 This is Think Tech Hawaii. Community matters here. Hi, welcome to Seymour's World on Think Tech Hawaii. We're going to have a wonderful show today. I have a repeat guest for us. His name is Tom Powell. He's a very good friend of mine who I've known for almost two and a half years. He's a homeless man who lives at Capulani Tennis Park in his car. And we have conversations every Saturday to talk about not just ourselves and what's going on in the world, but how do we fix the homeless situation? So a few weeks back, Tom came on the show and described the beginning of what our conversation was meant to be, which is what is the homeless situation? Why is it the way it is here today? What do we have to do to fix it? So we're going to get right into it because we just don't have a lot of time. Tom, welcome back to Seymour's World. Hi Seymour, thanks for having me. I actually just saw you yesterday because I played tennis yesterday afternoon and you were there but we didn't get a chance to talk. Well, hopefully we'll have more opportunities to talk in the future. Yes, as a matter of fact, I'll see you tomorrow morning at 6.30. Okay, perfect. I will bring you some coffee. Tom, we're going to get right into this. Our last show with you was one of the highest rated Seymour's World shows we've ever had. What does that mean? Very simply, people realize we have a problem here in Hawaii and it's all over the world. The homeless situation is growing and we understand the cost of living is high. We understand that the homeless are made up of the three groups that you described, the addiction group, the people who can't take care of themselves, and the mentally impaired group and something has to be done about it. But we didn't have enough time to answer some of the questions from the viewers. Would you help me with that first? Sure. Okay, number one, the first question I had from a viewer was, why are you still homeless because you seem so articulate and you seem to know what's going on in life? Well, the truth may set you free, but freedom may be living out of your car, not in your car, in copyrighted park at my age. Opportunities to become other than homeless don't just drop in your lap. It's difficult to find any good employment and you said something just a second ago, which I think we might hit on, homelessness is all over the nation. Is it all over the world? Yes, it is, but it's taken care of in many parts of the world. That's a different thing. We have the US, we have India, we have Denmark, where you see very many people sleeping on the street or Sweden or many other countries there. But is the economic issue, when you say, right now you made a statement and you said, and I'm paraphrasing, I am homeless because it's hard for me to get a job at my age. Is that one of the main reasons that you're homeless? Yeah, employment opportunities like this are very scarce. If you've got a chance to hire two people, and one of them is 70 and one of them is 38, who do you think your insurance company is going to yell at you for hiring? You're taking on a guy that's going to break the bank on your medical insurance? What are you thinking? Second, there's just a simple self-interest of a business. You have to take this into consideration when you're running a business. Who are you hiring? How reliable will they be? This lets a lot of homeless people out of the equation. That makes a lot of sense, actually. Employee reliability and job history counts in an interview. It's just that simple. Let me get to question number two. Sure. This question was from a viewer in Canada. Have you ever stayed in a shelter? No, came close to it once. Yeah, you wouldn't want to be there. Explain one thing. Well, generally they're not very well done. They're kind of zoos. Most of the shelters understandably sort of lean towards taking care of the women and the kids, which the children are really one of the big heartbreaks out there, is seeing children growing up homeless. I mean, that's got to leave an indelible mark. But the shelters understandably have to have rules, but they also don't offer very much in the way of amenity, appointment, whatever. Most shelters are geared towards giving you a place to sleep for the night. Well, what if I need a place to sleep during the day? Because you're working at night. Yeah, I mean, most of the jobs that homeless people can get are marginal jobs. A lot of them are cleanup work. A lot of them are in the service industry. Yeah, we close it too. You'll be off at 2.10. And you can't get into the shelter after. You can't get into the shelter because, as they said, if you're in the door at 9 o'clock, you're in the door. If you're not, you're not. And so being able to come and go, as you please, is impossible. Being separate enough from the rest of humanity so that you can hear yourself think is also impossible. And it's very difficult, especially in a high real estate cost place like Hawaii, to get enough space to have anything that you can have, any habitability in the place, any livability in the place. And most of the shelters are geared towards the very greatest need at the bottom. Right. I spoke to somebody in Santa Monica, California, where we have some business. And they said, their homeless situation is growing by the day. There's people all over the place. And they even have to have guards outside buildings now to make sure that homeless people don't go into the parking structures and set up a camp there overnight. Tom, it's not an easy problem. You and I discussed the word habitability. And that to me really makes, or I want our audience to understand how difficult it is for somebody who doesn't have enough money to pay rent. What do they do with their lives? What happens? And can you explain that a little bit? What goes on in your mind when all of a sudden you as an individual cannot afford to pay the rent and you're kicked out? The loss of control of your circumstances is very, very depressing. It can't