Royal Oakes And Mark Hood

0:00Your next meal just got more rewarding. Download the Nick the Greak app and get $5 off and you spend $20. Then keep earning points for free food, score a birthday reward, and get exclusive access to new items and special events. Nick the Greak rewards. Good food even better perks. It's the John Philip Show. Live from the Union Rescue missions over the Edge event. Come up and check out the live show. Ben, your mission should you choose to accept it. Repel down 25 stories to help fight homelessness in LA. Not a fan of heights or hanging off the side of buildings? You can still support this great cause by donating at urm.org-o-t-e. That's urm.org-o-t-e. Now, nervously gritting their microphones and seriously reconsidering their life choices. Here are John Phillips and Brandy Wang. And we continue live from the Universal Hilton. Johnny, we're broadcasting live from the over the Edge event.

1:00Let me show everyone what's going on here. Kevin's got the mobile camera. People repelling down the side of the Union, the Universal Hilton, for the Union Rescue mission. 25 stories. I've done it before. It is wild, our producer, Trisha and our program director, Art are going to be repelling down the side of this building anytime now. If you want to do this, you want to raise money for the Union Rescue mission, help out this great cause and repel down the side of a massive, massive hotel. Just go to urm.org-o-t-e. And if you see people coming down the Universal Hilton, they're raising money for the Union Rescue mission. If you see people coming off the top of the Universal Sheraton, they got caught cheating. 800-222-5222 is a telephone number 1-800-222-5222.

2:08It is our pleasure to welcome our next guest to the program. He is the ABC News legal analyst and host of the Too Many Lawyers podcast, which he hosts with his son Connor, who's a very bright attorney, former intern at KVC for Macintyre in the morning. He's also the author of the column, Too Lawyers Walk Into A Bar. You can get that at Substack. Royal Oaks, welcome. Thank you. You know, this is a big opportunity for me, John, because you and Randy and Art and Frank are there. Josh and I could have a hostile take over the station. We're here at KVC. We may just change the locks. That's fine. I'll work from home. Okay. All right. You got me. All right. Well, let's start out by talking about the environmental and public health disaster going on in Boyle Heights right now, where you had that fire at the cold storage facility. Initially, it was reported by the news that the fire started on the roof of that building due

3:14to solar panels that weren't supposed to be plugged in, being plugged in. Took a very long time to put the fire out. Took a very long time to take out all of the rotting food. That neighborhood stinks. You can smell it right here. People are getting sick. It's just a bad situation all the way around. So of course, you want to find out what happened. So you have to have a report after the situation is resolved. So you can look back and figure out just exactly who's it fault. What was the point of failure? The City of Los Angeles completed that report a month ago, and they sat on it for a month. Despite the fact that news organizations were requesting to review it, they didn't provide it. They waited a month before they made it public. And in the report, they said, we don't know how the fire started. Your thoughts on all of this. It sounds like a bad Saturday night life sketch, like they put on at 12.55 AM. John, I mean, it was so silly. It has been three months

4:20since the fire. And they have a big press conference, and they give us all the facts. You know, oh my gosh, people are being sued for a billion dollars. 500,000 square feet were burned up. 89 million pounds of food. It burned for eight days. And thank you for coming. That's all we've got. Oh, no, we have no idea what caused the fire. All they know is, first of all, it started on the roof. Oh, that's helpful. And then the other thing they know is, well, it was sort of adjacent in somewhere in the vicinity of a 12,400 panel solar array. But we're not saying that the solar array was the cause or anything. So you have to wonder where our tax dollars are going, John, because you'd think after two or three months, they'd be able to figure out now it's going to be litigated to the 23rd century in back because there are suits totaling a billion dollars that have been filed. But we still have no clue as to what caused this stinking rotten horrible mess. Here's what I don't understand. And you've been a part of many insurance cases over the years. You

