Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: I'm Alex Stone, former military service member and law enforcement officer, now CEO of Echelon Protected Services, one of the fastest growing private security firms on the west coast. And this is ride along, where our guests and I witness firsthand the issues affecting our community.
It I believe our proven method of enacting meaningful change through compassion and understanding is the best way to make our streets a safer place and truly achieve security through the community.
[00:00:50] Speaker B: Hi, Portland. I'm Angela Todd from PDX Real.
[00:00:54] Speaker C: And I'm Jeff Church, also from PDX Real.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: And we're here to experience. What are we experiencing, Jeff?
[00:01:00] Speaker C: Today we're going to experience the ride along. We're psyched.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: Right on.
[00:01:04] Speaker D: Hey, it's Alex Stone. Welcome back to the ride along.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: Today we have a guest, a team guest. We actually have the founders of PDX Real here in the studio, Angela Todd and Jeff Church. They're partners on the street, and they're partners at the house as well. And so they're a real dynamic duo. They're here today to talk to us just about, really, the explosion of the transition from getting news right to your phone on apps like TikTok, Instagram, and just that huge popularity swell that has occurred in our society to want that news quick and easy and fast. And out of everyone that I know, Angela Todd has really perfected that. So, Angela, why don't you kind of introduce yourself and explain just how this phenomenon came into your life?
[00:01:50] Speaker B: Such a great question.
News is turning into something that people are craving that's authentic and real. And so when you try to market it, when you try to be this thing, I could have never done this if I was going for it, if I was going for whatever we have right now. We call it branding sometimes.
[00:02:12] Speaker A: Yeah, branding, yeah.
[00:02:13] Speaker B: And I know a bit about marketing. I've been a business owner for most of my adult life.
[00:02:19] Speaker A: Very successful.
[00:02:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
But in this, it was just a matter of just starting to tell the story about what's going on, and literally sometimes starting with just a few people watching, and then it's starting to take momentum because people wanted to hear it.
Let me say it this way. In Portland, we have an information problem. We have a corruption problem. In our government, we have inefficiency problems, and we have a news problem.
And people know this intuitively.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: Is that really all one problem?
[00:02:53] Speaker B: Maybe. What's the word?
[00:02:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
Is it connected enough? Are all the people connected enough to where it's. I mean, I hate the word conspiracy, but is this a federated issue where it's a bunch of tiny little issues culminating into a larger issue, or is this a centralized issue, that whether it's ideologically or whether we're just lazy, we're not doing our job.
[00:03:19] Speaker E: I mean, what's going on?
[00:03:21] Speaker B: I think it's both.
[00:03:22] Speaker A: Oh, wow. Really?
[00:03:23] Speaker B: I think it's both. I think there's actually people that have axe to grind in a direction they want to go, and also, there's a lot of people that are apathetic and not.
[00:03:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:35] Speaker B: And I think that it's all cumulating to this cancer in Portland.
And I think that this lack of.
[00:03:44] Speaker A: Truth, lack of insight, lack of desire to want to know what's really going on on the street level.
[00:03:50] Speaker E: Yes.
[00:03:50] Speaker B: And lack of community.
[00:03:52] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
[00:03:54] Speaker B: Lack of community. Because when you have community and you have somebody across the street and they're camping and they're homeless, for example, I'm talking 20 years ago, 50 years ago, you might go over there and just go, is everything okay?
[00:04:04] Speaker A: What's going on? Check in on them.
[00:04:06] Speaker B: The community problem we do.
[00:04:07] Speaker A: Without communication, you can't have community. And that's really what you're bringing to Portland. And I would even say the nation. You're bringing real communication in real time about real topics that people really care about. And I don't think anyone else is doing it as well as you are.
[00:04:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
I was really frustrated. Seven years ago, Jeff and I had a series of things happen in the city, and we woke up, we have a problem.
And I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how I could make a difference in the city. And when I actually surrendered and let go, in a way, things started to happen. But I think that the real thing that's been going on is that one person at a time we need to talk to people.
And social media has allowed me to get my message out in a more prolific way than sort of going door to door or trying to meet people through my everyday life to talk to them about what I know about what's going on.
[00:05:15] Speaker F: Yeah.
[00:05:15] Speaker A: Much more effective.
[00:05:16] Speaker E: Right.
[00:05:16] Speaker A: Yeah. And so this wasn't what you always did. You kind of ended up in this space, and we know each other personally from the stories that you discussed with me. Your family wasn't really supportive because they didn't understand.
Wasn't there a point where that transition period happened, and how did that bring wind to your sales? How did that encourage you?
[00:05:40] Speaker B: Well, let's just back up really quickly. I'm from Indiana. I'm a Midwest girl. I'm an Indiana hoosier.
[00:05:48] Speaker D: Love it.
[00:05:48] Speaker B: And my father is from Michigan, and my mother was born and raised in very. My parents are the first people in their family to make it to middle class status. And it took them quite a bit to get there. I have a father who's well read, and you may not know it if you met him, but he has an 8th grade education.
So I, like a lot of Americans, I am the promise of my family.
[00:06:18] Speaker E: Right.
[00:06:18] Speaker B: They want me to do better than they did. So I ended up being a business owner, and I did fairly well at that and still have some of my. I'm still working on my business, by the way. I still do that while I do this.
And my parents were having some concerns about what it is I was doing in political activism in Portland, because here you get sort of canceled. People can say things about you. It can affect your business.
[00:06:52] Speaker A: There's also riots going on.
[00:06:53] Speaker B: Yeah, it might be dangerous.
[00:06:55] Speaker A: There's a lot of unknowns. People ask me all the time, what's going on in Portland. What's really going on in Portland?
[00:07:00] Speaker B: Yeah, right.
[00:07:02] Speaker A: The unknown is scary.
[00:07:03] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:07:03] Speaker B: So I think it was three or four years ago, I was down at Bangkok palace in downtown Portland. I had just launched an enough is enough campaign.
We got 10,000 signatures in seven days about telling our public officials we've had it. We expect the police and the county and the city and the legislature to all work together to help us with our livability in this city. It was about the time people started to see there were problems. That day I was with a banker that I'd never met before. I was introduced to him, and we were having a meeting, and a man went by and busted the window during the meeting. During the meeting.
[00:07:39] Speaker A: That just explains it right there.
[00:07:40] Speaker B: It's on surveillance, and I'm sort of away from the window, but glass hits this woman, and I'm in a full room of people eating their Thai food. And everyone stops because the window breaks and people screaming. And just real quickly, and I stand up and I run after this man. And this is on surveillance, so I can have a really good account of what happened.
[00:08:03] Speaker E: But I'm like, hey, stop.
[00:08:05] Speaker B: And I run after him. And the news ended up finding me. After I ran after him, got the police to go, and they made the arrest. I'm telling this story because this represents my parents. When my mom saw it, my mom said, that's dangerous to follow.
[00:08:18] Speaker A: That is dangerous.
[00:08:18] Speaker B: And I kept my spade. I'm a smart lady. And my dad said that a girl, Angie, give him hell.
So those were the kind of relationships that I've had with my parents. Mom's a little bit more concerned and dad's a little bit more like the rebel. That's where I get that. But once I started to really pour myself into PDX real because I'm so concerned about what's going on in Portland. It has had some sacrifices for us financially as a family. And my dad was asking me to do something come and seeing him, and he's getting older, he's in his seventy s. And I said, dad, money's a little tight right now. I can do this, but I can't do that. He's not used to hearing that from me.
[00:09:01] Speaker A: Because you were dedicating your time to really being that new form of press where you're not making the money that you're used to.
[00:09:10] Speaker B: Right.
[00:09:10] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:09:11] Speaker B: And he said, you know, honey, maybe it's time that you. Do you think maybe it's time for you to stop working on this and really focus on your business and your future.
And I listened to him and I think I was a bit defensive, maybe.
[00:09:32] Speaker A: I'm sure that hurt.
[00:09:33] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:09:33] Speaker B: Because making your parents proud is important to you.
[00:09:38] Speaker A: You wanted his support, right?
[00:09:41] Speaker B: And I was like, dad and I have a hard time even articulating how important this is to me, even though I'm probably one of the most talkative people you know. But he said that all happened. And he came in town this summer, just a few months later, and we were going places as a family, Jeff and I and my father. And people were coming up to us, complete strangers, and thanking us for the work we're doing. And we've grown large enough that we're recognized almost every time we're out in Portland now. And I don't mean that from a big head perspective.
[00:10:16] Speaker A: You are.
[00:10:16] Speaker B: It's an honor to have people.
[00:10:18] Speaker A: You also have striking red hair and piercing green eyes.
[00:10:23] Speaker B: Recognizable, but people's heartfelt stories that they gave us. My dad had a change of heart and said, you're doing something that matters. I'm proud of you.
[00:10:35] Speaker A: That's awesome. That's great.
[00:10:37] Speaker B: No, and I'm not crying because I'm hurt. I'm crying because I have put a lot on the line to do this, and it's defied what I should be doing.
I'm a creative. My business did really well. I worked for almost 20 years to get to the point that I did in my career. And there's been some grief with, like, why am I so distracted? But the truth is that I had two choices. When you're called you're called.
[00:11:06] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:11:07] Speaker B: And my two choices were, drop it all and leave this state and start all over or fight.
[00:11:15] Speaker C: Absolutely.
Sorry. You guys have been kind of over.
[00:11:20] Speaker E: Yeah, I know.
[00:11:21] Speaker B: Exactly. I looked over and I thought, so we were talking about this off air. It's like I talk ten to one. Jeff. Jeff is our.
We put out a lot of statistics and numbers and information to help underscore hunches.
[00:11:39] Speaker A: He's the research.
[00:11:40] Speaker B: He's the guy. He's not even the research guy. He's the guy that can remember, know a long time after I've forgotten them. He's the guy that remembers names. Somebody will come up arrested or in office or donating money to some grant within the city, and he'll remember where they were three years ago and who they were associated with. So I was just sort of looking at you like, I'm sorry, I'm hogging. I'm talking. Angela talks a lot.
[00:12:09] Speaker A: There's nothing wrong with that.
You're the mean.
[00:12:13] Speaker D: There's a lot of people that stand.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: Behind the camera that are talented, but you're who people tuned in to.
[00:12:20] Speaker C: Even when. Even when I'm posted on Twitter, and I do most of the Twitter stuff, it's like they all think I'm Angela, and I have to tell them over and over again, I'm not Angela, but it's pretty funny.
[00:12:33] Speaker B: So turns out that the best thing that we can do is shed light in dark spaces.
[00:12:42] Speaker A: And how are you doing that?
Well, Instagram.
[00:12:47] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:12:48] Speaker B: Well, I told you in the beginning that if I would have tried to put this together, I couldn't have done it. It was a perfect plan. But I'm a planner. But really, from a marketing perspective, I've been that way with other business. I'm going to do this, and I'm going to market this way, and I'm going to say this. And that didn't work with this. What worked with this was just starting to talk. And what happened is the more that we expose, the more that people find us, and they expose more for us. So I think we're part community reporting. And when I say community reporting, I always want to caveat this. I'm not saying that we're journalists. What I'm saying is we are reporting community news, and that doesn't even mean that we're the community reporter. The community is reporting, and I'm telling.
