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The housing market right now is extremely competitive, and homelessness continues to be rampant across the country. Further amplified by economic constraints and the disparity of wealth, more and more people are finding themselves unhoused and living on the streets. Corinna Bellizzi takes a deep dive into how Americans struggle with this harsh reality with Andrew J. Gregor, a novelist and essayist. He talks about his upcoming book Roscoe, which focuses on homelessness and the speed at which stability can disappear. Andrew also explains what you can do to reach out to homeless people, or those living on the margins, to make them feel loved and supported despite their difficulties.

About Andrew J. Gregor:

Andrew James Gregor is a novelist and essayist exploring how fear, power, and fragile social systems shape everyday life. Raised in Beirut and later based in the United States, his work draws from lived proximity to conflict, propaganda, and social division. His award-winning debut novel examines how paranoia and hatred corrode communities from within, while his upcoming book focuses on homelessness and the speed at which stability can disappear. Alongside his writing, Andrew runs a Bay Area design-build construction company, bringing over a decade of architectural and residential experience to his understanding of shelter as a basic human reality. His voice bridges narrative and lived truth, grounding abstract social questions in the physical structures people depend on to survive.

Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewgregor/

Guest Social: https://www.facebook.com/bluedogconstruction

Additional Resources Mentioned:

Them by Andrew J. Gregor: https://amzn.to/4uPkFbZ

Roscoe by Andrew J. Gregor: https://amzn.to/490pJBM

Show Notes:

• 04:32 – Writing About The Huge Issue Of Homelessness
• 14:40 – Writing The Book Roscoe
• 19:13 – The Alarming Disparity Of Wealth In The United States
• 32:13 – Why Roscoe’s Plot Unfolded In Just 12 Hours
• 40:54 – Notice And Acknowledge The Less Fortunate
• 46:55 – Discussion Wrap-up And Closing Words

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What We Miss When We Look Away: Shelter, Identity & The Hidden Architecture Of Belonging With Andrew J. Gregor

Welcome, Regenerators. Each episode, we explore the intersection of sustainability, justice, and regenerative thinking. I’d like to start with a personal story as we open a discussion about what it means to be unsheltered in America. I learned that one of my best friends from high school has been living on the streets most of his adult life. I discovered this truth when I heard a familiar voice say under the breath, “Hey, Corinna,” just as I walked down Pacific Avenue in Santa Cruz with a new friend.

That voice, it really stopped me in my tracks. I knew it. I thought I had imagined hearing my name for a moment, but then I tracked back into what I had just passed. I could see the individual in my mind. A slightly skinny hooded figure that seemed to carry himself just the way that my friend Doug had back in my early high school days. I turned around and sure enough, there was Doug. My reaction was instant.

I just said, “Doug, where have you been?” As I reached, grabbed him, and hugged him. It was a reaction. It was a moment of love. It was a moment of recognition. Here was this kid that I grew up with, that knew so much about me, that I knew so deeply in a way that you really only know people so quickly and easily when you’re that young. He was someone I loved. Not romantically, we weren’t involved that way but we were very close friends.

I have spent time since that happened trying to figure out how I can help him. What types of resources I might have at my fingertips that he might not be able to easily access and trying to also relate to what it’s like to be in his skin. In this episode, I’m going to explore this topic with someone who also cares about individuals like Doug. Hopefully, this conversation will help you see what it might be to be unsheltered or homeless in today’s America.

Andrew J. Gregor is my guest. He is a Novelist and Essayist that was raised in Beirut and based in the United States. His work explores fear, power, and the fragility of the systems that we depend on to survive. His debut novel has already won awards, and his new book, Roscoe, follows one man, a philosopher, a former professional, a person with a 100% cashmere coat and a nine-pound dog through a single day on the streets of San Francisco. Alongside his writing, Andrew runs a Bay Area design build construction company, which means he thinks about shelter not just as a metaphor but as a physical reality. I hope you’ll join me in welcoming him to the show. Andrew, thanks so much for joining me.

Thank you, Corinna.

You’ve got the taste of my personal recent connection to homelessness. This is something I care deeply about and actually always have. In my early teens, before I met Doug, I actually lived on the streets for a week. It was a very long week. That showed me realities that I think a lot of people don’t really spend time thinking about.

It is incredibly hard, and I think many people underestimate how actually how hard it is, even in a temperate climate like California. It’s a brutal way of life for sure.

A person living on the street, their average mortality age is 52. That’s not too far off from where my friend Doug is now, frankly. We both turn 50 this 2026. He in April and me coming in September.