help but have a severe impact on you. And how you let that impact affect you can have a lot to do with what goes on later. I'm assuming you're talking about depression as a potential side. Depression, self-medication with whatever you can get, whether it's legal or not. Alcohol is just another drug. This is just another way of kicking the can of your problems down the road for an hour or two, trying to escape, trying to relieve the pressure. And, of course, the pressure only grows when we have things like these sweeps and sit liban and things like that. The mayor's terminology for this is beneficial disruption. He hopes that the disruption of this will make it unpleasant enough for you to stay out there, that it will stimulate you to try to find help and try to get out of the situation. Wait, wait. I need to interrupt. I'm sorry. First of all, I'm not defending the mayor, but we have to understand that his responsibility to the taxpayers is just as important as his responsibility to the homeless people. He's between a rock and a hard place on this, and I'm sure you would hear exactly that from him. He's damned if he doesn't, damned if he doesn't, no matter what he does. And that's anywhere in the world, Tom, that has this situation. Yes. But our goal today on this show, I have the ear of Governor E. Gay. I have the ear of Mayor Caldwell. They both know me very well. And I have said to them, the solution that they have right now is A, inadequate, and B, it's not working. And what do you do when that happens? If you keep doing the same thing over again, you're a fool. So we have to come up with a solution. And I think the biggest problem I see is... Oh, tax cuts will do it. Tax cuts will provide prosperity and enable the job creation. Nice try, but that ain't good. Well, unfortunately, that's been the rule of the day since 1984 or 1985 when Reagan was in office and it's been going on again and again and again and again and again. And you see it work its way out to the near extreme as in Sam Brownbacks, Kansas, where he puts the state into a position of swimming in a sea of red ink unable to provide any of the services that it should. But Tom, services, the services that we need to do, remember if we could come up with a plan, and I'm not talking about a final solution of the plan of the homeless situation, but a path, if I could go tomorrow to the mayor and to the governor and say, I think this is the right beginning of a pathway that will lead to a solution. We know we can't do it all. I mean, if you take the addiction issue you mentioned prior to the show, a terrible situation of a 20-year-old who is sitting by a bus stop in Kaimuki, who is so out of it because of the method that she has taken over the years, she is probably not going to be able to be helped, but she's a homeless person. And she will be a homeless person unless we do something. So there's, I mean, I can see a path for that. That person has to be taken care of. She must go into an institution where she's going to be taken care of. We have to identify the problem and figure out the solution. This segment of the population as well as the children that are experiencing this, I mean, come on, what culpability can a child who isn't eight have in all of this? But one person living in those circumstances should ashamed everybody. Now, what happened? The state used to have facilities. A lot of the money was federal money. It dried up in that mid-A's period under that president. You cannot tell me. I can't tell you. Reagan pulled back money that used to support Little Hill Home. But that's federal. I really believe we have to take care of ourselves here in Hawaii. And I've said that to the mayor before, that our homeless situation here in Hawaii is our homeless situation. It's not the federal government. I'm sorry, I'm taking that point away from you. But in my mind, Tom, I want us to say we have a few thousand people that we need to help. We are a very wealthy state, no matter what people say, no matter how many billions they're paying for the rail, we have to take care of these people. I want to find a solution or a path to a solution with you that we can take back to our leaders and say, start here. This is step number one. This is step number two. That's what I'm hoping you will find. I see. Okay. Provide institutionalization, institutionalizing facilities for those who cannot fend for themselves. The people who are too old to fend for themselves, the people who are too mentally ill to defend themselves, whether that mental illness is self-induced or not, that gets rid of maybe, I would say 30% of the problem. So this leaves us dealing with the other two. Now, of that, again, you get down to the situation where, in Mary Caldwell's mind, apparently, I don't know, I shouldn't put words in his mouth. It's not very fair. He's just been quoted in the newspaper as having expressed these ideas. The disruption will help to stimulate people to seek help. Hold that thought, Tom, because we have to take a break. But I do want to say the first paths that I just heard from you are one of the most important. And that is that 30% of the homeless situation have to be in some way or form institutionalized because they can't take care of themselves. Whether it's the number big or the high. The number big or the high. Whatever it is, that is a path. That's something that we can work with that they are not considering right now as necessary. And believe it or not, when I was in Singapore last year, that's exactly what they're doing, exactly what they're doing. But we have to take a break. I hope you're enjoying this conversation because it is a conversation that's going to lead to a better life for all of us here in Hawaii and around the world. The idea of homelessness as part of our society is not something we should just let it sit there. We need, just like climate change, we have to do something about it. And I think that you can help. And I think that Tom