March 24, 2025 • 54 mins
Grace can lead us home—but first, we need to dismantle the myths many believe about what keeps people on the streets. Kevin Nye, author and homeless services provider, takes us on a journey to the heart of a crisis that's widely misunderstood, especially within faith communities.
Nye begins by challenging what he calls "the central myth" of homelessness—that people somehow deserve their situation and are therefore less worthy of assistance. This perspective, often intertwined with Christian ministry approaches, creates barriers to effective solutions by focusing on personal transformation rather than addressing systemic housing issues. The conversation explores how scarcity mindset contradicts the abundance mentality demonstrated repeatedly throughout Scripture, especially in Jesus' ministry.
The most revealing segment comes when Nye breaks down the actual causes of homelessness through compelling data. Contrary to popular assumptions, homelessness isn't primarily caused by mental illness, substance use disorders, or even poverty—these factors show virtually no correlation with homelessness rates across different regions. What does correlate strongly is housing affordability and availability. As Nye explains, when we remove affordable housing from our communities, those with pre-existing vulnerabilities are inevitably left without homes.
For churches seeking meaningful engagement, Nye offers practical guidance on leveraging collective people power to advocate for housing policy change. Drawing from inspiring examples of faith communities who've successfully influenced local housing priorities, he demonstrates how congregations can move beyond emergency services toward addressing root causes.
The conversation closes with a profound reflection on maintaining hope amid challenging work. Nye's answer? Connect with people experiencing homelessness—their resilience, joy, and ability to create meaning despite extraordinarily difficult circumstances can restore our perspective and revitalize our commitment to housing justice.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, welcome back to the Current.
This is Chris Nafis, pastor ofLiving Water Church, and today
we're very fortunate to haveKevin Nye joining us on the
podcast.
Kevin worked for a lot of yearsin homelessness services in Los
Angeles, now in Minneapolis,and wrote a really wonderful
book called Grace Can Lead UsHome a Christian call to end
(00:20):
homelessness.
We get to talk about some ofthe issues around homelessness,
some of his work and background,and then what do we need to do
to address this more fully.
Super relevant for our contextin East Village, san Diego.
But I hope you will enjoy thisconversation here.
It is All right.
(00:51):
Well, kevin, thank you so muchfor coming on here with me.
I'm so grateful for everybodythat's just lent their expertise
and their wisdom and theirfaithfulness to us, just so we
can have this chance to talk toyou, and you know I really loved
your book on homelessness.
I even like the name Grace CanLead Us Home, like what a
perfect name for a book likethat, and so really excited to
(01:12):
share sort of your you with,with the people at Living Water
and Beyond.
So thank you for coming on here.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Could you start out by just telling us a little bit
about, like, how you kind ofbegan working on housing and
homelessness and sort of inthese areas, like what, what
brought you to that work, andyou know what did that look like
?
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Yeah, sure, so I grew up in the church, was raised in
Arizona, in the Church of theNazarene and I, you know,
discerned, you know what Iunderstood to be a call to
ministry in like middle school,like very early, and I pursued
that.
I went to Southern Nazarene inOklahoma City and then went to
(01:58):
seminary at Fuller in SouthernCalifornia, along the way, you
know, just really expanding my,my theology, my understanding of
of who God was and what Godwould have us do in this world,
really connected strongly with,you know, the calls for for
social justice, the, theprophets of the old Testament
(02:22):
and, um, obviously, the work andlife and teachings of Jesus, um
.
And so by the time that I wasgraduating seminary, you know I
was still involved with thechurch but had really kind of
felt this wider sense of what,you know, ministry was, um and
(02:47):
certainly in terms of vocation,um I, I didn't have a strong
sense that what I was supposedto do at that moment was talk to
my district superintendent andask for a church placement,
right.
That just wasn't really feeling, for a number of reasons, like
that was in the cards, right,but I had started working at the
(03:12):
place that I talk about in thebook, called the Center in
Hollywood, because I felt that Iwanted my work regardless of
whether it was temporary or longterm to be about the things
that I was about and the thingsthat I believed God was about in
terms of justice and equity andcaring for people who are
(03:36):
extremely vulnerable.
Being in Los Angeleshomelessness that made a lot of
sense, and my friend was workingsomewhere and told me about a
job opening and I took it andthen, um, as you know, my
conversations with the church ofthe Nazarene kind of uh
(03:57):
continued and reached sort ofwhat ended up kind of being a
breaking point.
I uh ended up leaning into thework that I was already doing.
I'm very grateful to have thatand yeah, that and that sort of
just became my, my vocation andmy understanding of living out
(04:20):
that call that I had had since,since middle school and I'd say
about five years into.
That is where I realized that Iwanted to write a book, um, to
really sit at that intersectionof homelessness and faith.
That is like a place that Ioccupied, um, but that I felt
(04:41):
both sides of that were were notable to talk to each other in
the ways that seemed helpful oraccurate, and so the book was
sort of meant to be a bridgebetween those two worlds that I.
I walked in easily, right, Italk about the book a lot as
(05:01):
like a form of translationbetween those two groups and
that sort of catapulted.
This whole other thing that Ido, which is writing and
speaking and doing workshopsTypically two people of faith or
two churches about the topic ofhomelessness and helping them
(05:24):
understand it better and see howit's rooted in their, in their
faith call, and so, yeah, now Ido, I do kind of both of those
things.
I've moved to Minneapolis nowwhere I do full-time work in the
homeless services sector andthen on top of that I do
speaking, writing, teaching, andthen on top of that, I do
(05:46):
speaking, writing, teaching,yeah, and that translation work
is so important.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
I feel like both in the general population and in
the church maybe especially inthe church, I don't know there's
so many misunderstandings abouthomelessness, about the causes
of homelessness, about peoplewho end up, you know, on the
street or in a car or couchsurfing or in a shelter.
There's just so many, there'sso many misconceptions about it
and you know your book does areally great job of kind of
(06:15):
highlighting those things andfleshing them out.
I guess I'm wondering, goingback a little bit, do you feel
like you were prepared for thework through, kind of your
upbringing in the church andseminary, like you know, when,
when you kind of because I feellike I had a big learning curve
when I, when we started reallyengaging deeply in all this,
even though I had done some ofthat work in college and stuff
(06:37):
um, you know, how do you?
How was that transition in likekind of diving in?
Speaker 2 (06:44):
yeah, I mean, I think I think yes and no, right,
because I think that there wereaspects of my theological church
upbringing that I had to undoand, um, let go of in order for
me to to really embrace the work, and there were other aspects
that were just like anabsolutely like.
(07:05):
This was setting me up for that, right.
Right, and I think that that'severybody's experience, right,
that different, different voicesalong the way, different
streams of thought that youencounter, raised to you know
really care deeply about myfaith and to really hold on most
(07:34):
tightly to the parts of it thatcall us to love and to care for
one another.
And so I think that that thengoing into like a theological
education really primed me to tocare about the things I wound
up caring about.
On the other hand, I wasdefinitely raised, um, in a
(07:55):
political environment.
Um, that really um that reallyhad a lot to say about what
certain people deserve and what,and really just this kind of
basic understanding that youknow, people who who work hard
(08:18):
end up doing well and people whodon't work hard end up not
doing well, and that the rest ofit like that, that there's not
a lot of gray area in there, andso I think part of part of the
I guess political the way thatpolitics was sort of enmeshed
with theology was the, the partthat I had to spend a lot of
(08:39):
time untangling yeah, I meanthat issue of like deserving and
I feel like it comes up from alot of different angles just in
life in general, but especiallyaround homelessness, of who
deserves what, and I even evenamong people on the street.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
You know like we operate an inclement weather
shelter and people call tryingto get in and stuff, and you
know people will be telling mewhy they deserve a spot over
other people that are on thestreet and I think that that
kind of permeates all of society, because I think people feel
that, coming from just sort oflike the rest of the community,
just this, this sense ofjudgment like issues, problems,
(09:21):
bad decisions that people makeon the street.
Of course, the a lot of theissues problems people make who
are on the street are a loteasier to hide because they're,
you know, behind a door.
Um, there is this sense of likesomeone who ended up here
deserved it for some reason, andyou really kind of um
disassemble that in a lot ofways in the book, Like where do
(09:42):
you?
Yeah, could you like say alittle more about that?
Like how does the church getthis stuff wrong?
And where is our, where's ourteaching like intermingled with
that?
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Yeah, well, I, honestly, I've come to believe
that it is the central myth,right, and that actually all of
the myths about homelessnesshave their roots in that.
And I would define that centralmyth as the belief that people
who are experiencinghomelessness somehow have,
somehow deserve it and thereforeare less worthy of whatever
(10:17):
level of help that we're notwilling to give them.
Right, and I think everybodymight define that last part a
little bit differently, right,right, because I think a lot of
good Christian organizationswould say it doesn't matter what
you deserve, like, you're goingto get a meal, right, you're
going to get, you know, a warmbed at the shelter, right, where
we, but then they might cut itoff at, well, we're not.
(10:40):
You're not going to get anapartment, right, until you do X
, x, y and z to prove yourworthiness, right, I think the
myth that everyone on thestreets is is mentally ill, or
that everyone is out there doingdrugs, like those are, those
are that same myth, right, thatis us creating, uh, creating or
(11:03):
exaggerating a reality that thentherefore says, because of that
, we're not going to do this orthis thing won't work, right, um
, and I think the other, theother central piece to that,
that, that that myth only haspower if we really believe in
scarcity right, like the onlyreason that we would evaluate
(11:30):
who deserves what is.
If we believe that there's notenough to go around right, and
that that becomes true in asetting right where you were
talking about, where you have awarm weather, shelter, and the
reason that people on the phonefeel like they have to convince
you that they deserve it isbecause they know there's only
so many spots Right, and sothey're not.
(11:51):
They wouldn't, they wouldn't betrying to convince you that
they deserve it.
They didn't feel like they werein competition for a scarce
resource, right.
And so when we, when we believethat in scarcity, which says
there actually isn't enough foreverybody, there's not enough to
(12:12):
go around, and so therefore, wehave to choose how we're going
to allocate what we have, that'swhen we start ranking people.
