Previously on We the un Housed.

The first thing that I tell people who don't have any knowledge of the resources that exist in our systems is that there are virtually none.

Folks with mental illness don't have any entitlements from the state of California.

Right, so you're stuck.

You're not going to have a social safety net.

There's no income, there's no housing.

A lot of times there's no adequate medical care either.

They stop using the medication and so then you know, then it's a whole lot of chaos.

And then they have these laws they have to decide theyselves.

You know, well, how does a person that's not fully functionable make decisions on their own?

It boggles my mind.

Welcome to Whedian House.

I'm your host, Theo Henderson.

This episode is about further intersections of houselessness and we'll learn a lot from our guests Sakoya, including what body farming is and how it affects the indigenous community.

But first and house news.

This week, we want to remember the.

Life of a past guest on our show, Sydney McAllister.

Whiedian House takes certain responsibility and remember a people Indiana House community gone too soon.

Who left the world a better place.

My name is Maybe Poplo.

I'm the operations manager for sela Neighborhood Homeless Coalition, and I'm honored to be here memorializing Cindy McAllister, who is a beloved SEALA participants and volunteer.

Cindy unfortunately passed away a few weeks ago, somewhat unexpectedly, and so we're here at CELA just sort of, you know, remembering Cindy and just trying to keep.

Her memory alive.

And we were so grateful to have her as a participant, as a volunteer, as a member of our community.

I first met Cindy when I started at CELA about a year ago, and at the time of Cindy's passing, I would say she had probably been a part of the SEILA community for about two years.

And Cindy was just really special.

She just had one of those smiles that lit up a room, and everybody loved Cindy.

I was really happy as a trans non binary person to see Cindy, who was a trans woman so openly welcomed into the community and we got to share some special conversations.

Cindy shared with me that she actually used to be a drag queen, and I'm a drag queen, and so that was something that we were able to bond over.

And I was really excited to hear about her her storied history and how she was an actor and she actually acted as a drag queen in movies.

She told me that she made a cameo in an early two thousands movie called Not Another Gay Movie, and so I'm excited to rewatch it to think about Cindy and keep her her memory alive.

Cindy was more of a person who experienced houselessness.

Hi, my name's Rachel Sanov.

I'm the volunteer engagement manager here at CELA.

So the things that are just Cindy the person.

She had such a fun sense of humor.

She had amazing styles, like every time I saw.

Her, I cannot wait to see what she was wearing.

Always color coordinated, always accessories.

She was very spiritual, and she was very open about her spirituality, and that also means very open about anybody's spirituality.

I know that her ability to speak to that part of her life was comforting to a lot of our participants who also were as spirituals her.

She used to text me just the silliest, sometimes dirtiest jokes.

And I mean we text it every day, and I'm going to miss that so much.

I'm also really going to miss her sense of style.

I think she may have talked about this in her interview, but Cindy was defined by her fashion.

You know, she's a trans woman and she will forever be a drag queen.

She loved her style.

And coming to Cela, she was you know, she always wanted to pick out her clothes and she always wanted to help other people pick out clothes.

You know, she was like, she loved her fashion, and I will miss her style.

She always rocked in wearing the most incredible pants, and yeah, I think I'll just miss I'll miss her light.

She was wonderful.

I was able to look at some of her belongings after her passing and just seeing some of her little nick knacks and chowchke's and it just sort of really revealed, you know, a part of who she was.

And I felt very fortunate to be the receiver of one of her articles of clothing.

It was a blue button up and it had all of these patches of Divine the drag Queen all over it.

It's a really really cool piece of clothing, and so I'm honored to be able to keep that and you know, to be able to remember her by it.

Cindy had a friendly, welcoming personality, one that was demonstrated when she sat at the front of the Seala Neighborhood Coalition.

Cindy was a really special member of our community.

Cindy is a representation of what we really try to practice here at SILA, which is true community.

So she was someone who started coming to SILA as someone in need of services, someone who we identify as a participant in our programming, and then became a volunteer when you know, we supported her with getting into permanent supportive housing for the first time in decades, and once she was settled, she came in, started working the front desk and really gave back to her community here.

So I got to know Cindy through that housing process, helped her move out of a tough situation and into her permanent supportive housing.

She radiated light.

You could just see people were drawn to her.

She was truly a center.

I used to joke that she would hold court when you would come into a program and you would just see tons of people around a table and it was just you knew Cindy was in the center of it.

I hope people realize that Cindy did not just become unhoused one day.

She was loved by her mother and she was loved by her sister, both of whom lived in Arizona.

She came out here to follow a dream to be a performer and was injured on the job and financially just wasn't able to sustain herself, ended up like many people, being prescribed pain medication and fell victim to the same cycle that a lot of Americans fall prey to.

And she worked really hard to pull herself out of that cycle of addiction.

She passed in her sixties, and it wasn't until her late fifties that she actually started living as Cindy full time.

She was living as a gay man for most of her life, and I just think it took so much bravery, and again, it's like all of that courage, all of that love, the depth of that story, everything that went into that life, you don't see when you see someone pushing a shopping cart down the street, And I think that that is again, Cyindy is more than a symbol, but she is just a really clear example of why we do what we do here at CELA, because she is just one person, and every person here has a story that is just as dynamic.

Cindy lived a very interesting life.

She was also an actress and performer.

I think you know it wasn't that many years ago that someone would have seen her walking through the streets of West Hollywood pushing a cart and thinking putting all sorts of things onto her right, making assumptions, thinking they knew where her story was, and not realizing that she had had this incredible vibrant life, like she had an autograph book where she had met like every TV star from the sixties and seventies.

She was at one point like an incredibly prolific drag performer.

In West Hollywood who was just known.

She once was a personal shopper for share She helped John Waters design his own toy like she was just she was iconic in so many ways and prolific.

And it was a series of things that.

Took her to where she ended up living on the street, and some of them in her control and some of them out of her control.

Fun fact said they'd never let her flare with the arts die down.

Even when she was unhoused.

Like I said, you would have seen Cindy walking down the street pushing her cart, and what you wouldn't have known was in that cart were crystals.

Like you would have seen crystals and wigs and performing outfits because it was who she was.

She was deeply connected to spirituality and her faith.

