Former Homeless Reveals What Homelessness is Like in Sacramento | Matt King

I mean, I was homeless, so I have a better understanding of what's really going out on the streets right now. A lot of them are guys like me. You've got union iron workers, you've got electricians, you've got a lot of people in the trades are homeless. We're not stupid people either. We're very intelligent and we know how to do a lot of stuff. You think right now with these people that are on the streets, they can easily go and steal or they can sell drugs or there's like- You know, you hear about the retail theft things. And they're selling them? Yeah, out of the tent. They took me to the 911 call center, right? Three people. Sacramento's broke into two sectors, North and South. That's when you called 911? Yes. There's nobody. My guest today is Matthew King. He's a community advocate from Sacramento. He has seen Sacramento deteriorate over the last few years. Today, he'll talk about homelessness, drug addiction, and crime issues that his community is facing. He'll share with us his personal experience and he's gonna tell us how we can overcome these issues. We will also talk to Travis Gilmore, who's our own reporter in the state capitol. He's been talking to the state legislature, the homeless people, as well as the police officers. He has a really good perspective on this issue. He's gonna share with us what he's seen. It's almost like we are living in an open-air mental health facility. There's people walking down the streets. You don't know if they're gonna shoot you, stab you, punch you, spit on you. We'd find needles in the playground. We, as parents, are kinda teaching our kids and grandkids how to be numb to the situation and how to normalize this. My wife, sometimes, she used to say, well, we need to move to such and such. And then, two weeks later, you see on the news, well, such and such has the same problems. I'm Siamak Karami. Welcome to California Insider. Matt, it's great to have you on. Welcome. Hey, thanks. Thanks for having me. You know, we wanna talk to you, Matt, about your city, Sacramento. We've been watching from here, and we're hearing a lot of stories about the situation on the ground with homelessness. You guys are facing, and Sacramento was ranked one of the top three cities nationally that's challenged with homelessness. You have almost 10,000 homeless people in your city. Can you tell us what's going on, and if my numbers are correct? I think it's probably a little more. I think the last point in count was 10,500, maybe. And that's a total of people with shelter, without shelter, but people experiencing homelessness. You can't really go in the city, and most of the county of Sacramento, any residential neighborhood where you're not gonna see a problem. Our parks are, they're being taken over by tent camps. Any empty street that may be in, you know, like a warehouse district, anything like that, it gets inundated with RVs and trailers, and our baseball diamond who's getting ready to have their, you know, first of the year grand opening parade for the season. The field in the street they're gonna have to come down already has like three or four trailers. A lady just put up a tent right on the corner. It's really bad optics for people, especially kids, to have to walk by and see. They're supposed to be celebrating their life, and instead they have to kind of be told to look the other way, you know? So we as parents are kind of teaching our kids and grandkids, I think, how to be numb to the situation and how to normalize this. So it's inside the community now. People are seeing it. It's not one place where- Oh no, it's throughout. I have a friend that lives in a very well-to-do area. It's a massive regional park, probably 200 acres. There's always a track and field event there, and it's a big thing. There's a zoo there. There's everything at William Land Park, and beautiful park with a lot of funding, you know, throughout the community. So they have the resources to keep it clean, and there's million-dollar homes there. There's tents set up, you know? It doesn't matter. It's kind of like one guy one night, and the next morning you walk by, and where'd that come from? And so when one starts, it's almost like a network, and then more start coming. So it's like, oh, well, they didn't mess with me today, so it's okay to be here. I mean, it's just, it's a hard situation to deal with, and I don't really think the leaders or anybody really want to pick up the grenade. I call it a grenade because once you pull the pin, everything's on your hands. You have to solve it, or you're gonna be the bad guy. What's the response from the government? Oh, well, they have their crisis line or whatever you call it, you know, and you have to dial 311 in Sacramento to make a report, and it's a multi-level thing. You can make a report for, you know, they didn't pick up my garbage can or whatever, but it's also where you call the report homeless camps and things like that, and, you know, there's a couple different sections, homeless camp, a homeless encampment blocking sidewalk, et cetera, a homeless camp in a park or bike trail type thing, so there's different levels of ways you can report it. They have a 311 app, and I use the app to make reports on things, and a lot of the reports are being closed without even being looked at, and there's people staying on the streets, and not just me, but five, 10, 15 different neighbors are reporting the same camp, and they never leave. They just, they never leave, and the kids, they go