5:24know this world backwards and forwards. Everyone seems to be blaming the cold storage facility. You have really three parties involved here. You have the group that owns the building. You have the group that operates the cold storage facility that just rents the space from the group that owns the building. And then you have a third group that has the solar panels on the roof. If the solar panels are what started the fire, to my eye, they're responsible for all of the damage that went on. The cold storage facility, they're victims of a fire that was started by someone other than them, yet they seem to be the villain here. Everyone seems to be blaming them. Why do you think that is? Do you think that they have a policy that pays more? Do you think it's because the city doesn't want people to be afraid to have solar panels in their community because of the fire risk? Why do you think the cold storage company is the one that's taking it on the chin?

6:25I think you put your finger on a couple of key elements. Number one, insurance is a big deal. Whenever there's a catastrophe, then you just sue anybody and everybody who might have an insurance policy. I'll give you an example. Remember the great white band? There was a horrible fire. I think a hundred people perished in a fire when pirate techniques went wrong in Providence, Rhode Island 25 years ago. They sued everybody, including the radio station that advertised that afternoon, and hey, great white is going to be at the station nightclub. Absolutely no basis for the lawsuits, but if there's a deep pocket, then you sue them. The other thing is just sort of politically, yeah, if people have it in for the solar industry or the insurance industry or whatever, it's very convenient to sue. The problem is, when you litigate every side, I was a bunch of fancy experts who were paid big bucks to say, my client didn't do anything, but the other guy's did. That's fine. A jury has to sort it out. That's where the fire department

7:26comes in. They don't have a dog in the hunt. They're the ones that should actually have an objective view at what causes the fire. Think about the horrible fires now to Dean and so on. People can presume, well, it was probably the utilities. Their lines probably came down, cause the fire. And maybe they did, but until we know for sure from an objective investigator, it's all speculation and the biases come into play. What should the cold storage facility do at this point? I asked that question because all of this blame that's being directed at them is causing real world damages. The city is now saying they may not give them the permits to rebuild so they can have a cold storage facility in that neighborhood. Certainly all of the blame that's been pointed at them is causing lawsuits to pop up from people who live in the neighborhood against them. All of this speculation and all of this blame that elected officials have been participating in. The news has been participating in. It is slitting the throat of that company.

8:30When in reality, they're probably not even at fault. And it's a real problem for them. It reminds you the, I think it was Ted Stevens, the Alaska Senator years ago. He was put on trial for some sort of corruption and then whoops, turns out he was absolutely innocent after he'd been convicted then it came out of his innocent. And he goes to the press and he says, where do I go to get my reputation back? Well, the cold storage folks are in the same boat. Where do they go to get the reputation back? If it's determined later on that they actually were innocent. Now, if people out in public say to family or things about them, they can sue them, but good luck. You have to prove that they really knew they were lying. If you're in the context of a lawsuit, you can say pretty much anything you want. There's a lot litigation privilege and you can't get sued on the last. If the cold storage people could establish that they were sued with malicious intent, meaning the folks who sued them knew darn well, it was a frivolous suit, but they did it anyway. But again, that's almost impossible to do. So they're between Iraq and a hard place. Another wrinkle in this story that I don't understand is that Mayor Karen Bass is the one who's

9:33being blamed for this. And yes, the city she was gone. She was in I think Chicago at the Obama library opening when all of this happened. But it's the county that's in charge of the Department of Public Health. This is a public health emergency that's going on in the county of Los Angeles. I wonder why Karen Bass isn't directing the blame at the county and is taking it herself. I think she really missed a bet. I mean, here she is in an environment where we now know if this Berkeley poll was right, she's in deep trouble against the DSA lady. She should have made it her business day one after this fire set off. She should have said, this is going to be a nightmare. The whole East part of Los Angeles is going to be a stinky mess. I'm on trial here, whether it's the county or the city, people are going to be looking to me. If she had said to her team, this is going to be like Pete Wilson reconstructing the 10 freeway after the earthquake in the 90s. I want it to be fast. I want it to be effective. I want to have ulcerative incentives. We've got

