Adam Curry Explains Legal Loophole Behind Homeless Problem | Joe Rogan

It has grown though. Oh my god, it's changing. People talk about it too much. I mean I've lived in, my wife Tina and I, we got married in May. We bought a house together, southeast Austin, but we were living downtown, right downtown. I had a place there and then we moved into an apartment together and we just saw it happening. It really started with the scooters. That's really what started to mess up Austin. Because they just, overnight, it's like what the fuck is this? I'm just there everywhere. And Austin had already been trying to create a bike vibe with bike paths and just all this stuff which is ludicrous. I grew up riding bicycles and it takes maybe 50 years before everyone is accustomed to bicycle traffic. It's not just something that's built in. I turn right around the corner, I still look. Look at my right mirror, I look there to make sure there's not a bike next to me. Just built in. But people don't do that so people are always getting hit. And then these scooters pop up and it's just mayhem. They're everywhere. They're on the sidewalks, they're mowing people down. It's nuts. They go fast too. They go very fast. They go very fast. He's got a souped up one. How fast does that bitch go? Like 50? 25. Not a bad. Pussy. Is that a 50? Oh yeah. Oh I've seen him jacked up doing 50. Oh my god. Sure thing. Oh yeah. If you wipe you're dead. Yeah. Well there's that. Yeah you're going down at 50. But 25 is already pretty fast. He flies. Yeah because I think most of them do about 15, 17 miles an hour. His is juicy. But what I noticed is because all the Silicon Valley companies are opening up offices in Texas, a lot of them in Austin. And that's where they put the human resource heavy stuff. So not the top programmers. This is help desk. This is the people who review the YouTube videos. So they're already kind of whacked because they're watching nothing but death and destruction and fucked up shit all day long. They don't really have a connection to the city. They're kind of like I'm here for a couple of years and I'll go move somewhere else. So they don't care. And they're on the scooters. So they don't really care about the city, about the whole vibe. Like whatever get fucked up and drive around. And that's become increasingly more. Austin has some other problems. We're kind of following what California, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle. We're following the let people camp everywhere thing. So that's become a real problem. And it's crazy here. And you know it's based upon, it all comes from a lawsuit in Boise, Idaho. And that's where this started where, and the first one through the fifth circuit and the ninth circuit court, there was an appeal that said you cannot move people who are camping without having a suitable place for them to stay that you can offer them because then it is a violation of the eighth amendment under cruel and unusual punishment. That's why, and that's what Austin said. Well, until that's solved, it's cruel and unusual punishment to move someone who's homeless or not, move someone who's camping if you can't offer them adequate housing. So these people just camping on sidewalks there, just like they do here? Is that the underpasses? Medians, the underpasses, yeah, it's crazy. And so it's this weird legal situation. Yeah, this really started, well, they lifted the no camping ban, lifted it. So it was not a problem. Then they said, well, we're going to let anyone camp. And it went nuts. And all of a sudden, downtown was just filled with people laying camping everywhere. Then they went, oh, this is not going to work, Mayor Adler and City Council. So okay, we'll ban it just in downtown, which is pretty much where the mayor lives, the W Hotel, no camping in front of City Hall. But we're a university town, so you've got UT and there's this whole half of a semi-circle of camping and just mayhem right on the outskirts of the campus. And kids are afraid. They're getting harassed. We have squeegee guys. Dude, I drove into New York every single day from Jersey in 89, 90. And the squeegee guys were a huge problem. And then they were gone. I think Giuliani threw them in the East River or something. And now they're back in New York. This is not a good thing. Yeah, how do you fix that, though? People are worried about the cruelty in fixing it. Oh, there you go. That's the problem. It's like you almost have to be cruel to stop that. No. No? How do you stop? Well, you have to engineer some sort of a homeless solution. Well, what are we talking about? Not everyone who is squeegeeing and loitering and soliciting is homeless. Or it's not necessarily something that they didn't choose. A lot of people choose a vagrant lifestyle. There's tons of it, particularly in warmer climates. Like here. And I do