to the bus stops, and they wait for their school bus, and, you know, or the, you know, the RT bus, the public transit, and they walk by gallon bottles full of urine and things like that. If anything, it's a biohazard, a safety hazard, and I just don't understand really why it doesn't go away. I mean, I was homeless, so I have a better understanding of what's really going out on the streets right now from, you know, me being an addict and an alcoholic myself, so I just, I don't believe that, I don't believe anybody's being prosecuted, and I don't think a lot of the laws are being enforced, period. So what are you guys told? So what do you see in the streets with the homeless community that you see the camps, and what are you told from the city? Well, I was told from 311 one time by one of the operators that, oh, we don't enforce homeless camps or homeless issues. I said, okay, but this is who we're supposed to call, and then he, like, hung up on me, so I don't know if it's coming from a higher-up level that they're not supposed to do anything or to leave them alone. I know there's a attorney who's kind of semi-protecting the people experiencing homelessness. The police are not allowed to move them. They have the Department of Community Response who was also supposed to go out, reach out, hey, do you need a place to live? We gotta get you out of here, that type of thing. In my just drivings around, I mean, I've maybe seen one of them maybe two or three times in the last couple years. I do know that they did come to my park one time and remove a camp, but it was after the fact, after the guy had set his entire couch and camp on fire and almost burned some of the heritage oak trees in the park. So I think a lot of people in the city of Sacramento are just throwing their hands up. You know, we can yell and scream, but it feels like sometimes it's falling on deaf ears. And I'm not saying all the city council or any of those people are bad. I know our city council person, I know my friend's city council person, they're really trying hard to do something, but I think there's only so much they can do or are being told they can do. And it's interesting in that when Hollywood came to film a movie, Leonardo DiCaprio was in town earlier this year, the encampments mysteriously disappeared. So it showed what some lawmakers have told me is that this just proved that if the city has the desire, they can clean things up, but there really is no incentive for them. Their hands are also tied by a decision out of the ninth district court, Martin v. Boise in 2018, which essentially said that no clearing of homeless encampments is allowed unless enough shelter beds are available. And this really put a halt to certain municipalities addressing homelessness with physical action. And what we've seen now is a battle between the district attorney of Sacramento and the mayor, Darrell Steinberg, where the DA is saying that the city's failing to act and enforce its ordinances. And the mayor is essentially saying that they're doing what they can based on the Martin Boise ruling and that they need further assistance or further guidance from the courts to allow them to act. We have been hearing from a lot of people that the homeless crisis that we have, a lot of it has to do with addiction. But from other factors we are hearing, from official reports, we keep hearing about the housing issue. We don't have enough housing. This is in your community. What do you see in your community? I hear a lot of that too. It's always housing, housing, housing. I think there is housing if you have money. So if that makes sense. I mean, anybody can go rent an apartment or whatever, but obviously you have to have a job in order to have things in life. I can relate to my own experience. When I first got clean and sober, if you would have said, okay, we're gonna give you this place to live, but you have to quit doing drugs, whatever, right? It would have only solved one problem. Okay, I may not have been homeless, but I still had the behaviors of the addict behaviors, I call them, okay? I went through a six-month mandatory behavior modification program, and it was through the effort, the Aquarian effort, and it was called Alternative House. I think Wells Spriggs runs it now, and I've been out there since, and it's not the same. It's the same, but different. I don't think it's near as strict as it was when we went through there. But it took me a minimum of that six months in there to even realize that I was the problem. It wasn't the drugs. So the drugs were a symptom of my behaviors. So I allowed myself to steal. See, and during your addiction, your code of morals changes. So back then, there were accountability. I stole the water bottle from the thing, you called the cops, they would show up, I would go to jail. Now I can steal all your cameras, and you guys would have, I mean, you'd probably fight me, but basically, you know, people don't fight back anymore. You know a lot of sheriffs that have been on the show. Yeah, and people don't fight back. And the businesses and everybody are saying, don't chase them, we'll get sued. So that's where the chaos and compassion thing, it's right in the middle of people are so afraid to do anything or speak up, that everybody goes, hey, let's go to California. We can run wild. They do nothing. Are you concerned with stock market volatility? The market's closing in on their worst year since the financial crisis. Two of the major indices had their worst day since 2020. U.S. financial markets had their worst day since the