[00:13:30] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:13:30] Speaker A: So you're more of a platform, right, for community reporting?
[00:13:34] Speaker E: Yes.
[00:13:34] Speaker A: And you're taking stories of the day and retelling these stories for the community.
[00:13:40] Speaker C: On their behalf and how they relate to the community in a larger way. Like, for example, we had a person contact us recently who said that her, I think it was their husband or father, had a massive heart attack. And he lived for a while, but they called the ambulance, and it took the ambulance over 30 minutes to get there. And by the time he get there, they just couldn't save him.
[00:14:05] Speaker A: This is very sad.
In the 50s, when house fires and commercial fires were no longer prevalent because of fire suppression systems, the fire departments were losing their sense of who they were.
[00:14:21] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:14:22] Speaker A: And they were concerned that their budgets would get slashed. Right. So they purposely reached into the hospital and pulled those medic units, those ambulances, into the firehouses, and they all retrained and became medics. And it was good because it was able to sustain and help pay and justify the budgets at the firehouse, at the ladder companies. But the intent was to bring the ambulance closer into the neighborhoods so that emergency response time would be much less that response time, which would save lives, which it did. But now, because of lack of resources, we have cycle times and response times increasing like you're talking about. And this is really sad.
[00:15:03] Speaker C: They hit these level zeros all the time where it's just like, there is no ambulance to send.
Stories like that relate more into, like, well, this is happening a lot. This is not an individual story, just like it was a crazy day or something. Another interesting story on the same topic was there was a well known story about a local chef in town who was riding her bike on 26th and Powell and got hit by a big truck, and she laid in the street again for almost 30 minutes waiting for an ambulance.
They didn't relate that part of the story. It was just like, oh, this is horrible. Bike safety is not good in Portland.
[00:15:46] Speaker B: And we need more barricades. Let's get Peabot on that for me.
[00:15:49] Speaker C: But the real issue was if they would have been able to get an ambulance there in five or six minutes, they might have been able to save this woman. It would have been a different story. But they want to push it as like, oh, it's about that people are riding bikes, that it isn't safe. And to a degree, that's right. You ride a bike in an urban center, sending. It's not safe. And, I mean, I would argue that most people who ride their bikes in urban setting know that I used to do it myself quite a bit when I was a younger man.
[00:16:22] Speaker A: You're playing with death.
[00:16:24] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:16:25] Speaker D: A firm believer of that. It is scary. I used to do it as well.
[00:16:28] Speaker A: And, yeah, it's very scary.
[00:16:30] Speaker C: No, I did it probably two or three times a week for years. And every year, a couple of times a year, I would come close to, or I'd dump my bike over because some driver didn't see me or something and that kind of thing.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that we take these stories from people in the community, and we relate them to people and give them to the community as bigger issues that we're seeing sort of on a large scale.
[00:17:05] Speaker A: So let's hit a couple of those topics that you prefer to report on. I know that you didn't say that you're a journalist, but you are the media, right? Me too. I consider myself a journalist and someone in the media, and I report on security issues, law enforcement, emergency services, and community issues.
What's your heart about? What do you really care about? What topics that give you a burden on your heart? What are those topics?
I know we talked about human trafficking, the increase of female population among the homeless currently.
What are some things that are really, right now, a burden in your heart?
[00:17:49] Speaker B: Well, this isn't, like, the sweetest, softest thing I can say, but I think that how things revolve around for me is whenever I see things that I feel are kind of injustice or shouldn't be, so I get really activated about it. And so when it comes with women, for example, that are out on the street, we know that we could go over different stats that people have released, but the likelihood of a woman being sexually assaulted out there is extremely high.
[00:18:21] Speaker A: I would say it's 100%, but I've been told it's only 85.
[00:18:25] Speaker C: Yeah, the statistic that for chronically houseless, that was shocking to me when we heard it, but it's been released by various, even nonprofits. Is that the average amount of time it takes for a woman to get assaulted once she becomes homeless is 36 hours.
So, I mean, it's that dangerous out there, and to have these people be like, well, we shouldn't sweep, we shouldn't get in these people's way. It's just like, you don't understand. You obviously don't understand how dangerous it is for people out there. And the fact is that there's a lot of people who are being exploited out there, and it's not just women. I mean, there's a large scale percentage of the population that are criminals who are exploiting these homeless people as well, and doing horrible things to them, killing them, and getting them addicted to drugs and sex trafficking them and all of the horrible things you can even imagine.
[00:19:26] Speaker B: Beating them, stealing from them.
[00:19:29] Speaker A: I love that topic. People ask me over the years, who are the homeless? And I've identified seven segments, completely separate segments, separate populations that I believe make up the houseless population in almost any city. I mean, you have people that are just travelers. They used to be called rainbow children, and they literally are travelers. They're kind of the hobos of old, and they're only in a city. They're coming through kind of into the wild. Remember this movie, this great book?
Then you have different subsections of criminality. Right. You almost have a Romani style that are travelers but are a criminal type of class. And then you have that true criminal class that are part of a criminal organization. And then you have the juvenile population or children.
[00:20:21] Speaker C: Remember the gutter punks? You don't really see gutter punks. Remember how they used to in Portland? You'd be downtown, and the gutter punks are like.
[00:20:29] Speaker D: They were called. Yeah.
[00:20:29] Speaker A: Portland street kids. Psk.
[00:20:31] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:20:32] Speaker A: Is their gang name. They're underneath the sick boys who are underneath KRB, who are underneath the gypsy jokers.
[00:20:39] Speaker C: Yeah. Right.
[00:20:40] Speaker A: Psk were the juveniles who hadn't done time, and so they would run all the drugs.
[00:20:45] Speaker C: And then you have that certain percentage of people who are just. They get released from prison. They're used to prison life.
[00:20:52] Speaker A: There are people who can't get housing because of their background.
[00:20:55] Speaker C: Right.
And they run camps like prison yards, basically, where they have a shot collar and that kind of thing.
We've done enough outreach into some of these camps. And you see mean, it's just like you have a couple people that sort of control what, you know, like Kevin Daugrin calls know. He'll call him the mayor of the camp or more.
[00:21:22] Speaker A: That's a more appropriate term. I don't know if they were elected, but.
[00:21:25] Speaker C: Right, exactly. That's what he says. I don't think he's elected.
[00:21:27] Speaker A: We use street terms. I mean, it's a shot caller.
[00:21:29] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:21:30] Speaker A: They run that block. I call them a block captain.
And they don't have to be gang affiliated. No, but it is someone that has respect of the people in that area, and they offer protection. And the protection isn't necessarily always part of a racket to earn money. Sometimes they're just generous and they do offer their protection.
[00:21:51] Speaker C: Right.
[00:21:51] Speaker B: You're sort of thinking about it in terms of whenever you see a pride of lions, you sort of have the head lion.
[00:21:58] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:21:59] Speaker B: That's what you have and you can have good lions and bad.
[00:22:02] Speaker D: Exactly. Yeah.
[00:22:03] Speaker B: Just like Simba and whatever that other guy's name was.
[00:22:06] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:22:06] Speaker A: I don't question.
[00:22:08] Speaker B: I'm not a.
Yeah. So. And then you also have the just.
[00:22:14] Speaker A: Mentally ill, I would say there's the mentally ill. There's people that use so much, they're in drug psychosis.
[00:22:23] Speaker E: Right.
[00:22:23] Speaker A: I've been on a call with a lady who ate half her arm, and 9 hours later, she was completely normal.
Right. When we contacted her, she was speaking with a british accent and walking like a crab.
[00:22:37] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:22:38] Speaker A: So that was a meth induced psychosis. But then you had the chronically mentally ill, who truly are mentally ill.
[00:22:44] Speaker B: Right.
[00:22:45] Speaker A: And that is a definite segment. And they're probably committing crimes.
[00:22:49] Speaker C: And there's a lot of people, too that.
And there's different levels of mentally ill, too.
[00:22:56] Speaker F: Right.
[00:22:56] Speaker C: Because you could probably say from talking to people on the street, almost all of them have a level of trauma.
[00:23:05] Speaker E: Right.
[00:23:05] Speaker C: So you could characterize that as sort of mental illness in a way, sometimes.
We talked to a guy recently, and he. Pretty normal guy, but he'd obviously had some problems in the camp that he was in because another guy was saying, well, he punched me in the face the other day, and blah, blah, blah. And so we talked to the guy, and he was just like.
[00:23:26] Speaker B: He seemed nice to me.
[00:23:27] Speaker C: He was not. Yeah. But he'd been living outside of his home since he was 16 years old. He was living in some apartment with, like, three other guys that were all criminals that were robbing people. And that was his experience. Right. So he just had an incredible amount of trauma. He went to prison for a while. He gets out.
He's never really had any kind of security in his life or consistency or anything like that, or obviously a broken family. And it's just like, there's people like that that. It's just like, how do you integrate those people into society in a successful way where he's obviously a violent man? Sometimes he's completely rational. Sometimes when we were talking to him, he would just go off into things that made no sense.
There's no question that it's a very difficult problem, but our opinion is that the worst thing you can do is just leave them out there and defend for themselves.
[00:24:34] Speaker A: Oh, 100%.
To leave someone in an area that's dangerous with no support makes them more desperate. Yeah. Not only does it make them desperate, it's not compassionate.
[00:24:48] Speaker C: No.
[00:24:48] Speaker A: I would say it's the opposite of compassion.
[00:24:50] Speaker C: It is.
[00:24:51] Speaker B: So we, as a governing body, Multnoma county, has chosen that, oh, this is really bad, and so let's help them. And so we've given them tents and tarps and bandaids and bungies and band aids and sleeping bags and clothes and food and water and cell phones, and it's just. They are being loved to death. And it's all of this money spent on that and people sitting around in their offices doing graphs on the computer, testifying for more money instead of getting their rear ends out there and meeting with each of these people.
[00:25:30] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:25:31] Speaker B: And figuring out where they need to be met to uplift them out.
[00:25:35] Speaker A: Yeah. The way I explain it is resources are a bridge to the same situation they're already in.
[00:25:42] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:25:43] Speaker A: It's an extension. It could be a life extension.
It could possibly be a de escalatory extension.
It could provide comfort, solace. Right. But you're still extending them into the same life situation.
[00:25:59] Speaker C: Right. You're keeping them where they are.
[00:26:00] Speaker A: You're keeping them.
[00:26:01] Speaker C: You're just making them more comfortable.
[00:26:02] Speaker D: Correct.
[00:26:03] Speaker C: Which, I mean, it's almost like hospice. Feel better?
[00:26:06] Speaker A: It's a hospice.
[00:26:07] Speaker C: It is. It's sort of a sick, twisted way of looking at it, considering the hundreds of people that are dying on the street every year.
[00:26:16] Speaker A: Now, I want to be adamant with this, and I don't know what you think, but I don't think my suggestion is a lot of people that are in that nonprofit world actually have no idea what it's like to really be on the street. I mean, I was homeless as a man and a child. I was homeless with my mom after she experienced a sexual and physical assault that led to our. I was living in a vehicle when I was very young. Right.