Cindy also wanted to be an example to other people affected by houselessness that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Here's a clip of our interview from earlier this year.

Well, my name is Cindy McAllister and I listed transgender man to a woman.

I've been coming to sea Live for about a year and a half now, and sea Let people are so welcoming and so friendly.

I don't know my time here, and I try to be a friend to everybody who I know who comes here.

I try to be a positive attitude and I'm a class of friends just because I'm a nice person.

Up until her passing, Cindy was in her community, volunteering, referring friends to services, joking and enjoying time with her friends.

One of the reasons that it really hurts finding out about Cindy's passing was we were actually supposed to have an outing with her the very week that she passed.

We had plans to go to drag Bingo together, and then we didn't hear from Cindy that week, and we started getting really worried.

And then we had found out that she had passed away in her apartments, and so you know, that was just really hard to deal with.

After her passing, we set up a little makeshift memorial at our Saturday program and literally the very first person that walked into the program saw the framed picture of her and the candles, and they just gasped and they were like, oh my gosh, what happened to Cindy.

And I witnessed this over and over and over, just everybody's shock and sadness about this very valued community member that we lost.

I'll sit at the dusk and I'll sign people in, I'll help, you know, donate my time, and sometimes we'd come here like today just to hang out with my friends.

And here's more unhoused deuced.

Our first story talks about the elderly unhoused, the number of people aged sixty five and older who are unhoused jump more than seventeen percent since last year and more than thirty six percent in two years.

Elderly unhoused are estimated to be the fast and growing population in California.

Services are being cut due to the Trump administration, such as cuts to Medicaid and SNAP.

This means that this vulnerable population are being turned away from free food programs and other supportive services.

They are now struggling to choose between their medications, having food to eat, or paying their rent, says Yvon Son of Special Services of Group Silver.

Our last story.

San Francisco bans the unhoused from living in RVs.

This band targets at least four hundred recreational vehicles in a city of eight hundred thousand people.

The San Francisco cost of living is very expensive, making RV living essential.

The band sets a two hour parking limit citywide for all RVs, regardless of whether they.

Are being used for housing.

People in RVs who arrive after May twenty twenty six will not be eligible for the permit program and must abide by the two hour rule, which makes it impossible for a family in an RV to live within city limits.

And that's on house deuce.

When we come back, I will speak with indigenous activists.

Sequoya Decent.

Welcome back to Witian House.

I'm THEO Henderson.

Here is my interview with Sekoya educating us on the issue of body farming.

Hello.

My name is Sequiathisen.

I am a scholar and abolitionist.

I also consider myself a policy advisor more recently, and I'm very passionate about the unhoused issues because I myself have suffered in that situation not really knowing where to go.

Especially when I first came out to California, I was a victim of patient brokering, and so that's something that I talk about a lot.

Where did you come from originally, and how long were you in house?

I'm from Montana, and so actually growing up I kind of walked two different worlds because my dad is a felon.

But my mom she went to school when I was really young, she got a nursing degree, and she really tried to provide the best that she could life for us.

I was pretty stable in my childhood other than you know, my father's kind of stuff, and I started using drugs around the age of.

Like sixteen ish.

I had chronic pain.

My dad and me also like my dad was super strict, Like he was very abusive, which he doesn't like me to talk about, but this is but it's real, like honestly, Like he can be mad, but it's real.

Like So in Montana, it's pretty common for like kids, especially Native kids to start drinking at like ten eleven years old, like, and so that was my story too, and I used it to cope.

And then as I.

Got older, I also like did a lot of workaholism behaviors, just kind of throwing myself in work.

When COVID started, I started a couple of different businesses.

I was doing photography, I was doing different things, baking art.

I was also teaching.

At the time, I started teaching middle schoolers, and like I said, post COVID, you started seeing like all these kids that were dealing with anxiety, displacement, they were having issues socially, and to me, it kind of just showed like how much the youth is neglected in general, Like we don't really think about them when big things happened.

They were definitely an afterthought during COVID, and so I realized, Okay, I really need to get help if I want to help these kids.

So I came out here to LA to actually go to rehab, and the first place that I went wasn't technically bad.

But this is why I talk out about this stuff is because I feel like the rehab model in general is just very broken.

I'm like a big proponent for harm reduction.

I feel like treatment is one of those things that people need to make a lot of decisions for themselves, and it's not like a one size fits all kind of deal.

And so in Los Angeles specifically, this is one of the SUD hotspots of like the whole nation, substance abuse disorder treatment is rampant here and what's really unfortunate is that they target the unhoused populations, not just in LA but nationally.

And yeah, so I came out here.

I met my ex girlfriend who was actually I think she's been being patient brokeer for like six or seven years at this point.

Like she's been in this rehab scene since she was like eighteen.

She's never been able to escape it.

And I spent about a year dealing with that, and the entire time I was very like adamant, Okay, I want to go to school.

I want to you know, just I wanted to get my own place.

I had always lived on my own too, like before I lived out here and so, but what's crazy is that I had left my home.

I had left everything.

There's nothing wrong with losing everything as an addict, but honestly, I had given everything up to come and get clean.

And so when I did come here, I started immediately being introduced to the fact that not all rehabs are created equal.

And I was like, oh, okay, you know this is interesting.

I met my ex girlfriend.

She really educated me, like street knowledge type shit, everything, like taught me everything there is because she had been.

Wrapped up in it and so for so long.

And so I was being housed by UCLA, and UCLA is such a vibrant community.

There's like so many different groups.

Westwood itself is very vibrant, and so I started thinking to myself, like, I really want to go back to school, like this is.

Something that I want to do.

And when I would start to try to mention this to the people at the facility that I was at, they would get really hostile with me and they would basically start to gaslight me and they would be like, you need to focus on your recovery.

And this is a very common theme.

Like they like to be little school.

They like to and for me, like I have to say that school is not about earning knowledge at all.

It's about contributing knowledge.

And that's what I love about your podcast too, is like going to the people who have actually been unhoused, because I tell these lawmakers all the time, what do you know about liberty?

What do you know about justice?

No offense?

Like you've never been without those things?

Even truth?

Have you ever been without truth?

Have you been lied to?

Have you been coerced?

You know?

And so this is like a super important part of restorative justice is honoring people's lived experience.

