A practical way to help the homeless find work and safety | Richard J. Berry

126,408 views ・ 2017-09-01

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00:12
So, raise your hand if you've seen somebody in your city
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standing on a corner, holding a sign like this.
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I think we all have.
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If you're being honest,
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at least one time, have you wondered if they mean it?
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If we offered them a job, would they really take it?
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And what would that job mean to them in their lives?
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Well, this is a story about what happened in my city
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when we decided to find out,
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when we decided to think differently about panhandling,
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and lift people up through the dignity of work.
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We call it, "There's a Better Way."
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We call it There's a Better Way
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because I believe there's a better way to get the money you need
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than panhandling on the corner.
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I believe there's a better way to help your brothers and sisters in need
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than handing a few dollars out the car window.
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We know there's dignity in work.
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We also know that people are much more likely to invest in themselves
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if they believe that their community is willing to invest in them first.
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And because we're all wired to be kind and compassionate,
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it always feels good to hand a couple of dollars to someone
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that is in need.
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But if you talk to panhandlers, many of them will tell you
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that your few dollars don't necessarily go towards feeding the body,
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they go towards feeding an addiction.
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There's a better way.
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My name is Richard Berry,
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and I have one of the best jobs in the world.
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I get to be the mayor of a great American city,
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Albuquerque, New Mexico.
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I was at lunch on July 17, 2015, in my great American city,
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and on my way back to city hall,
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I saw this gentleman standing on a corner.
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As you can see, he's holding a sign,
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and his sign says he wants a job.
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But if you look closer at the picture,
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you'll see he's standing underneath a blue sign,
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and that sign says, if you need help, if you need food or shelter
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or you'd like to donate,
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please call 311, our community service number.
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So why is this guy standing underneath my sign with his sign?
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Well, we wondered if anybody would call that 311 sign,
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and as it turns out, they did --
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11,000 times people called.
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I put those up in about 30 intersections.
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And we did connect them with food and shelter and services.
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But yet he's still standing under my sign
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with a sign that says he wants a job.
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It's simple: he wants a job.
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So I decided to do something rare in government.
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I decided to make the solution simpler rather than more complicated.
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I went back to my office, I gathered my staff around
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and I said, "We're going to take this man at his word,
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and others like him.
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The man says he wants a job, we're going to give him a job,
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and we're going to make our city an even better place in the meantime."
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You see, Albuquerque is a beautiful place.
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We're a mile high,
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the Sandia Mountains on the east,
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the Rio Grande runs through the center of the city;
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we're the home of the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta.
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On a day like today,
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you could literally ski this morning and golf this afternoon.
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But there's always something to do --
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always weeds to pull, litter to pick up.
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If you're going to have an initiative like this in your city,
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you have to ask yourself two questions.
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First one is: Is there anything left to do in your city?
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And if the answer is no,
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would you please give me your mayor's phone number,
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because I need some advice.
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(Laughter)
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But the second question you have to ask is this:
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Are your solutions to panhandling working?
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If you're like Albuquerque,
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and you're taking the punitive approach like we used to,
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handing out tickets to panhandlers or those who give them money,
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I'm going to suggest that your solutions aren't working,
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and I know you're not getting to the root of your problem in your city.
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So if you have something to do
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and you need people that need something to do,
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there's a better way.
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And the good news is, it's not that complicated.
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This a 2006 Dodge van.
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It was in my motor pool not doing anything.
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We put some new tires on it, wrapped it with a logo.
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This van now goes out to street corners where our panhandlers are --
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we go to them.
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We stop the van, we get out,
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we ask them if they would like a day's work
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rather than panhandling for the day.
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And if you wondered if they really mean it --
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it takes us about an hour to fill this van up in the morning,
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because almost everybody we ask takes a job for the day.
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But you need more than just a van.
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You need a super-fantastic human being to drive that van.
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And my super-fantastic human being, his name is Will.
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This is him in the yellow vest.
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Will works at our local nonprofit partner.
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He works with the homeless every day.
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The panhandlers trust him,
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he believes in them,
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he hustles.
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I like to say, "Where there's a Will, there's a way."
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So if you're going to do the Better Way campaign in your city,
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you need to find yourself a Will,
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because he's really one of the keys to making this successful
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in the city of Albuquerque.
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You also need a great nonprofit partner.
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Ours is St. Martin's Hospitality Center.
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They've been in our community for over 30 years.
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They provide counseling, food, shelter,
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and if they don't provide it,
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they know somebody in our city that does.
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But they do something much more for me as the mayor.
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They provide agility.
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You see, it takes me two weeks,
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maybe two months sometimes,
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to onboard an employee with the city of Albuquerque.
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So you could imagine --
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my old Dodge van,
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my super-fantastic human being, Will,
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a great local nonprofit partner --
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they drive to the corner, there's a panhandler,
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they say, "Would you like to work for the day?"
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The panhandler says, "Yes,"
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and Will says, "Great! I'll be back in six weeks to pick you up."
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(Laughter)
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It wouldn't work.
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It's really important that we have that agility in our program.
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And they do the paperwork,
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they do the insurance,
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they do all of the other forms that I can't do quickly.
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We pay our panhandlers nine dollars an hour.
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We feed them once at the jobsite.
