Adrianne Hillman: My Sneaky Way To Teach People To Love Better (Pt 2)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Everybody. It's Bill Courtney with an army of normal folks.
And we continue now with part two of our conversation
with Adrianne Hillman, right after these brief messages from our
general sponsors. You want a quick zig zigular story, Yes,

(00:27):
I love. His favorite part of the roast was the ends,
but they always threw him away and it made him angry.
So he went to his So he went to his mom.
He said, mom, why do you always throw the ends
of the roast away? It's my favorite part? And she said,
I don't know. Your grandmother taught me that. So grandmother
was on Christmas. Grandmother was in the living room, went

(00:48):
and said, Grammy, how come you always throw away the
ends of the roast? It's my favorite part. And she goes, well,
that's the way my mama taught me. His great grandmama
was sitting in the lounge chair, went over. Great grandmama said, hey,
great grandmama, why why do you always throw the ends
of roast away? And you talk to your daughter? Now,
My mama that and I can't get the best meat
that I like. And she says, because back when I

(01:10):
was coming up, we didn't have big oven. So my
roaster was too small to fit throwle roast beef in it.
So for three generations they've been throwing out the best
piece of meat because sixty years earlier they just didn't
have an oven.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Oh man.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
And the point is, if you do something the way
you've always done it without questioning why, you will never
improve and you may throw away the very best idea
that exists exactly exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
That's such a great story.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
Yeah, I can't. I can't claim it. That's old zig.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
It's zig, but that's a.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Don't forget that. Oh it's rong.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
I just know that, Yes, sir, Okay, well that's a
really good story. And when I might have to put
in my back pocket, because I agree, you cannot be
innovative when you're in that box of like not being
I'm just like, I'm a naturally curious person anyway. I
think that's part of what has been part of my success,
because I just want to know why, you know, And
and I had to. I had to be curious because

(02:08):
I really didn't know why because I really didn't live
anywhere near holmelessness, you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
Yeah, but now you got the Sauceton thing. You've got
these people saying no, so.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
And I'm just getting increasingly frustrated with why are we
talking about people like this? Why are we saying those
people we you know, there were just some things I'm going,
We're why aren't we feeding people? Why aren't we bathing people?
Why aren't we like it just started it start? Oh yeah,
oh gosh, Okay, we're getting there because it's yeah, I
was going to say it, and I'm just like, I'm
just you know, i just want to offend people, but

(02:38):
you know, I'm just going to say it. So okay.
We had this like also the fundraising. You're not going
to create a movement with like baked sale fund raising.
It's not gonna you know what I mean. And we
were doing this fried chicken dinner and we all had
to sell all the board members had to sell tickets
to it. And it was fried chicken, broccoli salad, a cookie,

(02:59):
a little Hawaiian roll, and a water.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
Do you people know how to fried chicken properly? In California?

Speaker 2 (03:05):
They bought it from the grocery store.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
Yo.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
So okay, I know I know how, But that's because
I'm curious and I'm a cook, and I always want
to make guses.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
And get some Southern fried chickens around the corner from
where you're staying.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
Okay, I might need I'm a huge fried chicken fans.
I probably will gusses. Wait is there also is there
gus in Texas as well?

Speaker 1 (03:27):
Yes, it's all started here.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
Okay, I've been to guses in Texas. I've been there
with my sister and their family.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
Real that's good stuff, grocery.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
So we got the grocery or fried chicken whatever, and
we all have to buy our we have to buy
twenty tickets or whatever. And where they're serving in and
we're right in the neighborhood where people riding around on
their bikes. These are clearly people experiencing homelessness. And they
come by and they're like, man, I'm hungry. This is Sunday.
It's a Sunday. To add insult to injury, And they

(04:01):
put a fried chicken leg on a napkin and say
here you go, like, give him a whole dinner. No,
They'll just keep coming back for more. Then the ladies auxiliary. Afterwards,
when there's all this leftover chicken, they divvied up between
them and take it home to their families. These are

(04:23):
really wealthy women, really wealthy women. It went all over me.
I couldn't do it. I'm just like so I took
all my tickets, I took all my dinners, and I
loaded my kids in the car. We'd already decided we were
going to do this when we went down to the
bus station. This was probably a game changer for my family,
for my kids. And there was a guy dressed in

(04:43):
a Santa suit because that's all the clothes he had.
And it's you know, May in central California. It is
not where you're wanting to wear a felt Santa Suitpha.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
Home in May at the bus station in a Santa.

Speaker 2 (04:58):
Suit, Yeah, it was actually an lsuit. I'm gonna make
it clearer and even better. But but we get there
and we're like, we've got food, and he's.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
Like I was imagining bad Sanna with Bill a little.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
Bit, like a little bit like yeah, African American guy
just such a cutie and sweet as can be. And
he's like, come on, y'all, get up, get up, get up.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
Everybody.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
He goes all around the camp, gets everybody awake to
give them the food, and he's helping us distribute and
he's like, I said, it's almost like Christmas. He's like, yeah,
he's an elf, right right. He gives them all away.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
And to all the other homeless speed it's all gone.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
Bro, you gotta get some food too. He's like, that's
all right, it's okay, I'll find something. My kids boys,
they had to go to the car because they're just oh,
we got to go get them some food. I said, Oh,
I know where to get some. There's more fight right down.

Speaker 1 (05:56):
Oh yeah, no, skinny guy food everywhere.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
Skinny guy.

Speaker 1 (05:59):
But he will car body up in the camp to
make sure they had some dat.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
And I will tell you that I can that is
I've had ground day on that for years and years.
It happens every day on our food truck. I've served
over one hundred thousand meals, and it happens every day
because people with less tend to be more generous. You
can't believe that people will have nothing and they'll give

(06:22):
away the last thing they've got when they need it,
because there's all these other people that do this.

Speaker 1 (06:27):
Guy.

Speaker 2 (06:29):
So we went. I went back down. I went back
down to the to the chicken dinner and I bought
twenty more. What are you gonna do with those. I said, well,
I got rid of the last twenty and we gave
them away, and there's more people, and there's someone specific
that needs more. And when I brought him back, he goes, yeah,
I know I can find twenty more people. Let's go.
He gets in my car with me and we go
to another encampment across town. He gives all those away,

(06:50):
and I said, listen, this time, you're keeping one. Okay, ma'am,
I'll keep it. I'll keep it anyway.

Speaker 1 (06:56):
That you put the drunk homeless elf in your car
after meeting him only two hours earlier.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
Sure did. And you know what, I've never had one
instance of threat or lack of safety. The only people
who have ever threatened me or made me feel unsafe
or scared me were drug dealers and pimps, predators, people
who need people experiencing homeless to continue to be addicted

(07:25):
and continue to be trafficked for their good. They don't
like people like me because they don't want me helping
people settle in hell. You know what I mean. They
don't want me, that's right. So those are the only
people I've ever felt threatened by. All that to say,
just a sad note to that story. Two years ago
he was hit by the train in town. We lost

(07:47):
five people in one year of the train. If you're
close enough the train tracks, which is the only place
they could find a camp, if you're close enough to
it'll suck in.

Speaker 1 (07:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:57):
Yeah, just tough stuff. This is heartbreak work, and it's heartbreak. Heel,
heartbreak heel. I mean it's kind of like you start
getting used to it.

Speaker 1 (08:07):
But this dude taught you a lesson, Sure did, and
now you're even more energized.

Speaker 2 (08:14):
Yeah. I'm glad you called the energized, because at the
time it felt pissed really well. I just can't stand
the thought of people starving, people not sharing. It just
it just got all over me. So I did a
lot of soul search in and I fought this call
for well from twenty sixteen to January of twenty nineteen.

(08:34):
And in January twenty nineteen, I went back to Austin
for a kind of a leadership thing that they wanted
me to come to and I didn't want to go.
I was like, I'm not doing this, I don't want
to do I'm not equipped, I can't And my husband
said to me, then you know, you know, God called
you to this and you can't say no to God.
You can't.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
Like that's pretty supportive.

Speaker 2 (08:56):
Oh my God. And here's the deal. He was getting
ready to retire and we're twenty years apart, my second
husband and I and he was getting ready to retire.
We had a plan. Yeah, we know we're gonna do.
We're gonna go climb Killhimnjarrow and we're gonna go to
ever Space camp because he's a climber and a marathon runner.
He's a real athletic. And we had all kinds of
plans for travel and I just kept saying, I can't

(09:17):
do this. I can't. I just I can't do this
on my own. I've never run a nonprofit. I'm not equipped.
Came back from Austin and I knew, I just knew
I had to do it. We stayed up for three days,
We did not sleep for three nights, a lot of tears,
and I just raised my fist at God and said,

(09:37):
I'll do it. Fine, I'll do it. And my people
always say, like, don't you feel like you are you glad?
You like you're doing God's work? And I'm like, I know,
but I think he would probably want a little bit
more cheerful servant, you know what I mean, Because I
didn't want to do it. I was scared to death.
I had no idea what I was doing. I really
did not. I did have a front row seat to
some family businesses, couple that ran well, a couple that didn't,

(09:58):
a couple that went from mom and pop big, and
I got to see how they did that, building culture,
following guiding values that didn't change, having integrity within the business,
you know, doing what you say you're going to do.
And so I decided to do that, and in October

(10:19):
of twenty nineteen, we launched Salt and Light.

Speaker 1 (10:22):
Pretty tough timing.

Speaker 2 (10:23):
Oh yeah, I had no idea what was coming in March.