10:34to solve the problem so that in a month or so, I can go to the voters and say, guess what? I sunk my teeth into this real fast and we're making huge progress. And instead, I think she's getting no credit for it, probably because she hasn't done very much. And a lot of people are blaming her saying, first year at the Ghana inauguration during the fire. And now you're missing an action when it comes to the stinky fire on East Los Angeles. What we're not going to vote for you. We're speaking with ABC News, legal analyst Royal Oaks. You can follow on X at Royal Oaks. A Royal, let's shift gears here and talk about the bullet train because there is an auditor who is looking at the books of that non-existent train and found all kinds of waste-fraud abuse, including high priced Uber blacks to go one mile in downtown Sacramento, nightclub bills, first-class airfare upgrades. You name it. They're charging it to the high-speed rail authority, which they're not supposed to do. They've been doing it for quite some time. He says he'd be able

11:40to find a lot more of this kind of abuse if the state would actually give him the tools that he needs to properly perform on it, including hiring staff. What do you make of what's going on there? It's like a war. I mean, the general is justified if things aren't going well in saying, well, you know, if you'd given me some tanks and some jets and some soldiers, I really could have done a good job for you. And instead, they slash his funds. And obviously, it's to protect the unions and the contractors and the folks that are getting fat on, you know, 15 or 20 years of work, adding up to billions and billions of dollars with a projection now of what, 200 billion, and not a single inch of track has been laid. But what you mentioned is kind of the fun part of the story. And that is, you know, that the people who were supposed to be the budget hawks, hired a bunch of contractors, accountants and lawyers to try to help them get to the bottom of it. And they found that it was the contractors that were wasting even more money. You give a partial

12:40list. They're going to cigar bars. They're going to a nightclub. They're constructing a escape room. They go to a teaky bar. I mean, what is this a Jody Foster movie? It's absolutely insane. I mean, you'd like to find out what's going on inside the room. Or last hour, you mentioned, like, it'd be nice to be a fly on the wall. I want to remind you of a great normal Donald joke. Somebody said to Norm Ballboard to be a fly on the wall. And that meeting Norm said, well, if you were flying the wall in that meeting, first of all, you wouldn't understand a word being said. And second, you'd be worried about being eaten by a spider. So I have to get an homage to Norm's norm McDonald in every, every time I talk to you. Let's say they find more of this waste-fried abuse when this office is fully funded if that happens. In theory, would these consultants be forced to pay the state of California back? Absolutely. You know, theoretically, you can go to prison if you stole money. If you were just wasteful, then you're not going to go to jail. But absolutely,

13:44the taxpayers are entitled to say, guess what? I want you, Attorney General or District Attorney, to go after the people that took millions of dollars from us. And instead of fixing the high-speed rail deal, they went to a teaky bar. So we want the money back. That's totally legitimate. Now, this auditor is doing media interviews where he's talking about what he's finding in his audits. Typically, the government doesn't like that when you go out and embarrass them on the media rounds. How long do you think this guy has left in that office? He's got a target on his back. Everybody from Gavin Newsom down to the lowest person on the food chain in terms of high-speed rail, they are taking a hit. If the inside auditors are saying, hey, this really isn't very effective. And of course, you build on the fact that everybody kind of knows it's a total failure because so many years, so many billions and absolutely no track laid to find that there's absolutely colossal amount of waste as well. Yeah, I think this guy might find himself being a transfer to