Right, because even I will say,homeless services systems do
this, right, they might justhave a different ranking
criteria, like we use a criteriathat actually says the most
(12:33):
vulnerable people get placedfirst, but that has other
ramifications, right.
But all of all of it is becauseof this belief in scarcity, and
to me, that is not a Christianidea, right, I talk about this
toward the end of the book, butI believe the Bible teaches
(12:54):
abundance, that we have enough.
We have everything we need totake care of each other, right?
I think you could look acrossthis country and look at the
amount of wealth that we have,look at the amount of resources
that we have and prove thatthat's true in a number sense.
(13:14):
Right, we have enough.
It's just that it's not gettingall the way to where it needs.
It's being hoarded by some andwithheld from others, and so I
mean you don't have to spend toolong in a gospel to hear Jesus
speaking against that or doingmiracles.
(13:35):
That suggests that where yousay there's not enough, jesus
says there's plenty, there'smore than enough, so much that
we have leftovers, right.
And so I think the that centralmyth of deservedness has to get
overcome, but so does thiscommitment that we have to
(13:57):
scarcity.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Yeah, and I mean so like I guess what comes to mind
for me is the scarcity stuff insome ways becomes like a
self-fulfilling prophecy sort ofa thing, because you know, like
it feels, like you know.
I'll use an example of likebathrooms in san diego.
So there's, there's like nobathrooms in san diego.
No parks have bathrooms uh,very few of them do at least and
(14:22):
there's there's very few publicbathrooms and one of the things
that becomes the issue is that,like, whenever there is a
bathroom, it gets likecompletely inundated with people
, because it's the only bathroomfor like miles and there's
thousands of people living onthe street in that area.
There's also people that arejust other residents, that are
(14:43):
there's tourists, there's allkinds of people that need to use
the bathroom, and so when onebathroom is getting used by 5000
people a week, you know, if wewere able to just say, well, why
don't we open 10 bathrooms,then, like that, that scarcity
of the one resource would likealleviate this like overwhelming
need where we're like this onelittle low resource, low budget
(15:10):
church that's kind of dippedinto this overwhelming, you know
, epicenter of homelessness inSan Diego.
You know we're basically like inSan Diego's version of Skid Row
is where our church is locatedand you know, it's like there
are so many churches around,there is so much money around,
there is so much, even just likewealth in our neighborhood
around, there's so much, evenjust like wealth in our
(15:32):
neighborhood around, but becauseso many of those doors are
closed, then we end up with liketrue scarcity and I have to,
you know, take these phone callsand say like I'm, you know, I'm
sorry, like I can't send a carto pick you up from out of the
neighborhood because we have 28people who live on our block
that are going to come in anduse our 28 measly spots that we
(15:52):
have available.
I wish there was other churchesthat would open their doors, but
because they're afraid of beingoverrun or they're afraid of
you know what I mean and then itbecomes like this like cycle of
like well, now we don'tactually have enough resources
because everybody's kind ofhoarding the resources out of a
sense of scarcity, right, kindof hoarding the resources out of
(16:13):
a sense of scarcity, right, um,yeah, it's a it's, it's a hard
thing to overcome because like,how do you, how do we get, how
do we get past that, like as achurch and as a society.
Maybe I don't know if that's abig question, but it's a big
question.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
I will also just point out, because I looked up
these numbers not too long ago,because I actually spoke in san
diego like eight months ago.
It was a while ago now um, and,and y'all's housing market is
the exact same like your.
Your housing market forlow-income renters is your
bathroom analogy.
(16:44):
Yeah, right, um, right, it'syour.
Your numbers of available andaffordable rental units per 100
low income renter households isthe lowest in California.
So y'all are kind of no offense.
You are kind of the worst, theworst city and the worst state
(17:06):
on housing availability.
Yes, we are, um, and we feelyou know, yeah, and, and that's
how that's what happens.
You know, that's how it tricklesdown to to what y'all are
feeling, um, but to kind ofanswer your question, I guess
and I don't have a great answer,right, um, cause you already
(17:28):
suggested it that the answer isthat more people need to get
involved in the work.
Right, I spoke to somebodyrecently who said this really
well about you know,congregations is like you, no
one's asking every congregationto do everything, but each
congregation has to find their,what their part of the work is
(17:51):
and do it.
Really well, you know, and somechurches will have the ability
to do more and some will havethe ability to do less.
But scarcity, you know yourchurch by itself cannot resolve
scarcity in San Diego.
Right, and you're right that,because, because you can't, you
(18:12):
do have to reinforce scarcity inthe form of having boundaries.
You know, because if you tookin, if you started taking in
more people, you wouldn't, you'dbe able to, you wouldn't do as
good of a job at serving thepeople that you do now.
You would burn out staff, you'dburn out resources, you like.
I think it is important todistinguish between like
(18:37):
organizations putting in healthyboundaries and like
participating in scarcity, whichI would say like one of them
has to exist because the otherone exists.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
But it's not like I don't want any organization to
feel shame around havingboundaries, if that makes sense
and I mean in some ways it's,we're in a nice position where
we just don't have I meanliterally like if we started
trying to put up more than thatmany people, fire marshal would
shut us down and we wouldn't beable to do anything, you know
and so, like, having someresource limits is a nice way
(19:11):
for us to have, like a boundarythat's enforced upon us, that we
don't have to feel guiltybecause we're literally doing
all that we can.
you know, and that's not true inevery area of life, like but or
every area of you know, westretch ourselves pretty thin
and there just are realities andboundaries that have to be
(19:33):
maintained.
But I think getting more, youknow, every time the news comes
and tries to cover Income andWeather Shelter that's what I
try to say on there is like, hey, we need more churches to do
this stuff Because, like,there's a lot more people we
fill up every night, we fill upwithin 30 minutes every time we
start taking reservations andthere's like a lot of people
that need a nice place to stayon a cold night and it's it's
(19:53):
hard, but it's not that hard.
Like you all can do it, youknow.
Um, yeah, yeah, have you seen,like, have you seen churches
like picking this up?
Like where have you seen sometransformation and some eyes
being opened, like any storiesof inspiration for us of, like
some churches that have kind ofseen the light?
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Yeah, well, and you didn't do this on purpose, but
you're setting me up to plug thebook that I'm currently writing
.
So the book that I'm writing ismajority storytelling of
churches and faith groups thatare engaging homelessness in
meaningful ways.
It's divided into a lot ofdifferent sort of subsections,
(20:35):
like there's churches that buildaffordable housing on their
property, right, there'schurches that have actually did
that once and ended up launchinga foundation that ended up
(20:56):
becoming the biggest provider ofsupportive housing in the state
of Minnesota.
There's also churches that Itell stories of them just sort
of doing their small thingfaithfully.
A church in Skid Row you mightbe familiar with Central City.
There was a church in theNazarene that for 20 years did
karaoke night on wednesdaynights on the streets of skid
row and how meaningful that wasfor that community.
(21:17):
Right, the book is just full ofstories like that, of churches,
like, like I said before, whodid, who found their part of the
work and did it really well andspecifically did it in ways
that I think align with what Italk about in my first book,
which is how to actuallyunderstand homelessness
(21:39):
thoughtfully, correctly, andengage it in that way, because I
think there are a lot ofchurches out there that come at
this work from a very, you know,paternalistic or savioristic or
, frankly, kind of thoughtlessway and often can do a lot of
harm.
(21:59):
But I think that the ones whoare doing it from a thoughtful
angle are are more than we areaware of and and I've I've
gotten the privilege of gettingto know them because I wrote
this first book that peopleemail me and say, hey, we're
read your book, we've been doingthis thing for 20 years.
(22:22):
Um, and we, we thought youwould like it.
Um, and I do so.
I, I think there, there reallyare a lot out there who are
doing this.
But I think what's particularlyexciting and inspiring is
there's so many of them wantingto talk about this issue right
now in a way that we haven't Now.
(22:42):
Do I wish that we'd have beenhaving this conversation 10
years ago?
Sure, they're here now.
It's like, like they say, thebest time was yesterday, the
second best time is right now,right, and just the number of
churches that reach out to andthis is just me, right, I don't
(23:03):
represent the only peopletalking about homelessness and
faith, right, but the number ofchurches reaching out to me to
say, hey, can you come talk tous.
Can you zoom into our Sundayschool?
Can you, you know, do thisBecause we we see homelessness
around us.
We recognize that as a church,we need to do something about it
, but we don't know where tostart.
I get those almost daily.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
That's encouraging because, you know, I feel like a
lot of times you get into thework, you feel really isolated
in it because, in part, becauseyou just get buried by the
actual work itself, and then inpart because I think the
churches that not just churches,churches, people, organizations
that are doing the best workare often not the best at
self-promotion, and so you justdon't.
They don't tell the storiesvery often or very well, um, and
(23:55):
so it's nice to hear, I don'tknow, it's just always inspiring
to hear like, yeah, there areactually a lot of people around
here doing this and doing itwell.
Um, you know, you just don'talways.
They don't always, uh, you know, make, make the headlines and
they don't always have the the.
You know the books writtenabout them.
So I appreciate you doing thatwork also.
So you know your first book.
Maybe you could talk a littlebit about what does it mean to
do it well?
You know what does it?
(24:16):
What does it look like for achurch to engage in in?
You know, and there's a bigquestion, you could write a book
on it probably.
But you know, what does it meanto do it well?
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Yeah, well, I think starting mean to do it well.
Yeah, well, I think, um,starting starting with how we
see people right, because Ithink that there there's two
mistakes at opposite ends of thespectrum that we often make
when we talk about or encountersomeone who's experiencing homo
seps.
Right on one end, it's the whatkind of what we've already
(24:49):
talked about.
This is their own fault.
They need to pull themselves upby their bootstraps and stop
being lazy.
Get a job, get out of theirhomelessness.
That is one error on one side,which is I'm the person who has
my life together.
I know what you need to do.
(25:15):
Listen to me and my plan foryour life, and if you don't,
you're being ungrateful, right,right.