I don't think that people that have all these degrees and went to all these colleges, I don't think they actually understand what it's like to live in a tent with a guy who's crazy, that has a hatchet that walks by every five minutes, and the level of PTSD that forms the trauma. I don't think that these. When we talk about trauma informed care, I don't think that giving resources is trauma informed care because there's no care there. It's like you have 10,000 refugees fleeing a warlord in some random country, and you're just going to drop some supplies from the air.
[00:27:17] Speaker C: Right.
[00:27:18] Speaker A: Rather than go in there, stop the war, get refugee centers, get the children care, give them education, help them rebuild their society. I mean, this is what is needed in this urban environment.
[00:27:30] Speaker B: Right.
So as I see it, and I spend a lot of time thinking about this, as I know you two do. The way I see it is we have two problems. The first one is starting with ourselves.
So what I've started to do is start to think of this is from a lot of conversations, a lot of people. I started to think of myself as a navigator. So beyond PDX real, beyond what I'm doing there. I started to think of myself, of who's in my neighborhood that's experiencing problems, or who do I know from PDX real that I can be of service to, and I can't do it for everybody. It's a big problem. But, like, for know, there are a handful of people that usually it's two or three at a time that I'm in constant contact with that are in different places of homelessness and so forth. Our friend Chad. I came to Chad late in the game.
He's a former retired military, had some alcoholism problems, was having trouble navigating through the housing voucher system, which that's very tough, extremely difficult.
And we worked on kind of trying to figure out a right place to have him so he was safe. And then he was in, like, a shed in somebody's yard over in southeast that was letting him sort of be.
He's. He's sober now, and Jeff and I are big bourbon and whiskey people. So I was like, we can't have chad with know, because he was new in mean. It's funny, but it's also just reality. And I even told him that. I said, chad, I'd have you. I trust you. I've been around you enough. He'd been to some of our PDX, real stuff. I'd have you stay here, but we have a lot of bourbon and whiskey around, and I think that'd just be weird.
[00:29:13] Speaker E: And he's like, oh, I'm not looking.
[00:29:14] Speaker B: For a place from you. I said, it's okay. I want to help you. But anyway, gave him a lot of moral support, and he has a place in Vancouver now. There's another gal, and I won't say her name. Chad's been on my stuff publicly, which is why I'm using his name. But another gal, her boyfriend was selling and doing drugs. He passed away of a fentanyl overdose. She had gotten in touch with me as a follower, started talking to me. Very young woman.
I had gotten in touch with her again. After those women started, bodies started being dumped because those women fit a very specific profile.
[00:29:50] Speaker A: This is a series of murders, we'll call them deaths, that occurred in the Portland area. They were occurring to women that are local to the inner city of Portland, but their bodies are being found in common spaces outside of the city.
[00:30:07] Speaker B: Yeah, their bodies are being dumped. So it has to be a murder. But anyway. And it's a serial killer. But anyway, so this gal fits the exact.
[00:30:16] Speaker A: We'll come back and do one on that.
[00:30:17] Speaker B: We'll come back on that. We're going to reel in on that. So this particular gal, over the course of time, tells me that she was using fentanyl, too. First it was her boyfriend, and he passed away, and she was scared and whatever.
Anyway, she finally got clean. I mean, there's a whole story there, but I'll skip through it. So she gets clean, she gets detoxed. She's going over to Blackburn, which is 122nd in Burnside, and she's describing to me how much she likes them. But it's hard to go to her in appointments because she's wading through drug dealers to the point where they are putting it in their hands. Yeah, they're set up outside anyway, so I just check in on her. Hey, how are you doing? What's going on?
I really look up to you, and I'm like, we can get this done. And she comes from a rough background. I mean, she just does. Anyway, she was living with her father.
We were talking about that. I just talked with her, and I'm checking in on her, and she writes back and says, my dad just died. I don't know what to do. And so I pick up the phone and I call her. She doesn't answer. And I'm like, at this point, I don't know if she's using again or what's going on. Don't even care, actually care about her. And I know that she's living hand to mouth, and if your dad passes away and you have a place together, there's weird stuff. And she's also just outside of addiction, which anybody who knows about that knows, that your brain isn't quite firing on all cylinders. And so I feel like it's my job as a woman who's almost 50 and who has some wisdom and is also a survivor, that I can help one person, I can help one young woman who's 21 years old and where she's at and meet her. And so I think I would like to say that, and maybe I should have said this first, but one of the things I think we can be doing is thinking about who's around us and who we can touch and impact around us when we talk about what's missing in terms of community? I think that's what I mean.
50 years ago, we had more community centers.
People went to church.
[00:32:30] Speaker A: More.
People are more just overall civically engaged.
[00:32:35] Speaker E: Right.
[00:32:35] Speaker A: All these fraternal orders like the Eagles and the elks and the scouts and all these organizations were completely filled. Sometimes memberships were closed.
[00:32:45] Speaker E: Yes.
[00:32:46] Speaker A: And now they're down 80%.
[00:32:49] Speaker B: And what we're doing is we're all busy, and we're all doing our thing, and we're on our phones, we're watching TV, and we're just, like, in our own little world, and it's like we're not giving. And the other thing is, there's so many people that I meet on a regular basis that are not alive right now. They're slightly depressed. It's like everything's kind of. They're honestly a little bit hateful. The dark side's sort of taken over in terms of, like, Star wars. And the whole thing is, like, if you can figure out how you can be of service, you're going to get more back.
[00:33:23] Speaker A: So true. It's so true.
[00:33:24] Speaker B: I feel like this thing with PDX real because we were faced with this thing a few years ago.
I was just like, okay, I'll sell everything. I have equity in my home. My business is such that it would be hard to rebuild, but I could, and I could just leave. And what kept me here was not the destination of changing things. It's who I become as a result of it.
I, too, wanted to have better, more meaningful relationships with people. And what I notice about this work is that in the community and this civic work is that. Like you, for example, our relationship that we have was started in the work that we share, that we want to do in the community. But I know what you're made out of, and you know what I made out of?
[00:34:16] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:34:16] Speaker B: Marshmallows.
Really?
And so you get to see the pieces of them. This work allows me, and it will other people, too. It allows you to exercise the best aspects of yourself.
And what do you call it? I'm a recovered workaholic. I'm still a workaholic, but I got to use it for good. I'm kind of overdrive all the time. And there's parts of me, I mean, I'm a redhead, where I can have a hot temper and whatever, but when I get a chance to be of service and to help and to expose what's going on, I even mostly try to do that with compassion. I mean, even these politicians that I go after and what they're doing. Whenever I see places, I'm like, it's.
[00:35:06] Speaker E: Nice to see you, mayor.
[00:35:08] Speaker B: And sometimes I'm with a, stick with the mayor, and sometimes I'm with praise. But the thing is that, and the mayor is a bad example because he's not our biggest problem.
But I think that we can approach all this with rising up everyone, including ourselves. Yeah, I agree, because we need that.
[00:35:29] Speaker A: Well, I like your rule of just one. There's four to 500,000 people that live in Portland. If you take family structure and put it in play, let's say there's 100,000 units. Right. If everyone could take care of one.
Right? I mean, that's a lot. That's two to three times more than we need. If everyone would just take care of one, we really could solve the issue. I know that the nonprofit that we've started, we house more than 100 people a month and we only have three full time people doing that work.
[00:36:05] Speaker B: So the second part of what you said, because I said it was a two part solution, is that we need to be talking about where all this damn money's going and why they're taking it from.
[00:36:16] Speaker A: I can tell you're passionate about that.
[00:36:17] Speaker B: Because I'd like some of my money back. Because I could use that money to do better things for these people, you know, because like with Chad or with this other person, whenever I thought there.
[00:36:28] Speaker A: Needs to be accountability. Yeah.
Again, I'm jaded on politics because of everything I went through as a police officer.
[00:36:36] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:36:36] Speaker A: And I can't talk about that because I signed a nondisclosure agreement.
[00:36:40] Speaker B: We'll talk about it offline and then.
[00:36:42] Speaker A: I'll say it with, no, I can't.
[00:36:44] Speaker C: That's a non disclosure agreement. You can't even do that.
[00:36:47] Speaker A: But I will say this.
The one thing that I find frustrating is that there's no central tracking system for shelter beds, right?
So the county roughly has around 2000 beds. The city has just over 200. So it gives us around 2200 beds.
[00:37:05] Speaker B: And that doesn't count Ivy Lakes, the ones they have. That doesn't count Ib lakes. That doesn't count the salvation. It doesn't count all these.
[00:37:13] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:37:13] Speaker A: The private Portland Nazarene Union Gospel. Right. All these other great ministries that we love working with, they're fantastic nonprofits. And they're all mostly faith based. Right.
[00:37:24] Speaker B: And that's why they get cut off from the money.
[00:37:26] Speaker A: Well, I don't know.
[00:37:28] Speaker B: Well, I do know, and I'm telling you.
[00:37:29] Speaker D: Yeah, I believe you.
[00:37:30] Speaker A: I'm not questioning you kill the background of me.
[00:37:32] Speaker D: Don't.
[00:37:32] Speaker A: Background Tod.
But no one really knows where these beds are. No one knows. If you ask a politician, how many beds do we have available today? No one will know.
[00:37:47] Speaker B: Yeah, it's interesting, too, because we were talking about this in stories on Instagram, on PDX.
[00:37:52] Speaker A: Just that little accountability.
[00:37:54] Speaker B: It's crazy.
[00:37:55] Speaker A: It makes me feel like the money's being spent.
[00:37:57] Speaker E: You know, I'm not saying it's not.
[00:37:59] Speaker A: Being spent well, but it would make me feel like it is.
[00:38:01] Speaker B: They could, at minimum do a Google Doc.
[00:38:04] Speaker A: Seriously, to give you a juxtaposition for the audience to have a juxtaposition from what I would say is just these heavily ensconced elements that are surviving for decades, and they're just doing their own thing. We got together as a group of people, and we had a barbecue on July 4 in Old Town. We fed around 520 people. I think we handed about 750 meals out, and during that time, we were able to get people into shelters. But we talked to a lady named Hannah, and she wanted to get into recovery, so we set appointments for her with our team the next day. She did all the paperwork, and then the following day, three days later or two days later, we took her to Hooper detox. If you go to Hooper, you need to have a bed. So that's why it's important to get all your paperwork squared away the day before, and we already had her bed squared away, so now we know exactly how long she's going to be in Hooper. She wanted to stay at least a month, and now she has a bed that she's transitioning into that has her name on it.
[00:39:02] Speaker E: Great.
[00:39:04] Speaker A: But this is very easy to do.
[00:39:05] Speaker B: This is something that this is not easy for everyone else. You have figured out trial and error, how to do the.
[00:39:11] Speaker A: It's just paperwork.
[00:39:13] Speaker C: But if someone is on the street and they're trying to claim none of.
[00:39:16] Speaker A: The people that did the paperwork work at any of these places.
[00:39:18] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:39:19] Speaker A: We're just volunteers doing paperwork.
[00:39:22] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly.
[00:39:23] Speaker A: So anyone can do this paperwork. You don't have to even be a referring agent.