start of the pandemic. Do you really trust this economy? News are growing that the U.S. economy could be headed for a recession. Inflation soaring to its highest level in nearly 40 years. Prices for gas and groceries are so high. Inflation sending already sky-high prices soaring even higher across the board. What if you could invest in a portfolio with a higher fixed rate of return that's not correlated to the stock market? You can turn your monthly income on or off, compound it, whatever you choose, and there is no loss of principal if you need your money back. And absolutely, there are no fees. Just log on to investwireify.com. Folks, I personally invest my own money with WireEFI. Log on to investwireify.com or call 888-WIREEFI24. Now let's go back to the interview. So are you saying that people in these tents, some of them are stealing to get by from- I was in West Sacramento and I have a friend and I should have brought the pictures of it. You know, you hear about the retail theft things. There's a big camp behind one of the targets out there and they've got three foot by six foot tables lined up with all tie, dish soap, shampoos, all brand new bottles. And they're selling them? Yeah, out of the tents. So I saw another one at the park at the corner of by my house, by Martin Luther King Boulevard when I was going to rent a bobcat this weekend for a job I'm doing at my home. And same thing, lady right on the corner of the park, all the brand new stuff. And I go, and I know some people coupon, but a lot of the things I believe are being sold. They're being stolen, then sold, whether it's, you know, Facebook marketplace or what have you, or the auction, or, you know, even yard sales I've seen with just tables of stuff. And she had brand new clothes with tags still on them too. So I'm like, you didn't coupon those. But it's, like I said, the code of morals changes. So they're finding ways to basically fund their addiction through retail theft. And what prosecutors tell me is that it's very difficult to break this cycle. As one is taken away, we see another dealer pop up on the street to basically take the one who was arrested to replace his spot. It's also very interesting talking to the legislature because they're very aware that this is a problem, but there are differences in how to address this situation. We have one side calling for more enforcement, saying that there needs to be teeth to these laws. There needs to be some sort of incentive to obey society's rules. While the other side says that we don't quite have the statistics. They're not looking to really increase enforcement. They're just looking to understand what's happening and to better stop the sale of these retail items. I've spoken with homeless people on the street that tell me they're well aware of the situation, what they can get away with and what they cannot. I've also spoken with law enforcement who equally confirmed that the criminal element is as savvy, if not more savvy, than the legal system is. They know exactly what they can get away with. And you had your own experience with this, right? Can you tell us about your experience and what you were going through? Yeah, so during my addiction, you know, like I said, and the laws were different. You did something, you went to jail. It was before Prop 47 and all that stuff. So there was accountability. They did have a program called Diversion, which I was eligible for, but the judge decided I wasn't ready. But I started out, and for me, I didn't know when I crossed the line and became an addict, if that makes any sense. So I started out, hey, I'll go do it a little bit with my friends on the weekend, or, you know, hey, we're gonna study for the test, whatever. And I started in high school, you know, and by the time I was 16, 17, I'd already started like a criminal career, okay? And I was dumb stuff, like breaking into cars and stealing stereos and, you know, easy things, at least what I thought was easy. But I always got caught, so I wasn't a very good criminal. But, you know, and then as the addiction became more powerful and prevalent in my life, the things that I said I wouldn't do, like maybe, okay, well, I'm gonna go in that garage, the guy's house in the garage, and steal things out of that. See, I started out, well, I'll never touch anybody's property, and I'll never touch anybody's house. But then your morals, depending on- The level of addiction. Yes, the level of addiction, they came, they changed. I was lucky. The last time I got arrested, I had a truck, right? And I was homeless, and I was living in it, and the motor had blown up, right? So I'd actually stolen another truck, just like mine. I put my license plates on it and drove it, because I figured, hey, it's the same truck. You know, I've already been charged for this stuff, so I could talk about it. And so I proceeded to take the parts I needed off of, you know, John Doe's truck and put them on mine. And in the middle of it, I remember I started drinking. I started smoking marijuana and doing a lot of methamphetamines. So at that point, I'd probably been awake for two, maybe three days, okay? And instead of fixing my truck, I decided that it was a better idea to install a stereo in there. So you would think, if I had stolen stuff, I'd want to hurry up and do it, get rid of the stuff. Well, I'd push the other thing, like, a couple blocks away, so, and I guess the cops had found it. And I remember sitting in there, I'm messing with this stereo thing, and I look, and I said, oh man, there's a lot of CHP officers over