And so I think the correctresponse in the middle of that
is actually seeing people whoexperience homo sets as fully
human, with choice and agencythat should be respected, as the
(25:38):
experts of their own story andtheir own experience, who don't
need, don't need a bully andthey don't need a savior, right,
what they need is partnership,friendship, relationship.
You may have skills that theyneed in order to accomplish
their goals, but that doesn'tmake you better than them.
(26:01):
That doesn't make you of ahigher class or status than them
.
Right, right, the, the idea.
The idea is to recognize thatyou have power that they don't
and figure out how to give thatpower away.
(26:22):
To me, that is how, as asChristians I mean it makes me
think of the Christ hymn right.
I mean it makes me think of theChrist hymn right that Christ
(26:42):
did not see equality with God assomething to be grasped, but
came in the form of a servantright.
That is how we act and functionin the world, and so with that,
I think there's also we need todo a better job of embracing
what are best practices that aredata driven, and what we've
done for a really long time infaith communities, typically in
(27:06):
the form of like a gospel rescuemission, is say hey, here's
this big giant shelter that wemade where you're going to get a
very, extremely Christianexperience very often, whether
you like it or not, um, which weget to do because we're giving
you food, shelter, clothes, youhave to obey all of our rules to
(27:33):
keep your bed every night,which include going to Bible
study, listening to a sermonbefore you eat, all of these
sort of high barrierexpectations and if you prove
yourself worthy by gettingthrough our program with all of
its expectations, then you'vedemonstrated to us that you are
(27:57):
ready for housing.
Right, that model doesn't work.
It's not effective at endinghomelessness, and actually what
has proven to be true is thatmoving someone directly into
housing and then surroundingthem with the services that they
need is what does work right.
But people of faith are oftenvery resistant to that because
(28:20):
we've believed this idea that,in order for them to be
successful in housing, they haveto undergo some kind of life
transformation, something aboutthem has to change in order to
integrate into society.
Again, it all comes back tothat central myth we talked
about, right, that the reasonthat they're experiencing
homelessness is becausesomething is wrong with them,
(28:43):
instead of there's somethingwrong with our systems, our
society, that creates thisproblem.
And so, in like, the Christianresponse to homelessness is very
often uh, we need to fix you sothat you can be a part of us,
right, right, rather than weneed to fix us to make space for
(29:04):
you, right.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Right that and that I think that patronizing attitude
is not unique to Christians,but it is there for sure in a
lot of Christian ministries.
So I would say it goes as faras the structural things that
you're talking about of like youhave to fulfill these programs
in order to maintain access toour space or in order to get
(29:28):
access to our space or in orderto get access to housing or
whatever, and I think people getfrustrated.
The San Diego homeless servicesector is a little more secular
for the big ones and they alsohave people going through
programming that is just like.
I don't need this.
It's a waste of my time and Ihave to go through, jump through
all these extra hoops.
(29:49):
They have curfews or chores.
You know the the way thatchores have, um, have hurt
people in in some of the systemsin San Diego, like you know,
I've had people that I've had todecide between making it home
to do their chores and keepingthe job that they got, you know,
and where they're going to losehousing because they didn't
clean the bathroom and theorganization's not willing to
(30:12):
move the bathroom chore toaccommodate a new job, and you
know, and you just get put inthese impossible situations.
So in a systemic way, but thenalso just in the in the attitude
way.
So, like we have there's somevisiting churches that come and
serve coffee and snacks, and Ithink this is like an issue we
work on with people to kind oflearn.
(30:35):
So many people in our churchhave experienced homelessness
that we're all the same.
You know we're all one body andwe're pretty integrated in
terms of like who's doing what.
But people that often come fromthe outside just serve with
this like really you know justnot self-aware about the way
that they sometimes canpatronize people who come
through the door even in.
You know we'll sometimes praybefore we open up and some of
the ways that people will prayis just an indication of like I
(30:58):
thank God that we're herebecause all these people
desperately need us and you knowit just be it's, you know,
making like babies out of thepeople that are coming here
through and not recognizing thewisdom and the skill and the
ingenuity that walks through thedoor, um, as people come
through, and the things that wehave to learn from, from others
(31:21):
who have a different lifeexperience.
So some of it is is kind offlipping that script right and
learning how to um, justhumanize people, which I mean it
seems almost like ridiculous tohave to say that, but you do
have to say it.
You know I.
You know housing, the housingfirst stuff you know.
Maybe I found really helpfulSome of the things you talked
(31:42):
about in your book, about justthe stats around, like housing
affordability and homelessness.
Could you say a little bitabout, like some of the, some of
the um, the actual correlationsand causes of of homelessness?
Does that question make sense?
Speaker 2 (31:58):
Yeah, yeah so and and and the.
Since I wrote the book, thedata has only, you know, come
out more explain that,ultimately, homelessness is
fundamentally an issue ofhousing affordability and
availability period.
(32:18):
We talk a lot with homelessness, you know.
We get very stuck on thingslike mental health, substance
use, maybe disability.
We like to blame these otherAilments and systems for
homelessness, and I think a lotof it is.
It's well intentioned, right,but but it misses the mark.
(32:43):
And it's really important thatwe understand the relationship
between those things.
Right, because you know, chrisI know because we've spent a lot
of time working with peopleexperiencing homelessness that
like, yeah, substance usedisorders are real, they're a
big part of the experience, sois mental illness, so is
disability, but those thingsdon't cause homelessness.
(33:07):
Or when we look at a systemslevel, right, and the really
really fascinating parallelbecause this one blew my mind,
right Is that poverty actuallydoesn't cause homelessness on a
systems level, right, they'reactually.
(33:28):
So if someone is experiencinghomelessness, they probably
experience poverty on the way,right.
So on an individual level, youcan say, yes, poverty is a
contributing factor to some ofthese homelessness.
You can say the same thingabout mental illness, substance
use, right.
But when you look across theUnited States, most cities
(33:53):
experience those things to thesame degree, right, but they
don't experience homelessness tothe same degree.
And if you look at what are thepoorest cities or states in the
country, they have the lowestrates of homelessness, not the
highest, right?
If you look at the states thathave, for whatever reason,
(34:17):
higher rates of substance usedisorders a state like ohio they
have lower rates ofhomelessness than their
neighbors, right same withmental illness.
There actually is nocorrelation on a system level
between any of those things andhomelessness.
The only thing that correlatesis the price of housing and the
(34:42):
vacancy of housing, right, andthat's why you could actually
make the argument that, ratherthan poverty being associated
with homelessness, homelessnessis actually more associated with
affluence in a city.
That actually, the richer thecity, the more homelessness they
have, because the richer yourcity is, the more expensive
(35:04):
housing is, right.
So it's this great analogy andI get most of that from a great
book called Homelessness is aHousing Problem, which is a very
like data ebook if you're intothat kind of nerdy thing.
But they use this great analogyof musical chairs, right?
So imagine you're playing agame of musical chairs.
(35:24):
There's 10 chairs, 10 people.
The music starts, everyone'sgoing around the chairs and one
chair gets taken away.
Right, that's how the gameworks.
The music stops, everybodyscrambles for a chair.
One person gets left in themiddle.
You notice that person has abroken foot, right.
There's one way to look at thatthat says, oh, greg didn't get a
(35:46):
chair because his foot isbroken.
Right.
You can be compassionate andsay, oh, we should help greg,
you know, we should give himcrutches, or someone should try
to help him get a chair.
Or you can be uncompassionateand say, well, chris should have
been more careful, chris shouldgo to physical therapy if he
wants to get a chair.
But both of those, I think,misunderstand the problem.
(36:10):
Right, the problem isn't thatGreg's foot is broken.
The problem is we took the chairaway, right, right, and so that
is how homelessness works,right?
The problem is is we don't haveenough housing that is
affordable and available for thepeople whose incomes demand
that they need an affordablerent.
(36:33):
Right, we don't have enoughunits for them, and so the
people who end up getting leftout are the ones who already
have some sort of vulnerability.
Right, the person who can't geta chair in that system is the
one with the broken foot and,unfortunately, the way that the
(36:53):
numbers look across our countryfor how many available units
there are for the people thatneed them.
It's actually like we take sixchairs away instead of one chair
.
The national average is thatthere's 37 units for every 100
people who qualify for them, andI think when I looked in San
(37:14):
Diego, it's like 25, right, yeah.
So that means if you are, evenif you're working, but you make
less than 30% of the area medianincome in San Diego, there is a
75% chance that you're notgoing to get a unit that you can
(37:36):
afford.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Yeah, and I mean that when you that's those are mind
blowing things, like you said,where you're like, oh, like this
is, this is the cause of all ofthis.
And it makes sense on, you know, because I think some
especially more liberal folksactually, I think, tend to be
confused, like why is there somuch homelessness in West Coast
cities that have more robustsystems of support and are a
(38:03):
little more compassionate andhave better minimum wages and
stuff?
And the reason is becausehousing is so expensive here and
there just isn't enough of it.
Right, and in some ways it's assimple as that.
And then once people fall intohomelessness, then all the other
issues come up, if they weren'tthere already.
Then you get physically ill,then your mental health takes a
dive.
(38:23):
You're more likely to becomeaddicted once you're on the
streets, because if you haven'tslept in weeks and you can you
can't afford a house, a place tostay, but you can afford a
little bit of heroin or fentanylthat's going to help you
actually get a night's sleep.
You know, eventually thatbecomes a temptation that's
really difficult to overcome.
And you know, like there's justthe cause and effect of some of
(38:45):
these issues is just not whatpeople assume a lot of the time
and you know we just we got tohave more places for people to
live and more opportunities forpeople to get into housing that
they can afford, and it seems toonly be getting getting worse,
you know, as with inflation, andthis is why so many people in
our you know, some of our churchfolks are real love to talk
(39:07):
about, you know, private equityand train the housing market and
driving up prices and a lot ofthose issues.
Because you know these are likehidden things that most people
that aren't thinking seriouslyabout housing and homelessness,
like you, just don't think aboutthis stuff because you just see
someone on the street and youthink they need some food or
they need work or whatever.
But when you kind of dig in andyou actually begin to understand
(39:29):
how things work, you know itall kind of clicks together and
makes sense.
How can churches be a part ofthe solution?
