Use Respect and Hospitality, Not Force, to Get Homeless Into Hotel Rooms

Inside Safe, the initiative created by new Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass to move unhoused people out of encampments into hotel and motel rooms and ultimately more permanent housing has recently come under fire for poor, unsanitary conditions, uncaring staff, lack of food, poor communication, and sometimes ridiculous policies. Mutual aid groups, and other advocacy organizations involved with the homeless have termed the program “Inside Starving” and established a website showing atrocious stories of incompetence and poor quality services from the program: http://www.insidestarving.com

This is a perfect example of how homeless service programs fail on the basics of customer experience and make themselves ineffective by not doing the little things right. It also shows the pervasive attitude of not treating unhoused people as equals which ultimately results in negative publicity, a bad reputation of services amongst the unhoused community, poor adoption of the services by unhoused people, reluctance to accept future services, and ultimately program failure. Just by following the same steps of hospitality one would show to a customer in the private sector, or even a guest in your own home and having a systemic attitude shifters towards such, we can make these programs actually work without having to resort to the use of force.

The episode is a little rough and ran longer than expected, so my apologies.

Notes:

Inside Safe program is way better than other efforts but could use some improvement to say the least

No food, jail-like conditions, very
unsanitary, roaches, etc., no toiletries, not able to go to their work

Someone's tent got thrown away and didn't get a room because he was in the hospital getting amputation surgery. This is who needs the help!

The homeless service people all ordered themselves food but didn't get food for anyone else

Homeless service providers should listen to marketers. We also make people do things they don't want to do, but we can't hold a gun to your head to make you buy something.

My approach includes both policy expertise and marketing and sales knowledge, which is somewhat uncommon among social service providers, who see their customer as donors only and those people who know only work with donors

Inside Safe's “customer” is seen as those adversely affected by encampments

The solution is not more coercion, it's better services!

Overall patronizing inconsiderate attitude, even if they want to help and care, this is part of the system

They wouldn't do this to someone they invited over their house for example

A decent meal is cheap! Anyone organizing some kind of event knows this.

Homeless communities stick together, have a form of solidarity, and inform each other.

Word of mouth spreads

It’s just like product reviews, but why don't we see it that way?

Capitalism makes it so that when we provide a service to one type of people we feel like we can do it badly, even when it’s easy to do it better.

Give them something nice! People are happy when you treat them (and feed them) well. Doesn’t take much more money than what you were already spending

There’s a major difference in how the private and public sectors do temporary housing. It’s not impossible to get it right. I got temporary housing through insurance. It was great. This isn't hard.

Make them feel good about their decision, like it's exclusive and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity

Call staff "concierges" and little,stupid stuff like that, along with the substantive things that hospitality and human decency would call for.

Feed them! You do that at sales presentations to get them to talk to you. Give them the continental breakfast when you show up or something like that.

Or give them a brown bag once on the bus so it creates incentive, if you must make it only for those who accept the offer.

People who stay in the encampment are your top of funnel prospects, so still nurture those relationships.

Going through Inside Starving demands

This is an exchange. The homeless people have something the city wants and the city has something they want. The advocates need to get this. The city needs to as well.

You've got to give the people what they want, which is safe, accessible public spaces

One of them said don’t focus on aesthetics and “no cameras when council members come.” I think there should be limits and not get credit where it’s not due but this is an exchange. Let them get the recognition for doing something good.

Having a sanitary environment and not having drugs and crime are reasonable.

Both sides are going to posture. Like by say

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
This is the Fixer Punk podcast,the podcast that always stops at Costco before
inviting a large crowd over. I'mGrayson Peltier, So today I want to
talk about homelessness, which is anissue that I had discussed on a prior
episode in response to a listener question, and on that episode, I discussed

(00:23):
how some of the efforts that arebeing done to help the homeless aren't necessarily
being executed in the right way,and the issue of why there are people
that choose to stay on the streetsis because the services aren't very good,
they're bad conditions, they don't treatthem well, or the services are just

(00:44):
not available. There are too manyconditions they're put on things, they're put
in places they are more dangerous andless safe than staying on the streets.
Issues with crime and abuse and stufflike that serious problems. And there's an
example of this happening right now inLA There's a program that I think has

(01:07):
a lot of positives to it anda lot of great potential, and it's
better than a lot of the otherhomeless services that have been offered out there,
but there are some serious issues withit. It's the Inside Safe program,
launched by New La Mayor Karen Bass, which puts people who are homeless
and living in a encampment in certainspecific encampments. They don't it's not available