there. I go, well, I'm gonna run, and I look behind me, and there's a bunch of sheriffs behind me. And I looked another way, and there's a bunch of city police, and I go, man, I'm not gonna go anywhere. And they all came on the house at one time, and, you know, they yelled, parole search. And so my mind is sticking twists, was at a time, I go, well, I'm not on parole, I'm good, right? So they were coming to just raid the house on a friend of mine's mother, and, but in the meantime, they go, oh, hey, by the way, we found your truck, and your license plate's over here. So I had to go out to the branch, and I remember the judge, the last thing he said, he said, the next time you're in, and I'd be in, they were all petty things, because back then, the crimes were punishable more harshly. So. This was in the 2000s, or when was it, 90s? I got clean in 97. Okay. So 98, a little bit before that. I mean, my spree was probably 93 to 97. You did something, you went to jail. You did something harder, like you do robberies, or grand theft, stealing things out of a store back then were felonies, period. So this retail theft thing, it's out of control. You could steal $900 a day, and I'm not sure exactly how the law reads, but is that 900 a day from each store, or 900 each time you get caught? So I mean, if you could make $10,000 a day, why would you quit using drugs? I couldn't make $10,000 a day. It was hard enough for me to try to make $30 a day. But now it's so easy for people. There's no way I would get clean today, ever. It's just, I can go to the corner, I can get a free cell phone. I can get food from the EBT thing, or whatever, you know? And so I would have food, even though I didn't eat much when I was using that stuff, because it takes away your appetite, but people are just, they're running amok. And I have no burden of proof, but what I actually think, a lot of it is, people don't want them to be swept, or moved, or what have you, you know, you got the activist, no sweeps, you're just moving them from one block to the other. I understand that to a certain thing, but wouldn't it be fun if later down the road, we found out that they don't wanna be moved, because these are actually hubs for drug dealing rings, because I watch dealers show up to these big camps, every morning, everybody comes out, and they get whatever, and then everybody goes back inside. So with the fentanyl crisis, and things that we have going on the streets, if you're not allowed to be touched by police, isn't that like a perfect coverup for what you're doing? You know you can't be arrested for anything, they can't move you, they're not gonna search you, and honestly, today, I don't think most police even want to address anything to do with a person experiencing homelessness. Like I said, that's just hearsay, but that's my drug addict mind working. Do you see them come at a certain time, and can you tell? Oh yeah, they'll show up every morning, probably about time sunlight, you know. Is it the same people, or do you, how do you know that? This is at multiple different locations, so I see them always, the cordon of Ardenway, Alta Arden, and Howe, big camp right there, the guy shows up, everybody gets out, he gives them their stuff, they go out. So you can see like their... Transactions, yeah, we have another one right, not even a block away from our Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Huge camp underneath the freeway, same thing, guy shows up, different guy, but the same thing. Similar behavior. Comes up, he parks right in the street, illegally, you know, gets out, everybody hangs out, they smoke a joint while they're doing their thing, and then everybody goes away. If I was still using and selling drugs, I mean, and I knew that somebody technically couldn't be arrested, that would be who I'd want to sell drugs. Here, get rid of this. And with the addiction cycle in the homeless community, I don't think everybody that comes into homelessness starts out an addict, if that makes sense. I think a lot of them are, I think a lot of them are guys like me, union construction worker before I got all messed up. You've got union iron workers, you've got electricians, you've got a lot of people in the trades are homeless. There's a lot of, we're not stupid people either, we're very intelligent and we know how to do a lot of stuff. I think, say maybe, like in my situation, I got married, had my daughters, and in 23 days, you know, I found out my wife was cheating on me. So that kind of, it just, it kind of scrambled my brain a little bit. And I was already partying, but not like partying. So I use that as an excuse. Say, you know, in the program, they say F it, you know, you get a case of the F it. So just, when you have that mentality, nothing else matters. And then you become selfish and self-centered for yourself. And it's all about you. You start not to care about this person, that person, that person. With that mentality, your own code of morals that you were brought up with, like, even in my addiction, I knew right from wrong. I don't believe that anybody themselves doesn't have the basic idea of right and wrong. We're all taught that from a very young age. So those childhood triggers are always in your brain. You know what's right and wrong. I think a lot of people entered in similar situations. Some of them were already full-blown addicts. They may have been evicted, you know, because the landlord was like, hey, you haven't paid rent in three months. You gotta go. You've destroyed my house. You've ripped all the wires out