Transcription
My father died with a needle in his arm in a porta-potty in Inglewood. I came out of the Marine Corps, my mother's pain, me not being able to fix the situation. It triggered something inside of me that broke me.
- I didn't know your backstory.
And so I went back to the Corps broken. They released me with a mental illness into the streets, and I started to self-medicate to deal with my trauma and the dreams and the tremors, and I did that for seven years.
(dramatic music)
- You were in Hollywood and Vine homeless center with me. There's so much about the Hollywood and Vine Recovery Center that people would not believe. Gloria used to farm us out as labor.
- Yeah, 100% percent.
- She would have us rabbit-ear our pockets.
- Yeah, you had to pull 'em out
- And she would say, "I know all of you got a dime to call you a girlfriend." We would stand in line and prove to her we didn't have any money.
- That's right. And I ended up losing everything, trying to battle it on my own, So I would get a little recovery, lose it.
You might be unhoused you, you might be on the street, but if you're connected to the sense of community or family, you don't feel the homelessness, right? And it was that moment when my mother and my sister said they couldn't help me anymore that I felt homeless for the first time in my life.
(bright music)
30 years ago, I lived in a homeless shelter, Hollywood and Vine, here in Los Angeles. And as far as I know, there might be others, but there are two people that are still alive that I've ran into that lived at the homeless shelter at the same time I did. Sadly, Jimmy is still outside homeless. Hopefully, he's off the streets now. Last I knew, he was outside in San Francisco, and then Troy, who I ran into when he was CEO of the LA Mission.
Yeah, Troy went "From Skid Row to CEO," which is the title of his book. Troy has a powerful story: He's a Marine Corp veteran; His dad died of an overdose; and he started spiraling into homelessness. Manifest is Troy's culinary business that trains and employs people from his recovery programs, people with lived experience, with a management track, staff earning real ownership in the company.
But it's bigger than that because Troy, I've heard him from the stage at conferences share a very real truth on how we have to move past these lived experience committees where we're just listening to formerly homeless people, to empowering people with lived experience on a path to leadership. So we're not just listening to them, they're making the decisions.
This is a powerful podcast. Troy.
- Yes?
- I've been wanting to do this forever because, as far as I know, you are the only person, one of two people, that I know were in Hollywood and Vine.
- That's right. Recovery.
- Homeless Center with me.
- That's right.
- Well, with 30 other people.
- Exactly.
- Right, Living in a homeless shelter at the same time.
- Exactly.
- Oh my gosh, and that was 30 years ago.
- Yes, and you know, I think we were at a conference recently in Los Angeles, and we started talking about like, "Man, we have to get together." 'Cause that's a real rare history that people share. Because you tell people about the story, right, and I can tell you, nobody believes it.
- Right? I mean, the only other person that I know is I ran into Jimmy.
- [Troy] Oh, wow!
- About two years ago, homeless, he's still out there.
- [Troy] He's still out there?
- Yeah, this is San Francisco.
- Oh my goodness, and you ran into him and that is it?
- Yeah, that was, as you're talking about divine moments, you're right, there's so much that about the Hollywood and Vine Recovery Center that people would not believe.
- That's right.
- So I got you to verify it. Right?
(laughs)
- (indistinct) Verify! I tell the story of it all the time.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, go ahead, go ahead.
- No, I was gonna say, I was talking to my wife, and we used to go down there together after I came out, and I would go back to speak there. And I was telling her, and you were doing an episode, I think it was on "Spectrum." That was during the one episode you did. And I said, "That's Mark," and she remembered you. And she said, "Oh, wow." So she told me to tell you hello, by the way. And it was just so funny because when I tell people about then, it's hard for people to believe it about me. And certainly about you, 'cause of the great work you do in messaging and keeping a focus on the issues. And people don't really believe that 'cause we don't smell like smoke.
- Right, great way to put it. There's things, it was run by Dr. Gloria Montgomery. There's scripture that says all things work for the good.
- That's right.
- It was a crazy place.
- It was a crazy place.
- There was some things that I learned from Gloria that saved my life.
- A hundred percent.
- There's some things that I'm probably still sober because I never wanna go through that madness again. Right, right?
- It's true, it's true. I look back, and I say, "Oh my gosh, if I end up drinking or using and back in a park, I've gotta go through a Hollywood and Vine Recovery Center or a Dream Center again." And I never wanna do that.
