From Sky news.

This is connections I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made on a little league field with an unexpected discovery.

I want to quote directly from the prolog of a new book about homelessness from Josephine inside.

And she asked the reader this question.

Suppose you are the coach for your son's little league team, and you arrive for a Saturday game at your local city's Park baseball field to find a man camped out in the dugout.

What would you do?

Would you offer to buy him pizza and help move his tent and belongings off the field so the children can play?

If he refuses to leave, would you call the police or your elected officials, or the people at Parks and Recreation from whom you reserved and rented the field?

Is there a more compassionate and skilled team of outreach workers that you could call?

Would they even respond?

Generally speaking, what can we do about those people who don't seem to want any help?

Why do we allow people to live in tent encampments in our parks and on our sidewalks?

What is causing such an increase in homelessness and what are some possible solutions?

End quote for Josephine Insigne, this scenario poses a number of important questions for our society.

How do we view people who are experiencing homelessness?

Is our first instinct to call the police?

Is it to turn the other way?

Is it to scoff or sneer and sign?

Is spent her career working on these issues, and she comes from a place of personal experience.

She was herself homeless in her early adulthood, after a tumultuous marriage and in a setting that caused all kinds of trauma.

For decades now, she has worked as a nurse, as an advocate, as an author, a podcaster, asking society to make sure all of its members are seen and heard.

Her podcast series introduces us to both policymakers and to individuals who have experienced homelessness, and who can talk about what worked and what did not.

Insigne is in Rochester as a guest of Suny Brockport for an event tonight.

They would love to see you there.

But first, she is our guest here on connections.

Josephine Insigne is a professor of nursing at the University of Washington School of Nursing and the author of multiple books, including Way Home Journeys Through Homelessness.

Welcome.

Thank you for making time for us today.

Thank you for having me.

well, I think our listeners are wondering, what would you do if you found a man sleeping in the dugout?

Yes, I'm game day.

Yeah.

So that scenario is an actual, question that one of my students, one of my nursing students, asked me one time and, I've also seen it in action with my grandchildren, etc., and Seattle parks and so, I mean, obviously, I have insider, information on probably what the most effective way would be to handle the situation.

hopefully not the police unless, you know, unless there's violence or something else or, need to call somebody in terms of health, health crisis.

and hopefully then I would know, like who outreach workers are in that area, who I could I could call to try, if not right then to intervene, but then to follow up with a person.

Yeah.

I mean, in the book, you you asked the question, are there outreach workers who you could even call and would they respond?

That may be true.

I know that's true.

In Rochester.

We've talked to many, on this program over the years, and I could name them off.

You can probably do that in your native Seattle.

That's not true everywhere.

But set that aside for a moment and just tell me what the human response.

Yes, that's a good question.

So the human response is, I mean, obviously I'm going to be frustrated, right?

Because here I am, the Little League person, and I'm trying to to be a good a good team leader and get the get the field ready.

but I would hope that I would pause, like, internally, take a deep breath and realize that this is a person and that there trying to survive the best they can.

even though this is not where you would want, somebody to be, to be camping out, you wouldn't want to be camping out there yourself if you were homeless.

So to try to meet that person as a person, greet them.

and try not to, you know, start getting angry because that's not going to help anybody and ask them, you know, what you could do to help and just point out to them that you need that space as well for little kids.

So how could you work it out together?

Do you think most people or many people would call the police?

Yes.

and then what happens?

Well, if the police respond, in Seattle, that's most likely not the case.

And we, we we definitely have had a lot of, Seattle police reform, really good police officers.

But unless it's, violent, like, there's something really imminent, they probably are not going to be able to respond.

So that's not the best use.

And, you know, it also is not the best outcome for that person.

yeah.

In terms of, of being dealt with.

So before we kind of get into some ideas about what works and what does not and what your experience has, has yielded in your professional career, can you let our audience know a little bit more about your own experience with homelessness?

Yeah.

So that, you know, I, I always try to point out to people that everybody's experiences is different.

I mean, there's no there's no, one on one experience.

So mine was when I was a young adult and I was living in my hometown of Richmond, Virginia, and it was in the 1980s.

so for me, it was like, you know, my, my marriage breaking down also, also challenges from, my work, from my bosses who were extremely religious.

Right.