of the electric box. This and that. And I was that guy. I mean, I had extension cords running from neighbor's houses plugging in to get lights on in the house. I was that guy. You look at me now. I mean, normally I don't dress like this. So, I mean, I'm usually overalls or jeans, and you know, I'm a worker guy. But I don't think that housing is going to solve the problem. I think if there's a big building like the one we're in now, where they have 24-hour maintenance and care and counselors and treatment and behavior modification, I think that's a start, which also provides an element of housing because you have your own dorm rooms, whatever, but you also have onsite care. You have to relearn how to enter society. It took me two years to be this close to anybody. I would go to my AA meetings and other meetings, and the people were happy, and I wasn't yet. You know, they'd come up and they'd smile and genuinely wanted to know me, right? Like, hey, welcome. And I'd be like, back up, man, you know, personal bubble. It took me probably another seven years just to get some of the dope fiend ways out of my head, like looking into people's mailboxes or watching their porches for the packages to show up. I don't do that anymore, but I knew. I knew when the mail came. I knew when the credit card came for different neighborhoods. So this is why I say we're not stupid people. It takes a lot of effort to stay high, but I have to learn to transfer that effort into staying clean and being a productive member of society, which I was ultimately designed to be. Before we continue, we would like to thank Shen Yun for sponsoring this channel. It takes you back in time to magical world of ancient China with a unique blend of brilliant dancing, beautiful costumes, and legends coming to life. Go to shenyun.com to find out the schedule and theater information. It's a lifetime experience you don't want to miss. Just so inspiring. It makes me want to go dance. Breathtaking. I was very impressed. I'm taking my program and I'm going to mention it on the news because I think it's a great performance and people should see it. What I loved about the show was the authenticity of it. It was taking me on a journey, exceptional. The technique involved it, the thousands of hours of training. People just float. Everything was exact and then they worked to the exact moment and it was beautiful. You go away feeling with a smile in your heart from it. Have to come, life-changing. Make sure you see it. Don't wait, get your tickets now. And so you think right now with these people that are on the streets, you think they can easily go and steal or they can sell drugs or there's like, you think this is what's happening? I do. I don't believe there's any accountability for it. I think a lot of it from what I'm hearing is the law enforcement agencies, everybody wants to bag the big guy, the kingpin or whatever, right? The big dope dealer. But if you started picking off the little dope dealers, you'd find the big guy because ultimately somebody's not gonna wanna go to jail and they will talk, right? So by not arresting anybody, it's another facade of we're doing good for the community but you're not because you're not doing anything. So we either have to do something or they continue to do nothing. Our neighborhoods are like in dire straits. Then there's the other side of it too. I have my own mental health issues, ADHD but it's not near like some of the people that are on the streets. It's almost like we are living in an open air mental health facility. There's people walking down the streets. You don't know if they're gonna shoot you, stab you, punch you, spit on you. You have to walk across the street when you see one. My wife, she barely wants to go do her walks because if she sees somebody, she comes right back home. And this is in the middle of a residential. Yeah, a decent residential area. I mean, we're cleaning it up. We've put a lot of effort into a park that we live behind now and it was destroyed by the unhoused population. Nobody used the park in probably close to five to seven years The city wouldn't even acknowledge that it was there. They wouldn't clean it anymore. There were burned out motorhomes, RVs, trailers, prostitution. We'd find needles in the playground so bad that they shut off the water. They shut the bathrooms, didn't allow public to use them at all. And so what'd they do? They started defecating on the playground structures or on the sides of the walls. And I don't know if that's just, hey, you really had to go. You're in the right spot. Do you praise you or do you, sometimes you just have to throw your hands up because you're like, where am I living? What is this? But it's anywhere. My wife, sometimes she used to say, well, we need to move to such and such. And then two weeks later you see on the news, well, such and such has the same problems. We should go to El Dorado Hills. Well, El Dorado Hills has problems. But the difference with El Dorado Hills and Sacramento is they have law and order. And we don't when it comes to things like that. We should be able to call a cop and go, hey, this guy has a needle in his arm in my park and I want him to go. Well, we'll put it into the DCR. And then it's already three days a week, 10 days later, and the guy's gone. It did no good right then. You could catch people now and do something, but there's no accountability for things like that. So I say, if I had to get clean today, I wouldn't. And you got clean because of drug court or? So that's kind of a funny story. I mean, the