- You don't wanna do it, but it's the lessons that we learned then that have become foundational, right? Because I learned a lot about what I wanted to do then. I didn't know the pathway and how I would do it. And I also learned what I didn't want to do, because it was that kind of a lesson, right, for me, it's like, "Okay, here's how to do program. Well, here's some good components," but then there's other aspects that I didn't wanna repeat. And I wanted to make sure that I can create something that would be generational. But, so I've built upon it.
- Yeah, so for those of you watching and listening, Hollywood and Vine Recovery Center, this is 30 years ago, it was a lot different. Now you have housing and, back then it was three hots and a cot.
- It was three hots and a cot.
- Three hots and a cot, and Dr. Gloria Montgomery had a storefront on Hollywood Boulevard.
- A storefront.
- A storefront, and there's 30 of us. I don't know if you were there when I first walked in, there was a drum set, and I used to make my living playing drums. It was my passion. And I had a six-foot iguana. I don't know if you remember all this, but I walked in, and it was Roy at the front desk. So I walked in just asking if I could play the drums.
- [Troy] Yes.
- I probably hadn't showered in a couple weeks. I got this iguana on me, right? And I didn't know what the place was. I just saw the drum set. And I walk in and I say, "Can I play the drums?" And Roy says, "Well, this is a Christian recovery center. Get rid of that iguana and you could stay."
- Wow.
- And I had a friend pick up dog, and that's how I first went in. But Gloria used to farm us out as slave labor.
- Yeah. A hundred percent.
- Going to the sitcoms wasn't bad. Or the Hollywood shows, "The Price is Right" or whatever.
- That's right, we get those tickets sitting at the back.
- Yeah, 'cause there's girls there, which there's candy and you're not, but Gloria made money from that, right.
- A hundred percent.
- And the couple memories that really stick with me is the Hollywood Christmas Parade, she would have us out selling blankets.
- That's right.
- That's my memory of that, and the other one is, and this changed me, really was set me on a path, because I was starting my path in Christianity, and I was searching. So what she would have us do is she would have us rabbit-ear our pockets, our front pockets.
- Asks you to pull 'em out.
- Yeah, and she would say, "I know all of you got a dime to call your girlfriend. You need to give it to the Lord!" And we would stand in line and prove to her we didn't have any money.
- Have no money, that's right.
- Because she wanted every penny that came into us. And where I'm going with this is, I knew God was real at the time, but the money piece-
- Was hard to reconcile.
- It was hard to reconcile, and then I was doing the TV show. Gloria allowed me to go out a couple days a week because I could make tapes for her, and my background was TV, and then Pastor Phil Aguilar was doing a show there, and they were talking about how they never take offerings. Right, they have a box in the back, give if you want to, don't if you don't. That was it, and I was like, "Whoa! A church that doesn't take, wow." And that's my path to the next step. And I'll be quiet after this.
- No, I love it, I love reminiscing. You're telling the raw story.
- I mean, it's real. I mean, we got Roscoe's Chicken & Waffles.
- That's right.
- Gave us the leftovers every day. So under the name of Jesus, she got free food, right?
- She fed us.
- Yeah, and they were very creative, chicken cacciatore, chicken on biscuit. It was chicken every day. And I'm gonna be a little vulnerable here how she saved my life and was in group therapy. So she preached Jesus, but she preached Jesus was an alien. I don't remember if you remember that.
- I remember that.
- Yeah. Yeah. And then she lived with Wendy.
- [Troy] I remember that.
- And she was just a character. She was definitely a character. But I was adopted, and that was, I always thought my mom gave me away, right? So I always had troubles with my birthdays. That was the day that my mom gave me away. And Gloria said something to me, and she says, "No, that's the day your mom loved you so much, she knew she couldn't take care of you."
- Mm, that's a paradigm shift.
- And it changed me for the better. So even though there was this hell, farmed out for slave labor, all this craziness, there was that seed planted, that paradigm shift.
- And, for me, it was seeing, she was an entrepreneur, and she really knew how to get things done, but it wasn't really the right way that empowered people, right, and that was when I said earlier that you take away lessons that you learn directly, but you also learn lessons indirectly. And sometimes when people do things the wrong way, you learn how to do it the right way. And when we first started creating our housing programs and our employment opportunities for people with lived experience, we wanted to make sure that we wanted to empower them, right? Because I had learned and saw the alternative, and not to just use people as a commodity, but to make sure that they were a part of the infrastructure. And so now through our social micro-enterprising, one of them, particularly called Mana Feast, which is our culinary business. Of course, we hire people who matriculate out of our programs and not just ours directly, but the community-based programs that we serve, and they go through our culinary training school, they come and they get a job. And those that rise up to management, they actually get ownership interest in the organization.