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At the end of the day,
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our old Dodge van takes them right back to St. Martin's,
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and they get connected with counseling services.
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So far,
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with the pilot program and a couple days a week,
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and a fantastic human being and a Dodge van,
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we've cleaned up 400 city blocks in the city of Albuquerque.
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We've picked up over 117,000 pounds of trash, weeds and litter.
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I don't know if you've ever weighed a tumbleweed,
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but they don't weigh much,
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so you can imagine the volume of material that we've picked up.
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My city has 6,000 employees,
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and none better than my solid waste department.
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We send our trucks out at the end of the day,
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they help the panhandlers put into the truck
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the material they've picked up during the day,
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and we take it to the landfill.
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I'm lucky that I have city employees
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that are willing to work side by side with our panhandlers.
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They're lifting up our city while lifting up their lives.
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And like anything else -- listen, it takes resources.
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But the good news is it doesn't take much.
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We started with an old van,
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a super-fantastic human being,
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a great local nonprofit
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and $50,000.
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But we also had to have community trust.
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And fortunately, we had built that up in years prior to Better Way.
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We have a program called "Albuquerque Heading Home,"
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a Housing First model where we house the chronically homeless,
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and when I told my community we wanted to do that differently,
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I said there's a smart way to do the right thing.
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We have now housed 650 chronically homeless, medically vulnerable --
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frankly, most likely to die on the streets in our city.
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We commissioned our university, they studied it.
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We could tell the taxpayers, we can save you 31.6 percent
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over the cost of leaving someone to struggle for survival on the streets.
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We've now saved over five million dollars while housing 650 people.
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So we had that community trust,
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but we had to have a little bit more of an honest conversation also
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as a community,
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because we had to get people to understand
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that when they hand those five dollars out the window,
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they might actually be minimizing their opportunity
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to help the person in need, and here's why:
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that five dollars might go to buying some fast food today --
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a lot of times it goes to buying drugs and alcohol.
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That same five dollars,
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if you gave it to one of our shelters,
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could feed seven people today.
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And if you gave it to one of our local food banks or food pantries,
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we could actually feed 20 people with that money.
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People ask,"Well, Albuquerque is 600,000 people -- million, metro --
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this wouldn't work in our city, we're too big, we're too small."
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I disagree; if you have one panhandler on one city block,
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you can do this.
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If you live in a city of eight-and-half million people,
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you can do this.
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It doesn't matter what you do.
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It's not the work that you do, it's the dignity of the work.
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You could do anything.
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So I think any city could do this.
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And people say to me,
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"Mayor, that's just a little too simple.
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It can't work that way."
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But I tell you what, friends:
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when you go to a street corner
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and you engage with a panhandler with dignity and respect,
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maybe for the first time in years, maybe in their life,
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and you tell them that you believe in them
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and that this is their city as much as it's your city,
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and that you actually need their help to make our place better,
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and you understand that this isn't the answer to all their problems,
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but at least it's a start,
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an amazing thing happens.
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When they get out on the jobsite and they start working together,
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you start seeing amazing things happen.
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They see teamwork; they see the fact that they can make a difference.
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And at the end of the day,
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when they get back to St. Martin's in that old Dodge van,
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they're much more likely to sign up for whatever services they need --
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substance abuse, mental health counseling, you name it.
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So far with our pilot program,
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we've offered about 1,700 days of day work.
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We've connected 216 people to permanent employment opportunities.
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Twenty people actually qualified for our Housing First model,
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Heading Home,
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and they've been housed.
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And over 150 people have been connected
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to mental health substance abuse services
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through There's a Better Way.
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This is me just two weeks ago,
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at St. Martin's,
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doing our point-in-time survey
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that we do every two years.
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I'm interviewing a gentleman who's homeless, like we do,
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getting his information, figuring out where he's from,
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how he got there,
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what we can do to help him.
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And you notice he's holding the same sign that the guy was holding in 2015,
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same sign I walked out with here today.
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So you have to ask yourself: Is it really making a difference?
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Absolutely it's making a difference.
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Albuquerque is now one of the national leaders
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in combating some of the most stubborn and persistent social issues
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that we have.
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Combined with Albuquerque Heading Home,
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the Better Way program,
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Albuquerque has reduced unsheltered homelessness in our city
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by 80 percent last year.
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Since I took over as mayor,
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we've been able to reduce the chronic homeless population in our city
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by 40 percent.
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And by HUD's definition,
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we've gotten to functional zero,
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which means we've literally ended veteran homelessness
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in the city of Albuquerque,
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by being intentional.
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(Applause)
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So I'm happy to report that other cities are hearing about this,
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other mayors are calling us --
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Chicago, Seattle, Denver, Dallas --
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and are now starting to implement programs
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where they bring the dignity of work to the equation.
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And I can't wait to learn from them.
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I can't wait to see what their experiment looks like,
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what their pilot project looks like,
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so we can start taking a collective approach nationally
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through the dignity of work.
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And I want to commend them --
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the mayors, their communities, their nonprofits --
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for the work that they're doing.
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So who's next?
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Are you and your city ready to step up?
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Are you ready to think differently about these persistent social issues?
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Are you ready to lift people up in your community
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through the dignity of work,
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and make your city profoundly better in many ways?
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Well, if you are, my friends, I promise you there is a better way.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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