(01:32):
to everybody, it's only for certainencampments. Puts them into a hotel room
and they stay in that hotel ormotel location, presumably until they get permanent
housing. And they've promised that theywould be allowed to stay until they get
permanent housing of some sort, whichis really positive, and that's a lot,

(01:56):
a lot better than the typical sheltermodel, the warehouse shelter, where
you're just you have like a bedwith no privacy in the middle of just
like a large room with a bunchof with a bunch of people in there,
just with like cots all just likeyou're just sleeping around each other,
no privacy at all. Feels likea prison. Those kinds of things that

(02:22):
a lot of jurisdictions have tried arejust atrocious, and they've had their own
problems with obviously, because there's somany people in such close quarters, you
have you have problems between people thatcan arise at certain times, and people
sometimes feel safer on the streets,especially when you're dealing with situations of domestic
abuse, those types of those typesof problems, And this program seems really

(02:47):
good because it presumably gives you aprivate room and and there's supposed to be
some sort of permanent housing that's goingto come out, and also mental health
service, all kinds of other wraparound assistance is also supports supposed to be
part of Insight Safe. But whatwent wrong here is a bunch of very

(03:12):
little, easily solvable things that arejust not getting solved. And I think
there's one thing that comes down towhy these things aren't getting solved, and
I think it has to do withthe approach and the attitude to which homeless
services are undertaken. They are undertakenin a way that, in my opinion,
basically fails sales and marketing one Oone. They don't treat the people

(03:38):
who are who are homeless, whoare unhoused, who are in these situations,
with the level of courtesy and thelevel of service that really should be
expected in this type of situation.And I think that there are certain reasons
for that, and some of itis kind of fundamental to the culture and

(04:00):
fundamental to the way that capitalism hasprogrammed best to view people who are lesser
than each other, and to notnecessarily view somebody as an equal. But
these issues that have come up arerather simple, very like obvious things that
if you were providing a service tosomebody else, or if you're trying to
sell a service to somebody else,would immediately come up, like keeping people

(04:24):
without food an entire day while they'regoing through processing in lines and waiting in
places, promising things and not justnot delivering on them. Having somebody who
was like in the hospital. Oneexample was a somebody was in the hospital
gang an amputation surgery, had atent in one of these encampments, and
what they did was they just wentand instead of giving a hotel room,

(04:46):
he contacted the organization running the insidesafe and they said, yeah, you
get a hotel room. But apparentlybecause he was in the hospital gang and
amputation surgery, he didn't get ahotel room, and they just took his
tent and and through it in thetrash and even after they promised it to
them, and not giving people foodall day long, leaving people waiting for

(05:09):
long periods of time, Putting peoplein hotel and motel rooms that have roaches
that have all kinds of sanitary issues, not giving people like adequate toiletries.
You have like restrictions that make thatare sort of prison like or jail like

(05:30):
where they have to where there arecurfews and they're not allowed to have their
own room key. There are peoplethat are stuck in there. They can't
get out of there, even thoughthere are people that are homeless, and
people don't realize this, but theyhave jobs and they lose their jobs because
they can't they can't leave the place. All kinds of issues like that that

(05:51):
are honestly relatively easy to solve,but they just don't get solved. And
I think that we have to viewthis as an exchange. We have to
view this as similar to an actuallike like it like it like an actual

(06:13):
business transaction, like like you havelike you have a customer on the other
end of it. Because the privatesector has like temporary housing stuff that happens
all the time, like I hadI had a water leak in my house
and I got a extended stay hotel. I went to great experience, not
a problem, very good, noissues, and the insurance company took care

(06:39):
of everything in a very good way. So we know that housing people temporarily
who are affected by something is somethingthat's doable. It's not like I am,
it's not like we're asking to moveheaven and Earth necessarily. But the
same level of courtesy that is affordedto me, a relatively privileged person whose

(07:03):
expenses for my stay was being paidfor by a private company is not what's
going on when it's in this publicsystem, and of course that's that's how
public services and stuff like that tendto go. Unfortunately, what we have
to think about is that the peoplewho are unhoused in this situation have something

(07:29):
to give in exchange, which thisprogram actually explicitly explicitly and the way it's
designed, it's designed to be youexchange your tent that you're using to live
outside to get a hotel room.And there is a little bit of a
wacky issue there, which is thatsometimes people will be sharing tents with people