is going to be able to give us some solutions after our break. Thank you for joining me on Seymour's World at ThinkDecawai. We'll be back in one minute. I'm Arsha Joyner inviting you to navigate the journey. Spend your time with us as we look through and discover all of the ins and outs of this journey through life. We're on Wednesdays at 11 a.m. and I would love to have you with us. Come navigate the journey. Aloha. Living in this crazy world. So caught up in the confusion. Nothing is making sense for me and you. Maybe we can find a solution. How to make a party. Hi, welcome back to Seymour's World on ThinkDecawai. We're having a heated discussion here with Tom Powell, my friend and my guest, a homeless individual who I respect tremendously because he wants to do something for his life and he wants to do something for the others in the homeless community. Tom, before we go back I'm going to put up a few pictures and these are pictures that we have of our situation here in Hawaii. And as you can see in this photograph, obviously this individual has all of his belongings in the shopping cart and he's just there, right? Yeah, it's awful. The place is taken be. There's somebody sleeping on the beach in Waikiki in the park. I believe that's the Queen's Beach if I'm not mistaken or close to it. And of course there's many, many people like that. Bet you a buck that kid takes every job he can get. Yes, I wouldn't be surprised. And this is the encampment I think at Kapalama. That's Coho Canal I believe. Okay, that's on the canal. As you can see there's just loads and loads of tents of people and it's something we've got to do something about. Let's look at the next one. Yeah, they swept that area up. Yeah, there's another encampment and it's unfortunately the current situation is we move these people from one place and they set up in another place that's not a solution, not even close. This is by far the toughest one for me Tom. This picture of these children and I see so many of them out there and you know what are we doing for them and you could see in this picture it's the little boy and his brothers on the other side and whatever is happening is not good. We must do something to help them. And the last one. This is an older gentleman who says I don't know where that is. No, it looks like it might be along Thomas Square. Yeah, it could be. And he's there with all his belongings and obviously having a hard time. And this segues right into what we were talking about at the end of the last period that approximately 30% of the homeless people need help past the point of saying you can go get a job or you can do this. They need institutional help. This gets to the counter productivity of what we have been doing. Those homeless encampments as much of an eyesore as the average person views them as and they are, they're communities. The people know the people who are living next to them. They know who in there they can trust and who they can't. They can behave around one another. Even if that behavior is you have to be careful with so and so because he's got a real short fuse or whatever it is. When that is disrupted these people are forced to flee into another area where they are viewed by the people who are already there as interlopers. The police department can tell you about the fistfights and calls they had in Kakako after Chinatown was cleared out. Right. And in fact there is a police lieutenant who is working with the outreach programs Lieutenant Lambert and he may be able to shed some light on how to motivate people because this is what he's working at is trying to find out what you have to do and say and how you have to approach people to get them to say, okay, give me a ride in that squad car over to so and so and I'll see if they can help me. But the role of government. But you see when the disruption occurs you just view this as painful and problematic and somebody that comes along and says I'm with social services and the government and I'm, get away from me. You know? Oh yeah? Buy. What's your name? Bill. You know? But Tom. You tend to not cooperate. I understand. The role of government, what they are doing and what they are not doing is not working one way or the other. No, it's not. So the solution for that one third that we had that needs to be institutionalized, what's the solution for the other two thirds? I'm not asking you for, you know, a kumbaya moment here. I'm saying what could we do if there's 60% left for 25 or 30% left? Okay. Let's talk about solutions. First of all, on the macro level we can we can alter our thinking and alter the direction that the entire nation is taking. This country is not becoming more prosperous. It is not becoming a place with a higher standard of living. In fact, just the opposite. And this is due to the short-sightedness of economic policy. Economic policy does have certain effects. You want to double the economic vibrance in a community, double the amount of money that people on the bottom are getting because they take it out and spend it every damn dime of it. They're Americans, so I want to do things, own things, have things, okay? Will the price of a McDonald's hamburger go up a quarter? Probably. Will everybody be able to afford one? Yeah, for a change. So this gets around to part of how do you help the people who are just sort of volitionally homeless? There's nothing really wrong with them, but they're just out there because there doesn't seem to be anything else for them. But housing is just a part of the homeless situation. That's right. Exactly. The economy that you're talking about, work, et cetera, et cetera, is the other part, right? Another part is education, obviously. The simple choice, education is a real part of it. The only antidote to poverty is education, period, end of report. The only thing that changes anything is education. You take a family who has never had a college graduate and get one kid through college, and all of his children will