I know for our church, likewe're there, we don't even have
a place ourself.
You know we're renters payingtoo much rent in a downtown
place.
Um, there's no way that we'regoing to be building housing for
people at this point.
(39:51):
Or maybe, maybe in, you know,someone gives us a bunch of
money or something, but you knowhow.
How can churches or the churchin general like help with this
issue?
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Yeah, well, I mean, you have people power, right.
I think that churches reallyneed to get serious about
housing policy in theirneighborhoods, in their cities
and figure out what's changeable, right?
Because I think we get sodistracted and caught up with
(40:31):
the type of protest which islike very easy slogans, um, and
I wear them all the time, likeend homelessness, house keys,
not handcuffs like uh, you know,more affordable housing, like
great, but there there are lawsand statutes on the books that
(40:55):
could change right?
I had a really longconversation with a group that
this is going to be in the book,a story about how there was an
affordable trust fund thatalready existed in the city of
Minneapolis.
When it came time to actuallyapprove who was going to get
(41:16):
that funds, without evenrealizing it, 82 of the
buildings that were funded werefor 80 ami, which is like
technically affordable housing,but just barely right.
And nobody was doing that onpurpose, it was just those were
the easiest projects togreenlight because they could
(41:37):
get built the fastest.
And it was all these reasonsthat then when this organization
which really it was the work offive congregations coming
together and saying we're goingto make a big deal about this
brought it to the city council'sattention and just said hey,
did you notice this?
Are you OK with that?
(41:57):
Because the whole purpose ofthis fund Is to be for those at
30 percent AMI or less.
But when it all comes out inthe wash, that's not where the
money goes, right?
And so they they took that tocity council and said are you
good with this?
And city council was like no,actually, this isn't what we
(42:19):
want, what are we going to doabout it?
And so they actually sort ofrewrote the mission statement
for what that fund was for.
And the next year it was 60% ofthe projects that got approved
were 30% AMI and lower.
So none of that would fit on aprotest sign.
(42:42):
Right Like change the missionstatement of the Affordable
Housing Trust Fund inMinneapolis to prioritize 30%.
Right Like.
It's not sexy, right, but it'sthe work.
Because of that, within oneyear, enough change was made
that several projects gotgreenlit for the poorest of the
(43:03):
poor in minneapolis that hadthat work not been done, that
wouldn't have happened, right.
So I and?
And that only works if you havefolks invested enough in
understanding how housing worksin your neighborhood what gets
approved, what doesn't, why,what are the ways that you know
(43:26):
affordable housing getsdeveloped.
What are the things that theyrun into that you could help
advocate to smooth out?
Help advocate to smooth out.
I mean the state of Californiajust last year approved a
religious land use exemptionright Making it easier for
churches to build affordablehousing on their property where
(43:47):
before they were subject tozoning laws.
I know an affordable housingdeveloper in the Bay Area who
had a project that was stuck inlimbo for three years and she
helped get that bill passed andit meant that that project that
had been stuck got approved inthree months.
(44:08):
But that only happens when youdig in and I think churches have
a unique opportunity to do that, because churches have, you
know, longevity.
They have communities that aretogether for a long time.
That can, you know, spareresources like or allocate.
Hey, you're the person who'sgoing to zoom into city council
(44:32):
every week because you're you'rea stay at home mom, so you can.
So you can't show up places,but you can zoom in right.
Who's our person that's goingto make phone calls?
Who's our person that's goingto show up for this right?
I think, because churchesalready have existing recurring
(44:53):
community, they have such anopportunity to plug in in that
way and then, because they havea lot of people, you know when
it comes time to show up, youcan show up.
When it comes time to put thatpressure, you can put the
pressure.
And, like you said earlier,ideally you're not just one
church doing it but you haverelationships with other
(45:16):
congregations and you know,ideally, some really rich
congregations throwing theirweight around Right To really
get this thing done based onshared values.
Speaker 1 (45:30):
Yeah, yeah.
And so maybe some of the workthat needs to be done in the
grassroots, at least in ourcontext, is, you know, making
some of those connections withthe wider church community,
(45:50):
doing some education and someinformation sharing, which needs
to be done with thoughtfulnessand intelligence.
My wife has corrected me for,essentially, you know, I'll have
a family member come to mykid's soccer game and ask me
what's going on withhomelessness soccer game, and
ask me what's going on withhomelessness, and then I'll end
up just like berating them aboutprivate equity and the cost of
housing.
And you know all the.
You know it's not.
You know well, why don't theyjust move to the desert?
Well, when you don't, whenyou're in poverty, like you know
, you're not mobile like you are.
If you're like in the uppermiddle class, you can just
bounce wherever you need to go.
(46:11):
You know, and you know I end upoverwhelming people, I think,
sometimes talking about this,but I think there's got to be
some ways we can connect withthe wider community, get people
informed, call them to payattention, which is hard right
now with you know certain, youknow Red people that are sucking
(46:31):
all the air out of the room onevery issue.
But these are, these are thethings that really matter
locally and and maybe we can tryto get some momentum to try to
get people paying attention tothis stuff so much I get so much
to write a book or have apodcast episode on this or
something.
But yeah Well, you know Iappreciate the time.
(46:53):
I don't want to take too muchof your time.
No-transcript that you'velearned.
(47:25):
That's new information, anylike what's the next, what's the
next stage of of uh, of your?
I don't know, maybe you'vealready answered this, but
what's next in your work?
Speaker 2 (47:37):
of your.
I don't know, maybe you'vealready answered this, but
what's next in your work?
Yeah, I mean, I'm alwayslearning, Um, I think you know,
and part of it's just becauseI'm I'm always growing on the
professional side of this, youknow.
Um, I think that, even morethan when I wrote that book, I'm
paying attention to housing,I'm learning about affordable
housing.
Um, I'm paying attention tohousing, I'm learning about
(47:59):
affordable housing.
I imagine the book after thebook I'm currently writing is
going to be more just,singularly focused on housing,
and homelessness will be more ofan adjacent rather than vice
versa.
And then I'm I'm always, youknow, because it does come up a
lot in our work, but alsobecause I think there is such a
strong faith entanglement withit.
(48:22):
I'm always interested inlearning and talking more about
substance use and substance usedisorders, or what we commonly
say addiction.
Right, um, I think there's somuch to be said and understood
about that by the christiancommunity that really gets lost,
um, but I'm I'm not at a placeto speak as an expert on that.
(48:48):
So, um, that's where I think alot of the next few years of my
attention is is going to be um,so I think, if I could fault my
first book on anything whichactually I have a bunch right,
because you write it and thenyou're like, oh, I don't want to
take, want to redo it.
Um, I think I there's a couplechapters that I do on substance
(49:10):
use and addiction and I wouldstand by 90 of it, but there's,
that's that 10% where I was like, ooh, I said I said that a
little too strongly or I leanedtoo hard into this methodology
that now I don't necessarilyagree with, because it came from
less informed of a place, as Iwish it would have, if that
(49:32):
makes sense if that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, I feel like that's anarea I'm learning a lot into.
Coming more from an angle, I'vebeen diving deep into issues of
trauma lately and I think thatthat the roots of that are all
around issues of addiction,substance abuse, disorders and,
um, and learning.
Maybe we can learn some of thattogether over the years here.
Um, my last question for youprobably uh, how do you keep
(49:59):
from getting like jaded?
You know, like, how do you keepthe energy and the hope?
Cause you seem you just alwayshave like very hopeful posture.
I'd say, you know, for thosewho don't know how to follow
Kevin on Twitter for a long time, until you know, twitter
basically stopped being fun andinteresting to be on and and
(50:20):
just always, like in yourwriting and in your work, you
always seem to be able tochallenge, but there's always
this like underlying grace andhope.
That's that's there.
And I know, for those of us whoare in the work, like it's hard
to maintain that becausethere's just so much negative
from every direction all thetime and the issues that we're
(50:41):
dealing with are so entrenchedand so complex.
Like, how do you, how do youmaintain that yourself?
Like, where is your hope andyour and your joy and the grace
you do your work with come from.
Speaker 2 (50:53):
I mean it comes from the people who are experiencing
this right Like I've.
I've never met a group morehopeful and joyful and resilient
than people who experiencehomelessness and still wake up
every day and show up, you know,and, and, and and demand in
(51:15):
their own way a better life.
You, um, or or, who find a wayto make beauty and life happen,
still without so much of wherewe think life and happiness come
from.
You know, um, and so, at theend of the day, when I find
(51:37):
myself despairing which is oftenright, and it seems to be
increasing Um, I, I've sort ofbuilt in this mechanism within
myself.
That sort of like reminds methat.
Like, oh, I'm probably spendingtoo much time away from real
(51:58):
people.
Then I need to get back to that.
At my old job, it just meant,oh, I need to stop doom
scrolling and go have a cup ofcoffee with what's his name or
what's her name out on the patioright here.
In my new job, it's like youknow what I need to go sit in
(52:19):
the drop-in center with thechess board because I need to
get away from the scarcity, Ineed to get away from the
despair and and borrow some hopefrom from somebody.
Speaker 1 (52:35):
Yeah, yeah, that's.
That's awesome, Perfect answer.
I love that.
Um any any final thoughts?
Things that you want to saythat we haven't talked about,
you know, at this point, Um, no,I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
I'm really grateful to have come on here and um, I
need to get back out to SanDiego.
Speaker 1 (52:55):
Yeah, man, come on, come on and say hello and, you
know, let us know if you want tocome and talk to a tiny little
church of people that arestruggling their way through it
and we'll be happy to host you.
Or, just, you know, welcome youto the city down here.
Sounds like my kind of people.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Well, yeah, again, I feel likeI could get asking questions for
(53:19):
another hour, but I reallyappreciate the time and, um,
really really deeply appreciatethe work and just the
camaraderie you know.
Again, in some ways, you knowyou're saying you're on when
we're online too much.
You just got to go like touchgrass, you know, as they say,
you got to go see some peopleface to face, but then then
there also is there has been atin CES.
(53:39):
I feel like it's missing rightnow partly because of the
downfall of Twitter, but, um,there there has been this
camaraderie with people that arein the work that does happen
online and that's, you know,just kind of being in touch with
you has been an important partof that for me over the last
several years.
