Before I went to prison, homeless people were almost invisible to me. I saw the tents, I saw people sleeping on sidewalks, and I drove past them like everybody else. I just never really wondered or cared who was inside the tent. Now I do, and I want you to meet three young women who changed the way I look at homelessness for three completely different reasons.
The first one makes homelessness sound like freedom. The second one almost broke my heart. And the third is a 23-year-old heroin addict named Sabrina. She was asked a very simple question about what she wanted out of life, and her answer stuck with me, but it became a lot harder to hear after I found out what happened to her later. I'm going to save that part until the end.
Interview 1: Casey in Los Angeles
The first young woman I found while I was back in Los Angeles making my video about going back to LA, the city that almost destroyed me. She didn't look like what I pictured when I thought of homelessness, and then she started talking. Watch this:
Brad: Thanks for speaking with me, Casey. So we're in LA, and you're homeless here?
Casey: I am.
Brad: Is it rough?
Casey: It's not that bad. I honestly worked in Beverly Hills — Beverly Hills — at a hair salon for a year while I was out here before I was homeless, and I enjoyed doing this a lot better than I enjoyed doing that.
Brad: Wait a minute, you'd rather be homeless than cut hair?
Casey: It's all the angry, mean rich ladies.
Brad: What?
Casey: I'm enjoying the fresh air. It gives me a chance to travel if and when I want to. I'm not attached to a mortgage or a family or any business payments right now, so I'm enjoying my freedom while I'm young enough and healthy enough to have it. And this way I get some freedom. I'm my own boss. I can make my own hours, take a day off if I — can when I want to.
Brad: And so you're a minimalist right now?
Casey: I'd say it's — I enjoy having living minimalistic. I have what I need on my back. I got my sleeping bag and some water, food, spare change of clothes, and normally I'd have a tent. Working on saving up for one of those again, though.
Brad: How long have you been homeless?
Casey: I have not — I've been in LA for three years. I've not been homeless for as long. It's been about six months now, I think. And before that, I started out coming to LA three years ago for cosmetology school. I was living on a boat in Marina del Rey while I was doing that for 10 months. And after that, I lived in an apartment with my sister right up La Brea here in Hollywood for about five months while I was working on getting a job. And once I got a job, I moved down to South Central and got a roommate.
Brad: Then what?
Casey: And then my roommate blamed me for some stuff that I didn't do, and I had my job, so they — it was between them firing me and me quitting. They fired me a week before I was going to quit anyways, so it was kind of good timing on that, I guess. But the roommate thing wasn't a good idea, cuz she threw out all my things when I was gone for three days. I had my phone stolen and the keys to our apartment stolen, so I had no way of getting back into the apartment or contacting her at all.
Brad: That sucks.
Casey: So that kind of sucked, but, you know, making the best of what I've got.
Brad: This is actually better than the roommate situation?
Casey: Not too bad. I'd been on and off for a few months staying with my boyfriend. He's been homeless for many, many years now, so I'd spend weekends with him in his tent, and so it wasn't too big of a change for me. And when I was living with my sister, I was pretty much living out of a backpack anyways, sleeping on the couch, so it wasn't too much of a transition for me, to be honest.
Brad: Where'd you sleep last night?
Casey: I slept near the 10 freeway, and you know, there's all the plants on the side and then there's a plateau, so slept over there. It's near the LA Board of Supervisors and the big cathedral over there, not too far from that place.
Brad: Can you picture your future, and if so, what does it look like?
Casey: Like I said, I want to travel for a while, and I mean, eventually, if I want to change my lifestyle, I can and I will, but right now I'm content doing what I am. If anything, I'll do odd jobs for a while and just see where the road takes.
Brad: If you could be granted any wish you want, anything, what would it be right now?
Casey: Oh man, that's that's an interesting one. I'm — I'm not sure, to be honest on that one, right now. I just — I don't know, I don't have anything that I'd really wish for at the moment. I've — like I said, I have what I want, what I need on my back, and I'm enjoying not needing any more.
Brad: Casey, I appreciate your time. Thank you for speaking with me.
That's what caught me off guard. She's articulate, she doesn't appear high, she doesn't seem defeated. In fact, part of her almost seems to enjoy the freedom of having everything she owns in a backpack. And maybe she really feels that way. But I kept thinking: how long can you live without a safety net before something goes wrong? A phone gets stolen, you get sick, you lose a job, the person letting you shower at their house disappears. It doesn't always take one huge catastrophe; sometimes it's five little things.
Interview 2: Kylie in Houston
The next one affected me completely differently, and where I was when I put this interview together made it even harder. I was making my Federal Toolbox video about taking the bus while I was living in the halfway house. One late bus can make me late getting back, and when you're still technically in federal custody, being late isn't just being late.