(07:50):
that they don't know, like someother person who maybe they don't get along
with U, and sometimes they don'thave enough hotel rooms, and somehow people
are getting paired with the abuser thatthey were abused by an am in a
domestic violence situation, which that's justatrocious that's like totally unacceptable. I don't

(08:11):
know who on earth would approve that, but that apparently is happening according to
the group that is bringing up thesegrievances. The group involved in bringing out
these grievances. There are multiple organizations, mostly mutual a groups involved, but
there they have a website called insideStarving dot com and it's called that because

(08:33):
these people will be left in thesehotel rooms without any food for extended periods
of time or very limited, verylittle food. And what is really really
I think that the first thing isto move out of sort of this coercive

(08:58):
You have to go kind of attitudeand like seeing it as either like a
benevolent type of control or like apolice or a governmental type or like a
law enforcement type control situation. Becausethe program's supposed to be voluntary. It's
supposed to be a voluntary thing,but apparently there's law enforcement involved in other
things that are not quite making itvoluntary. And people's tents that are getting

(09:22):
trashed and removed even when they're inthe hospital, stuff like that. But
we have to return to and thisis also this is also something that the
people who are advocating for the forthe inhouse communities need to understand as understand
that this is an exchange. Thereis something that is valuable, which is
the return of the public space tothe community from removing the tents from these

(09:50):
encampments from these communities, they arebothering them quite a bit, and that's
something that is being taken care of. So there is an exchange here.
There isn't. This isn't some sortof like, this isn't some sort of
just pure act of charity. AndI think that that's why when the organizations
say, well, no, youhave to we don't want to have a
policy where you have to give upyour tent. I think that giving up

(10:11):
the tent part, I think that'snot quite problematics, or at least it's
the least problematic thing about this program, because then it's an exchange, and
that that puts that into focus.What right now, The way that they
see it is that the people whoare involved in these homeless service efforts is

(10:33):
the people who do this work.I'm sure care a lot about these people,
but sort of like an very intrinsic, very subtle attitudinal shift that needs
to be made is that they seetheir customers being the people in the community
who are adversely affected by the encampments. They're like, Okay, we're doing

(10:54):
a service, We're doing a jobto get rid of this encampment for the
people who live in this neighborhood,which that's part of it. I think
that's part of it. Of Course, when the groups make their demands,
they're not going to acknowledge this inany way because they have to come in
strong part of the k fabe andthey have to come in strong with their
moral argument. And that's fine,but in reality, we do recognize that

(11:18):
a lot of this is about cleaningup these communities so that members of the
community who are not the person whois unhoused in the tent can use that
public space. Again, and mybackground, really, my approach to things
tends to be a little bit differentthan people that work on the political side.

(11:39):
A lot of people who work onthe political side or on the social
services side kind of adopts sort ofa mindset of patronizing control. For me,
my background is a combination of policyexpertise and marketing and sales knowledge,
which somewhat uncommon in this whole socialservice space. And I think that needs
to be applied to communicating with thepeople who are there. A lot of

(12:03):
times when we're talking about like privatesector philanthropy, they see their customers just
being the donors, and only theonly people who actually know how to how
to mark it well and talk andnegotiate with people are the people who work
with donors, not necessarily peopleho aredoing services, which is which is ridiculous
because you don't want this patronizing,inconsiderate attitude to be part of this.

(12:28):
People want to be treated as equals. You wouldn't like treat like like if
somebody invited you, If you invitedsomebody over to your house, you wouldn't
just like leave them there for hoursand hours and hours. You wouldn't like
not attend to them. You'd makesure that things are set up for them.
I was only slightly joking a littlebit about that Costco remark at the

(12:52):
beginning of the episode. But it'slike, you take care of them,
you you you feed them, youmake sure that they're comfortable. And you're
asking people who distrust your institutional righty, who don't have a good relationship with
the institutions of the government, thehomeless service organizations, certainly the sanitation and

(13:13):
the law enforcement they don't have agood relationship with. You're asking them to
trust you. And when you're tryingto sell something to somebody, you're also
asking them to trust you. Likeas a marketer, you're trying to get
people to do something that they don'tnecessarily want to do. You're trying to
get people to part with their moneyin a way that they maybe didn't want

(13:35):
to before they heard your messaging.And we don't have the ability to hold
a gun to somebody's head to makethem buy a product. Obviously, the
government, I think kind of inthese homeless situations leans too much on that
use of force. Maybe sometimes ifsomebody's doing something actually like criminal or harmful