It’s a moving story for me, what you said, and you’re not the first person who has told me a story that’s similar to that where they’re wandering, and there are novels even, The Glass Castle, I think, where she recognizes her mother on the street, it’s something that’s so shocking to people that somebody they knew could fall like that. Yet it’s so easy to do. It really is, unfortunately, especially here.

Writing About The Huge Issue Of Homelessness

The social safety nets that we have are really falling apart. If you don’t have a nuclear family living close by that can offer you support, and even then, sometimes there’s reasons you don’t feel safe at home. That was my situation, why I ran away when I was thirteen years old. What you’ll accept when home isn’t safe is different. I would love for you to just share the story of what your why is because you obviously touch these deep and challenging subjects through your artistry, your work as an author.

Corinna, I think that one of the whys, because there are several of them, is just seeing this disparity of living near a city, I live outside San Francisco, but living near a city where there are apartments selling for $10 million, $20 million and there are homeless people on the street, there are people driving $3 million or $4 million cars and there are people sleeping on the street, there are companies making $3 billion, $4 billion, $5 billion dollars in profit per year and there are people living on the street, and it doesn’t make sense to me.

They’re not paying taxes. This part blows my mind, that a company that’s making money is not paying taxes.

I don’t know if you know but there was a move to try and get companies in the San Francisco Bay area to pay an additional tax to work towards helping the homeless, and the only company, the only CEO, was the CEO of Salesforce who was for it, and all the others rejected it. It’s a really sad statement on who we’ve become as a society.

I’m a believer in the fact that the reason we became as humans so successful is because we learned to take care of each other and we learned to take care of the planet. Before the industrial age, if you look at the Middle Ages, villages, there are villages and towns. In these villages and towns were people who were sometimes disabled, born disabled, born autistic, born crazy, and the village would sometimes, sure, make fun of them a little bit, but they also took care of them. They fed them, they clothed them, they gave them a place to stay. Novels are full of these tidbits of information.

One of my favorite stories is Mary Leakey, who my father personally knew, the discoverer of Lucy, who said very famously the most important find she ever made was finding a woman’s skeleton that was around 100,000 years old, I believe, with a femur bone that had been broken and had been repaired, which means about 100,000 years ago, no one said, “Well, take care of yourself you got to go and hunt and pick fruit and find stuff to eat.”

They were like, “You stay here, we’ll do it for you,” what has happened to that? Why are we so unwilling? Not all of us, not everybody, but a majority of the population think that somehow helping people who are less advantaged or less privileged or who fall on hard times is somehow stealing from them instead of saying, “We’re a collective unit and we should really be trying to support each other.”

Some people have had bad luck, and some people made their own bad luck, but they still deserve help, I believe. That’s one of the whys. The other is that, like you, I myself in 2008 or ‘09, almost became homeless or unhoused. My ex-wife and I had sold our house she was an artist, so I gave her the proceeds and the crash came, and as a remodeling contractor, I had no work. What I could afford, I couldn’t live in because it was so disgusting. Anywhere else wouldn’t take me because I didn’t have a W-2.

Without a home, I couldn’t find work anywhere, even if I’d wanted to try. I was trying to keep my business afloat somehow, and so I ended up sleeping on friends’ floors and then my truck. My truck started getting tickets for not having tags because I couldn’t afford the tags. I knew the next step was it was going to get impounded, and then I’d have to get a tent, and then I’d be on the street.  It was terrifying, it really was. A lot of people are living 1 paycheck or 2 paychecks away from that. Somebody gets told you’re out of a job, they have maybe 2 months’ severance, maybe 3. If they don’t find a job in that time, they end up falling back behind on their rent, and we know how that goes.

Many people are just one emergency away from being on the streets. I just learned of one in my community you might be able to tell, I just got my hair redone here. I like to put a little color in these days and so you’ve got some blue, turquoise, purple fun just peppered in. This is part of my going gray. I decided to stop trying to hide the gray and just have fun with color. I, obviously, have a disposable income to be able to do that.

However, there are a lot of people who don’t. One of my hairdressers’ friends, she’s a friend of mine too, but one of her friends, is essentially a gig worker. They drive their car for Uber, and they just got into a really bad accident. As it would turn out, they only had liability and can’t afford to buy another car, and the car was also income because they drove for Uber. At this moment, there’s this tension point, where it could almost break them.

That’s the reality for so many people. A medical emergency away from being homeless. A car accident away from being homeless. The housing market is so competitive, people outside of California may not understand it the same way that we do where you’re competing with other people to be able to rent a place. You have to show on a W-2, that you have a reliable income and that you’re making at least three times what your rent is. Your rent might be $4,000 for an apartment. We’re not talking some luxurious place either.