And I was questioning kind of that approach to taking care of the people, in the, in the homeless shelter where I worked and, and, and then spiraling into and a depression related to at that point, childhood traumas that I hadn't I mean, I was only in my 20s, right.

Still, young had not really addressed adequately.

So it was complex.

I was fortunate that it didn't last for long.

I was not, you know, literally on the streets or in emergency shelters.

I was I was living in my car and I, you know, I work with a lot of vehicle residents.

I know you also have a lot of people living in their vehicles or RVs as well as families here.

and I did know, like, how to get help.

to be able to like, work on that and then get get out of homelessness is your point, I think is well taken, that every individual's experience is different.

And you've never that I've seen in your writing or your podcasting tried to hold out your own experience as some sort of, model or an all encompassing view of homelessness.

I do want to ask you, how has that informed the work?

How has that helped you at least understand the issue better?

Yes.

And that's, you know, people's lived experience of, homelessness.

that there are there are cases and I could have fallen into this where then I would be like, oh, I got myself out of homelessness.

Why can't you, you know, the whole judgmental ism.

And that's and that's why I also wrote my first book, Catching Homelessness, which is really a medical memoir of that time, of how it has deepened and also made more complex my understanding of the nuances of what goes into, you know, both structurally, contributing to homelessness in our country, as well as individual vulnerabilities.

And then what it takes, to be able to work out of that.

What is the most consistent judgment that people who have never experienced homelessness have that is incorrect about homelessness, that it's all their fault, that they're all mentally ill, that they're all on drugs, they're all lazy.

you know, the those whole thing that we've had forever in our country about, people who are poor, that they brought it on themselves.

And so there's this tension, I think, and I want to explore a little bit of this with you.

You live in Seattle, you've worked in Seattle for decades.

Seattle's got the third highest percentage of homelessness in the country, behind Los Angeles.

In New York.

These are sort of classically politically blue cities and classically politically blue states.

Before we talk about that, there's a term that's interesting.

And for listeners who hear it, sometimes you'll hear Josephine say, Houselessness, and you'll hear advocates say that.

And you explained in a, in a recent talk that I was watching that this isn't just like a squishy term to kind of placate people.

There's a reason that activists use that term because they view the lack of housing as a primary driver, so they use the term houselessness as a way of highlighting the fact that we don't have the supply to deal with this problem, and we've got to put a spotlight on that.

Do you want to talk a little bit about that?

Yes.

so and that is like research that's been done about what are the contributing kind of, systemic contributors to, to homelessness and looking at that in terms of especially the West Coast of why such high rates of, homelessness.

And it really boils down to, a lack of affordable, safe, affordable housing, permanent housing that people can stay in.

it's not because of increased permissiveness, drug use or increase and, mental health disorders or anything like that.

they are all, I, I am biased this way.

Right.

but they are, desirable cities to live in, right?

and probably at least partly because of their, their politics.

So people are drawn there as well.

But the vast majority of people who even experience homelessness in Seattle, they're from the Seattle area or from Washington state, you know, they don't move there to become homeless.

and so I think that that calling out and trying to emphasize houselessness is important at the same time, recognizing again, both from my personal experience, and also working with people over decades experiencing different kinds of homelessness, that is not only about not having a safe, affordable place to live.

It's also about all of the breakdowns and social networks and how we treat people as a society.

All of the different kind of social exclusions that happen that, that make it so much more difficult for people, to, to work their way out of homelessness.

I like to listen to a couple of clips and get your take on and there so there's been a lot of talk in the discourse lately about a new book from a couple of public intellectuals who are on the political left, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson.

Their new book is called abundance.

The entire first section of the book is on housing, and in a recent podcast on Derek Thompson's Plain English, I want to listen first to Ezra Klein talking about his experience of moving back in his adulthood to his native California and what he experienced.

I went back to California, and the state, in my view, just was not doing well.

And when I looked around at why it wasn't doing well, why to become so unaffordable, why it had such a bad homelessness problem, why people were so upset, why so many people were leaving, right?

California was and is losing people.

It was really just clear we had built enough the things we had wanted to build, like high speed rail, had not come to fruition.

We did not have enough mass transit.

There was no functional.

I shouldn't say functional.

There is no good subway system in Los Angeles.