Speaker 1 (10:27):
So I started my business when I was with seventeen
thousand dollars in two thousand and one, when I was
thirty one years old. And you talk about not having
what you're doing scared, and that was September first of
two thousand and one. Yeah, and I didn't think I
was going to make it. Did barely make it. Over

(10:48):
it and then about eight years ago, as the industry changed,
well not eight years ago, about six and a half
years ago, as the industry changed, I needed change with it,
and to do it, I had to change the bottom
of our business. And I invested everything i'd saved up,

(11:08):
hawked my house, hawked the business to come up with
about eleven million dollars in debt because I'm not wealthy,
didn't come from anything, and anyway, financed eleven million dollars
to put in this new equipment. And I will never
forget the banker sitting at my conference room table when
I was shaking signing this amount of money, and I said,

(11:33):
I have confidence in this because I just don't think
you guys would loan me this money if you didn't
think I was actually going to be able to repay it,
despite the collateral I'm putting up. And he said, Bill, listen,
it's a lot, and it's a bunch of leverage, but
absent a world war or a pandemic, I think it'll
be fine. Six months later, COVID mean, and that's your

(11:59):
story a little bit.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
So in October twenty nineteen, I we had a launch
party at my house and a bunch of people came.
And by this point I had already I had already
resigned from the board. You know, amicably, and I love
those folks. These are people I'm still friends with. That's
why I am careful. I don't want to be disparaging.
It just was the old model. It was the old
way of thinking.

Speaker 1 (12:19):
Oh, you don't want to I mean, they're doing whatever work, they're.

Speaker 2 (12:21):
Want to do it for that and they've grown and
done great work. And actually they've taken some of what
we've done and they've built it not and not at all.
It just wasn't what I what I wanted. And so
but before October twenty nineteen, I'll be honest with you,
I have a therapist, and I went to my therapist
and I'm like, look, I.

Speaker 1 (12:39):
Know I'm crazy, but is this another level of crazy? Go?

Speaker 2 (12:43):
That was it right there? It's like, why won't this
let me go?

Speaker 1 (12:46):
Oh? Really?

Speaker 2 (12:46):
She said, let's do some work on it. Took us
about six weeks. We did some work on it. I said,
why won't this let me go? Is this a penance project?
Is this a vanity project?

Speaker 1 (12:57):
Did you ever ask supose you go.

Speaker 2 (12:59):
Yeah, vanity project? Oh sure, I mean I'm an entertainer.
I yeah, I mean you got to check yourself on
that stuff. Because now I can now I can spot
that for my mile away. And now that I've done
that work, and I'm telling you, it's really difficult to
have a nonprofit work or this kind of heartbreak work
actually work if it is a vanity project, because the

(13:19):
person's ego it just gets too big, bigger than the organization.
And it's it's really incredibly difficult to have an integrity
based organization when the ego is like in charge, right,
you just cannot approach It's impossible. I've seen it too,
and I knew that that was going to be a
no go for me. And I'll tell you what. I've
been an entertainer of my whole life. I thought I

(13:40):
was moving to Nashville after Miss California. I did, and
I was going to come and sing, and I mean,
I'm a musician. I that is what I wanted to
do with my life. I've always been a performer. Well,
you know, performing didn't get me to stay in the church.
You know, when that kind of thing happens to you
and you're extricated from your friends and groups and church

(14:00):
and places you thought you belonged, it does a number
on Miss most popular of her senior class. You know,
all of a sudden, I don't care how much tap
dancing or doing it doesn't matter. And so I had
to go to my therapist's say, am I tap dance?
Am I trying to get people like me? Am I?
What is this about? So we did six weeks of
work on it, and she said, we got to belongings.

(14:22):
My heartbreak I got thrown out of church. I mean,
tell me, when someone says to you, God doesn't love you,
I mean, in so many words, you're not okay in
the eyes of God. I mean, how much more can
we extricate someone? Right? However, and I'm not suggesting that
I'm anywhere near homeless, please, I'm not suggesting that getting
a kicked out of church is like being holmemless. But

(14:44):
when we tell people that you don't belong to society,
what that does to a person's soul?

Speaker 1 (14:50):
Right, So we'll try being gay and hearing that from
your parents? Right?

Speaker 2 (14:54):
So you can see why my heartbreak is around these
these groups of folks, right, anyone who's extricated anyone? And
so we did a lot of work on it, and
then we worked it out and I was like, all right,
I'm clean on this. I know why I'm doing this
as any hard as hell, and I had no idea
how hard I thought it was hard. No clue started
in October. A week later, my dad had an emergency

(15:18):
open heart surgery, you know, flatlined on the table during
a routine angiogram. My grandmother died in my arms. A
week later, my other grandmother died three weeks later. Kind
of felt like maybe I shouldn't be doing this, you know.
It felt like, Okay, I'm gonna fold up the tin.
I didn't, and in March of twenty twenty, COVID hit
and then I was like, all right, God, I did

(15:41):
my part. I'm folding up the tent. I am done
and I am The answer that I felt that I
got was like, no, you're not sorry, but no, you're
called to this. And I raised my fist at God
again and we had a little fight, and I said, fine, doors,
I'll walk through them. You close him and I'm done.

(16:03):
And he laughed and laughed and laughs, and the doors
just started flying open.

Speaker 1 (16:10):
We'll be right back.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
And so I spent COVID behind a screen with making
zoom calls and County calling on our cality supervisors. Powers
it be, how can we get this done casting that
vision with people.

Speaker 1 (16:35):
What is this done?

Speaker 2 (16:37):
Building a village? And that's all I really wanted to do,
was build a village. Then our local continuum of caricane
to us and said, people are literally starving on the
streets of Tileri and by Celia without Ppe, They're unable
to get their hands on food, and there are no
soup kitchens. There's no access to food for these folks.
Would you consider a mobile food truck operation, which is
what Alan Graham had at Mobiles and Fishes in Austin.

(16:59):
But I had wanted to circumvent that. I thought someone
else could do the food, clothes, you know, the relief items.
I want to build a village. Well I did say
yes to it, and I flew up to Portland and
drove home a Gelope Canteen food truck. It's still the
one we use, rusted out and sat on a name
layer base and I drove it home fourteen hours from
Portland myself, and we started Everyone Eats Today. We started

(17:22):
feeding people in the streets and it was a game changer.
It taught us what we needed to know about people
experiencing homeless us. We had more days of people giving
away their food to other people who were hungry. And
this is twenty twenty, twenty summer twenty.

Speaker 1 (17:39):
You go get a gelapie, you fix it up, you
make a food truck. But in the back of your.

Speaker 2 (17:42):
Mind, meanwhile, I got the wheels.

Speaker 1 (17:44):
Turned on the hill to build a village.

Speaker 2 (17:46):
Oh yeah, and I've already cast this vision in my
front yard in front of four hundred and seventy five
people that I'm going to build a village. And now
people are going, when's it going to be done and
where's it going to be I'm like, oh, I don't
have any land, money, volunteers, donors, or anything else.

Speaker 1 (17:57):
But I got it.

Speaker 2 (17:58):
But I got an idea. I don't need your support.
Alan Graham came out and actually was a keynote speaker
for that helped to cast that vision. But yeah, people
and people were behind it, but also didn't really understand
how much work I still had to build an organization.
And what I didn't know is I had to teach
people why this even mattered to begin with.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
Which is why we started the way we did, to
lay the foundation so that everybody understood that's listening to us,
why is this crazy girl wanting to build a village.

Speaker 2 (18:21):
Right, And I say this a lot, and I still
think it's true that, yes, our work is around you know, homelessness,
but I always say, this is just my sneaky little
way to teach people to love each other better, and
probably selfishly because I wanted to be loved better too
than I had been, you know, during some real hard
times in my life. And so I did kind of
go on a campaign of like having to educate the

(18:42):
community about this model, which is a community based, relational
intentional model which has intensive services, you know, community built
into that, a lot of grace and a much more
robust care system than anyone in our community he had
ever seen. They only really knew the shelter model, and

(19:02):
the shelter model is pretty antiquated now. It's good for emergency,
you know, emergency shelter is a definite need within the
homeless pipeline. But permanent support of housing where people can
actually settle and heal is critical, and people are not
given that chance to settle and heel before they have
to up and out through transitional housing.

Speaker 1 (19:22):
That's really important.

Speaker 2 (19:23):
YEA, having the time, you know, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:30):
There's something I've read and I want to go to it,
and then we got to get back to the food truck,
because I think the food truck kind of morphs into
everything else. But you said, we can say, as reasonable people,
well that's never going to work. But then we also
criticize someone goes back to life on the streets. But

(19:50):
what they're going back to, whether it's dysfunction or not,
they're going back to a community. They're going back to
a place that they belong. And someone will say, well,
I don't need that, Okay, Well tell me the last
time you looked out the doors of your house and
you haven't looked in the eyes of a human being
for an entire day or days on end. When you
go to Starbucks and grab your coffee and the brist

(20:11):
she won't even write your name on the cup. Basically,
you're a person persona and on Grada invisible, invisible, and
when you're invisible, you don't feel worthy.

Speaker 2 (20:24):
That's right, And so good luck trying to get someone
to get off drugs get a job. Now they've been
living in survival mode for god knows how long. In
Larry County, the average age of the average time on
the streets is five years of chronic homelesses before they're
getting housing, because we were at such a shortage of permanent,
supportive or transitional housing for folks. So five years tell

(20:45):
you something. I did a street retreat in Austin with
my husband in April of twenty eighteen, twenty twenty eight nineteen,
actually twenty nineteen, where we lived on the streets for
a day. No. I had a backpack and a bottle
of water, no wallet, no cell phone. We went with
Alan Graham, and we had to make our way no
bus pass well. We also had to find a place

(21:07):
to sleep. We slept on the UT Austin campus, which
I was sure we were going to get arrested. And
so you don't sleep, you rotisserie sleep all night and
you got one eye open. Am I going to be assaulted?
And am I going to be robbed? And am I
going to be arrested? And I'll tell you I did
that for forty eight hours. That's not that long. It
took me, I'd say my husband I both said, oh,

(21:28):
at least a week to reset our nervous systems. After that,
then I thought, now, what happens when someone's done this
for a week, a month, a year, Five years Alex, what's.