They don't even need to know who you are. So to kind of follow up, I like to chase the rabbit. I call it chasing a rabbit. Right. So to kind of follow up, I really want the audience to know that this isn't something you're doing to make a lot of money. Right. This isn't a monetized platform you have. How many followers is it now?
[00:39:48] Speaker B: It's close to 70,000 on Instagram. And then between TikTok and Twitter and Facebook and YouTube has very little at this point. It's growing every day.
[00:40:01] Speaker A: We're going to grow that platform, I.
[00:40:03] Speaker B: Think, 110 or 120,000 followers.
[00:40:05] Speaker A: So you have, let's say, 120,000 followers on your platforms, and you gave up a career, you gave up this fortune, a lot of money, your business, your business owners, and you did it because you fell in love with a city, and you want that city back.
[00:40:21] Speaker B: Yeah. And in terms of what we gave, still, it almost feels like. So I'm a creative, and I'm sort of a freelancer. Jeff's a broker. And so what we do is we spend enough time on that so we can at least pay our bills.
[00:40:39] Speaker D: And.
[00:40:39] Speaker B: Then we spend the rest of our time doing so.
[00:40:43] Speaker C: We are working constantly.
[00:40:44] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:40:46] Speaker A: You're not getting paid by some dark money somewhere to be some political activist. You're a political activist because you see a need and you see something that has to really change. And if it doesn't change, we could possibly lose our city.
[00:41:00] Speaker C: Well, yeah, I mean, the whole reason we did this and started to get involved is because we chose this city. I moved here 30 years ago, and I chose it because I loved it, and it was clean and it was safe, and it was beautiful, had great food. It had great. I'm a musician. There's great music here. So it was just like a city we both fell in love with.
[00:41:22] Speaker B: We're both musicians. We're both creative people.
[00:41:25] Speaker A: It is an art city. It's a city of art.
[00:41:27] Speaker C: It really is to a lot of people's point. I think the first room that I rented in Portland when I first moved here was $400 a month. So it's a little bit different now. And to people's point, it's much harder to live here as a musician or as a young creative, because it's just so expensive.
And we started seeing things, like, sort of slowly sort of lose grip with that original feeling.
And part of it was because it had grown quite a bit, but it changed a little bit through that growth, but it wasn't, like, dangerous yet or anything like that.
[00:42:12] Speaker A: Almost like a village community.
[00:42:14] Speaker C: It was. It still felt like a very smaller community. I mean, compared to any other city, even Seattle, it feels just much smaller than so, you know, once we started seeing it slip, it was just sort of heartbreaking for then and then seeing friends move away and businesses leave, because we know a lot of business owners, and they were just like, it's untenable for us to do business here, they.
[00:42:40] Speaker A: No longer want to open their door to a pile of human feces.
[00:42:44] Speaker C: Right, exactly.
[00:42:46] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:42:46] Speaker B: And we woke up in our neighborhood first. It was during the time where the camping and the drug epidemic really started to take root. We've always had homeless here in Portland.
[00:42:58] Speaker E: I moved here in, oh, of course.
[00:43:00] Speaker B: I moved here in 96, deaf in 94. But it was sort of like it was the kids that were out here for the summer, or it was the man who was a little bit mentally ill, but he was really kind, and he might want you to put cans.
[00:43:17] Speaker A: Behind, and you knew them. There were familiar faces.
[00:43:20] Speaker E: Right.
[00:43:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:21] Speaker A: You would put cans out for him instead of putting you aside on your recycling bin.
[00:43:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
And then it just started to turn into, like, there was more criminal elements over. So in our neighborhood, we sort of woke up with neighbors that were having a lot of homeless. This is a time whenever they were on ODOT land, and there was a big thing where ODOT wasn't able to clean it up or didn't have it budgeted.
[00:43:43] Speaker A: Oregon Department of Transportation so lands owned by and controlled by the Oregon Department of Transportation, like size of highways.
[00:43:51] Speaker B: And we had neighbors that were just terrorized, and they were far enough away from us that it wasn't so much bothering us, but we knew them, and it was things. Know one neighbor, he'd been broken into. Four.
[00:44:03] Speaker A: See, you can't have that.
[00:44:06] Speaker C: You can't live literally sleeping with a shotgun.
[00:44:08] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:44:09] Speaker A: You can't feel safe if you're having homes broken into. I mean, who's going to stay in that neighborhood?
[00:44:15] Speaker E: Right?
[00:44:16] Speaker B: And I have an old house, and so one of my neighbors also has an old house, and that's how we know each other. We kind of geek out on that. And he had a hose, and somebody had used his hose, somebody who was living outside. And then because they're kind of not connecting on all cylinders with their maybe psychotic or something, or maybe vengeful, I don't know which. But they just threw the hose down. So he got back from work, and his entire basement was, like, damaged.
[00:44:44] Speaker D: They left it on.
[00:44:45] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:44:45] Speaker B: And so it was a $16,000 claim.
And his insurance, just based on circumstances, didn't pick up everything. And anybody who's had an insurance claim understands it doesn't always cover everything. And so that was hard. And we have a neighbor who.
[00:45:04] Speaker A: These are not normal living conditions.
[00:45:07] Speaker B: No. We had all these stories, like, one of my really good girlfriends in the neighborhood, they had a disabled daughter, and they had a paid for van. And so it wasn't a new van or anything, but it was all they had to transport her. And they had had somebody come and not just siphon gas, but they cut the line to get it out. So they didn't know, and they left in the van, and something happened, and it caused this big malfunction electronically or whatever was going on, and it totaled the thing. And so then they have nothing to get around their disabled daughter. And so there was just, like, so many stories like this. And so we were.
[00:45:46] Speaker A: These stories are common. Everyone in Portland, we have all these stories, and our friends had these know.
[00:45:51] Speaker C: One of the things that we get a lot of times from followers is just like, why are you doing this? Portland's a lost cause. Just move. You know, it's just like, no, this is a city that we chose. This is where we decided to put roots in. This is a place where we started businesses in.
We have friends here. We have family here. We have all of that stuff. Why should we move?
[00:46:15] Speaker A: Yeah, your roots are rooted.
[00:46:16] Speaker C: Right, exactly.
And we were seeing all these other people who had lived here for decades, and they were just leaving, and they were broken up about it.
[00:46:27] Speaker B: And I will say this, and I'm not encouraging people with kids to move from Portland. I hope you stay and help us. But we noticed that we don't have young kids at home. And we sort of understood that some people for different life decisions, whether they had young kids or they were at retirement age anyway, they were older than us. They were just like, yeah, we're out.
And we've seen that reflected now in the numbers of people that are migrating outside of Portland.
[00:46:54] Speaker A: Portland's had a net loss of population this the last three years.
[00:46:58] Speaker B: Yeah, but it's not just what the problem is sometimes in life.
It's being part of the change and who you become when you do that.
[00:47:09] Speaker A: And that's the decision you made?
[00:47:11] Speaker B: That's the decision we made.
[00:47:12] Speaker A: You decided to give up your business to start. Essentially.
[00:47:18] Speaker B: We gave up some business. We still are paying our bills and have business.
[00:47:21] Speaker A: You're paying your bills, but you definitely took a lifestyle cut.
[00:47:26] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:47:27] Speaker A: To start a media platform that you're not making money on.
[00:47:32] Speaker C: Right.
[00:47:33] Speaker A: In order to. Essentially, because you want to engage in political activism, you want to uproot corruption, because you want the city to go back to how it used to be. Right. But I want people to know that there's more to you than just that. Right. I mean, you're out there helping people as well.
[00:47:50] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:47:51] Speaker B: So it was kind of like, PDX world is hard to define for people, for me. And I'm still learning how to define it. So we have whistleblowers that come in and give us information that we get out and expose things, and then it'll help us unwrap more of a story because we have so many followers now that they'll tell us things about it so we can really get a sense of what's going on.
We have some human interest stories, and sometimes it's just documenting what it is that's going on. Like, for example, I had an american flag that was outside of my home, and it was stolen, and I have no idea who.
[00:48:26] Speaker A: Someone stole your american flag?
[00:48:27] Speaker B: Yeah. And I don't know if it was somebody just going by being funny or it was somebody that was anti american flag, or it was honestly somebody who was transient and just thought, oh, I'll take that. I don't know.
Or it was kids. I just don't know. But I had put that in stories, and somebody from Twitter said, I'd like to get you guys an american flag.
[00:48:50] Speaker A: Well, that's awesome.
[00:48:50] Speaker B: And so they sent it to us, and then allegiance flag company saw that. I said that on stories, and they said, we'd like to send you one. So then I did a reel about that and about what the american flag means and what I think it means, because we're at this time, right now, where patriotism can be a little bit off putting for people. And so really, I think what we're doing is trying to bring people together in community. And I think that's what we're sort of missing in a way. I think that all these problems can be resolved by an involved community.
[00:49:31] Speaker A: Whether you're thinking, and I agree with.
[00:49:32] Speaker B: You, engaging with the government on civic affairs, testifying, making your voice heard, voting, but also, like, helping the person next door.
How many people anymore know that their neighbor three doors down, whenever we have a weird snow or an ICE storm, go and just take care of their driveway. When's the last time you did something like that? Or you're like, you know what? I mowed my grass, and I'm just going to mow theirs just for the heck of it. Or I made cookies and I'm going to take them down and introduce myself to this person.
[00:50:03] Speaker A: So you're going for civic and community engagement. So it sounds like you're a news platform that is trying to increase community engagement, to bring awareness about political issues that have turned awry, turned our social ills awry.
[00:50:21] Speaker C: And I think one of the problems of our modern society, too, is that people have this idea that, oh, if I just vote right, things will be taken care of.
[00:50:31] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:50:31] Speaker A: Like it's a magic.
[00:50:32] Speaker D: Like it's a magic wand. Right.
[00:50:34] Speaker C: And it's just like, well, that's not.
[00:50:38] Speaker A: It's hard to do 30 years of bad policy by hoping that one politician.
[00:50:44] Speaker C: Can change it all.
[00:50:44] Speaker A: Can change it all, and they really can't. It really does take every bureau.
Accountability. You have to look at everything and you have to say, no, we can do without or we can do this. This works better. There's periods of reform like this.
[00:50:59] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:50:59] Speaker C: I mean, one of the things I think we do well is that when there's a policy thing that comes up, like a house bill or something like that, is that most people, they don't know about it until they are looking at their voter. Voter pamphlet or whatever, and they read a couple of paragraphs and like, okay, yes, but there's always way more information in.
[00:51:21] Speaker B: And people pay to be in the voter pamphlet. And most people don't know that.
[00:51:25] Speaker A: I didn't know that.
[00:51:25] Speaker B: Yeah, you pay to.
[00:51:27] Speaker A: Well, I can be in the voter pamphlet.
[00:51:28] Speaker B: Well, if you have a standpoint on a measure, et cetera.
[00:51:34] Speaker A: So I'm glad you came in today.
I kind of have a better understanding why you created PDX real and why, I mean, essentially you put your entire lives on the line to do it because you love the city. And so what I would like to do is I would like to kind of go out into the city. That's what the ride along is really about. And go into some areas and talk to some homeless people and ask them what kind of they need and what they expect from the city. And we're going to ask them directly, hey, is what the city doing? Is it helping you?
