>> Homeless people are often victims of crimes themselves and many live in fear every day.

Homeless activist working directly with city officials shares his first-hand account of life on the streets.

MetroFocus starts right now.

♪ >> This is MetroFocus.

MetroFocus is made possible by Filomen M. D'Agostino Foundation Barbara Hope Zuckerberg Jody and John Arnold Bernard and Denise Schwartz Dr. Robert C. and Tina Sohn Foundation The Ambrose Monell Foundation Estate of Roland Karlen The JPB Foundation ♪ >> Good evening and welcome.

The recent news of serial killer targeting homeless people has left New York City's on house population on edge.

A suspect has been taken into custody, but this individual was far from the only danger homeless New Yorkers often faced.

Last year was the deadliest year ever recorded for the homeless population of New York with 640 reported deaths in shelters, hospitals, and on the streets.

As Mayor Adams attends to transition those living in the subway to city shelters through his plan, the homeless are taking the situation into their own hands.

One known as the homeless hero has struggled with homelessness it is entire life.

His advocacy has garnered the attention of many notable New Yorkers including the mayor.

Welcome to MetroFocus and thank you so much for joining us.

>> I'm glad to be here.

I appreciate the invite.

I look forward to discussing things with you.

>> Before we get into your personal story and work you have been doing, I want to get your take on the killings that I mentioned in the intro.

That was someone who was specifically targeting homeless men and while he has been picked up, do you think that New York City is doing enough to help support and protect the homeless population?

Guest: To be 100% with you, the reality is that New York City has a history of not really centering the homeless issue in a way that it should be centering it.

Clearly, our protections and our rights as vulnerable people, vulnerable members of the population often go unaddressed.

A lot of the ways that the city operates are providing Band-Aid solutions that leaves the wounds there.

Right now currently we have the previous administration under de Blasio that the homeless crisis grew and got worse under his leadership specially homeless people experiencing homelessness in the streets.

The single adult members of the population.

It's like this new Mayor Mayor Adams has inherited a serious mass.

We won't get out of this overnight.

No matter how much we are out here doing this work as advocates and directly impacted people, the reality is it is so complex and so deeply rooted obviously and realistically in systemic racism.

We also have to address the systemic racism that permeates our systems of government from the federal, state, and city level.

Jenna: From your perspective, do you think the homeless population gets unfairly blamed for not only being homeless but in addition, being victims of crimes can self?

Guest: Yes definitely.

The language that is used, I sat in meetings with even city administrators this is going back from my days at the Lucerne hotel.

I was horrified at the way they described us when people were asking either legitimate questions or questions based on ignorance, simply not knowing what the face of homelessness looks like.

Instead of answering these questions, the way that they spoke of us reduced us into sort of a dehumanized scription.

-- description.

Even the city administrators, those who are there to serve us are looking at us in a way that is dehumanizing, what do you think the public site?

-- what do you think the public will say?

media plays a huge role because they sensationalize things and a lot of times, it's inaccurate information.

It makes us look extremely bad.

One of the things I try to articulate that this place into the hands of those who are anti-homeless and in some cases anti-black.

I said that because when you look at New York City, the population of people experience in homelessness, 90% of those are black and brown.

Jenna: One of the things again before we get too deep into the issues that you are working on, I want you to explain for people who have never lived on the street and don't understand what that life is like.

What is one of the more difficult things about being homeless?

What is one of the greatest challenges that on housed New Yorkers face every day?

Guest: Let me say.

I grew up in foster care start at the age of two.

I was permanently discharged into the streets with no safety net at the age of 12.

Look at it from this perspective.

One of the basic human rights's access to a home, to shelter, a place to live.

If we take that away from someone or if that doesn't exist for somebody, then what you have is dehumanizing experience.

A lot of us that are experiencing homelessness, we are lacking one of the most basic necessities that would make a person human and whole.

A lot of that can come whole lot of other issues.

For me in particular, it was mental illness.

You don't going into depression which progressed into a deep depression which turned into a desire to commit suicide.

Without no treatment.

I was a casual drinker.

But in the experience of homelessness, it exacerbated that desire to drink and find a coping mechanism.

So I became an abuser of alcohol.

That didn't help the situation.

Because we don't have the right services and we have not been approaching homelessness in the right way, it becomes a further dehumanizing process and the worst thing when I found I went into the shelter system, it was more dehumanizing than the streets.

Jenna: Can you explain what you mean by that?

Guest: I can go on with that, but I'm going to keep it short.

First of all, when you go through the intake process and I've been in a family shelter system as well as a single adult shelter system and both systems are similar in how you are processed.

Walking in is like voluntarily walking into a prison.

You are going through the checkpoint.

You are being talked at like you are less than an animal.

The way you are dressed.

