June 24, 2025 • 41 mins
Kevin was tired of walking by people experiencing homelessness, not doing anything, and undermining his own humanity and theirs each time. So he finally did something and his accidental nonprofit Miracle Messages has since reunited over 1,100 people with their families!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
We go out, I record a video of him to
his family. Within three weeks, all four of his siblings
had recorded messages back, and they all flew from across
the country on their own dime. Sitting there there, sitting
on a bed, all surrounding him, and he's looking me
in the eye and says, you know, thank you for
giving me the family back. Yeah. At that point, all right,
(00:24):
there's something here. I got a player with.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney.
I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, I'm a father,
I'm an entrepreneur, and I've been a football coach in
Inner City Memphis, which that last part somehow led to
an oscar for the film about our team.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
That movie is called Undefeated.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
I believe our country's problems are never going to be
solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice suits
using big words that nobody ever uses on CNN and Fox,
but rather by an army of normal folks. Guys, that's us,
just you and me deciding, Hey, you know what, maybe
(01:13):
I can help.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
That's what Kevin.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Adler, the voice you just heard, has done. Kevin is
the founder of Miracle Messages, which is reunited over one
thousand individuals experiencing homelessness with their loved ones. And that's
just the beginning of what they've done. I cannot wait
for you to meet Kevin right after these brief messages
(01:36):
from our general sponsors, Kevin F Adler, Welcome to Memphis.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
It's going to be.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Usually I just say Kevin Adler, right, but with you
have to say Kevin F.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Well, you could say Kevin or well.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
I'm gonna say Kevin the rest. I'm not gonna sit
here and call you Kevin f the whole thing, but
the F. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Farrington was my mom's maiden name. She passed away when
I was twenty three. She was fifty nine. She had
breast cancer. I gotta give her as much credit as
I can, So you drop the FM just to make
just to give her them and just to make awkward
moments like this to start. I think that's beautiful. Oh
is it okay?
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Sure? All right? Kevin man loving his mama. Yeah, that
he wants to make sure she's remembered.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
She was pretty remarkable. Yeah. She was both the strongest
and the kindest person I ever met, So she wouldn't
It was warm everyone's friend in the neighborhood. You know,
the house was the Sunday evening dinner spot, classmates, neighbors,
and if you messed with her values, if you did
some real out aligned, you knew where she stood. I
(03:02):
can answer questions now, nearly twenty years since she passed
on where she'd stand on issues. She's both the rose
and the one. Yeah. Yeah, and there was a playful
side too, because I can get real cerebral, but she'd
kind of bring it to a little straighten that out.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Let's get real about this, all right. So, given that,
where are you from? I grew up in Livermore, California.
It's about an hour.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
East of San Francisco. Yeah, small, it's grown a lot,
but I grew up, grew up there with my actually
do a business and living, do you really Yeah, the
lumber business.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Yeah there. It's kind of an industrial area.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Yeah, it is agricultural, the Livermore cowboys. Yeah, growing up.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
So it's actually pretty conservative out there, oddly.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Yeah. Culturally it's a world away from you know, San Francisco,
but it's about an hour east driving.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
So you grew up there, Yeah, I grew up there.
Brother sisters, what you know what was life like, you know,
a lot of exploring the world. Pretty idyllic.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
You know. My my parents, I'd say they were the
best mom and dad I could have asked for, except
when they were together. They never figured out how to
make it work as a couple. You know. My dad
had a lot, has a lot of you know issues.
Hey Dad, good to see you. You know, but I
don't know where the camera is. He's not gonna watch this.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
But hey, he doesn't understand it either.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
All the things you're thinking, coach. Now he's you know,
he's a wonderful dad. I saw him cry many more
times than I saw my mom cry. He showed me
that true masculinity is synonymous with emotional forthrightness, saying and
doing the right thing. But he also grew up in
a very broken home and also escaped the war at
home in his household when he was seventeen to go
(04:41):
fight the war in Vietnam. Was a door gunner and
has PTSD from you know, his time and two tours
in Vietnam. So you know, he has his issues. But
I never questioned where my brother and I stand with
him as unconditionally loved.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
So Mom work out of the home, or she's saying.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
He was older adult school exercise instructor. So she'd go
down and do teaching the aerobics and physical fitness and
wellness to folks in nursing homes. It's what everybody did
in the eighties or so. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yeah, it was like mom.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
There was once or twice where I'd walk into the
kitchen and she'd be rocking out playing put in a
cassette tape together for the class, and I was just like, Mom,
I have friends. I want to keep those friends for
a living. He's a material scientist. What does that mean?
So he Yeah, he is an interesting story. So I
mean he went he was he got kicked out of
all the schools he went to in middle school, high school,
(05:41):
went to war, came back, worked at gas stations for year.
There's nothing wrong with that. But he was just like,
there's something more for me, you know. And he started
taking a class at a time at a community college
and had a teacher there who recognized his potential in
the math and sciences. Took another class another class, ended
up transferring to Berkeley than Mit became a pop scientist
(06:04):
in his field, and so he does work on Smart Dude,
Smart Guy a lot. That was the phrase Talent is universal,
opportunity is not. You know, that was kind of his thing.
So he was most recently he just retired, but he
was working at a medical device company for quite a
few years looking at the corrosive properties of the stints
(06:26):
kind of go into your heart, make sure that that
doesn't corrode and cause issues later on.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
So what a neat story for him? Yeah, I mean
some gas station guy. To that guy, the point is
Livermore mom not making a ton of money, but living
her best life, being a great mom, dad doing what
he's doing. You're a normal guy, kind of grew up
in an idyllic Robby on this podcast versus A Yeah,
I mean that's it. But the point is establishing kind
(06:52):
of nothing overly remarkable, just.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
The most remarkable thing. Maybe my childhood was the relative freedom,
but still with like respecting rules and constraints on that.
So the example, you know, I think we were talking
before the show that we share a faith. You know,
when I was I wasn't raised religious, and when I
was twelve, I felt like someone was missing in my
(07:20):
life besides puberty, and I asked my mom and dad
if we could start going to local churches and through
that process we all got baptized. That's cool and just
that encouragement of a twelve year old say yeah, you
want to explore that, we're going to do that, and
then you know, my dad and brother and I all
getting baptized through that process, right.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
No kidding? Yeah, So you know there's that kind of
is remarkable. But again, it's not like you were ordained
to go do something in the world. You just grew
up a.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Life, live in my life.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yeah, so everybody Kevin fer Adler is the last time
I was saying that, it's just Kevin is the founder
of Miracle Messages. Living in Salcilito, San Francisco area. You know,
your bio says your award winning social entrepreneur and the
founder of Miracle Messages, which we'll get into social entrepreneurship
(08:14):
here in a minute. His work is with the homelessness
and relational poverty. He's been featured in The New York Times,
the Washington Post, the PBS News Hour, Los Angeles Times, CNN,
a billboard on Tom Square which we also share that
and in his ted talk and his groundbreaking book. When
we walk by forgotten humanity, broken systems, and the role
(08:37):
we can each play in ending homelessness in America. He
talks constantly about what he's spent many of the last
years of his life learning, and that's what we're going
to dive down into. But I was afraid if I
read all that first before explaining where you came from,
people would think, oh, he's a big wig. And the
truth is, he's just a guy who found a passion
(08:59):
and who ripped over an idea one time, which we're
going to explain, and it's led to all of this,
but much much more so and all those there's a
difference between I think resume items and eulogy virtues and
all that.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
You know, that's the resume side. But you know, I
define myself more by how I try to, you know,
live my life and show up for people. And that's
what I call, like more the eulogy virtue side of things.
So I can I can rewrite that and yeah, I
get that completely. Yeah, yeah, So tell me about Uncle Mark.
So Uncle Mark was my favorite member of my extended family.
(09:36):
This guy come over for Thanksgiving, Christmas. He's my dad's
younger brother. He grew up with a lot of the
same traumas and issues at home that my dad faced.