go through college. He doesn't care what degree they get, but they get one, because he will be able to see the difference that it has made in his life, comparing his life to his peers, the kids that he grew up with that didn't go through the university system, that didn't get that sheepskin. And he'll make damn sure that his children don't ever fall into that category. What about the jobs? You can transform that family forever. What about the jobs issue for the homeless? The jobs issue is very there. And how to create jobs. Union busting in this country, fortunately, we've been fairly spared of it. Union busting seems to be almost a national sport with about a half of the country. Currently, the half that's in power in quite a number of states is on that side of the fence. And the simple fact is that all those training programs that take kids and turn them into journeymen, carpenters were run by the unions. All those programs that taught kids how to use roofing square. It's not as simple as it looks. It takes a little bit of studying. And when you know how to use a tri-square... So something is forming in my mind, Tom. We need to find jobs for these homeless people. And we know that in Hawaii, the unions and the government are like a hand and a glove. They work together very, very well. If we were to get a system whereby the unions could use a lot of the homeless people to train, to be able to do the work that the unions do, whether it's electrical plumbing, carpentry and roofing and all that kind of stuff. And those companies will get a tax break by using these people. We might be able to find a way... I'm thinking about a pathway now. We'll find a way of having a program to give these people jobs. Well, we spoke of solutions. I don't know. Have you ever seen a Pachinko machine? They're very popular in Japan. Not everybody may have seen one. You fire a small metal ball into a maze of pins. And it goes down. And there's an array of places where it can land. And they all land in different places. You just use the spring-loaded thing to fire it up into the top of the machine. Well, this is what you're dealing with. Solutions. You have to have the whole solution machine working because each individual is going to have the parameters and the things that that person needs. Does that person need education? Quite probably. Does that person need a job? Very definitely. If you started out tomorrow... If you put an ad in the paper tomorrow, homeless people wanted for employment. $18 an hour. Full-time. Plus a place to live. They'd be beating down your door. You would have thousands of people on your doorstep. You would have people with perfectly good jobs at $8 an hour to get their doctor to certify them as homeless so they could show up and double their income. Right, right, right. It would be a reality. Economic. Everybody does what they do out of a certain self-interest. Now maybe that self-interest parameters have, how do I survive tonight on the street? But if you show a person how they can broaden that set of parameters and broaden their horizons, usually they'll take it if they are not to burn out by, well, I just got rousted three different times in three different places where I lived and I got to know people and I had people around me that I could say, hey, watch my bike. I got to go so-and-so. I got to go doctor. Watch my backpack. Can you watch my stuff? And you're trying to have a few things. But what we have just done now, and I'm sure our audience realizes it, we have started to look at a path. We've started to say education, work, housing, that Pashinko machine is a very good example of all the different things that have to be done to help the situation. The path that our government needs to take is not moving people from one place to another. It's addressing the individual issues that we have just got. And I'm going to take that to them. I'm going to take the idea of taking exactly what you just said, which means take the education part of it. Take the housing part of it. Take the work part of it. Take all of these different issues. I mean, what do people do with their children if they can't get them to go to school, right? We have to find an education solution. We have to find a working solution to these people. And to me, that is going to be what it takes. The problem we have, we don't have enough time to continue. Believe it or not. I'm sorry, I burnt you out again. No, no. It's one of the most important pieces of what our government has to do not just here in Hawaii, but around the world. They've got to start thinking of the homeless situation and start thinking of the homeless solution. They also have to stop thinking of it as something that just arises of its own. It's part of the whole thing. Do you want to live in a country that is prosperous and has a high standard of living? Or do you want to live in a country that's impoverished and has a low standard of living? Because the country with the cheapest goods and services has the lowest standard of living. Period. Tom, a pleasure. Thank you very much for coming. I just wish and I'm hoping that I can take this message to both Governor E. Gaye and Tamara Caldwell and maybe we can get the ball rolling. Well, the bottom array of that Pashinko machine gets very difficult because you've got to get a lot of different groups to work together and the motivation is there. They're finally starting to realize that Queen's Hospital just took over a four-story building over in Ivalet where they're going to do nothing but homeless outreach medical. They're going to have enough beds there for people who are critically ill but because $29,000 per patient $214 million in 2016 for homeless people alone $214 million. Thank you Tom. And thank you all for watching Seymour's World Today. This is not a topic we can cover in one one hour or 30 minutes and try to find the solutions but I think we're finding a path. Thank you. I will see you on Seymour's World. Aloha.