So thank you for your work meover the last several years.
So thank you for your work, uh,keep it up, and um, blessings
(53:59):
to you as you uh head out foranother day out there, and I've
heard it's been sunny inminneapolis this week.
Is that, yeah, finally turned?
Speaker 2 (54:04):
around.
Yeah, it's like 40 degreesright now and we're just we're
ready to like put on ourswimsuits and jump in the lake
40 degrees.
Speaker 1 (54:12):
Yeah, you should come to san diego.
Yeah, all right.
Well, thanks, kevin, I'm goingto um end the recording here,
but thank you so much and um,yeah, hopefully we'll stay in
touch and keep on, keep onkeeping on together, thank you.
Hey, welcome back to the Current.
This is Chris Nafis, pastor ofLiving Water Church, and today
we're very fortunate to haveKevin Nye joining us on the
podcast.
Kevin worked for a lot of yearsin homelessness services in Los
Angeles, now in Minneapolis,and wrote a really wonderful
book called Grace Can Lead UsHome a Christian call to end
(00:20):
homelessness.
We get to talk about some ofthe issues around homelessness,
some of his work and background,and then what do we need to do
to address this more fully.
Super relevant for our contextin East Village, san Diego.
But I hope you will enjoy thisconversation here.
It is All right.
(00:51):
Well, kevin, thank you so muchfor coming on here with me.
I'm so grateful for everybodythat's just lent their expertise
and their wisdom and theirfaithfulness to us, just so we
can have this chance to talk toyou, and you know I really loved
your book on homelessness.
I even like the name Grace CanLead Us Home, like what a
perfect name for a book likethat, and so really excited to
(01:12):
share sort of your you with,with the people at Living Water
and Beyond.
So thank you for coming on here.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Could you start out by just telling us a little bit
about, like, how you kind ofbegan working on housing and
homelessness and sort of inthese areas, like what, what
brought you to that work, andyou know what did that look like
?
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Yeah, sure, so I grew up in the church, was raised in
Arizona, in the Church of theNazarene and I, you know,
discerned, you know what Iunderstood to be a call to
ministry in like middle school,like very early, and I pursued
that.
I went to Southern Nazarene inOklahoma City and then went to
(01:58):
seminary at Fuller in SouthernCalifornia, along the way, you
know, just really expanding my,my theology, my understanding of
of who God was and what Godwould have us do in this world,
really connected strongly with,you know, the calls for for
social justice, the, theprophets of the old Testament
(02:22):
and, um, obviously, the work andlife and teachings of Jesus, um
.
And so by the time that I wasgraduating seminary, you know I
was still involved with thechurch but had really kind of
felt this wider sense of what,you know, ministry was, um and
(02:47):
certainly in terms of vocation,um I, I didn't have a strong
sense that what I was supposedto do at that moment was talk to
my district superintendent andask for a church placement,
right.
That just wasn't really feeling, for a number of reasons, like
that was in the cards, right,but I had started working at the
(03:12):
place that I talk about in thebook, called the Center in
Hollywood, because I felt that Iwanted my work regardless of
whether it was temporary or longterm to be about the things
that I was about and the thingsthat I believed God was about in
terms of justice and equity andcaring for people who are
(03:36):
extremely vulnerable.
Being in Los Angeleshomelessness that made a lot of
sense, and my friend was workingsomewhere and told me about a
job opening and I took it andthen, um, as you know, my
conversations with the church ofthe Nazarene kind of uh
(03:57):
continued and reached sort ofwhat ended up kind of being a
breaking point.
I uh ended up leaning into thework that I was already doing.
I'm very grateful to have thatand yeah, that and that sort of
just became my, my vocation andmy understanding of living out
(04:20):
that call that I had had since,since middle school and I'd say
about five years into.
That is where I realized that Iwanted to write a book, um, to
really sit at that intersectionof homelessness and faith.
That is like a place that Ioccupied, um, but that I felt
(04:41):
both sides of that were were notable to talk to each other in
the ways that seemed helpful oraccurate, and so the book was
sort of meant to be a bridgebetween those two worlds that I.
I walked in easily, right, Italk about the book a lot as
(05:01):
like a form of translationbetween those two groups and
that sort of catapulted.
This whole other thing that Ido, which is writing and
speaking and doing workshopsTypically two people of faith or
two churches about the topic ofhomelessness and helping them
(05:24):
understand it better and see howit's rooted in their, in their
faith call, and so, yeah, now Ido, I do kind of both of those
things.
I've moved to Minneapolis nowwhere I do full-time work in the
homeless services sector andthen on top of that I do
speaking, writing, teaching, andthen on top of that, I do
(05:46):
speaking, writing, teaching,yeah, and that translation work
is so important.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
I feel like both in the general population and in
the church maybe especially inthe church, I don't know there's
so many misunderstandings abouthomelessness, about the causes
of homelessness, about peoplewho end up, you know, on the
street or in a car or couchsurfing or in a shelter.
There's just so many, there'sso many misconceptions about it
and you know your book does areally great job of kind of
(06:15):
highlighting those things andfleshing them out.
I guess I'm wondering, goingback a little bit, do you feel
like you were prepared for thework through, kind of your
upbringing in the church andseminary, like you know, when,
when you kind of because I feellike I had a big learning curve
when I, when we started reallyengaging deeply in all this,
even though I had done some ofthat work in college and stuff
(06:37):
um, you know, how do you?
How was that transition in likekind of diving in?
Speaker 2 (06:44):
yeah, I mean, I think I think yes and no, right,
because I think that there wereaspects of my theological church
upbringing that I had to undoand, um, let go of in order for
me to to really embrace the work, and there were other aspects
that were just like anabsolutely like.
(07:05):
This was setting me up for that, right.
Right, and I think that that'severybody's experience, right,
that different, different voicesalong the way, different
streams of thought that youencounter, raised to you know
really care deeply about myfaith and to really hold on most
(07:34):
tightly to the parts of it thatcall us to love and to care for
one another.
And so I think that that thengoing into like a theological
education really primed me to tocare about the things I wound
up caring about.
On the other hand, I wasdefinitely raised, um, in a
(07:55):
political environment.
Um, that really um that reallyhad a lot to say about what
certain people deserve and what,and really just this kind of
basic understanding that youknow, people who who work hard
(08:18):
end up doing well and people whodon't work hard end up not
doing well, and that the rest ofit like that, that there's not
a lot of gray area in there, andso I think part of part of the
I guess political the way thatpolitics was sort of enmeshed
with theology was the, the partthat I had to spend a lot of
(08:39):
time untangling yeah, I meanthat issue of like deserving and
I feel like it comes up from alot of different angles just in
life in general, but especiallyaround homelessness, of who
deserves what, and I even evenamong people on the street.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
You know like we operate an inclement weather
shelter and people call tryingto get in and stuff, and you
know people will be telling mewhy they deserve a spot over
other people that are on thestreet and I think that that
kind of permeates all of society, because I think people feel
that, coming from just sort oflike the rest of the community,
just this, this sense ofjudgment like issues, problems,
(09:21):
bad decisions that people makeon the street.
Of course, the a lot of theissues problems people make who
are on the street are a loteasier to hide because they're,
you know, behind a door.
Um, there is this sense of likesomeone who ended up here
deserved it for some reason, andyou really kind of um
disassemble that in a lot ofways in the book, Like where do
(09:42):
you?
Yeah, could you like say alittle more about that?
Like how does the church getthis stuff wrong?
And where is our, where's ourteaching like intermingled with
that?
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Yeah, well, I, honestly, I've come to believe
that it is the central myth,right, and that actually all of
the myths about homelessnesshave their roots in that.
And I would define that centralmyth as the belief that people
who are experiencinghomelessness somehow have,
somehow deserve it and thereforeare less worthy of whatever
(10:17):
level of help that we're notwilling to give them.
Right, and I think everybodymight define that last part a
little bit differently, right,right, because I think a lot of
good Christian organizationswould say it doesn't matter what
you deserve, like, you're goingto get a meal, right, you're
going to get, you know, a warmbed at the shelter, right, where
we, but then they might cut itoff at, well, we're not.
(10:40):
You're not going to get anapartment, right, until you do X
, x, y and z to prove yourworthiness, right, I think the
myth that everyone on thestreets is is mentally ill, or
that everyone is out there doingdrugs, like those are, those
are that same myth, right, thatis us creating, uh, creating or
(11:03):
exaggerating a reality that thentherefore says, because of that
, we're not going to do this orthis thing won't work, right, um
, and I think the other, theother central piece to that,
that, that that myth only haspower if we really believe in
scarcity right, like the onlyreason that we would evaluate
(11:30):
who deserves what is.
If we believe that there's notenough to go around right, and
that that becomes true in asetting right where you were
talking about, where you have awarm weather, shelter, and the
reason that people on the phonefeel like they have to convince
you that they deserve it isbecause they know there's only
so many spots Right, and sothey're not.
(11:51):
They wouldn't, they wouldn't betrying to convince you that
they deserve it.
They didn't feel like they werein competition for a scarce
resource, right.
And so when we, when we believethat in scarcity, which says
there actually isn't enough foreverybody, there's not enough to
(12:12):
go around, and so therefore, wehave to choose how we're going
to allocate what we have, that'swhen we start ranking people.
Right, because even I will say,homeless services systems do
this, right, they might justhave a different ranking
criteria, like we use a criteriathat actually says the most
(12:33):
vulnerable people get placedfirst, but that has other
ramifications, right.
But all of all of it is becauseof this belief in scarcity, and
to me, that is not a Christianidea, right, I talk about this
toward the end of the book, butI believe the Bible teaches
(12:54):
abundance, that we have enough.
We have everything we need totake care of each other, right?
I think you could look acrossthis country and look at the
amount of wealth that we have,look at the amount of resources
that we have and prove thatthat's true in a number sense.
(13:14):
Right, we have enough.
It's just that it's not gettingall the way to where it needs.
It's being hoarded by some andwithheld from others, and so I
mean you don't have to spend toolong in a gospel to hear Jesus
speaking against that or doingmiracles.