(13:58):
to other people, then you haveto take action about it. But when
you're trying to get somebody to agreeto services, you have to treat it
like that, like it's like it'sa customer, like it's somebody that you
actually genuinely want to help, oreven if it's like a friend, somebody
that you that you want to dosomething good for, not somebody who's like
a subject or some sort of cogin a machine. And these homeless service

(14:20):
workers, one of the things thathappened was that is that the people who
are running this thing, they madesure to get lunch orders and breakfast orders
and bringing donuts and all of thatfor the homeless service workers. But they
have these people outside waiting forever andever to go through this process or waiting
to get into the hotel and whatever, and they didn't keep them fat all

(14:41):
day long. That's a simple thing. And one of the things you have
to understand is is that the homelesscommunity. I've I've talked about this a
little bit on the on a fewprior episodes, but the homeless community does
stick together. They have a sortof solidarity with each other. They talk
to each other, they are they'recooperating with the each other in certain ways.
And they've obviously they've gone some ofthese mutual aid groups up in LA

(15:05):
and they have and they formed abond with some of the people in these
groups, and they will get toknow people are always like, okay,
they are these stubborn homeless people whowon't accept services. But just like in
any sort of marketing or sales situation, any business that's selling a product,
people have friend groups and communities whowill say, oh, yeah, this

(15:26):
company did me right, they didsomething good for me. I like the
service, I like the product,I like the food, I like the
experience, the entertainment I had thisplace. I like this place that did
my car a bear. It's thesame thing with homeless services. If people

(15:46):
have a positive impression of the servicesyou're providing, they are going to say
good things about it to the peoplethat they know. And homeless people do
talk to each other, and Ithink that a lot of service providers just
completely forget about that. There's wordof mouth. There may not be a
Yelp, but there is. Evennow that a lot of them have gotten
access to smartphones or um internet accessthrough libraries or through the Affordable Connectivity program

(16:11):
those types of programs, which that'sa necessity oftentimes to find and keep a
job. They're talking to each other. They're even texting these these mutual aid
groups and they're telling them about thebad things they are going on in these
in these programs, Like there aretext message streads on that inside Starving dot
Com of like saying they've they've hadto move people multiple times around there.

(16:36):
There are people that only got onefifty dollars gift card for food they've been
calling and the organization Saint Joseph's that'srunning some of these inside safe locations asking
for food and then they they theydidn't get anything and they had to beg
on the phone. It's a badexperience. It's a bad experience. And

(16:56):
they're talking about the roaches that theyare seeing these places. They're hearing like
all kinds of sounds in the wallsfrom like insects and vermin and all kinds
of stuff like that. Not havingsufficient toiletry is going to unsafe, not
clean locations, people that haven't gottentheir medicine, people that are supposed to

(17:17):
get mental health services that aren't gettingthem. Word gets out. And if
you want to solve this problem,if you want your end of the bargain
to be held up, you wantto get rid of these encampments, and
you have to talk to people.And this is the part for the advocates,
is that myself, as somebody whois a who is both a marketer
and a communications consultant for activists andpolitical organizations, if they were my client,

(17:45):
I would tell them, well,look, obviously, you keep your
demands, you keep them strong,you keep going, you keep that going.
But you need to understand that you'realso giving them something in return.
The people that you're representing, thepeople, the unhoused people in these community
have something that the remainder of thecommunity, the remainder of the taxpayers want,

(18:06):
which is to get rid of thoseencampments. And that is leverage in
a way, But don't you don'tgo too far. You have to act
responsibly too. There are some claimsthat are going out there from these organizations.
They're saying that some of these homelessmutual a groups are telling people to

(18:26):
stay on the street and not acceptthe rooms, and that just makes them
seem like bad people who are negotiatingin bad faith. So there is a
balance there. There's a delicate balancein the game theory of all of this
to make it work, and Ithink that that needs to be emphasized in

(18:48):
some of these discussions. And thisis supposed to be a voluntary program,
and the only way that the volunteeryprogram is going to work is if you
actually start doing the little things rightlike making sure people are fed. Heck,
I would make sure that when theyshow up to these encampments if I
was working for these homeless service organizationsor they hired me as a consultant.
I would tell them, make everythingfeel amazing. You want to make the

(19:12):
people that you're talking to that you'retrying to convince to do this deal with
you to get their tent out ofthe out of the community so that the
local residents can have their public spaceback. You want to make them feel
good about what they're doing. Youwant to make them feel great, like
this is a really great decision.You want to butter them up, and
you want to even give them anice meal even when you show up there.