14:46load-eye. We're talking to Royal Oaks. The co-host of the Too Many Lawyers podcast, which you can download wherever you download your favorite podcast. And Royal, the estate of Dolly Parton, the country, western singer, the icon, has apparently gone to war with her family, including one of her relatives who acted as a security guard, a longtime security guard, for Dolly when she was alive. He has been fired from his job, relieved of his duties. They say it won't impact his inheritance at all, but they don't want him working for the organization at all anymore. What's going on here? Reminds me a little bit about the Britney Spears deal where it was her dad against the giant team of lawyers. Yeah, it's very sad. This guy is her nephew, was her nephew, and you've got to give him a little more credit, John. I think he was in charge of her security, so maybe he was a security guard, and he had one or two underneath him as well. But the point is he had a lot of

15:48responsibility, and now the trustee is coming in with a team of lawyers saying, no, this guy was wasting money. He's not doing a good job, and so they want to replace him. So it's going to be heavy duty litigation that'll go on for years. I have to say, John, I need a higher IQ because I was watching TV news this morning, everybody's saying, hey, it's Dolly Parton Day. It's Dolly Parton Day. You know, it's September 25th. What's the deal? Oh, yeah, 925. Yeah, you guys are quicker than I am. It just didn't sink into my brain. How common is this? And I asked that question because I could think of at least two other instances where the trustees have gotten a war with the family. One of home being Jimmy Buffett, who died a very, very rich man, whose estate is worth the gazillion dollars. And the other one is California's former senator, Diane Feinstein, whose family is now in a legal battle with the trustees. So what happens is you have people who are close to a famous

16:52wealthy celebrity type person and are given a lot of responsibility, but they don't necessarily have the financial expertise. I mean, it's not easy to get your arms around, you know, in a state and sort of a financial world of a mega star worth hundreds of millions or more. And so often you do have a clash between, you know, the hangars on the relatives, the close friends, you know, the alvast mafia folks. And then you've got the pencil pushers and the guys with the green ice shags, the CPAs. And you know, if there's a suggestion that some of them maybe aren't quite as honest as they should be. Yeah, it winds up a litigation. But again, that's what our fine courts and judges are for. They'll sort out who's honest and who's exaggerating. I would imagine that if you're a rich, famous person in particular, a lot of people in your social network live because of you. They work for you. They're being given gifts by you. Whatever the case may be. And the minute that

17:52that person dies and the trustees starts looking at the books and they go, this person was getting how much we're putting it into that immediately. Oh, yeah, I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of wasted abuse in those contexts. And to build on the alvast mafia reference, I had a minute ago, you know, you think of Colonel Tom Parker and you know, you look back on Elvis's career. And a lot of people say, that was a real creep. All he did was want to feather his unnest. He wanted to maximize his income. And so he led Elvis into all these, you know, Buhawaii and Margaret dance movies when he should have steered the career in a very different direction. And so you have to worry about whether the people who have influence over an artist and are benefiting financially from the artist's career are thinking more about their personal wealth and how much, you know, their checks are going to amount to. It's a problem and there's no easy solution. And you see that sometimes when these celebrities get long in the tooth, Frank Sinatra comes to mind, I know they're just dealing with an issue with Gladys Knight where they keep putting them out there on stage, even if they're beyond

18:57their best by date, because they bring the cash register. Yeah, I remember seeing Bob Hope speak at some functions. What he was pretty much in the range of 95 to 100. And it was not a pretty picture. Yeah, I think a lot of people just want to ride ride the horse as long as they can. Royal Oaks ABC News, a legal analyst co-host of the Too Many Lawyers Podcast, which you can download wherever you download your favorite podcast. You can also subscribe to his substacks column, Too Lawyers Walk Into A Bar. You can follow Royal on X at Royal Oaks. Royal, thanks so much for stopping by, have a great weekend. Yeah, too. Thanks a lot. It's the John Phillips show live from the Universal Hill. Your next meal just got more rewarding. Download the Nick the Greak app and get $5 off and you spend $20. Then keep earning points for free food, score a birthday reward and get exclusive access to new items and special events. Nick the Greak rewards. Good food, even better perks. Sanctuary of Hope changed my life. I was only 19. Scared, pregnant, alone.

