled tyra bank show i wanted to understand what their lives are really like and walk a day in their shoes no makeup no lights nothing but me i stopped at two kids in the street playing ball hi my name is tyra hi what's your name franklin i mean there is so much going on there but i want to focus on franklin's face because that is the face of a kid who's definitely figured out the secret identity of the woman who had a camera crew looked like tyra banks and introduced herself saying hi my name is tyrone but despite tyra's best efforts homelessness is still a huge problem in this country for the fourth consecutive year it increased nationwide with the most recent count suggesting there are over 580 000 people experiencing homelessness in america but the truth is it is likely way more than that because that annual count only includes people that surveyors could find on the streets or in shelters on a single night last year a system that misses countless people and not just that experts project the pandemic recession could cause chronic homelessness to increase 49 over the next four years and with this rise in homelessness has come a corresponding rise in the rhetoric around it exemplified by segments like this we came out just have some time it's a great time everybody's safe it's america it's my home this used to be one of the crown jewels of austin but as you can see another tent city the guy's walking around with a machete threatening people it started with box cutters as a weapon now we sadly we joke that we're the machete capital of texas okay hold on i i'm not saying that someone walking around with a machete isn't scary but you are making an outlier seem like the norm there and you've gone out of your way to make it scarier with visual effects and you can make anything frightening that way here i'll show you here is a bit of fun just shaquille o'neal dancing with the jabberwockies oh god oh no no it's terrifying leave him alone jabberwockies leave shaq alone run shaq just run and look i know it is easy to criticize fox news for being alarmist alarmism is their whole thing that and airing ads for pills that make your dick go bongo but the truth is even some residents of austin famously a blue dot in a red state have said it's been a struggle to reconcile their feelings about their homeless neighbors do you think if you had seen this issue happening in another city and it wasn't happening in your neighborhood you would feel differently once you're in the middle of it you change your mind of how you approach the situation but as your safety declines so does your compassion every every time i have to pick up human my liberalness just got lowered one but one more notch wow that is very honest every time i have to pick up human my liberalism gets lowered is quite the sentence although i'm surprised it was heard in this context and not in a leaked recording from an amy klobuchar staff meeting and look again i am not saying that that is a nice situation to be presented with but far too often stories focusing on homelessness are presented solely through the lens of how it affects those with homes when in reality it is obviously the people without them who need the real help and the demonization of the homeless community in austin may well have contributed to incidents like this we had so many people throw glass bottles from their cars at our tents and said we all want trash y'all need to get a job y'all need to get housing y'all don't need to be out on the streets or some would yell out go home it's like this is technically our home right and that is obviously horrible although i will say no one screaming out of a car window has ever said anything worthwhile it's like giving a eulogy through flash mob the method of delivery alone is just immediately disqualifying the story of homelessness in this country is grounded in a failure of perception compounded by failures of policy so tonight let's look at the way homelessness is talked about how the problem is currently being made worse and what could actually help and like so many things the modern version of this issue was turbocharged by ronald reagan who came to power at a time when homelessness was increasing and made the problem far worse by cutting programs for the poor and slashing housing subsidies by 75 percent making it pretty galling that reagan regularly made arguments like this one problem that we've had even in the best of times and that is the people who are sleeping on the greats the homeless who are homeless you might say by choice uh i'm sorry homeless by choice look there were lots of things from 1984 that we could have used an undo button for long dok dong most of temple of doom this extremely unfortunate jello ad but reagan's quarter asked thoughts on homelessness are near the top of that list and that notion that homelessness isn't related to economic policies but simply reflects the problems of the individuals experiencing it still informs the way it's discussed today here is dr drew of all people talking to seth green of all people and pushing back on the notion of the homeless crisis in la might have anything to do with a shortage of affordable housing this isn't a housing problem it's not no no that's a hoax that's a hoax being perpetrated by the government here locally that there's a job to stop that there isn't because it seems that of course we have housing expense issues but we we just absorbed a million illegal uh undocumented immigrants without a home without a country without a job without a penny we absorbed them they found a place to live it's a hoax so it's a mental health crisis and addiction crisis full-on oh okay then i certainly don't see why we wouldn't innately trust dr drew confidently mouth-splooging theories to dr evil son but a few notes on what he said there set aside the nonsense that undocumented immigrants don't experience homelessness because experts will tell you that they very much do they're just less likely to avail