(19:33):
Make sure you have a nice mealset up for them. This is
this is simple, easy stuff thatis not going to cost you that much
money. You want to have anice meal set up for them. You
want have a nice bag, likelike one of the demands from the groups,
which is super logical, is havea nice bag with all the toiletries
the santation supplies that you need,toothpaste, toothbrush, that kind of stuff

(20:00):
that you need if you're going intoa hotel room. That is simple stuff.
And if you see those those littlebits of actually showing like you care
about the person, are going toget them to want to accept it more
than just like a here's here's atrash truck that's going to come right in
and grab your stuff right now.And here all these trash sanitation workers are
going to throw everything out. Everythingthat's your life. We're seeing that is

(20:23):
that's just trash that has to getremoved. Sure, there's trash has to
get your trash has to be cleanedup. But if you want the people
to feel good about what they're doing, you want them to read it,
then you have to treat them assuch. If somebody tried to sell you
some sort of project or service,somebody tried to get you to sell your

(20:45):
house, and they were treating youbadly, I don't think you do the
deal, and especially if they're notgiving you what you expected in return.
And there's an issue where a lotof these people that are in these um
they're being taken to these motels,they're not being told what motel they're going
to, not being told the location. A lot of them will have jobs

(21:07):
in the area and they can't getback to their job because they're like they're
too far away and there's not clearcommunication, not clear written information of where
they're going, or sometimes they'll beabruptly moved from one location to another without
notice. Those are the kinds ofthings again super simple. Tell them,
give them all the information they needin writing, give it all to them

(21:29):
ahead of time, plan these thingsahead of time, and actually talk to
people in a way that makes youseem trustworthy, which is really the part
that just keeps getting failed over andover and over again. And to make
up for the lack of care,courtesy, consideration and actually selling this as

(21:51):
being a good thing to the targetpopulation, then you just bring in coercion.
Then you bring in like sweeps andlaw enforcement and stuff like that.
And I'm not saying that there's nevera place for that. Again, if
somebody's being violent, if they're doingdamage to somebody else, you have to
stop that, but you have tostart with actually showing them that you're giving

(22:17):
something that they want to have.The fact that this is for certain encampments
only, I think allows an opportunityto make it seem like this is an
exclusive thing. One of the keythings that like, when you're doing any
sort of marketing, you want tomake the person on the other end the
end of it feel special. Youwant to make them feel like like this

(22:37):
is something that only I get Thisis like a once in a lifetime opportunity.
This is an opportunity doesn't come aroundvery often. If you've gone to
any sort of sale. That's howit feels. They should do that here.
They're like and make the whole atmospherein the environment of it like,
we really really care about you,we really want to help you, and

(23:00):
this is an opportunity. This isa special opportunity. I know that there
are some one of some of theadvocates, we're saying that the workers are
making false promises. Of course,don't make false promises, but make the
people feel special, feed them,give them what they need to make them
feel like this is a good thingto do. You don't need to get
break out the force and the andall all of that stuff without at least

(23:26):
trying to persuade. And that's thething is a lot to feel feel in
government and in these organizations, feellike they don't need to persuade anybody.
They should be lucky that they're evengetting a room, which it's a good
thing there they are unlucky to geta room. But you need to still

(23:48):
at least treat them with some sortof dignity. And you could even just
go and start just doing all thesethings of like making of just making it
feel more special, more like it'sa real experience. You can do stupid
stuff like having obviously you want tohave you want to have plenty of staff.
There are times when people are justleft alone with no staff attending to

(24:11):
them, and sometimes there's need.Sometimes these programs do have like more secure
environments. I guess you can saythat the advocates say, are a little
bit more carcerole, and that's nota good thing. But if you have
to have safety type measures in place, you have to have more staff involvement.
Make it seem like the staff involvementit's some sort of positive like call

(24:34):
the people who work on these thingsconciergees or something like that. Make the
people feel good about what's going on, like that they're doing extra stuff to
care for them, like it's likeit's a feature, not a bug.
But of course, making people feelgood make means giving people the autonomy that

(24:56):
they need, and and that shouldbe if you can do that, then
that should be what you do.In some cases, though, you do
need to control situations for sanitation,make sure things are clean when people are
coming in from the street, makesure that there isn't drug deals or crime
going on outside. But a lotof un housed communities that have decided to

(25:21):
stay there side stay and encampments isbecause they felt like the other shelters were
just not controlling those kinds of issues. So controlling those kinds of issues and
making sure that it's a safe environmentcan be seen as a positive, but
you have to do it in away that makes it seem positive. And
when you have these types of programs, there is a there is a media

(25:45):
narrative outside of this narrative within thehomeless community, and I think that's again
something that's been forgotten, is thefact that there is a narrative, there
is a discourse whenever you do something, just like if there's a new something
that's going on in in your community, that's that's happening, You're going to
post on social media, you're gonnatalk to other people. You know,
there is that narrative. There isthat discourse within the unhoused communities too.

