- [Mark] Brent, we're in Hollywood, you're homeless.
Tell me about it.
- It's somewhere I never thought I'd be.
It's a little embarrassing, it's disconcerting,
at times it's scary,
and at other times,
there's nothing good about it, really.
- [Mark] How'd you end up here?
- I lost my job, lost my lease,
and then I blew the engine in my truck.
I'm kinda stationary.
- [Mark] So, your wife sleeps in the truck,
or she sleeps in the tent--
- Yeah, she's a significant other,
and she sleeps in the truck
and I sleep in the tent.
- [Mark] Oh my gosh.
Now, you've told me you're 61.
- Yes sir.
- [Mark] Tried to look for work?
- I am looking for work.
- [Mark] And it's tough.
Ageism is real.
- Yeah.
Age discrimination is very real.
- [Mark] And, so, tell me about it.
- I go and interview, I look great on paper,
I've got really good references,
I interview well on the phone,
I go down for interviews,
and I can see when I walk in the room,
they kind of go, "Ugh,"
you know, because of my age.
- [Mark] So what did you do,
what's your profession?
- I'm a law clerk.
- [Mark] So, and now,
you're helping people out here with--
- Yep.
Legal issues.
Yep.
I'll help people through anything,
any administrative mandamus proceedings,
such as social security,
getting stimulus checks,
taxes,
I do a lot of things out here.
Social security is number one.
Some other things I do for people
is I got a couple claims going against
the police and sheriff's department
for people out here that have,
were locked up without seeing a judge,
I got one case where a boy was locked up for 111 days
before he saw a judge.
- [Mark] Oh my gosh.
- Yeah.
- [Mark] So, COVID
has changed the police a little bit?
- Made them more lenient in a way,
very lenient.
Because when you're homeless out here,
the police don't like you setting up your shop.
And there's an ordinance in Los Angeles
that requires you to flatten your tent
between 9:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m.
But, just to give you a little legal lesson,
the Supreme Court, about two months ago,
denied search area on a course case
called Martin v. City of Boise,
and what that case stood for,
is Martin is somebody that was in the city
of Boise, Idaho,
the police had an ordinance on the books there
that said the police,
if they found you camping on city streets
or city property,
they could either arrest you, take you to jail,
confiscate your property,
or they could take you to the city limits
and tell you to hit the road.
Martin was somebody that challenged that statute
and the Ninth Circuit of the Appellate Court,
the federal district court,
actually found that the ordinance in Boise,
which applies to all the eight western states,
was unconstitutional
in that it violated the Eighth Amendment,
cruel and unusual punishment
by punishing the poor by taking their property,
it also found that it was an impermissible
use of police power.
So, the Martin case was then,
all the city attorneys and
everybody else that wanted to see the Boise ordinance upheld
filed certiorari,
the Supreme Court denied certiorari about eight weeks ago,
which means that that's the law of the land
and what it comes down to
is that the police,
cities cannot use impermissible police power
to tell you to take down your camp
or get off city property
if there's not adequate housing.
- [Mark] Right.
And that is,
there's one little catch to that,
is there's a loophole, where,
if the police can offer one night shelter,
and one of the things that some of the politicians were,
and COVID changed a lot of things,
so, shelters now,
what they wanted to do was build these giant tent shelters
not to really help people--
- Yeah.
Which are containment camps.
- [Mark] Right.
And it wasn't to help people,
but as a loophole for getting around the Boise,
- Yup, yup.
- [Mark] Martin v. Boise.
So, what the cops prior to COVID,
they were harassing you more,
and now, after the coronavirus,
- They backed off.
- [Mark] Okay, and how has that helped you?
- Well, it's relaxed the pressure out here on us
to constantly be on the move.
I was told by police officers on Western,
when I first hit the street,
was Western between Sunset and Hollywood Boulevard,
I was there for about six months,
and we had a get together on a Saturday night,
and that night,
the police came in force,
and they actually went up to a couple of guys,
I think that were dealing drugs,
called them by first name,
and told them they can't deal their drugs there anymore,
and they told us to leave.