And unfortunately, you know, he never was able to get
on his own two feet. You know, got schizoph game
schizophrenic kind of his late teens, early twenties, yours of
(09:56):
drug use, of a lot of you know, harmful behavior,
and he spent thirty years of his life living on
and off the streets of Santa Cruz, California. So he
ended up passing away when I was in college. He
was fifty years old, which I found out later is
about the average life expectancy person who's on how's chronically
almost But Mark, every year he was on the streets,
(10:18):
he never missed a birthday sending me a birthday card.
You always just sign uncle Mark. We come over. We'd
have long, elaborate conversations on our shared love of super Britos.
What are you going to tell you it's twelve fourteen
year old. Talk to him, my schizophrenic uncle. What do
you like about the burrito? I love them Brito like
(10:39):
me too, Mark, We got that right deep into the breed. Yeah,
we'd have these, you know, fun conversations, and you know,
and then he he'd leave from you know, Thanksgiving, Christmas,
my dad would drop him off at the Greyhound station
or drive him back to if you're staying in a
transitional housing unit in Santa Cruz. And then months would
go by. We wouldn't hear from him, you know, and
(10:59):
my dad will said, if that collect phone call comes in,
and remember what those were like, you know, answer that,
make sure you accept it. And we'd hear from him
from time to time, and then he disappear. And then
one day, yeah, I was in college, I was got
a phone call from my dad crying. He said, you know,
my whole Mark had been found deceeized. So it's his
(11:21):
not not just the time I spent with Mark, but
the time I didn't spend with that kind of got
me on this journey.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
So obviously that's a that's a huge pivot point and
the trajectory of your life, that experience that love or
let's just be candid, a holmost schizophrenic man.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Yeah, and the kicker for me that that kind of
pulled it together as that turning point is I never
thought of him as a homeless man. He was your uncle,
He's my uncle. You don't, you know, categorize people that way.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Right, not in your own family, not in your own family,
but you do and everybody else is.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Why my shirt says everyone is someone somebody I was
sitting and so I went to his funeral service, and
you know, that was the last time I was at
the gravesite. A few years go by, my dad and
I are having Thanksgiving a dinner at a neighbor family's
house not too far from Santa CRUs. We got some
time before the meal was ready, so we go down
to the gravesite. We sit there and we had one
(12:21):
of those like father son conversations that just want your
entire life right, about who his younger brother was, what
his childhood was, like, you know, all these all the
things that appear only in the dash on that gravestone.
We had the conversation what happened in that dash? And
you know, I was just floored and heard these stories.
(12:43):
And then I get back in my car, you know,
sitting there, my Dad's driving home, and I just start
absent mindingly, you know, pull out my phone, start scrolling
on social media, and I'm like, wait a second, I
am learning more about my random acquaintances classmates middle school
on social media than I did about my own uncle,
(13:04):
if my dad wasn't there at his gravesite, like I
wouldn't know any of this just from the the tombstone.
And so I h I got this question in my
heart just kind of sat with me for a while,
which was, how would Jesus use a smartphone? How would
Jesus use a smart How would Jesus use a smartphone?
Or social media? Right? Because I was like, I like
(13:26):
these cat videos. I like these selfies just the same
as everyone else.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
But I wonder if he would have liked GPS the
road to Nazareth and recognize there's a lot of.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Traffic concerns of robbers up ahead.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
There's parts of the road that are washed out, and
maybe take an alternate route right.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
And then he's he's quickly texting his disciples and they're
not responding, are off and it's like, what's going on, guys,
It's a mess. We might need to.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Head down somewhere else.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
And I think it's it's it's it's a fun thought
experiment to kind of sit with, like these technologies, like
how would Jesus use this? And so my response to
it was, gosh, everyone, I'm walking by in San Francisco,
I'm not seeing them as some kids beloved uncle or aunt, right,
I see them as problems to solve, not people to love.
(14:32):
And so I basically spend a year where I invited
twenty four individuals experiencing homelessness to wear GoPro cameras around
their chests and narrate their experience of what life is
like on the streets.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
And now a few messages from our general sponsors. But first,
we're thinking about launching a few local chapters of the
Army this year. To dive more into it, check out
our recent shop Talk episode titled experimenting with local Chapters.
And if you're interested in potentially leading a chapter in
(15:08):
your community, email Army at normal Folks dot us and
Alex would love to connect with you.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
You got twenty four folks living on the streets, and
you're putting go pros.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
On them about an hour or two out of time,
and you know they're they're joining me as homeless autobiographers, right,
So it's not like I'm strapping at they're sleeping, right,
they're participating. Well, what reason are they agreeing to do this?
For you? The question I put forward was what do
you wish people like me knew that.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
We don't about your existence.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
About you, about how you see the world and what's
going on. Okay, what'd you find out? I'll bite, I'll
bite yeh. Share some of the videos with you if
you want.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Actually, could we put some up on our yea, yeah, absolutely,
we need to do that. Yeah, talk about if you're
okay with they're going to meet Adam for the first
time before you watch the videos. Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah,
but hold it seriously, can we get some of those
throw them up on our stuff?
Speaker 1 (16:17):
I think we need to do. I got some good videos.
That's good. Okay. So all right, So I was told
I had a little earpiece, you know, from the from
the producer there. Yeah, so so he told you about
Yeah you did? Yeah you did you hire him for?
Because actually, a listener I haven't responded yet.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
It's a universal, it's a preview.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
So yesterday a listener emailed us and they said, Bill
on taking away points from you because of how mean
you are to Alex.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
You were raised better than that. They have no idea.
People have no idea that stuff I put up with
off microphone and off camera. So you know, that's only
half the story. Everybody, Bill, You've changed that man, that
listener's heart in that moment, I could feel it.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
I could feel it.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Listen, you're not part of the show. Please go ahead,
so ignore the man in the corner.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Do you have the curtain you know? Like oz Oh,
that's right, yeah, pull it back there. I'm down with that.
The first time that I was meeting one of the
individuals who's going to wear the cameras and named Adam,
and I'll share this, I'm not proud of this. But
as I started approaching this individual who I met through
a mutual friend, like this is, I'm so nervous. Right,
(17:39):
the whole thing's weird, right, I've got these donated go
pro cameras. I'm meeting this guy in broad daylight in
the Castro District downtown San Francisco. And instinctively, as I'm
approaching Adam, I reached my hand into my pocket and
I grab my keys and start fiddling with them and
grab them as a weapon as I approached this person.
(18:02):
I've never done that before or since. You know, I'm
a six foot two guy. I'm generally pretty confident walking
around the streets. That's where I started. I didn't know,
if this guy was going to lunge at me, if
he's you know, mentally like right, the whole thing. So
that's where I started on this issue. You know, quickly
realize this guy's pretty normal. Guys had some tough circumstances, right,
(18:24):
And we start having this conversation. He says, yeah, I'll
wear the camera for you and I want to participate,
and he will, I'll share his videos so you'll be
able to put that up. So I'm watching, you know,
these videos that are coming in and it's pretty heartbreaking.
And the two things that really stoock out to me.
So first, you'd often see a kid walk by. The
(18:48):
kid never just walks by. The kid always points at
the person stairs, Mom, dad, why is that man on
the streets? You know? Can we have them live with us?
Like whatever it is? And half the time you'd see
the parent kind of scold the kid or say, oh
that's im play, don't do that, and then pull them back.
The other half the time, the kid is almost like
(19:10):
guides the parent to go talk to the person and
they have a conversation, right, And they have this interaction.
And I've always thought, which of those kids is going
to twenty years later, be a little bit more trusting
and open as an adults. And what have we forgotten
it that we knew almost instinctive for those children, so basic,
right and wrong. The other piece that stuck out is
every single time you'd see a person experiencing homelessness on
(19:31):
the camera, they'd start sharing stories of some loved family member, friend, classmate,
former girlfriend, former boyfriend. Often the person was no longer
in their life, but they still you know, they're talking
about somebody else. And you know, in listening to this
over and over again, I just started thinking, gosh, you know, like,
(19:53):
what what do those relationships look like? And in one
clip I heard sign that changed my life. The guy said,
I never realized I was homeless when I lost my housing,
only when I lost my family and friends.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Home is where the heart is.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
It's not the structure four walls and a roof that's
a house. A house. That doesn't make a house a home, right.