It would be such an amazing city if it had a good mass transit system.

But we weren't building enough homes.

We weren't building enough clean energy to meet our clean energy goals.

That California's problem was not, its commitment to justice, but its commitment to expanding supply.

And then he talks about in this second clip, he talks about what that means for the working class, what it means for people who want to be able to live in Seattle or Los Angeles or New York City.

And how that has changed.

Let's listen to working class.

People are leaving the high productivity areas to move to low productivity or lower productivity areas, because it's just too expensive to live there.

You you know, there's a get on and show of whose work.

I quoted the book the other day, this sort of thing about like the, the the janitor and the lawyer.

And it used to make sense for a janitor to move to York City, and it made sense for a lawyer to move to New York City.

Both of them would make more money there.

Now, it's still makes sense for the lawyer to move to New York City, but not the janitor, because a janitor can't afford a house, can't afford a place to live.

So in dating the mega cities, by making by constraining the supply of housing such that they became an affordable to live in, what we've done, in addition to making them in affordable is shut off.

a driver of opportunity.

So that says Rick Klein talking to Derek Thompson.

What do you make of some of what you're.

Yes, I have many thoughts on that.

so, yeah, again, the city that I know the best, outside of Richmond, Virginia, my childhood home is is Seattle.

So, I completely relate to Ezra's, observations about the infrastructure here.

Seattle has I mean, we do have a light rail system.

Some of it is underground.

It is always breaking down.

I couldn't even take it to get to the airport yesterday.

and I was reflecting on that, like going through Dulles.

They still have the people movers.

I love the people movers that are still.

I mean, they've been there since I don't know how it started.

I mean, why can't we build something that works just infrastructure wise?

And Seattle right now is going through and Washington state, has just enacted laws to change single family zoning that has, Seattle.

I guess it still is the case.

We have the largest single family zoning, of any major city, and so of course it's going to be on it.

You know, people can't afford, places, places to live.

and so that's changing, going to more multifamily and, you know, apartments and condos, but still of trying to make sure that there are enough that are affordable, that aren't market rate, you know, through the roof, for people to have to afford.

So I agree with that, that something has not kept pace with, I think, more idealistic, notions of of justice.

and, and antipoverty, more equity, that, that for some reason we haven't kept up with that of what we actually need infrastructure wise, with housing, with transportation, with, you know, public education, all of that.

Well, I want to oversimplify Thompson and Klein's critique, but it in some ways, it sounds like this.

The progressive enclaves in this country, of which Seattle is certainly one of them, is filled with people who feel good about driving a Prius for years or, you know, driving an EV and voting a certain way.

But they are largely populated by NIMBYs who also oppose multi-family housing, lower income housing, support for homeless services.

So they feel good about themselves for being on the right side of the politics, but they don't actually act in ways that helps people in the most dire circumstances.

That's an overly simplified analysis of some of our abundances as a book.

But is it is there a grain of truth to that?

Yes, I think so.

I mean that, you know, accelerated by the pandemic, Seattle has widening, income disparities.

And any time you have that, even if you have, no matter what the ideology is of people who are on the upper end of that spectrum, it's a lot more difficult for someone who's climbing that socioeconomic, ladder to maintain any kind of empathy for people who don't have what you have and to start distancing yourself from them, you know, gated communities or, you know, going out to suburban sprawl and things like that where you're not having to, on a daily basis, confront poverty and homelessness as much.

It looks different in those areas.

And I would encourage listeners to listen to, Kline's recent conversation with Zephyr Teachout this week, I think, where she at Fordham law professor who ran for governor of New York state.

We're working on bringing, finding a date for Zephyr Teachout to come on this program.

Her critique of of Klein and Thompson's critique is that they're missing the culprit.

She still blames largely the billionaire class income disparity, the powerful who are sort of entrenching their turf.

But I don't think it changes the fact that if you look at the issue of homelessness, it is more acute in bluer cities and states.

And so the question then becomes, what do you do about that?

So, you know, you've had a lot of time to think about policy.

You've heard from almost all the policymakers, and you've talked to people who are experiencing different ideas for what would work in homelessness.

Let's talk a little bit about, you know, I'm going to give you the keys to the castle of Seattle at least, or whatever.

Pick any American metropolitan area.

What are you going to do first when it comes to homelessness?