Because we have jobs, we're middle America, and we can always sit here and complain and know this isn't right. That isn't right. But let's actually talk to the people who are being affected by the policy and see what they think about the policy.
Let's see what they think about. Can you find a shelter bed today?
Right? How do y'all feel about that?
[00:52:27] Speaker C: That sounds great.
[00:52:27] Speaker D: Okay, let's go.
So we just got out of the studio. We're about to hit the streets. We're actually having Spencer from Loa loving one another. Gonna meet us here. We have the lovely couple in the back, right? And he should be here any second.
What up?
Good, bro. How are you?
[00:52:51] Speaker E: Hi.
[00:52:52] Speaker B: What'd you get for lunch?
[00:52:55] Speaker D: Yeah, what'd you get us for lunch? What'd you get us for lunch, bro?
[00:52:59] Speaker F: Well, I was moving this first around for the hairdressing place right here?
[00:53:01] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:53:02] Speaker F: And they laid flakes and they bought me lunch.
[00:53:04] Speaker E: Good to see you. It's nice to see you. You, too.
[00:53:07] Speaker D: How you doing, sir?
[00:53:08] Speaker C: I'm Jeff Spencer.
[00:53:09] Speaker F: Nice to meet you.
[00:53:10] Speaker D: Nice to meet, bro. Good to see, brother.
Where is it?
[00:53:15] Speaker C: Hand disappeared in his right here.
[00:53:18] Speaker D: Is it the sandwich? Yeah.
Big man across the street bought it for me. Yeah.
[00:53:24] Speaker F: Have you ever had break bread before?
[00:53:27] Speaker D: You want to eat your sandwich?
[00:53:30] Speaker F: I'm doing intermittent fast, so I got to wait at least an hour anyway.
[00:53:32] Speaker D: Okay.
[00:53:32] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:53:32] Speaker D: Okay. Are we recording?
[00:53:33] Speaker E: All right, emergency call.
[00:53:35] Speaker D: We got to hit the resource center for our security team.
[00:53:40] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:53:40] Speaker D: And so we're going to head out there. We'll see you there.
All right. So we just met it with late, but he got a call. We have a woman at one of our properties that needs to be de escalated, so he's going to roll and go get her some supplies.
[00:53:57] Speaker A: We're going to meet him at the resource center.
[00:53:59] Speaker B: So you have a resource center that has clothes in it?
[00:54:05] Speaker D: That's right.
[00:54:08] Speaker B: Supplies. So where are you getting these clothes from?
[00:54:10] Speaker D: We get them donated from all different types of nonprofits, government agencies, private funding. We even have clients of mine that are security clients that will put out donation boxes at the entrance of their buildings. And so we will pick that up weekly as well.
And then a lot of these are donated to the nonprofit or the security company.
Okay, we're good.
[00:54:38] Speaker E: We're ready.
[00:54:42] Speaker D: Right?
Awesome. You want to throw the truck? How's it going?
[00:54:50] Speaker F: How you doing today?
You need anything?
[00:54:54] Speaker D: Pardon?
[00:54:55] Speaker F: You need anything, brother?
Cigarettes or anything? More cigarettes?
[00:54:59] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:54:59] Speaker F: I'll grab you one in my truck. All right.
[00:55:03] Speaker D: Coffee shop's looking pretty good.
Yeah, it does. I was surprised what kind of smoke she got.
[00:55:12] Speaker F: What kind of smokes?
[00:55:13] Speaker B: What kind of smoke she got?
[00:55:14] Speaker F: Things I could buy.
[00:55:16] Speaker E: I don't smoke.
[00:55:17] Speaker F: I just buy them for people out here.
[00:55:18] Speaker E: Yeah, I got it.
[00:55:19] Speaker D: We have a lady who makes all our cigarettes for us.
[00:55:23] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:55:23] Speaker D: So we buy tobacco in bulk, and she makes, like, a couple of cartons, like, five to ten cartons a week.
[00:55:30] Speaker A: Like that.
[00:55:30] Speaker C: Oh, wow.
[00:55:31] Speaker D: That way. Oh, my God. It's very de escalatory. You hand them out. Right?
[00:55:35] Speaker A: Calms people down.
[00:55:36] Speaker C: Right.
[00:55:37] Speaker D: That's another thing, like law enforcement. You could never do that. I used to all the time.
[00:55:43] Speaker B: What's the purpose of giving the man a smoke? So that next time, if you need.
[00:55:46] Speaker C: Something, he remembers you're a cool guy.
[00:55:48] Speaker D: You're building a relationship?
[00:55:49] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:55:58] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:55:58] Speaker D: But we're going to go to this place.
[00:56:01] Speaker A: They are a client, but they don't.
[00:56:03] Speaker D: Want us to film their people on site.
[00:56:10] Speaker E: It.
[00:56:11] Speaker D: So these are all the areas that.
[00:56:12] Speaker A: We'Re going to be looking at.
[00:56:16] Speaker B: We're driving down an area where there's all kinds of businesses, of people that I know have pulled out because of how bad it was.
[00:56:22] Speaker D: Oh, yeah.
[00:56:23] Speaker A: All right, we're here.
[00:56:24] Speaker D: We're going to roll out.
[00:56:27] Speaker C: Hi.
[00:56:27] Speaker F: How are you all doing today?
[00:56:28] Speaker C: Fighting.
[00:56:29] Speaker E: How are you?
[00:56:30] Speaker D: Good.
[00:56:32] Speaker E: I would love somewhere.
Yeah.
[00:56:39] Speaker D: Man.
So you were good.
[00:56:46] Speaker F: By the way, what's your name?
Nice to meet you. How long have you been on your streets?
[00:56:52] Speaker E: Well, I grew up on the streets in Las Vegas, so I've been my whole life. But I'm not on the streets.
[00:56:57] Speaker F: Oh, you're not?
[00:56:58] Speaker E: No, I have a home in Lincoln City. I came up ryan stuff. I'm a factor.
Yeah, I do.
[00:57:07] Speaker D: Sergio. Cool, man. How long you been on the streets for five years.
And you want to stay on the.
[00:57:14] Speaker E: Streets, but now.
[00:57:21] Speaker D: You want to throw it away.
[00:57:22] Speaker E: So what I do is I'll come in and I'll take that stuff and I'll reamp it and I'll give it.
[00:57:29] Speaker D: This is a little bit safer area.
[00:57:30] Speaker E: Maybe represents you, so they're still able to utilize it.
[00:57:36] Speaker D: We're filming a documentary about how.
[00:57:39] Speaker E: Yeah, I kind of got stuck out here because I want something from my mom. I'm a foster kid.
My mom and my dad, they kind of got split.
My father is an illegal.
[00:57:53] Speaker D: Do you know the people around the corner?
[00:57:55] Speaker E: His name is Star.
[00:57:56] Speaker D: Are they good people? You mind if I talk to him?
[00:57:57] Speaker E: Do you think they mind when I finally got to actually talk to him, that he signed my birth certificate? Well, I grew up in a home that told me that he was dead. And they were very racist.
And with this racism, they were abusive to me, and they hurt me a lot. And so I got into a point of understanding my mother, why she maybe had done her walk or why she was going through all of her issues.
At one time, I really resented her. I had this hate for her because I was like, why weren't you here?
Why couldn't I be good enough? But then I was like, wait a second. You've always been good enough because you made a decision that you sacrificed yourself, sacrificed something that you love, because you thought it would be better for me. And at that moment, I realized I was like, well, I got to go give this lady a hug because I'm sure she's never really had it. She deserves it. She deserves to get some love. And I went on a mission, on a journey in 2021 of April, after my mother in law, she passed away. I watched these people stand with her kids. They would not rest her ashes. And it tore me to pieces because I was like, that's my mom. Because she had raised me. She had made me chicken burritos, and she always picked the best peaches and nectar, and it gave me a hope for her. And so when I watched her kids just lay that down, but they couldn't have put it to rest, I made a decision. I was like, this lady had walked back every time she tried to come back, but they had so much hurt that they just kept pushing her and pushing her, but she always came back. And eventually she passed. And I was like, I don't want that for my timeline. I don't want that for anything of me. So I went walking, and I had asked my kid's father. He had went into addiction, and he.
[01:00:20] Speaker D: Had told me, he's like, tn four hour. Is it a man? Is he hostless?
[01:00:25] Speaker E: So I googled alpine tn on Lancaster.
It was the 24 hours, you know.
[01:00:34] Speaker D: An asian guy named TN.
[01:00:36] Speaker E: It's crazy. So going from there, I got back home while my friend, you just walked.
[01:00:41] Speaker D: By, hey, do you know where TN is? Asian guy, TN came.
[01:00:45] Speaker E: She's looking for him to go to the northwest warehouse. I've never been place where they do EDM music or, like, there's different.
[01:00:54] Speaker D: So that guy, his name is Sergio. And Sergio said that TN walked by, like 510 minutes ago that way, but he doesn't know where he is.
[01:01:01] Speaker E: Just like the beginning of the.
[01:01:04] Speaker D: Well, we're shooting a documentary about homelessness in Portland, so we walk around. We're also a nonprofit. We try to get people into shelters at the same time.
[01:01:14] Speaker E: I had felt a certain way.
[01:01:22] Speaker D: Oh, my God, that's awesome. Just yourself. By yourself. That's amazing.
[01:01:25] Speaker E: I met you one day when his camp sheet is on five days.
I didn't need to ask. We got a magical tent. Everything. I didn't.
[01:01:35] Speaker D: Yeah.
[01:01:38] Speaker E: Goodwill. I got all tents, and I haven't over a year now. I almost got my car.
[01:01:51] Speaker D: Yeah, happenstance.
[01:02:00] Speaker E: Everyone calls me.
Jumped out of my car.
So when I see the e had a big.
I got there, and I came down.
[01:02:19] Speaker D: I really.
Of course. Yeah.
It's so sad, isn't it? It is weird.
Oh, nice.
[01:02:36] Speaker B: Because I'm.
[01:02:38] Speaker D: Oh, wow.
[01:02:39] Speaker B: That woman's completely out of.
[01:02:41] Speaker D: Yeah.
[01:02:42] Speaker E: Anyway.
[01:02:45] Speaker D: Yeah.
[01:02:51] Speaker B: We listen to what's going on here. Someone's looking for somebody.
[01:02:56] Speaker D: Oh, wow.
[01:02:57] Speaker E: I mean, she's.
[01:02:58] Speaker B: She's not even.
Gal's not even looking at anyone.
[01:03:02] Speaker D: Horrible, right?
[01:03:03] Speaker E: Yeah.
[01:03:04] Speaker D: That's amazing.
Yeah.
[01:03:12] Speaker B: Patient man.
Patient man.
[01:03:15] Speaker F: Got to be.
[01:03:22] Speaker D: Oh, I'm sure. Yeah.
[01:03:24] Speaker E: This is amazing.
Can I share one thing with you? I had gotten sick, like, three years ago, and.
[01:03:34] Speaker B: Sister, sister, listen to me.
[01:03:36] Speaker E: Listen to me.
[01:03:36] Speaker B: Sister, listen to me. No one.