And as I started digging into this concept that I've
come to call relational poverty as an overlooked form of poverty,
it turns out about one in three people who are
(20:30):
experiencing homelessness attribute the immediate cause of how they ended
up on the streets or in a shelter to some
sort of relational breakdown or brokenness, death in the family, argument,
a divorce, a suicide, a domestic violence situation where it's
not safe to stay with the love one, but some
(20:52):
kind of falling out, something that happens. And so I
got it on my heart. Gosh, maybe you know, I'm
just a normal guy. I'm just gonna walk down the
street go hope to everyone I see who's visibly homeless
and say I do you have any family you want
to reconnect to for the holidays. Okay, so that's weird. Yeah,
it is weird.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Yeah, but it's interesting. Yeah, you know, I can't I
can't help but say this. As I listen to you,
we might need to redefine vocabulary. I think there's maybe
houselessness and homelessness.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Say, homelessness is often seen as a binary, and it's
really more of a spectrum.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
That's what I mean when I say that.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Yeah, so you got folks, you have one hundred people
who are on house. You got a hundred stories and
reasons and context of why they're on housed and what
the challenges are. And it's often never just one thing.
So even with that family friend, social support, there probably
was some form of tremendous you know, job loss, health issue,
(21:55):
housing insecurity, being evicted, and then you're doubled up or
you're tripled up rarely, but it's that relational thing that
ends up being the kind of a straw that breaks
the camel's back. But it's never just one thing.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
What does your We're going to get to that first person. Yeah,
but as a further background, Yeah, what percent have you
found among the population of these folks have a mental illness.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Here's how I'd say this. What we see as the
physical manifestation of homelessness is actually not the majority of
people experiencing homelessness. Most people who are experiencing homelessness, they're
doing whatever they can to hide the fact that they're
(22:48):
experiencing homelessness. They don't want anyone to know it. So
it's there's a kind of confirmation bias that happens. As
we say, we're going down the street and that person's
screen at the top of their lungs to no one
in particular. Okay, that person's got some serious mental health issues.
They're probably experiencing homelessness, But for every one individual we
(23:11):
see like that, there's another three or four that we're
not seen. So maybe twenty twenty five hours.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Yeah, my question is and I've always thought about this.
Now this is before I met you, read your background
or anything else. But I live in midtown Memphis. My
business is in north of downtown, so I am in urban.
My world is urban. As a result, I see folks
experiencing homelessness to and from work and in everything I do,
(23:40):
because I'm in a city of a major metropolitan area
of a couple of million people. And You're going to
see that. Yeah, right, And look, I hate generalizations and
judging books by the cover, but there are people you
know are suffering from a illness that are also homeless,
right often one? Or did the mental illness precede the
(24:02):
homelessness or did the mental illness come as a result
of the homelessness. I always wonder of that population the
chicken or the egg, and I just because if I
was on the street, dirty, stinky, nowhere to go, hopeless
as hell, and everything else, I could see how that
could develop mental illness. But I can also see the
(24:25):
way the systems are, especially in foster care and some
other things. Many people age out of protective systems, have
nowhere to go and are dealing with mental health issues
and end up homeless. So I think it's I think
there's both. But have you experienced people that you think,
you know, I think this mental illness as a result
(24:47):
of the homelessness. It wasn't what started the homelessness. Football
doesn't urt build character. Football reviews character.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Okay, so you just quoted me. That's weird. Homelessness reveals
all the things that are broken in our society.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
You want to talk about it, get the metaphor, so
go ahead and talk on that.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Foster care. One out of three kids who age out
of foster care will experience homelessness by the time they're
twenty six years old. For black kids, that's sixty percent.
Sixty percent will experience homelessness for no fault of their
own because they have age out of foster care. We
have over three thousand counties in the United States. There's
(25:30):
not a single county or someone who's working full time
at the federal minimum wage can afford the fair market
value of a two bedroom apartment, and less than one
percent of counties where that same hard working person full
time working can afford a one bedroom apartment at minimum
at minimum wage, right, So homelessness at its core is
(25:52):
a housing problem. There's plenty of other countries in the
world with lots of folks who have mental health issues
and substance abuses that does not have the homelessness problems
that we have throughout the United States, And even within
the US we look at it, state like say West Virginia,
where they have plenty of folks who have substance abuse
(26:12):
issues mental health issues, don't have nearly the rates of
homelessness as some of the coastal cities. Well why is
that cost of housing is a lot cheap, so at
the end of the day, we don't have it's a
game of musical chairs. Don't have enough chairs for everybody.
Some people are going to be sitting on their butts literally,
(26:34):
And when that happens as a society, as a choice
that we've made from policies, then you have a whole
host of other issues that can conflate, exacerbate, and as
your point, Bill can be both causes of homelessness as
well as effects of homelessness. And for many people it
is an effect, you know, and we're talking about the
(26:57):
systems kind of the you know, the governments and the
policies and the whole thing. The whole other piece that
I talk about in my book is around the human systems. Right,
we have this notion of rugged individualism, right, self made man,
self made woman. Well, if that's true, like to its extreme,
(27:18):
let's just say that is the priority above everything else.
That is our one truth. You can pull yourself up
by our bootstraps. And if you don't, does that mean
you are deservedly poor or deservedly homeless? Right? And I
think most people would say, well, no, you know, people
got bad luck, bad circumstances. But what we discount is
(27:39):
all the people who have helped us get to where
we're at at different key moments in our lives, as
well as access and access absolutely in those resources.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Former Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger has an interesting take
on being a self made guy.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
You read that quote, Yeah, yeah, I can in the voice,
or no, it's horrible in the voice.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
If you could do it in the voice.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
It's a really good kid. I mean I can't, but
I'll do it anyway. So you know, you can call
me Arnold, You can call me Schwatzi. You can call
me the Terminada whatever ever you do. Don't you ever
ever call me a self made man.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Okay, First of all, that was actually really good.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
I'm gonna have to watch it back. But why don't
you tell me why he says? He says, because for
every you know, success I've had in politics and business,
as a bodybuilder, as an actor, I've had coaches, mentors,
people who believed in me, gave me a chance, you know,
opened the door to me. Social capital is really what
he was talking about. So here we got the last
(28:49):
action hero telling us who's often held up as this
paragon of you know, the immigrant success story self made man.
He's like, don't call me that's an offense to everyone
who's helped me get to where I'm at.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
It really illustrates an interesting level of humility from a
guy who we think is full of another when you
go the same guy that says girly men with speaking
of people that he doesn't like. But the point is,
that's an interesting take. I don't have to agree on
everything he does. I think I appreciate his words there. Yeah,
(29:24):
I think he's dead right on. Yeah, we'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
So with that backdrop, which I think is really good
back film. You need a guy. I walk down the
streets because I'm just a normal guy, and normal people
just walk down the streets on Christmas Eve, going up to.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Every person who's on house and saying, do you have
many fans? We are friends. You'd like to reconnect.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
But your uncle kind of set you down a path
in your brain, and you were following it.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
I think in your heart. I started not wanting to
change the world, not wanting to do this whole. It
is so nice for somebody self interest rightly understood, because
I felt like I was my own humanity, my own
empathy was being undermined by the fact that I saw
these people as those people rather than my neighbors. Really,
(30:29):
I just got tired of walking by.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
I use it my speech all the time and quotes
these people, What do you mean these people? Yeah, you're weep, that's.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
I know, all right? All right.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
So I'm walking down the street and I meet a
man named Jeffrey, And at first you know, this guy's
got in a bottle this is water.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
But he's got a bottle of not water sitting at
his side, and fowerwater. He's firewater, and he's talking to himself,
and I'm like, this is the last guy who I
should be sitting down talking to, right, I have a
good resume. I went, what am I doing right with
the thing? And I walked by him. I walk by
him and I go back and I sit down next
(31:07):
to Jeffrey and I say, I asked him all these
questions and he's just out of it, not talking, you know,
not talking to me. He's just talking to whoever. And
finally I say, well, you know, I'm about to leave,
about to step away, and you know, kind of keep
my keep my walk going. And then I say, you know,
I got to ask him this question. So I say, Jeffrey,
do you have any family or friends you want to
(31:28):
reconnect to? And for the first time, he looks me
right in the eye. He says, I haven't seen my
family a long time, my dad, Harold, my niece and nephew,
my sister Jennifer. Yeah, if you could help me reconnect
to them, that'd be great. It's like this Awakenings moment
if you ever saw that the film, Right, it's just
(31:48):
this level of lucidity. I wasn't expecting. And we have
started having this conversation, and so I asked him. He said, Jeffrey,
you know, I'm walking around today inviting folks to record
messages to their family for the holidays. Here a few
days from Christmas twenty fourteen, and would you like to
record a message to your piece and nephew, your sister
(32:09):
and your dad. And said, yes, I would pull out
my phone, hit record, and I can share that video
with you as well. But he records a video to
his family.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
So I go home that night he saysah paraphrase, he says,
he mentions all the people I just mentioned. He said,
I intend to come home and see you again someday
if I can.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
And that's about it. What are we going further?