Well, I think also especially as a nurse, right?

Yeah, sure.

love nurses, love nursing.

That's why I am one is we have to take care of immediate needs, immediate suffering.

yes.

We also need to be working on upstream policy solutions like changing zoning laws and all of that.

But until that is, can become a reality or work on like infrastructure and public transportation that actually works, we have to take care of the people that are suffering in our doorways, on our streets.

you know, parked on our streets, in their vehicles and, and provide services that, at least lessen that suffering and work with them again as people.

what would help you, where would you really prefer to be living?

And what can we do to facilitate that happening for you?

Giving people agency, you know, as much agency as they can handle at that point.

and also more programs that are that are not judgmental, that have a harm reduction, approach to them.

I mean, so many of our emergency shelters, etc.

traditionally and even still do, you can't be under the influence of anything to come in here.

And if they're not being dangerous to anybody, why are we doing that?

That's judgmental.

you know, getting them into a place to live.

We know that getting someone into permanent supportive housing, it can really help to reduce their rates of alcohol, drug use.

get them mental health, improve their mental health, even if they're not taking medications.

and so, you know, supporting more of those there's a lot of big backlash in our country against those now.

So let me take, policy point by point.

And I want to start with harm reduction.

You mentioned harm reduction.

We had Rob Kent on the program earlier this week.

He is, a former Biden White House.

he was a legal counsel on drug policy.

He helped write drug policy for the Biden White House.

And he described what it was like working with President Biden to try to convince him to use the words harm reduction in the state of the Union.

And he said he finally, Biden finally does it.

And the team that's working with Biden was almost amazed that the, to hear a president say that in that setting, because it has been kind of controversial and there has been, kind of a push and pull and an ebb and flow on the idea of harm reduction there.

Certainly I don't want to make it just a left and right or Progressive Conservative, but there's I think there is a somewhat conservative pushback that says harm reduction is too permissive or too encouraging of behaviors that lead to long term problems.

And there needs to be more of a tough love approach.

So I want you to define harm reduction, first of all, and then tell me what you think the evidence says about that.

Yes, I'd love to.

so harm reduction, kind of simplistically is reducing the harm to that person and to people that they're in contact with, and, and the wider community while helping them to, like, move towards what it is that they, they want to work on.

so it's not like a anything goes, you can just keep using sort of a thing or other, you know, some people on the continuum of harm reduction have that.

But of, okay, you're still using meth, using what we call motivational interviewing.

What what are the consequences of that for you?

What what what matters to you that you would like to, have less of that or have more of that's positive and less of that's negative?

And how can we help, you know, us individually, health care providers, community to help you to do that, we have some really amazing harm reduction programs in Seattle.

I mean, needle exchange is, is, one I know that's controversial.

It saves lives.

I mean, I came of age as a new nurse in the beginning of the HIV Aids epidemic.

I had many patients that died.

And knowing that, you know, use of condoms, I mean, getting safer sex information out there, getting, where people could more safely inject, you know, not not reusing needles or sharing them that it saves lives.

And, and, you know, helps to decrease a big burden on society as well.

we now have because we have a big problem with fentanyl and meth.

there's a lot of places.

And so we have not not just, Narcan and lots of places, but we also have, contingency management, kinds of programs where people like even the women's shelter where I work, they can sign up to start doing, you know, dropping off a urine.

And if there's reduction in use, they get positive rewards, which helps with our dopamine.

Right.

And can help them to at least reduce, reduce use of things.

And we have lots of other harm reduction programs as well.

I remember reading Sam Harris's book called The End of Faith back when it came out in 2004, and he looked at programs that were, in working in sub-Saharan Africa, disease outbreak.

And he looked at two different organizations, one secular and one very religious in its ministry.

And they were doing almost everything the same, except for the secular group was passing out condoms, and the very religious group was taking them away, telling, oh, that's pretty gross.

Well, telling, telling people that, you know, he should premarital sex is not in God's image and that you shouldn't be having sex at all.

And and that made me think this last week about Pope Francis, who we talked about yesterday, who has talked in his life in his papacy about meeting people where they were not in the cliche sense, but understanding what is a realistic set of demands on what human beings can do and and not do.

And if you are so rigid in what you demand of people, you're going to shut doors on those who maybe are not meeting your standard, but certainly need some help at the same time.