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21:04O'Reilly VeraScan. The service is free and provides a report with solutions verified by ASC certified master technicians. And if you need help, we could recommend a shop for you. Ask for O'Reilly VeraScan today. It's the Jaden Phillips Show live from Universal City. You're seeing right now if you're watching us on YouTube what the top of the Universal Hilton looks like at the Union Rescue Missions over the edge event. People all day long have been repelling down 25 stories on this building. The first thing you see when you turn around and you go is the 101 freeway. It is wild. You can sign up if you want to do this. Go to urm.org slash ote they're here today and they're here tomorrow. Sid and where I am when you look over where they're coming down the building all you see is a bunch

22:04of orange helmets. It looks like a pumpkin patch. Joining us now is the CEO of the rescue mission. A man who came down the side of the building about 20 minutes ago. Mark Hood, welcome. Well, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Now this is not your first time going down the building, correct? Uh, this will be my third time to go down the building. Okay. And does it get any easier after you've done it a couple of times? I have to say that it absolutely does. Okay. Because I get anxiety just sitting here watching everyone go down. You know, I will tell you that the only part that really makes me nervous is when you get to the top and they tell you to step over that rail and let go of the rail and trust the rope. That's the only part that makes me nervous. And then after that, there's it's the one way trip. You're going down one way or the other. How did you guys come up with this idea? Well, over the edge is actually a company that works with nonprofits for fundraising all over

23:06North America. Coming to going right now. Come on. And so we kind of found them eight years ago and went and visited some of their events and we thought, you know, what? This would be a great thing to do in L.A. A lot of adventurous people, a great way to bring awareness. And it's been a huge success for the mission. And you guys are dealing with a problem that I think it doesn't matter what poll you look at. Is one of the most acute, if not the top of the list, problems facing the state of California. You're taking on the biggest issue right now in the Golden State head on. Well, and I'll tell you, we try not to focus on the numbers because I tell everybody, if all we ever do is talk about is the number, you know, 70,000 or 72 or 75, that's not what the conversation should be. The conversation should be is how do we get more people off the streets and homelessness in their life forever. And that's our focus. Our focus isn't just being shelter. We want to reconnect families. We want to break addictions. We want to help heal the trauma

24:09that caused homelessness to begin with and help people become independent in their lives again. We want to give their life back to them so they're never on the street again. Right now, you're dealing with an epidemic that is about as severe as I've seen since the crack cocaine epidemic that happened in the 80s and the 90s. And by that, I'm talking about fentanyl. How much of a game changer has fentanyl been in terms of increasing the number of people living on the streets? Well, fentanyl is a nightmare because the addictions are worse, the addictions happen faster. You have open drug trade and skid row is just absolutely everywhere. And when someone is lost in a fentanyl addiction because people are like, well, why don't they just change their mind? Why don't they just stop? But when you're lost in that addiction, you're not making rational decisions. And so, you know, when we can contact people and we do, we walk the sidewalks every day and convince them to come inside and let us help you break that addiction, it's huge.

25:12But fentanyl is a harder drug to break the addiction than anything we've seen. And so, it's tough. And it's a different animal in the sense that let's take smoking. Smoking is a very, very bad habit to break. But you light the cigarette, you put it in your mouth, you smoke it, you know what you're doing. There are people who become addicted to fentanyl who don't even know that they're consuming fentanyl. They think that they're consuming Xanax or they're consuming some other drug and there's some fentanyl in there and boom, they're addicted. They've, you know, that is the horrible and spooky part of the problem. You're right, they lace so many drugs with fentanyl now to drive that addiction because they, you know, the drug dealers won't repeat customers. And so, the faster you can get people into an addicted state, the better your business is going to be. So, you're right, it's really almost terrifying on how many drugs are being laced with fentanyl now. And you guys have a very different approach than, let's say, the county department of public health