Speaker 2 (32:36):
I gotta believe people are listening to this asking this question,
because I'm asking it. If you have family that you
love and that loves you, I sit on the street. Yeah,
and even maybe more stark, candid, and even maybe a
harder question, why are those people society and taxpayers problems
(33:00):
family who have them? Which is a hard question. There's
a lot in that question too, There's a lot in
the English. So let's unpack it a little bit. For
every one person that San Francisco gets housed, another three
people fall into homelessness. So and some would argue though
(33:21):
that they aren't falling into homeless from San Francisco, but
they're shipping in because they know that San Francisco cares more.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
That's true for a relatively small percentage of.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
Folks that just because I'm not doing that job if
I do, Yeah, sure, point that others do make.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Yeah. The research has shown that in California, about seventy percent,
seventy to eighty percent of those who are unhoused in
California were previously housed in California.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
And you can kind of go, there's some that are
seeking yep, whatever The state.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Has services, whether all the things that people assume, but
a lot of it it's a homegrown thing. People were
county before, they're almost in Yeah. Yeah, and I think
with the family. So there's three reasons that I've heard
over a thousand people experiencing homelessness. Now I have offered
this service to for three reasons over and over again.
(34:16):
And why folks are disconnected? So first, digital literacy, digital access,
so phones get lost and stolen, a number changes, people move,
You call, no one answers did they not want to
talk to me, right, and the mind can wander. The
second reason is there's bureaucratic barriers. So under HIPPA in
(34:38):
the United States, you know, it's like health and privacy,
trying to make it so homelessness is protected. You don't
have to reveal that to everyone and their mother, right.
But shelters, I've gotten so terrified of being sued for
HIPPO violations that they will refuse to confirm or deny
(34:58):
whether someone's out of a city, or even relay a message.
So when you go to a shelter, look at the
bulletin board as you walk in. It's filled with missing
person flyers. A family is looking for people wanting to reconnect,
but people are like, we can't tell you whether they're
here or not. You have to kind of do that
at very informal. But the biggest reason, by far is
(35:19):
the emotional barriers of shame. Right.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
I mean we because that's what I anticipated you to say,
but I didn't. I wondered if you don't want We
don't want to be a burden. We don't want to
hurt the people we love. There's a woman I featured
in the book who was in in jail. She had
some substance issues, I mean the whole thing. Right, she's
in prison.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
She gets a letter from her daughter, asn't talked to
her daughter in like fifteen twenty years. It says, Mom,
we you know, I found you. I've been looking for
you for years. We have a place, you know, we
got some land, We got a place for you. Please
come live with us. She never responded to that letter.
She's a shit, she.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Said, a mother at my age should be taking care
of her daughter, not the other way around. She just
never responded. They ended up reconnecting later. We helped them,
but but still, that shame is one of the bears.
You know.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
Want to be a burden. You know, I want to
be a burden.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
So all right, so Bro said, I got my sister,
my cousins, and my dad.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
I think we record the video. Go online and do
an online search. Get in on Facebook and found a
Facebook group connected to his hometown. Now you know you're
from Monteursville if dot dot dot inside knowledge this restaurant,
(36:39):
and now you remember mister so and so from the school,
and posted the video there with a short note anybody
know this because anyone know this guy? Right, here's his
name here, he's looking to her. Why not? And I
put it out there. They know what to expect and
and and I'll share it just because I was told
by you know, the producer is here, be vulnerable, said,
(37:02):
be be vulnerable. That's what normal people do. It's like,
all right, Well, my vulnerable moment here is that I
just sat on that video for about a week before
doing anything. Really, Yeah, because I didn't know if I
could trust the guy. Yeah, I didn't want to get involved.
What's the backstory here? The whole thing right, yelling rape?
(37:24):
It's just a homeless guy. I didn't know what was
going on, right, I didn't know what was going on,
and so I after a week of sitting on it,
it's just like, burn into my pocket, find the group,
post it there. Within one hour, that video goes viral.
It makes the local news that night as the leading
story in wherever villas. This is a real place on Toursville, Pennsylvania. Yeah,
(37:46):
that place. Classmates start commenting in the posts and saying, hey,
I went to high school with Jeffrey. I work in construction.
Does he need a job? I work at the congressman's office.
Does he need healthcare? The town came together and race
over five thousand dollars to try to bring him home.
We got on the phone the next day with jennifer sister.
(38:07):
She got tagged in the post. In the first twenty minutes,
she tells me Jeffrey has been a missing person for
twelve years. Broad Daylight downtown San Francisco a few days
before Christmas, and so we were able to get them reconnected,
first on a phone call and then they reconnected in person.
A few months later. Jennifer got on a train across
(38:28):
the country she was afraid of flyne gone on a
four day trained from Pennsylvania and saw her brother for
the first time in twenty two years. So does this
immediately solve Jeffrey's homelessness? Is you know the Blue Skies,
everything's peachy punky door. No, like he had in his case,
had some of those underlying mental health issues, addiction issues,
(38:50):
and unfortunately he never accepted the help that was offered.
It's just two in the throes of the addiction, it
wasn't okay to travel, and he ended up dying on
the streets a few years later. So you almost think, well, gosh,
is that a good story to.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
It's a great story. And I'm that's a great story.
His family didn't think of him as missing anymore. They
had answers or whatever Jeffrey was experiencing living on the streets. Clearly,
as you've stated, the connection to family still mattered to
him because it was the only thing that he really
(39:25):
mentioned to you, and in his desperate life, he at
least got to know that he was loved.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
That's what Jennifer told me. Almost verbade him so right, Yeah, yeah,
because I almost after he passed away, I'm like, I'm
sorry we were in you know, this was years later.
We had all these reunions, some got off the streets
and now living with family. Oh, we're going to get
into that. Yeah. But and I was like, i feel
like I failed you, Jennifer, I'm sorry this never worked out.
She's like, are you kidding me? Like the closure that
(39:53):
we got, the kids got a chance to have an
interaction with her uncle. They I didn't even know he
knew their names. And we have a video of him
recording a message to Josh and Rachel, right and just
means so much to us. And yeah, he never was
able to beat that devil on his shoulder. But he
(40:14):
knew that we were there and they You know, I
always thought with my uncle, would this work have been
appropriate for him? And the answer I've come to Bill
the best I can think of, is it depends on
the day. Some days work good days sure, offered to
other days not good days, fully inappropriate, no informed consent,
(40:35):
no ability to have this conversation. But whether it was
a good day or a bad day for Uncle Mark,
I'd like to think that we as a society would say,
here's the services of the doors open. It's up to
you if you want to walk through it.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
There and that concludes Part one of my conversation with
Kevin Appler, and guys, you do not want to miss
part two that's now available to listen to him together. Guys,
we can change this country, but it starts with you.