What do you say to that?

The more conservative critique that says a lot of harm reduction, needle exchanges, supervised use leads to an exacerbation of the problem, or at least a continuation of a problem instead of an an attempt to end a problem.

All right.

Well, and there are, are certainly cases where that, that can happen.

if they're not from my, my perspective, they're if they're not run well because I think, I think that having, more palatable options for at least reducing use or quitting altogether, having more sober housing, available as permanent supportive housing is also hugely important.

It's that's really important for I've worked with all, prisoners and, Washington state prisons and, you know, the criminalization of poverty, how they were homeless before they went to prison.

And they're facing that again, but they've gotten clean and sober in prison.

They want to return to sober, you know, sober living.

And we don't have enough options for people with that.

so I think of, you know, again, just recognizing the reality.

There are lots of people who use and abuse alcohol and other, other kinds of substances who, live in places where we don't see that.

Right.

and so why are we why are we taking out our judgmental ism on people who are doing that, but having to do it more visibly on our streets?

And to be clear, I want to mention, as Josephine said earlier this hour and in her books and work, not all people who experience homelessness are struggling with drugs and addiction.

I mean, that's one of the stereotypes.

It certainly can be a very big challenge.

It is not everybody.

Having said that, how do you feel about supervised use sites?

So, I've been to the one in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Yeah, more famously, just because there haven't been all that many, it's been illegal in Vancouver is one of the first that I even heard.

Is it still operating?

It is.

It's gone through some changes that has, started to incorporate much more robust, even on site, treatment options and better treatment options, buprenorphine.

different things like that than it did early on when we didn't have those, those, those treatment options, for instance.

And, there definitely are under the table, supervised injection use places like even in LA, places that I have worked with, where it's not like an official site, but that is what's going on in a health care facility.

and I think that having those as an option on the continuum of, for instance, prevention in the first place, early early intervention and prevention before people get deeply entrenched in, in, in substance use, you know, so many times it's functional use like take for instance, mass, which is a really big problem in in Seattle, not just among, you know, people experiencing homelessness, but the general population in that, you know, it's a stimulant if you're homeless and you're trying to survive out on the streets of Seattle at night in the winter, or, you know, whatever it is, the elements, you're going to want to stay awake, so that you don't hopefully don't get assaulted, and have your things stolen so that a lot of times people start off with that as a functional use to stay awake, to stay alive.

and they don't realize how how different methods now from how it used to be, how strong.

and then they get, they get, addicted.

But you're right.

Not everybody who experiences homelessness is mentally ill. Has.

Yeah.

So in general, last question of harm reduction as an umbrella of an approach is harm reduction moving in a in a direction of getting more momentum or is it facing more headwinds now generally speaking, in this case, I know you work primarily in Seattle, but do you think harm reduction has a lot of sort of political and social capital right now, or is it viewed more negatively than it was five, ten years ago?

Well, it depends on which awareness you're talking about, right?

Yeah.

I mean, it's definitely, it definitely has a lot of support and bipartisan support for instance, and in, in Seattle, and even a la and San Francisco, places like that that I've worked with.

it has huge pushback.

among more conservative leaning, folks locally in those areas, including in Seattle.

And then obviously with the, the current, the current, you know, federal situation that's going on.

so a lot of pushback from that and pushback federally as well on permanent supportive housing, which is really unfortunate because that is evidence based.

After we take our only break, I'll work in some of your feedback.

We're talking to Josephine and Signe, whose newest book is called Way Home Journeys Through Homelessness.

She is in Rochester as a guest of Suny Brockport, and you can go to hear her tonight at 7:30 p.m. at Suny Brockport.

It's happening at the McHugh auditorium and the Fanny barrier Williams building there.

And, it's part of their one of, their Writers Forum events.

In fact, it's the final event of their season, and they're glad to have Josephine sign here.

You can listen to her podcast.

It's called Skid Road.

I've had a chance to listen to a number of episodes, and she she interviews policymakers, people who work in homelessness, people who've experienced homelessness.

and it's a it's a very human, and it's a very strange thing to say, but it's a very human way of talking about the issue of homelessness.

So her podcast is called Skid Road, and she has, other works in books as well.

So we're talking to Josephine inside, and we'll get some of your feedback on the other side of this.