themselves of services because of the whole undocumented thing instead let's address the notion that all of this is down to mental health and addiction because yes many who are homeless do struggle with both those things and those people are often the most visible but by no means all of them also in many cases those struggles can be the result of being homeless and not the cause of it the truth is there are many reasons someone might find themselves without housing medical debt job loss fleeing domestic violence being kicked out of their homes because their parents don't approve their sexuality or being recently released from prison or just the overriding fact that housing costs are rising much faster than wages currently 70 percent of all extremely low income families are spending more than half their income on rent and only 37 affordable and available homes exist for every hundred extremely low income renter households and that is a startlingly low number especially considering just how much this country loves watching tv shows about homes little homes humungo homes homes for ghosts and homes remodeled by weirdo twins who definitely shower together to name just a few of them the point here is it doesn't take much for people to suddenly find themselves without stable housing as this woman found out two years ago priscilla had a full-time job at a health clinic for the homeless her husband ryan stayed home to care for their two sons the youngest had severe autism they lived on a tight budget and then their landlord raised the rent 150 dollars that's a lot of money for a lot of people that live paycheck by paycheck and we live like that the family was evicted and in a place they never imagined homeless themselves living in their car i work at a homeless clinic and i'm homeless how the heck does that happen to me yeah that is an awful situation to be in you never want to find yourself suddenly saying how did this happen to me with the sole exception of being if you are knee-deep in stanley tucci sheets and even then why question it you're swimming in touch peppermint this is going to be a delight so despite reagan's confidence there can be not much choice in the matter after all as for those outward signs of homelessness that raise such alarm they are typically the result of public policy choices that we have made remember that woman complaining about human that is actually a common thread in coverage of the homeless in la you can find multiple stories about human feces near homeless encampments but it's worth knowing there is a reason for that most of the city's hundreds of encampments are nowhere near a public toilet in fact la has only 16 mobile toilet stations for its 36 thousand homeless people to make matters worse with no funding for round-the-clock security the city hauls away these toilets at night leaving the homeless no choice but to go on the streets what the to all of that from the amount of public toilet stations available being less than the amount of bond movies to shuffling those very minimal toilets away like they're going to turn into a pumpkin at midnight and while that clip is from just before the pandemic which prompted city officials to increase toilet stations there are still currently only 55 accessible 24 7. so the next time you complain about human in the street maybe think about what it would be like if someone padlocks your bathroom every night you too will suddenly be getting really creative really fast and it seems the impulse behind many local policies surrounding unhoused people isn't so much to help them as to punish them for their existence and keep them out of sight you're probably familiar with hostile architecture designed to prevent homeless people from sitting and lying on certain properties it's why you'll sometimes see spikes under bridges like this or benches with dividers to prevent anyone lying down and one city went even beyond architecture debate raging over a florida city playing children's music at a park pavilion at night to keep homeless people away people say the music rotates between baby shark and this song it's raining [Applause] [Music] it's true they pumped the song raining tacos of people when they were just trying to sleep which is completely inhumane nobody deserves that also and i know this isn't the key point that song doesn't deserve it either because it is a certified banger take a listen [Music] stop stop stop stop stop i would love to play you more but the problem is this show would then get too fun and i'd spend the rest of the show dancing in the isles with you and ellen would literally kill me but it but it is not just spikes and songs more and more city ordinances have been put into place criminalizing behaviors associated with being homeless over the course of 13 years city-wide bans on camping have increased by 92 percent on sitting or lying by 78 on loitering and panhandling by 103 and on living in vehicles by 213 so when you hear fear-mongering about rising crime among the homeless it's worth asking yourself if those crimes were actually crimes or just someone sat down take kenneth schultz a 71 year old homeless man who told reporters sometimes i just get exhausted and boom sit down that's it you're trespassing in the nine years he's been homeless he's been charged with trespassing 96 times and has spent one of every three nights in jail and think about what that means it means he spent three of the last nine years behind bars in what way is that man being helped you cannot arrest someone out of homelessness in the same way they can't sing someone out of bankruptcy one thing doesn't remotely lead to the other and he's just going to end up making things worse even if you're singing this [Music] no no turn it off i am warning you ellen is sharpening her knives as we speak she'll do it it won't be the first time and criminalizing homelessness exposes already vulnerable populations to unnecessary interactions with the police unhoused people