26:14or other organizations in the sense that you guys really try to treat the person and not try to treat just one symptom of whatever problem it is that they have, whether it be housing or whatever. You want to help these people get their lives back in order, not just housing, but kick their addiction and get back on track. Well, we, well said, first of all, we personally believe that if you take someone that is experiencing homelessness in there in a state of addiction and you stick them in a home or a hotel room and you don't do anything else for them, you haven't really done much for that person and likely they're going to be right back on the street. You really have to address the root causes of what caused that homelessness to begin with, whether that's fentanyl or whether that's domestic violence or whether that's abandonment, whatever it is, you've got to address what caused homelessness to begin with and you can't enable an addiction. People ask, why are you so believing facility? Because we want to end homelessness for people and

27:15we want people to have a safe place to end those addictions and we don't believe that you turn people's lives around and restore their lives by enabling an addiction. It seems like so many of these groups and so many governments walk into it with a false premise where they think it's a housing issue so that's what they treat. Let's give more money to developers, let's build more housing and that will solve homelessness. When in reality, that's not the issue that caused that person's life to unravel in many cases and that's what you have to attack. That's what you have to treat and for each individual, it may be a different story. Well, and I'm going to tell you personally, believe there's a lot of empty rooms in Los Angeles County. I'm not saying that there's enough for everybody but we're not currently in a housing crisis for people experiencing homelessness. There are a lot of empty rooms. What the crisis is, is the services to address what's causing the homelessness to begin with and get them ready for

28:20housing and that's what we do at Union Rescue Mission. Our goal isn't for people to stay at Union Rescue Mission but we want to get them ready for permanent housing. By the time they leave us, they're ready for that. They're stable. They can maintain a life. They have an income. They're ready to go out there and be independent but it's because they've taken that journey with us to get ready for that. We're putting the cart before the horse a little bit when we say, let's just put a little bit of house first. No, you've got to deal with the root causes first. What you said makes perfect sense to me and is really in line with my lived experience being here in California and just seeing it in the areas that I live in. Why do you think there's such a hesitancy among those in charge to acknowledge that because they don't want to say it's a drug problem. They don't want to say it's a mental illness problem. They don't want to say it's addiction. Is it because they're stigmas associated with those things and they don't want to be seen as insulting or using a pejorative or that sort of thing? Well, I think that there's some hard

29:24realities we have to face. Listen, I'm going to be honest. I've worked with the mayor's office. I've worked with the county supervisors. I've met very few people that don't seem to be very sincere in the fact that they want to make an impact. They want to make a difference. It's about how we make it, how we, what that approach looks like and how do we come together as a community with a united plan that works and has the outcomes that we want. And so I think that's where we need to come together. The leaders and the people in this public space on helping people in homelessness. We need to come together with an aligned plan instead of every little group has a plan. And we also have to quit being so invested in things like housing first and harm reduction in allowing those arguments to keep us from moving forward because that's a big part of the problem. We find something to fight about and we get stuck there instead of moving beyond that and just start helping people. And you make such a good point about the way that the county has focused almost exclusively on those philosophies, harm reduction and housing first. So if you have

30:26somebody that is trying to make a change, trying to get their life together, we make it that much harder when we're literally paying organizations to pass out drug paraphernalia on Skid Row and MacArthur Park and in Santa Monica, we're not doing these people any service by doing something like that. We actually are not and I had to actually, when I took this job, I had to go actually figure out what harm reduction was. I didn't even know. And when you read the history of it, you know, it was started back during when we had the HIV explosion and the thought was, okay, if we pass out clean needles and condoms, we're going to stem the spread of that disease. And so it started with good intent. But if you open one of those bags now and you have clean needles and you have glass pipes and you have foil and you have rolling papers and that's not stopping the spread of anything. It's enabling drug use. And so we have to at least be honest with ourselves about the fact that it's drifted from what it's core once was and what it's doing now is it's not addressing