Now people are giving up their animals because they go from living in a house to living in a smaller apartment and the apartment has rules and you can’t have a dog. The shelters are filling up with dogs which you might have no-kill shelters. What I’m saying is that turd keeps rolling downhill. That’s the reality of our present economic system. We have built something that doesn’t work for most Americans.

As you may know, I lived in Germany for almost twenty years. Ran an architectural practice there, and that was actually the first time that I, one of the characters in the, a main character in the book is inspired by somebody I met there who was a, originally a history professor at the University of Mainz. There are two things I want to say to that. One is that I do know that in Europe people are able to get help from the state or the town or the city or the county or wherever they are in terms of unemployment benefits, that kind of thing. They’re readily available and they’re readily available immediately not 3 or 4 months down the line and then you’ve ticked a box wrong.

My ex-wife was laid off, and it took her almost four months to get unemployment. When she got it, they found out she’d made a small mistake because she’s dyslexic on the form and they decided to ask her for all the money back. Things like that are just devastating. The other thing is, this is just a snippet of information which I love, I would love it if California or the United States or San Francisco Bay area would adopt it, and that’s the Germans made a rule, a law, that if somebody is a landlord, owns an apartment or a house, he can no longer forbid anyone to have an animal under 45 pounds in that apartment.

That meant that this situation that you’re bringing up, because animals are very close to my heart as well as and what that meant was that the shelters were relieved of so much stress that was put on them by people who were downsizing, moving to a new town. They had another rule that shelters are no longer allowed to euthanize healthy pets in Germany. Those two things together, they make my heart sing. I love that story.

We have also another resurgence in a lot of puppies, a lot of mutt puppies, and part of that is coming from the cost to neuter and spay animals. My “low cost” spay for my border collie was $650. These are California prices. Most of the vets’ offices are charging over $1,000 for a spay and somewhere in the ballpark and about $500 for a neuter, and I’m like, “Really?” Neutering is so less invasive, like you’d think it would be far simpler, but there’s just such a high demand.

The shelters are choosing to only fix the animals that come through and they’ll sometimes run clinics, but the clinics are only available to those animal breeds that they tend to have a high flux of, which is generally speaking all of the Chihuahua breeds and Pitbull breeds. They’ll just say, “You have another breed of dog, tough you don’t get the $200 spay or neuter. You have to go to one of these other spaces,” in my case, $650, that’s a big chunk of change.

A lot of money. I don’t know if I’m allowed to do this, but there is a shelter in Walnut Creek and they’re called Joybound who do have a spay-neuter clinic which is very affordable. The lines are long, but they make it very affordable for people. I think it’s under $100.

That’s amazing. We should see more of that. I’m speaking from my space in Santa Cruz area in California. If I was to drive 3 or 4 hours, it might be different, but Walnut Creek is, I would have driven that far for that.

Now gas prices are coming becoming an issue for driving, of course it wouldn’t cost you $400 to drive to, but it’s time and it’s complicated, but I think it’s something that could also be more widespread.

Writing The Book Roscoe

I agree. Now I’d like to get back to talking about your book, Roscoe. That’s why you came on the show in the first place and I really do want people to get a taste of what this book is like, and also just to gain an understanding of this character. Roscoe in your book, he did have a job, he had a house, a family, an ID, all the things that you would expect a productive member of society to have, and he describes having all of that and losing it. You’ve said yourself you’ve come close to homelessness. What was the first practical thing that started slipping away from you and also from Roscoe that made their truths unravel?

For me, it was really the divorce from my ex-wife, which meant we sold the home. Suddenly, I didn’t have a home anymore and like I said I gave her much of the proceeds, it wasn’t very much, but much of the proceeds because she, she would have a harder time as an artist than I to make her way. Combined with the crash that happened in 2008 or ’09, it was a very rapid slide really for me. By mid-2009, I thought I was going to end up on the streets.

Roscoe’s based on a number of events that have happened either in my life or that I’ve gleaned from other people. I like watching a channel called Invisible People on Instagram. They interview a lot of people on the streets and I have myself, I did outreach for the homeless for a couple of years and I interviewed people myself. I’d give them $10 and say, “Can I talk to you for fifteen minutes and ask you how the, how you ended up here?”

The stories were very varied, but they all had the same impetus that something, an event happened and what I also noticed was they all thought it was going to be temporary. They all moved out and then some became drug addicts. In my book, he was an architect, which is what I was at a time. He has an affair, his wife divorces him, and he he begins this slide into alcoholism or drinking, he starts losing his business his friends start moving away from him, and that’s, that’s a very realistic scenario.