They give you a cares number similar to when they give you a number when you are in jail.

The food they feed you is not nutritious.

It's horrible.

For person, I have to always speak my black experience but if you have the knowledge of your slave experience, I automatically get triggered and think they are feeding us like they fed the slaves.

This dehumanizing experience automatically sends a message to my brain to let me think that I'm not worth being treated with respect, with dignity and it makes it easier for me to say I need something to cope, I need something to process this.

In the traditional shelter system, there's no mental health professionals on site.

There's no when I can talk to, there's not even a peer specialist.

While I'm going through this, I might want to talk to somebody but someone who doesn't know how to deal with a person that may have years of trauma, years of experience just trauma from the homeless experience.

When I'm trying to get help, and denied help.

I'm told it up at 8:00 and go into the streets.

Just make sure you are back before 10:00 or you will lose your bed.

There are so many things with experience that are dehumanizing, we aren't even talking about the physical structures of being in settings like barracks.

Where you have one bed next to the other.

When you are pulling people 40% of the parolees that are sent from state prison coming into shelters.

And they are not even given the proper environment to get on their feet.

Then you have people to be -- dealing with severe mental illness but no treatment on site.

You have people dealing with substance abuse issues and no treatment on site.

People dealing with multiple years of trauma with no treatment on site.

This is a powder keg that leads to a whole lot of stuff and it will definitely negatively impact communities.

One of the things I've been pushing for is trying to get them to reimagine what that shelter experience should look like for people that are experiencing homelessness.

Jenna: That's interesting that you say you want people to reimagine the shelter experience because I would imagine most of the people making these decisions haven't really had the shelter experience.

From your perspective, how do you think that at least this current administration is addressing the un-housed population in your in terms of sensitivity to a lot of the issues you just mentioned?

Guest: That's a great question.

Last year in February I did a forum for the mayoral candidate that were running in the primary election.

Our current mayor was one of those persons who participated.

There he said in his administration he would have people like myself have a seat at the table in his administration, that he would have a voice.

After he made that statement, people were asking do you believe him?

You know how these politicians are.

I would say I don't know, let's just see.

After he won the primary and he went on to be elected as the mayor of New York City, his administration reached out to me.

They had me join his transition team to help shape what would become the policies that address housing and homelessness.

Not just homelessness, but housing and that's the committee that I sat on.

That was a great step.

To actually take a guy who couple of years ago was sleeping on park bench in Harlem who was walking around with a bottle of beer, to have me there shaping policy and I was very active in those discussions, that is amazing.

Then further into his administration when he decided to roll out this public safety plan to address the homeless population on the subways, he reached out to me not just to join a press conference but to actually find out what I thought about and offer suggestions to help shape it and I did that.

In this administration, I look at people that are part of his administration.

He has chosen some great people that are involved in the issues of housing and homelessness for years that are really centered on the issues and aligned with me in my views.

They always like his chief housing officer, they ensure that I have a seat at the table, a hand in the decision-making.

A voice in the discussion.

That is one of the things that is so important.

Not just having shams, but having people that have lived experience at the table helping shape policy and helping to decide what happens within.

That's one of the most important things we can do and that differs from the previous way things have been done.

Jenna: At least for the resources the city has now, a lot of the implementation of some of the policies will involve the un-housed population having further interactions with Police Department which has notoriously been criticized for being rough, unnecessarily rough at times.

I want to get from your perspective any interactions that you may have had with the NYPD and do you think that it's correct or even fair for people who been law enforcement officers to do what sounds like the social service outreach of helping people get off the street?

>> That's a great question as well.

Let me say this.

Some people think that because I am the homeless hero and doing all this work, that I'm not the same person that has been homeless since I was 10 years old.

On and off.

They forget it's generations, the gates of trauma.

You don't erase that trauma just by being on a news show or in the media.

No, those traumas still live with me.

I have to constantly especially being an advocate and having to relive the telling those experiences come I have to relive the traumas and one of the most traumatic events was encountering police in the subway under the de Blasio administration.

When he had called intervention program.

When I encountered them, they asked if they could help me and I submitted to the help I said it's a cold night and I was like it's too cold to be riding the trains.

I was intimidated because it was a ton of Cops, but I was intimidated they asked for my ID.

They started running for warrants.

I started thinking, did I do something one day, it's triggering my fear that I could be arrested.

Thank you -- thank God, no warrants came up I ended up out of fear agreeing to go with them and I was placed in handcuffs being told I'm not being arrested they are helping me and I can't process how are you helping me if you're putting me in handcuffs?

It took me to it transit precinct.

It's not really funny, it's always traumatic to talk about it, I don't really go into it too much but I don't mind sharing.

They took me into a station where the captain described me as perpetrator.

Make sure they had the cameras on.

