- Hi everybody, I'm on a road trip
for Sevenly and Virgin Mobile, and I didn't plan
on hitting Boulder, Colorado.
I was here in '09 and had a great experience,
but there just wasn't time.
I started getting these tweets from this place in Boulder
called Attention House, and they're pretty persistent.
- Yeah, we don't mess around.
- You don't mess around.
So yesterday was a holiday, and a lot of places are closed,
but all the key staff came in, I drove here,
and we had a little meeting.
This is Chris, and your position is?
- I'm the program director here at Attention Homes.
- Tell us a little bit about Attention Homes.
- I was going to, but let's hear it from the--
- We've been around since '66 in Boulder,
providing services to this demographic
called "at-risk youth", whatever that means, helping people.
Mostly young people.
Three years ago, we moved more from residential
and program-specific stuff to really trying to serve
a need in the community that we identified,
with just a little bit of searching, was a huge need,
that there were a lot of young people that were aging out
of social services, no resources, and ending up
on the streets so we started
this runaway and homeless youth shelter
where we do street outreach and drop-in.
That's where we are now, on drop-in,
and overnight shelter for youth up to age 20.
And we're loving it because we meet great young people
all the time.
- Being Boulder, you have some...
It's a very progressive community.
- In some ways.
- A very affluent community, but it kind of
doesn't want to acknowledge that there's homelessness here.
- No, so we served 550 young people last year.
- All right.
- So to not acknowledge that there's an issue
with young people on the streets is ridiculous.
- It's crazy ridiculous.
I just went to the library yesterday,
and there was an army of travelers.
- Army. - An army, a platoon.
I've been to Portland and every place else,
but there was more than I've seen in a lot of other places,
especially compared to the community.
But the Boulder, I don't want to say hippy lifestyle--
- You can say hippy, yeah. - Hippy lifestyle.
I just had a bunch of kids over here,
and we're all eating leaves.
I've never done that.
- From the garden, from our garden.
- Thai basil-- - Licorice, mint.
Billions of tomatoes.
- I've been in 200-plus homeless shelters,
and I've never been asked to eat mint
and licorice and everything else.
- You have not lived fully yet then, Mark,
I must say, you haven't really had the experience.
- So that's Boulder. - It is Boulder.
- And it brings people here that just are a little more
free spiritual, want to live on the streets,
that type of thing.
- And not "just".
I want to say that the affluence and progressive town
and all that loveliness is that there are also
a lot of local families that are hurting.
That Boulder, like any community, feels the hit economically
that the nation is feeling, and lack of resources
is lack of resources, and so that exists in Boulder too,
and I think that it is lovely that this is a community
that travelers come to,
and it's got some rooted issues as well
as far as people being on the street,
people struggling to make it work,
and so, thankfully...
The catch-22 is that it's a town where, yes, that exists,
and on the same hand there are a lot of people
in this community that want to give back to the community
and help out, so--
Juxtaposition that's sort of lovely.
- A couple of unique things that I've never seen
anyplace else is that yesterday I went out to hand out socks
and I met a girl that was traveling.
A couple other people, and they complained,
they had to leave because they couldn't pan handle here.
- Sure, there's not enough socks.
- There's too many, and there's not enough resources,
and there's too many. - That's what it is.
It's not enough resources.
- There's too many coming here.
The other one that's very unique is that I see,
and somebody told me they're called "trustafarians".
- Trustafari, yeah.
- Okay, where you have these rich kids
that are coming down almost like homeless groupies,
hanging out with the homeless kids,
like trying to piss off their parents or something.
I've never seen that.
- Or something, but I think it's also about
people like connecting with people.
Whether it's this community or anywhere else,
that when you have a group of people
who are just doing their thing, "fuck it man",
whatever that looks like...
I don't want to buy into the societal bullshit,
but that's not exclusive to people who don't have resources.
You know what I mean?
It might be, fuck you mom and dad, or whatever,
but it also is this...
We're a town where we can't deny
that we're a weed-friendly town,
we're a thoughtful progressive town,
there are a lot of intellects.
You walk around the library park,
and what a lot of people see as a bunch of homeless people
is a bunch of really creative, intelligent people
who are doing their thing, right, and so whatever,
and so it's like this misnomer everywhere.
- For the sake of this conversation,
we'll try to keep this short.
Some of you might not know the travelers.
The travelers are almost identifiable by uniform.
Usually together, have brownish, usually with dogs, cats,
pit bulls, musical instruments.
A lot of them are out there really by choice.
Some are just homeless kids that got caught up in it
because it was a community. - Yep.
- And that's what you deal with here.
- In the summertime. - In the summertime.
- A lot of travelers in the summertime.
- And there presents a lot of unique differences.
- It does, it does, and one of the things...