He doesn’t become a drug addict in the book. He’s based more on this character that I met in Germany who was a professor who decided at one point, he’s just going to let go and he’s going to be on the streets because he was fed up with working and paying taxes and slogging away and being told what to do and being in this grinding machine that he viewed.

At the time, he told me there was a lot of political conflict within the university itself that became very distasteful for him and he just let himself fall. Those were his words. They resonated with me and stayed with me all this time that that when you get close to that edge, if you let go, you will fall if you don’t take care. Once you’ve fallen, it’s very hard to get yourself out of there again.

I think people tend to imagine that this is a slow decline that ends us there. All of those changes could happen quite suddenly. I think about the slip in 2008, 2009, I also think about I think it was the early aughts where there was a tech bubble just went away. All my friends in high tech were losing their job all at the same time. I think it was late ‘90s, because I graduated college in ‘98. Right around the same time I was exiting college, there weren’t a lot of prospects for new graduates and a lot of my peers went back to living at their homes or being like five people renting different rooms in a house, something like that just to stay outside of the family home and try to make it wherever they were.

The Alarming Disparity Of Wealth In The United States

In many cases, that meant that their parents were still giving them money as if they were still in college just to make sure that they could be okay and get a start. It feels like the space that we’re in now, there’s just less of those resources available, like college is more expensive, a lot more expensive than it was then. The ability to help even your kids carry through one of those challenges could be really bad or just really hard to do. From what you’ve observed the stretch that somebody falls out of the typical system of working the 9:00 to 5:00 job and having the lights on and being able to maintain a home, what’s the common thread that you hear from people? Is it just financial difficulty?

I say this with respect and not saying they’re stupid or incompetent, but I think the trap that a lot of people fall into is thinking, “I’ll just do this for a little bit and I’ll get myself back on my feet.” I remember seeing a young lady in Oakland. There was a small scattering of tents and a lot of them obviously had been there longer, they had tarps over them and poles and stakes and gathered detritus around them of stuff they thought might be valuable.

This one tent, which was almost looked brand new, was a pop-up modern pop-up tent, and this girl in yoga clothes was outside it sweeping the area in front of her tent. I was in my car, and I couldn’t stop, but I circled back later and I found her and I spoke to her and I found her and I spoke to her, and she was still saying “Yeah, I lost my job I had to leave my apartment, but I’ve got some friends, they, they got a gig for me.”

I could tell that her idea and maybe it worked, I’m hoping for her that it worked, but very often, this dream of being getting back out of that situation eludes them and then you’re in with a group of people who do turn to drugs very often because life is really freaking hard. On the streets, it’s even harder and being on drugs is a way of escaping that.

Not every homeless person by any means is addicted to drugs, but the slide in there can be very quick. For me it was six months from living in a house to seeing my truck run up the bill for my tags was around $1,200. When I found work as a contractor, I actually got a job in 2010, the first thing I did was pay off the tags to secure my truck.

As it happened, I was lucky, my current fiancé, girlfriend, wife was with me at the time and we moved into a house together and I found a way to pay my way. I got more jobs and built my business back up again, but I was extremely lucky. I had a lot of support from friends who allowed me to stay in their houses and things. In talking to people, there were some who medical bills. I know one guy they rented an apartment, his wife was the major breadwinner, she got cancer.

Help by insurance was denied, she died he couldn’t keep the apartment on his own, he lost it, couldn’t get another apartment because he lost his job as well, and that’s how he ended up. He’s in San Francisco and still there, I imagine. This was a few years ago. Healthcare is a major contributor here, it’s a disaster what we’ve got as healthcare.

There are two things. One is that this country has a lot of money. Republicans who say we don’t have money to pay for to help people on SNAP benefits or we don’t have single payer healthcare, we don’t, we can’t afford that but we can afford a trillion-dollar war. The other thing is that there’s a lot of money sloshing around this area. I follow a lady on Instagram who does what stupid rich people buy that we poor people don’t know about, and there’s a dog collar for $250,000, sold out.

There’s a pair of jeans for $169,500. It’s insane what people will pay money for. We think wealth in this country equates to a person being successful and good. I always think of Bernie Madoff in New York. I’m sure he was at dinner parties where people said, “That’s Bernie Madoff, my god, he’s amazing.” He was a thief, he was a common crook. We equate wealth with power and success and that these are good people and very often some are and very often they’re not. That wealth should be distributed.

I think when you don’t travel in wealthy circles you don’t hear it, you don’t see it the same way. I have traveled in wealthy circles, I’ve heard people at dinner parties literally say, “I love wasting money,” like it’s a pastime to go spend a ridiculous amount of money on some bag by Balenciaga. They had like a plastic bag they were selling for $4,000 on their site. That is literally wasting your money. Buying them and then taking pictures with it and like posting it on social media. That is wasting money.