Speaker 1 (21:41):
The who the people we interviewed that the kid.

Speaker 3 (21:43):
Joe and Kelly Carson, they actually started the Memphis Stream
Center based off.

Speaker 1 (21:47):
The LA one Oh yeah, and their kid had to
go to Chicago and do the same thing. And the
very first person that walked out of door reminded him
of his grandmother because that's how he grew up. But
he had nothing and could only they allowed them to
take their own shoes, but they had to dress out

(22:08):
of a polo clothes that was given to them. Oh wow,
And they were not able to have any money and everything.
And he asked for a dollar and the first thing
was why don't you get a job and looked away,
and he's like, that is exactly how my people treat
these people. And she said that her son, that may

(22:30):
be the most profound lesson in his life, that by
only changing clothes and only looking like this population of people,
he all of a sudden became person person.

Speaker 2 (22:45):
I remember after we woke up, we went to seven eleven.

Speaker 1 (22:48):
Isn't that right? That's the story, right? Yeah, and it is.

Speaker 2 (22:52):
We went to seven eleven and said can we use
the bathroom?

Speaker 1 (22:55):
Oh oh, you were still in your eight hours right.

Speaker 2 (22:58):
But we weren't in the clothes he was in. But
I was watching all this and I'm in, you know,
I've got a Patagonia sweater on or sweatshirt or whatever,
and yeah I got a meanie. Yeah. Yeah. I mean
we're not playing cause I mean, we're not causling. We're
just like we're we just have no resources, right, So
we're gonna walk the streets and do what we gotta do,
and you gotta figure it out. Final seven? Can I

(23:19):
go to the bathroom? And she looks us yes, sure,
And I said to my husband and I walked out. Now
many how many missed showers and days on the streets
would it take for her to tell me? No, not long.
It's because we looked clean, we didn't look homeless. We
didn't And I'm like, so now all of a sudden,
you've got these barriers. And I'll tell you something else.
We walked around all day because we had no transportation.

(23:41):
Have you ever tried to walk around per eight hours straight? Well, yeah,
you have your a football coach, But I mean it
was hard and we were tired as hell. And you
can't sit on a park bench in certain cities or
you get ticketed or in trouble. It's like, I can't
tell you. We were searching for park benches everywhere. I
was exhausted. My feet were killing me. I'm thinking, and
my feet are in good shape. What happens when your
feet are all, you know, blistered up from having lived

(24:03):
like this for years on end. You know, just that
exercise alone for me was huge. But I do think
that them that the larger understanding from the public is
just a lack of understanding around what truly living in
survival mode looks like and what it does to the human.

Speaker 1 (24:23):
System and the lack of community and the.

Speaker 2 (24:26):
Lack of community it loneliness actually is harder on the
arteries than smoking a back of day. You know that
there are I wish I had the study pulled up.
That's yes, there is a study that loneliness belonging is
the is the epidemic, that is is the problem of
our time. In my in my book lack of blowing.

Speaker 1 (24:47):
Thus, do you want to build a community, but first
you got to build the Portland food truck.

Speaker 2 (24:54):
The food well not really, I kind of both going
at the same time.

Speaker 1 (24:56):
They were as they were asking, so tell me about
that expert.

Speaker 2 (25:00):
So we started making peanut butter and jellies. And this
is part of the guiding principal piece. It's so important.
I just want to point it out because it really
is an important piece to me, and I think it
is integral to why Salt Light is so successful. Our
guiding principles are what we filter every decision through, and
I really mean that. And so I had someone to
come to work for me who used to work in
the shelter system and didn't totally espouse the guiding principles.

(25:23):
I thought they did, but they didn't. Really. One of
our guiding principles is abundance and radical hospitality. It's another one.
And she was really big on the bottom line, really
wanting to save pennies, really wanting her numbers to line up,
And so she contacted Cisco and we were going to
get what I call brown paper bag bread, you know,
the kind brown bread, and the peanut butter was the

(25:43):
kind that ripped the bread because it was so dry.
First of all, it's not dignified. Guiding Principle number one too,
that's not an abundance because that's not what I would
feed my kids or myself. And I basically said if
we won't eat it, they're not eating it. Well, it's
sixty nine cents alone, and you know white bread is,
you know, dollars from it. I don't care. I actually

(26:03):
don't care build it into the budget. We're not doing that.
And you know what, people came to beg Oh, please
tell me you guys got great jelly today? Oh we do,
we have strawberry and great. What do you want? You know,
they came to love us. When we first got out there,
it's just kind of like, yeah, well we'll take the sandwich.
And a lot of times they'd say, I prayed today,
I prayed today, I read my Bible today, I'm going okay.

(26:24):
So now we've done outreach that so we have created
such performative Christianity or performative believers because they believe they
have to say that to get what they need because
they're starving. I'm like, hey, you don't have to believe
or behave to belong. You belong to us by birth right.
We love you. That's why we're giving you a peanut
butter jelly sandwich.

Speaker 1 (26:42):
So you felt like people were saying that to earn
your good graces, yaut they.

Speaker 2 (26:46):
Were because the people that had gone out were people
who were saying, well, let me pray for you first
and then you can have your sandwich kind of thing.
And I mean I had seen it and listen, I
pray for people and I love people. I love people.

Speaker 1 (26:57):
You know that's funny because in coaching football and then
Ares City, it's one of the things I've said all
the time is the kids aren't signing up to be
on the roster of mentorship. They're signing up because they
want to play football. That's right, and then you get
to mentor and teach little life lessons on the way
because the football is the hook. Likewise, as I hear you,

(27:21):
I'm thinking about it. You know, if you show up
and say, if you pray with me, you can get
the sandwich. How about we show christ like living by
giving you the sandwich, and maybe you're inspired to pray
with me because you see what that looks like in action.

Speaker 2 (27:37):
Right, And that's what ended up happening.

Speaker 1 (27:39):
Very interesting, Uh huh.

Speaker 2 (27:40):
We don't want to create performative Christians. That's what my
job was. I didn't have a clipboard of who am
I going to save? And trust me, I've had people
come in and ask me how I'm bringing people to Christ.

Speaker 1 (27:50):
I'm like, look, I'm bringing people to food.

Speaker 2 (27:53):
I'm bringing people to food and Alan. I called Alan
one day because I had somebody who wanted to give
us a bunch of money. Then they found out I
didn't have Jesus in my mission statement and they were
now unwilling to give me money. Now my first thought
was contort because I needed money. But then I knew
better because I teach fear, you know, I know better

(28:14):
than to make decisions out of fear. So I call Dolan, Hey,
you don't have Jesus in your mission statement. It's mobile
loaves and fishes. Is clear what you're doing. He goes, Look,
every day I preached the gospel when necessarily I use words,
And I said, and I use peanut butter and jellyes.
He o that I do too, because they were serving
peanut butter jellies too. But it's like, he goes, Look,
they can't see that Jesus's hands are all over this.

(28:36):
I don't know what to tell him. I said, exactly.
He goes, you don't need to do that. You don't
need to change your mission statement. Your mission statement is
very clear of what you're doing transforming the lives of
people experiencing homelesses through food shelter. Right. Yes, He's like,
your job is not to have your clipboard. I said,
I'd never have my clipboard. First of all, I'm a
seed planner and not I have a harvester. I want
people to know their worth. I want them to know

(28:58):
they belong by birthright to the body of God, right
to the body of Christ. I'm a Jesus girl myself.
I sound like a preacher, but I'm a Jesus girl.
But I'm also like, hey, look, you belong by birthright,
and I'm here to love you because you're my brother
or my sister. And when they would ask us, and
they have asked us, I cannot tell you how many
times I've heard this question, why are you doing this?

(29:20):
Why you love us like this?

Speaker 1 (29:22):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (29:22):
You belong to us. You're my brother, you're my sister,
and they just it takes a long time for people
to get the head around. That takes many.

Speaker 1 (29:30):
It takes a long time for him to actually believe
you believe that correct.

Speaker 2 (29:33):
And you know what it takes consistency, show up, show
up and keep doing what you say. And I know
you know that.

Speaker 1 (29:38):
Okay, do you know the Turkey person story? Nope, many
of the people listening now do, but I'm going to
share it with you.

Speaker 2 (29:46):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (29:47):
My first year at Manassas High School, I was there
seven years. We started coaching football because that's what I am,
football coach. But it was clear early on that we
need to coach things other than football, like character, commitment, tigers, teamwork,
the dignity of hard work, the importance is showing up
on time, and many others grace, So we start coaching

(30:07):
that too. Again, football's the hook to be able to
do the other things. Halfway through the season, we're three
and three. When I showed up to NASAs, they'd won
four games and lost ninety five the previous ten years.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
I watched the movie.

Speaker 1 (30:21):
Okay, then you knew.

Speaker 2 (30:22):
How they were.

Speaker 1 (30:24):
So we were three and three that first year, which
I think is average. But when you've won four games
and ten years, they thought I was like a fat,
redheaded version of Pete Carroll for somebody. So they were
buying into the football, right, They were yes or no, sir,
But half the team buying an important stuff. The other
half the team, while yes or news are in the
football field the minute football was over there back in

(30:44):
the streets. Yeah, So I want to my guy. Every
coach has a guy. And I said, hey, man, what
do I got to do to get your half the
team to buy an important stuff?

Speaker 2 (30:55):
Like?

Speaker 1 (30:55):
What do I have to get that half the team
to buy important stuff? Like you're half the team. You're
all yes or no, are buying the football, but what
about you know the other stuff? And this is a
guy that had a lot of real conversations with kind
of like your elf. Yeah, and he looked at me
and said, oh, coach, just keep doing what you're doing dismissively,
probably like your sons have said to you many times

(31:17):
when they're teenagers, and you know, you know the tone.