Our mission, what we're trying to do is very generically
help people, create a safe space for people to be,
to get basic needs met, and you can live in a house,
in a van, in a tent, under a bush, and if you need
a fucking sandwich, you need a sandwich, right?
And so of course we're doing that thing,
but we also want to provide opportunity for people
to have more choices for themselves,
and so the uniqueness of the traveler
is that they want to just have a sandwich
or a place to chill or a place to get some needs met.
And so it's hard when we're like we're going to help people
take the next step in life.
That's not the reality for people
that are choosing to be on the streets.
- That's what we want for them.
- That's what we want.
The adults, the system, or the funders, that's the thing.
- Right, right, right.
- And so I think one of the most, as far as services go,
I don't give a shit if somebody's traveling
or from next door or whatever the deal is.
People are people, and if you need socks, you need socks.
If you need help finding resources,
then you need help finding resources.
We have employees that need help finding resources.
That's the world we live in and so that's what it is.
- We all do.
- The uniqueness to the traveler is that
I think it provides opportunity for the community
to get engaged in realizing that this stigma,
this perception of homelessness is wrong.
It's all broken.
It's not some person whose got...
Of course there are people on the street
with mental health issues.
There are people on the street with substance abuse
and dependency issues, but they're people.
- I see the soccer moms hitting the pipe.
- Who doesn't hit the pipe these days.
- My doctor probably, I'm sorry.
- So, you can't really...
When it comes to somebody that's going to the bathroom
behind a dumpster in a McDonald's parking lot,
let them have a beer, and I'm not advocating drug abuse
or alcoholism, I'm just trying to put it into perspective.
- That's the thing, it's that um, I don't know
if you've wandered around Boulder much.
There's a public restroom, and if you talk to people
in this community, you get people that are getting tickets
for going to the rest room, and so what it comes down to,
you're getting arrested for finding a place to urinate
or having a beer.
- Oh my gosh, and it's crazy.
- It is the criminalization--
- We were talking to one girl, traveler, just a moment ago.
She's going home to Montana or some state.
- To some place.
- Because she's got to do three days for a fine
that she can't pay, so she's going into jail
for a fine that she can't pay for a couple days.
And you, as far as tax payer, you're paying that
in a huge way, so having some place
where travelers and homeless youth--
- People. - People, thank you.
Having some place where people--
- Sorry about that.
- No, no, I get it.
If you're to take my work and to put it into a sentence.
It really is all people should be treated the same.
- Absolutely, and that's not a bold new idea.
It's just one that doesn't seem to catch on super well.
- Exactly, how do we spread that.
So you also have runaway kids, a runaway shelter
and everything else. - We do.
- We've gone a little long here because I really did
want to talk about the travelers because it's unique.
People see them out there.
They say how can we help, how can we do something?
Treat them just like anybody else.
- Don't fucking spit on them, how about that.
Don't tell them to get a job.
Treat people like people.
That's what people can do.
- Exactly.
I just came from sock place and he was saying
they're nicer than the other homeless kids.
They have more--
- The travelers? - Yeah.
- Well I think there's just a perception
that travelers are more evolved.
We're talking about people who were in school,
left school, or finished school...
We were talking earlier and you were talking about choice.
I think choice is the big one as far as...
If I don't have choices, I get pretty frustrated,
and it's very tough to be compassionate towards other people
if you're not experiencing compassion from other people.
And when you have a community, whether it's travelers or not
who are supportive of each other, who show each other
compassion well then, of course, it's easier to be friendly.
Appreciative is a lovely word.
It doesn't mean a whole lot.
- The $20 million question.
- Yeah, we love that one.
- And you've been doing this forever.
You were a teen helping teens and now you're--
- Millennia, that's right, now I'm an old guy.
- How do we really help kids?
How do we fix homeless youth?
- Well, when you say $20 million question,
does that mean I have to give a $20 million answer?
- That's up to you.
- Cuz that's the trick right there.
- How do we help young people?
Listen to them, that's it.
It really is that simple.
Sandwiches are sandwiches, a shower is a shower,
a bed's a bed, but for too long,
we have, as a society, not empowered young people enough
to give us their voice and tell us what they need.
If we listen to young people,
they'll tell us how we help them.
And often very directly.
But that's hard for adults to swallow.
- I know it, I know it.
So this is Attention Homes.
There will be a link to this place underneath.
I love it.
They're trying to talk me to come back in November
because like here it's gotten nice and sunny
and probably just ruined the total exposure
of this video that I don't edit,
but they're trying to get me back here in November.
We all know Colorado's nice and sunny,
like the sun just came out in November, right?
- It'll be lovely in November, I assure you.
- Promise? - Yeah.
- Above 60? - Uh...
- So I love the people here.
They're amazing, they're helping people, and support them.
So thanks for supporting this road trip
with Sevenly and Virgin Mobile,
and thanks for following along as I travel to D.C.
- Good luck man. - Thank you.