There are many examples like that. The Trader Joe’s bag was trending in circles all over Europe and so people were spending $400 on a Trader Joe’s reusable bag just because it was a trend. These are examples. There’s many more, you could spend days on it. The reality is that we’ve gotten to a spot where we’re in this bizarro land where wealth inequality is so overdone that it is literally as if the Steinbeckian world of Tortilla Flat is coming right back.

I mention this book because it’s one of my favorite books ever. I love that book and it’s something that makes me so angry and sad moments reading it that I want to throw it across the room. I felt the same way about your book. It’s so real, it’s so raw, it makes me so angry and sad. You just see this person and you want to help him and yet there’s reasons it’s hard to help as an individual.

I think that what one of the things I wanted to come out in this book is a long time ago, when I first moved to the Bay area in 2004, it may have been actually before that even because I was commuting between Germany and here, I’d fallen in love with my ex-wife and I’d decided to move to California, and I was walking past a man who was panhandling.

I walked past him and ignored him because I didn’t have any change on me and I didn’t want to engage or something, and he caught me by the arm and he said, “You can at least say hello.” It was so impactful, it actually brought me to tears thinking about it. I’ve made it a point since then to always address them. I say, “I’m really sorry I don’t have any money. Is there any other way I can help?” I have a lot of stuff in my truck. I have food and nuts and banana chips and I give them whatever I can just to show that they’re not invisible.

This is actually one of the changes I made since seeing my friend Doug living on the streets. I am carrying cash again because I wasn’t carrying cash. I’d just gotten in the habit of never carrying cash. It was actually a bit before that. I happened to have some cash on me at the time, I’d taken my kids to Costco. As we were driving out of the parking lot, this guy was not panhandling but he was obviously homeless and he had like his whole cart and bicycle set up and he had a dog with him.

There was just something about him. I stopped and I handed him $10 out the window type thing. “I just want you to have this.” My kids talked to me about that still, about that moment. They’re not always with me when I’m doing my errands or running into these situations. “Mom, why’d you give that man that money?” I said, “Honey, because he’s living on the street and he and that dog need to be fed, and one thing I know about homeless people with animals is they’ll often starve while they feed their animals. That $10 dollars is going to do him more good than it would do me today.”

I’m really touched by that. Thank you. I try and run my life by the principle of doing a random act of kindness a day. That includes every day trying to find somebody who’s out of luck and then giving them some money and I’ve had friends who are like, “You give them $10?” I’m like, “Yeah, I give them $10 because I don’t go to Starbucks and I don’t go to Peet’s and I don’t drink my coffee outside and I have $10 to spare.” Luckily, I don’t color my hair because I’m too lazy.

I want for people to think about this for a minute because so often I hear words like, “Well, let’s say you go to help Doug. How do you know he’s not spending it on drugs?” I’m like, “I don’t.” Frankly, but also living on the street and this is someone I grew up with, I’ve known since I was seven years old, David Thompson. He lives up in the Portland area. He’s worked in homeless services. He has lived on the street for a stretch of his life too. He has a unique perspective on this.

He put it really simply because I reached out to him after I had learned about Doug’s predicament. He said, “Doing drugs and becoming drug addicted is a perfectly natural response to living on the streets.” Just thinking about it that way, I’m like, “Yes, I understand,” that doesn’t make it less horrible that also doesn’t mean that they’re not deserving of help. Alcoholism lands people on the street, drugs and drug addiction can land people on the street, sometimes they land there for a variety of reasons.

I’ve gone by homeless encampments and seen a big family-sized tent with a tricycle in front of it. We’re talking about families in some cases living on the streets here together too because there aren’t enough beds, there’s not enough resources, and they’re doing what they can. Now, you and I may both know it’s hard to get a shower if you don’t have shelter. It’s hard to stay clean, it’s hard to do laundry, it’s hard to find a bathroom. All the things in life that it takes to be presentable for the public.

All of those things become really difficult. Too hard. That individual if they might want to can’t get a job. Panhandling is a job they can have. That’s a sad truth. Theft rises because people are trying to just make it by. Bicycles might get stolen, things like that. We see it. It’s a problem in Santa Cruz area. We have a high homeless population, it’s a problem in San Francisco, petty theft.

There are two things. As I said, I have friends also who say, “If you give him $10, he’s just going to go and spend it on alcohol.” I say to them, “If some benefactor gives you a check for $100,000 and then says, ‘You can’t spend it on whatever you want, you have to spend it on things that I think you should have,’ how would that feel?” I understand. I wish that they would buy food and they would buy whatever they can to help along, but if alcohol is the thing that they in that moment that they need, I’m not going to judge them. I’m not unfortunate enough to live on the street right now and I’m not going to judge them.

