- [Interviewer] Walter, we're here in Venice.
You're homeless, tell me about it.
- Three years ago, three plus years ago I became homeless.
I lived in Missouri.
Republican state.
They didn't care about anyone.
Republicans don't give a damn.
But I had a racist family.
I said I am not going to be racist.
They wanted me to be a racist person.
They said anyone of a different color other than this one,
had to die.
They don't matter.
There was nothing.
Yet I have a family that has children who are interracial.
Yet the parents that I had said, "No, uh huh.
"No, we don't want them, don't need 'em, they don't matter."
They want to be nice to them in front of their faces
and say horrible things behind their back.
I am supposed to go along with it.
I said, no.
I'd rather be homeless than a racist.
And along the way, before I left
I wound up with mental illness.
I was diagnosed with schizophrenia,
multiple personalities, and bipolar.
I didn't want to have to deal with my mental illness
and had to deal with a racist family.
I left.
It was the best thing to do.
If this happens and you have mental illness,
you have to think about yourself.
You don't think about them other people.
This is why mental illness becomes worse.
Because other people want you to do something
that would make your mental illness even worse.
I have breakdowns.
I can walk down the street and I'm not with my wife,
I start talking to myself and I start ranting.
Then I have people walk by.
"Oh, he's one of them."
"Crazy."
Well, it can happen to anyone.
I used to laugh at people who had that
then it happened to me.
Think about it.
Has there been someone in your family
who had mental illness?
What did you do?
What did, why didn't you say,
"Hey, there's a problem.
I'm on your side.
Let's try to do something so you can get better."
Not have to deal with racist people whose saying all this,
"Oh yeah, they all have to die, they're not white."
Most of the people I know, they're a racist.
You could say whatever you want.
Most of the people who are racist are Republican.
That I know of.
I've seen it.
They'll say one thing to your face,
turn around and say something horrible about you
and you'll find out later that these people
are lying backstabbers, alright.
What do you think is going on in Congress?
What do you think is going on in this world?
When are you going to stand up?
Hey, I got mental problems okay.
I'm still standing up, I'm still calling senators
asking them to help the homeless.
Help, please, help the elderly.
Please help minorities.
Please help, please help the ones with mental illness,
the homeless.
I am not by myself.
My mind is screwed the hell up.
But I am not so screwed up
where I don't know what the problem is.
- [Interviewer] Well, Walter I have,
we've known each other a little bit now.
And I have huge respect for you
because you're willing to be open and honest
about mental illness.
And we need more people to be open and honest,
'cause it's just like you said,
people are pointing at you and saying,
"Crazy."
And that shouldn't be.
But my question is who's helping you?
I mean, you're here in Venice.
Who's helping you?
- I am seeing a doctor, a mental doctor,
an osteopathic whatever, a coo-coo doctor.
Dr. King at Venice Community Clinic.
I talk to him.
He looks at me and he says okay.
He asks me questions.
How's this doing.
He don't exactly treat me like I'm...
But, you know, he tries to find out,
"are you having good days?
Are you having bad days?
Are you having more problems?"
I hear the voices 24/7.
They want me to die.
They say, "die, die, die."
But yet I get up every day.
I try to do something.
I try to do some good.
I have a beautiful women with me, my wife.
I call her my wife because she is my family.
She is part of me.
That sometimes helps.
I have mental problems.
- [Interviewer] You live, you pitch a tent every night
here and then you have to pack it up every morning
and move your stuff over to there and then every night
you come back and you pitch it up
and then you have to move every single day.
I mean, that cannot be helping your mental problems.
- No it don't, it doesn't.
It seems like the same thing over and over and over again.
When you think about it, you lost some hope.
You're lost.
You feel like you're lost in life.
But you've gotta get up and try.
You've gotta do something.
But we're stuck being homeless.
They want you up at 6 o'clock in the morning
to get the Hell out.
And sometimes, when it rains,
they allow you to stay a little bit.
But they want you gone so that they
don't have to worry or something.
I'm not quite sure what.
- [Interviwer] You need to be in housing.
How are you gonna get better
if we don't get you into housing?
- I've been trying to get housing.
I finally got a voucher for section 8.
- [Interviewer] You got a voucher?
- Yeah, finally, my second one.
I couldn't get an apartment before
because no landlord would say yes.
- [Interviewer] So they give you a voucher
but then they put responsibility on you to find it?
- They do and sometimes they don't.
If you can't get housing on your own,
they will try to help you.
They will down here at St. Joseph's on Lincoln.
