 This is Think Tech Hawai'i. The community matters here. Hi. Welcome to Seymour's World on Think Tech Hawai'i. It's a pleasure to have you here, and I have a very special guest for us. Before I introduce him, though, I want to tell you something to set the stage for you. Every Saturday and Sunday, I go to play tennis at Kapiolani Tennis Park. And I have coffee with a man who has become a very close friend of mine. His name is Tom Powell. Tom and I sit down for about half an hour, 45 minutes, before each tennis session, and we talk about the world. And I only found out recently that Tom lives in his car. He lives in his car at Kapiolani Tennis Park and has been there for several years. And here, this highly intelligent, very articulate man has become one of my best friends and somebody that I can talk to about anything, and I feel that Tom can talk about anything to me. So I wanted to talk about the homeless situation. I wanted to talk about why it is so terrible, not just here in Honolulu, but everywhere around North America. And I felt that by having Tom on air with me on Seymour's World, we may not be able to solve all the problems, but we can actually understand what it is from the grassroots, not from the social workers, not from the politicians, not from all of the people who say they know what to do. But we're going to hear and talk to Tom about the actual living conditions as a homeless person here in Hawaii. So Tom, welcome to Seymour's World. Pleasure to be here and thanks for having me on the show. It is an absolute pleasure. I'm actually, I have goosebumps, because this has been something I've wanted to do with you for several months and we finally got the timing to have you come. And I know it's not easy for you to be here because you're open to the audience of the world, but I want them to understand who you are. Tell us a little bit about your past. Okay. Oh, that part about intelligent and articulate and all that. Can I get that in writing? Yes, go ahead. Basically, I first came to Hawaii in the late 60s with the military on my way to lovely Vietnam where they said I was needed, which of course wasn't quite the case. And after bouncing back a little more, back and forth between here and there for a little more than four years, I separated locally because they had just changed the regulations to where you could do that. Prior to that, you had to go back to Treasure Island to separate from the Navy on the West Coast. So I separated locally and I did want to stay in Hawaii. I had come to enjoy the community quite a bit. I wanted to do some more scuba diving, which turned out to be the excuse that sounded good. I called my family and told them I was going to stay for a little while and do some more scuba diving, which I did for the first decade or so. I practically lived on the beaches here. But after that reality came around and I had to start going and doing things, which I had sort of been doing, but I was doing more scuba diving than anything else. I think the real reason was I didn't want to go back home. Denver was a fairly sterile community at that time. Very, very, very middle of the road. A bit on the conservative side too in terms of thinking, not necessarily inflexible or intolerant, but just whatever you do, keep it to yourself, keep it behind closed doors, we don't want to know. But it was not a diverse community in those days at all. Were you living in Hawaii and working at the time, or were you living on the beach homeless at the time? I was actually working at the time. Various things. My first job was actually with an air conditioning representative here working in the warehouse, and occasionally taking air conditioning units out to a job site, either to unload them or to help whoever the installer was from one of their sister corporations put the thing in. But the dock strike happened and the inventory dried up. And I wasn't the most recent hire. The most recent hire was a local Japanese guy, but he had a family and I didn't. So at that point, Tom, when you were working in Hawaii and living in Hawaii at the time, that led to some good work as well, didn't it? You were working, you had other jobs as well, besides the air conditioning gig. Well, I went from the air conditioning gig to actually selling cookware door to door. Really? And I sold cookware door to door for a number of months, and I finally learned to sell, which was mostly a matter of learning to shut up. You asked the closing question, shut your mouth. But I found that product belief is everything. When your product belief begins to falter, so do your sales. Because if you don't really believe in it, it's very hard to make anybody else believe in it. So you had a career in sales, you had a career in warehouse distribution, all that stuff. And then when I met you a year or two ago, you were already at Capilani Tennis Center. So what were you doing at that time in the last couple of years? Whatever I can get, whatever I can get. The trouble with being darn near 70 and looking for work is they accept the application and thank you very much, and that's the end of it. It's really difficult to hire anybody that's that age from a healthcare standpoint. You've got to provide healthcare for your employees if you're of a certain size and your health insurance people are going to be crazy on you if you start hiring a bunch of people who are practically pushing up daisies. What tech are you doing? Can't you find any people who are 35? So if two candidates are available for the job and one is under 45 and the other one is pushing 70, guess who gets the job? And nobody says this. Sometimes I got so tired of beating my head on that wall I wished they would call me up and read me out in four letter words and tell me we wouldn't hire you if you were the last person on the plant and here's why. At least give me a little feedback. But now you are working, right? Can I say what you're doing? Well, yeah, I'm driving part-time. I'm also doing some mechanical work on cars when I can get it. I'm doing construction work and painting part-time. Like I said, whatever I can get. You're a very proud