I'll see in part too,
We go out, I record a video of him to
his family. Within three weeks, all four of his siblings
had recorded messages back, and they all flew from across
the country on their own dime. Sitting there there, sitting
on a bed, all surrounding him, and he's looking me
in the eye and says, you know, thank you for
giving me the family back. Yeah. At that point, all right,
(00:24):
there's something here. I got a player with.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney.
I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, I'm a father,
I'm an entrepreneur, and I've been a football coach in
Inner City Memphis, which that last part somehow led to
an oscar for the film about our team.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
That movie is called Undefeated.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
I believe our country's problems are never going to be
solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice suits
using big words that nobody ever uses on CNN and Fox,
but rather by an army of normal folks. Guys, that's us,
just you and me deciding, Hey, you know what, maybe
(01:13):
I can help.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
That's what Kevin.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Adler, the voice you just heard, has done. Kevin is
the founder of Miracle Messages, which is reunited over one
thousand individuals experiencing homelessness with their loved ones. And that's
just the beginning of what they've done. I cannot wait
for you to meet Kevin right after these brief messages
(01:36):
from our general sponsors, Kevin F Adler, Welcome to Memphis.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
It's going to be.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Usually I just say Kevin Adler, right, but with you
have to say Kevin F.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Well, you could say Kevin or well.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
I'm gonna say Kevin the rest. I'm not gonna sit
here and call you Kevin f the whole thing, but
the F. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Farrington was my mom's maiden name. She passed away when
I was twenty three. She was fifty nine. She had
breast cancer. I gotta give her as much credit as
I can, So you drop the FM just to make
just to give her them and just to make awkward
moments like this to start. I think that's beautiful. Oh
is it okay?
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Sure? All right? Kevin man loving his mama. Yeah, that
he wants to make sure she's remembered.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
She was pretty remarkable. Yeah. She was both the strongest
and the kindest person I ever met, So she wouldn't
It was warm everyone's friend in the neighborhood. You know,
the house was the Sunday evening dinner spot, classmates, neighbors,
and if you messed with her values, if you did
some real out aligned, you knew where she stood. I
(03:02):
can answer questions now, nearly twenty years since she passed
on where she'd stand on issues. She's both the rose
and the one. Yeah. Yeah, and there was a playful
side too, because I can get real cerebral, but she'd
kind of bring it to a little straighten that out.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Let's get real about this, all right. So, given that,
where are you from? I grew up in Livermore, California.
It's about an hour.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
East of San Francisco. Yeah, small, it's grown a lot,
but I grew up, grew up there with my actually
do a business and living, do you really Yeah, the
lumber business.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Yeah there. It's kind of an industrial area.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Yeah, it is agricultural, the Livermore cowboys. Yeah, growing up.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
So it's actually pretty conservative out there, oddly.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Yeah. Culturally it's a world away from you know, San Francisco,
but it's about an hour east driving.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
So you grew up there, Yeah, I grew up there.
Brother sisters, what you know what was life like, you know,
a lot of exploring the world. Pretty idyllic.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
You know. My my parents, I'd say they were the
best mom and dad I could have asked for, except
when they were together. They never figured out how to
make it work as a couple. You know. My dad
had a lot, has a lot of you know issues.
Hey Dad, good to see you. You know, but I
don't know where the camera is. He's not gonna watch this.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
But hey, he doesn't understand it either.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
All the things you're thinking, coach. Now he's you know,
he's a wonderful dad. I saw him cry many more
times than I saw my mom cry. He showed me
that true masculinity is synonymous with emotional forthrightness, saying and
doing the right thing. But he also grew up in
a very broken home and also escaped the war at
home in his household when he was seventeen to go
(04:41):
fight the war in Vietnam. Was a door gunner and
has PTSD from you know, his time and two tours
in Vietnam. So you know, he has his issues. But
I never questioned where my brother and I stand with
him as unconditionally loved.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
So Mom work out of the home, or she's saying.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
He was older adult school exercise instructor. So she'd go
down and do teaching the aerobics and physical fitness and
wellness to folks in nursing homes. It's what everybody did
in the eighties or so. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yeah, it was like mom.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
There was once or twice where I'd walk into the
kitchen and she'd be rocking out playing put in a
cassette tape together for the class, and I was just like, Mom,
I have friends. I want to keep those friends for
a living. He's a material scientist. What does that mean?
So he Yeah, he is an interesting story. So I
mean he went he was he got kicked out of
all the schools he went to in middle school, high school,
(05:41):
went to war, came back, worked at gas stations for year.
There's nothing wrong with that. But he was just like,
there's something more for me, you know. And he started
taking a class at a time at a community college
and had a teacher there who recognized his potential in
the math and sciences. Took another class another class, ended
up transferring to Berkeley than Mit became a pop scientist
(06:04):
in his field, and so he does work on Smart Dude,
Smart Guy a lot. That was the phrase Talent is universal,
opportunity is not. You know, that was kind of his thing.
So he was most recently he just retired, but he
was working at a medical device company for quite a
few years looking at the corrosive properties of the stints
(06:26):
kind of go into your heart, make sure that that
doesn't corrode and cause issues later on.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
So what a neat story for him? Yeah, I mean
some gas station guy. To that guy, the point is
Livermore mom not making a ton of money, but living
her best life, being a great mom, dad doing what
he's doing. You're a normal guy, kind of grew up
in an idyllic Robby on this podcast versus A Yeah,
I mean that's it. But the point is establishing kind
(06:52):
of nothing overly remarkable, just.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
The most remarkable thing. Maybe my childhood was the relative freedom,
but still with like respecting rules and constraints on that.
So the example, you know, I think we were talking
before the show that we share a faith. You know,
when I was I wasn't raised religious, and when I
was twelve, I felt like someone was missing in my
(07:20):
life besides puberty, and I asked my mom and dad
if we could start going to local churches and through
that process we all got baptized. That's cool and just
that encouragement of a twelve year old say yeah, you
want to explore that, we're going to do that, and
then you know, my dad and brother and I all
getting baptized through that process, right.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
No kidding? Yeah, So you know there's that kind of
is remarkable. But again, it's not like you were ordained
to go do something in the world. You just grew
up a.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Life, live in my life.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yeah, so everybody Kevin fer Adler is the last time
I was saying that, it's just Kevin is the founder
of Miracle Messages. Living in Salcilito, San Francisco area. You know,
your bio says your award winning social entrepreneur and the
founder of Miracle Messages, which we'll get into social entrepreneurship
(08:14):
here in a minute. His work is with the homelessness
and relational poverty. He's been featured in The New York Times,
the Washington Post, the PBS News Hour, Los Angeles Times, CNN,
a billboard on Tom Square which we also share that
and in his ted talk and his groundbreaking book. When
we walk by forgotten humanity, broken systems, and the role
(08:37):
we can each play in ending homelessness in America. He
talks constantly about what he's spent many of the last
years of his life learning, and that's what we're going
to dive down into. But I was afraid if I
read all that first before explaining where you came from,
people would think, oh, he's a big wig. And the
truth is, he's just a guy who found a passion
(08:59):
and who ripped over an idea one time, which we're
going to explain, and it's led to all of this,
but much much more so and all those there's a
difference between I think resume items and eulogy virtues and
all that.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
You know, that's the resume side. But you know, I
define myself more by how I try to, you know,
live my life and show up for people. And that's
what I call, like more the eulogy virtue side of things.
So I can I can rewrite that and yeah, I
get that completely. Yeah, yeah, So tell me about Uncle Mark.
So Uncle Mark was my favorite member of my extended family.
(09:36):
This guy come over for Thanksgiving, Christmas. He's my dad's
younger brother. He grew up with a lot of the
same traumas and issues at home that my dad faced.