And so I got really just okay, I need to leave this.

A couple months later, I got my own place with the help of my family.

And this is another reason I'm so passionate about housing issues, is because I would not be where I.

Am at all if it wasn't for my family.

I can't even fathom what it's like to have to navigate these systems without those kinds of resources.

And I've seen it just in my advocacy, like.

Okay, you have to go here, you have to wait three months in order to get a voucher.

You have to you know, you've got to spend two hours just on the phone with this person.

And it's so dehumanizing.

Because I think that even when you're in an emergency, because I've been in this situation before, when I was being patient brokered, it was like being put to this rehab, this rehab, this rehab because after a while, like you can't really stay anywhere long term, like you just don't have the capacity mentally because sobriety has been commodified.

That's the problem with treatment in LA, I feel like, is that there's so many places that it's kind of hard for people, at least for me to commit to one place because it's almost their fault because you can just start over at a new place.

And the problem is when they're offering you X, Y, and Z and you're already in a situation.

This is like when I was being patient brokered from twenty twenty two to twenty twenty three, that was like the only time that I had ever really been I guess, unhoused in my life, and I was out here in LA.

And one thing I want to mention about patient brokering too, is that I just want to define patient brokering REALM.

That was my next question ahead.

So, patient brokering is when people are being offered money, luxury, housing, a job, various different things.

Sometimes it's hormone replacement therapy, sometimes it's a shopping trip.

It could be a whole bucket of things.

They're being offered those things to stay in treatment, and this is something that begins cycle for people.

So this is happening on a national level and a local level, and it's draining billions of dollars out of our insurance all of our insurance networks that are private, so like ETNA, Blue Crossbow Shield Signa, a lot of them are under the same name.

But actually ETNA.

Is going to officially take their healthcare off the marketplace because of this kind of fraud.

And for me, it's not really about what the insurance companies are losing, but it's about the lives that are lost because, like I said, like sobriety becomes commodified.

You are told that if you don't tell the doctor that you're not feeling well or maybe that you want to relapse, then your benefits will run out.

And this becomes something where people are just then in treatment just to get housing, and I've even seen this on the inside of the LA jails.

I'm in the pod with like thirty women and they're like, yeah, you know, the judge ordered me to go to treatment, but I've already been in here for like three months.

And it's really unfortunate because a lot of them are going to be swept up by places that don't actually care if they actually get sober or not.

What they want to do is they actually want to keep you sick because they can bill you as much as possible.

And I think that three thousand people in I believe January were made homeless at one time because of one of the most infamous body brokers that we know of.

His name is Nathan Young, and he owns fifty five Silver.

I think it's Hollywood rehab.

Helping Hands and what he calls Santa Monica Rehab, but there's really no such thing as Santa Monica Rehab.

So if you ever hear that those names, it's like those aren't real places.

And then same with there's a woman named Annie Mira Zion.

She owns a place named Revived.

She's been sued by EDNA.

Both of them have been sued by EDNA.

For basically taking millions of dollars overcharging for things.

And what's really sick is that they go to the unhoused populations and they will offer insurance policies, which is healthcare for a lot of people.

That includes that, they offer housing, they offer surgeries sometimes like for our trans relatives, and honestly just safety, like they tell you that they're going to keep you safe.

And also this is the other part, is that it's not uncommon for outreach workers to walk around with clipboards collect things like social Security number, name, birthday.

When these patient brokers collect those things from our unhoused relatives, sometimes they instantly sign them up for a policy right then and there.

And then what they do is they're charging these people for sometimes months before they're able to realize I'm actually seen people die and then they're still being billed by an insurance and it's so it's so.

Sad.

And then a lot of these places that they will bring you to are essentially trap houses.

And for the audience, what is a trap house?

So we have, you know, places that are really messy.

Typically there's no security, like the door will be kind of like faulty, Like I said, drugs throughout the house.

One time I arrived to a sober living and there was three separate people overdosing, one of them in the living room, one of them out in the back patio, and then one of them in a bedroom, and the police were there, the ambulance was there, but I was just arriving, like with my stuff, and I remember going upstairs and it was so ironic because I'm gay, and the guy was like, oh, we don't allow that here, and I'm like.

Broh, you guys have people like overdosed.

On the couch, Like that's notise.

I promise you being gay is not an issue.

And so the problem is is that they only.

Really started caring about this stuff, I would.

Say in twenty twenty two, which is when they're this California Sober Living and Recovery task Force was created.

And what's really sad is that they it was only created because of neighbors of these sober living places saying wow, this is so crazy.

A lot of them honestly complaining and treating us like we're some kind of sense in their life, right yeah, and just talking about us like I remember one time.

Because I'm a part of the task force now, But I remember they one time they told the story.

It was very dehumanizing the way that they told this story.

They were like, yeah, you know, there was a young man and he was given too much medication, and then he was taken to another rehab and he was given too much medication again, and then he ended up having some kind of and he went to somebody's house and somebody shot him.

And what was really.

Upsetting is that the task force kind of acted like the homeowner was the victim.

And you know, of course the homeowner.

Was probably scared, that's why he did what he did, But he wasn't the victim in this situation at all.

And I try to remind these people of that is like, no matter how annoying you see somebody to be, that's just so ignorant because you don't understand, like that could be someone's lowest point in their life.

And then for you to just write.

It off as annoying, it just shows how individualistic our culture is and how people don't really care to It's so one of the reasons I stopped teaching, because people look at and they say, oh, the kid is being bad, why are they acting like that?

But then they don't really think about the fact that the kid, you know, maybe has things.

Going on at home and trauma and all kinds of other stuff.

So to back up a little bit to talk about brokerage.

Patient brokerage is simply a type of fraud that uses to induce or to overcharge and get money in a fraudulent manner.

Yes, And the person that needs the most help is without help.

They are being spun around or they are being you know, volunteered involuntarily for benefits or insurance or other incentives in order to keep them in this loop of staying involving the system where their focus was if they were dealing with substance usage issues and they were on the detox end, now they were focused on housing.

They have to play the game, yes, to stay into the system.

If they don't, then they're going to be in a different dilemma.

And with what's going on, which I want to interject here to remind the community and our audience of what's going on right now, there has been a wave of ordnances laws all across the country to criminalize unhouse people.