Only break.

Coming up in our second hour, a conversation about what a local town says is a cannabis success story.

The rollout of the legalization of marijuana in the state has not been all that smooth or all that timely, but we're going to talk to folks from Henrietta who say that they have an example of where it's working, where the tax revenue is helping the town with hires and reducing taxes on its citizens.

We'll talk about it next hour.

Support for your public radio station comes from our members and from Green Spark Solar, serving the greater Rochester and Finger Lakes regions for over 20 years.

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This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

so let me work through some feedback.

Joseph wants to know about your feelings about UBI universal basic income.

Joseph says we saw a little bit during the pandemic.

So he says Canada did more than the United States.

I don't have the data on that.

But is that part of the set of solutions, you think for homelessness?

I think so, at least some version of it.

I always point out to people that we actually know what helps to reduce, if not end, homelessness.

veteran, you know, the whole effort to end veteran homelessness, until recently has had huge impact.

And then in Washington state, we've had really amazing success.

That includes, that includes direct cash payments to, to young adults, experiencing homelessness across our state or at risk of that, like during the pandemic.

for instance, somebody and, rural part of Washington state who had to drive somewhere and their car broke down, they could get a direct, a direct cash, payout.

And it helped to reduce, youth homelessness across our state by 40%.

And, you know, and obviously wasn't like, oh, here's $100 go party.

It was, you know, working with local social service agencies and schools and things like that.

But I think it, it makes sense, to have some, some form of that could definitely help.

Chad's got a couple of questions.

He says, what is the politically conservative approach to reducing homelessness, especially for those who are incapable of working?

I don't know, I mean, that is not Josephine's politics, I think.

Fair to say.

No.

I can say that we've had those solutions in the past, and it actually, unfortunately, has been has been talked about, again by the current administration and that is, poor camps, poor farms of, of basically rounding people up who are homeless, destitute and putting them, in poor farms away from our cities, making them work, to pay their way.

so, you know, basically a form of incarceration when you, when you think about what President Trump has said about San Francisco.

So San Francisco, I think, has had some very well documented problems with homelessness in recent years.

And yet when big international events come, President Trump says, well, all the homeless people disappear, so they care about it.

When bigger international events come.

What do you know about what's going on there?

yes, I do know what's going on there.

Well, until the current administration, you know, has put a dent on, on travel and people from other countries coming wanting to come to our country.

the World Cup is coming to Seattle.

the mayor's commission and planning for that, the infrastructure and, and they're putting more money into the outlying areas of King County outside of Seattle, to basically bus all of the homeless people from Seattle.

And I'm simplifying this, but not really, but but basically to ship them out of the city, during to go where to some of the, the suburbs and some of the rural areas in King County outside of Seattle, at least temporarily.

so that that's been going on for a long time and it's still going on.

It's not that we solve homelessness that way.

It's that you put people on a bus for a couple days.

It's like having your mother in law come to town and you put a curtain over that messy storage shed that you have, but it's not actually solving the problem.

Yeah.

All right.

Okay.

And it's making people who get shuffled out even more socially excluded and worsens self-esteem and and getting them away from the services that they need.

Well, maybe related to that, Chad asks follow up.

He says, could you talk about the the mindset that one gets set in from having to manage immediate needs, like not having enough food or clothing or shelter for months or years on end?

What is that like mentally, for people who have to try to solve long term problems like finding a job, finding housing, but in the short term, they literally don't have clean clothing or a place to stay or food for them.

Right?

Right.

Well, that's going back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right?

Our immediate needs as as humans are like safety, food, sleep, shelter.

And so if people are having to put all of their time and energy into meeting those basic needs, they're not going to be able to to have long term planning or take care of health problems.

you know, get to appointments or think about things like that, much less self-actualization.

And but at the same time, I want to point out that so many people who I've worked with and still work with, who are experiencing homelessness are extremely gifted in all sorts of different areas writers, musicians and, you know, poets, etc.

and, and they somehow manage to keep some of those up, like, I have a pianist who is able to practice, piano at the downtown library.

so, yeah, I'm not wanting to again make those stereotype generalizations.

People are also working on these amazing creative pursuits.

But yeah, it just it numbs people and it just gets overwhelming.

They can't they can't have the time and energy headspace to work on other things.