(26:11):
Um but outside of that, there'sthe greater narrative to the general mass media
that's going on. And of courselegislators they want to look good and say,
oh, yes, Karen Bass I'ma new mayor where I'm taking care
of homelessness. We're really helping thesepeople. If you if you obviously,
if you have cracks in the systemlike this, that you're not going to

(26:32):
maintain that good positive rapport with theoverall community. If if the if the
people in the especially the advocacy groupsgo to the media and say, well,
look, this isn't this isn't working. But a lot of times that
I've noticed this in the overall discoursearound homelessness, especially in Los Angeles,
people are like, I don't care. I just want them gone from my

(26:56):
neighborhood. I this is a threatto my children. There are needles all
over the play it's dirty, there'sdisease, and my children can't play outside.
So just do whatever you have toto get rid of them. And
that maybe feeds into some of theharshness that some of these people who work
in this field have is because theyfeel like they're being pressured by their true
client here, which is the peoplein these communities that are complaining about it,

(27:22):
like they're being pressured. But youhave to kind of you have to
temper that, you have to actin a way that you're being responsible and
responsive to both and you have tostill though obviously some of the advocates were
saying, well, note, whencouncil members come and try to help out,
there should be no cameras. Oneof the lists of demands said that,

(27:45):
and then they said that there shouldn'tbe a focus on aesthetics, but
on the humanity of the people there, which yes, on a fundamental moral
principled ground. Yes, you shouldbe focusing on the needs of the people
that are there. But the realitywe have to work with reality here.
The reality is that most people inthe communities, it seems like we're at
least a growing number of them,only care about getting rid of the esthetic

(28:10):
problem and the safety hazard posed bythe encampments, not necessarily about giving the
homeless people what they want. Butyou want to set it up as and
this is to the advocates here,this is the means to get you what
you want. You've got to givethe people what they want. This is
how you give the people what theywant, and they should be allowed there.

(28:33):
They're saying, no cameras when thecouncil members come over, if they're
doing a good job, if they'redoing something good then let them get the
recognition from it. Again, I'ma little bit biased as a communications consultant,
but if the council members and everybodyinvolves is doing the right thing,
then heck let them have their photoop. Of course, privacy all of
that stuff. You want to protectpeople's privacy. But if they're doing the

(28:56):
right thing, then why not letthem show it off. I know they're
not doing the right thing now,but hopefully that will get resolved. And
that's the goal here. The goalis not to keep people on the streets,
and sometimes there are there is thisvery very small group within the Mutual
Aid more radical homeless advocacy community thathas been that some have accused to basically

(29:21):
want to keep them on the streetsand keep the nuisance there until there's perfect
affordable housing, permanent housing and notallowing them and telling people that are homeless
to not go to a hotel temporarilyor a motel or take these arrangements.
And I think, again, Ithink that's ridiculous. Word gets out,
the narrative gets out, even ifyou're trying to keep it contained. You

(29:45):
want to be part of the solutionand not a part of the problem.
You're not going to if you takea super unreasonable stance in negotiation, just
like when the some of the othercommunities do homeless services where they're like get
away from this location and you haveto or else you have to go into
this shelter with with just a cot, with like hundreds of other people in

(30:11):
one one warehouse. When they givethat unreasonable position, that's not going to
cause the unhoused people to move.If you take the position that until we
have permanent housing built, there's they'renot going to get off the streets,
then that's not going to help either. And that is also an unreasonable position
that's not going to look good forthe overall narrative. That being said,

(30:37):
I did want to go through someof the inside starving groups demands in regards
to this situation and kind of kindof break them down a little bit,
and I'm going to start to sortof call balls and strikes on this a
little bit so we can see kindof fantasy book how we can solve this
situation. So on their website,it does stay here that inside Safe Operations