31:30addiction. It's not doing anything to slow addiction down or stop addiction. It's enabling people and if you live in Skid Row, the facilities, because their facilities down there that are harm reduction facilities, what will happen when those facilities open is right across the street, drug dealers will pop up. So I can get my supplies here at this facility. I can walk across the street and buy my drugs and then tent cities pop up on either side of that. And it's just insane that we see those things. We know it's happening and we're not being honest with ourselves about, hey, those are some things we need to eliminate because we're not going to waive a magic wand and stop drug use in Skid Row. But if we could get more aggressive on stopping the drug selling and the drug distribution and the harm reduction and the paraphernalia, you're at least going to make it harder and you're going to slow it down. And as people experience sober living for a minute, they can make

32:31rational decisions. We've had so many people that come to us to say, you know, I woke up and after two or three days being sober, I looked at my life and said, what am I doing? And is that really where I want to be this time next year? I've got to change something. But you don't make those decisions when you're in the middle of an addiction. You know, for many years, we've worked with Dr. Drew Pinsky used to do a show on this radio station and he always said that when you get somebody to finally be at that point where they are able to think for themselves, they have to speak for themselves and they're clean in sober. The first thing that they'll say is, why did you allow me to live like that for so long? Exactly. Nobody, I tell everybody, nobody when they're 16 years old says, you know what my goal in life is to be homeless on the streets of LA. That's just nobody's goal. And nobody's dream is I want to be so addicted to some drug every single day that I do not even know who I am. And what you learn when you start trying to help these people restore their lives is those addictions come from horrible traumas, abuse and abandonment and domestic violence and people

33:36lost in your life. I mean, we've got so many people that they became addiction through people in their family committing suicide. And most of the addictions that we have worked with, yes, they're an addict, but they became an addict because of horrible trauma in their life and they were self-medicating to try to just numb the pain. And, you know, we need to recognize those are our brothers and sisters out there. Those are our neighbors. And it's not our job to help them stay in the state they're in. It's our job to help them get beyond that. You look at drug addiction. Drug addiction is something that cuts across all different categories where you have rich people who are addicted to drugs, poor people who are addicted to drugs. Black people, white people, people who live in the North people who live in the South, you name it. Appalachia has one of the worst drug problems right now in the country. In those industrial Midwestern factory towns where the factory went away, drug addiction is a huge problem. We certainly have our issues here in California.

34:37Yet when you look at homelessness, I looked at these numbers this week. 25% of the homeless in the entire country are right in this one state, California. And if you're specifically looking at the unhoused population, the people who are living in the encampments on the sidewalks and the parks, one out of two in the entire country lives in California. Why is it that we have such a monopoly on homelessness in California when we don't have a monopoly on drug addiction? Well, I'm going to tell you and this is nothing against our law enforcement because I don't think it's our law enforcement. I think their hands are tied. I think a lot of it is those other locations you're talking about. Do a better job in forcing the laws that are on the books. For instance, I was just in New York City. New York City has a very large homeless population, but a fraction of that, a small fraction of that is unhoused because they enforce the laws that you cannot sleep on the street. We have housing for you. We're going to

35:38put you in that housing. You can't be on the street and we're going to get you in housing. We're going to get you exposed to programs. And listen, I've talked to a lot of city officials that want us to get to that point that we're telling people, hey, we have a humane solution for you. We have union rescue missions and other locations like that that are a great space for you. They're clean. You're going to have three good meals a day. You're going to have a safe place to sleep. You're going to have medical services and dental care and mental health. And all of it's under one roof and these people are going to love on you, but you can't stay here. And that's what's missing in California. We accept the fact that people can sleep on the sidewalk and say that's okay because that's their space. And again, just like we said earlier, we're not being good neighbors to our brothers and sisters when we say, you know what, we're going to leave you on the sidewalk. That's not helping anyone. If we really care about people, we should say, hey, you're not making good decisions right now. And so we're going to get you in a better place and we're going to get you surrounded by people that care about you. And we're going to get good services in your life.