Dallas emails to remind me that, the San Francisco issue recently was when, I think, G. Jinping and the Chinese delegation came to visit Governor Gavin Newsom.

and all of a sudden in Governor Gavin Newsom's when he used to be mayor of San Francisco.

All right.

All of a sudden, a lot of the issues on the street disappeared.

Disappeared for a few days.

Yes.

Didn't solve any problems, but found busses for people to get them.

and Dallas also says he thinks that the more a city, more that a city focuses on justice and equity, etc., the more expensive it becomes to live in that city.

Do you think there's a connection there?

How could there be a connection between that?

Sorry, I'm just trying to think of, you know, basic economics.

maybe I'm missing something with that.

I'd have to think about it more.

but I don't see that as being a direct, direct, link.

I mean, how could the I efforts, displace people or make it more expensive to live in an area?

Yeah, that one stumped me.

Okay, well, I mean, Dallas, who leans politically conservative, I think might also just be equating the fact that, as we talked about the highest homelessness rates in this country are in three of the most politically blue cities New York, L.A., Seattle and, you know, larger cities with Republican mayors and in red states don't have as high of an issue of homelessness.

They certainly have it.

And they don't have perfect housing situations.

But housing is more affordable.

And with Dallas is simply drawing a conclusion of his left leaning politics are not working for people, right?

I mean, that's a common thing.

And again, research, including, Greg Colburn, who I work with at University of Washington, has done, national research looking at that question and, it's not about the politics.

It's not about, you know, it's not about drug use.

It's not about levels of mental illness.

it's it's not about the weather.

That's another thing that comes off of, oh, the West Coast.

It's got better weather.

but it's really down to affordability.

of those areas.

I mean, how Seattle's weather.

How Seattle's weather, compared, I mean, compared to LA, it's not as good.

Nobody's good.

No.

That's true.

We're getting much more extremes, just like everybody else.

Yeah.

The point being that homelessness can happen anywhere.

High rates anywhere.

Yeah, anywhere.

And certainly here in Rochester continues to be a challenge.

So back to the question of if you had the keys to the policy, Castle.

Yeah.

And you talked about the I and you pushed me on that.

Well, so I mean, I appreciate the fact that as a nurse, your first instinct is to say the people who have immediate needs, we need to get to those folks.

And we can do that.

And then while working upstream, while working upstream.

Yeah.

So is there something that isn't happening that you go, I can't believe we're not doing x, Y and Z. I can't believe we're not doing more of X, Y and Z for housing, for for housing, for homelessness, for the issue in general.

Well, okay, back to Seattle.

Yeah.

you know, lots of services, and different agencies, NGOs, you know, nonprofits and faith based government agencies.

And for a long time, everybody was kind of like working separately.

And we didn't have a cohesive King County plan to address homelessness.

We now do have that.

It's gone through.

It's gone through problems.

It came into existence finally during the pandemic.

It's gone through leadership changes.

It's not perfect, but I'm trying to look at this from a government perspective of this is not just a Seattle problem.

You know, we also have, suburban rural homelessness and that people and administrations in those areas need to step up and, and do their share, and to have some type of, coming together and trying to plan and distribute funds more equitably.

it's not perfect, but I they are working on that.

They also have a lived experience coalition.

not perfect, but at least they have people who have had experiences with homelessness who are part of, at least contributing to the discussion.

You mentioned that yesterday.

You couldn't even you struggle to use public transportation just to get to the airport in one of the city's most progressive leaning and one of the country's most progressive leaning cities.

And Klein and Thompson talk about the lack of good public transportation in LA.

How important is better transportation for dealing with the issue of homelessness?

Is it related to jobs access operations?

Yeah.

Of course.

And then, you know, and also helping people, get to, get to health care facilities that they need to go to or or other kinds of things.

So public transportation is hugely important.

But I don't see, and again, I mean, the pandemic has messed up lots of lots of these types of things because like, even in Seattle, statistics just came out that, yes, people are starting to go back to the office.

You know, there's back to the office, mandates now even even for Amazon.

And instead of people taking public transportation, they're, they're driving, so and and singly not, not, actually doubling up or anything.

So that's not helping the situation.

I read a brief piece recently and I get it.

I need to spend more time thinking about this before I feel like I know how I think about it.