individual, Tom. I've learned that over the years that I've known. Well, I am opinionated, but I think it's the right one. I think living in your car and being able to keep your head high the way you do is amazing. It's something, I mean, as a business consultant and a mentor to many people, I know a lot of people who are much higher than you in income level and much lower than you in personal stature, and I think that's important for you to know. Well, thank you. It's really true. Now, tell us a little bit about your finance. Everybody wants to know how do you make a living? Are you able to go from, well, if it is a paycheck or from work to work to make it happen? Sometimes it's really close. There are sometimes when I'm eating out of a can, I call it male to uncle's serve at Fresco. And if we translated that, we got to find a point on it. You know what, out of the can in the fresh air. Yes. But, yeah, it's hard to get hold of enough money to be able to live halfway decently because all of your food choices are pretty much what you can get out of restaurants. So you have some restaurants at the low end where for 8 to 12 bucks, you can get a really decent meal and you really only need one a day. But you have to learn to avoid the routine fast food stuff. There are only a few things out there that are palatable or good for you. We talked about this. You're better off to go to the supermarket and buy something and munch into it, you know, whatever it is. And Tom, the food choice is not just the other issue. You're very clean. You keep yourself that way all the time. You're able to find a way to live to give yourself cleanliness, good food, because you're in very good shape. And obviously, you're still working, which I think is fantastic. You're not relying on our social system. Am I correct? So far not. I'm sort of considered stupid because I haven't been. I would have eaten better if I had EBT or something like that, quite a bit better. But so far, I just haven't been able to bring myself to do it. And on the soap and water issue, soap and water is not that expensive. When I can't afford that, I'm going to go over to the park and take a sharp blade with me. That'll be that. I mean, come on. It's just good for you. There are points past which you cannot allow life to push you if you expect to keep your sanity. But it is a fight with depression. The depression of all of it is very daunting. It's very difficult to deal with. And even though you can still laugh and tell jokes and things like that, you can still be really seriously depressed behind that, even to the point where I've had the medical people that are in my life notice it and offer me something for it. And I keep telling you, you've got an income and a pill. That would solve the problem. If you've got an income and a pill, I'm fine, because I know it's depressing me. I know it's causing the problem and we're going to deal with the cause or we're not going to deal with it. And the cause is finding a job. The cause is homelessness and lack of income. Well, that brings us right in. That's segue exactly into the next question. Describe homelessness here in Hawaii. Is it strictly a lack of income? Because when we look at what we're seeing on television with the homeless, it's not just a lack of income. There is issues about mental issues. We have issues about physical pills, addiction. Tell me what it's really like. That is all very much a part of it. You see, as I've seen it, it seems to break down in almost thirds. A third of the people out there are people who have mental issues and are really unprepared to fend for themselves. And one person living like that should ashamed us all. You see people that are in their 60s and 70s and quite clearly dealing with mental issues that they cannot surmount. Maybe they could with medication. Maybe they're on the medication already. You don't know. But they're constantly pushed from pillar to post, wherever they show up. They're not wanted. And they shouldn't have to live like that. Those people showed up on the street during and a little after the Reagan administration when the federal government pulled back the funds that used to support things like Lumeli Little Home. There was a place where these people could be kept, where they could be fed, where they could be housed, where people could look after them, make sure they fit their medications, where they had clean facilities, where they had people to help them with whatever activities of daily living they might be challenged by. But the mental issues are still there today. We have as many, that one third that you're talking about, it's still there. Yes, they're definitely on the street. Now there are other people who are, I suppose you could say, voluntarily mentally challenged. They are substance abusers. They are clearly unable to help themselves. Often they're unwilling to accept help. And this is where the difficulty comes in. Because until they want help, until they decide they need to do something different, it's very difficult to help them. This is a very significant watershed in any kind of dysfunction or addiction that way. Even just simple alcoholism. That will keep you on the street. That will keep you out there. That will keep you doing nothing and getting nowhere. Tom, both of those are critical issues in what we're going to talk about after our break. The biggest problem I have in what you said is that people that are addicted to substance abuse, they don't want to help themselves. I honestly believe that addiction is a disease. And I believe that it has to be looked at from the government standpoint, city, state, federal government, so that it becomes part of the social system network we have to help, rather than look at it and say, why don't they help themselves? And I think we're going to talk about that after the break. And then you have the third third of them all, which are people who, for whatever reason, they don't want to cope. They could cope. We're going to talk about what do we do about those as well. Give us a minute. This is Seymour's World. I'm Seymour Kazimurski with my very good friend Tom Powell. We have to take a short break, and we're coming back to try to find how we fix the homeless situation here in Hawaii. Ted Rawson here, folks. You're a host on Where the Drone Leads, our weekly show at noon on Thursdays here on Think Deck. We talk about drones, anything to do about drones, drones, remotely piloted aircraft, unmanned aircraft, whatever you want to call them, emerging into Hawaii's economy, educational framework, and our public life. We talk about things associated with the use, the misuse, technology, engineering, legislation with the local experts as well as people from across the country. Please join us noon on Thursdays and catch the latest on what's taking place in the world of drones that might affect you. Aloha. My name is Steven Phillip Katz. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, and I'm the host of Shrink Wrap Hawaii, where I talk to other shrinks. Did you ever want to get your head shrunk? Well, this is the best place to come to pick one. I've been doing this. We must have 60 shows with a whole bunch of shrinks that you can look at. I'm here on Tuesdays at 3 o'clock every other Tuesday. I hope you are too. Aloha. Hi. Welcome back to Seymour's World on Think Deck Hawaii. We have a show today with Tom Powell, one of my very good friends, who I have known for probably two to three years now. And I know him from playing tennis. He doesn't play tennis with us, but he is homeless, and he lives in his car at Capulani Tennis Center. And this is where I've got to know him. Every Saturday and Sunday morning, we have coffee together, and we talk. And I wanted him to come on the show to talk about what happened. So Tom, the first segment of our show went so quickly, we only did two of my questions. So we're going to have to go a little bit faster. Yes. Well, you identified the three parts of what the homeless situation is about. One, you said are the addicts. Two, you said are the people who don't want to do anything to help themselves. And third are the physical and mental issues that people may have. On all three of those, I feel we have to do something. And I feel that you have to help us understand what we should be doing to help each of those three pieces of the puzzle. Well, it's a very difficult issue because with the legal structure that we have in place, they're sort of doing what they think they can. And of course, it's totally ineffective. We're just moving people from one place to another. I get so angry with that, Tom. And they're spending piles of money to do it. Yeah, it's costing piles of money to do it. It's totally mis-spent. But it solves the... It gives political expedience. Yeah, it's a PR problem. It takes the thorn out of your shoe in one corner and puts it over in the other. And at a certain point politically, I suppose this is pro... If you look at it from the standpoint of an office folder, but it does nothing to solve the problem. Now, as to what solutions there are, the money would be better spent to try to do as much as you can for those that you can. That's the two-thirds. The physical and mental and the addict problem, right? Yes. The other part of the problem I really think is burgeoning not only here but in the United States for the simple reason that this country has been transformed into a less-than-prosperous country with a very low standard of living that people don't seem to be aware of. This used to be the highest standard of living in the world, in this country. It used to be the most prosperous nation on earth. And if it is compared to other countries, it no longer holds such a place, only in the minds of the people, which unfortunately have not changed. Now, why that is, I don't know, but I'm sort of aware that probably only about 12% to 15% of them have ever even had a passport. Fewer than that number have been outside the country in the last decade. But let me try to interpret what you're saying. It could be they just don't know that they're living in a third-world country. But let's assume now we're trying to look at the homeless situation. If we take the people who are mentally incapacitated physically incapacitated, who have addiction issues, and we get them into rehab centers, or we get them into shelters where people can help them and take care of them both physically, mentally, and addiction-wise, you still have that one-third. That's thousands of people that live here who don't want to move. What do we do with those? Do we do what they do in Singapore, where they pick them up and take them somewhere? You'll find actually that falls into... I was planning on asking you whether you wanted to talk about this seriously or humorously, because that falls into the kind of black humor side of this thing where we allocate the number of homeless people to each political district. Each political district having approximately the same number of people. So each district would get its allocation of homeless people. And we would have to live there. Then we could just issue the homeless-numbered T-shirts with yellow H on the front. And sooner or later, some Bret Young politics would come up with the final solution. You know, it's a chilling idea. We could also sell futures or sell... sort of... we could monetize them. And so the people in the wealthier districts could buy up all of the homeless living permits for their area, and the homeless would have to go someplace else, the homeless in general, so their mothers shrunk ahead for ten bucks. What about Tom? What about the... This would be a way to keep the homeless out of the better parts of town, if you will. I'm not worried about that part. I'm trying to think of a solution that helps us guide our politicians in understanding where we have to go. I heard one the other day that says, everybody who is homeless, if we were to give them a refuge, a place to go to, they would go to. You're saying one-third of them would not. They just don't want to be... they want to be able to take their dogs. They want to do everything that they want to do, which they have right now as a citizen of the U.S. What do we do, Tom? What can we do? The only thing that I think