- [Mark] Oh, wow.
- And so what that's done is create a level of empowerment where people see themselves as owners in the business. We had with intentionality set aside so much percentages of the company so that we give 'em a small percentage, like 2%.
- Right, right, right, right.
- It changed their mindset. They see that they can own, they're buying their homes. They're part of community. And they always tell me, "Pastor, No one ever saw me like this." That I had this level of value. And it's important that we instill value in those that we serve.
- Right, right, right, and that's a big point. At the Hollywood and Vine Recovery Center, I didn't feel valued.
- Exactly.
- Not at all. I was Gloria's way of making money, right, for-
- And she saw herself as doing a service. Like she saw herself as doing a service to the Lord. It's just that sometimes we get skewed because when you have the pressure of business on you. And back then, a lot of that was happening, not just in Hollywood.
- Oh yeah, that wasn't the only one.
- Well, it was just the way business was done then. People were doing all kind of insurance stuff. It was a lot, the medical, I remember being farmed out and told you can go down here and do the medical stuff, and you can get money. And then that person wanted a part of your money, or they were taking all of your check from GR. It was all of that happening, right? And I think those are the lessons of the past that we have to learn from so that we can build a better system.
- I don't know your backstory.
- Well, how I became homeless?
- Yeah. Whatever you wanna share.
- Well, I mean, no, it's all open in public. But I came out of the Marine Corps. My father died with a needle in his arm in a porta potty in Centinela Park in Inglewood. And I was in the Corps at the time, I think I was about two years in or so, and working on my third, and I had a psychotic break.
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- And I was in the Corps at the time, I think I was about two years in or so, and working on my third, and I had a psychotic break. And mainly because I had been estranged from my father, but it was also because, hindsight, doing my therapy showed me that my mother as well, me not being able to fix the situation and her pain, it triggered something inside of me that broke me. And so I went back to the Corps broken, and they didn't fix me. They didn't treat me or anything like that. Instead they released me with a mental illness into this community, into the streets. And the reality is that I didn't know at the time, in my community, you don't talk about mental health issues. You don't show that. And so I started to self-medicate to deal with my trauma and all the things that I was having, the dreams and the tremors and all the stuff that I was having. I started to self-medicate. And I did that for seven years. And I ended up losing everything, and trying to battle it on my own. So I would get a little recovery, lose it. And so through trial and error and through divine intervention, I met some good people. And I ended up in, ultimately, not the Hollywood Recovery Center environment. I ultimately ended up in the Union Rescue Mission where, 'cause Hollywood Recovery Center environment was one of my stops. I had seven different recovery treatment programs. That being one, I was in the Salvation Army. I was in so many, but the last stop was at the Union Rescue Mission mission, their Christian Discipleship Program. And I met some really, really loving people. And I knew at that time that something had happened in my life in terms of my intervention. I went from being unhoused to homeless for the first time when my mother told me that she wouldn't come out no more. Because for me, if you stay connected to your parents, or you have some level of tethering to something, you don't never feel homeless. You might be unhoused, you might be on the street, but if you're connected to the sense of community or family, you don't feel the homelessness, right, and sense of it. And that's why I always tell people, there is a distinction, a real one, that we need to understand in our community, in our conversation between unhoused and homeless. And I think that when people feel estranged from community, when they first went from service or access to something, that's what's create the sense of homelessness, because now you're not tethered to something. And this is the reason why some people who are unhoused on the street don't feel homeless because they have a sense of community in the environment in which they stay, they live in. But there is a distinction in my mind, and I understand that distinction because my mother said no. And it was that moment when my mother and my sister said they couldn't help me anymore that I felt homeless for the first time in my life. And I had been unhoused on the streets for a long time, but I never felt that. And I needed to turn to power greater than myself, and I turned to the Lord. And I had knew Him as Savior, but not Lord. I didn't really give him lordship over my life until that moment, December 13th, 1992. And I ended up at the Union Rescue Mission through divine intervention, and people can get the full story in my book, "From Skid Row to CEO." I just released this February. But it really tells the story of how I came in contact with God for the first time, and He led me. And I talk about this divine connection that we're all linked to inside the book. And the premise is that God always has you connecting to a person who's gonna connect you to something. And that divine thread is what connects us all. And so after I completed the program, my now godmother, Dr. Lula Ballton, and her husband, Carl Ballton, he just went to home to be with the Lord. But he and both of them together instilled to me a sense of community and the value of an education. So they encouraged me to go back to school. And I went back to school at Trade-Tech, and I met my wife there. And it was at that moment that I said, "Okay, this is strange, 'cause I'm sitting in front," I'm back at school, I'm still living in the shelter at the Union Rescue Mission, but I'm going to school. And I was in a program called PACE, an adult learning program. And I met my wife. And then six months later, we were married. And we've been together for 30-something years now.
