- [Mark] Hey Derek.
- Hey Mark.
- [Mark] That's a really nice shirt you got on.
- Gotta support my man that made me famous.
- [Mark] Ah, your fame,
I met you and from watching an NBC piece
on you live streaming from this tent community.
- Yeah, it's uh, it's been a crazy year.
I've been really busy,
a lot of support from Invisible People.
It's been an incredible ride in the year
that I've been on Invisible People.
The amount of people and viewers
and people interested in what I'm doing
and what I'm bringing to Oakland as the future mayor,
it is been incredible.
People are responding really well.
I'm getting a lot of attention for my--
- [Mark] Let me stop you.
You just went off on the races.
- Okay. - You're right, right.
So we're here in Oakland.
- Yes.
- [Mark] You're back homeless.
- I'm back homeless.
- [Mark] So you weren't homeless for a bit,
but now you're back.
Yeah, and it bothers me.
I love you like a brother,
and it bothers me that you're back sleeping outside.
This is like the second week.
- This is, I've completed one full week.
I'm in my second week right now,
actually returning to the street.
- [Mark] And it was like a year ago almost to the day
that we first met each other.
I mean that we first did this recording.
- Right. Exactly.
- [Mark] And now you're back outside.
Many people know you from the live streams
we do on Sunday night.
- Right.
- [Mark] You're back outside.
And I remember checking on you the next day,
the first night after you slept here
and the rats kept you up all night.
- Oh, it was incredible, the amount of rats.
There wasn't any quiet place.
Everything was moving in my place.
And I sat out 24 blocks of bait, all 24 blocks blocks.
- [Mark] Blocks of rat poison.
- Rat poison, all 24 blocks were gone
in three hours, three hours.
- [Mark] Oh my Gosh.
- That tells you how infested this area was.
But it's been quiet since.
- [Mark] I sure hope the wind noise isn't,
it's getting windy.
So it's been a year.
Fill us in what what's been happening.
- (sighs) In, in that year, I got into housing,
not through the program that I had signed up with,
but through a friend who gave me housing for a year.
Our original agreement was only for 30 days,
but he gave me a full year.
After a year had passed, I still hadn't been able to
secure any kind of permanent housing
through any of the agencies here in Oakland,
and so I had to just step forward
and start creating my own type of housing.
And by doing that,
I joined different agencies here in Oakland.
- [Mark] So let's talk, because when your last video,
you're supposed to go in the housing.
- Right.
- [Mark] And there was a fundraiser.
- Right.
- [Mark] But that place was breaking the law.
- Yeah.
- [Mark] I mean, it was even in news media.
- It was all over the media that they,
we still haven't found the money, and there were--
- [Mark] The money that they were using to house people.
- To house people, all $100 million
in three months disappeared.
And it's impossible to spend $100 million
on housing seniors, it was a brand new program.
In only three months, they claimed they burned through
$100 million, which is impossible.
- [Mark] Oh my gosh.
- And so I never received the housing.
The agency is in a lot of trouble right now.
So there's a lot of investigations,
a lot of auditing going on with that agency.
So they're not off the hook, but I still didn't get housing.
I was harmed, and when I did get into housing with a friend,
it was through his generosity, he didn't charge me anything,
but I still had to pay my way, you know, with cable,
with food, with all the living things that I need,
like clothes and the sheets and towels and everything else.
So that's where the money went to.
The whole time, I was trying to find housing
and here in Oakland, unfortunately
there's so many crooked agencies,
and we get our hopes up and when the day comes,
we even fill out the paperwork and hand it to them.
And, then we end up getting lost in the cracks
or something falls through.
Mine fell through,
several other folks here in this camp.
We were all part of the same group.
And we all lost our housing at the same time
through this scam.
And so we all had to scramble for housing.
- [Mark] So for the last year,
well, you've been doing this longer than that.
You're basically doing outreach.
You're working for a bunch of different committees.