And if you listen to my show, I have a segment called Unhoused News, and I try to keep as much as possible it happens so rapidly, to let people know what is going on for unhoused people, to get a heads up, even if you don't live in the area, but to understand, to see the connection and see how these interlocks or interlinks with the conversation.

Now it has reached to the White House.

Most recently, President Trump's issued an executive order, and this executive order goes and basically makes out that unhoused people are criminals.

Demands the cities, the force on house people to go to treatment, to go to alcohol subst usage, and to involuntarily volunteer and house people to go to mental asylums or mental health agencies.

These all interlink because of the narrative that's out here about unhoused people.

You have to understand when you hear people say that unhoused people don't want a job or people like being out there, they are contributing to that negative stereotype.

There's over sixty six thousand unhoused people here in California alone.

When you say those things, you cannot intelligently think that that's realistic.

It's the same.

It's like I would bring another similar though closely related topic about immigration, where people were talking about people doing immigration the right way, but we see the lie to that because they are being swept away or attacked while they're.

Going to court doing it the right way.

See when you contribute to those kind of conversations or agree with that, this is what the end result is.

So understanding this now, this is where we're at.

Now.

On house people and advocates and people that are involved in the in house community have an upio battle because now they've got to go to war with the government because now they have singled them out as nothing but criminals, substant usage users, and mentally ill, which has been a pernicious stereotype and the in house community for at least thirty years that I know of.

Yeah, and this is crazy because I want to say, in my area right in body brokering, there is an advocate who's out there saying that she loves ventanyl act and all that stuff.

And I'm like, what a contradiction you're saying that.

You know, you advocate for body brokering, but this is actually going to make body brokering worse because now you know the administration has real stakes in the game.

You know, in fact, they're probably investing in those companies as we speak, because that's kind of how.

The administration does things.

As we've seen, like a lot of people get well off of their stocks and they clearly are doing something shady with that, and so yeah, it's so dehumanizing, like to just assume.

And that's one of the reasons I tell my story, like when I went back to school, I was able to discover some new history that I hope to publish in the next year.

And it's such a disgusting stereotype to say, Okay, you know unhouse people X, Y, and Z.

I keep saying, I remind politicians, lawmakers, city officials, the subaltern, the people who you consider so far outside of society's bubble.

Those people are so much smarter than you give them credit for.

Those people are capable of so much more than you give them credit for.

In fact, those people are smarter than you.

Those people have more capable in their bones than you do, because they've.

Survived things that you never could.

And so I remind them of those things often, because that's one of the conversations with brokering too, is like they try to criminalize those people, and I say, you realize that somebody to rehab because they wanted to get clean at one point, so there's no reason to.

I mean there's no reason too anyways, but especially in that situation, like and in my experience, most of the people that I've met that are on housed don't even use drugs, Like it's like a very few, and it's such a negative stereotype and people don't It's one of those things that people have to be willing to put out of their mind.

But also too because it didn't have to be willing to have one empathy to put in the work, and it's easy to hold on to, you know, pernicious stereotypes because you don't have to do any work.

You can just like for example, I have this friend of mine that it just drove me crazy because every time we would talk and I was in house and I was trying to educate him, like you don't understand the quagmire that people have to go through, and he only focused he zeroed in on the segment of they like being out there, they don't want it, And then I have to break it down to him, if you're in this system, you don't understand and why people give up.

You don't understand and understand the frustration and the never ending cycle, the broken promises the city gives you.

You're waiting for.

No one in the right mind wants to stay in a shelter or short term shelter.

They would rather just go through all of the paperwork.

They need one time to get into housing and be done with it.

They don't want to be making these five or six trips.

They don't want to be dealing with this interested caseworker.

They don't want to go all the way over this way to get this paperwork.

It's too much.

Especially if you're on house, you have to be on top of that.

If you have health conditions, then you got to be on top of that.

Then you have to basic upkeep, which is another paid in rebut when you're out there in the house as well, so you are juggling all of that.

Not just like you're in a house where you can go and remove your clothings and put other clothes on the hump of the shower, or you can take a quick nap and then you can go to the doctor's appointment here and that you know, it's not that And one of the things that I also want to point out about substant usage is many people turn the substances when they're on the street conversely, because they're dealing with the adverse conditions of trying to survive and coping and trying to maintain a mental equilibrium, if there's such a word in a crazy system being swept all the time, being harassed all the time, or Billy dealing with the trauma that caused them to be in house, or they're having a low point at whatever.

Where our society has so much stigma, so much harsh consequences for people out on the street, it makes it can be very difficult to bear.

Yeah, no, you're right.

One of the most like transforming experiences, transformative experiences that I've had while being in LA is that I got fifty two to fifty one time fifty fifty two because they keep you for two weeks.

Oh really, I didn't know that one.

Yeah, fifty one, fifty is the seventy two hours, and then fifty two is where they extend it for two weeks.

It was so bad, it was, Oh it was.

But I learned a lot in there because I was around a lot of different people, and there was this guy in there, and he was an older man and I would talk to him pretty much every day, and he basically said, like, you know, they keep trying to force me to go to a shelter.

I don't want to go to a shelter.

And I was just like and I was like younger back then.

I was like, oh, why not?

And he was like, because I've had horrible things happen to me in shelters.

You know.

People have stolen from me, people have hurt me, people have you know, done all kinds of things to me for no reason, you know.

And and finally I looked at him and I was like, wow, you know, that actually makes a lot of sense.

And he starts talking about how, you know, he sleeps at this park every night, and he said, no one has ever bothered me at this park.

Nobody like people walk by me, if anything, they're like scared of me, you know.

And he was like the sweetest guy too, and he lived in the valley and he said, every single night nobody bothers me, he said, but when every time I go to a shelter, it's one of the most traumatizing experiences.

You know, that I've ever had.

And I was like, wow, you know, that's real because even like at the shelter, like they're not providing people the adequate care I feel like that they need in order to be successful.

At most of them, it's kind of like you're allowed to exist there is what I've seen.

It depends on where you are too.

And my experiences with shelters, which I didn't like go on either, but trying to explain to hardheaded or unwilling people to understand that people that are living in this world have much more advanced knowledge and experience with it.

So when they're telling.