The other thing is that this huge disparity in wealth that we have in our country. As I said, there are people spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on vehicles and god knows what else and they have a right to, it’s fine, but if you’re somebody who’s living day to day and trying to scrape together some money, surely there is some part of that that comes up at some point for some of them where they think it’s legitimate to be able to take something because they’ve been cheated by society.

We live in a very capitalistic world here that there’s this belief that everybody has an equal chance, which isn’t true. That everybody can pull themselves up by their bootstraps, which ignores the fact that some people don’t have boots. It’s a tough world for people who can’t function in the way that we’ve decided to design this where you get up in the morning and you go to work and you sit somewhere and you do your eight hours and you come back and then you sleep and you eat breakfast and you go back out and do it again. That’s not for everybody and it’s not a very normal way of life. Bertrand Russell wrote a paper on it in I think 1922 about the fact that working eight hours a day is not a natural human way of being. We’ve imposed this.

I think we know that.

I’d like to think so, but I think a lot of people think that this is normal. But it’s not. That’s because most people do it, but it’s not really. It’s very unhealthy.

Why Roscoe’s Plot Unfolded In Just 12 Hours

I think this might also be part of why you chose to have the story of Roscoe unfold within only twelve hours. Can you talk about that choice?

Part of it was because it allowed me to really get down to the nitty-gritty of the minuteness of his movements around the city. For a homeless person, those that I’ve met, there’s nothing to rush to. You don’t have to take an Uber somewhere or do something. For him, his life was deciding what he was going to do that day and then doing it in a slowly and unfolding. Doing nothing allowed him also to think, and he expresses a lot of these thoughts which of course a lot of them are aligned with my thoughts, but it was really just this idea of like let’s go in with a magnifying glass and just see.

I don’t want to write a story about how somebody fell into homelessness experienced homelessness for years and then got themselves out of it or whatever. I wanted to get down to the nitty-gritty of what it is like really to experience it. Of course, it’s a novel, it’s a story, it’s not realistic necessarily in parts, but I like to think that by weaving in stories that are actually true I’ve changed the names and stuff, but I think I’ve gotten a fairly realistic idea of what it is like to feel to be unhoused in a city surrounded by people who might think of you as a blight.

They think of you as something other, not human.

Yes, we talk about the problem of homelessness but what we really mean is they are the problem because they set up camps and they’re unsightly and it’s disgusting and all these things. We don’t think of it as we have created this. Even the drug addicts, like why don’t we have the money to take care of them? They’re in a situation that’s, that’s hellish. I certainly don’t have all the answers at my fingertips. I’ve read a lot about different programs across not only the States but in Europe of how some cities have dealt very successfully with the homeless situation.

There’s a city, I think it’s Iowa but I’m not sure, it might be Des Moines. I don’t know where it might be in Idaho, I’m not sure. There’s a city that started putting homeless the homeless in apartment buildings that were empty. The deal was that you could have this for free and as long as you took care of it, you could keep it. They had around a 78% success rate.

People who suddenly had a place to live got themselves a job and began having pride about where they lived. That’s incredible. There are hundreds of apartments empty all over San Francisco, even though like you said people are jousting to rent somewhere, but there are buildings that are sitting empty because one developer stopped working on them or something or whatever. I know they’re there. That’s a solution, maybe.

I’ve also seen experimentation in homeless populations where they give them like six months’ worth of living expenses as opposed to sucking off the teat, really, as opposed to giving them a monthly stipend instead giving them enough money to pay their first and last and deposit and all that jazz and buy some clothes if they need it and get themselves set up.

As opposed to the more welfare style setup that we have that is you can only have it for a while so long as you qualify but then it’s going to cut off after five months as a for example when you are unemployed. If you’re a gig worker, guess what? You might not qualify for unemployment, so tough, you know?

So many people are cobbling together an existence because one job isn’t enough to cover their expenses. This is the reality of America nowadays. I know that the solutions that are being proposed aren’t enough and can’t happen quickly enough and that’s our reality too. Increasing the minimum wage to 15 dollars is no longer sufficient. We’ve been asking for that for a long, long time. Now it’s more like 35 dollars. 25 plus something like that.

Day laborers at Home Depot, they’re immigrants, day laborers, they very barely speak English, but they work for $25 an hour cash. They won’t work for less and I understand it. My workers, the lowest wage is, is $30 an hour of my guys at because and that’s tough for me cuts my margins, but it’s not survivable on less than that.