(31:03):
participants wait for hours, days,and sometimes weeks from the timecase workers to
announce the program to an offer ofshelter. Once the program is in full
swing, they must give up theirtent for a motel room and the one
tent for one room rule. Thisdangerous exchange places domestic abuse victims with their
abusers, forces platonic camp mates toshare rooms, sometimes with just one bed,

(31:26):
and completely disregards vehicle dwellers. Yeah, the one tent, one room.
I get the exchange part of it, but I think it's again,
I think it's a little bit alittle too dogmatic to say one tent,
one room. So I'm gonna allagree with them on that giving up their
tent. Yeah, but it's fora room for a person. And then

(31:47):
of course if you have like smallerchildren or whatever people want to stay in
like the same room, like amarried couple, whatever. Sure, but
a person should should get a roomand their own bed if they're staying in
the same room and it says you'reafter giving up their tent, Participants are

(32:07):
clear from their account encampment and loadedon a bus, often without a clue
where they're headed. When they arriveat the first motel, there is typically
no one to greet them, noorientation or information, and no food.
Some placements have carstal rules like lightschecks, a ten pm curfew, a
two bag limit, no visitors,no visiting each other's rooms, bag checks

(32:28):
and pack downs. Others lack basicKaiji items, towels, betting in one
participants here, Roaches crawling in thewalls when they turn off their lights at
night. Again, this is thesimple stuff, the simple stuff, like
you, like, you don't wantto put all these ridiculous rules in place

(32:49):
when you can do temporary housing,to do safe temporary housing without doing this
kind of stuff and all, andthen of course no information, no one
there to greet them, that kindof stuff. Again, simple. You
have people there to help people out. If this was you, if this
was your situation, if this wasyou, those displays from your home for

(33:13):
some reason, is this how you'dwant to be treated. No, But
the people who work in these things, the people who are in government,
kind of lose sight of that,and they're just like, we just need
the quickest possible way to get this, to get this fixed. So they're
not even taking the proper attitude towardthe customer experience, so to speak.
But they do have the main websiteI was talking about. There's some Google

(33:36):
docs linked on this Inside Starving websiteas well. But the main website has
a set of demands on here.There are ten of them here, actually,
yeah ten, it' says here.Inside Safe must be a completely voluntary
program with no bs, lies,tricks, or promises that can't be met.
People must be allowed the choice.I agree with that. I agree

(33:59):
with that. You want to,at least at the beginning, you want
to make this thing totally voluntary,and you want to make them feel good
again. You want to make themfeel good about their decision. You want
to make them feel like, no, I'm not being forced to do this
is something that I'm doing because Iwant to do it, because this is
a really good thing. Even ifyou know that that encampment has to be
cleared out, then you just showthem. Look everybody else, the people

(34:22):
at that encampment probably all talk toeach other. Look, this person went
and they had a great experience,and they're getting into their housing. They're
in a room, they're safe,they're comfortable. Another thing, and I
forgot to mention this before, butpeople were saying they didn't have enough blankets,
and these mutual A groups have beengetting in addition to them having to
get the food. They're having toget blankets and all the pillows, that

(34:46):
kind of stuff, like the basicstuff that you'd expect in a hotel room.
Just do that basic stuff right,and more people want to come.
Abolish the one tent for one roomrule. I agree, it's people are
not tense. Yeah, each personshould should get there, should get their
own room. Out of this,you have to give up the tent,
yeah, because you're that's the exchange. But they but I agree there give

(35:09):
on house people to details of theprogram and the writing alte in writing alright
covered that duration of the stay.The location services provided the motel placement must
be located within five miles of theparticipants in encampment and must not be infested
with pets pests, sorry not petspests. Agree totally on the on the

(35:30):
latter part former part within five miles. Sometimes I don't know if it's possible
every single time to get within fivemiles. If you wind up you can't
find enough rooms within five miles ofit, then at least if you tell
them where it is and let themdecide. I think it's fine to have
a further distance, but try asbest as possible to get close by because

(35:51):
these people are are possibly living inthat area because they're trying to get to
a job. The motel must nothave any unnecessarily restrictive carcel rules. Of
course, I agree there, exceptfor like whatever's necessary for safety. If
there's if there's some sort of safetyconcern, then do it. But do

(36:13):
it in a way that makes itfeel good. Try to make it feel
like this is for your benefit insome way, not in a rude,
cold, uncaring way the way thatthese workers have been doing it. Again,
if this was you in this situation, if you were like me and
you were out of your house becauseyou had a water leak or whatever,
would you want the people who arewho are taking care of you and putting