(13:35):
That suggests that where yousay there's not enough, jesus
says there's plenty, there'smore than enough, so much that
we have leftovers, right.
And so I think the that centralmyth of deservedness has to get
overcome, but so does thiscommitment that we have to
(13:57):
scarcity.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Yeah, and I mean so like I guess what comes to mind
for me is the scarcity stuff insome ways becomes like a
self-fulfilling prophecy sort ofa thing, because you know, like
it feels, like you know.
I'll use an example of likebathrooms in san diego.
So there's, there's like nobathrooms in san diego.
No parks have bathrooms uh,very few of them do at least and
(14:22):
there's there's very few publicbathrooms and one of the things
that becomes the issue is that,like, whenever there is a
bathroom, it gets likecompletely inundated with people
, because it's the only bathroomfor like miles and there's
thousands of people living onthe street in that area.
There's also people that arejust other residents, that are
(14:43):
there's tourists, there's allkinds of people that need to use
the bathroom, and so when onebathroom is getting used by 5000
people a week, you know, if wewere able to just say, well, why
don't we open 10 bathrooms,then, like that, that scarcity
of the one resource would likealleviate this like overwhelming
need where we're like this onelittle low resource, low budget
(15:10):
church that's kind of dippedinto this overwhelming, you know
, epicenter of homelessness inSan Diego.
You know we're basically like inSan Diego's version of Skid Row
is where our church is locatedand you know, it's like there
are so many churches around,there is so much money around,
there is so much, even just likewealth in our neighborhood
around, there's so much, evenjust like wealth in our
(15:32):
neighborhood around, but becauseso many of those doors are
closed, then we end up with liketrue scarcity and I have to,
you know, take these phone callsand say like I'm, you know, I'm
sorry, like I can't send a carto pick you up from out of the
neighborhood because we have 28people who live on our block
that are going to come in anduse our 28 measly spots that we
(15:52):
have available.
I wish there was other churchesthat would open their doors, but
because they're afraid of beingoverrun or they're afraid of
you know what I mean and then itbecomes like this like cycle of
like well, now we don'tactually have enough resources
because everybody's kind ofhoarding the resources out of a
sense of scarcity, right, kindof hoarding the resources out of
(16:13):
a sense of scarcity, right, um,yeah, it's a it's, it's a hard
thing to overcome because like,how do you, how do we get, how
do we get past that, like as achurch and as a society.
Maybe I don't know if that's abig question, but it's a big
question.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
I will also just point out, because I looked up
these numbers not too long ago,because I actually spoke in san
diego like eight months ago.
It was a while ago now um, and,and y'all's housing market is
the exact same like your.
Your housing market forlow-income renters is your
bathroom analogy.
(16:44):
Yeah, right, um, right, it'syour.
Your numbers of available andaffordable rental units per 100
low income renter households isthe lowest in California.
So y'all are kind of no offense.
You are kind of the worst, theworst city and the worst state
(17:06):
on housing availability.
Yes, we are, um, and we feelyou know, yeah, and, and that's
how that's what happens.
You know, that's how it tricklesdown to to what y'all are
feeling, um, but to kind ofanswer your question, I guess
and I don't have a great answer,right, um, cause you already
(17:28):
suggested it that the answer isthat more people need to get
involved in the work.
Right, I spoke to somebodyrecently who said this really
well about you know,congregations is like you, no
one's asking every congregationto do everything, but each
congregation has to find their,what their part of the work is
(17:51):
and do it.
Really well, you know, and somechurches will have the ability
to do more and some will havethe ability to do less.
But scarcity, you know yourchurch by itself cannot resolve
scarcity in San Diego.
Right, and you're right that,because, because you can't, you
(18:12):
do have to reinforce scarcity inthe form of having boundaries.
You know, because if you tookin, if you started taking in
more people, you wouldn't, you'dbe able to, you wouldn't do as
good of a job at serving thepeople that you do now.
You would burn out staff, you'dburn out resources, you like.
I think it is important todistinguish between like
(18:37):
organizations putting in healthyboundaries and like
participating in scarcity, whichI would say like one of them
has to exist because the otherone exists.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
But it's not like I don't want any organization to
feel shame around havingboundaries, if that makes sense
and I mean in some ways it's,we're in a nice position where
we just don't have I meanliterally like if we started
trying to put up more than thatmany people, fire marshal would
shut us down and we wouldn't beable to do anything, you know
and so, like, having someresource limits is a nice way
(19:11):
for us to have, like a boundarythat's enforced upon us, that we
don't have to feel guiltybecause we're literally doing
all that we can.
you know, and that's not true inevery area of life, like but or
every area of you know, westretch ourselves pretty thin
and there just are realities andboundaries that have to be
(19:33):
maintained.
But I think getting more, youknow, every time the news comes
and tries to cover Income andWeather Shelter that's what I
try to say on there is like, hey, we need more churches to do
this stuff Because, like,there's a lot more people we
fill up every night, we fill upwithin 30 minutes every time we
start taking reservations andthere's like a lot of people
that need a nice place to stayon a cold night and it's it's
(19:53):
hard, but it's not that hard.
Like you all can do it, youknow.
Um, yeah, yeah, have you seen,like, have you seen churches
like picking this up?
Like where have you seen sometransformation and some eyes
being opened, like any storiesof inspiration for us of, like
some churches that have kind ofseen the light?
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Yeah, well, and you didn't do this on purpose, but
you're setting me up to plug thebook that I'm currently writing
.
So the book that I'm writing ismajority storytelling of
churches and faith groups thatare engaging homelessness in
meaningful ways.
It's divided into a lot ofdifferent sort of subsections,
(20:35):
like there's churches that buildaffordable housing on their
property, right, there'schurches that have actually did
that once and ended up launchinga foundation that ended up
(20:56):
becoming the biggest provider ofsupportive housing in the state
of Minnesota.
There's also churches that Itell stories of them just sort
of doing their small thingfaithfully.
A church in Skid Row you mightbe familiar with Central City.
There was a church in theNazarene that for 20 years did
karaoke night on wednesdaynights on the streets of skid
row and how meaningful that wasfor that community.
(21:17):
Right, the book is just full ofstories like that, of churches,
like, like I said before, whodid, who found their part of the
work and did it really well andspecifically did it in ways
that I think align with what Italk about in my first book,
which is how to actuallyunderstand homelessness
(21:39):
thoughtfully, correctly, andengage it in that way, because I
think there are a lot ofchurches out there that come at
this work from a very, you know,paternalistic or savioristic or
, frankly, kind of thoughtlessway and often can do a lot of
harm.
(21:59):
But I think that the ones whoare doing it from a thoughtful
angle are are more than we areaware of and and I've I've
gotten the privilege of gettingto know them because I wrote
this first book that peopleemail me and say, hey, we're
read your book, we've been doingthis thing for 20 years.
(22:22):
Um, and we, we thought youwould like it.
Um, and I do so.
I, I think there, there reallyare a lot out there who are
doing this.
But I think what's particularlyexciting and inspiring is
there's so many of them wantingto talk about this issue right
now in a way that we haven't Now.
(22:42):
Do I wish that we'd have beenhaving this conversation 10
years ago?
Sure, they're here now.
It's like, like they say, thebest time was yesterday, the
second best time is right now,right, and just the number of
churches that reach out to andthis is just me, right, I don't
(23:03):
represent the only peopletalking about homelessness and
faith, right, but the number ofchurches reaching out to me to
say, hey, can you come talk tous.
Can you zoom into our Sundayschool?
Can you, you know, do thisBecause we we see homelessness
around us.
We recognize that as a church,we need to do something about it
, but we don't know where tostart.
I get those almost daily.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
That's encouraging because, you know, I feel like a
lot of times you get into thework, you feel really isolated
in it because, in part, becauseyou just get buried by the
actual work itself, and then inpart because I think the
churches that not just churches,churches, people, organizations
that are doing the best workare often not the best at
self-promotion, and so you justdon't.
They don't tell the storiesvery often or very well, um, and
(23:55):
so it's nice to hear, I don'tknow, it's just always inspiring
to hear like, yeah, there areactually a lot of people around
here doing this and doing itwell.
Um, you know, you just don'talways.
They don't always, uh, you know, make, make the headlines and
they don't always have the the.
You know the books writtenabout them.
So I appreciate you doing thatwork also.
So you know your first book.
Maybe you could talk a littlebit about what does it mean to
do it well?
You know what does it?
(24:16):
What does it look like for achurch to engage in in?
You know, and there's a bigquestion, you could write a book
on it probably.
But you know, what does it meanto do it well?
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Yeah, well, I think starting mean to do it well.
Yeah, well, I think, um,starting starting with how we
see people right, because Ithink that there there's two
mistakes at opposite ends of thespectrum that we often make
when we talk about or encountersomeone who's experiencing homo
seps.
Right on one end, it's the whatkind of what we've already
(24:49):
talked about.
This is their own fault.
They need to pull themselves upby their bootstraps and stop
being lazy.
Get a job, get out of theirhomelessness.
That is one error on one side,which is I'm the person who has
my life together.
I know what you need to do.
(25:15):
Listen to me and my plan foryour life, and if you don't,
you're being ungrateful, right,right.
And so I think the correctresponse in the middle of that
is actually seeing people whoexperience homo sets as fully
human, with choice and agencythat should be respected, as the
(25:38):
experts of their own story andtheir own experience, who don't
need, don't need a bully andthey don't need a savior, right,
what they need is partnership,friendship, relationship.
You may have skills that theyneed in order to accomplish
their goals, but that doesn'tmake you better than them.
(26:01):
That doesn't make you of ahigher class or status than them
.
Right, right, the, the idea.
The idea is to recognize thatyou have power that they don't
and figure out how to give thatpower away.
(26:22):
To me, that is how, as asChristians I mean it makes me
think of the Christ hymn right.
I mean it makes me think of theChrist hymn right that Christ
(26:42):
did not see equality with God assomething to be grasped, but
came in the form of a servantright.