You these things and you just you know, they waste the time, they waste the energy, and then you just turn around to do the same damn thing.

Then it's like, but what is the point of trying to argue, complain or talk to you.

It's just like, you know, I'm just going to give monosyllabic answers and just leave it alone.

And so I had very difficult times in shelters too because of the car sural nature, like you have to be back at like a curfew, or if you don't, then you call and you have to have a explain.

And if you're at work, I'm like, you know this is a shelter.

This is not like you know, where we're children, we have to have a note like from a doctor and things like that, or you know, those kinds of things really just annoyed me.

Were the food restrictions or you couldn't have this behind, or you couldn't bring this into the other room, or you know, it's just yeah, to the point where it can be very difficult.

On top of that, Ice focuses on the undocumented that house as well.

But most importantly, what they're talking about the conditions in these hotels.

They cannot have guests, they cannot have this curfews and things like that.

So when you hear these glowing public relations statements, people are not looking in deeper to it.

People are not asking the hard questions.

People are not calling the service providers on the carpet.

Why is it that these are grown adult people that they can't have guests?

Are you saying that they are incompetent or stupid people that they can't have a friend or they can't have a relationship, or they can't bring people in Every place, even the hotels that I've gone through allow you to have a guest.

So it just it begs the question to be humanized, yes, and to try to talk to people that are so adamant about trying to say that people don't want help and things like that.

They're so hard headed, so you can't penetrate too because they believe deep down that unhoused people should be punished.

But they won't go out and say it because they know it's an ugly statement to say.

But they honestly believe that, and that's by their actions.

They do those things or say those things in a way make it criminality or make it like, for example, unhoused people that live near their care or elderly centered or something.

They make it sound like the unhoused person is jumping out of bushes and attacking old people or in attacking children and things like that.

Most often not, the unhoused people are just trying to survive or you staying near resources, or they may have relatives or whatever it is that it is.

But it's the whole picture that they pay.

When you can be able to demonize the people, then you can criminalize them.

I always say that, yeah, no exactly, And it's such a contradiction too, because the whole point of I unders stand it, like mayor Bas's like interim housing program is to give people autonomy, right, like, okay, you have an hotel room instead of going to a shelter.

But then they just completely cancel out every single benefit that you would have by having like your own private room, your own private space.

If you do have your own private space, you know, the idea is that you could be more successful because you have that autonomy, and that autonomy is so important.

Like taking people's autonomy is basically like making them a slave, Like you're not giving them any options to do what they want to do, and then that kind of affects people's will to live, It affects basically everything about their mental health, and then it's going to make it harder to motivate yourself.

Like there's a book by Virginia Wolf actually called The Room of.

One's Own and it talks about like how important it is just as a woman to have your own room.

But I feel like you could apply that to everyone, especially when you've lived a life where maybe you've been controlled by others, you've been dominated, you've been a press, you've been told what to do, and when you have your own space and you can just like I remember when I got out of sober living, and I've always lived on my own, but when I had got out of the sober living, human trafficking unhoused space, and I just was like going back and forth to the store, and I was just, like you said, like doing those basic things like Okay, I can go out until ten pm and I can come home.

Like people take those things for granted.

So much like like you said earlier, people take just being able to shower and change their outfit at home for granted.

And I think about that a lot, especially because, like I said, like that's such a contradiction.

The idea is, if you want to give people housing, you also need to give them their own room, you know what I mean, And that needs to be there.

And let me add another thing too, just this is not only just hotels inside safe these are also SROs, because like I'm in an SRO right now, and it really frustrates me because again, the denseness or the resistance to create humanity for people people go only so far they create a kind of humane kind of solution.

But I remember I was having this challenge with this racist person that lived in the same sorrow what it was, and this person tried to make it so difficult for me to stay there and was creating situations and then pretended that he was the victims.

He's because he's you know, he has a record and all of this kind of stuff.

But it got to the point where they were like, well, you just stay on this floor, you know.

And the way this SRO is set up is the kitchen is on the floor, he's on.

The laundry is on this one.

What he's on.

They don't keep up.

The showers like they're supposed to, so I usually use the other one because it has better water flow, what needless to say, And to try to elucidate these type of points, it was like we didn't want to hear it out there.

Other they just didn't comprehend and it got so exasperated, which is why sometimes I get tired sometimes of house people that are in our communities and they are resistant to understanding sometimes like why are you here?

Why do you join this place?

And you don't want to listen and to the people that are being impacted.

And when we come back more with the choir, welcome back, it's to Steve Henderson with weedy in house.

Let's get back to It.

Here's the rest of my talk with Sakoit, who initially started out this city, and the government was against hotels because of the pandemic.

Activists advocates like myself and others push for if you wanted to get rid of on the house so much, the house's issues so bad, why not get these empty hotels.

There was such a kerfuffle that they didn't want to do it because they were worried that the brand was going to be impacted and things like that.

So now they're using one or two star or CD places to use these places.

There's one hotel where on house people are.

They can't use the towel.

They get one four week a paper towel to use to dry themselves off.

I had one out an eagle rock.

This is why I'm like, I don't know, why do they get these advocates, But there was just one advocate was in an uproar or was against there's other unhoused people from having a coffee maker inside that room.

Put that in your mind, a coffee maker.

It's insinuating that unhoused people don't drink coffee.

It's insinuating that they are too stupid to not you know, to use know how to use a coffee machine.

And I was, for the life of I'm like, I was so stumped when she said, I thought she was joking.

It says, why would that be such an issue?

Because everybody you go too, even the see hotels, they have some kind of coffee maker or something like that.

Why would that be such an uproar issue or issue that you take issue with.

It just didn't make any sense.

I hear abolitions always say stop the cough in your mind, I would add, I would add, stop the judgment and lack of empathy in your mind.

Out of house people are human beings.

They deserve just this much of the accouterment, the incentives, like everybody else.

If they want a coffee machine in there, there should be no reason.

If they take a shower, God forbid, the world is not going to end if they have a towel.

That is that's pretty shocking.

I don't want I like dang.

Like I said.

When I get the show and started going to different places and talking to other unhoused people and listening to their stories, it opened the world to me to understand how these stories don't get told at how it flies under the radar.

Under the auspices of being helping unhouse people, and when you really hear them telling you the stories and saying, no, this is definitely more than.