- [Mark] Wow, great.
- And we have a wonderful family, two children, grandchildren. And God has done a miracle in my life. But more importantly, Mark, He instilled in me the desire to transform the thing that abandoned me, right, like the system itself, the access to it and what we needed. And so I think my experience in being unhoused and homeless and my experience in learning about policy and learning about creating programming, and seeing how it's not done right and how it's done right. And then really creating something that I think is meaningful and impactful now in the space, that's how I got to be here.
- Yeah, I lost track, or we didn't connect for many, many years until you were CEO of the LA Mission.
- [Troy] Correct.
- And you were CEO for how long? What was it like running a big mission down on Skid Row?
- I had promised the Lord that I would serve Him for the rest of my life. I knew that I was to go back to Skid Row, because that's where my journey actually began. At the time, Union Rescue Mission was on 3rd, it was in a different place than it is now. But LA Mission was here, and I got a lot of services there when I was on the streets. And a friend of mine, Herb Smith, was the president and CEO.
- [Mark] I love Herb.
- And we had done a lot of work together through my matriculation in the ranks in terms of working through service organizations. And so he asked me to come sit on his board at the LA Mission, and that was in late 2017-18. And so I went to go serve on the board. And it was while I was on the board that Herb decided that he was retiring. And we started a search for the new president and CEO, and I initially was not on the search committee, but eventually became on the search. We had an offer out for someone that fell through, and they asked me to step in for six months. And right then, COVID had hit. And so we were in a crisis mode. The mission was not doing well, and we were as a board trying to decide what we wanted to do. They knew that I had experienced running organizations and with government relations and being able to step into a crisis, 'cause I was running Christ-Centered Ministries, my church, and LARRP, and my businesses. So I was not looking for work, I was already working. And so I told 'em that I would step in for six months and to help during the COVID time. And so I signed up for six months. And then after that, they asked if I can extend it. And so we ended up doing, a multi-tiered contract that would be renewable at different terms. And going into the sixth year as president and CEO, I had been there since 2020, and two more years before that as a board member, then at 2020. And now here we are at 2025 and I'm like to the Lord, I'm like, "I didn't sign up for this," because my ministry, my larger ministry was being suffocated by it, but it was a wonderful experience for me because I've always been a background person. I lead from the back, right? I don't have a problem with that. I like that position a lot because I get to be a kingmaker. I get to change policy and not be a target. But this time it was different, because all of a sudden I became moved up front, and the face, and I had to do that to step into that space. But I had already been serving in this space for years, and people know me who are in the work, but now, all of a sudden, I became, along with the mission, a national kind of phenomenon. Like, it was kind of crazy, actually. And it was a little overwhelming, right? Not the work, but just the notoriety of the work.
- Right, right, right, public-facing?
- Yeah, and the mission and I rose together.
- The last time I saw you, you mentioned it earlier, we were at a lived experience conference, and you were speaking.
- [Troy] Yes.
- And you said something that I have to amplify, I think I even told you after, that's so important, but even though people like yourself are saying it, it's not resonating with the lived experience folks.
- That's right.
- Right, they wanna be paid, rightly so. That's a human thing. I should be paid. I get it, you have now peer support. Well, let me back up a little bit. So I went and worked marketing rescue missions. I worked with Rod Parsley, I went television evangelists, all that stuff. Television producer. It was my path, right? And then the '08 crisis hit and I lost everything except my sobriety. So I was like, "Oh, I was once homeless. I'm gonna go work in homeless services." But at the time, they didn't take lived experience as an asset. Like if you were formerly homeless, they wouldn't hire you. They considered it a liability.