[01:03:38] Speaker E: You are taking care of me at all. But the people at Delta park, underneath the bridge, those people, they were tearing out buckets of my puke and making sure I was able to rest. They put clothes on my back. They took care of me. They've been the most kindest, most generous people that I've ever met. They're being so good to you.
[01:04:02] Speaker B: So you're living like this?
[01:04:04] Speaker E: Well, I choose to. I like to live in the land. I'm native. I like to put my. I'm native, too. But I ain't living in puke. You know what I mean?
I'm not living in puke. The only thing that I really am living in is hate. There's so much hate that is to different nationalities or different cultures or the way that you think or how you feel. There's no validation. There's no connection. And to me, it doesn't matter how you sit or what you look like or where you be. I was taught that. Honestly, I was sold into trafficking. I've been a check for anything and everything. Told that. How to dress, how to act, how to walk, when I could talk. And I was mentally, emotionally, and physically abused. So when I come out here, it's people that are honestly the realest people.
They'll help you out. You need some water. They'll get you some water.
[01:05:06] Speaker B: You're not concerned about being out here at night, being subjected to more trafficking?
[01:05:11] Speaker E: No. I see the people that are in the cars. I see the people. It's a whole profession.
It's a whole circle that is so linked up.
[01:05:23] Speaker B: You know that there's a series of girls that have been murdered and their bodies dumped, right? That are your age. You know this.
[01:05:28] Speaker E: I do understand that. Okay. Honestly, that when you put love to it, when you say, oh, my God, help me, and you say, my God, may the dark souls have the same love that you give to me. They deserve it. You shine such a light and of a love to it that there's no helping.
[01:05:47] Speaker B: I don't know. They stop talking to you.
[01:05:49] Speaker E: They stop looking at you. They walk away.
[01:06:11] Speaker B: I think we should just take an Uber and leave. I don't want to do this now.
[01:06:15] Speaker C: We can just do it for another hour. It's fine. We'll get through it.
[01:06:23] Speaker F: Is that a deal?
Take on it, man. Demand.
All right. I'll come back and bring it to you. Okay. All right.
[01:06:34] Speaker C: What was the woman in the car asking about?
[01:06:40] Speaker B: How are you supposed to help people whenever they're completely out of their mind on drugs, making no kind of sense?
[01:06:46] Speaker F: You have to discern what's truth, what's reality, and what's not reality.
[01:06:50] Speaker E: Right.
[01:06:51] Speaker F: So with her, she's got a lot of pain.
Her reality is a little bit skewed, but she's also living.
It's also what she believes her reality is. So she probably doesn't even live in Liberty City, but she maybe lived there at one point. So that's why I told her I'd come back and talk to her in. So in order for me to get her a bus to Lincoln City, I got to be able to call somebody and verify that she lives there. Yeah, I told her I'll come back home. We'll see if she does. I'll take her down, because they got a bus that leads to 02:00 and one at 1010 and one at two. That's easy. I can go down and buy a $20 ticket. She can back up to her family. If that's legit.
[01:07:25] Speaker B: How do you find out if that's legit?
[01:07:27] Speaker F: So she has to provide me with a number that I can call.
[01:07:29] Speaker E: Yeah.
[01:07:29] Speaker F: I have to be able to talk to somebody.
[01:07:31] Speaker E: Yeah.
[01:07:32] Speaker F: Otherwise you can't send somebody who's houseless here.
People in cities do that. They send them to Portland all the time.
[01:07:39] Speaker C: I mean, clearly, she doesn't have an.
[01:07:41] Speaker F: Apartment in Lincoln City.
[01:07:43] Speaker C: Obviously.
[01:07:45] Speaker F: She's using some blues. You can tell she's using some. Yeah, yeah.
[01:07:50] Speaker B: She's not able to even focus when she's talking.
[01:07:52] Speaker F: No, she's emotional. It's sad is because this is the kind of person you want to get off.
[01:07:57] Speaker B: Well, I mean, she's in danger out.
[01:08:00] Speaker D: Cool.
[01:08:00] Speaker F: She's in great.
[01:08:01] Speaker B: And she's already talking about it anyway. I'm like.
[01:08:03] Speaker C: She's just saying how great it is.
[01:08:05] Speaker D: Out here, and it's like, this is my cousin JJ. That's my goddaughter, his daughter Lainey.
[01:08:15] Speaker B: I'm Angeliza.
[01:08:16] Speaker D: Her name is, I think, Debbie and, you know, Tian.
Vietnamese guy.
[01:08:21] Speaker C: Yeah, right on.
[01:08:22] Speaker E: What's that?
[01:08:22] Speaker D: Kind of, like 40 years old. She's been helping him for, like, six months.
Place her down. She just comes by every day, tries to get water.
So I said, if we ctn, let them know that you're.
[01:08:33] Speaker E: I don't know. You look mean as hell.
[01:08:43] Speaker F: He said you'll set it up, all.
[01:08:45] Speaker B: The stuff out like a brick.
[01:08:49] Speaker F: He likes to get tires, and so.
[01:08:52] Speaker D: We'Ll, like, hang up a tire and then grab that tire.
[01:08:56] Speaker E: Yeah, that's how that head got big.
[01:08:58] Speaker D: When he was younger. A lot smaller and cuter. Right?
[01:09:01] Speaker E: Muscle.
[01:09:01] Speaker D: Now.
[01:09:05] Speaker E: Are we following you guys?
[01:09:07] Speaker D: Yeah.
[01:09:08] Speaker C: What was the woman in the car asking you?
[01:09:11] Speaker D: Okay, so we know him. He's a gentleman named PM.
[01:09:14] Speaker E: So people are still using needles.
[01:09:17] Speaker D: He was, like, in a camp in Thailand for years.
[01:09:22] Speaker C: Oh, like a refugee camp?
[01:09:23] Speaker D: He's a refugee? Yeah.
[01:09:26] Speaker E: I'm glad that you can get your stuff back.
[01:09:30] Speaker D: He's a refugee. And also he.
[01:09:32] Speaker B: Hey, Spencer, I'm sure that guy means her.
[01:09:34] Speaker F: Well, that guy right there.
[01:09:36] Speaker E: Yeah.
[01:09:37] Speaker D: Sergio.
[01:09:37] Speaker B: She's in big trouble.
[01:09:39] Speaker D: Yeah.
[01:09:39] Speaker E: Good news is.
[01:09:45] Speaker D: She'S looking for tea and she comes by every day. Just knows him.
[01:09:48] Speaker F: What's up, brother?
You got the necessities? You got your beer? Already going.
[01:09:57] Speaker D: Hey, what's up, young lady?
[01:10:00] Speaker E: Hello, Rick. What's up? Nice.
[01:10:07] Speaker D: Hello.
[01:10:08] Speaker E: Panama Duran is coming.
[01:10:10] Speaker D: Who? Panama red.
[01:10:12] Speaker E: The last one.
[01:10:13] Speaker D: Who's the last one?
Me.
[01:10:18] Speaker E: Duran. Anybody.
Baby king is coming.
[01:10:22] Speaker D: Oh, who's that from here. Oh, for real?
[01:10:25] Speaker B: My God.
[01:10:26] Speaker D: Oh, nice.
[01:10:27] Speaker E: Do you imagine the raft here at night?
[01:10:30] Speaker D: Crazy.
Yeah.
[01:10:33] Speaker E: And I grew up with him. From Panama.
[01:10:35] Speaker D: No way.
That's crazy.
[01:10:40] Speaker E: It's going to be exciting to ran doing the last one.
Sugar. Leonard gave up.
He retired.
[01:10:57] Speaker D: Yeah, he did.
[01:10:58] Speaker E: After he.
[01:11:04] Speaker D: Right? That's right.
Isn't that crazy?
[01:11:10] Speaker E: And he was looking good.
[01:11:11] Speaker D: Oh, he was amazing. Yeah.
[01:11:20] Speaker E: Panama.
[01:11:21] Speaker D: I've always liked Oscar de la. Personally, he's my favorite.
[01:11:25] Speaker E: Panama is a beautiful place.
[01:11:27] Speaker D: It is, yeah. Are you from Panama?
[01:11:29] Speaker E: I'm right. From Panama.
[01:11:31] Speaker D: Oh, that's awesome.
[01:11:32] Speaker E: I came here when I was 1212.
[01:11:35] Speaker D: Wow.
[01:11:35] Speaker E: Ma'am, what are you guys going to do tonight?
[01:11:38] Speaker B: Whenever the rats come out for all this food, like, do you guys clean it up or what do you do? I'm pretty afraid of rats myself.
[01:11:45] Speaker E: I work at lion restaurant. The one that used to be over there by the Lloyd center? Yeah. Because I was going to school, I had to have something in. Answer me, what are you guys going to do about this food when the rodents come out? I don't eat like that. All right.
From Panama to Boca and Raleigh. Rocking.
Amazing.
You will buy it in autophanical.
[01:12:30] Speaker D: Island, taboga. Yeah.
[01:12:31] Speaker E: Tourists. The tourist island.
[01:12:34] Speaker D: Yeah.
[01:12:35] Speaker E: Oh, you go there, you see everything, really. It's profitable.
[01:12:39] Speaker D: I love that. I love that. Earthquake.
[01:12:41] Speaker E: Delicious, people.
[01:12:48] Speaker F: Good. I got to do some cooking, too.
[01:12:51] Speaker D: So you think he'll be gone by tomorrow?
[01:12:52] Speaker E: I don't eat like that.
[01:12:56] Speaker D: We have to come power wash all this.
Oh, you're funny. You're a funny man.
[01:13:04] Speaker F: It's.
[01:13:23] Speaker E: I haven't been over there because I've been in college, but it's downtown.
You can't miss it.
[01:13:33] Speaker D: Yeah.
[01:13:35] Speaker E: It's a place on that side of the road.
On this side. You got a parking spot?
[01:13:44] Speaker D: Yeah, parking area.
Do you know the name of the restaurant?
[01:13:50] Speaker E: I haven't been there since my son grew up.
[01:13:53] Speaker D: Oh, wow. That's a long time ago.
[01:13:56] Speaker E: I'm 62 now.
[01:13:57] Speaker D: Oh, for real? Wow. Okay.
[01:13:59] Speaker F: All right.
[01:14:00] Speaker E: Bam.
[01:14:01] Speaker D: You're pretty strong, though.
[01:14:02] Speaker F: All right.
[01:14:03] Speaker E: 4 hours.
[01:14:04] Speaker D: Okay. Hey, thank you. We're going to try to power wash in the morning, and I don't want to get all your shit fucked up. I appreciate it. I like your old lady.
All right.
And that's his tent over there.
[01:14:21] Speaker F: I'm sure that's his brother's tent.
[01:14:23] Speaker D: Yeah. Okay.
[01:14:24] Speaker F: He's going today into a tiny home, brother.
[01:14:27] Speaker D: Okay.
[01:14:31] Speaker F: This is a difficult spot over here. You have a lot of mental illness.
[01:14:35] Speaker D: Over.
[01:14:35] Speaker F: You got it everywhere, but especially this one right here. This block. And it's really like. And the hygiene over here is really bad. Worse than anywhere else I've seen.
[01:14:44] Speaker D: Well, it's so industrial that they don't care as much because it's not as residential. So people are walking around.
