Joe Rogan | What is Going on with the Homeless in LA?

Okay, so time out real quick. So real quick story, we're time with Rich. So I landed, right? And you know Boston, the deal in Boston. Yeah. So I landed and a buddy of mine picked me up from the airport and I got to where I was staying. I was staying in the mission district. And you're like, look at all the sun, first of all. It was freaking great. The sun was awesome, right? I was like, oh my gosh, sun. No gray skies. And then I looked down, literally homeless people everywhere. What is going on with that? Like it just, it blew my mind because it literally, so I went to the gym in the morning and I was like, it's like at 7 a.m. and I saw probably just as many homeless people living in tents next to buildings as there were people commuting to work. Yeah. Like thousands, it's amazing. Have you been to Skid Row yet? No, God, I'm scared. You gotta go. You should go while you're here because it's like the Grand Canyon. It's like the Grand Canyon of homeless people. Why would I wanna go there? Because just you can't believe the, it's like, did you watch the Battle of Winterfell, Game of Thrones? No, don't tell. No, no. No, no. No, no. I won't give any spoiler alerts. I'll have a come with a better, okay. Here's a better analogy. Did you ever see I Am Legend? Yes. Okay, remember when all the fucking crazy zombie people were running at once? Yeah. That's what it's like. Are you serious? I'm telling you, you can't believe the volume. Doesn't someone even like, in Boston, listen. They freeze to death and die, right? Yes, exactly. So no, in Boston, we hide our homeless people. We have like shelters and stuff. We hide them. For the most part, you know, Downtown Crossing, Area Park Street, whatever. They're like the junkies that like have that, the whole gangster, they just lean, close their eyes and stuff. The most part, right? And then we, you know, it gets cold, they scatter. I don't know where they go, but you don't really see them that much. You know, I'm not being rude. Like I don't mind seeing them. It's great. But like in same way, they're in your face, man. Like you, if San Francisco is the craziest, it was insane. So like honestly, and then one of my friends, he said, listen, you know, come to my house, you know, whatever, we're gonna hang out for a bit. School, no problem. Went to his house, like a, you know, small place, not badly, a thousand square feet. Like pretty nice. He goes, yeah, you know, I'm kind of, you know, things are a little tough. Can I borrow some money? I was like, borrow money from me? What are you talking about? Dude, this is, you live in, you know, you're doing okay. He's like, yeah, I live in paycheck to paycheck. I was like, what? What are you talking about? I'm like, this is a, this is like, you know, you got a decent place. The house that we were in was a $1.6 million house. And it was this big. And I'm like, everything's expensive, man. And then another point of mine said, listen, hey, come to my house, you know, and I pull up to the house, it's a warehouse. Like they live in a warehouse. That's actually cool. You can live like Blade. It's, remember Wesley Snipes lives with Chris Christofferson. It's, no, no, you're right. You're right. He had the motorcycle. He had the fucking charger, the Dodge Charger. But it sounds cool. When you have kids living in a warehouse, isn't that great? No, no way, no. So that's the thing is that like, it's a common thing I've noticed for people to live in either abandoned buildings, warehouses and cars. Yeah. You know how people that live in cars and the amount of smashed windows that I've seen here, it's, I couldn't believe it. Well, most of those people living in cars are actually standup comedians. Like everybody has a fucking story. Like so many comics come here and you know, when they first settle in, they live in their car. That's super normal. Yeah. That's, that's, it's just crazy. Like 10 of my friends lived in their car. Really? Yeah. They're used to at least. And then got an apartment. Got a bigger car. Well, that's an issue we're having around here. We're having around here with these people that live in caravans. They live in these mobile home things. I've seen them, yeah. Yes. There's like, if you drive around this community, you go down certain streets and you just see these mobile homes. Massive caravans, yeah. Yeah. And they have like, like towels over the windows. I saw that. And they're cooking meth inside of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. These are dirty people, some of these fuckers. I don't, so how come, so again, in Boston, we just kind of say, hey, there's no likelihood of loitering. Well, they're kicking people out now because businesses are complaining because there was one business where this guy had parked his caravan right in front of it. Right. This is where a buddy of mine works. And this dude had laid out his, like a blanket on their front lawn and was sunning himself in front of his caravan. So the front of his building became this guy's lawn. So this guy in this caravan was literally using, they were sharing grass. So he's got this multi-million dollar building and he's sharing it with a homeless guy who's cooking meth. Or I don't know if it's meth, but it's some white, noxious, fluke smoke that comes out. Jack in this fucking place. Yeah. It's, I couldn't, so it was different for me. The weather was awesome, but like, that was a big thing. And I feel like as I'm walking around more, if I see a large standing body of water, I'm like, there's a homeless guy living there too. People just everywhere. They're everywhere. I'm telling you what you saw is nothing. Well, you gotta go to Skid Row. It's, what is this? Is that Skid Row? It's Skid Row. This is Google Maps, Skid Row. I just started snooping around. They must've cleaned it up right before the camera drove through. Clean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That ain't shit. That ain't shit. Let me tell you something, man. It's, look at that. Look at all that to the right and to the left. It's fucking crazy. So how do people have businesses there? They don't. They just deal with