[MUSIC PLAYING] We have about 600 miles of flood
channels in the whole Las Vegas valley. Two or three of the tunnels
go right beneath the strip. A few go beneath
the downtown area, and then the rest
are just everywhere. You can see the neon lights,
the 40 story tall casinos, the polished lobbies. And then right beneath that
is this dark and gray world where people are just
trying to survive. I go to the tunnels maybe
two or three times a month, just to check on people. I started a community
project called Shine A Light to try to do what
I can to help the people who are living down there. You ready to see who's around? Let's do it. Creepy. It's a stuffed animal
wrapped in caution tape. That's the kind of thing
if you're by yourself late at night walking and you see
it, it can give you the chills. Craig, is that you? Can you give us a quick
tour of your camp? Just describe-- Well, I just made this up. I locked this down to make
sure the wind and air can come through, a pretty
decent amount of air. You can lower this if
you need to and shut it? It's cold. The floor is cold. The floor is cold enough to keep
the food preserved a little? You found this in a trashcan? Yeah, dumpster diving. Craig is one of the
masters of dumpster diving. Even when he had
an apartment, he would dumpster dive and
furnish it with stuff he found. I wouldn't want to be homeless
anywhere else, I would think. Out of sight, out of
mind here, in Vegas. You're left alone. You have some privacy, and
strangely, a sense of security down here. How are you doing? OK. Yeah? How are you? Good. Good to see you. You've lived down here
off and on for how long? Oh, my god. Since 2004. Wow. Take me back to that moment. You lived, white picket
fence, family, kids? I came down here,
and I expected it to be dirtier, more humidity--
raw sewage going through or something. Right. And I saw how it was. And I was like, wow. That's not as bad as I thought. Whatever my man
chooses or whatever, that's what I want too. If he wants to live
down here, then I'll live down here with him. Can you give us a little tour? This is one of the
more elaborate camps, you'll see down here. The bed is elevated on
these shopping carts. That's my refrigerator. The cooler? I keep the food,
yeah, and water. Aren't those the coin
cups from the casinos? You use that as a bathroom? That's our bathroom, our toilet. People get so comfortable living
down here with their couch, and their milk crate, and
their clothes hung up. And I think
sometimes, they almost forget that they're
living in a flood channel. [MUSIC PLAYING] It says, aghast, the devil stood
and felt how awful goodness is. I think it's a line from
Milton's "Paradise Lost" that a guy named Ricky
wrote on the wall. He's a bit of a poet,
a rough guy, tough guy. But he also has a
more sensitive side. Yeah, this is a roulette table. Wow. You use it just as a curtain? Yeah. Wow. You have a canopy, huh? Yeah. This keeps you warm. Oh, you can pull it down over? Yeah. Is that a thin mattress
or a few blankets? Those are two McDonald's crates. That they unload
their supplies with? Yeah, and they didn't get back. So what is it about the tunnels
that attracts you to it? For one thing, it's free rent. I know my future, and
I'm past 50 years old. I have extensive
prison background. And I know I won't get no work,
no decent work around here. So what? You feel you don't
have any future, so you just don't mind
staying down here? Unless you could think
of a better future than I could think of. And what I've discovered is
it's very tough to get someone to come out literally
into the light and to face the issues that
made them become homeless in the first place and to
try to change and turn that around and give up the freedom. The people down here have
been really good to me as far as welcoming
me into their homes, sharing their stories with me. The thought part of
helping just one of them or brightening
one of their days, those are the kind of
things that keep me going. In another episode
of "Seeker Stories," find out how a controversial
medical procedure is saving lives. So we process stool
from healthy donors and send it out to hospitals
all over the country. The population that
we're treating this way, this is their last resort. They've been sick for a
minimum of six months. And this cures them. This classic case that I
take care of has an over 90% success rate. To watch more stories,
be sure to subscribe. Thanks for watching. [MUSIC PLAYING]
I seriously think we're in the first part of an economic depression in the US. I just quit my job as a debt collector last week, and my experiences there really got me thinking about the american lower class. Most people I called got to where they were due to something medical, surgery or something, which caused them to fall behind on bills, which caused them to get foreclosed on, which pressured a divorce, and now someone who's credit file shows an entire 20 years of on time payments on countless previous loans is collecting SSI disability checks and avoiding their phone.
I got curious about disability because so many people I talked to were receiving it, it turns out it's 5% of the working age population. There is a town in Alabama where it's 1 in 4. Here's the kicker of the whole situation, these numbers aren't included in the unemployment rate of the U.S.
The whole thing started when Clinton added some changes to wellfare, he made it so that states had to contribute more to their citizens wellfare so the feds could save money, and so that states would be incentivized to take a bit more of a look at someone before cutting them a check. Companies start sprouting up that offer a service to states, the company would call citizens on wellfare and get them signed up to ssi disability, assist the citizen in every step to getting signed up, in return the state cuts a couple thousand for each citizen signed up. aaand now we're here. The ultimate problem of the entire situation is that SSI disability is running out of funds now, SSI retirement running out of money has been looming overhead, a future gurantee for years now.
Sorry about the rant, not sure where i was going with this, we have a shit ton of problems to deal with in the US and it really seems like it's all coalescing into this perfect global shit-storm, we dug our graves pretty deep and the rain made the walls too muddy to climb out.
we need more people like this guy in this trashy world.