And unfortunately, you know, he never was able to get
on his own two feet. You know, got schizoph game
schizophrenic kind of his late teens, early twenties, yours of
(09:56):
drug use, of a lot of you know, harmful behavior,
and he spent thirty years of his life living on
and off the streets of Santa Cruz, California. So he
ended up passing away when I was in college. He
was fifty years old, which I found out later is
about the average life expectancy person who's on how's chronically
almost But Mark, every year he was on the streets,
(10:18):
he never missed a birthday sending me a birthday card.
You always just sign uncle Mark. We come over. We'd
have long, elaborate conversations on our shared love of super Britos.
What are you going to tell you it's twelve fourteen
year old. Talk to him, my schizophrenic uncle. What do
you like about the burrito? I love them Brito like
(10:39):
me too, Mark, We got that right deep into the breed. Yeah,
we'd have these, you know, fun conversations, and you know,
and then he he'd leave from you know, Thanksgiving, Christmas,
my dad would drop him off at the Greyhound station
or drive him back to if you're staying in a
transitional housing unit in Santa Cruz. And then months would
go by. We wouldn't hear from him, you know, and
(10:59):
my dad will said, if that collect phone call comes in,
and remember what those were like, you know, answer that,
make sure you accept it. And we'd hear from him
from time to time, and then he disappear. And then
one day, yeah, I was in college, I was got
a phone call from my dad crying. He said, you know,
my whole Mark had been found deceeized. So it's his
(11:21):
not not just the time I spent with Mark, but
the time I didn't spend with that kind of got
me on this journey.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
So obviously that's a that's a huge pivot point and
the trajectory of your life, that experience that love or
let's just be candid, a holmost schizophrenic man.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Yeah, and the kicker for me that that kind of
pulled it together as that turning point is I never
thought of him as a homeless man. He was your uncle,
He's my uncle. You don't, you know, categorize people that way.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Right, not in your own family, not in your own family,
but you do and everybody else is.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Why my shirt says everyone is someone somebody I was
sitting and so I went to his funeral service, and
you know, that was the last time I was at
the gravesite. A few years go by, my dad and
I are having Thanksgiving a dinner at a neighbor family's
house not too far from Santa CRUs. We got some
time before the meal was ready, so we go down
to the gravesite. We sit there and we had one
(12:21):
of those like father son conversations that just want your
entire life right, about who his younger brother was, what
his childhood was, like, you know, all these all the
things that appear only in the dash on that gravestone.
We had the conversation what happened in that dash? And
you know, I was just floored and heard these stories.
(12:43):
And then I get back in my car, you know,
sitting there, my Dad's driving home, and I just start
absent mindingly, you know, pull out my phone, start scrolling
on social media, and I'm like, wait a second, I
am learning more about my random acquaintances classmates middle school
on social media than I did about my own uncle,
(13:04):
if my dad wasn't there at his gravesite, like I
wouldn't know any of this just from the the tombstone.
And so I h I got this question in my
heart just kind of sat with me for a while,
which was, how would Jesus use a smartphone? How would
Jesus use a smart How would Jesus use a smartphone?
Or social media? Right? Because I was like, I like
(13:26):
these cat videos. I like these selfies just the same
as everyone else.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
But I wonder if he would have liked GPS the
road to Nazareth and recognize there's a lot of.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Traffic concerns of robbers up ahead.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
There's parts of the road that are washed out, and
maybe take an alternate route right.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
And then he's he's quickly texting his disciples and they're
not responding, are off and it's like, what's going on, guys,
It's a mess. We might need to.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Head down somewhere else.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
And I think it's it's it's it's a fun thought
experiment to kind of sit with, like these technologies, like
how would Jesus use this? And so my response to
it was, gosh, everyone, I'm walking by in San Francisco,
I'm not seeing them as some kids beloved uncle or aunt, right,
I see them as problems to solve, not people to love.
(14:32):
And so I basically spend a year where I invited
twenty four individuals experiencing homelessness to wear GoPro cameras around
their chests and narrate their experience of what life is
like on the streets.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
And now a few messages from our general sponsors. But first,
we're thinking about launching a few local chapters of the
Army this year. To dive more into it, check out
our recent shop Talk episode titled experimenting with local Chapters.
And if you're interested in potentially leading a chapter in
(15:08):
your community, email Army at normal Folks dot us and
Alex would love to connect with you.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
You got twenty four folks living on the streets, and
you're putting go pros.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
On them about an hour or two out of time,
and you know they're they're joining me as homeless autobiographers, right,
So it's not like I'm strapping at they're sleeping, right,
they're participating. Well, what reason are they agreeing to do this?
For you? The question I put forward was what do
you wish people like me knew that.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
We don't about your existence.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
About you, about how you see the world and what's
going on. Okay, what'd you find out? I'll bite, I'll
bite yeh. Share some of the videos with you if
you want.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Actually, could we put some up on our yea, yeah, absolutely,
we need to do that. Yeah, talk about if you're
okay with they're going to meet Adam for the first
time before you watch the videos. Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah,
but hold it seriously, can we get some of those
throw them up on our stuff?
Speaker 1 (16:17):
I think we need to do. I got some good videos.
That's good. Okay. So all right, So I was told
I had a little earpiece, you know, from the from
the producer there. Yeah, so so he told you about
Yeah you did? Yeah you did you hire him for?
Because actually, a listener I haven't responded yet.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
It's a universal, it's a preview.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
So yesterday a listener emailed us and they said, Bill
on taking away points from you because of how mean
you are to Alex.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
You were raised better than that. They have no idea.
People have no idea that stuff I put up with
off microphone and off camera. So you know, that's only
half the story. Everybody, Bill, You've changed that man, that
listener's heart in that moment, I could feel it.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
I could feel it.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Listen, you're not part of the show. Please go ahead,
so ignore the man in the corner.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Do you have the curtain you know? Like oz Oh,
that's right, yeah, pull it back there. I'm down with that.
The first time that I was meeting one of the
individuals who's going to wear the cameras and named Adam,
and I'll share this, I'm not proud of this. But
as I started approaching this individual who I met through
a mutual friend, like this is, I'm so nervous. Right,
(17:39):
the whole thing's weird, right, I've got these donated go
pro cameras. I'm meeting this guy in broad daylight in
the Castro District downtown San Francisco. And instinctively, as I'm
approaching Adam, I reached my hand into my pocket and
I grab my keys and start fiddling with them and
grab them as a weapon as I approached this person.
(18:02):
I've never done that before or since. You know, I'm
a six foot two guy. I'm generally pretty confident walking
around the streets. That's where I started. I didn't know,
if this guy was going to lunge at me, if
he's you know, mentally like right, the whole thing. So
that's where I started on this issue. You know, quickly
realize this guy's pretty normal. Guys had some tough circumstances, right,
(18:24):
And we start having this conversation. He says, yeah, I'll
wear the camera for you and I want to participate,
and he will, I'll share his videos so you'll be
able to put that up. So I'm watching, you know,
these videos that are coming in and it's pretty heartbreaking.
And the two things that really stoock out to me.
So first, you'd often see a kid walk by. The
(18:48):
kid never just walks by. The kid always points at
the person stairs, Mom, dad, why is that man on
the streets? You know? Can we have them live with us?
Like whatever it is? And half the time you'd see
the parent kind of scold the kid or say, oh
that's im play, don't do that, and then pull them back.
The other half the time, the kid is almost like
(19:10):
guides the parent to go talk to the person and
they have a conversation, right, And they have this interaction.
And I've always thought, which of those kids is going
to twenty years later, be a little bit more trusting
and open as an adults. And what have we forgotten
it that we knew almost instinctive for those children, so basic,
right and wrong. The other piece that stuck out is
every single time you'd see a person experiencing homelessness on
(19:31):
the camera, they'd start sharing stories of some loved family member, friend, classmate,
former girlfriend, former boyfriend. Often the person was no longer
in their life, but they still you know, they're talking
about somebody else. And you know, in listening to this
over and over again, I just started thinking, gosh, you know, like,
(19:53):
what what do those relationships look like? And in one
clip I heard sign that changed my life. The guy said,
I never realized I was homeless when I lost my housing,
only when I lost my family and friends.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Home is where the heart is.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
It's not the structure four walls and a roof that's
a house. A house. That doesn't make a house a home, right.