it. They just deal with it, most of them. Most of those people, they just put all like gates and locks and shit and deal with it. So what's on Skid Row business wise? Back up? Where you just were, Jamie? Where you just were? Well, it's a lot of warehouses and shit. But the interesting thing is this area is getting, air quotes, gentrified. So this is where a lot of businesses are going now. They're opening up apartment buildings. Right. And a body of mine has lived there. My friend Magnus, Magnus Walker, he's a famous car guy too. I don't know if you know who he is. He's got all these videos of Porsches. He rebuilds old Porsches. He's got this crazy dreadlocks and beard and crazy Englishmen. But he's been living down there forever. And he has this warehouse where he has it set up where his living space is one part of the warehouse and then down below he has these cars. Right. And he has it all set up. But if you drive down some of these roads, you'll see like these super expensive apartment buildings that are going up now. And then a block over, you see these homeless encampments. And people think it's like cute to be around like all this dirt. What is this? There we go. Nice. Yeah, look at that. So that's someone's apartment. What's going on here? Yeah. They just set up tents. And then the cops kick them out and they just come back and they move and then they come back. But they make these encampments. And you just have to deal with it. So it's like if you live in that area, you just have to jump over needles and try to figure your way through it. I feel terrible. No, it's sad. Most of this is either drug addiction or mental illness. Those are the real problems. Do you guys have no drug addiction or mental illness like places that you could go to for help here? I don't know what it is, man. I don't know enough about it. I'm entirely ignorant about what's going on. I know that if you talk to people that work in the field, that work with these folks, they say that it all really started to happen. Look at this guy. He's like, run over my legs. Oh my gosh. Fuck, I need disability. Oh my goodness, man. That's crazy. Crazy, they're everywhere. They live in the street. This is like a, honestly, if you were to take a screenshot of what you just showed me, I'd be like, okay, that's some third world country. This is LA. People can't even afford to live in LA. I know, it might as well be a third world country though. I mean, it might as well be the apocalypse. It's the apocalypse for those folks. I mean, at least they're around all these cars and shit, but I mean, there are thousands of homeless people in that whole skid row area. Right next to the mission there. Yes, that's one of the things that keeps them there, I guess. Well, they have like four beds, three beds in the whole thing. That's wild, man. But they allow most of this to go on. I don't know how often they break it up and make people move, but the numbers are so high, there's not much they can do. Man, that's crazy. That's sad, man. That's super sad. But what do you do? How do you fix that? I don't have any solution. You can't tell people this shit. What are you doing? What does that do? That's a documentary. Do you remember Prozz from the Fuji's? Yeah, yeah, Prozz, yeah. He went and spent three days down there, undercover and close where he had people filming him, experiencing it, and then he'd come back and do an interview of what he just went through. It came out 10 years ago, so it's different. I don't know if, I'm assuming it's worse now, but it's definitely not good in this documentary. It's crazy. So I was on my one wheel, right? Just like riding by, I was commuting back and forth. By the way, that thing is badass. It's pretty crazy, right? Yeah, I rode yours today. You did ride mine, it was good. And after watching you scoot around effortlessly, I was like, how hard could it be? You need one. You should get one. I also don't need broken elbows. Honestly, it's a good core workout. It really is, it's a great workout. I think it's a better core workout. I have a sit up machine. I'll show you this hip and glute machine from Rogue where you put your ankles in this thing and you lean all the way back, go all the way up. You have some next level shit here, by the way. Some cool stuff, man. It's awesome. It's a man warehouse. It's really, this place is for, can I live here? Sure. All right, cool. There's plenty of room. There's tons of room. Bring your tent. You can't pile the jiu jitsu mats. But yeah, so I was riding my one wheel past this, past this kind of overpass and there was a tent there and a lady sticks her hand out and she offers me a chocolate, what was it? I think it was a chocolate ladybug, right? It was a ladybug wrapped in that tin that makes it look chocolate. I'm like, oh, I'm like, no, thank you, no, thank you. Right back the next day, offers it to me again. I was like, no, thank you, no, thank you. I was like, you know what? I'm gonna do something nice, right? So I get five bucks and I was like, I'll give it to her, you know, it's a nice gesture. I ride up, you know, I give her, you know, a hand of the five bucks. As I start slowing down the one wheel, other people started popping their heads out of the tents and they actually saw me give her the money and immediately a guy runs out and like snatches it directly out of her hand, snatches it right out of hand. Someone else comes around the corner, takes it from him and they start getting into the scuffle. And I'm just like, I've never seen anything like that before. I know I'm really passionate about that. I just can't stop thinking about it. It's crazy, it's really crazy out here, man. It's crazy. And everyone comes to LA, California to get their big break, like, oh, I'm gonna be like a famous whatever, famous, you know, actor, singer, exotic dancer, porn star, whatever. And it's, the struggle's real out here. It's real. It's real everywhere, but whenever you get giant groups of people, you're gonna get, you know, a higher percentage of people that are out here that are homeless or struggling. Right. Again, I don't know what the, what's the solution? Yeah, I know. No idea. I know. Yeah. Yeah.