So we left that night,
I didn't leave because I'm a drug dealer,
I left because the police told me to leave
or face arrest,
which I don't think they could have done,
so we went down to Fernwood
which is at Western and the Coventry House,
and we were there for about another six weeks
to ten weeks,
and then I had a couple of LAPD officers
come and threaten to take my vehicle
because the tag had expired,
take my vehicle and take me to jail
if I didn't move within 24 hours,
so I moved from there to here to
Berendo and Hollywood Boulevard
and I've been here ever since,
probably been now,
I'd like to say five months.
- [Mark] Five months.
Is anybody helping you?
- Yes.
I've got Path,
Michael at Path trying to find me housing,
and then we have Ava at Los Angeles Sanitation District
is also an outreach worker,
trying to place us as well.
[Mark] Wow.
Sanitation, you mean LACERS, or sanitation?
- Yeah, LACERS, LACERS.
- [Mark] Yeah, I didn't think sanitation had--
- Well she comes out with the sanitation department, yeah.
- [Mark] But they sweep, right?
When they come out with sanitation,
the police are trying to move encampments right?
- Yeah, they come out and they impermissively,
I think impermissively,
force us to move and respond to them,
we get run every time,
like, you know,
how they run you for warrants and all that stuff,
and unfortunately,
I'm going to be quite honest,
I have a Caltrans warrant out of Orange County
that I have not signed up for Caltrans here,
and the police have threatened to take me to jail,
but they haven't yet.
And then, also,
I have a ticket warrant out of Glendale.
So I have two bench warrants for my arrest.
[Mark] Wait, for being homeless?
- No, just for being out here.
No new violations, it's just--
they regularly come here and stop, and they run everybody.
- [Mark] But your tickets were for something
related to homelessness?
- No they're not.
- [Mark] They're not,
they're something else from prior?
- Yeah, yeah.
- [Mark] But they're still holding it against you?
- Yeah, they hold it over my head
and if they come here and say,
"Look, either you go to jail or you move within 24 hours,"
I'll move.
But it kind of feels like Nazi Germany
or some of these other,
what I would call the communist countries,
whereby you hear that the police
come in the middle of the night
and tell you to move
and you gotta move,
that's what it feels like.
They come and they rouse you,
they, say, search us,
they do all of that stuff.
- [Mark] Now, what's a day like?
- A day here, a typical day?
- [Mark] Yeah, a day like homeless.
- Well, the first thing you gotta worry about
is cleanliness.
Is taking a shower.
And I do shower once a week,
the mission outreach group,
they come down, Victory Outreach Group,
come down to a church at Franklin and Edgemont,
and they have showers from 9:00 to 1:00 p.m.,
9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
And I get a shower there every Tuesday.
So, cleanliness is number one.
Charging your phones and electricity
and keeping in contact with the world
is probably number two.
- [Mark] How do you look for work
if you can't connect to the world?
- That's right.
Absolutely right.
And with the libraries closed,
I used to use the library before the COVID-19,
I could go in there,
I'd send out resumes,
it was really convenient,
I'd check the internet,
now I'm doing everything on a phone
and I'm very fortunate that I have a phone
cause a lot of people out here don't.
- [Mark] I've helped homeless people
try to fill out an application on the phone,
and it's extremely hard.
- It is hard.
It's hard because one is to give an address,
I'm lucky I have an ex client of mine
that allows me to use his address
for government and job purposes.
- [Mark] So, you're looking for work.
If you were able to get into housing,
you don't want to be here?
- I would be off the street the minute they--
even a single resident occupancy,
if we had to go separate ways,
I'd be out of here.
I'd really like a place to lock up my stuff,
take a shower,
and just a little piece of the world
to close the door on
so that people can't go through your stuff.
- And COVID, you were telling me earlier,
the COVID coronavirus,
it closed all the bathrooms.
You guys had no place to clean up or to go--
- Yes.
It's hard to go to the bathroom out here as it is,
but everybody has now shut the bathrooms down.
Fast food restaurants is really where you go,
or the supermarkets, or service stations,
and they're always, always closed
even before COVID,
they were always either under repair,
not working, or whatever,
it's very difficult to go to the restroom.
You almost have to go under a construction site
and use an outhouse-- one of those porta potties.
- [Mark] So what's your future like?
- My future looks good.
I've got a couple outside clients
and I do believe that I will land a position
with someone somewhere
for the next nine years.
I want to work till I'm 70.
- [Mark] So your goal
is to get out of here as quickly as possible.