Right. I know what it costs too because I recently had to rebuild my backyard and do my retaining walls and decking and all that because we might have a lovely outdoor space but guess what? That’s expensive to maintain. When it has to be redone, it was $70,000. The guys that worked in this construction company, it was basically father, son, and another son who worked part-time somewhere else that came on to work on these projects. They kept it in the family, they write off everything and then like one friend. They were all earning I think $40 an hour in this community. That was the least he could pay to keep people.

That means construction costs are a lot higher and of course home values are a lot more now because even to fix it up, it costs a lot more. We’re in this world now. One of the things that I have often pondered and thought about and I don’t know if you have thoughts on this too having the experience of living internationally elsewhere, there are certain things that just seem to be a lot more expensive in the United States than they are elsewhere and I don’t understand it. For instance, airfares. Just one.

Airfares are on an order at least three times more expensive than they are in Europe for a similarly distanced flight at a similar class level. You can easily fly for $50 to $80 from like top of Italy to the bottom of the boot. I don’t understand it. I just don’t understand why it costs $300 round trip now on Southwest Airlines for me to go from San Jose to LA and back.

I do not know this for sure but I know that there are costs that come to businesses here. For example, they’re taxed very little here, but there are things like worker’s comp which is not a thing in Europe because everyone’s insured. A company that that employs people. For example, I pay worker’s comp, it’s a big chunk of money for me. I don’t know what the airlines pay but also insurance.

Insurance in the States is never insurance. The insurance companies here, with the fires, they’ve been really hit pretty badly but in general, if you crash your car they’ll pay for it but then your premiums will go up because they’ll recoup that money over the next five years or something. I have no idea about airlines but I do know that there must be a reason why I can fly for $70 from Paris to Morocco which I have done, but it costs me $250 to fly from here to Laguna Beach. I don’t understand it.

I don’t understand it either. It’s something I find perplexing. I think also, we don’t have a rail system so there’s not another competing type of interest in a way. When you travel through Europe, I could take a sleeper car from one side of Europe to the other and wake up in Amsterdam having started in Barcelona. We don’t have that system here.

At least not a good one.

I think that’s part of it. I think the fact that there’s not competition and executive pay. You know they’re paying the ceos of these airlines a lot more money than they’re paying European ceos.

Yeah. I think the European CEO, there’s a cap of 14 times the minimum the lowest wage in the company and here it’s around 400.

I know, it’s insane.

Generally, the average is 400 to 500 times the lowest paid worker which is absurd. It’s stupid.

They’re essentially saying that we are in danger of sliding into what we would define as a third world country or a developing country. Like that’s where we are right now.

I could say a lot about the political slide that we’re in, but I’ll stop right there.

I have blue hair for a reason.

I’m very left wing. I don’t want to proselytize.

Notice And Acknowledge The Less Fortunate

One thing I try to do is like I will host conversations here on the show that are across the aisle, invite people to think more deeply about these things. I think we do that through story. I think we do that through stories like Roscoe. The fact is that you need to get people to really consider what it would be like to be in someone else’s shoes, to have a challenge confront you that you can’t just buy your way out of because you don’t have the money to do it. What happens when that’s gone? There are individuals who will never have to deal with that, and I know that the saying is absolute power corrupts absolutely. I think that’s part of what has led people like Elon Musk to say that empathy is what’s wrong with this country.

Yeah, statements like that are so shocking to me because without empathy what are we?

He’s no longer human. That’s what he’s said. That’s it. A humanitarian ethic is human. It’s in the word. It’s uniquely human in a way, caring for your common man, caring for your fellow people. It’s a human perspective. Now we of course see it in the animal world too. You see that humpback whales will help protect sea lions and seals from orcas.

There are other examples in the animal kingdom as well of collaboration that we don’t necessarily see because we’re not looking for it until suddenly I’m watching the trail camera for the wildlife crossing under Highway 17 and I see there’s a badger and a coyote and they seem to be pals like what’s happening here? Turns out they have a symbiotic relationship and this is a common thing observed in nature.

I have actually seen that. The coyote and the badger.

It looks like friendship. It looks like friendship, walks like friendship, is friendship. It’s like yes, they’re helping each other out, but what do we do? We show up and help somebody move and then our friend buys us pizza and beer. It’s the same thing. Let’s be real. I didn’t complete your book but I am going to finish it, and I don’t often make that commitment to every guest I bring on the show, but it really is a joy and I hope that people will explore your work after having taken part in this conversation. I would like to know if there is a specific call to action you’d like to place in their hands.