- That's right.
- Now it's the sexy thing that you have lived experience, but you have, let's say, a peer support outreach worker who's out there, but then they're with a masters of social work who's getting a lot more money. And the peer support worker who understands the streets is like going, "I'm doing all the work. How come I'm not getting the money?" And that's just a very human thing.
- A hundred percent.
- You know what I mean? And we have to give people a path to education, if they so choose, that they can go become a social worker. But more importantly to what you said, right now, everybody's forming these lived experience committees. Most of it is tokenism. There's some great organizations that are really integrating lived experience.
- A hundred percent.
- Right, but most of it is still tokenism. What you talked about is that we need to move past these committees to get people with lived experience in executive roles. Like you, homeless to CEO, where it's the people with lived experience making the decisions instead of this committee where you go and say, "Oh, what do you think about that?" And there's some reason, I mean, it makes sense. It's where this needs to go if we're really going to integrate lived experience into services. But for some reason it's like you're speaking a foreign language when you talk about that, even to the lived experience committee, community.
- Yeah, because I said this, I was just on a panel here at the conference, and one of the things I said about coalition work rings true here when we're starting to develop ourselves to understand the issues, right? It's not about rushing, it's about rooting. I think a lot of people in the work don't wanna root themselves into the issues so they can really articulate the issues, whether from a policy lens, a housing lens, whatever it is, we do have to spend time educating ourselves. We can't just say we have lived experience. And that makes us a subject matter expert. We have to use that lived experience to burn the passion within us, but we still have to educate ourselves on the policies. We still have to make sure we're developing ourselves so that we can actually run a business or run a program, once we have it. Because you can be given a million dollars, $10 million just because you have lived experience, but eventually, you've burned through it because you can't master the art. I haven't mastered the art of understanding budgets, understanding governance, understanding these things. And it doesn't come by osmosis. It actually comes over time and with intentionality, and that's the messaging that I have right now. And I'm not just talking about it. We created a leadership. We have a whole leadership cohort in partnership with JCOD, which is Justice, Care and Opportunities Department, who, my partner is a visionary, like I am, Songhai Armstead. And she is an amazing visionary as it relates to empowering community-based organizations. Nobody really got it when I was saying it, like she did, and she partnered with me, she took a chance, and we partnered and we created a concept. The Incubation Academy was birthed out of the idea that we would work with emergent nonprofit leaders that would lived experience that had nonprofits. They were small NGOs that really wanted to do good work but didn't have the apparatuses to really understand or the faculty understand the behind-the-scenes work. And so the Academy was created to really help educate and prepare them for leadership and also to understand the importance of the framework, right, because as we are framing how we want to do community-based restoration services, how we want to be a part of the process, and elevating people to the C-suite, we need to make sure they are equipped to be in those seats. And I think that's an important thing. And I don't think it's a wrong thing to say, actually. I think it's the right thing to say and the right thing to do.
- It is. Go ahead.
- Otherwise, we're slaving now, going back to Dr. Montgomery's model, where we're creating slaves of people and tokens of people with lived experience just so that we can check a box. But I'm about empowering them so they can hold office, so they can run a business.
- Exactly.
- So they can raise up.
- That's the shift.
- So for me, I'm about empowering them and basically bottling their passion, right? Because I don't wanna discard it. I want to guard against it so it don't become something that people can use and weaponize, but that we can actually empower.
- Just because you fly in an airplane doesn't make you qualified to be a pilot.
- [Troy] That's right.
- And what has happened now, because lived experience has become so popular, they're asking people with lived experience all kinds of questions to give input on things they don't have knowledge of, or experience, right? So I've always looked at it as a blessing that not only was I homeless, but I worked as an outreach case manager, that I worked as a family case manager. I saw the other side. Because often when you're on the streets homeless, and I understand how these perceptions form, you start hating nonprofits, because you didn't get helped as you felt to be helped. And then when you work in the nonprofit, you see the other side. Oh, there's no money for that, or I have 50 clients or whatever roadblocks there were to provide the help that's needed. So you get to see both sides and you have a balanced view. So often, they put somebody just because they're homeless on this lived experience committee that doesn't see the other side.
- Right, and it's our job to make sure that they can understand the other side.
- And have education if they so want. Some people are not gonna want to go back to school.