36:41And we're going to get you fed and we're going to get you sober. And we're going to help you restore your life. Because, listen, I know it's not a one size fits all. But, and I don't mean to paint with too broad a brush, but that model will work for a lot of people that are out there experiencing homelessness right now. But they're going to have to have encouragement. If we allow people to say, okay, if you want to be an addict and you want to sleep on the sidewalk, we're going to let you do that. We're never going to solve the problem that way. Last question. If you could go to Sacramento with a magic wand and get one bill to go through the legislature with the governor signature, anything you want to help fight this problem in California, what would it be? I would want two things. One is I would want them to say, hey, we're going to start to enforce laws and we're going to not let people sleep on the sidewalk. We're not going to allow open, the open exchange of drugs on our streets. And we're going to put a stop to that. That's one.

37:44The other is that we're going to spend our money wisely. And so we're going to look at organizations that are getting good outcomes. And that's where we're going to put our funding. And organizations that don't have good outcomes or they can't account for their money, we're going to quit funding that. So we're going to run the homeless solution like we would run a business. And we're going to spend our money for we're getting results. Mark Hood CEO of the Union Rescue Mission, you can get them online at urm.org. You're doing God's work. Thank you so much for being here and doing this today. Thank you so much. I appreciate you both. It's the Chad Phillips Show live from the Universal Hilton in Los Angeles. Your next meal just got more rewarding. Download the Nick the Greed app and get five dollars off and you spend $20. Then keep earning points for free food, score a birthday reward and get exclusive access to new items and special events. Nick the Greed rewards. Good food even better perks. At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering something new every day.

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40:56I feel like when you two come down the building and you step on land again, they should have a cocktail ready to go right there for you. They should. A shot or something. I agree. It's a good tip. We'll give that to Mark for next year. So having done it now, you've done it before, correct? Yeah, this is your number three for me. And it's funny. No one can see. All right, fine. I got to radio. So yeah, this is my third year. And opposite of Trisha, I'm now completely zen when I'm up there. I'm not sure. I don't feel anything. We're a frequent flyer. Yeah, and notably the first time he did it, he went down so fast that the emergency break stopped and then he started dangling. Yeah, I was stuck for about five or ten minutes because there's a whole process you have to go through when you're a bad repeller and you have to undo yourself. But I've learned my lesson. I take it easy. I watched. I really wanted to make sure Trisha was okay this year. When I went down with Frank and Kevin, I didn't care about them, but Trisha, thank you. Thank you. Now, would you do it again? I would. I would.

41:58Sober. Sober. Sober. Okay. It was that much fun. Yeah, I would do it again. The high is enough. It's sober when you start. High when you're done. Are we going to make it mandatory that John has to do it next year? Yes. I think. Look, yes. Yes. I'm going to put up a pole on the station. I'm going to go over the edge. Yeah, well, I want to be fair to my start talent, but you know, yes. My breakfast that morning may have to come from the pharmacy. It's going to look like Graceland over here. I really take what you take when you go on a plane. You'll be fine. I really want to thank you guys for doing a great job with this broadcast today. It sounded killer. Thank you, Matt. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Mark Hood. Thank you, Union Rescue Mission. We love, love, love this organization so much, and we cannot wait to continue our relationship with them. Thanks so much for being with us for another great event. If you want to sign up, they're doing this today and tomorrow, urm.org slash OTE. Thanks to Trisha, Art, Matt, Kevin, Debbie, Josh back at the radio station. Everyone here at the Union Rescue Mission and the Universal Helton

43:03have a great weekend, everybody. We'll see you on Monday. At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering the brands you love across beauty, fashion, home, and culinary, all in one place. Whether you're getting ready for crisp mornings, cozy nights, or everyday moments, QVC has what you need for the season ahead, with brands like Laura Geller, Philosophy, Ninja, and so many more. Shop now at QVC.com.