[01:14:50] Speaker F: I've cleared this block. Not cleared it, but I've helped this block three different times already. And this is the spot. It's the trees and everything.
[01:14:58] Speaker D: Trees. A shade. You get shade in the morning and the afternoon because of the trees.
[01:15:02] Speaker F: It's quite wide right here for some reason. It's been a real trouble spot.
[01:15:08] Speaker B: Is this company a client?
[01:15:10] Speaker D: Yeah. There's four blocks here.
[01:15:15] Speaker B: How long has this been here? This particular. Really?
[01:15:19] Speaker D: Yeah, but it's constant. There used to be, like 30 tents. 40 tents on these four blocks?
[01:15:24] Speaker E: Yeah.
[01:15:25] Speaker D: And then we came through. We worked with them. We had them install things like this.
[01:15:29] Speaker E: Right, right.
[01:15:30] Speaker D: And then it usually stays clear. This is as bad as I've seen it.
He's going to move today. We got to come and power wash.
They're not giving Ada access.
The camping over here, they're literally blocking all the power to the building.
And it's at a fire on fire lane. And so, legally, as the property owner in Portland, you should have the right to access the outside of your building at all times.
[01:15:58] Speaker B: And they're only using the front entrance because they can't get through.
[01:16:06] Speaker D: It's tough.
And hopefully that guy's going to get into a tiny home today. Again, Spencer's been here for three days working the solution.
[01:16:16] Speaker B: The gentleman with the cap and the blue shirt, correct?
[01:16:19] Speaker E: Yes.
[01:16:20] Speaker B: So you guys just have space at this place at 120 2nd in Burnside and they.
[01:16:24] Speaker D: No, we have to call every day. You have to call and schedule every day.
[01:16:28] Speaker E: Okay.
[01:16:29] Speaker D: Confirm, confirm, reconfirm every day.
[01:16:39] Speaker B: Have you ascertained what's going on with them? Have you ascertained what's going on?
He's going to go to a tiny home.
[01:16:47] Speaker F: They're both going to. So Chuck's supposed to be going today and Rick is supposed to be going next week. So I don't know what's going to happen with her, though. So I'd like to get her inside, but she's hard to deal with.
[01:17:02] Speaker A: Have we identified as mental health or.
[01:17:03] Speaker D: If she's been drinking?
[01:17:05] Speaker F: It's mostly alcohol related.
[01:17:06] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:17:07] Speaker D: That's what it seems like to me.
[01:17:08] Speaker F: Yeah, it's mostly alcohol related. She's actually, I would say intelligent, but she's not smarter. Yeah, well, they start drinking early all.
[01:17:16] Speaker A: Day.
[01:17:19] Speaker D: And all of this stuff is theirs as well, I'm assuming. All of it.
[01:17:21] Speaker F: Yeah. This is nothing. Usually it's a lot more.
Usually it's like broken down generators.
[01:17:28] Speaker D: That's when the Jen got, man.
[01:17:31] Speaker F: At one point they had to.
Hey, do they talk to you about getting into a shelter into a tiny home?
[01:17:46] Speaker E: I have that.
[01:17:47] Speaker F: You have it?
[01:17:48] Speaker E: Yeah, we found it.
Apartment right over there. By city theme or Team City?
[01:17:54] Speaker D: Yeah, city.
[01:17:55] Speaker E: Right there. There's a nice place.
You can do it.
[01:18:04] Speaker B: It would help more.
[01:18:09] Speaker D: Interesting.
[01:18:13] Speaker E: If you can.
[01:18:15] Speaker D: What's going through your mind right now?
[01:18:16] Speaker B: Me.
[01:18:17] Speaker D: How do we solve this on a mass level? There's 4500 people like this right now in Portland.
[01:18:23] Speaker C: Right?
[01:18:23] Speaker D: 4500 with 2000 transit, an extra 2000.
[01:18:27] Speaker C: That are transitioning in it all the time.
[01:18:30] Speaker E: Right.
[01:18:31] Speaker D: Hello.
[01:18:36] Speaker A: Right.
[01:18:38] Speaker B: I mean, you had two people roll up. Whenever you're trying to get the people that are here clean into places, you got two more.
[01:18:44] Speaker D: Yeah. Because they see this as safe.
They have wealth on the street, they have bikes, they have all these kind of items. They have food, they have a food cooker. So this is like safety.
So he automatically becomes a block cap and he gets a following and then that gives him more power because he has people now.
[01:19:06] Speaker C: Right.
[01:19:06] Speaker D: And so it just becomes entrenched.
[01:19:11] Speaker A: And this is a constant process.
[01:19:13] Speaker E: I don't get any trouble.
[01:19:14] Speaker D: And so we're moving 120 people off, in this situation into shelter a month, roughly four a day.
[01:19:23] Speaker E: And there's only a couple of them.
[01:19:24] Speaker B: Are you tracking once you put them in? Like, if they're staying? That's the thing. They might be hopping right out.
[01:19:30] Speaker D: No one's tracking.
[01:19:32] Speaker B: Exactly.
[01:19:34] Speaker D: They'll go to detox, and then Hooper's not tracking. Okay. Then they go to a Tpi bed.
[01:19:38] Speaker E: Right.
[01:19:38] Speaker D: Then they get that for what, six months? Maybe three months, maybe. And then they go to another transition living, and they go to something else.
[01:19:46] Speaker E: Right.
[01:19:46] Speaker D: So there's, like, five or six steps involved that are all different entities. So no one's tracking anything?
[01:19:51] Speaker E: Yeah.
[01:19:52] Speaker D: There's not even a central tracking system for beds in Portland. And this type of software has been perfected by the hotel industry every 15 minutes in the hotel industry, if a conference is scheduled, all of this is understood and known in this system. And then the beds will automatically pick up and go up and down as conferences and as things are scheduled in major cities and as occupancy rates fluctuate, every 15 minutes, they all change. And then all those are fed to expedia and all these other.
We should be able to track every single bed every 15 minutes, because I.
[01:20:30] Speaker F: Called at 10:00 this morning to get.
[01:20:31] Speaker D: Two people to shelters, and they're all full already. They're already full. Fridays are the worst.
[01:20:36] Speaker F: Always can't get anybody until Monday. Yeah, I got a vulnerable young gal over here.
Over here in the. Lloyd called yesterday, nothing available. Called today. Actually, I take that back. There was.
[01:20:47] Speaker E: And that doesn't include.
[01:20:49] Speaker B: You're talking about shelter. That is no barrier, because Bibi will only take if they've been sober for 24 hours.
[01:20:57] Speaker D: High barrier.
[01:20:57] Speaker B: It's not that high, but 24 hours.
[01:21:00] Speaker F: Portland is about the highest that it comes.
[01:21:02] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:21:04] Speaker D: You have to be completely sober, drug free, with no mental health issues, and not able to get into any conflicts with anybody.
[01:21:14] Speaker F: I have a young african american lady gal that I want to get off the streets because she's vulnerable. Yesterday, she had no clothes. Completely naked in a tent. Got her some clothes and tried to.
[01:21:23] Speaker B: What happened to her clothes in her tent? Somebody stole it. Ripped them off of her.
[01:21:27] Speaker E: Okay.
[01:21:28] Speaker F: That's all that she told me. What happened to her?
[01:21:30] Speaker E: Right.
[01:21:31] Speaker F: Stole her clothes.
So we worked with her yesterday, and I've called now. There was one bed open at the Gresham women's shelter, but she didn't want to go that far because all of her friends and family are around here, which I don't know why she doesn't stay with them, but nothing available.
[01:21:50] Speaker D: Let's go down there and recheck in.
[01:21:51] Speaker A: And see if anyone came back to that tent.
[01:21:54] Speaker F: To what tent?
[01:21:55] Speaker D: Down here. Okay.
[01:21:55] Speaker A: That encampment right there.
[01:21:57] Speaker E: Jesus.
[01:21:59] Speaker F: But there's only one small scenario of the reality of what's going on out here, especially women are vulnerable.
[01:22:06] Speaker D: That's why.
[01:22:10] Speaker F: I got a bleeding heart for veterans and especially out on the streets for women, because they get assaulted on a daily basis. So where I will get men in there, as well. But my focus, first of all, is on these women that are really vulnerable.
[01:22:24] Speaker A: That's right.
[01:22:24] Speaker F: This young lady right here. Right. If we're on the street, we're homeless. We can fend for ourselves. Nobody's going to take advantage of us. Or they're not going to try. These women right here, people are going to take advantage of you. Yeah, for sure.
[01:22:42] Speaker E: Why are we doing this?
[01:22:44] Speaker F: Is she home yet?
[01:22:46] Speaker E: Not there.
[01:22:52] Speaker D: Hey. For real? Like, how well do you know Selena?
We gotta get.
[01:22:59] Speaker F: I already worked to deal with.
[01:23:01] Speaker D: I mean, this is dangerous, bro.
You know what? I.
But it's worth it.
[01:23:25] Speaker F: We care.
[01:23:28] Speaker D: Reed and I, we own echelon. We're putting $16,000 to $19,000 a month into the nonprofit ourselves. We pay for Spencer and Terrence's salaries. Everything else we do, everyone else we hire is paid for by other entities and contracts. But we see the need, and we're just like. I just got to help because my background originally was nonprofit work. I've worked in Africa, and I worked with the houseless in Houston, Texas, for, like, six years, specifically with street kids, and the majority of the time, underage street kids engaged in prostitution.
[01:24:05] Speaker F: Yeah.
[01:24:06] Speaker D: Right. And so this is hard work. You ready?
[01:24:09] Speaker F: Yeah, I'm ready.
[01:24:10] Speaker C: All right.
[01:24:15] Speaker B: Did you see the most recent where all the things that they bought that were released yesterday, including a boofing chair? The boofing chair.
They literally bought directions on how to stick drugs up your ass.
[01:24:29] Speaker C: Our government, they have pamphlets.
[01:24:32] Speaker D: The county is paying for that.
[01:24:33] Speaker B: Yeah. So that you can stick part of the foil, part of the harm reduction.
[01:24:37] Speaker F: That's harm reduction.
[01:24:38] Speaker E: Yeah.
[01:24:39] Speaker F: Nothing could go wrong there, right?
[01:24:41] Speaker C: Yeah. Right.
[01:24:42] Speaker E: We want people to be able to.
[01:24:44] Speaker B: Safely put drugs up.
[01:24:45] Speaker D: All we need are. We need 100 Spencers on the street every day.
[01:24:49] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:24:50] Speaker D: That's what we need. We need an army of 100 Spencers.
[01:24:53] Speaker A: We don't need to pay for fentanyl.
[01:24:55] Speaker D: We don't need to pay for straws and foil.
[01:24:59] Speaker F: I don't even talking hospital again, a very large one, so that we can keep people that have drug induced psychosis or mental health problems that is not fixable. At least they can have somewhat of a normal existence.
[01:25:13] Speaker E: Right.
[01:25:13] Speaker B: That they're not being victimized and harmed out here.
[01:25:16] Speaker F: Like the gal that was on there. She talked about the echelon officers or whatever over there.
[01:25:21] Speaker E: Yeah.