- Get into a place,
and if it's government assisted,
I'd really appreciate it,
but if it isn't,
it's gonna be a little bit of a harder road.
I've actually worked homeless.
The last job I was at,
the last couple of months,
I'd lost my lease,
and I was trying to get another job
cause I knew the job was coming to an end,
and I wasn't successful
so I actually did live in my truck
for the last couple months of my last job.
- [Mark] But, this time's a little different.
- Yeah, this is different.
It's way different.
I don't know about the job outlook, it doesn't look rosy,
but I am looking forward to the stimulus check,
and I am looking forward--
I also applied for the special federal government
subsidized unemployment
which, it allows you to get 10 weeks
at $600 a week or something, $6,000
so I got that application in as well.
Those things happen.
Obviously,
I'd get a vehicle with the $6,000 of unemployment.
- [Mark] That way, you can go look for a job
- Look for a job, and yeah, I'd be presentable.
- [Mark] It's a case for
the universal basic income, actually.
- Yes it is.
It's very difficult when you get a job interview
and you don't have shower facilities.
So it's like,
I almost need to go rent a room,
which I have done in the past,
I'll go get a motel room and get cleaned up
so I walk in there looking like
everybody else that walks in there:
clean and ready to go to work.
- [Mark] Well, that's one of the things,
you know, people just automatically go,
"Get a job, get a job,"
there's 30 million people unemployed right now,
so "Get a job" is stupid--
- Every job that I've applied for is through Indeed,
I look on there, see how many applicants,
anywhere from 90 to 240 applicants.
And a lot of those have homes.
- [Mark] Right.
They have showers and transportation.
- Everything else you need to get there.
Parking,
- [Mark] 30 or 40 years old,
I'm 59, and it is,
the last time I looked for work,
which was a couple years ago
when I was laid off,
it was really hard,
- It's depressing.
- [Mark] Over 55 to get a job.
And any minimum wage--
so, the McDonald's places aren't going to hire you,
- Nope.
- [Mark] And, even if they did,
you can't afford rent.
- You can't at $15 an hour, not in Los Angeles.
There's not affordable housing for
the people that are not well off.
And I gotta be honest with you,
it would be very hard for me to go to sign a lease
for a one bedroom apartment for
$2,500 or $3,000 a month, that's $36,000.
That's a little bit more than my dad's mortgage
was in Anaheim Hills,
so it's hard to know that I'm out here
and I've been out here.
I would love it if I had a shower,
because I would probably stink out here while I worked.
Anyway.
Little bit of brevity there.
- [Mark] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's what I tell people, is that they'll say,
"People want to be homeless,"
like no, nobody wants to be homeless.
People get used to it out here.
- Yeah, we get accustomed to it,
but we don't like it.
It's very disconcerting,
you don't really sleep,
like deer in the headlights,
you got one eye open at all times,
and it's not just the police,
but it's the people around us.
Some of the people in the homeless community
are really scoundrels.
Everybody's ripping everybody else off,
it's terrible.
- [Mark] And there's good people here too.
- Yes there is, there is.
- [Mark] That's what you were talking about earlier,
there's good, there's bad.
- Yup.
Bad things happen to good people
and they didn't plan for it and they end up out here.
For some of the people, it's really scary.
I've been able to adapt and I'm fortunate for that,
and I've adapted,
but I don't want this to be a way of life.
There's no certainty.
- [Mark] Yeah, even in the suburbs or Beverly Hills,
there's good and bad people.
- Yes, everywhere.
- [Mark] If you had three wishes, what would they be?
- I would like-- wow, three wishes.
The first wish would be for our country
to lay down their weapons and their bullets,
stop building bullets and start building infrastructures
and things for people here.
This country's wealthy enough to feed everyone,
to really give everyone a college education,
and house everyone.
I think we just need to redistribute
some of our wealth, our resources,
my first wish is that we stop warring
and spending so much money in foreign affairs.
Second wish would be,
obviously I'm gonna get selfish here,
but I'd like to get a job.
- [Mark] And third wish?
- I wish good health for everyone
that I come in contact with.
- [Mark] Well, thank you very much for talking to me.
- Awesome Mark, I appreciate you today, very much.
- [Mark] Thank you.
(upbeat electronic music)