a lot for the homeless problem in Austin as much as I can. And none of it is sanctioned by the city. They're fucking morons. They're just like, oh, we'll build affordable housing. We'll get a hotel and we'll turn that into a slum hotel. Okay, great. The number one reason people become homeless is catastrophic loss of family. That's the number one reason. Someone dies. And then it's downhill from there. And before you know it, you're out on the street. And it's very difficult to rebound from that kind of thing. And so people need community. Everybody needs community. So where do they find the community? Under the bridge. That's where the community is. And the community is transactional. It's drugs. You know, it's whatever. That's a community. It's not a healthy one, but it's a community. There's actually a great project in Austin called Mobile Loaves and Fishes Community First Village. Started by this guy who was in construction. And he just put down a whole bunch of tiny homes. And people who are, if you're homeless, you can go there and you can live in a tiny home, but you rent it. And there are some prerequisites, but you don't have to be necessarily drug free because it's your home, so you can do whatever you want in your home. But it's like $200 or $250 a month. Most people, if they do the paperwork, they can get social security or disability, which will cover that. They still have to either work there in the community garden to feed themselves. They have different, like auto detailing, got all this different stuff. But there's no policing. I think there's 500 people there now. And it's working out fantastically. Oh, that's cool. Because they have community. And outside the box solution. Totally, totally. Gets no money from the city because there's a religious aspect to it. There's a ministry part. So oh, we can't give money to that because fucking God nuts or whatever it is. And it's really working extremely well. That's great when someone comes up with something. Yeah. I mean, people should look at this. Alan Graham is a saint. What he did, and he lives there. He lives in a small home on premises. Really? Yeah. And if you go there, he'll be happy to show you around. And they got all kinds of cool stuff, but just people are living together. He says so, if Joe walks out in the morning, not you, Joe, but the other Joe, and he's got his dick hanging out, and he's like, instead of the neighbors calling the cops, the neighbors, hey, Joe, what's going on, man? Let's sit down for a second. Let's have a coffee. Let's see what's going on. Pull your pants up. You know, let's... Yeah. And a community. Right. Community first village. That's the answer. But that's not the answer that you hear from your local city council or your mayors. It's always, well, we don't have affordable housing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Affordable housing, we're not going to fix everything. It's also there's a lot of mental illness. That's a giant part of it. Of course, drug addiction. But there's a lot of people with mental illness who have houses. Yeah, that's true. Definitely. It's mental illness and drug addiction, but it really starts with catastrophic loss of family. That's the number one reason people become unhoused. Out here, the shift was, Jimmy, what would you say about four or five years ago? It really started kicking in somewhere around then, yeah. Somewhere around four or five years ago, you just started noticing villages of tents under passes. Yeah. We used to do Fear Factor in downtown LA, like right down the street from Skid Row, which is an extraordinary place. If you've never seen Skid Row and you drive by, you go, what? This is real? Like, this is downtown Los Angeles and you're in a zombie movie. Which they turned beautiful, by the way. I mean, downtown LA became really nice. Some parts of it. Yeah, great infrastructure and everything. Restaurants and cool, really cool apartment buildings and stuff. It's an interesting spot. But then there's also Skid Row, which is just, you can't believe the staggering numbers of people that are just camped out. Thousands and thousands and thousands, just a mass, like people coming out of a fucking stadium to see a game. Adam Carolla said it really well. I forget where I saw him. He said it's like no one wants to be the bad guy. No one wants to say, okay, this shit has to stop. We got to do something about this. And it starts with stopping whatever you're doing. And that's a part of cancel culture. People are afraid, you know, because cancel culture is real. If you have something to lose, like you have nothing to lose. I have nothing to lose. You're bulletproof. To a degree, I'm bulletproof. You can cancel all you want. You're not taking away from me. No advertisers. I don't have them. You know, only the people who listen can stop listening.