of color are more likely to be cited searched and have property taken than white people experiencing homelessness and those with multiple marginalized identities like lgbtq plus people of color are even more vulnerable to these laws and if you're thinking well hold on why don't homeless people just go to shelters there can be a lot of problems with that some cities simply don't have enough beds for everyone in oakland for example in 2019 there were 457 beds available for more than 4 000 unhoused people meaning they couldn't provide everyone with a bed even if they really wonkered the situation and if i may i'd actually like to pause at this point for just a quick tangent so put um 40 seconds on the clock please um regarding this i don't mind charlie's grandparents sleeping in one bed everyone always asks but what about when they have to do they separately or all do it together to which i say i don't care and i hope so they're not related by blood they're related by their children's marriage it's not their fault they have to share one rickety bed grandpa george is going to want to make love to grandma georgina they've shared a life together and grandpa joe is obviously going to want to get it in grandma josephine that's the mother of his children but at a certain point if you don't invite the couple sleeping in the same bed to join in it is just real so the next time you talk about charlie bucket's elder sexual proclivities ask yourself this are they the problem or were you just raising the pure technical society that shames any sexual deviation from the quote unquote norm oh that's my time that's my time i said my peace back to the sad stuff the point is some cities don't have enough shelter beds and even in those that have many like here in new york they are not always an option for everyone some might not want to split up their family or part with their pets or simply wary of bringing their only possessions around a room full of strangers but also the key problem with saying why don't people just go to shelters is that shelters are only a stop gap solution because you don't live in a shelter you just sleep in one as this woman points out it's very very rough i would rather stay on the streets and this is why i understand when i see a lot of homeless people while they're on the streets shelter degrades you i work part-time i went from a full-time job to a part-time job being in the shelter because there's just too much going on i have to be in at eight o'clock every night if i'm not in at eight o'clock i lose that bed you wake up at five o'clock you have to be out of there at 7 o'clock regardless yeah an 8 p.m curfew and a 7 a.m kick out the door so if pulling yourself up by your bootstraps involves working nights i'm sorry you're out of luck and if you're thinking no john surely a shelter eventually helps people get back on their feet everything worthwhile in life takes time i read that on a pillow once well think again because just look what happened when the person who filmed that woman caught up with her almost eight years later you talked about going in and out of the shelter system and that's still happening and that still happened they place you they let you go they move you they let you go they get your money from the government they let you go and you're still misplaced yeah the shelter system has done nothing to change her circumstance and i will be the first to admit here it's impossible for me to understand just how hard that cycle is i've been lucky enough to have always lived in a department or a house or most recently an infinite white void run by an abusive landlord that was hard in its own way but it was nothing compared to a potentially life or death game of musical beds so if all we've mentioned so far tonight poking homeless people with spikes blasting with music and locking them up doesn't solve this problem what does well this housing advocate has a bold new idea the solution is simple this is what the solution is it's the only thing that is homelessness is this right here house keys exactly house keys in other words give the homeless homes it's the solution you've probably been shouting at your tv for the past 15 minutes or let's be honest shouting at your laptop or if we're being really honest shouting at your phone during your monday morning and if you are annoyed that i wasted your time taking the scenic route here let me make it up to you with another excellent clip from the tyra bank show [Applause] [Laughter] [Applause] there is some context for that but the truth is it honestly wouldn't make it make much more sense now some will say sure giving the homeless homes is an obvious solution but before that they need to be sober and have a job but it's just not that simple set aside that dealing with sobriety or your mental health issues is hard enough when you are not living on the streets getting a job is often if not contingent on at least aided by having an address that is why advocates endorse an approach called housing first it prioritizes helping people get a place to live but also offer support like mental health and addiction services we've actually tried a version of this with homeless veterans before and it had some real success the first step of this new model is a permanent house funded mostly at government expense with services then added around the resident it's called permanent supportive housing and that's what lendl c found himself in c lives in this complex that houses only formerly homeless veterans while there is no firm program that he has to follow he has access to support services including on-site case managers mental health counseling substance abuse treatment and even a community garden it feel good sometimes i walk around apartment no no tv or nothing on and just singing for no reason at all and then i catch myself done and i started laughing i said you must be going crazy now but i'm just happy a good question it feels good that is a very nice thing to