That is how we act and functionin the world, and so with that,
I think there's also we need todo a better job of embracing
what are best practices that aredata driven, and what we've
done for a really long time infaith communities, typically in
(27:06):
the form of like a gospel rescuemission, is say hey, here's
this big giant shelter that wemade where you're going to get a
very, extremely Christianexperience very often, whether
you like it or not, um, which weget to do because we're giving
you food, shelter, clothes, youhave to obey all of our rules to
(27:33):
keep your bed every night,which include going to Bible
study, listening to a sermonbefore you eat, all of these
sort of high barrierexpectations and if you prove
yourself worthy by gettingthrough our program with all of
its expectations, then you'vedemonstrated to us that you are
(27:57):
ready for housing.
Right, that model doesn't work.
It's not effective at endinghomelessness, and actually what
has proven to be true is thatmoving someone directly into
housing and then surroundingthem with the services that they
need is what does work right.
But people of faith are oftenvery resistant to that because
(28:20):
we've believed this idea that,in order for them to be
successful in housing, they haveto undergo some kind of life
transformation, something aboutthem has to change in order to
integrate into society.
Again, it all comes back tothat central myth we talked
about, right, that the reasonthat they're experiencing
homelessness is becausesomething is wrong with them,
(28:43):
instead of there's somethingwrong with our systems, our
society, that creates thisproblem.
And so, in like, the Christianresponse to homelessness is very
often uh, we need to fix you sothat you can be a part of us,
right, right, rather than weneed to fix us to make space for
(29:04):
you, right.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Right that and that I think that patronizing attitude
is not unique to Christians,but it is there for sure in a
lot of Christian ministries.
So I would say it goes as faras the structural things that
you're talking about of like youhave to fulfill these programs
in order to maintain access toour space or in order to get
(29:28):
access to our space or in orderto get access to housing or
whatever, and I think people getfrustrated.
The San Diego homeless servicesector is a little more secular
for the big ones and they alsohave people going through
programming that is just like.
I don't need this.
It's a waste of my time and Ihave to go through, jump through
all these extra hoops.
(29:49):
They have curfews or chores.
You know the the way thatchores have, um, have hurt
people in in some of the systemsin San Diego, like you know,
I've had people that I've had todecide between making it home
to do their chores and keepingthe job that they got, you know,
and where they're going to losehousing because they didn't
clean the bathroom and theorganization's not willing to
(30:12):
move the bathroom chore toaccommodate a new job, and you
know, and you just get put inthese impossible situations.
So in a systemic way, but thenalso just in the in the attitude
way.
So, like we have there's somevisiting churches that come and
serve coffee and snacks, and Ithink this is like an issue we
work on with people to kind oflearn.
(30:35):
So many people in our churchhave experienced homelessness
that we're all the same.
You know we're all one body andwe're pretty integrated in
terms of like who's doing what.
But people that often come fromthe outside just serve with
this like really you know justnot self-aware about the way
that they sometimes canpatronize people who come
through the door even in.
You know we'll sometimes praybefore we open up and some of
the ways that people will prayis just an indication of like I
(30:58):
thank God that we're herebecause all these people
desperately need us and you knowit just be it's, you know,
making like babies out of thepeople that are coming here
through and not recognizing thewisdom and the skill and the
ingenuity that walks through thedoor, um, as people come
through, and the things that wehave to learn from, from others
(31:21):
who have a different lifeexperience.
So some of it is is kind offlipping that script right and
learning how to um, justhumanize people, which I mean it
seems almost like ridiculous tohave to say that, but you do
have to say it.
You know I.
You know housing, the housingfirst stuff you know.
Maybe I found really helpfulSome of the things you talked
(31:42):
about in your book, about justthe stats around, like housing
affordability and homelessness.
Could you say a little bitabout, like some of the, some of
the um, the actual correlationsand causes of of homelessness?
Does that question make sense?
Speaker 2 (31:58):
Yeah, yeah so and and and the.
Since I wrote the book, thedata has only, you know, come
out more explain that,ultimately, homelessness is
fundamentally an issue ofhousing affordability and
availability period.
(32:18):
We talk a lot with homelessness, you know.
We get very stuck on thingslike mental health, substance
use, maybe disability.
We like to blame these otherAilments and systems for
homelessness, and I think a lotof it is.
It's well intentioned, right,but but it misses the mark.
(32:43):
And it's really important thatwe understand the relationship
between those things.
Right, because you know, chrisI know because we've spent a lot
of time working with peopleexperiencing homelessness that
like, yeah, substance usedisorders are real, they're a
big part of the experience, sois mental illness, so is
disability, but those thingsdon't cause homelessness.
(33:07):
Or when we look at a systemslevel, right, and the really
really fascinating parallelbecause this one blew my mind,
right Is that poverty actuallydoesn't cause homelessness on a
systems level, right, they'reactually.
(33:28):
So if someone is experiencinghomelessness, they probably
experience poverty on the way,right.
So on an individual level, youcan say, yes, poverty is a
contributing factor to some ofthese homelessness.
You can say the same thingabout mental illness, substance
use, right.
But when you look across theUnited States, most cities
(33:53):
experience those things to thesame degree, right, but they
don't experience homelessness tothe same degree.
And if you look at what are thepoorest cities or states in the
country, they have the lowestrates of homelessness, not the
highest, right?
If you look at the states thathave, for whatever reason,
(34:17):
higher rates of substance usedisorders a state like ohio they
have lower rates ofhomelessness than their
neighbors, right same withmental illness.
There actually is nocorrelation on a system level
between any of those things andhomelessness.
The only thing that correlatesis the price of housing and the
(34:42):
vacancy of housing, right, andthat's why you could actually
make the argument that, ratherthan poverty being associated
with homelessness, homelessnessis actually more associated with
affluence in a city.
That actually, the richer thecity, the more homelessness they
have, because the richer yourcity is, the more expensive
(35:04):
housing is, right.
So it's this great analogy andI get most of that from a great
book called Homelessness is aHousing Problem, which is a very
like data ebook if you're intothat kind of nerdy thing.
But they use this great analogyof musical chairs, right?
So imagine you're playing agame of musical chairs.
(35:24):
There's 10 chairs, 10 people.
The music starts, everyone'sgoing around the chairs and one
chair gets taken away.
Right, that's how the gameworks.
The music stops, everybodyscrambles for a chair.
One person gets left in themiddle.
You notice that person has abroken foot, right.
There's one way to look at thatthat says, oh, greg didn't get a
(35:46):
chair because his foot isbroken.
Right.
You can be compassionate andsay, oh, we should help greg,
you know, we should give himcrutches, or someone should try
to help him get a chair.
Or you can be uncompassionateand say, well, chris should have
been more careful, chris shouldgo to physical therapy if he
wants to get a chair.
But both of those, I think,misunderstand the problem.
(36:10):
Right, the problem isn't thatGreg's foot is broken.
The problem is we took the chairaway, right, right, and so that
is how homelessness works,right?
The problem is is we don't haveenough housing that is
affordable and available for thepeople whose incomes demand
that they need an affordablerent.
(36:33):
Right, we don't have enoughunits for them, and so the
people who end up getting leftout are the ones who already
have some sort of vulnerability.
Right, the person who can't geta chair in that system is the
one with the broken foot and,unfortunately, the way that the
(36:53):
numbers look across our countryfor how many available units
there are for the people thatneed them.
It's actually like we take sixchairs away instead of one chair
.
The national average is thatthere's 37 units for every 100
people who qualify for them, andI think when I looked in San
(37:14):
Diego, it's like 25, right, yeah.
So that means if you are, evenif you're working, but you make
less than 30% of the area medianincome in San Diego, there is a
75% chance that you're notgoing to get a unit that you can
(37:36):
afford.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Yeah, and I mean that when you that's those are mind
blowing things, like you said,where you're like, oh, like this
is, this is the cause of all ofthis.
And it makes sense on, you know, because I think some
especially more liberal folksactually, I think, tend to be
confused, like why is there somuch homelessness in West Coast
cities that have more robustsystems of support and are a
(38:03):
little more compassionate andhave better minimum wages and
stuff?
And the reason is becausehousing is so expensive here and
there just isn't enough of it.
Right, and in some ways it's assimple as that.
And then once people fall intohomelessness, then all the other
issues come up, if they weren'tthere already.
Then you get physically ill,then your mental health takes a
dive.
(38:23):
You're more likely to becomeaddicted once you're on the
streets, because if you haven'tslept in weeks and you can you
can't afford a house, a place tostay, but you can afford a
little bit of heroin or fentanylthat's going to help you
actually get a night's sleep.
You know, eventually thatbecomes a temptation that's
really difficult to overcome.
And you know, like there's justthe cause and effect of some of
(38:45):
these issues is just not whatpeople assume a lot of the time
and you know we just we got tohave more places for people to
live and more opportunities forpeople to get into housing that
they can afford, and it seems toonly be getting getting worse,
you know, as with inflation, andthis is why so many people in
our you know, some of our churchfolks are real love to talk
(39:07):
about, you know, private equityand train the housing market and
driving up prices and a lot ofthose issues.
Because you know these are likehidden things that most people
that aren't thinking seriouslyabout housing and homelessness,
like you, just don't think aboutthis stuff because you just see
someone on the street and youthink they need some food or
they need work or whatever.
But when you kind of dig in andyou actually begin to understand
(39:29):
how things work, you know itall kind of clicks together and
makes sense.
How can churches be a part ofthe solution?
I know for our church, likewe're there, we don't even have
a place ourself.
You know we're renters payingtoo much rent in a downtown
place.
Um, there's no way that we'regoing to be building housing for
people at this point.
(39:51):
Or maybe, maybe in, you know,someone gives us a bunch of
money or something, but you knowhow.
How can churches or the churchin general like help with this
issue?
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Yeah, well, I mean, you have people power, right.
I think that churches reallyneed to get serious about
housing policy in theirneighborhoods, in their cities
and figure out what's changeable, right?
Because I think we get sodistracted and caught up with
(40:31):
the type of protest which islike very easy slogans, um, and
I wear them all the time, likeend homelessness, house keys,
not handcuffs like uh, you know,more affordable housing, like
great, but there there are lawsand statutes on the books that
(40:55):
could change right?