- Right.
- [Mark] I mean a bunch of different agencies.
You're on a bunch of different committees.
You're going out helping other homeless people,
getting them, we met two today
that you helped get into an RV park.
- Right.
- [Mark] I've walked around with you to different camps
where you're helping the people there.
You're basically, I hope somebody's paying you for that.
- Nope. Nobody's paying me.
I don't get a dime for this,
from city or County or any agency. It's just me.
- [Mark] So why, why are you out here?
Why are you back homeless?
Why are you walking around
spending your days helping homeless people?
And I know the answer because I do it.
- Yeah, I mean, it just hurts my heart
to see people having to live like this,
and myself, you know, living like this,
it's a horrible experience
that nobody should ever go through.
It's sad. It's depressing. It's undignified.
And I try to bring some sort of hope to the folks here
by getting them into the safe RV parks,
the safe trailer parks.
We're also working with some other agencies right now
establishing some new housing
through California's new Project Home Key.
And the project that I'm working on right now
here in Oakland is a rolling into Project Home Key
with the state of California.
It's a 20 acre site close by.
It was originally, in the first plan that I submitted
was a 1.3 not to exceed budget, with 100 tiny homes onsite.
And all the tiny homes have sewer, electric,
garbage, everything, it's a real home, not a shed.
- [Mark] So they have bathrooms.
- These have bathrooms, these have showers.
These have cooktops, sinks.
- [Mark] So you're working on a deal for a hundred cabins,
tiny homes, they have bathrooms.
- Right.
- [Mark] So to help a hundred people.
- To help, we're hoping that in each of the tiny homes
we house at least two people.
We want families and couples.
Singles, we're going to be doing a different project.
But this one here to begin with,
we expanded from 100 homes, which was the original plan,
to now 350 homes on that plan.
So we've more than tripled the size
by moving from a county project to now a state project.
- [Mark] So you're still running for mayor?
- Still running for mayor.
- [Mark] Okay. How's that going?
- That is doing incredibly well.
I'm getting a lot of attention, a lot of worldwide views,
a lot of compliments.
Oakland is really starting to see me
and start to understand what I'm doing
and bringing to Oakland.
And it changes the dynamics here at Oakland.
- [Mark] So will this tiny home,
will there be a tiny home for you in the village?
- Yes. There's going to be a tiny home for me.
- [Mark] 'Cause I want you out of homelessness.
- I want myself out of homeless too,
but by helping the many others out of homelessness,
I also help myself. so it it's all a big circle
and it all comes back.
I help people and my assistance helping people
circles back to help me, but by helping other people first,
then I can get and secure housing.
- [Mark] Now, after your Invisible People video,
you did beat you, like you had every week,
you're emailing me, there's a new documentary.
There's new something, all kinds of people reach out to you.
- Yes, it's been constant.
I get a lot of folks reaching out
for helping me, wanting to assist with my mayoral campaigns,
assist with the tiny home projects.
I'm also having a lot of folks here
who just want to be involved with something to help out.
And that's great, I love that.
and that's what this is about.
You know, we all reaching out to help each other.
- [Mark] So I know on your last video
we put your Facebook page.
Is that still where you want people to contact you?
- Yes, that's still the same place.
- [Mark] If it changes, let me know.
We'll change it for you.
Tell me about, has homelessness changed here in Oakland
at all in the last year?
- Yeah, homelessness has gotten a really out of control here
because right now, since COVID hit, you know,
we're seeing more families being evicted, unfortunately,
illegally evicted, even with the shelter in place,
these are still going on.
And we're seeing more people here in the tiny crevices,
the places where most people aren't going to be,
they're starting to show up
and we're starting to see large groups.
We're starting to see families with children,
I mean, it's really scary what we're starting to see
here in Oakland and how it's changed in just the last year.
- [Mark] Now last week, actually a week ago today,
we rented a car, went driving around,
and you're wanting to point me out to tent camps.