- Well, not formal. I think that we need to understand education from a standpoint of equipping, right, people on what the issues are. Let me give you an example. We just launched, underneath the Office of Diversion and Reentry, a Lived Experience panel, right. It's not more of a panel, but it's really a governing body that has the ability to impact decisions that are being made in ODR. But one of the things that we're making sure that we're doing with this group is educating them on the issues. So that when they're at the table, they can really speak with a level of intelligence and knowledge about what the issues are and not just come from the impacted place. Like I think one of the values with people with lived experience is that we do understand the impact the system has had on us. And so we want to make sure that that's always protected and valued. But I think that we need to go up beyond a step, right. We need to make sure that once a person can come to the table because they have been impacted and that has value, but the other thing that it needs to be coupled with is a mastery of the issue. And not just from an experiential place, but also from a place of problem-solving. Like I wanna be able to extrapolate from my experience and not speak from my own experience, but how the system is impacting other people as well. That's where we need to graduate to, right? I think, because what happens is, is that oftentimes when we place somebody at the table, they only can speak from their experience, but we have to make sure they're understanding that their experience may not be unique, but it also may not be exactly the same experience as somebody else. And I remind myself of this all the time. I was homeless and unhoused over 30 years ago. So yes, I'm a person with lived experience, but I'm not a person of lived experience in 2026. I'm not that now.
- [Mark] Oh my gosh, thank you for saying that.
- And so I can't get to the table and say I speak for everybody who's experiencing being unhoused or homeless right now. I can't speak for them as though I know how they're experiencing it now. Because the government is different, the systems of delivery are different. It's a different environment.
- Exactly, yep.
- Now I can say I have had this experience and that gives me a level of empathy, so I can speak from that, but I now I have to educate myself on the present issues so I can speak with a level of authority and authenticity.
- Going back to the Gloria Montgomery thing, and there's something that I've been ranting about for years, is yes, you have people that are formerly homeless, and let's say they've been housed for 5 years, 10 years. They can't speak about the growing criminalization now, because they haven't lived through it.
- That's right.
- Right? One of the reasons why when we talk about lived experience or living experience is we also need to listen to the people in our shelters, or they're out on the streets.
- Exactly, exactly.
- Their voices because they're in it right now. Especially if you're looking at, does this shelter provide dignity? Does this system or this solution work for you? What are the roadblocks that are preventing us from helping you or for you to receive help? And then for people that are in housing, because that's a whole new set of challenges. Their expertise shifts from homelessness to how to survive in housing. But we don't look at it like that.
- Right, and to help us to make sure that we are creating the right type of housing and what the issues are. That was one of the things I really appreciate about leading the Mission. The Mission is a wonderful place. I mean, historically, they've been around for 80 plus years. And I learned so much running the place because it really kept me in constant contact with people that were experiencing being unsheltered at the moment. And that lens, that viewpoint humbled me. And I'll tell you a prime example. I had started initiative prior way back before I came to the Mission. God had gave me an initiative. So it wasn't birthed at the Mission, it was birthed in me that God had gave me, that I knew that one day, it's called Music Matters. And it's huge thing that God had really gave to my heart to do, using music as an apparatus to bring awareness and change to the arts, really, to bring change to the condition of homelessness. And a friend had took me to a concert in Orange County to listen to a group that I love called Maverick City Music. And at the time I was really into Maverick City Music and the work that they do and the music that they generate. And so I went in and I had an opportunity to speak. The tickets were really good, And so they gave those ticket holders an opportunity to speak to the band, to the group at the end. And I waited to be the last person, it's on video. It was so strange how this happened. And so I asked him, I said, "Why you guys here in Orange County? Why you don't come down to Skid Row and do something for the community down there." So they put me in contact with the manager. Nothing really materialized. A year later, God said, "You wanna put this Music Matters." And they had just released their "Kingdom" album with Kirk Franklin. Ad they called me at the mission and they said, "We're gonna be in town. We would love to try to see if we can do a benefit concert. We're gonna be doing a concert at the Staples Center and we'd love to invite you as our guest." And so all that happened, right. It was just a miracle. God had kind of, one year I put it out there in the space. A whole year later they came to the table and we did the first benefit concert was a huge success, and you can Google it and everything, but Kirk Franklin came, Maverick City Music. We shut the street down.
- Oh wow!
