(uplifting acoustic guitar)
- [Mark] I'm 49 years old.
I don't have any savings.
Probably one of my unconscious driving forces is
I'm trying to solve homelessness
within the next five, 10 years
so I don't end up on the streets.
- Did you know that LA is the homeless capital
of the country?
Tonight, you'll meet a man who's trying
to do something about it using social media and Youtube.
- Hi Youtube, my name is Mark.
I started something called InvisiblePeople.tv
where I empower homeless people to tell their own stories.
- I miss being domestic, you know?
I'm kind of losing that feeling.
- You're homeless, with your two daughters,
who are over playing.
Tell me about it.
- Dude, I've been on the street for almost five years, bro.
I wanna get out of here, man.
- [Mark] How long have you been out on the streets?
- This is my first day.
Today's my 18th birthday.
- We had a house at one point.
We had vehicles (laughs)
we had everything, and it kind of just,
it fell apart.
At one point when this is all happening
you feel like a failure,
and then
you think, you know what?
There are still people worse off than you.
There are people who are living under bridges.
- You leave and you just feel their pain.
I started using social media
not because I wanted to be a social media guru
but because it's free.
- So this didn't exist last year,
and I think Mark's visit provided really kind of
a catalyst and a rally point for our community.
- Here I am, an unemployed guy without income
with an iPhone and my number one tool is Twitter,
and people are being fed because I'm Twittering.
You look at InvisiblePeople.tv, none of it makes sense.
I have business friends and they say,
"you'll never be sustainable."
it's not your normal nonprofit, but the impact,
right now 40,000 videos a month are being watched,
and this isn't Disney or porn.
I was a television guy.
I mean I made a lot of money, and in 1995
I sold pictures of my iguana
to tourists on Hollywood Boulevard.
I was wasted.
I was crazy, out of my mind wasted.
- Mark came to this program, tore it up completely,
and really when I saw him I thought to myself,
"This guy has no chance to change."
- You know, what did you think
when I was about ready to become homeless?
Did you see that coming?
- Oh, yeah.
It almost killed me.
- Yeah? - Yeah.
- Oh, I'm sorry.
That's one of my regrets is what it did to you.
But, um.
- Barry, we're here under Vegas.
Tell me about it.
- Came out here to kill a day before I went back
to my home state, had a backpack stolen with my money
and got stranded here.
- The public hasn't been educated on this.
You know, they just see, you know,
they don't see it as real people.
I've been fighting my own homelessness,
and it's because of you guys that I'm not only
still surviving and not homeless,
but I'm able to help other homeless people.
It was the Calgary community, they saw the video
of Donny on InvisiblePeople.tv and then they rallied
to get him into housing.
- Yep.
- The number one thing that I want people to know
about homelessness is we can solve it.
There's times that I want to quit because I think
it's so hard that I'd think,
"why haven't you changed already?
Come on, can't you see this?
Can't you see what I see?"
they kicked 600 people out into the rain
yesterday morning, this morning.