- I believe these two young men are over here.
- [Mark] So where are walking?
- We're walking through the jungle, jungle one,
in Ithaca, New York.
- And this is a rural community.
- Yeah
- In Ithaca, upstate New York.
- Yeah, upstate New York, yeah.
There's Gavin, he's not a resident here,
used to be, he's inside now, (phone ringing)
he comes down and checks on the cats,
and just shouts across the (inaudible)
- What's up with the tree here?
With the sandals?
- You see a lot of that, they just do that, don't know why.
Something to do, maybe.
- Yeah, so how did you first get introduced
to being down here?
- I was feeding some, with a church organization,
feeding the homeless down here at a center, a feeding center
and just got talking to one of the guys
and I never thought there would be any homeless people
in Ithica, lived here all my life, and you know,
I was talking to one of the men, asked him where he lived,
and he said "I live under the bridge by Cuba Street,"
I said, I snickered, "No, really, practically when you leave
here tonight, it's gonna be 8, 9 o'clock,
you go to bed at night, where are you gonna sleep,
tell me where you are gonna sleep tonight?"
He looked at me like I was dumb,
and he said, "I'm gonna sleep under that bridge.
I've got my blanket."
In America? Am I in America? You know what I mean?
- Right.
- I mean, it's just.
- I mean, it's not too bad today, but it gets cold here.
- Yeah, it gets real cold here, yeah, real cold.
Ernie almost burned himself alive here in this tent.
It's the only way he could get inside.
I was trying to get him inside for months and months,
nobody would accept him, and he was trying to stay warm
one bitter cold night, twenty below zero,
the wind was blowing, he almost burned himself up,
then they, then they took notice.
- Oh my gosh.
So now you're telling me that there was
a family with children down here.
- Yeah, an 8 month old child living in the jungle,
over there is that corner.
I said, "This can't happen".
So I took them to social services,
and it took me eight days,
all day long, eight hour days, sitting in social services,
until they got housing.
- Wow.
- That's how frustrating it is--
- Wow.
- for people.
(people shouting in the distance)
Hey Rick!
(man shouting in the distance)
You're home?
Oh man! What're you going back down here?
(man shouting in the distance)
Check things out?
(man talking)
Oh does he?
- How y'all doing?
- [Rick] Fine! Checking out my house.
Hello, how are you?
- [Female] good how are you?
- This is the wall,
this is where everybody hangs out in the summertime.
- Alright
- Lots of people fell off the wall, that guy did.
- He died?
- Yeah, he fell off the wall and didn't make it.
- Oh my gosh.
- Where are you staying these days?
Yes I have been, how did you know?
So you're inside? Good man!
Who you with?
- Uh, two?
- Two, okay, good, I'm glad. I'm glad you're inside.
I'm glad you're staying warm.
This is my friend Mark.
- Hey guys, how are ya?
- I'm good.
- I'm shooting video, is that alright?
- Can you believe that?
Look at that, those glasses.
- No, it's true!
(laughing)
- Oh wow, is that a video camera?
- Yeah! So I do advocacy for homelessness.
- He traveled all over the world.
- Oh man, that's awesome.
- So bringing people, vicariously,
seeing what it's like out here in a tent.
How long you been here?
- I don't know!
- Oh, I don't know, not the real ones.
- Too long.
But he plays with it, see he's got a cabin up in Truman
for when it gets bad, he goes up there, right?
- Yeah, Mama didn't raise no fool!
(all laugh)
When it gets bad, I roll outta here.
- Well the weather's gotta get really bad here.
- Oh it does! (truck back-up beeper)
There was some times, I'll tell ya, I didn't think
I was gonna make it 'til morning.
- So now what brings you back to here?
What brings you coming back here?
Today, just coming down, check on my house,
and my girlfriend's got a doctor's appointment,
I went and got my mail over at
the Friendship Center, cup of coffee and a bagel.
- Just checking on the summer home, right?
- My brothers,
see if my brothers are still alive and kickin'.
- Great!
- See if John Curl didn't burn my other houses down.
See what he done? Look at that!
That's what I got all these from, putting that out.
And another one there, he lit both of them.
- I see Rob has got a tent up top.
- Does he?
- Yeah, yeah.
No body else down here.
Did you see the two young boys here?
- I haven't been down in the pit in awhile.
- No, no, yeah over there. They showed up yesterday.
- Somebody took off with my brown tarp
that was covering up my garbage pile.
- Well of course they did.
If it ain't nailed down here.
- Man, I have to spike it down now.
- Are the fires mostly from propane?
From the heaters? - Yes.
- This would be...
It says (inaudible) right onto it.
(all laughing)
- Give me that!
Yeah I don't know how many of them I've bought.
- You know I take them all over to--
- Oh yeah, pallet loads of them.