They will try to help you if you ask.
- [Interviewer] Because I mean, you're homeless, you know,
and you don't have the resources to contact landlords
and you're very open about mental illness.
They should be helping you with that voucher.
- They have been.
They've helped quite a few people with that.
Then all of a sudden, the housing shortage isn't just
here in California.
There's a lot.
We're talking about if you've got 52 states, whatever.
There should be 52 anyway.
We need Puerto Rico.
- [Interviewer] I agree, I agree.
- Look what Trump did.
That wasn't cool.
- [Interviewer] I try not to go political.
- I'm a political person.
- [Interviewer] I know.
- You put them numbers together.
You're talking about elderly.
Every time there's a recession, who suffers?
The elderly, the vets, more homeless, more minorities.
Minorities, once you're out here,
it don't matter what color you are.
It doesn't matter who you are.
You are a minority again.
- [Interviewer] That's very powerful.
- And when you're a minority, no one listens.
And when no one listens, you gotta speak louder.
And if you don't speak louder, like Martin Luther King says,
who gives a damn?
I don't mean speak louder as in being totally angry
but you've got to speak up for yourself
and that other person who's homeless.
That other person no matter who it is.
Elderly, whatever.
Mental problems.
You've got to speak, not just for yourself.
You've got to speak for everybody.
- [Interviewer] That's what I've been saying.
It's gonna get worse.
We've gotta be raising the flags, sounding the alarm.
We've gotta do something about
the affordable housing crisis.
We've gotta do something about more mental illness services,
drug addiction services.
We need to treat it like the health crisis that it is
instead of locking people up.
We need to be sounding the alarm.
- Yes.
I come up with an idea that wasn't mine.
You see a show called Tiny House Nation.
I'm not saying it's the answer
but I'm saying Congress needs to look at it.
The state of California needs to look at it.
Every state needs to look at that.
It's cheaper.
- [Interviewer] So you'd go into a place
if you were offered a place, I mean,
you've got a section 8 now,
but you've gotta find it.
You've got to find a landlord
willing to allow you to stay there,
which is kind of like finding the Easter Bunny.
But if you had a place of your own,
whether it be a tiny house or an apartment,
you'd go inside?
- Yeah.
- [Interviewer] You and your wife.
- Yeah.
- [Interviewer] And that's how we end homelessness?
- We gotta care.
That's why I keep pushing the only idea I have
to senators, to representatives.
Tiny houses.
Look at it, look at it.
It's got everything you need
and every time you watch the show you see other stuff
that even homeless people would need.
Solar on some of them.
All of this.
Wind power.
We better start thinking, hold it now.
Homelessness can last forever.
There's people out here in their 70s.
There's people out here in their 60s.
- [Interviewer] I met somebody that's 78 today
that has been out here for seven years.
- I've known, even when I was in the state of Missouri
and in Illinois, people who were homeless 20, 30 years.
- [Interviewer] That shouldn't be.
- Some people die on the street.
I've seen a person who was afraid
to take off his coat in the summertime.
He died because he was hot.
He didn't know better to take off his coat
in the summertime.
I've seen people sleeping on cold concrete.
I've heard people say they were trying to sleep
in the vent areas in St. Louis next to big buildings
where the hot air was coming out.
The police got them away.
- [Interviewer] Well, it's interesting
you're from Missouri because I'll link to
a tiny home video down in the description
from Springfield that I visited over the summer,
which kind of validates what you're saying.
- They have done it in certain places.
And they did it for vets in Kansas City, Missouri,
and it kind of worked I know.
- [Interviewer] Well we can't just put people in boxes.
It has to have community and services like,
for instance, if there were tiny homes here
and they offered health services and mental health services
it would be perfect for you.
It would be perfect for your wife.
You'd end homelessness like that.
- Yeah, think about it.
When America first started, what did everyone start on?
In tiny places.
Just think about it.
They had to make it but it lasted
and that's how it started.
- [Interviewer] Well Walter, I think the world of you.
I really, really respect you for being so open and honest.
I could talk to you all day but we try to keep these videos
at a reasonable length.
Let me ask, if you had three wishes what would they be?
- Well, we're gonna go into something you may not like.
Stop voting Republican.
- [Interviewer] Okay, there's wish one.
- Just help the vets.
And then try to help us homeless, the rest, please.
They deserve it just as much,
if not even more than the rest of us, the vets.
- [Interviewer] Well thank you very much for talking to me.
- You're very welcome.
(calm drum beat)