Speaker 2 (31:20):
Oh yeah, I'm still in it with them.

Speaker 1 (31:22):
So they okay, well fine, So I look out and say, no, man,
real talk. He's like, Coach, I don't want to hurt
your feelings. I said, I'm a grown man. You're not
gonna hurt my feelings. Why can't I get that half
of the team to buy in important stuff? Like you're
half the team? He said, Coach, are trying to figure
out if you're a Turkey person or not. And I said,
a Turkey person, he said, Coach, every Thanksgiving Christmas people

(31:42):
rolling our neighborhoods and they gives us hams and gifts
and turkeys, and we take them because we ain't gotten none.
But they leave and we never see them again. Makes
you wonder if they're doing that because they really care
about us, or they're doing that to make themselves feel good,
to look good in front of their friends.

Speaker 2 (31:58):
I can't even tell you how how hard we have
tried to retrain our communities to stop being Turkey people.

Speaker 1 (32:04):
So when you say, here's how hard it is for
them to understand that you truly love them, and then
you say it's as simple as being consistent and showing up,
it genuinely is as simple as being consistent and showing up.
And if anybody listen to us serves and soup kitchens
or it gives away turkeys on Thanksgiving, please don't take

(32:26):
the moral of this story is that's something you shouldn't
be doing. The question is twofold, how consistent are you
and what is your motive? And if you're motivated by
the simple edification of a brother or sister and humanity,
that isn't as blessed as you, then you're doing it
for the right reasons, and people respond to that. If

(32:48):
you're doing it because it checks as a box on
your philanthropic needs for work, or it makes you get
backslaps from your friends and your social circles, you doing
it to otherwise somehow serve yourself, you are in fact
a fraud and that people you seek to serve will
see right through you, because if they're good at anything,

(33:10):
it's recognizing bs yep.

Speaker 2 (33:12):
Best bs meters out there.

Speaker 1 (33:15):
There's the Turkey person story, which you're free to use
in the round Fresno area. But the point is when
you say just be consistent and show up and serve
for the right reason, it is so true. And when
they do buy in, they are in because you are uncommon. Right,

(33:37):
we will be right back.

Speaker 2 (33:51):
We have bridged so many gaps in the community utilizing
this food truck for that very reason, and it took us.
It took us some time, a long time, it does.
And you know what, I can't I tell you how
many people have come to me to remedy an issue
they have when they found someone that lives behind Burger
King that they felt really sorry for and they started
taking the meals every day, and they started giving them

(34:11):
the clothes and started trying to help them out, and
then they realized three or four days later, then you know,
they need to eat it three times a day, and
they have a lot of needs and there's no one
for them. And all of a sudden, I've taken this
thing on, and can you help us because I don't
know what to do with this person now, And it's like,
be consistent. You have to be consistent. And now that's
why I tell people, I don't expect you to go
out there and do it on your own. Come support us,

(34:32):
so we can all go out together on that truck
and we'll find every person in town that's hungry. We
will do it. And we did do it. We had
a roote and they came to depend on us. And
what ended up happening is in the middle of COVID
you're talking about when you talked about services San Francisco,
I was thinking, we have a ton of services too,
but they weren't bound together and people weren't taking advantage
of them, which then perpetuates the story. Oh, they just

(34:52):
want to stay homeless and they don't care and they
don't want the services. That are being offered them, Well,
they don't trust the services are being offered them. First
of all, they're not always consistent, they're transaction, they're hardly
ever relational, and they're not bound together. So what happened
was the county came to us, some of the healthcare
agencies came to us and said, hey, we've really tried
to get healthcare services out to them. They won't take them.

(35:13):
But if we come with your truck, do you think
they'd take them? I said, well, if you treat our
people with here's my guiding principles, here's my rules. This
is how you treat people, and this's how you talk
to them. And if you will follow our guiding principles,
we'll partner with you. If you won't, no, but if
you will, we will. And they wanted to get them vaccinated.
If they wanted that, they're like, we have no chance
of getting anyone vaccinated and they're highly susceptible to death

(35:37):
due to COVID at the time, and we lost several
neighbors to COVID and that people started getting vaccinated after that,
and the healthcare agencies will want to do foot clinics
and I clinics and screenings and get people signed up
for health care services. And all of a sudden, the
people and the encampments were starting to get those services
through us. Now they weren't our services, we were just partnering.

(35:58):
So we became this conduit. What the best thing about
the food truck that I'm so glad it was a
step that we didn't skip, I'm so glad that we
said yes to it was that I did not take
into full account. First of all, I had no idea
that people experiencing homelessness didn't trust the community at large.
I didn't realize that. I thought, well, they need us.
So this is coming from my privileged perch, Right, they

(36:20):
need us, We're giving them something. Of course they love us. No,
they don't. They're afraid you're an undercover cop, or you're
working with the cops, or you're going to hurt them
or right, and people Obviously the general public is also
not super trusting of people experiencing homelessness. We became a
bridge in so many ways. But when people started volunteering
on that food truck, I'm telling you game change both yes,

(36:47):
And all of a sudden, people are taking services, They're
taking the turkey dinners. But I mean, but this is
that happens when you're consistent in your relationship. You can
also say them, what do you guys really want for Thanksgiving?
You know what they said? We get all these turkey dinners.
Everyone brings us all their turkey. All they bring turkey
sandwhich is turkey soup, turkey dinners. The church brings five
hundred dinners out a lot of it goes aways. We
never get pie.

Speaker 1 (37:09):
Costco man, we never get pie.

Speaker 2 (37:12):
We forget pie and we love pumpkin pie with whipped
cream and apple pie. Would you please? So every year
Thanksgiving we do not serve turkeys. Now there's a church
that does these turkey dinners, and we'll let them. We them.
We'll take some of them. We'll take them out. They
want them, but we don't make them. But we always
have pie. We always bring the pipe.

Speaker 1 (37:29):
Is interesting that you'll find out exactly what people need
if you just ask them what they really.

Speaker 2 (37:33):
Need them they need inte of giving them what you
think they need. So as an agency, I'll be honest
with you. I just actually just gave a keynote or
a excuse me, a breakout at Homeboy Industries down in
La father Greg's organization had a deal called the Gathering,
and I spoke to kind of to how Salt Night
was built and kind of our guiding principles. And one
of the things I was telling them is you have
to teat and when you're building an agency, building a nonprofit,

(37:56):
you have to teach your donors and everyone how to
treat you as an agency. So one thing we don't allow.
I don't allow people to bring me trash bags of clothes.
First of all, it's not dignified. Two to my employees,
because now they're digging through people's dirty underwear that it's
going to go in the trash anyway. Cost me money
to bail all that stuff. And frankly, it's much cheaper
for me to go down to Walmart just buy new, dignified,

(38:16):
nice things that I would buy from my children first fruits.
Because I'm pretty sure if Jesus was walking along the
streets of uh Wherever Nazareth, that if he had a new,
brand new leather pair of sandals and someone walked up
and said they needed shoes, He's not going to go
home to his giveaway pile. He's going to give him
his shoes, you know, hear what I'm saying, first fruits.
And so we started teaching the public how to treat us,

(38:37):
and trust me, we got tons of pushback. People want
to dump their crap on us. And I said, if
people are experiencing homelessness, people experiencing homelessess are associated with
salt and light. We we're you know, And I allow
you to make my organization the dump. I'm letting you
dump all my people. And you know what, I found
those encampments with all that trash. You know how many
kids toys and trisickles and crap that was all the

(39:00):
on the the UH train you know train line, the railways.
And it's because people come and dump their crap there
when they don't have any place else to take it.
And then they say, oh, those people are so messy.
And I'm going to tell you people don't have hoarding problems.
We know that's a symptom of trauma, and there's certainly that.
But people come and bring their bags of trash and
dump them off at the encampments and then see you later.

(39:21):
And so I just decided, now I'm not letting people
do that. We're gonna change the way people consider giving
to people experiencing homelessess. We're asking the community for first fruits.
We're giving first fruits on that truck. I'm not serving
one thing on that truck. I wouldn't eat myself. We
even get donations from Crumble Cookie. We get there, like
I wouldn't eve say. They're day old, like at the
end of the day, so they're still really fresh. But

(39:42):
any of them that are broken go into a bin
and my employees eat those. We only serve whole cookies.

Speaker 3 (39:47):
Have you guys seen the Siphold episode on the Buff and.

Speaker 2 (39:49):
TOFs, yes, that is such a good episode, but I
just I won't allow it, and they love it. I
give them little tongs and little paper and then the back
of the food truck we set it up like a
bakery station and they go get their cookies or whatever.
And I had a grocery store that wanted to give
me a bunch of donations and they insisted, and I said, listen,
they said, we want to give you our bakery dalals.

(40:10):
I said, here's the thing I can't take. I can't
take bagels because my folks have trouble with their teeth
and I can't toast them. They're not going to be
they're gonna be hard on people to eat. So I
can't take your bagels. Oh no, you have to take
the bagels. If you don't take the bagels, you can't
take everything. Keep yourself. Well. Then I had a volunteer
that didn't follow my guiding principles of abundance and really thought, well,
what if we don't take them, they'll never donate to
us again. So she speaks for me and says, we're

(40:32):
gonna go get them. Takes a truck and they loaded
up on the fourth of July, like one hundred and
thirteen degrees outside, perfect day to get all that stuff
on a Saturday when we're not even open.

Speaker 1 (40:41):
We get it.

Speaker 2 (40:42):
We open it up. It's trash bags full of bakery items.
One of the trash bag is full of cakes. You
ever served a cake out of a trash bag? Do
you get what I'm saying? Oh yeah, I threw it
all in the dumpster. Costs me money that you know
what I'm saying. I gotta get rid of it now.
And I just said we're no longer taking donations and
this is huge your store, and I mean I had employees.