(36:35):
you up in a hotel to treatyou this way. No, the motel
must not limit the number of belongingspeople can bring with them. Supposedly they're
providing storage for extra belongings, butthey're not telling people about it. They
should definitely provide storage and make itmore clear again, more clear, better
communication about the extra storage. Ican kind of understand it if you can't

(36:59):
fit all the stuff in the room, but if you can fit it in
the room, reasonably. Then that'sthen then then that should be fine.
Adequate food must provide every step ofthe process, including at the inside Safe
operation. People must provide with nurishingmeals or enough money to access nurishing meals
themselves. This is easy again.People are going to feel good if you

(37:23):
if you show up to the encampmentand you at least, like in the
morning when you're doing this thing,at least give them like the whole like
Ramata Continental breakfast type thing. Actually, I don't know if Ramada ends have
Continental breakfast. I'm more of aHilton guy. But total side note there,
but do you know what I'm talkingabout? Have even make it a

(37:43):
nice setup with food for them,or even if you're trying to get them
to get on the bus to goto this location. Um, you maybe
give them their brown bag meal oncethey're on the bus. But people feel
better when you feed them. They'llbe more likely to do what you want
them to do if they feel goodin some way. That's why you take

(38:08):
clients out to launch provide the wraparound care and mental ath services. The
mayor promised both the Inside Safe participantsand the people who choose to stay behind.
Yeah, they got to get theservices they're promised, and a lot
of the people that a lot ofthe people and this is a win win
on the mental health services, especiallya lot of the people that have these

(38:28):
very antagonistic attitudes towards homeless people aresaying, well, it's because they have
mental problems. They need to helpget help for the mental problems before you
give them housing. So at leastfollow through on that. That's saying both
you at your constituents and the andthe homeless advocacy people agree on. And
then of course and the people whochoose to stay behind. I think that
the services may have to be differentfor people who choose to stay behind versus

(38:52):
those who go into the program,because I think their needs will probably be
different, and the way you administerit is different. You probably want to
leave some incentive but adequate services thatmake the program seem enticing and that build
a good positive relationship and make thepeople who stay behind want to possibly consider
coming in to the program. Youwant to make it, make it again.

(39:15):
If they go through the mental healthtreatment, they're like, this is
the these therapy is really helping me. The psychiatrists really helping me. This
is really good. These people arereally good people. You want to make
them feel that way, and thenthey're like, oh, yes, maybe
I should leave the encampment and cometo come to one of these motel sites.

(39:38):
Do not implement forty one point eighteenzones for those who choose to remain
at the encampment. We want housekeys, not handcuffs. This is basically
saying, don't arrest people for choosingto remain at the at the at the
encampment, don't enforce like loitering lawsthere. And I would say, yeah,

(40:00):
for a period of time while you'reattempting to persuade people to leave,
then yeah, you want to Youdon't want to lead with law enforcement and
an arrest and a criminal record.You want to lead with we're really trying
to help you, and this isa really good thing for you to do,
and this is going to be soamazing if you decide to come over
to one of these sites. Obviously, at some point, again people become

(40:24):
harmful in some way and they're justnot taking the help, then that's going
to be a different story. ButI think that there's hope even for those
people. If you actually treat peoplewriting you do all the right things to
begin with, people are going tobe reasonable, especially if giving them the
mental health help, They're going tostart to think positively when they see positive
things happen, and let me seepositive things happen to the people that they

(40:46):
have grown attached to in these communityand grown upon with and wanting to and
wanting to listen to. I amdefinitely going away above the amount of time
that I expected for this episode,So thank you so much for taking the
time to listen. This was definitelypretty messy, a lot messier than I

(41:07):
expected of an episode. If youhave any feedback, any input, If
you're going through a bad situation withgovernment, employers, whoever, you want
me to break it down, givesome analysis on it, or if you
just want to vent to me,whether it's related to this or not,
call into the toll free number,leave a message anytime, day or night.
Eight four four four seven seven seveneight six five eight four four four

(41:30):
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a business that's focused on social responsibility, or if you're leading any sort of
nonprofit effort and you want to knowhow to communicate and engage with all stakeholders,

(41:52):
well, then please check out offspeed Solutions dot com my consulting practice
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(42:15):
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Grace and Nation. Again, thankyou so much for your time and I
hope you'll choose to join me againfor the next episode.