[01:25:21] Speaker F: Alicia. Remember Alicia?
[01:25:22] Speaker D: Yeah. Alicia. Yeah.
[01:25:23] Speaker F: Alicia is the kind of person that needs to be in a state hospital.
[01:25:25] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:25:26] Speaker F: Where she can be monitored. I've seen her when she's taking her meds, and she's, I would say normal.
[01:25:32] Speaker D: But she's 85% there, bro.
[01:25:34] Speaker F: Yeah, she's somewhat there.
[01:25:36] Speaker B: One without the arm.
[01:25:37] Speaker F: Yeah, somewhat there.
[01:25:39] Speaker D: I bought her a meal one day, and literally for an hour. We literally sat and talked for an.
[01:25:44] Speaker A: Hour, and he was completely normal.
[01:25:46] Speaker F: Well, and look at James harmon. He was great for a long time. He's a veteran, and now Va had.
[01:25:51] Speaker D: Him on a regimen.
[01:25:52] Speaker F: Now he's not taking his meds, and he's back to pulling knives on people and doing all kinds of stuff.
Some people just have to be institutionalized. Yeah, I'm sorry. People say it's not compassionate, but it has to happen.
[01:26:05] Speaker C: Well, they had this reaction.
[01:26:06] Speaker D: Every other country does this. There isn't another country in the world that doesn't do this right. We're the only country that doesn't do this right. And it's because we have this extreme form of libertarian ideas coming from all political sides.
[01:26:24] Speaker B: In the homeless population. We have the highest number, last I checked. It changes all the time in this nation of unsheltered homeless people. So my big gripe continues to be, where the hell is all this money going?
[01:26:39] Speaker D: Yeah, great.
[01:26:39] Speaker B: You know what I'm saying? You guys can't even get a shelter today. It's just like, even if people say, I'm ready, I want to go, or people saying, hey, I'm ready, I want to get clean. We got to have places to take people when that.
[01:26:53] Speaker C: And part of the money is like, oh, affordable housing. So they'll build these things that. These buildings that have, like, 100 units in them for $500,000 per unit, and it's just like, it's a big celebration. It's just like, how would any of those people be able to live in an apartment right now?
[01:27:09] Speaker D: How can they pass the background even? They don't even have IDs. That was always my pitch was, hey, I know you're not living your, you know, how do I help you start that process today? Like, when we did the barbecue the other day, and we ran into Hannah, and Hannah was like, oh, y'all don't have any food. And my wife and I were like, we're gonna take you to subway right now. So we talked to Hannah for, like, five minutes, and I was like, let's get you off the streets. And she's like, we need detox. Three days later, we got her into Hooper. We got all the paperwork done. We got her a bed before we got her into Hooper, because you have to have your bed assigned at a shelter first. And then we were able to step her in. And that's one person.
[01:27:52] Speaker C: How is detox off of fentanyl? I mean, is it similar to heroin detox, or is it worse?
[01:27:57] Speaker D: I actually don't know. He might know better. His background is medicine. Yeah.
[01:28:01] Speaker F: They come down quicker.
[01:28:02] Speaker D: So they require more.
[01:28:04] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:28:04] Speaker D: Really?
[01:28:05] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:28:06] Speaker F: So, with the fentanyl, they usually like to smoke about every 2 hours.
[01:28:09] Speaker C: Yeah. So do they give them, like, suboxone? Is that what they do?
[01:28:13] Speaker D: I would imagine, yeah. Now, the problem we're having on the streets is because the chemical precursors are always changing for this synthetic fentanyl. Synthetic heroin. The half life of the narcan is shorter than the half life of the actual opiates that they're taking that synthetic fentanyl. So you can narcan to someone four or five times. They're okay. They don't want medical help. They'll walk away, and then they'll end up dying six blocks away. Because that Narcan wore off. Wore off so quickly. Yeah.
This is just a new thing in the past month. Wow. Because the drugs change, that's why.
[01:28:53] Speaker F: If emergency services show up, they usually still take them to the hospital.
[01:28:56] Speaker D: Oh, yeah.
[01:28:57] Speaker F: They usually don't let them just walk away.
[01:28:58] Speaker B: Well, they tell them, but they constantly are walking away. Fire is telling me that, yeah.
[01:29:04] Speaker D: They have the legal right to refuse medical.
Only a police officer. This is why we're suggesting that medical and firefighters have the ability to conduct a Poh. They should be sworn officers with only one criminal mandate or one civil mandate that they're able to conduct a police officer. Hold in order to hold people for that reason. And this is something that we've been advocating for for almost a year or two now, with the city, with the state, with the county. You got to have EMT and fire. You got to get the ability to get someone in the hospital without a physician's hold or a police officer making.
[01:29:37] Speaker C: What would that take to get. Would that be, like, a house bill or something.
[01:29:39] Speaker D: It'd be a house bill. It'd be a house bill, and then it would be everyone signing off on that. And then the individual police departments basically swearing in the firefighters and EMTs, essentially, almost as a reserve police officer would. But the only mandate that they'd be legally allowed to fulfill would be a police officer hold.
[01:29:57] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:29:58] Speaker D: And again, they're more medically trained than most police officers. Luckily, this guy has a history working with mental health, and he's degreed and he's squared away as law enforcement. And I was prior to law enforcement and I was a chaplain, so I had that in my background as well. But these firefighters and EMTs, they're much more highly trained when it comes to understanding when someone's, whether it's drug induced or whether it's true mental health, this is their background. So they should be making that call because you have city beds, you have county beds, and they have private beds. So you have salvation armies women's shelter, and then you'll have city team victory outreach, things like that union gospel mission.
But then you have 200 plus city beds, and they have 2000 county beds. None of them are coordinated. None of them are tracking their beds, and none of them are telling anybody when their beds are available. The majority of them are not conducting true outreach every day trying to fill their beds.
And so that's all we want to do. We want to fill every bed, every open bed. We want to fill it. That's our mission. Yeah.
[01:31:07] Speaker F: The city is doing theirs. They're trying to fill theirs with the Silver brothers.
[01:31:09] Speaker D: They do a great job.
[01:31:12] Speaker F: They do a phenomenal job.
[01:31:13] Speaker D: Yeah. But they only have 200 beds.
[01:31:14] Speaker F: Right.
[01:31:15] Speaker D: So they're full. That's right. They keep them every day.
[01:31:18] Speaker F: Every day.
[01:31:18] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:31:19] Speaker D: I was homeless. I don't want people to be homeless.
It's not what I want.
My mom's homeless with my mom.
And at the end of the day, we have to help as many people as we can.
[01:31:33] Speaker C: It's frightening.
[01:31:34] Speaker F: It's hard to keep your own mental health sometimes.
[01:31:36] Speaker D: Yeah, it is.
[01:31:37] Speaker F: You got to find a way to fill your cup.
[01:31:39] Speaker C: Right.
[01:31:40] Speaker F: If you don't truly love people, man, you don't have compassion, you don't want to be out here then.
[01:31:44] Speaker C: Right, exactly.
[01:31:46] Speaker D: Censor came to Reed and I and said, hey, we need to do this full time.
I was like, we can't afford that. And Censor's like, can't afford not to. That's exactly what he said. Yeah. And I looked at him and I was like, you're right. Brother, here we are.
[01:32:06] Speaker F: We were doing it already, just on a much smaller scale.
[01:32:08] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:32:09] Speaker D: We appreciate you coming out today. Yeah, I think this is going to be a wrap. We were going to try to go to another location, but I really feel like it was more important to stay here and dig in deep and build these relationships here today. And I appreciate you coming out.
[01:32:24] Speaker E: We love options.
[01:32:26] Speaker D: Spencer's the heart of what we do on the streets. And I'm so glad that you came today because you have a real following. People really listen to you.
What's important to me is I want people to know how much you actually care.
You care about the city and you care about everyone living here, and you want to see a city transformed. And that's what we're about. We're about transforming the city one life at a time.
[01:32:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
I think when we're looking at what needs to happen in the city, people say to me a lot, what do I do? And I'm like, well, you're going to have to just be inspired at what you're good at. If you're still not sure, start with where you're pissed. I mean, I find that it doesn't.
[01:33:07] Speaker E: Mean I have to be mad.
[01:33:08] Speaker C: I mean, go to the county.
[01:33:09] Speaker D: No, but it's passion. That's your passion.
[01:33:11] Speaker C: Send an email to the city council members, whatever. I mean, do something.
[01:33:17] Speaker B: But I think that this particular work very hands on for me. I'm sort of specializing in letting people know what the government's not doing and what they're doing.
[01:33:27] Speaker C: Right.
[01:33:28] Speaker D: Whoever has the money should also bear the majority of the responsibility.
[01:33:32] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[01:33:33] Speaker D: Because they're in charge of spending our money.
[01:33:35] Speaker C: Yes.
[01:33:35] Speaker D: And that makes them in charge. They're in charge of finding real solutions. And I don't see very many. No, not from my angle. My point of view is from the street. And looking from the street towards the Capitol, I don't see much happening in my point of.
[01:33:50] Speaker E: So I agree with you.
[01:33:52] Speaker D: Angela Todd, PVX real.
Check her out. Subscribe, like, hit the button. Send her a star or a heart. And she's going to start on her YouTube channel. She's going to be releasing that very shortly. Tell the people where they can find.
[01:34:09] Speaker B: You so we can be found on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. PDX reels.
Don't even give them. They shut down my Facebook page. Don't go there.
[01:34:22] Speaker D: Yeah, PDX reels. Appreciate y'all coming out today for the ride along.
[01:34:27] Speaker F: Yeah.
[01:34:29] Speaker D: Awesome.
[01:34:29] Speaker B: Right on.
[01:34:30] Speaker D: Well, thanks for coming out.
[01:34:30] Speaker E: We appreciate it.
[01:34:31] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely.
[01:34:32] Speaker D: Thanks, bro. Enjoy your sandwich. I'm going to go find me a sandwich.
[01:34:36] Speaker C: I already ate it.
[01:34:40] Speaker F: Thank you for coming out.
[01:34:41] Speaker E: That's awesome.
[01:34:42] Speaker D: Your favorite person here.
[01:34:43] Speaker F: And I'm going, I don't want to.
[01:34:44] Speaker E: Say the wrong name, but I know it's.
[01:34:48] Speaker D: Did everything go okay on the call?
[01:35:04] Speaker E: Yeah, already got that.
[01:35:06] Speaker D: Did you notice that you were stamped that you were, like, standing right on their machete when you were talking to that lady?
[01:35:12] Speaker E: No.
[01:35:13] Speaker D: There's a giant black machete on the ground.
[01:35:16] Speaker E: That's why I stand on it.
[01:35:18] Speaker D: The reason I was standing where I was standing was because I was strategically positioned. And I guess we could put this on the camera, like an aftercut or something, but I was strategically standing where that lady was so that none of those people could run and grab that machete and attack any of us.
That's why I was kind of positioning myself between. And then just stood right up, and I was like, hope she knows that there's machine.
[01:35:42] Speaker B: I clearly didn't.
[01:35:43] Speaker D: It had a black blade on it, which was. It matched the concrete because it was all black from the derm. All right, PDX reel. Check them out.