(41:02):
That was a great lesson for my employees to be like,
this is not abundance, guys, that's living and scarcy. That's
saying that we don't have. We know God's best is
out there for us and for our neighbors, and we
are going to stand in the gap and make sure
they get it.

Speaker 1 (41:14):
Okay. So people may be thinking that Salt Light is
about a food truck. So that helped you to build
the relationships. It also helped you train your people around
your guiding principles. Yep. But earlier you said this village,
which really was what you wanted to.

Speaker 2 (41:37):
Do and be, that was the flagship project.

Speaker 1 (41:39):
Also, take us to what Salt and Light really is
now that we've laid the table for all of the data,
all of the understanding of the people, all of your
heart and why you did this, why the food truck matter,
why you went to Portland, how it worked, what the
principles are, what your volunteers and staff now understand that

(42:01):
culminated in what Salt Night really is.

Speaker 2 (42:04):
Yes, okay, So the flagship project was always the village,
and so that village I was still you know, moving
the needle on building that village and trying to figure
out where it was going. To be how we were
going to do it, how we were going to fund it,
while that food truck was also going and teaching us
what we needed to know and also helping us build
a movement. I needed a movement because I needed support

(42:25):
right in a lot of ways, money, volunteers, all those things.

Speaker 1 (42:28):
About village, those are houses a development, and yes this
is not cheap.

Speaker 2 (42:33):
No, it wasn't cheap. And I knew that it was
going to be difficult to raise that kind of capital
and keep the momentum going because people are like, when's
the village going to be built? And I'm like, I
haven't even found land yet. But meanwhile, that food truck
started in like I said, the summer of twenty twenty,
and I think it was like September October, and the
county had been wanting to maybe give us a piece

(42:53):
of property, maybe lease us a piece of property. They
had been kind of dangling since the launch party, and
we've been kind of working on it. But it was
someone else's family business was utilizing this piece of property
and the county was potentially going to break the least
so that we could build a village there. That didn't
feel great to me. It was a family pumpkin patch
and corn maze, and it was. It's a hit. It's

(43:14):
been around for twenty years. Everybody loves this place. It's
kind of the place to go during Halloween.

Speaker 1 (43:18):
May not get a get community support, still the corn
maze for the homeless, thinking.

Speaker 2 (43:23):
That wouldn't be the greatest headline, you know what I'm saying.
And also our tagline has also always been cultivating community.
I'm like, something about this doesn't feel like cultivating community.
I mean, so I go to the guy and ask him,
would you be willing to swap land? Has anybody talked
to you about this? He's like, no one's talking about this.
But I'll tell you something. I have actually experienced some
of you of what the people you deal with have
dealt with. I've been through recovery, and I actually think

(43:45):
this model could really work. But if you take the
corn Maze, it'll put me out of business. And I said, well, okay,
well that's not cultivating community. So I'll just and I've
been working on this for a year and I literally
I love the county. I have a great relationship them,
still do. And I just said I'm not going to
do it. I'm just not willing to move forward on
any more discussions on this because I'm not willing to
do that on that land, on that land, And they

(44:07):
were like, are you serious? I was like, yeah, I'm serious.
And I had no other plausible ideas for where we
were going to go because I was now, I'm at
the point. At this point, real estate as just won't
even talk to me because they know what I want
and no one wants me anywhere near them.

Speaker 1 (44:21):
Yeah, who wants to build a homeless filled my house?

Speaker 2 (44:23):
And no one's seen what I've seen. No one knows
about this model. So I'm trying to educate people about
how the model looks, but they've got nothing to look at.
I mean, they can see Alan Graham's stuff, but kind
of and it's like, well, that's Texas. It's spread out,
it's different. You know, people aren't getting it. So but
I had faith that if I was honoring to what
I said I was going to do, my insides matched
my outsides, that a door would open. And I'm kid

(44:45):
you not. Two days later, two days later, the same
people who asked us to put the food truck together
so our local continuum of Care got us together with
an affordable housing developer and said, you guys need to meet.
Let's see if you guys could do something. And the
affordable housing developer been around for sixty five years, been
building farm worker housing, all kinds of affordable housing, said
we're interested in maybe making your vision come to life.

(45:07):
Because what people don't know is that affordable housing buy
and large in the United States is not one hundred
percent permanent supportive housing for people experiencing homelessness. There aren't
villages like this. What happens is you have an apartment
complex and it's well at least in California, and it's
a unit mix, and it's like there's tribal housing, there's
farm worker housing, there's multi family housing as Section eight housing,
blah blah blah, and.

Speaker 1 (45:27):
That that's the same stuff here.

Speaker 2 (45:28):
Yeah, and then a percentage is people who've experienced homelessness. Now,
where do you think the revolving door is in those
affordable housing complexes. Yeah, it's the ten percent of people
experiencing homelessess because there's no community there, there's no services there,
there's nothing for them. Farm worker housing, they don't need that.
I mean everyone needs community to agree, yes, but people
experiencing homelessess need a lot of services. And the way

(45:48):
we've done it in the US as we say, here's
your house. This is a housing first model. Here's your house.
We'll send your caseworker. And you're talking about someone with
complex trauma, living in survival mode, potential substance abuse issues.
Now we're going to go put them in solitary and
tell them good luck. You have no transportation, no food,
no outside, no furniture. Maybe actually a lot of our

(46:09):
affordable housing developer is really good. They put furniture and everything.
And I will tell you this. Our affordable housing developer
partner on the neighborhood village, which we obviously end up building,
we'll talk about it. They do a great job. And
that's why we partner with them, because we really were
pretty value aligned with them, which is why they said,
we want to bring your vision to life. And we
have a piece of property six and a half acres.

(46:30):
I know you wanted twenty I did because I wanted
two hundred houses. I had a big vision. But they said,
we can make it smaller, and we think we can
make this work. We're going to have to do some
contorting because my vision was freer than necessarily and I
don't mean free cheap, I mean less restrictions or just
more ability to have the grace. I wanted to have

(46:51):
a little more fluid than affordable housing always permits. We
worked with the State of California, so they were able
to bring down state dollars. So that's something wholly different
than what Alan did in Texas. They used private dollars.
He also had a twenty five year nonprofit behind him
to be able to have that community to build that
I did not.

Speaker 3 (47:07):
So he's also got like the founder of Patron supporting
him in subs.

Speaker 2 (47:11):
Yeah, Tito's gave him a huge piece of property. Yeah.
I mean, it's just a different it's a whole different
climate there. We're not a philanthropic based community, which is
that wealth is not there. So we said yes to
that and we started working the state of California. It
was like nope, nope, nope several times. So we contorted
and contorted, and we worked with my vision and I
held firm on some things, and we got that village built.

(47:32):
So we have fifty three units. Fifty of them are
people experiencing homeless who have experienced homelessness. Three of them
are homes of people like you and me who live there.
As a call, Well, one family does, and then one
is my property manager, and then another person is someone
who lives there.

Speaker 1 (47:48):
Everybody right now is thinking, so you built a village
for a bunch of people to live in that aren't
paying rent.

Speaker 2 (47:53):
Oh no, they're paying rent.

Speaker 1 (47:54):
Yeah. That part, That was the part that I love
the most is that you're it's a hand up, not
a handout, and you're asking them to meet you halfway
with the rules, the association, the rent, which in my view,
gives them pride in themselves for the work that they're

(48:18):
doing in their own lives and the skin in the game.
We'll be right back six years ago. You're like, I'm
going to build a village, and then you end up

(48:41):
with a food truck, and now you build a village,
which is freaking insane for someone who had no idea
what they're doing. But the secret to the sauce, in
my opinion, is just like you were steadfast in the
rules of your organization and your guiding principles, you have

(49:05):
principles about this village that I think are phenomenally vital
to a success, and the people living in it, So
talk about that please.

Speaker 2 (49:15):
Okay, and I'll talk about the fact is it's unique.
It's unique because it's unique because it's expensive. Okay, First
of all, it's expensive because people we believe that people
heal people. Have a staff of thirty one people. We
moved into that village just shy of five years as
an organization, so we moved in September tenth last year.

(49:35):
It's just incredible, it is, And I really feel like
a lot of that's just miraculous in a lot of ways,
and community support and a lot of it was you know,
passion driving behind it, but also the trust the neighbors
there were just it was an alchemy you know of
things that made this happen. But I think it's also
because the model itself works. So we believe wholeheartedly in

(49:57):
really coming beside people and really whole person care. So
there's a thing that people talk about in this in
the homelessness realm wrap around care. Wrap around care can
look like a lot of things. It's the same as
like coaching life coaching. It's like some life coaches get
their certificate one on Saturday afternoon at the First Baptist
Church and some people go through a year of training, certifications,

(50:20):
all these things, and so there's wide range of what
life coaching looks like. For example, same thing with Wrap
around Care. We can call rap around Care someone who
just is getting case management services and the phone number
to some medical care for us. We bring that on site.
We bring services on site. Everything's there, My office is there,
We all of my employees are there on site in community,

(50:42):
in relationship with people experiencing homelessness, and we hold the line.
It's highly managed because we're all there. It's and we
hold the line. On community rules, those are like hoa rules.
There's things like you can only have two animals. They've
got to be on a leash. If they're not on
a leash, they got to be in the dog park.
If not, you're getting a lease violation. You know, you

(51:03):
can't give your gate key to outside folks like your
drug dealer, or you will get a lease violation or
we will be calling the sheriffs. I mean, there's things
like that.

Speaker 1 (51:12):
We have more than two cars, that's right.

Speaker 2 (51:14):
So and you've got to follow those things.

Speaker 1 (51:16):
No cars on blocks, correct, no boats in the front yard.

Speaker 2 (51:20):
No, no hoarding. Yeah, we've got some we've got and
we're on it. But let me tell you something. It
is a lot. And so people shave that part off.