see it's like two babies hugging or four grandparents absolutely railing each other it's something that just fills you with hope and thanks to this housing first strategy the number of homeless veterans dropped from 74 000 in 2010 to 38 000 in 2018 and near 50 reduction and supportive housing is just one version of what this can look like for those recently made homeless rapid re-housing provides short-term rental assistance and services to help people get back on their feet quickly and look housing first programs clearly require significant resources and funding but it is not like our current approach is cheap one study in florida that tracked a decade's worth of spending on just 107 chronically homeless people found that just between money spent on incarceration and emergency medical treatment their communities and local governments have spent an average of just over thirty one thousand dollars per person per year when the estimated cost of providing with permanent supportive housing would have only been around ten thousand dollars per year so if your argument against housing for the homeless was purely monetary congratulations your concerns have been answered also a pre-congratulation for being visited by three ghosts this upcoming christmas eve but funding is not the only issue here a huge obstacle in implementing these sorts of programs is opposition from local residents it is the nimby problem not in my backyard and it happens absolutely everywhere take claremont california where new developments offering affordable housing including those geared to the homeless were proposed only to encounter fierce community pushback like this you don't need to put it in our backyard it's not fair but what they're doing is pass crazy well it's just going to go downhill if you bring all that in all their riffraff i don't need it it's just not the right place i agree that they need help i agree that they need to find a location but claremont's not the location to be had how is that going to impact crime how is that going to impact the businesses out here if they're low income are they going to be spending money at the sushi place or you know or not oh no not the sushi place i didn't realize a prerequisite for housing was a willingness to spend friday nights deep throating the geary as for that guy saying i agree they need to find a location just not here where then because you do get just because someone leaves your site doesn't mean they stop existing right it's a concept that we all learn pretty early on after about eight months of absolutely terrifying games of peek-a-boo and claremont is by no means an isolated example in north texas local residents mobilized against a proposed affordable housing project which had units set aside for residents using housing choice or section 8 vouchers basically rental subsidies for low-income or homeless individuals and here is how one opponent of the project explained herself the lifestyle i feel like that is goes with section 8 is usually working um single maybe single moms or people who are struggling to keep their heads above water and it's not i feel so bad saying that but it's not um it's just not people who are i guess of the same class as us which sounds bad but i don't mean that in a bad way do you think that you maybe are stereotyping the folks oh i totally am 100 it's not it works both ways i i'm definitely not a racist and i'm not bigot but um i i think i hold a little bit of a stigma against people who are different okay some quick corrections there you don't feel that bad saying it the things you're saying are things racists and bigots say and saying i'm not a racist or a bigot but also saying you have a stigma against people who are different isn't necessarily splitting hairs but it's definitely segregating them while that woman lives in a conservative area of texas plenty of the places you've seen tonight and plenty of the places where these sentiments run deepest are deep blue liberal cities the truth is some of you watching this right now may share some of those views and if you do i implore you to take in every word of this formerly unhoused mother kiana k scott who wrote a letter to the nimbys in her hometown you wear your bias like a badge of honor when you see my history you judge me for having children for needing assistance you hate me for wanting the stability you take for granted and why because you didn't like looking the other way when you saw me on the street or is it simply because i make you uncomfortable and your discomfort is enough to disqualify a person from the american dream exactly she's absolutely right it is not the house comfort that needs to be prioritized right now so if you're wondering why homelessness continues to get worse in this country one reason is that there are a lot of people even liberals who believe that homelessness is a personal failing poverty can be avoided and their own good fortune makes them not only better than the unhoused but more worthy of comfort it is basically reagan's attitude from a whole foods crowd and i do not want to oversimplify the logistics involved here it will take a massive commitment in infrastructure funding and resources but the very first step here is a collective change of perceptions basically we need to stop being dicks and assuming that the unhoused are a collection of drug addicts criminals who've chosen this life for themselves instead of people suffering the inevitable consequences of gutted social programs and a nationwide divestment from affordable housing i really hope that is one of the two key things that sticks in your head from tonight's show the other of course being this that's our show thank you so much for watching we'll see you next week good night [Music] you

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 6,586,419

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Id: liptMbjF3EE

Length: 24min 56sec (1496 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 31 2021