Now I see tent camps all the time.
So I was like "Derek, I see tent camps all the time."
And we went driving around
and it really affected me afterwards,
not that there was any different than the tent camps
I see in LA or in other cities, but right now
they're saying 21 million, I saw another report,
28 million families and individuals
are at risk of being evicted.
And what I saw here, because this, I mean,
the effects of COVID is brand new.
So yes, you're seeing some of it.
But the tent camps that you see here in Oakland
are because of the cities and the states
and the country's inability to fight homelessness
in the past, before COVID.
- Right.
- [Mark] So I can't imagine what it's going to be like
if millions of people get evicted.
- Oh, it's going to be horrendous.
If any of that comes remotely true,
this whole street will be filled,
as will hundreds of streets across America.
That's scary.
And then who's going to be able to recover from that
with so many displaced people?
- [Mark] We can't handle what we have now.
- We're already trying, we're scratching our heads,
trying to figure out how to fix things and we can't.
And then if you add up to 28 million evicted people
to that formula, oh my God.
- [Mark] Well, I don't think it will be 28 million
and a lot of people end up homeless
and they get out of the homeless quickly
when there's a good economy.
- Right, when there's some homes.
- [Mark] So right now, even a couple of hundred thousand
and it could be millions is really, really concerning.
- That's a scary number.
That's a very scary number because here in Oakland,
we have well over 8,000 homeless people
that we know for sure.
And since everything's hit, Oakland shut down,
there's literally no work.
There's no work.
So many businesses are going out of business right now.
And yesterday I was reading 400 restaurants
right here in the Bay area,
the San Francisco region has closed.
- [Mark] Yeah, and that's what I was going to say.
A lot of people, because they can't afford
to live in San Francisco, come here,
even though it's expensive here.
So they work over there and those jobs are--
- Those jobs are going away.
- [Mark] Yeah. And those, you had the posts you shared
was not just that those restaurants are closed,
they're closing permanently.
- Right, they're closed for good, and these are,
some of those restaurants have been around for a hundred,
a hundred years in, around the Bay area.
Some of these are very old, long standing restaurants
that mean a lot to two generations of families here.
And they're gone now.
- [Mark] And the jobs are gone.
- Jobs are gone, you know,
who knows what the future's going to hold for us
in terms of the economy, housing,
just life in general, you know, it's so different,
- [Mark] But let's end on a positive note,
because I believe there's always hope.
Tell me about a couple people you've helped.
- Well, I'm really proud of Gina and Rachel Shook.
- [Mark] Who I met today.
- You met today, Gina and Rachel
are going into permanent housing this coming week.
So I'm really excited for them, and they're real happy.
Then we had Kim and B,
who are also on the list to get housing in about two weeks.
So they're going to be finally off the streets
and can tear off that homeless label
because now they're going to be back in a house of their own
that they can call their own with their own keys.
- [Mark] So we can end homelessness, we know how.
- We just need to do it.
- [Mark] Public and political will to do it.
- Right, we need the will to do it.
That's all it is. It's the will to do it.
- [Mark] Any last words?
- (sighs) I don't think I do.
- [Mark] So you know this is coming.
Have you pre-thought about the question?
- Yeah.
- [Mark] You did? So you got three wishes for me?
- The three wishes, my wishes still are housing,
housing, and more housing.
- [Mark] Well thank you very much for talking to me
and putting up with me today and laughing again.
- Well, it's been a great time having you here, Mark.
I've enjoyed your company and I enjoy doing these features
and the films and the videos.
It's just been fun and exciting.
It's something that I've never done.
- [Mark] We've had a lot go wrong.
- Yeah, we've had plenty of them.
- [Mark] But nothing goes as planned,
blessed is the flexible, but hanging out with you is fun.
- It's always a great, great pleasure having you, Mark.
- [Mark] Well, thank you very much for talking to me.
- Thank you.
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