And as I started digging into this concept that I've
come to call relational poverty as an overlooked form of poverty,
it turns out about one in three people who are
(20:30):
experiencing homelessness attribute the immediate cause of how they ended
up on the streets or in a shelter to some
sort of relational breakdown or brokenness, death in the family, argument,
a divorce, a suicide, a domestic violence situation where it's
not safe to stay with the love one, but some
(20:52):
kind of falling out, something that happens. And so I
got it on my heart. Gosh, maybe you know, I'm
just a normal guy. I'm just gonna walk down the
street go hope to everyone I see who's visibly homeless
and say I do you have any family you want
to reconnect to for the holidays. Okay, so that's weird. Yeah,
it is weird.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Yeah, but it's interesting. Yeah, you know, I can't I
can't help but say this. As I listen to you,
we might need to redefine vocabulary. I think there's maybe
houselessness and homelessness.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Say, homelessness is often seen as a binary, and it's
really more of a spectrum.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
That's what I mean when I say that.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Yeah, so you got folks, you have one hundred people
who are on house. You got a hundred stories and
reasons and context of why they're on housed and what
the challenges are. And it's often never just one thing.
So even with that family friend, social support, there probably
was some form of tremendous you know, job loss, health issue,
(21:55):
housing insecurity, being evicted, and then you're doubled up or
you're tripled up rarely, but it's that relational thing that
ends up being the kind of a straw that breaks
the camel's back. But it's never just one thing.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
What does your We're going to get to that first person. Yeah,
but as a further background, Yeah, what percent have you
found among the population of these folks have a mental illness.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Here's how I'd say this. What we see as the
physical manifestation of homelessness is actually not the majority of
people experiencing homelessness. Most people who are experiencing homelessness, they're
doing whatever they can to hide the fact that they're
(22:48):
experiencing homelessness. They don't want anyone to know it. So
it's there's a kind of confirmation bias that happens. As
we say, we're going down the street and that person's
screen at the top of their lungs to no one
in particular. Okay, that person's got some serious mental health issues.
They're probably experiencing homelessness, But for every one individual we
(23:11):
see like that, there's another three or four that we're
not seen. So maybe twenty twenty five hours.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Yeah, my question is and I've always thought about this.
Now this is before I met you, read your background
or anything else. But I live in midtown Memphis. My
business is in north of downtown, so I am in urban.
My world is urban. As a result, I see folks
experiencing homelessness to and from work and in everything I do,
(23:40):
because I'm in a city of a major metropolitan area
of a couple of million people. And You're going to
see that. Yeah, right, And look, I hate generalizations and
judging books by the cover, but there are people you
know are suffering from a illness that are also homeless,
right often one? Or did the mental illness precede the
(24:02):
homelessness or did the mental illness come as a result
of the homelessness. I always wonder of that population the
chicken or the egg, and I just because if I
was on the street, dirty, stinky, nowhere to go, hopeless
as hell, and everything else, I could see how that
could develop mental illness. But I can also see the
(24:25):
way the systems are, especially in foster care and some
other things. Many people age out of protective systems, have
nowhere to go and are dealing with mental health issues
and end up homeless. So I think it's I think
there's both. But have you experienced people that you think,
you know, I think this mental illness as a result
(24:47):
of the homelessness. It wasn't what started the homelessness. Football
doesn't urt build character. Football reviews character.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Okay, so you just quoted me. That's weird. Homelessness reveals
all the things that are broken in our society.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
You want to talk about it, get the metaphor, so
go ahead and talk on that.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Foster care. One out of three kids who age out
of foster care will experience homelessness by the time they're
twenty six years old. For black kids, that's sixty percent.
Sixty percent will experience homelessness for no fault of their
own because they have age out of foster care. We
have over three thousand counties in the United States. There's
(25:30):
not a single county or someone who's working full time
at the federal minimum wage can afford the fair market
value of a two bedroom apartment, and less than one
percent of counties where that same hard working person full
time working can afford a one bedroom apartment at minimum
at minimum wage, right, So homelessness at its core is
(25:52):
a housing problem. There's plenty of other countries in the
world with lots of folks who have mental health issues
and substance abuses that does not have the homelessness problems
that we have throughout the United States, And even within
the US we look at it, state like say West Virginia,
where they have plenty of folks who have substance abuse
(26:12):
issues mental health issues, don't have nearly the rates of
homelessness as some of the coastal cities. Well why is
that cost of housing is a lot cheap, so at
the end of the day, we don't have it's a
game of musical chairs. Don't have enough chairs for everybody.
Some people are going to be sitting on their butts literally,
(26:34):
And when that happens as a society, as a choice
that we've made from policies, then you have a whole
host of other issues that can conflate, exacerbate, and as
your point, Bill can be both causes of homelessness as
well as effects of homelessness. And for many people it
is an effect, you know, and we're talking about the
(26:57):
systems kind of the you know, the governments and the
policies and the whole thing. The whole other piece that
I talk about in my book is around the human systems. Right,
we have this notion of rugged individualism, right, self made man,
self made woman. Well, if that's true, like to its extreme,
(27:18):
let's just say that is the priority above everything else.
That is our one truth. You can pull yourself up
by our bootstraps. And if you don't, does that mean
you are deservedly poor or deservedly homeless? Right? And I
think most people would say, well, no, you know, people
got bad luck, bad circumstances. But what we discount is
(27:39):
all the people who have helped us get to where
we're at at different key moments in our lives, as
well as access and access absolutely in those resources.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Former Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger has an interesting take
on being a self made guy.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
You read that quote, Yeah, yeah, I can in the voice,
or no, it's horrible in the voice.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
If you could do it in the voice.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
It's a really good kid. I mean I can't, but
I'll do it anyway. So you know, you can call
me Arnold, You can call me Schwatzi. You can call
me the Terminada whatever ever you do. Don't you ever
ever call me a self made man.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Okay, First of all, that was actually really good.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
I'm gonna have to watch it back. But why don't
you tell me why he says? He says, because for
every you know, success I've had in politics and business,
as a bodybuilder, as an actor, I've had coaches, mentors,
people who believed in me, gave me a chance, you know,
opened the door to me. Social capital is really what
he was talking about. So here we got the last
(28:49):
action hero telling us who's often held up as this
paragon of you know, the immigrant success story self made man.
He's like, don't call me that's an offense to everyone
who's helped me get to where I'm at.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
It really illustrates an interesting level of humility from a
guy who we think is full of another when you
go the same guy that says girly men with speaking
of people that he doesn't like. But the point is,
that's an interesting take. I don't have to agree on
everything he does. I think I appreciate his words there. Yeah,
(29:24):
I think he's dead right on. Yeah, we'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
So with that backdrop, which I think is really good
back film. You need a guy. I walk down the
streets because I'm just a normal guy, and normal people
just walk down the streets on Christmas Eve, going up to.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Every person who's on house and saying, do you have
many fans? We are friends. You'd like to reconnect.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
But your uncle kind of set you down a path
in your brain, and you were following it.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
I think in your heart. I started not wanting to
change the world, not wanting to do this whole. It
is so nice for somebody self interest rightly understood, because
I felt like I was my own humanity, my own
empathy was being undermined by the fact that I saw
these people as those people rather than my neighbors. Really,
(30:29):
I just got tired of walking by.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
I use it my speech all the time and quotes
these people, What do you mean these people? Yeah, you're weep, that's.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
I know, all right? All right.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
So I'm walking down the street and I meet a
man named Jeffrey, And at first you know, this guy's
got in a bottle this is water.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
But he's got a bottle of not water sitting at
his side, and fowerwater. He's firewater, and he's talking to himself,
and I'm like, this is the last guy who I
should be sitting down talking to, right, I have a
good resume. I went, what am I doing right with
the thing? And I walked by him. I walk by
him and I go back and I sit down next
(31:07):
to Jeffrey and I say, I asked him all these
questions and he's just out of it, not talking, you know,
not talking to me. He's just talking to whoever. And
finally I say, well, you know, I'm about to leave,
about to step away, and you know, kind of keep
my keep my walk going. And then I say, you know,
I got to ask him this question. So I say, Jeffrey,
do you have any family or friends you want to
(31:28):
reconnect to? And for the first time, he looks me
right in the eye. He says, I haven't seen my
family a long time, my dad, Harold, my niece and nephew,
my sister Jennifer. Yeah, if you could help me reconnect
to them, that'd be great. It's like this Awakenings moment
if you ever saw that the film, Right, it's just
(31:48):
this level of lucidity. I wasn't expecting. And we have
started having this conversation, and so I asked him. He said, Jeffrey,
you know, I'm walking around today inviting folks to record
messages to their family for the holidays. Here a few
days from Christmas twenty fourteen, and would you like to
record a message to your piece and nephew, your sister
(32:09):
and your dad. And said, yes, I would pull out
my phone, hit record, and I can share that video
with you as well. But he records a video to
his family.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
So I go home that night he saysah paraphrase, he says,
he mentions all the people I just mentioned. He said,
I intend to come home and see you again someday
if I can.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
And that's about it. What are we going further?