I had a really longconversation with a group that
this is going to be in the book,a story about how there was an
affordable trust fund thatalready existed in the city of
Minneapolis.
When it came time to actuallyapprove who was going to get
(41:16):
that funds, without evenrealizing it, 82 of the
buildings that were funded werefor 80 ami, which is like
technically affordable housing,but just barely right.
And nobody was doing that onpurpose, it was just those were
the easiest projects togreenlight because they could
(41:37):
get built the fastest.
And it was all these reasonsthat then when this organization
which really it was the work offive congregations coming
together and saying we're goingto make a big deal about this
brought it to the city council'sattention and just said hey,
did you notice this?
Are you OK with that?
(41:57):
Because the whole purpose ofthis fund Is to be for those at
30 percent AMI or less.
But when it all comes out inthe wash, that's not where the
money goes, right?
And so they they took that tocity council and said are you
good with this?
And city council was like no,actually, this isn't what we
(42:19):
want, what are we going to doabout it?
And so they actually sort ofrewrote the mission statement
for what that fund was for.
And the next year it was 60% ofthe projects that got approved
were 30% AMI and lower.
So none of that would fit on aprotest sign.
(42:42):
Right Like change the missionstatement of the Affordable
Housing Trust Fund inMinneapolis to prioritize 30%.
Right Like.
It's not sexy, right, but it'sthe work.
Because of that, within oneyear, enough change was made
that several projects gotgreenlit for the poorest of the
(43:03):
poor in minneapolis that hadthat work not been done, that
wouldn't have happened, right.
So I and?
And that only works if you havefolks invested enough in
understanding how housing worksin your neighborhood what gets
approved, what doesn't, why,what are the ways that you know
(43:26):
affordable housing getsdeveloped.
What are the things that theyrun into that you could help
advocate to smooth out?
Help advocate to smooth out.
I mean the state of Californiajust last year approved a
religious land use exemptionright Making it easier for
churches to build affordablehousing on their property where
(43:47):
before they were subject tozoning laws.
I know an affordable housingdeveloper in the Bay Area who
had a project that was stuck inlimbo for three years and she
helped get that bill passed andit meant that that project that
had been stuck got approved inthree months.
(44:08):
But that only happens when youdig in and I think churches have
a unique opportunity to do that, because churches have, you
know, longevity.
They have communities that aretogether for a long time.
That can, you know, spareresources like or allocate.
Hey, you're the person who'sgoing to zoom into city council
(44:32):
every week because you're you'rea stay at home mom, so you can.
So you can't show up places,but you can zoom in right.
Who's our person that's goingto make phone calls?
Who's our person that's goingto show up for this right?
I think, because churchesalready have existing recurring
(44:53):
community, they have such anopportunity to plug in in that
way and then, because they havea lot of people, you know when
it comes time to show up, youcan show up.
When it comes time to put thatpressure, you can put the
pressure.
And, like you said earlier,ideally you're not just one
church doing it but you haverelationships with other
(45:16):
congregations and you know,ideally, some really rich
congregations throwing theirweight around Right To really
get this thing done based onshared values.
Speaker 1 (45:30):
Yeah, yeah.
And so maybe some of the workthat needs to be done in the
grassroots, at least in ourcontext, is, you know, making
some of those connections withthe wider church community,
(45:50):
doing some education and someinformation sharing, which needs
to be done with thoughtfulnessand intelligence.
My wife has corrected me for,essentially, you know, I'll have
a family member come to mykid's soccer game and ask me
what's going on withhomelessness soccer game, and
ask me what's going on withhomelessness, and then I'll end
up just like berating them aboutprivate equity and the cost of
housing.
And you know all the.
You know it's not.
You know well, why don't theyjust move to the desert?
Well, when you don't, whenyou're in poverty, like you know
, you're not mobile like you are.
If you're like in the uppermiddle class, you can just
bounce wherever you need to go.
(46:11):
You know, and you know I end upoverwhelming people, I think,
sometimes talking about this,but I think there's got to be
some ways we can connect withthe wider community, get people
informed, call them to payattention, which is hard right
now with you know certain, youknow Red people that are sucking
(46:31):
all the air out of the room onevery issue.
But these are, these are thethings that really matter
locally and and maybe we can tryto get some momentum to try to
get people paying attention tothis stuff so much I get so much
to write a book or have apodcast episode on this or
something.
But yeah Well, you know Iappreciate the time.
(46:53):
I don't want to take too muchof your time.
No-transcript that you'velearned.
(47:25):
That's new information, anylike what's the next, what's the
next stage of of uh, of your?
I don't know, maybe you'vealready answered this, but
what's next in your work?
Speaker 2 (47:37):
of your.
I don't know, maybe you'vealready answered this, but
what's next in your work?
Yeah, I mean, I'm alwayslearning, Um, I think you know,
and part of it's just becauseI'm I'm always growing on the
professional side of this, youknow.
Um, I think that, even morethan when I wrote that book, I'm
paying attention to housing,I'm learning about affordable
housing.
Um, I'm paying attention tohousing, I'm learning about
(47:59):
affordable housing.
I imagine the book after thebook I'm currently writing is
going to be more just,singularly focused on housing,
and homelessness will be more ofan adjacent rather than vice
versa.
And then I'm I'm always, youknow, because it does come up a
lot in our work, but alsobecause I think there is such a
strong faith entanglement withit.
(48:22):
I'm always interested inlearning and talking more about
substance use and substance usedisorders, or what we commonly
say addiction.
Right, um, I think there's somuch to be said and understood
about that by the christiancommunity that really gets lost,
um, but I'm I'm not at a placeto speak as an expert on that.
(48:48):
So, um, that's where I think alot of the next few years of my
attention is is going to be um,so I think, if I could fault my
first book on anything whichactually I have a bunch right,
because you write it and thenyou're like, oh, I don't want to
take, want to redo it.
Um, I think I there's a couplechapters that I do on substance
(49:10):
use and addiction and I wouldstand by 90 of it, but there's,
that's that 10% where I was like, ooh, I said I said that a
little too strongly or I leanedtoo hard into this methodology
that now I don't necessarilyagree with, because it came from
less informed of a place, as Iwish it would have, if that
(49:32):
makes sense if that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, I feel like that's anarea I'm learning a lot into.
Coming more from an angle, I'vebeen diving deep into issues of
trauma lately and I think thatthat the roots of that are all
around issues of addiction,substance abuse, disorders and,
um, and learning.
Maybe we can learn some of thattogether over the years here.
Um, my last question for youprobably uh, how do you keep
(49:59):
from getting like jaded?
You know, like, how do you keepthe energy and the hope?
Cause you seem you just alwayshave like very hopeful posture.
I'd say, you know, for thosewho don't know how to follow
Kevin on Twitter for a long time, until you know, twitter
basically stopped being fun andinteresting to be on and and
(50:20):
just always, like in yourwriting and in your work, you
always seem to be able tochallenge, but there's always
this like underlying grace andhope.
That's that's there.
And I know, for those of us whoare in the work, like it's hard
to maintain that becausethere's just so much negative
from every direction all thetime and the issues that we're
(50:41):
dealing with are so entrenchedand so complex.
Like, how do you, how do youmaintain that yourself?
Like, where is your hope andyour and your joy and the grace
you do your work with come from.
Speaker 2 (50:53):
I mean it comes from the people who are experiencing
this right Like I've.
I've never met a group morehopeful and joyful and resilient
than people who experiencehomelessness and still wake up
every day and show up, you know,and, and, and and demand in
(51:15):
their own way a better life.
You, um, or or, who find a wayto make beauty and life happen,
still without so much of wherewe think life and happiness come
from.
You know, um, and so, at theend of the day, when I find
(51:37):
myself despairing which is oftenright, and it seems to be
increasing Um, I, I've sort ofbuilt in this mechanism within
myself.
That sort of like reminds methat.
Like, oh, I'm probably spendingtoo much time away from real
(51:58):
people.
Then I need to get back to that.
At my old job, it just meant,oh, I need to stop doom
scrolling and go have a cup ofcoffee with what's his name or
what's her name out on the patioright here.
In my new job, it's like youknow what I need to go sit in
(52:19):
the drop-in center with thechess board because I need to
get away from the scarcity, Ineed to get away from the
despair and and borrow some hopefrom from somebody.
Speaker 1 (52:35):
Yeah, yeah, that's.
That's awesome, Perfect answer.
I love that.
Um any any final thoughts?
Things that you want to saythat we haven't talked about,
you know, at this point, Um, no,I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
I'm really grateful to have come on here and um, I
need to get back out to SanDiego.
Speaker 1 (52:55):
Yeah, man, come on, come on and say hello and, you
know, let us know if you want tocome and talk to a tiny little
church of people that arestruggling their way through it
and we'll be happy to host you.
Or, just, you know, welcome youto the city down here.
Sounds like my kind of people.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Well, yeah, again, I feel likeI could get asking questions for
(53:19):
another hour, but I reallyappreciate the time and, um,
really really deeply appreciatethe work and just the
camaraderie you know.
Again, in some ways, you knowyou're saying you're on when
we're online too much.
You just got to go like touchgrass, you know, as they say,
you got to go see some peopleface to face, but then then
there also is there has been atin CES.
(53:39):
I feel like it's missing rightnow partly because of the
downfall of Twitter, but, um,there there has been this
camaraderie with people that arein the work that does happen
online and that's, you know,just kind of being in touch with
you has been an important partof that for me over the last
several years.
So thank you for your work meover the last several years.
So thank you for your work, uh,keep it up, and um, blessings
(53:59):
to you as you uh head out foranother day out there, and I've
heard it's been sunny inminneapolis this week.
Is that, yeah, finally turned?
Speaker 2 (54:04):
around.
Yeah, it's like 40 degreesright now and we're just we're
ready to like put on ourswimsuits and jump in the lake
40 degrees.
Speaker 1 (54:12):
Yeah, you should come to san diego.
Yeah, all right.
Well, thanks, kevin, I'm goingto um end the recording here,
but thank you so much and um,yeah, hopefully we'll stay in
touch and keep on, keep onkeeping on together, thank you.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.