- Never such and never again has anything been like that in the heart of Skid Row. We had shut it down for blocks, but when I started doing the work, I was getting resistance from the community members, 'cause they didn't want to be swept away. And I was like, "Well, I'm not sweeping away." So I called a meeting with them and I empowered them. I said, "You're right." I'm creating this with, and I'm being insensitive to where this community is, 'cause I'm thinking, "Wait a minute, I know I've been homeless, I know what," you know. And they were like, "No, we have other things we want to make sure is in place." And so we created a council that had voice and power. They wasn't just some kind of puppeteer voice. And we empowered them and their ambassadors to kind of help us understand the community as it existed. And we were able to put something together that was humane so people were still able to be where where their tents were, wherever they were. We had the concerts there, and we put the fences up in a way that it wouldn't be obstructive to them. And they were able to join The concert. And it was very humane. And we did that because, I realized that just because I was unhoused and homeless at one point in my life doesn't mean that I get the right to speak for people now, without bringing 'em to the table to hear their voice.
- Oh my gosh. Exactly, I mean, and that's where this has progressed. And I get why because somebody that is in housing is probably easier to work with, right? It's not as messy, right? Somebody that's still homeless, they're in survival mode.
- They're in survival mode.
- Both voices are important. The people that are in housing, that shows that we can solve homelessness, they have massive knowledge and expertise, 'cause they lived through it. The challenges is of, "Oh my gosh, I was in a park, now I'm in a home. How do I survive this?"
- Exactly.
- But you're asking them to be an expert on homelessness. And they haven't been homeless for 10 years or 5 years.
- And so when we created our Lived Experience panel just recently, it speaks to your point with the ODR, I mentioned it earlier, but what's unique about it is that they're not homeless. They live in the recovery homes that are part of the program, because we wanted to make sure that we had a voice, that is at the table that's not unhoused, but has the experience of being that, but now are living directly inside the program so that we can make improvements. We want to actually know what's working and what's not working. And their unique perspective can give us that. Because a lot of times we fool ourselves to think that when we create something that is perfect and we don't never continue to look at it to examine it to make the system better. And that's one of the things I really appreciate about the team at ODR right now is that they really want to go back to the core of who we are. I sit on the Permanent Steering Committee, which is the governing body. And we decided that we wanted to go back to who we are and the core of who we are. Understanding the population, understanding our service delivery methodologies, and then fixing them so that we can have a better delivery system.
- Well, we're out of time. So you talked about a book?
- Yes.
- Hype your book. How do people find you? How do people find your book?
- Well, my book, I have a copy for you here. It's called "From Skid Row to CEO." They can actually go on my website, SkidRowToCEO.org And it's so much more resources there, how to access stuff. I'm doing a lot of teaching in there on the website. I'm building it, but the book, the title is "From Skid Row to CEO." It really about how we are all connected by divine connection. And I tell the story, and I don't just do a linear, I look back and moments that I'm having now, like at this conference. And this conference triggers something in my head, and then I take, it's a cinematic approach to the book, and I'm getting great reviews about it. We're right now getting ready to put in LA County Jail. I'm excited about that. I'm hopeful that I can get it also in the prisons. Not just here in California, but across the nation. Because, at recovery homes, that's what it's written for. It's written to give hope to people in recovery homes like I was, in jails and institutions, hospitals, people that are matriculating out from those places to home.
- Yeah, and we'll close a little bit of reminiscence that you brought back the, I don't know if you know, 'cause Gloria was AA-based.
- Yes, she was 12-step.
- Right, 12-step-based, And she would have meetings and being Hollywood, so you had, I don't know if you remember Paul Williams?
- Yes.
- I've maintained a friendship with him. I haven't talked to him in years, but I spoke at a conference with him. And here's a celebrity that you and oh my gosh, this is the person you see on "Smokey and the Bandit" and all this other stuff. And he had issues.
- Everybody had.
- And then there was one of the drummers from Guns N' Roses and some other people. So them sharing their story, like you said, 'cause I thought I was an alien. I was like, "Nobody did drugs like I did." And then hearing other people really, all things work for the good.
- That's right.
- It's through the connection of Gloria Montgomery and the Hollywood Recovery Center that we're sitting here today.
- And it's the divine connection. It's the thread that binds us, right? And that's what the book is about. So and I encourage your viewership to get a copy of it because it's not about the sales, right. I didn't write it for that. I wrote it to have an impact in this system and then have a paradigm shift.
- Yes, cool. Well, thank you for spending time.
- Thank you.
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