- Hey if it stays...
If it keeps you warm--
- It cleans up the area.
- Yup, yup, yup.
- Recycle.
- Billy Plemoth, right here, nine years, right here.
- Yeah.
- Got so bad he went to the Friendship Center,
which is the Red Cross, he soiled himself so bad
with his own feces they said,
"Will you please get him out of here,
"he just ruined a chair."
Came down, I'd been after him.
"Bill you ready to go some where?
"Are you ready?
"Or are you going to just lay here and kill yourself?"
I had set up with him to go to rehab
a couple days before that.
I showed up, pick him up, he said
"No I'm not going today."
I said "Huh, I thought you were a man of your word."
That stirred him pretty good.
He's a Vietnam vet, and I picked him up and I said
"Are you ready?"
He said "Yeah, I'm ready."
2 years sober.
- Awesome.
- He was probably within hours of death.
- Awesome.
- I had to go get new seats for my vehicle after that--
- Who cares?
- Who cares? I mean who cares?
Small price to pay right?
- Left over.
- From kids, from a family.
- Anybody home?
(inaudible)
(laughs)
No?
- You gotta have a pretty safe community,
and have bikes and st.. oh you got a pitbull!
That's what it is.
Hey bud.
- Pretty nice dog.
I saw these two young boys yesterday morning.
- How old?
- I'd say late teens.
I said "You guys want help getting a place?"
"No, we can do this, we're boys,
"we can handle this."
"Okay, I'll check in on you February 25th
"when it's you know fifteen degrees out
"and the wind is blowing."
In that thing yeah.
This was the site of Tom Personne.
He was down here for six or seven years.
Worked at the State Diner, right down the road.
He worked his butt off as a dish washer,
still could not make enough money to live
here in Ithica.
- Wow.
- You know what I mean?
- Wow. So if he was here for six years--
- Yeah.
- This tent community, here in Ithaca,
called the jungle--
- Over 100 years old.
- This community?
- 100 years old.
- People have been living here?
- They'd say it's over 100 years old,
and I guess it's not been empty since World War II.
- Wow.
- Last year it went empty,
it was a big press and all that about--
- Well you said the police came
and then slashed the tents.
- No no, that had nothing to do with it.
It was Joe, who was up there,
he was the last one to leave last year.
He's up behind the garage.
- Wow. So now when did the police come in?
Or how often--
- That was four or five years ago.
- Okay.
- They don't ever come in anymore.
- Really?
- No, no.
- Now what was the change?
- I think the mayor, the mayor of Ithaca.
- Right!
- I don't know if you know his story.
- I just heard, he actually experienced homelessness.
- He's an ally
(inaudible)
Any body home?
That's been abandoned for a while.
Yeah, it's funny when I cleared the last guy
out of this jungle, there's jungle two,
who he had actually a friend that lived in jungle two,
the mayor, so when this went empty
he caught wind of it and he called me up.
He said "I want to thank you for your
"work and taking care of the guys
"and getting them out of the jungle."
He said "If there is anything I can do for you
"don't hesitate to call.
"Here's my phone number."
I said "Oh cool!" Right.
Two days later he calls me and says,
"I need your help."
I said "Wait a minute, I thought I was supposed
"to call you for help."
He wanted me to help get his friend out of here--
- So now what do you do? What is your normal gig?
- Normal?
- Yeah!
- Nothing normal about it.
- Well, so you're doing this full time?
- Pretty much, yeah.
- Okay.
(laughs)
It's just evolved
- Yeah it's just evolved, I mean I'm a nobody.
- No I think you're pretty important.
Like we said earlier, I think you're pretty brilliant.
- I would just go to the social services and say
"Hey I'm dumb, please help me get this guy into housing.
"What can I do?"
- And you learned how hard it is
to get people into housing, and then
your friend killed himself out here.
- Yup, yup.
You know if the money was there they'd even say
"Okay here's, we'll give you 350 go find a place.
"Okay, good luck."
- And again this is a rural community,
well you know Ithaca is pretty big with Cornell
and everything.
- Yeah well that's what drives up the prices of
housing in Ithaca.
- Yeah.
- You know what the key is?
- Huh?
- The key is relationships.
- Yes.
- Relationships.
- You know how many Bible tracks that I've
trampled under foot coming through here day after day?
You know from Guys who say "You need Jesus, here take this
and you'll get out of here."
- Right, magic Jesus.
- Never heard it put that way.
- I'm going to read a Bible track,
and everything is going to be better.
Amen, hallelujah, praise the Lord,
feed the fish, guacamole.
- Meanwhile the guy that handed the Bible track
never comes back.
- Right.
- Well thank you for the tour!
- You're welcome.
- Thank you for helping our homeless friends.
- Thanks for coming, it was good to meet you.