Met the eye.

No, it's true.

Actually, that's one of the things I told the Sober Living in Recovery Task Force.

I said, stop looking at unhoused people, stop looking at people who suffer from addiction, stop looking at all of these people like somebody you need to manage.

You don't need to manage us.

We don't need your management.

What we need is like real tangible resources that you're already giving to other people.

I'm on the land back in Operations House Force in Santa Monica, right, And there's a lot of conversations, especially around reperations in California, like, and.

I remember I called this out in the meeting the other day.

I was like, okay, but didn't the city council just create this whole big plan to make Palisades businesses who were burned down by the fire, probably mostly white owners, to be honest, move them to Santa Monica.

Didn't you guys come up with that in how long like three months?

So and you guys are saying that you guys can't come up with reparations.

You guys can't come up with, you know, real solutions to even the unhoused issue in Santa Monica, like they refuse.

The culture in Santa Monica is disgusting.

And I was going to say I was on house out there in San Monica before I I forced me to move back down here because do you know it is again they were voting to you ban for unhoused people to have blankets and pillows.

Yep, that's how backed up this.

Yeah.

Yeah, I always get into it with people that live in Santa Monica because you know, one of the things I advocate on the task for us a lot, And I say, you know, you cannot keep funding the police the way that you do in Santa Monica and then claim that you care about the unhouse population or claim that you care about minorities because they literally target both, yes, like aggressively.

Yes.

And I had a professor who was a prosecutor in Santa Monica, and he actually straight up said that pretty much all of the penal codes in Santa Monica and civil codes and stuff are made up by white people who have nothing better to do.

Hate in their heart and they hate unhoused people, and they hate black and brown people and pretty much all that they ins a lot of women, and all that they do is make laws like you can't ride your bike in Santa Monica, and that is specifically to target unhouse people.

They will never stop a tourist with that penal code ever, exactly never in their life will they do that.

And they will never have, but they will never stop tourist that will put out a blanket in land the mouth, but on the house person, that's what that's what they're aiming for.

And it's like it's so aggressive and so openly disrespectful.

They make it shown that the antipathy is so known, you know, you can only stand there stay there for some time.

I used to go to before they changed, the people concerned the Samuil Shell that used to have an ocean park, and the way they will talk about on house people, the way they were using staff to try to convince unhouse people that we deserve to be treated this way.

That's the that was what really turned me off.

And really.

That's the craziest part.

They literally make themselves the victim.

There was one staff member I have to tell this story, and I was so infuriated because if you have to go to the restroom there, it is so difficult to go into that, you know, unless you know it was a McDonald's there.

If you're not there, then you have to be trying to be creative and go.

No, if you don't get to the when they finished that new part in time, then you're going to have that accident.

But before that, the staff member comes to us all over the young house there and she says, well, you know, there's this person that went to use the restaurant out of the street.

And I was appalled.

I was so offending and furious by it.

I was like, you know, have you ever tried to go up usually the restaurant out here and you're unhoused.

You can't use the restaurant out here, because a lot of people don't allow you to use the restaurant out here.

You know, they are very adamant against there's no facilities, there's no free facilities at the time, So of course they're going to have to you know, human beings are going to be able to either the use it on themselves, and they they probably didn't want to do that, so they had to be able to do what they needed to do.

I almost got arrested because I was out in the house and waiting for the bus by people that was standing out on the bus stop.

And I don't never forget it was a rainy Saturday at the time, and they just saw me standing there and obviously I was must be menacingly at God forbade it was rainy.

I had a hood on, right, I was going to attack these people waiting for the bus.

And that really was the turning point for being like, you know what these people are.

I don't irredeemable, but I just think there's no point in trying to convey to them the humanity because they'll never see it.

Yeah.

No, there's people on the task Force even who are like, let's go to the Santa Monica community.

I'm like, no thanks.

If you want to do that and you want to get vitriol hate from white supremacists, you go right ahead.

But what I want to do is I want to, you know, hit up the people who already support us and bring love to Santa Monica, because that's honestly what needs to be done.

Like people need to go to Santa Monica and use their voice because right now, the white supremacists just take over those city council meetings as far as like you know, and I feel like they feel empowered to do that because in LA it's a little bit harder to do that, you know, you have to watch your mouth a little bit more.

Yeah, but over there they really feel and like I was saying, they really feel like they're the victim too.

They sit there and they're like, I'm not safe to take my child out.

Just shut the fuck up, bro.

Well, if they see it in the house and can admit they feel like the child is going to be attacked.

It's like Sant Louis Abispo.

When I was doing an episode for my show, I went out there the San Louis Abispo and it reminded me of Santa Mona.

I said, this is this is so surreal, and it's just the way that people were acting and reacting.

And what I noticed is there was two people, two white people, and I was asking questions and one white person was trying to put a spin on it.

The other white person was just telling like, no, this is a racist place here.

And the guy was.

Getting frustrated because he didn't want that part to be known.

And then when I started, you know, because I already knew the answer, but I was asking the question to see just how they would phrase it.

And they were phrasing it just like people from Santa Monica that they were just decent people.

They just they the quality of life was being impacted when they see unhoused people there.

Was it was so hard.

Was that the unhoused people were literally living on the edge near a river, a muddy side the river, on a hill.

And I'm talking about elderly people and things like that.

So it got to the point where on house people were hiding because if they were shown throughing, you know, the city proper, they were going to be targeted.

And that was another is that's always what I noticed.

You know, when you see young house people who are in the outskirts or in far flung places, chances are very good that the people there, the house people there are very are very nasty.

Yeah, it's really it's really disgusting.

I don't like the culture there.

And I've been saying this, I'm like, it's difficult to navigate when those are the people that come and they're so loud, right, And I remember one of my best force members tried to be like, oh, they out organized this, And I'm like, no, just don't say that, because that's not an excuse for city council to not see through that stuff.

Because these are people who are supposed to be educated on policy.

These are people who are supposed to care about all their constituents, not just you know, the rich white people who have the time to come here, and and it's a lot of time you got to dedicate to go to city council meetings.

It's like seven eight hours sometimes they be going on and so on.

How's advocates are so important because, like you said, like you just get so beat up after a while and you're just trying to survive.