Speaker 2 (32:36):
I gotta believe people are listening to this asking this question,
because I'm asking it. If you have family that you
love and that loves you, I sit on the street. Yeah,
and even maybe more stark, candid, and even maybe a
harder question, why are those people society and taxpayers problems
(33:00):
family who have them? Which is a hard question. There's
a lot in that question too, There's a lot in
the English. So let's unpack it a little bit. For
every one person that San Francisco gets housed, another three
people fall into homelessness. So and some would argue though
(33:21):
that they aren't falling into homeless from San Francisco, but
they're shipping in because they know that San Francisco cares more.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
That's true for a relatively small percentage of.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
Folks that just because I'm not doing that job if
I do, Yeah, sure, point that others do make.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Yeah. The research has shown that in California, about seventy percent,
seventy to eighty percent of those who are unhoused in
California were previously housed in California.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
And you can kind of go, there's some that are
seeking yep, whatever The state.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Has services, whether all the things that people assume, but
a lot of it it's a homegrown thing. People were
county before, they're almost in Yeah. Yeah, and I think
with the family. So there's three reasons that I've heard
over a thousand people experiencing homelessness. Now I have offered
this service to for three reasons over and over again.
(34:16):
And why folks are disconnected? So first, digital literacy, digital access,
so phones get lost and stolen, a number changes, people move,
You call, no one answers did they not want to
talk to me, right, and the mind can wander. The
second reason is there's bureaucratic barriers. So under HIPPA in
(34:38):
the United States, you know, it's like health and privacy,
trying to make it so homelessness is protected. You don't
have to reveal that to everyone and their mother, right.
But shelters, I've gotten so terrified of being sued for
HIPPO violations that they will refuse to confirm or deny
(34:58):
whether someone's out of a city, or even relay a message.
So when you go to a shelter, look at the
bulletin board as you walk in. It's filled with missing
person flyers. A family is looking for people wanting to reconnect,
but people are like, we can't tell you whether they're
here or not. You have to kind of do that
at very informal. But the biggest reason, by far is
(35:19):
the emotional barriers of shame. Right.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
I mean we because that's what I anticipated you to say,
but I didn't. I wondered if you don't want We
don't want to be a burden. We don't want to
hurt the people we love. There's a woman I featured
in the book who was in in jail. She had
some substance issues, I mean the whole thing. Right, she's
in prison.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
She gets a letter from her daughter, asn't talked to
her daughter in like fifteen twenty years. It says, Mom,
we you know, I found you. I've been looking for
you for years. We have a place, you know, we
got some land, We got a place for you. Please
come live with us. She never responded to that letter.
She's a shit, she.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Said, a mother at my age should be taking care
of her daughter, not the other way around. She just
never responded. They ended up reconnecting later. We helped them,
but but still, that shame is one of the bears.
You know.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
Want to be a burden. You know, I want to
be a burden.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
So all right, so Bro said, I got my sister,
my cousins, and my dad.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
I think we record the video. Go online and do
an online search. Get in on Facebook and found a
Facebook group connected to his hometown. Now you know you're
from Monteursville if dot dot dot inside knowledge this restaurant,
(36:39):
and now you remember mister so and so from the school,
and posted the video there with a short note anybody
know this because anyone know this guy? Right, here's his
name here, he's looking to her. Why not? And I
put it out there. They know what to expect and
and and I'll share it just because I was told
by you know, the producer is here, be vulnerable, said,
(37:02):
be be vulnerable. That's what normal people do. It's like,
all right, Well, my vulnerable moment here is that I
just sat on that video for about a week before
doing anything. Really, Yeah, because I didn't know if I
could trust the guy. Yeah, I didn't want to get involved.
What's the backstory here? The whole thing right, yelling rape?
(37:24):
It's just a homeless guy. I didn't know what was
going on, right, I didn't know what was going on,
and so I after a week of sitting on it,
it's just like, burn into my pocket, find the group,
post it there. Within one hour, that video goes viral.
It makes the local news that night as the leading
story in wherever villas. This is a real place on Toursville, Pennsylvania. Yeah,
(37:46):
that place. Classmates start commenting in the posts and saying, hey,
I went to high school with Jeffrey. I work in construction.
Does he need a job? I work at the congressman's office.
Does he need healthcare? The town came together and race
over five thousand dollars to try to bring him home.
We got on the phone the next day with jennifer sister.
(38:07):
She got tagged in the post. In the first twenty minutes,
she tells me Jeffrey has been a missing person for
twelve years. Broad Daylight downtown San Francisco a few days
before Christmas, and so we were able to get them reconnected,
first on a phone call and then they reconnected in person.
A few months later. Jennifer got on a train across
(38:28):
the country she was afraid of flyne gone on a
four day trained from Pennsylvania and saw her brother for
the first time in twenty two years. So does this
immediately solve Jeffrey's homelessness? Is you know the Blue Skies,
everything's peachy punky door. No, like he had in his case,
had some of those underlying mental health issues, addiction issues,
(38:50):
and unfortunately he never accepted the help that was offered.
It's just two in the throes of the addiction, it
wasn't okay to travel, and he ended up dying on
the streets a few years later. So you almost think, well, gosh,
is that a good story to.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
It's a great story. And I'm that's a great story.
His family didn't think of him as missing anymore. They
had answers or whatever Jeffrey was experiencing living on the streets. Clearly,
as you've stated, the connection to family still mattered to
him because it was the only thing that he really
(39:25):
mentioned to you, and in his desperate life, he at
least got to know that he was loved.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
That's what Jennifer told me. Almost verbade him so right, Yeah, yeah,
because I almost after he passed away, I'm like, I'm
sorry we were in you know, this was years later.
We had all these reunions, some got off the streets
and now living with family. Oh, we're going to get
into that. Yeah. But and I was like, i feel
like I failed you, Jennifer, I'm sorry this never worked out.
She's like, are you kidding me? Like the closure that
(39:53):
we got, the kids got a chance to have an
interaction with her uncle. They I didn't even know he
knew their names. And we have a video of him
recording a message to Josh and Rachel, right and just
means so much to us. And yeah, he never was
able to beat that devil on his shoulder. But he
(40:14):
knew that we were there and they You know, I
always thought with my uncle, would this work have been
appropriate for him? And the answer I've come to Bill
the best I can think of, is it depends on
the day. Some days work good days sure, offered to
other days not good days, fully inappropriate, no informed consent,
(40:35):
no ability to have this conversation. But whether it was
a good day or a bad day for Uncle Mark,
I'd like to think that we as a society would say,
here's the services of the doors open. It's up to
you if you want to walk through it.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
There and that concludes Part one of my conversation with
Kevin Appler, and guys, you do not want to miss
part two that's now available to listen to him together. Guys,
we can change this country, but it starts with you.
I'll see in part too,
Host
Bill Courtney
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