Speaker 1 (51:31):
But here's the thing. Don't hear that and think, oh,
you're crimping their lifestyle. Oh no, I live in a
house with a homewern association. I can't put a boat
in my front yard or have cars up on blocks
in my yard and people run around my place. I
don't do it because I don't want a dog, because
I don't want to have to walk a dog with

(51:51):
a bag of dookie that I got to scoop up
off the grass every time they go. But those who
have dogs, that's what they have to do or they're
going to get fined. So village is just normal.

Speaker 2 (52:05):
That's right. It's just a community. It's like a little
mini city kind off.

Speaker 1 (52:09):
And everybody listen to me, what's that YouTube thing? What's
the link to it? That YouTube you made me watch that?
I'm glad I did you sent me a little on
the How do people find that about them? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (52:22):
I just go on their websites a website, The videos
are on there.

Speaker 1 (52:25):
Yeah. Well, I mean we're not dropping right here. We've
still got a few more moments. But I want people
to hear me. You think of a village or a
housing area for people experiencing homelessness going into it, and
you think of a cinder block, institutional, green, multi level
type place. Y'all go to the pictures. This is a

(52:48):
lovely little neighborhood with bushes and yards, and it looks
like any other little neighborhood you might pull into.

Speaker 3 (52:56):
It's a unity hall.

Speaker 1 (52:59):
It's it's like Niceville.

Speaker 2 (53:01):
Mean, that was by design, because you know what, people
Sometimes people need to be reminded of their worth, and
sometimes that comes with being in spaces that feel dignified
and beautiful as a whole. And I really wanted people experiencing
homelessness and our community at large to think of this
differently in the way that they don't need seconds. And

(53:23):
my employees don't need seconds. You know, a lot of
nonprofit employees work in the back office of somebody's office
building that they didn't want, that has the rats running
through it and the drippy ceilings and all the things like, no,
I don't want my employees. I don't want my employees
in that. And you know why, They've got to go
do a really hard job and love people really really
hard and also pedal, dignity, belonging, raticloss, all these things.
If they're not feeling that inside the office, how are

(53:44):
they going to do that out there? Same thing with
building a village. It's beautiful and neat and kept. People
have a serious pride of ownership in their in their houses.
You should see all the decorations. The flower on a
sliding scale and it's that's basically set by the state
of caliph So the way that that works is that
they take fair market rent based on one bedroom or

(54:06):
two bedrooms. So we have one bedroom and two bedroom homes.
These are mobile homes that we have on our site.

Speaker 1 (54:10):
Yeah, but they're not mobile homes on wheels. They're actually
on Yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:14):
We put them on a foundation, pits foundation.

Speaker 1 (54:16):
So they're basically manufactured homes. This is what they are,
but on a concrete slid.

Speaker 2 (54:21):
That's correct and which for earthquake gives.

Speaker 1 (54:23):
It also a really cute look.

Speaker 2 (54:26):
Yeah, we wanted it to feel like a stick bilt.
We wanted it to feel like a househouse, and we
didn't want it to feel like a trailer was skirting
it's not.

Speaker 1 (54:32):
It's manufactured housing on the thing. But you got one bedroom,
two bedroom house rent work, and the.

Speaker 2 (54:37):
Rent works the way that the state does that. It's
always like this with affordable housing. They set it based
on the bedrooms, so it's like, okay, in Larry County,
fair market rent for a two bedroom houses X, and
then they go on a sliding scale of average media
and income. And so we have folks who pay rent
at sixty percent average meeting, so they would reduce that
by thirty percent whatever that fair market rent is, or

(54:58):
then there's forty and then there's thirty percent, so that's
the lowest rent.

Speaker 1 (55:02):
So them, but they are paying to live there.

Speaker 2 (55:05):
Oh yes, and if they so, we have people who
have vouchers, so I don't know if you know how
the voucher system works that comes through HUD. A lot
of those got cut recently. We're really hoping they get
reinstated because that's the way we can shore up some
of this. When someone doesn't come with income, because there
are folks who are disabled, there's all kinds of things
about why someone might not have income. Many of our
folks have jobs and they pay rent. And then for
those there are some who came in on what we

(55:26):
call scholarship. We knew they didn't have income at the time,
but we have a work force so that we've implemented
within the community that they can work for us.

Speaker 1 (55:35):
You know, there's something you just said that boy, I
has toitate to tell this story, but I'm going to
tell it because of what you just said, and I
think it's really important our listeners hear those. I specifically
remember when Barack Obama's president, and there are a lot

(55:55):
of things he did and said that I didn't agree with.
And there's a lot of things presents from the other
side of the all say and do that I don't
agree with. So again, I'm an equal opportunity frustration person.
But he said this. He said, in America, anybody working
a full time job should not also be in poverty.

(56:17):
And if you aren't paying at this time, it was
ten dollars and twenty seven cents an hour. This is
back then. If you aren't paying ten dollars in twenty
seven cents an hour to a person working forty hours
a week, then they are earning in a full time
job a living that keeps them in poverty. And at

(56:40):
that time, I had people making less than ten dollars
and twenty five cents an hour in my company, and
I first verified that that was not be us and
it was true, and it was I looked at what
the poverty level, what the what the statistics said the
poverty level was in the state, and made sure that

(57:00):
within a week, made sure every in my business was
not killing it at this time. But I still made
sure that if someone was working me forty hours, I
was at least going to pay them a quarter over
per hour. What it took that I was not going
to sleep in bed knowing I had people working forty
hours a week in my company and not making at
least enough stay above the poverty level. The reason I'm

(57:23):
telling the story, as you said, many of my people
had jobs. Can you imagine someone with a full time
job still homeless and people don't get that it's not hey,
go get a job. I would say if I was
that person, Hey, jerk, I do I work forty hours
a week and I still am living on the streets.

(57:44):
That's sinful that our culture and our society would tolerate
that someone is willing to go do the right thing
and pay their taxes and pay into Social Security and
have a forty hour job week and still be living
in the streets. Right, No, it's not right.

Speaker 2 (58:05):
But I'll tell you what.

Speaker 1 (58:06):
But you have people that now meet that lower income
expectation of forty hours a week in work. But now
they can actually afford to live based on the village.

Speaker 2 (58:17):
Yes, because they can pay for a subsidized rent, which
is awesome. But I'll tell you something else, just speaking
to the minimum wage thing, there is not a single person,
including my work for us at Salton Light, who makes
minimum wage.

Speaker 1 (58:27):
No one.

Speaker 2 (58:28):
And I made that decision early. I built it into
my budget early because I decided that if I believe
that the greatest cause of homelessness is a catastrophic loss
of family or support, I got that straight from Alan Graham,
by the way, I can't claim that one, but it's
the truth. I've seen it meet it out. But here's
what's true. If I'm asking my employees to do this

(58:49):
really hard work, I mean, the work we do is difficult.
This you know, we haven't talked about the messiness of this,
the grittiness of this kind of work. If I've got
my people doing this kind of work, that that taxing.
But then they're also having to go work another job
and another job to make ends meet. But then they're
drinking to go to sleep at night, or you know
whatever other things can be cause catastrophic losses of family,

(59:10):
or a mom that's never home or a dad that's
never home because they have to work three jobs because
they decided to have a heart for the homeless and
work for this nonprofit. But sorry, it's nonprofit work. You're
gonna have to work three jobs and just suffer. How
am I going to have them doing good work? How
can I sleep at night knowing that I'm causing my
own catastrophic losses of family and generational trauma?

Speaker 1 (59:30):
The irony is those people are only one one catastrophe
away from needing your services.

Speaker 2 (59:35):
Correct, Correct? So how about we don't create more of
those issues? And also, I just made it my I
know minimum wages and cover in the US, it doesn't
it's not a living wage. It doesn't work anymore. And
so for me and my ORG, we're not doing it.
And I'm not saying we pay people an exorbitant amount
of money, but we pay.

Speaker 1 (59:52):
You at least live Yeah. Yeah, So you've got this village,
You've got these people in it. Are you still running
their food truck?

Speaker 2 (01:00:01):
Heck? Yeah, there's all kinds of things going on?

Speaker 1 (01:00:04):
How many?

Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
So we've got eighty two residents.

Speaker 1 (01:00:08):
You got eighty two residents in how many units.

Speaker 2 (01:00:10):
In fifty well fifty three, yeah, eighty two resident.

Speaker 1 (01:00:14):
Believe you're thinking about the next fifty three?

Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
Oh heck, yeah, I got And I've got a piece
of property that is an escrow north of us and
that we've got big dreams to that. So we're pretty
stuffed onto the six and a half acres. We need
more ancillary buildings. We want an art house, we want
want an entrepreneurial hub. I have big dreams about the
you know, I saw what happened with the food truck
in terms of bridging the public with people who've experienced

(01:00:38):
homelessess and trauma. And this corridor that we're on has
two Amazon warehouses to a UPS warehouse. It's it's right
on the edge of an industrial park in Vicelia. So
we're in we're actually in Goshen. That's actually where it's
a long story, but it's an unincorporated, little, very impoverished
little city that we are. We are kind of on
the outskirts of Isilia. Anyway. This piece of property has

(01:01:01):
the ability to it's got some frontage, so there's a
lot of traffic there, and I'm like, I think we
need a bakery, and I think we need a market,
and I think our neighbors need to be working it,
and I think people need to be coming getting their amazing,
delicious sandwich from someone who they didn't realize had ever
been homeless or maybe and all of a sudden they're
front facing with people who are living in that village

(01:01:23):
and going, huh, they're just people like me, just like
people on the food truck. Cause it's like people want
to come get a sandwich and want to get their
gas pump, they want to get a cupcake. Whatever. That's
our dream more housing in that piece of property, and
then also just more opportunities, more services for the folks
who are going to be living there with us.

Speaker 1 (01:01:40):
I did this in five years, when as that next.