we can do is to try to work... well, short of the Singaporean laws, the Draconian laws, the only thing I think we can do is to try to transform the country back into a prosperous one where the average man on the bottom rung of the ladder can hold his head up to some extent. I think I told you about when I was a kid, I had a minimum wage job as one of only two full-time bag boys in the supermarket system in Denver. I was with, say, I was with another chain. We were the only two in the city, but I lived in what I made. I had my own apartment in a nice building, center block building, all carpeted, laundry in the basement, coin operated, of course, but didn't pay any utilities, fully heated, a nice little studio apartment. And you made enough money to be able to afford to live there with the subsidies that you were getting. I didn't have any subsidies at all. I had the minimum wage, the grocery store, I had a bus pass. I worked in the grocery store, and occasionally one of the butchers would take a package of chuck steak and market his hamburger. I'd buy it at 13 cents a pound instead of 29 cents a pound, but that was as far as it went. And that wasn't that awful. So now bring that to where we are today. Obviously, we're in a different phase, and I'm starting to understand what you're saying. If the country that wants to take care of the homeless situation, we have to make the atmosphere for them acceptable for them to not want to be homeless. Is that what you're saying? That would be a good first start. The simple fact is that there are homeless people out there who are homeless because they made a poor choice between rent food and medicine for their kids, and they chose wrong according to their landlord and chose food and medicine for their kids, and they are living in cars, and both the husband and wife have jobs most of the time more than one job because in the world that we have created it's very hard to get a full-time minimum wage if you get a part-time job because over 20 hours they have to start paying you benefits. They have to start paying the matching... They can't make enough money to actually rent a place, therefore they have to stay where they are. Exactly. They can't make enough money to get back in and they can barely make enough money to be where they are, and they get shoved from pillar to post. As soon as the police are aware that they're living in their cars they cite them, so they end up having to take time of a job they do have to go down to a cart and explain to the judge what it says. I mean, they're between a rock and a hard place. Tom, the frustration for me is not just for people like you because you're my friend, but you know I'm involved in children's programs at the hospital with our make-em smile and our foster kids. When I drive by a row of tents and I see kids there my heart just bleeds. I can't stand the idea that we live in such a prosperous nation we spend gazillions of dollars on bombs and all this kind of stuff and we can't take care of these people. What life solutions are those children learning? How are they learning to what kind of a lifestyle are they learning to look for? What kind of choices are they learning to make that are bad for them? It's just, yeah, it's very daunting. I have foster kids that I work with, Tom, that live in cars and they have to live in cars. That's just the way it is. And I understand that and I'm trying to help them via education I'm trying to help them via focusing on their future, looking at the light at the end of the tunnel. Everything that they need to take that first step forward so that they don't look back and do the same thing that they were there and some of them can't do it, Tom because we don't give them enough choices. We don't give them the right path to go forward. Education is the only antidote to poverty. You take a child from a family that has never had a college graduate in its membership and get that kid through university and you will have transformed him and his life and his family's life forever because he will insist that all of his children go through the university because he will know from comparing himself with his peers what difference this makes but Bernie Sanders stands up and says education ought to be free and he's a communist. He should be put away somewhere. In fact, the other day they announced that for the first time student loan debt outstrips credit card debt this is a horrifying statistic. And only in the United States but almost the rest of the world education is free but only here. Education and medicine are a given anywhere else. Everybody talks about how wonderful it is to have this wonderful healthcare system we have well it isn't so wonderful because it doesn't serve everybody and compare this country with any of those other countries. In those other countries where you want to start a business go start a business. In this country you figure out how the hell you're going to go home and explain to your wife and kids that you're probably going to go naked on healthcare right. Tom, we have a problem. Our show is over. We're out of time. Yes, we are out of time. And I do want to continue it and I hope you will be kind enough to join me again because we haven't really gone over. We've talked about the big picture. We've talked about the middle picture but I want to talk about the picture that says this is what we have to do. And I think we're getting there. I'm starting to see it myself and I'm sure our audience is starting to see it as well. Let's join me again. I would be glad to. I want to thank you so much for coming on Seymour's World. I would be glad to and thank you very much for having me on the show. It's been a pleasure. My pleasure. Really has been. Thank you very much. To all of you out there, I hope you learn something because I certainly have. Homelessness is not a simple issue. Extremely complicated. But just by saying that doesn't mean we should do nothing and move people from one location to another. That is ridiculous and it doesn't do anything for any of us. We will continue talking about it. I'm Seymour Kazimurski on Seymour's World Aloha.