Like I remember when I was going through all this, Oh my god, I couldn't have cared.

Like when people are saying things, it's like, oh my god, whatever, like it's just noise.

But then once you're like out of it, or once you're trying to get out of it, and then you start looking back at it, you're like, wow, people are really people almost knock you down to that point you like you're you're at that really low point fiscally right, you don't have money, but then also emotionally and socially, people are trying to minimize your existence all the time, and so it's hard to bring yourself out of that.

And that's why I told the California Past Force, like you need to invest in these people, like, not just okay they're surviving, invest make sure they're good.

And not only that too.

I think one of the things that really turned it around from me to start to reinditt it was having people to talk about it, because when I noticed too that I was telling unhoused people too.

When I did the show, I noticed on house people felt so relieved that I asked their opinion and they loved to talk.

They talked so long and it frustrated the producers and other listeners.

And I have to always get on the house people.

I like, listen.

If you can listen to a kinburns or other things for three hours without changing the channel, that you can listen to onhouse people venting when they finally be heard.

If you need to take a break, take a break, put a pause on it, and then come back.

But come on, you know, it's like it's just so disrespectful.

Just make it ten minutes.

Just move on.

But the second thing that I noticed about it too.

Was when you're dealing with this kind of conversation.

I was telling onhouse people this, I says, you may not think voting is important, you may not think having a voice is important, but I guarantee you somewhere somebody is at a meeting discussing a way to put you in a position that's going to cause you harm.

Somebody voted for an ordinance against you.

And if you don't think about that, or you don't realize, because if voting was not it was, it's a waste of time.

They wouldn't take time to do it, they wouldn't organize, they wouldn't put money into and as an African American person and it was trying.

That tells people that this was an issue that our ancestors were killed for.

We couldn't do that even when we had the right.

They intimidated so much because they knew that if there was a collective party or a collective block of people to stop what they were doing, then they would change the game entirely.

So that was another Colonel of a nugget of wisdom that I keep making sure they're certainly a voting batch.

You look what we got in the office.

Now, look what they're doing.

He just set out in a horrible executive order.

It's giving license for people to go out and target on the house people in the most horrific of ways and making it legal.

And you can say we'll voting.

Into this, or they the same kind of part, or whatever it is you go to say, but you have to see the reality of it.

This is what's just happening to you.

So you're going to have to figure out a way to reconcolve yourself or understand the political process and understand how you need to be a part of it.

Yeah, I agree, And I always tell people, I'm like, when you start to feel like I feel like a lot of people when they think of justice, there's a reason that we think of like cut handcuffs and.

Jails and like laws and stuff.

It's because, like, traditionally the law has been used to restrict people, like you said, like target people, knock people down a peg.

And so when I'm thinking about like restorative justice, I try to give people hope and say, you know, we can make laws that actually give people second chances.

We can make laws that target the corporations and the people who are actually exploiting us rather than us who are just trying to make a living and just trying to survive.

And like, not to bring up the subaltern again, but the subaltern is I think Gary Spivack is her name.

She's a scholar and she's a postcolonial scholar, and she talks about this idea of the subaltern.

And in the cast system, in the India cast system, there is the bottom cast is the subaltern.

And it said that the subaltern can't speak, like spiritually they're bound from speaking.

And so in this article she poses the question can the subaltern speak?

And the idea is, yes, we can speak the most oppressed people in society, the people who are on the sidelines the most, those of us who have had the hardest lives, we can speak.

In fact, we can speak much louder.

The fact that we're not heard, that's the problem.

People don't listen.

And like you said, like the fact that you give a voice to the subaltern, it's so powerful because these are the voices that people really.

Don't hear from that often.

I think that's why people are grab imitated towards especially.

I feel like in the past couple of years, things like soft white underbelly or whatever, like yeah, I know.

He's so exploitive and likes Yeah, that's another thing.

But people, I think are gravitated towards that because people are curious and people do want to know, you know, what our lives are like.

It just is unfortunate that people still exploit us for that trauma porn.

And that's another thing.

With one of the things, there was another I don't want to give anymore notoriety a person, but there's another one that has another uh a program that does the similar thing.

And then two we're gonna behind which I bring up like the white saverism they have, like or try to shape the conversation into white Saverism narrative.

That's what I'm trying to be as poliged as that possibly can.

I know, I agree because there's a lot of connections between colonialism and homelessness.

Yes, because what's crazy is.

That some of the first homeless people were white settlers.

And it's funny because when they were homeless, it was, oh, my god, the government needs to give me land, the government needs to give me five horses, and.

Blah blah blah.

And they did.

They subsidized so much.

But also too, like back in into even how the narrative would negatively frame and in some respects for them too is he does not work, does not eat.

I remember being in this coat shelter that was saying that about non house people who knowunsn't worked, don't eat.

So you have to have to do a job in order to get your suffer, or you have to pay, like like the at one point and rescue mission, in order to stay you have to pay part of your gr to stay there in these packed bunks.

And so it's it's so these things are so intertwined in how the conversation of house blessness is.

It is always sent for some kind of negative way of twisting support or there's some kind of way of making sure that you're that he is always on the neck of vulnerable people.

But the soft underabilities and those conversations always has to have a phase of the white saviorism that's going to pull the poor minorities out of their condition because they are unable to do it themselves.

And in order this has happening, and I have seen it happen, they can dictate how they do it by shaping or being in the forefront or the front line or pushing themselves into it.

I'll give you one last example.

There is this one creator won't say the person's name, but this person goes into a rage, and I explained it to the person before I says the reason why I call it weedy in house because the term is much more up to date.

It also gives a chance for the person that is displaced on housed just have us say how they want to be called.

And it also opens the conversation and the mental landscape for people to realize not everyone responds to the word homeless.

Not everyone wants to be called homeless.

There's a person a friend of mine, calls herself ruthless.

There's another person that calls themselves yeah, you know what were called four walls removed.

There are so many people that have a personality choose a conversation, but this person flies into a rage and enlist other homeless people that are okay with it to say these things.

And I have to always says, why does it puts people into a rage that people are using their own autonomy, They're using their own voice to say what they want to be called.

Why would you want to relegate?

Because again it goes back to that white say riism complex.