I said I wasn't sleeping on the train, I was walking on the platform, I didn't do anything that would want a ticket or confrontation or any interaction.

They just assumed that I was homeless.

They were correct and when they offered to help, out of fear I didn't want to trigger them and think I was doing something wrong so I submitted to the help but now I am facing the captain who is telling his officers they have to keep their body camera on then they asked me to remove my laces, they took my property and they put me in a cell for an hour.

I didn't break the law.

It was nothing.

There was nothing that would warrant them to do this is this what intervention is?

Is this what helping the homeless is?

I was further traumatized in this homeless experience by going through that.

That's a lived experience.

I sat in that cell for an hour not knowing.

I'm from the streets of New York and our encounters as a black man my personal encounters have not always been good when encountering police hence my fears.

Now being in a cell in this era of those who have died while in custody, I was extremely fearful.

I cooperated of course, I didn't commit a crime but they took me to a drop off center and put me in the same congregate deathtrap that they call shelter that I didn't want to go in in the first place.

Now this time, they said if you don't stay here, we will ticket you and you have to go to court.

You miss the court, that will turn into a warrant so the next time whereas this time they said I wasn't being arrested, the next time obviously they would have reasons to arrest me.

This was also a way that was criminalizing me instead of helping me.

I'm sorry.

Jenna: No, that's totally fine.

What I'm hearing you describe is what seems like a prime example of why people who are homeless in New York wouldn't want to interact with police officers who are tasked with getting them off the streets.

I'm wondering because so often we have this conversation, we talked about it so many times on MetroFocus, it ends up that the city will deem the police officers and even Mayor Adams himself has phrased it as clean up the streets.

Guest: I think what he was saying was more so clean up the subways.

If anybody has read the subway safety plan, there are two things he is addressing.

Number one, he is addressing the need for people experiencing homelessness to have services and clinicians come and meet with them.

His idea and the governors idea is to put a team which doesn't exist and hasn't existed before to put a team that consists of a mental health professional and outreach workers that her peers like what we call credible messengers and this is where it might differ with activists, where they would be the presence of a uniformed officer but they wouldn't be the first line of engagement.

The engagement would come from those two parties.

I don't know if it's called the SOS team or whatever but there's a term for.

These people would be the ones to deal with those who are experiencing homelessness and offer the support.

When he spoke of having officers there enforcing certain laws, enforcing rules, he was speaking to a different element that exists on the subway and that's real and present for a lot of people in terms of people who may be using drugs on the subway or doing different things.

Those were two things addressed in the safety plan, but they are not the same thing.

That's what I think people have missed and what was being presented.

I think it probably needs to be expressed more and what I would want for us to do is have more -- Michael is to hold the administration accountable to make sure the safety teams consist of the right dynamic of people who experience homelessness.

I don't think these officers have the training to go in and engage with homeless New Yorkers, but I'm not opposed to having their presence when needed because there are certain situations where it might require the need for an officer.

So if their presence on the subways is there and they're called upon when needed, I don't have a problem with that, but I would like to see the state and city fund the people that are trained as they have put in that public safety plan.

This is were getting into a problem that I mean discussing it now but I understand this being someone his expense mental illness and find hard to get a proper psychiatrist.

One of the things that were having a problem with is the defunding of mental health services.

From the state level, we don't have enough money to actually -- were losing that.

Losing the professionals.

There's waiting list just to see a psychiatrist.

As we want to address these issues, you have to -- you have people that are dying they're being killed by people that are not necessarily bad people but these are people that are not being treated -- they are being treated for mental illness.

I guess the problem we don't have the resources placed where they need to be.

It's going to be a negative effect.

I'm out there in the streets all the time.

I'm going to subways I deal with the population of one of the reasons that I'm effective as I understand with air coming from their instances where I realize you don't think you can handle this one, you better fall back.

But one of the things the first thing the only to the real reason I'm able to be effective is the foundation all I do in love, it's based in compassion is based on saying you and you.

I know where you come from.

When I have this conversations you know it turns into a different thing and calm people down.

I can say look, this is what you need to do and this is how were going to get you some help.

Jenna: We have to leave it there but thank you so much for taking time to not only share your personal story, but you been doing -- the work you've been doing to make your abettor city for everyone.

Guest: Thank you for amplifying the voices of homeless New Yorkers and homeless people throughout the country and the world.

>> Thank you for tuning into MetroFocus.

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>> MetroFocus is made possible by Joan Ganz Cooney Fund Filomen M. D'Agostino Foundation Barbara Hope Zuckerberg Jody and John Arnold Bernard and Denise Schwartz Dr. Robert C. and Tina Sohn Foundation The Ambrose Monell Foundation Estate of Roland Karlen The JPB Foundation ♪