But the argument was that when the American interstate system, the highway system, was created, it was a a choice that has haunted us because it was a choice that prioritized the automobile in this country, vis-a-vis Europe, instead of instead of investing in a massive, coast to coast, higher speed rail system.

And that we have prioritized the automobile ever since.

And it makes sense to me.

I haven't thought about it.

Well, and also, where, I mean, is, Seattle's affected by this, historically and even currently with I-5, going basically through downtown Seattle, and they chose the land where the, the most working class, the most people in poverty, where our nation's first, racially integrated public housing, Yasir Terrace was located.

So that wasn't by accident.

Right.

It's where they where they decided to build these and how that, you know, disproportionately impacted people in poverty and how it still is impacting, the, the communities where those were put.

Before we go, you created Skid Road as a podcast.

And, you know, I kind of clumsily described it as a very human set of conversations about some very, very difficult issues.

So what would you describe?

What is the mission of Skid Road and what have you learned from doing your own podcast?

Yeah, well, it didn't start out as a podcast.

I've done, like 65 oral history interviews over the past ten years, and a lot of that helped to inform the writing of both good Road, my Skid Road book, and then also more recently, Way Home.

And I had so many people asking me, well, can I listen to these?

Or they're going to be archived at university of Washington.

But, I decided they needed to be out there in the world, and I had people's permission to share those, and so that's how I got into that of, of, of realizing that even the ones that are older, that are like ten years old now, that though those are really relevant.

we had Charles Royer, three, three term mayor for Seattle, very progressive, helped, usher in health care for the homeless.

programs, in the 80s who recently died.

And I have a really good, interview with him.

So of making those available and also, again, of trying to privilege people with lived experience of homelessness who not only have survived homelessness but have gotten out to hear from them.

What what you know, they think now, they know now, help them to survive and to get out and stay out of homelessness.

I think those stories, those positive stories are so important that we don't get to listen to enough.

We have a just a couple minutes left.

Is there a story or a moment in that series of interviews you've done that has stayed with you that either changed your mind or moved you in a way that surprised you?

Yeah.

So this is from Jen Adams, who is a woman who lived in her car in an RV for 17 years, and Ballard work had been a working class neighborhood of Seattle.

And she told me that what helped her the most was this volunteer.

Not not faith based, but volunteer outreach, non-judgmental, who would bring her hard boiled eggs because she has mass.

She needed to eat a lot of protein and she said hard boiled eggs and and hugs because she got to know them.

She trusted them.

They gave her hugs were what helped to make her feel like she was part of the community, and that she could actually get through this and start giving back.

She works with my students.

She's in charge of a vehicle residency outreach program.

just an amazing woman.

Hard boiled eggs and hugs and hugs.

Yeah, that's easy to remember.

Powerful.

Tonight, the Brockport Writers Forum is welcoming Josephine Insigne, who has been my guest this hour, and Josephine's books include her most recent, Way Home Journeys Through Homelessness.

The event tonight at Brockport starts at 7:30 p.m..

It's at the Fanny Barrier Williams Liberal Arts Building in McCue auditorium.

Public is welcome and they would love to see you there.

what do you what are you planning on talking about tonight?

An extension of what we talked about here.

Yes.

I am bringing in.

I'm focusing on my most my most recent book, but of bracketing it with, with poetry that I've also written, and, and just helping people to kind of think through what it could be like, to experience homelessness if they haven't done that, and what we can do better as a society to help.

Last 20s having done this now for four decades plus an experience, what you've experienced, do you find despair or hope considering you're living in a city that's still number three and homelessness in the country after all this effort, all this attempted change?

I think because of the people I work with, like Jen, I mean, I'm concerned about our country.

but I have hope.

Well, I want to thank you for making time for our listeners and our viewers today.

Wish you well in the trip to Rochester.

hope you get public transportation home when you get back to the airport in Seattle.

the book, the newest book is Way Home Journeys Through Homelessness.

It is available now.

The podcast is called Skid Road, and you can find Josephine's other works as well as her website.

Very helpful.

A lot of great stuff there.

Thank you for making time for this program.

Thank you for having me.

Josephine and Insigne tonight, 7:30 p.m. at Brockport with the Writers Forum.

More connections coming up in just a moment.

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