Speaker 2 (01:01:42):
Week, well, I'm already trying to drawing up planned So yeah,
and then yeah, so there's a few things. There's a
few irons in the fire in terms of expanding, and
that you know, the state has their eye on us.
They know what we're doing, and they like what we're doing.
The Department of Housing and Community Development has been very
supportive of US, And I know California has taken a
ton of heat about their homeless policies or perceived homeless

(01:02:06):
policy policies, but I will tell you that this administration
in California has been very friendly to innovative solutions to homelessness.
And I know that at one point Governor Newsom turned
around a bunch of Continuance of Care who came with
their next few years plan because it only moved the
needle like a half a percent, and he's like, go back.
And so there is a real push for innovation and

(01:02:28):
we're we're hopefully leading that charge. And what we would
love to do is to say to the state. Look,
we've the and the federal government to say, we've got
to stop giving affordable housing dollars using this broad brush
stroke approach for people experiencing homelessness who need so much
more robust care. Think of ICUs, you.

Speaker 1 (01:02:46):
Know why top down like that almost never works. You
need to be bottom up.

Speaker 2 (01:02:51):
That's right, and we've got and we've also got to
put those affordable housing dollars specifically for people experiencing chronic
homelessness with the care dollars. So what we've done for
Salt and Light these care dollars didn't just come We
fundraised for him. We grant raised for him. We built
the village with affordable housing dollars. That doesn't pay anything
for services, really nothing. It paid for a basically minimum

(01:03:15):
wage part time village manager to be on site to
give people these violations. His pay doesn't look like that
because he was already employee of mine and I wasn't
gonna pay him that. But so that budget that came
out of those affordable housing dollars does not pay for care.
And we know what kind of care it takes. And
we've got all the data. We've got the metrics, and
we've got I brought you a little folder and I'll

(01:03:37):
show you all the ways we care for people. But
it's robust. It's like you cannot expect people who just
need to go get a splinter out at the urgent
care to be housed with the same people who need
ICU doesn't work. People experiencing commissess need ic you, they
need time, grace, you know, redentive stance therapy, mental health care,

(01:03:58):
medical health care. I can't tell you we've had We've
lost a lot of neighbors. And I had one lady
so we did start case managing people, and we were
case managing them and housing them in other affordable housing
complexes while we were building the village, because we want
to get people on the streets, obviously. But we had
a woman we got housed in our affordable housing developers,
one of their apartment buildings, and she was there one
day and she died. She didn't have any and you

(01:04:23):
would she die of broken heart. I think she died
of like her body finally got to rest. The trauma
of life on the.

Speaker 1 (01:04:30):
Streets is so yeah. We got to remember, you spent
two days and it took you a week to get over.
What's it take to get over?

Speaker 2 (01:04:37):
Five years average a life span of a person who's
experienced chronic homelessness. They usually average death age between fifty
and sixty.

Speaker 1 (01:04:48):
We'll be right back. You've had thirteen hundred and seventy volunteers,
you open the neighborhood successfully, how seventy four neighbors you

(01:05:09):
now have age eighty two.

Speaker 2 (01:05:10):
We have kids, and they're just sure.

Speaker 1 (01:05:13):
You open in September twenty sixth or twenty twenty four.
We're not even a year old at this point, and
you've already surpassed both state and national retention rates. Over
eighty six percent of residents feel supported by the village community.
And I think not a single resident has gone back

(01:05:33):
to homelessness. Homelessness.

Speaker 2 (01:05:34):
Now, I'll tell you the three we've lost. We've lost
one to death, lost one to incarceration for something else
outside the village, and one that needed to be in
behavioral heal to begin with, had a mental break and
is now in boarding care. That's it.

Speaker 1 (01:05:46):
Ninety two percent of your neighbors feel hopeful about the future.
Now that sounds good, and it's like, why not one
hundred percent? Well, just remember this that the last polling
on our government said that fifty two percent of Americans
feel hopeful about the future. So ninety two percent is
pretty daggum number.

Speaker 2 (01:06:06):
We serve it them. We have a hope index and
a dignity index, and we start when they move in
and we see where their hope lies then and then
we re what is what.

Speaker 1 (01:06:14):
Is the hope number before they come in? Do you
know's pretty low.

Speaker 2 (01:06:17):
I don't know the actual number, and I can ask
I wish I had.

Speaker 1 (01:06:19):
It, well, I mean it would have to be horrific.
I just didn't know if you know it.

Speaker 2 (01:06:22):
Yeah, it can't tell you how many ways we have
to keep showing people that we love them. They throw tantrums,
they throw fits, they do things that cause these violations,
and then they keep going. But you still love us, like, yeah,
we still love you.

Speaker 1 (01:06:33):
Saltonlike dot com. What is it?

Speaker 2 (01:06:35):
It is Salt and Lightworks dot org.

Speaker 1 (01:06:38):
And if somebody wants to support you, hear more about it,
maybe come see you like you saw the folks in
Austin and try this elsewhere.

Speaker 2 (01:06:47):
We're starting to develop an educational program so that people
can actually come out and have a day with us
instead of just like a tour. They can come take
a tour any Wednesday. Those are always open on the website.
But if they want to start learning, they the website.
It's a great place to start good. They can email
us at info at Saltmightworks dot org and we'll get
you the right where you need to go. Yeah. No,

(01:07:09):
I people got to see it to believe it. The
thing is, I wish you could. I wish we were
in California. I wish you could come see it maybe
when you come to California, maybe one.

Speaker 1 (01:07:15):
Day, because I do business up in that area, so
maybe one day at least, And I like Wine Country.
It's not that far away.

Speaker 2 (01:07:21):
Now, and we have Central Coast Wine too.

Speaker 1 (01:07:23):
Yes, I've heard Central Coastline's actually pretty good. We have
done it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:26):
It's very good.

Speaker 1 (01:07:27):
So I know you have a bunch of sad stories,
and I know you have a bunch of success stories,
because any time of work that you do like this,
there are failures and there are heartbreaks, but you've got
to remember the successes carry them all, because if you

(01:07:47):
weren't doing this work, there would be no successes. So
I could talk to you for four hours about those,
and I really do wish we had time to do that.
But on the little video I watched, there was a
driver's license picture of an emaciated man Patrick, who is

(01:08:08):
now the receptionist, healthy and happy. And I'd like you
to tee up that story just because I saw a
little of it. And y'all please go watch this video
to get him put in your minds on what this
place looks like. But honestly, what I got from it

(01:08:29):
most was the juxtaposition of the picture of this man
with his California's driver's license, and he looked horrid emaciated.
I mean I know that I don't want to overdo it,
but I mean.

Speaker 2 (01:08:45):
He was really sick.

Speaker 1 (01:08:47):
It was disgusting, and how bad he looked. Not he
was disgusting, but it was disgusting to me that he
looked like that. And now to have him interviewed and
you see this healthy, smiling human being and this transformation
that's taken his life. If that doesn't make you a
believer in this work, nothing will. But I want you

(01:09:08):
to wrap us up with Patrick, who said I finally
feel safe, I have a second chance of life. Why
don't you take us to the story of Patrick.

Speaker 2 (01:09:17):
Okay, I'm gonna try to do without crying.

Speaker 1 (01:09:19):
You can cry. There's been plenty of people that have
cried here, Alex Kros because I make fun of him, am.

Speaker 2 (01:09:26):
I appregiate not making too much fun of me? But no, Patrick,
he was our first neighbor that moved in.

Speaker 1 (01:09:31):
He actually was he really I didn't know that part.
He was the first one in.

Speaker 2 (01:09:34):
Well, he was there the first day we had. We
moved five neighbors in the first.

Speaker 1 (01:09:37):
Made him on the food truck.

Speaker 2 (01:09:38):
He actually was in respite care. So what happened was
his mom died. He was addicted after that lost everything,
had a stroke on the streets.

Speaker 1 (01:09:46):
Oh gosh.

Speaker 2 (01:09:47):
Yeah, and if there aren't respite care places set up
for people, they just if they're sick, open art surgery. Sorry,
you're going back to the streets. It's terrible. But he
got to go into respite care. And so one of
my case managers met him through this RESPAC care center
where he was healing and got him on our case
load and then we you know, then he applied for
housing at the village and so the very first day

(01:10:09):
and that he was beloved. He has you know, had
his walker because he'd had a stroke. So, I mean,
he's disabled, but he was just I'm just so glad
to be here. I'm just so happy to go sh way.

Speaker 1 (01:10:20):
I mean that picture of his license, he'd looked hard, emaciated.

Speaker 2 (01:10:24):
He was emaciated. I actually never met him during that time.
My case manager had and they nursed him back to
health at this RESPA care center, and then he came
and moved in and then he ended up being the
keynote for our grand opening, which like state representatives were
there and everything, and he did so well. But let
me tell you just yesterday, so he's he is our
front desk receptionist in the afternoons, and he writes to me,
and I see him every day when i'm there, when

(01:10:45):
I'm walking on Hey, Patrick, what's up. He's like, I
just want to remind you that I'm really grateful for
living here, and I just want you to know that
I really love you, and I really loved this whole team,
and I love being a part of it. Every day.
I mean, I get this every day. Yesterday he chatted me,
just wants you to know I want you make it
a great day. I wish i'd have seen you on
your birthday because my birthday was Wednesday and I wasn't
in because I wasn't feeling great. And I mean like

(01:11:07):
to get messages from this guy who he said, I
was so close to death. I don't know if I
five told you. And of course he's told me many
times that how close to death he was and how
destitute and hopeless he was. He goes, you know what
I love the most that I can just sleep and
feel safe and then I just get up and I
can work. It's so much easier because I could never
hold a job before because I just never could sleep,
I never felt safe. That's the settling and healing piece

(01:11:32):
that is the game changer. When people know that they
can sleep, eat, no, they can be held. I mean
people can come to us and say, can I get
a box of cereal? Yeah, come and get it out
of our pantry. They know where their next meal is
coming from. They don't have to worry anymore. And it's
not about handouts. It's about reminding people of their works.

