If We Want to End Homelessness, We Have to Change

What a Psychiatric Ward Taught Vijay Gupta About Music

Vijay Gupta was 19 years old when he became the youngest violinist ever to join the LA Philharmonic. On the night he turned 20, he was playing the Hollywood Bowl with John Williams in front of 18,000 people waving lightsabers. By every measure, he had made it. Then he took a wrong turn while learning to drive and ended up on Skid Row. His father was in the passenger seat, screaming at him to get out of there. Less than a mile from Disney Hall. He couldn't stop thinking about it. What followed was 18 years of showing up at Skid Row shelters, county jails, state hospitals, and VA clinics, convinced he was there to heal people through music. It took a long time before he understood that the people he came to help were the ones healing him. Vijay Gupta is the founder of Street Symphony, a 2018 MacArthur Genius Grant recipient, and the author of the new memoir Restrung. In this conversation, he and Mark talk about what it really costs to see people who have been made invisible, why homelessness is an epidemic of spiritual alienation, and what a man in a psychiatric ward taught a Juilliard-trained violinist about music when nobody applauded. Some conversations deserve more than a listen. They deserve to be passed on. Share this episode with someone you care about, and if you want to go deeper into Vijay's remarkable journey, pick up a copy of Restrung https://www.vijaygupta.com/book. [https://www.vijaygupta.com/book.]

The UK Once Housed 39,000 in Days. Now Rough Sleeping Hits Record Highs.

Rough sleeping in London and across the UK just hit a record high. Every measure of homelessness is at its worst level ever recorded. And yet during the COVID pandemic, the UK government got roughly 39,000 homeless people off the streets in a matter of days. The political will existed. The problem got solved. Then it stopped. Matt Downie is the Chief Executive of Crisis, the UK's national charity for people experiencing homelessness. He's been inside this fight for over a decade, watching rough sleeping numbers climb while proven solutions go ignored. In this conversation we get into why the homelessness sector's own fundraising messaging helped build the very stereotypes that make the public look away, what Finland and Japan did to dramatically reduce homelessness and why those lessons aren't being applied, how the UK just abolished a law criminalizing rough sleeping while the US moves in the opposite direction, and what it's actually going to take to change the narrative around homelessness for good. Whether you're in London, across the UK, in Canada, or anywhere in the United States, homelessness is growing. And the solutions already exist. Share this podcast with everyone you know. Talk about it in your community. Because the only thing missing is the will to act.

He Went From Skid Row Homeless to CEO. Here's How.

Thirty years ago, Troy Vaughn was homeless, struggling with addiction, and trying to survive on Skid Row in Los Angeles. Today, he's a CEO, author, pastor, and nationally recognized leader helping others rebuild their lives. In this powerful conversation, Troy and Mark Horvath reconnect for the first time in years and reflect on their shared experience at the Hollywood Vine Recovery Center. Troy shares how homelessness, recovery, faith, education, and community transformed his life, leading him from Skid Row to leadership roles that are changing how homelessness is addressed across Los Angeles and beyond. They also discuss the importance of lived experience, leadership, housing, recovery, and why people who have experienced homelessness should have a greater voice in shaping solutions. Troy's story is a powerful reminder that transformation is possible and that people experiencing homelessness are capable of far more than society often imagines.

Warehousing People Is Not a Housing Policy

Warehousing people in shelters is not a housing policy. But that's exactly what decades of misplaced investment have created. In this episode of Homeless Unfiltered, we sit down with Gary P. Jenkins, CEO of Urban Pathways, and Pascale Leone, Executive Director of the Supportive Housing Network of New York. Gary has lived experience with homelessness and worked his way up through New York City's Department of Social Services to become its Commissioner. Pascale leads statewide advocacy efforts that this past year included seven rallies, fights to protect HUD funding, and a meeting between domestic violence survivors and state legislators that resulted in an $18 million increase for supportive housing. We talk about why shelter maintains homelessness instead of ending it, why investments keep going to the wrong places, and what it actually takes to change policy when the system feels impossible to move.

More Than a Museum: How Love, Art, and Community Is Transforming Homelessnes

Jessica Turtle was born into a community of homeless people in Cardiff, Wales, set up by her own parents. Her father had spent years sleeping rough on the streets of London. That's where this story begins. But this isn't a story about poverty or pity. It's about love, art, and a community that refuses to be invisible. The Museum of Homelessness in London isn't just a museum. It's a shelter in winter, a gallery, a campaign headquarters, and a home for people society has tried to forget. Jess and her co-founder Matt built something the world told them it didn't want. They were offered a morgue. A closed women's prison. They almost gave up. Then they found a park keeper's lodge in North London and a community that made it their own. In this conversation, we talk about what it really takes to change how the world sees homelessness, why babies are still freezing to death in one of the world's richest cities, and why love, not policy, not charity, might be the most powerful strategy of all. For more information and to support the Museum of Homelessness, visit https://museumofhomelessness.org [https://museumofhomelessness.org] Their current exhibition, Criminal: An Untold History of Homelessness, Resistance and Survival, is open now. Check the website for dates, hours, and how to visit.