This isn’t a book that I plan on becoming wealthy from. My call to action is really to go out there and acknowledge those that you notice who are less fortunate. Acknowledge them. Offer them $10 even if they’re not panhandling.

That’s the Simone Weil epigraph that you had with the book. The quote, I’m going to read it directly because I’m not sure if you have it handy, but the quote is, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” I love that. It’s what you spoke to at the commencement of this conversation, right, that person who said, “You could just say hi to me.”

Yeah. I was so ashamed I remember and it stuck with me that I would pass a fellow human being who was, who was acknowledging me, I could I didn’t acknowledge him back and now I do it everywhere and it’s very rewarding. It’s really rewarding. Even to say, “I’ve got nothing I’m really sorry, but I really wish you good luck.” It’s enough.

Yeah, it’s something. Now, I also think if you have the means, start carrying cash on you. It’s not that hard and if you think about it, $10 isn’t by that much anymore these days so if that can become like the giving minimum, like $5 or $10, but whatever you can afford to give. Frankly, I have given somebody a $20 bill because that’s what I had and I don’t miss that $20. Think about that. Maybe you go without that latte for a day or two.

The cocktail here is $18.

Now it is, yeah.

Have 3 instead of 4.

I might go out now once a week and have 1 or 2, partly because of the expense but also mom life. Andrew, I want to thank you so much for writing this book and for drawing our attention, that rarest thing, our genuine attention to this important story. Imagining life differently, I think it’s everything that novels are really meant to do and I appreciate you for doing it.

Thank you, Corinna. It’s an honor really. I’ve listened to many of your episodes in the last couple of days and you’re a very special human. Thank you.

Now you’re going to make me cry.

It’s true.

Thank you. It means a lot. As I would put it, it’s my do-gooder effort. It’s my putting something into the world that I think might help people. While I might not reach hundreds of thousands of individuals, perhaps one day. I hope I plant a few seeds for people. If I can be on this journey with you, that’s a gift. What I’ll invite any of my readers to do is to reach out with your own stories and if you care to share them, if you’ve been touched by a challenge like homelessness or if somebody in your life is connected, I would love to hear from you. 

You can send me an email note to Hello@CareMoreBeBetter.com. If you’re on my email list, which you can join at CareMoreBeBetter.com, you’ll receive weekly updates from me which is just typically a new email announcement for the new episode. You’ll get my direct email which is Corinna@CareMoreBeBetter.com, but that’s a little harder to spell so hello works just as well. They both end up in my inbox. Thank you so much, Andrew, for joining me and for that immense compliment.

Thank you so much.

Discussion Wrap-up And Closing Words

I think all of you by this point know that this story is one that touches me personally. I care deeply about our global populace, I care deeply about the Americans that are struggling right now, that are connected to this reality, that are struggling, and that are working really hard to make ends meet. To everyone reading, if you have a Doug in your life, someone you’ve lost track of, who may be closer to the streets than you might know, who might be living on the margins in some way, I hope that you’ll reach out to them and let them know that they matter, that you care because I think sometimes, that is what carries us, what might help us put another positive foot forward each day.

If you have the means, carry a little cash on you, give it away when you see someone in need because if we’re always selective about what we share and when and why and circumstance, then we’re really committing charity as a somewhat selfish act. It’s like conditions, you’re introducing conditions on your care. That’s not unconditional love, that is not unconditional care. If you are seeking to be a more empathetic, more caring individual, start there. Give a little attention, give a little love, give a little support, whether or not it’s asked for.

Now I want to again thank Andrew for joining me. I loved this conversation. I love his book Roscoe. Before I close, I want to just give you all a reminder, my cause partner for 2026 is Prescott College. This institution is special to me it’s where I’m earning my PhD, but also because it is an institution that is focused deeply on experiential education, on helping people learn in new and different and positive ways that is leaning into its support for all of the types of education that are under fire by our present administration.

That supports diversity, equity, and inclusion unabashedly. That cares, that comes from care. We are working with Prescott College to really train the next generation of sustainably minded, ethically grounded, regenerative individuals. Those leaders that are going to build a better world, those leaders that will help us rebuild the world that the present administration is trying to dismantle.

Thank you, readers, now and always, for being a part of this show and this community because together, we really can do so much more. We can pay attention, we can care a little more and be a little better and as Simone Weil said, “The rarest and purest form of generosity is attention.” It might be all it takes to remind someone that they haven’t disappeared quite yet, that they matter. Thank you.

Important Links

• Andrew J. Gregor on LinkedIn
• Roscoe
• The Glass Castle
• Tortilla Flat
• Corinna Bellizzi Email
• Them
• Blue Dog Construction