Across the street from the halfway house was a homeless encampment. I remember looking over there and thinking, "How far am I away from that?" Really. I didn't have a car, my credit was destroyed, I was coming home with a felony conviction and rebuilding my life from scratch. The difference was I had a bed, I had a job, I had people helping me. You take those things away, and the story can end very differently.
This next young woman just made me sad. There's something incredibly vulnerable about her. Watch:
Brad: Kylie, we're out here in Houston. You're living on the streets. Tell me about it.
Kylie: Uh, it's hot. It's really hot today.
Brad: Yeah.
Kylie: Um, I don't know, what do you want to know?
Brad: Well, let's start: how long have you been homeless?
Kylie: I've been in — on the street for a couple months.
Brad: And how'd you end up here?
Kylie: I took a bus.
Brad: All right, all right. Did you have to get away from somewhere?
Kylie: Uh, well, yeah, I guess you could say that. Got in an argument with my adoptive parents.
Brad: So, uh, when was this?
Kylie: A couple years ago, and then I started traveling, and I ended up back on the East Coast.
Brad: So you've been on the road for a while?
Kylie: Yeah, for a few years.
Brad: Everywhere you've been, what's your favorite?
Kylie: The West Coast.
Brad: Really? Uh, which part?
Kylie: I like California.
Brad: Yeah, yeah, I'm from LA.
Kylie: Nice.
Brad: Yeah, I've been in Houston for about a year and a half. That's cool. So how are you surviving out here now?
Kylie: Barely, but you know, the sign. I'm actually trying to save everything I got to get back on the West Coast, so it works.
Brad: Where do you sleep most nights?
Kylie: Uh, in front of a church.
Brad: So when you first got here and realized you had no place to go, what was your first day like?
Kylie: Actually, uh, scary at first. But then I ran — or I met some people, and they kind of took me under their wing, so it was all right, and then you quickly learn the streets.
[...]
Kylie: That I was off the street... I would — that I was off the street and had my own place to stay. That people were all kind to each other, and that there was no war, cuz I really don't like violence.
Brad: Beautiful wishes. Thank you. Thank you very much for your time.
Kylie: You're welcome. Thank you for asking.
That one got to me, because when we talk about people coming home from prison, everybody immediately thinks about relapse. Yeah, relapse can destroy someone's reentry, but you don't have to relapse to become homeless. Come home after 10, 15 years with no rental history, lousy credit, no car, no money, a felony record, and nobody with a spare bedroom — you can be completely sober and follow every condition of supervised release, you can genuinely be trying, and still have nowhere to go.
Interview 3: Sabrina
But addiction is also part of the story, which brings me to Sabrina. Sabrina was 23. She was homeless and addicted to heroin. Near the end of her interview, she's asked a simple question: if you had three wishes, what would they be? Listen carefully to what she asks for:
Sabrina: And, uh, I've been off — on the streets on and off for about four years. I'm 23 years old, and, um, so math this, since I was about 19. Um, I'm a heroin addict, uh, currently, and have been for about two and a half, three years.
Brad: Um, how do you survive out here?
Sabrina: I, um — I fly a sign. Um, sometimes I have to do things like I have to steal from the store, cuz always when — when I do it, I feel wrong. You know what I mean? Like, you got to survive.
Brad: Yeah. Um, if you had three wishes, what would they be?
Sabrina: Um, well, one would be to be able to have actually have a healthy relationship with my family. Um, another one would be to be off heroin, um, to, you know, get the help that I need to get off of it. And my third wish would be to find — find employment so I can get, you know, get my — my life together. Get my shit together, you know? And that — that along with those wishes comes, and in order for those to happen, I have to help myself.
There's something I deliberately didn't tell you before you watched Sabrina: Sabrina died shortly thereafter, still homeless, still struggling with heroin addiction. And knowing that makes what you just heard incredibly different.
Think about her wishes. She wanted a relationship with her family, she wanted to get off heroin, and she wanted a job so she could put her life back together. That's it. She wasn't asking to be rich. She wanted the things that most of us don't even think about because we already have them. And she even understood that, ultimately, she had to participate in saving herself.
That's why I wanted these three women in the same episode. One describes homelessness as freedom, one looks like she can't quite understand how her life ended up there, and one knows exactly what's destroying her life and desperately wants out. Same label — homeless — three completely different human beings.
And that's why this belongs on the Federal Toolbox. Getting released from prison doesn't mean somebody hands you an apartment key, and it doesn't repair your credit, it doesn't give you transportation, and it doesn't erase a felony conviction, and it doesn't replace a family that's moved on while you were gone. The prison gate can open, and you can still have nowhere to go.
I was lucky. Very lucky. I had a job, somewhere to sleep, and people who showed up for me. A lot of people don't. Before prison, I saw homelessness everywhere; I just didn't really see the people. Now, when I pass somebody sleeping under a freeway, living in a tent, I find myself wondering, "What's that person's story?" And maybe that's where all of us should start.
Thanks for watching.