It goes back to that punitive kind of belief system that they cannot they cannot kill the you know, puneral cards through nature in their mind about on house people or homeless people or displaced people, ruthless or four walls removed, or however you want to say what your condition is.

Because you once you start to take ownership of who you are and how you want to be called, it shifts the mental landscape and it makes you much more confident in how you will be addressing your situation or how you want to address it, and what you want to say when people talk to you, because you demanding that they see you instead of just looking and at another homeless person on which the idea escapes in it really does, and it escapes a lot of people.

They don't get that deeper context to it.

So yeah, no, I think you're right.

Actually, when I first escaped body broken, there's no resources for people who escape body brokeing.

So I remember going to different like nonprofits and different access centers and stuff and talking with different people, and I remember the term unhoused actually helped me realize that I was actually being human trafficked in the first place, because you're right, it is such a fluid term, and you start to realize that different people are experiencing a lot of different things, and some people, you know, are couch serving, some people are you know, creative, and they're going and they're fighting places to sleep that aren't necessarily legal, but you know, they're finding somewhere to sleep.

And so I think it is much.

More of a fluid term that allows you to talk about your really unique experience because everyone's experience is really different, and especially because a lot of it is based off of like your safety, like what you feel safe doing.

Some people feel safe right here in Hollywood.

Some people prefer to go to like a neighborhood and lay low.

So I think you're right like honoring people's individuality and not judging them and just trying to come from a place of understanding like, oh why do you do that?

Why do you feel more comfortable here, and not trying to judge them, but just trying to genuinely understand like where they're coming from.

And that's that's the hardest part too.

Like, for example, it gives you you are the master of your fate.

It gives you a little bit more control into an uncontrollable kind of situation.

What you're dealing in housesness because there's a lot of chaotic things there.

There's a lot of things that beyond your control.

But what you can control is who you are are and how you respond to the conflicts that are the storms of your life.

But also I think because people don't think of it is like, for example, I'll give you the counter argument that they always spout off, well, if you change the name, you know, then it's not going to address the issue.

I was like, well, let me put let me put it to you this way.

Black people have changed from Afro American African American Negro and we still have reasons for it, and the world still moves.

And the saving with people from the lgbtt I plus community, they have used terms now back with I hear and when I was growing up and this is going to you know, on the grade, so give the gray.

But the fighting words was if we could go back to time and time using the word queer, because that was that was you did not use that word.

People try and selling that for older generation.

Yeah, a lot of them, they're gay elders.

Sometimes Like when I was like oh queer, They're like, oh my god, we can't say that out Yeah, exactly exactly.

So it's the same thing, the evolution of those conversations.

Why is it that when we're dealing with the houseless or the unhoused and homeless and displaced that we cannot use those.

Same evolutionary terms again.

We're going back again to the punitive nature of our society and the punitive nature of our spirit, that we are just trying to relegate or dictate what they can and cannot do and say what they can say.

So I want people when they're listening to the show to understand by the show it's so incremental and so instrumental to discuss these things and to walk away with a more nuanced and more humane approach when you're dealing with it, and when the terms are used, when people.

Ask, well, what do you what do you call them?

Well, they're human beings you feel you ask you for your name and say, okay, if you can say, what's your pronouns?

Okay, what do you like to be called?

Some people say I'm homeless, when some people say I'm just out there.

Some people just say I'm displaced.

But what the point of it is is giving them the power of control and the respect.

Now, you may be want to be called something else.

I maybe want to be called this.

Some people like being called homeless.

Some don't like to be called homeless.

They like to be caught hobos.

Now that was a trouble word.

But this group of people like that.

That's the term they want.

So what are you going to do, you know, yell at them because they want to be called what they want to be called.

That doesn't make sense.

And it's like a reclaiming of the term too, like like you know, yeah, who cares?

Like, you know, I embrace it.

Like the terms are always connected with the culture and how cultures are shifting.

Like the term person of color was coined by the white abolitionists because they wanted a way to talk about black communities without saying the same things that.

The white supremacists were saying.

They wanted a different term that was more respectful in their head, and so.

Garrison came up with that term.

Actually, and it's.

Funny they've been talking about retiring it now yeah yeah, yeah.

It's and then too, even in our communities we have people when you were saying for people of color, we're trying to divorce ourselves from people of color and use it for people that are not black or people are not African American because of the nuances of our conversations and their struggles.

But yeah, it's again things change, time change, and we should be open to that and it should not be such a which, like I said, you know, just you know, it just made me more aware when I'm interfacing with people that experienced houses, there's a homelessness that are non black or non I won't say a person of color, but other races.

They can't help themselves but try to dictate or snatch the conversation and for us other vulnerable people to follow their lead because they obviously know they feel that they know best, and us as people of color, as other house, we don't know what we're talking about.

So right, well, I have enjoyed this conversation.

I do not want to overstay my welcome, and I would like to invite you again to the show.

I'm creating the panel and I'll probably reach out to you to see if I can invite you to.

But I wanted to ask two follow up questions.

You mentioned you a native, were you on the reservation?

Or were you independently out?

So I'm from Montana Great Falls, and so from what I know, Great Falls is partially on like what.

Is considered a reservation.

Yeah, but technically I just kind of like grew up in the city.

But most like pretty.

Much how it's like half and half where I'm from the past native population, half white and so I'm Ojibway descendant of the Turtle Mountain Turtle Mountain Indians.

Okay, okay, well, thank you very much.

Is there anything else that you would like to add to the conversation before Sol's on out?

No, just thank you so much for having me, and I would definitely be willing to come back.

Oh, thank you very much.

Of This is Theo Henderson from Whedian House and again I promise you a very exciting and titilating conversation and I have thank you, Thank you, thank you very much.

Thank you so much to Secoya for her time.

You can learn more about her work at the description.

Thank you again for listening to another episode of Weediant House.

If you have a story you'd like to share, please reach out to me at Weedionhouse at gmail dot com or at whedian House on Instagram.

Until then maybe again meet in the light of understanding.

Whedian House is a production of iHeartRadio.

It is written, hosted, and created by me Theo Henderson, our producers Jamie Loftus, Hailey Fager, Katie Fischel.

And Lyra Smith.

Our editor is Adam Want, our engineer is Joel Jerome, and our local art is also by Katie Fisher.

Thank you for listening.