Speaker 1 (01:11:50):
Yeah, don't don't remember these people are paying rent? Well,
they've never paid rent. These are the very people that
you avoid on the street that are now working, paying
rent and living a good life. Why wouldn't you if
you don't care about this from a social faithful or

(01:12:12):
point of view, and if you're just someone who don't
like having to deal with homeless folks all over your streets, well,
from a pragmatic standpoint, why wouldn't you support this?

Speaker 2 (01:12:23):
Right and let us? And I always say let us
do the work. I don't expect you to go out
and do the work by yourself. I mean, love people,
you know you.

Speaker 1 (01:12:27):
Don't have to care about them, right, wouldn't wouldn't you
be happier if this existed so that we didn't have
all of the issues that come along with people experiencing almostness.
I mean, I wouldn't much rather you care. But if
you don't pragmatically, how about the cost this is? How
about the cost of.

Speaker 2 (01:12:44):
It, the cost to law enforcement? I mean, like the
police chief of Ilia's on our board. It happened to
be a really good friend of ours, and the policy
in that city is that they want to enforce their
way out of homelessness. He knows that's not a vible
S book, right, he knows that too.

Speaker 1 (01:12:57):
But there's hell of a lot less then a jail cell, thank.

Speaker 2 (01:13:01):
You, incarceration, law enforcement, you know, the judicial system. What
the cost of healthcare systems? I mean I think when
I first started, I think one of the healthcare systems
told me that they think it costs about one hundred
thousand dollars per person experiencing homelessess who uses the er
as their medical treatment. You know, the cost of that
is to medical care center.

Speaker 1 (01:13:21):
Meanwhile, in the village, you've got this big what's that
big six thousand square foot thing called oh Unity Hall
A it's a meeting hall for the meanwhile, they can come.

Speaker 2 (01:13:32):
There and then yeah, the Frezler Space medical care. Yes,
the Frezzo state medical truck comes. They've got an FMP
program and they bring their medical truck. It was there yesterday,
it's there every other Thursday. And then our local healthcare
system in Venice.

Speaker 1 (01:13:43):
Health come now now they are is not overrun with
correct all of it.

Speaker 2 (01:13:47):
And we've got dental care that comes on side, a
mobile dental clinic, all these ways that we're trying to
ease the burden on the system. Yeah, might be expensive,
and I'm using air quotes to run an organization like
this with this much row bust care, sure, because it
takes people, and I gotta pay people to do it.
I gotta pay their insurance and all the things. Right. Yes, However,
we've got the data it's nowhere near the cost of

(01:14:09):
society with this turnover we keep having, which that's our
human cride of the state and the Feds.

Speaker 1 (01:14:13):
Hey, and meanwhile, while that cost is being reduced, people's
lives are thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:14:20):
I mean, it's like that part the part for me.
But if you want to get pragmatic and really it's
about the bottom line.

Speaker 1 (01:14:24):
That's what I'm saying. It just checks both boxes, it
really does.

Speaker 3 (01:14:27):
It tell him about father Greg Boyle's quote about the margins.

Speaker 2 (01:14:35):
Oh yeah, Oh, I love Father Greg so much. He's
such an inspiration to me. Yeah, he's and this happened
to me. So I'm real careful with my hiring practices,
and I'm really careful about people who come in and
want to wear a Superman cape. I don't think that's
a good idea because typically then the organization and the
people get appropriated. For people.

Speaker 1 (01:14:54):
Superman thing about a cape, it's just you know, people
look at him a lot. So if you're wearing a cape,
you gotta ask yourself, why are you wearing a cape?
You won't to be looked at.

Speaker 2 (01:15:05):
Right. So Father Greg says when people ask Father Greg,
don't you get burnout? And people ask me this all
the time, don't you get burned out? And he said,
you only get burnout when you think you're going to
the margins to fix the margins, when you realize that
the margins are actually going to help you. It's addictivity.

(01:15:26):
You can't stop.

Speaker 1 (01:15:28):
That is another great quote. Yeah, that's the second one.

Speaker 2 (01:15:30):
Of his quote is better than that. That's kind of
ad living his actual quote, but that's what he says.

Speaker 1 (01:15:34):
We get burned out. Say it again, you.

Speaker 2 (01:15:36):
Only get burned out when you go to the margins
thinking you're going to fix the margins. When you realize
the margins change you, you can't stop.

Speaker 1 (01:15:44):
That is another way of saying what I am telling you.
Without exception, there's not a single guest that is not
ever sat in an interview with me is somewhere in
this country and said, the truth is, I get more
out of this than I ever put into it.

Speaker 2 (01:16:00):
And don't you at Manassas.

Speaker 1 (01:16:02):
Yeah I did back then, am now at middle college.
But yes, I get more out of this podcast that
I put into it. The stuff I've learned, the people
I've met, It's unbelievable.

Speaker 3 (01:16:12):
You said you don't want to do this interview today,
you said it's too many.

Speaker 1 (01:16:17):
It's not this one today. This is just me just
scheduled five. I've done five interviews this week. It's a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:16:24):
I really, I'll be honest. I you did a really
good job. I would. I really have wanted to launch
a podcast for so long, wanted to before I even
started something light. And I got to tell you, your
interview skills are really good. Really, you're fun to talk to.

Speaker 1 (01:16:38):
Well, just keep saying that, louder, I mean, don't say
that anymore. You're embarrassing.

Speaker 2 (01:16:42):
You're great. It really was fun. It was fun to
talk about it. You gave me the floria talk about things,
and I love being challenged and talking about ways that
society sees this and ways that we can talk through.

Speaker 1 (01:16:54):
I think we need the opportunity to open mindedly without
preconceived notions first, that out the preconceived notions that are
often inaccurate, before we can even lay a foundation to
averill chat. That's all.

Speaker 2 (01:17:08):
I think that was really helpful.

Speaker 1 (01:17:09):
For another podcast. We can do that About logging.

Speaker 2 (01:17:15):
I know you are. I heard about this the hard people.

Speaker 1 (01:17:18):
Don't want to hear the truth that there's seventy percent
more harvestable timber growing in the United States today than
there was in nineteen fifty.

Speaker 2 (01:17:26):
I didn't know that exactly. I don't know a lot
about logging.

Speaker 1 (01:17:30):
So we could we could talk about why there's fires
and oh yeah, and there do you know there's four
times as many lightning strikes east of the Mississippi River
as there are west of the Missippi River. Yet we
don't have massive forest fires while the West burns to
the ground.

Speaker 2 (01:17:44):
Because we're not managing our forests.

Speaker 1 (01:17:45):
Because logging roads great fire breaks. When you run out
of stuff to burn, the fire just burns out, and.

Speaker 2 (01:17:53):
We've lost so many of our gorgeous majestic we have.

Speaker 1 (01:17:56):
But when you actually harvest the old trees and you
have logging roads, certainly you're going to have fire breaks out,
but they're contained a by the logging roads and the
lack of tender to keep the fire burning when you
don't log them. It is actually pitiful policy, and you
lose twelve times the amount of standing timber to forest fire.
Then you went to logging in a year, and we
have sixty percent more standing timber today than we did

(01:18:20):
eighty years ago.

Speaker 3 (01:18:21):
Let's save it for a shop talk. How about that policy?

Speaker 2 (01:18:23):
I this, this is the kind of stuff. I love
learning that.

Speaker 1 (01:18:26):
Yeh for a girl that grew up on the foothills
of the sequoia.

Speaker 2 (01:18:29):
Yeah, and I care about them burning, of course you do. Yeah,
and absolutely, And we know that.

Speaker 1 (01:18:33):
I'm not saying we just cut down sequoias.

Speaker 2 (01:18:35):
I'm talking about I know what you're saying, we used
to do that.

Speaker 1 (01:18:37):
But the point is to all of that. Always, if
you just hear that there's data about people experiencing homelessness,
that may be inconvenient, may fly the face of what
you've been told, but it doesn't make it any less true.
That's right, my friend, Adrianne. Thanks so much for jutting

(01:18:59):
out here for California. Sorry about Delta screwing you up,
but I hope you got a buddy coming down to
hang out with.

Speaker 2 (01:19:04):
You this weekend, right, Yeah, yeah, And it was worth
it anyway, even if she wasn't. This was so fun.

Speaker 1 (01:19:08):
Well. I hope you get to enjoy some chicken, some barbecue,
a little bit of music, and some of the Memphis
flair while you're here. And I really do appreciate you
spending time to come out and join us. Touch Story
and y'all Salt and Light. She's the founder of the CEO.
She's obviously the dreamer of it, and in only five

(01:19:30):
short years to have a village and a food truck
and serving all other people that are doing I cannot
imagine where you're going to be five years from now,
but I want you to check in with us on
the snow, Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:19:39):
We sure, I sure will. And it's been an honor.
It's an honor to be here, it really is.

Speaker 1 (01:19:43):
Its honored to meet you as well, thanks for being here,
and thank you for joining us this week. If Adrianne
Hillman has inspired you in general, or better yet, to
take action by donating to Salt and Light, volunteering at IT,
somewhere like it in your community, or starting something similar

(01:20:06):
or something else entirely, please let me know. I really
genuinely I want to hear about it. You can write
me anytime at Bill at normal folks dot us and
I will respond. If you enjoyed this episode, share it
with friends and on social subscribe to the podcast, rate it,
review it, join the army at normal folks dot us,

(01:20:28):
any and all of these things that will help us
grow an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney. Until
next time, do it you can

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Host

Bill Courtney

Popular Podcasts

CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist

Crime Junkie

Stuff You Should Know

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Adrianne Hillman: My Sneaky Way To Teach People To Love Better (Pt 2)