judge thought he was funny, but I didn't. I was supposed to go, they had a program called Diversion, right? So my last time arrested- Either go to jail or- Or treatment, right? And so my uncle, who was a raging alcoholic, was friends with the director at A-House, which is the aquarium effort, the program I went to. And he said, oh, I know the judge, I know her. We'll make sure that she gets in and I'll tell them that you wanna get help and whatever, right? And so when I went to court, the lady was sitting there and I'm thinking, oh God, this is good. I'm gonna get out. I hate jail. This is, I freaking hated jail, it was horrible. It's just boring, right? It's just, it's boring. And really, you see the guys that come out of jail and they're all jacked, that's because all you can do is pushups and stuff. It's like, it's boring. And it's not supposed to be fun, really. I mean, so I'm thinking, he goes, well, I have Ms. Torres here. She's ready to take you into treatment. Are you ready? You want treatment, Mr. King? And I thought, well, yeah, heck yeah. Sure, your honor, I'm ready. He goes, well, it'll be there when you get out. And he slammed his gavel and he made me go do six months. And I was like, oh, you rotten. You know, I was, oh, I was angry. I was, I said some things in the courtroom and you know, I'm lucky I didn't get eight months. But my higher power was working through that judge because he knew I wasn't ready. Because the day I got out of jail, I was blackout drunk and doing drugs again within an hour. Wow. An hour. And I'd been clean for five months probably. But I went back to what I knew because I didn't know any different. So that's when I say we have to be reacclimated to society because when you get clean, you're lonely. And so what gives you comfort? Your friends, right? Your family. So if your friends and family are addicts. Then you go back. That's who you're gonna go to because it's comfortable. And being clean is not comfortable. It's not. So you have to learn how to reinsert yourself back into society. So just giving somebody housing is not gonna solve the problem at all. I might get a house and then I'm gonna order a bunch of crank and steal a bunch of things and tear things apart inside of it, but I'm not gonna get clean. And do the same thing again. Exactly. And until you kick me out of the house that you just gave me. Like, cause I ruined it, right? I don't know how to live in a clean society because I haven't been clean for so long. I mean, I used from probably 16 to 28. I got clean when I was 28 years old. And this June, I'll celebrate 27 years clean and sober. Congratulations, yeah. It blows my mind because I was that guy that you would see standing in a tree in the park going, hey, hey, hey, hey, yelling. Or the guy that stares out of a little tiny hole in the curtains for days and nobody's there. It's tough. I was bad. I mean, I'm still a little bit wonky, obviously, but I think people can get clean, but I think they have to be forced to be clean. There has to be some kind of mandated thing. I worked on a program with one of the assemblymen, Assembly Bill 1360, which is basically bringing back diversion. It's voluntary, mandatory treatment. So how does that work? Voluntary, mandatory. So you have to volunteer and then you- You can either go to jail. So say you commit a crime, the judge sentenced you to one year, right? And it was drug-related or you're under the influence. The judge has the option to say, okay, you can go do, Mr. King, you can do one year in jail, or you can choose to do six months in our treatment program, which I don't know if they have the building yet. I know it's a pilot program, but it takes about five years to see if this actually works. So they'll be able to gain metrics and things like that from it. So of course, me at the time, I would be like, well, I want six months. That's a lot less than a year, right? Which I probably would do. But the deal is, is once you join, you have to complete it. And it's a mandatory, it's a lockdown facility. There's sheriffs, there's counselors. It's a building. Well, it's a treatment center, basically. But the kicker is, and the good news about this one, which is one of the only reasons that I helped him with, is unlike diversion for me, if you complete your treatment successfully, they wipe off your drug charges and the previous drug charges you had before, which is very powerful for somebody that's going to look for a job and has to put a resume together. Because that's not what you want. Hey, will you give me a job? I want drugs, drugs. No, right? No. So that's a very powerful thing. But if you decide three months in, I don't like this. Okay, well, you got to finish nine months in jail because you didn't take the deal. So there's incentive to finish it. Is it going to solve everybody's problems? Probably not. Most addicts actually relapse. So it's not like it was in 1930 or 40 when Dr. Bob and Bill Wilson started the treatment program of Alcoholics Anonymous. They had about a 50 to 60% recovery rate. Now it's about five to 10%. Wow. But back then, people would hang out with it. Hey, I'm going to call you. We're going to go to this place and we're going to go to a meeting. Now it's like, eh, people have lives. Back then it was simpler. Now, Matt, why are you being vocal about this? I'm sure it's not easy to face the advocate because there's probably some homeless advocates or housing advocates that are pretty harsh to deal with. It's very tough as, number one, just as a person in recovery. And I went, for me, I'm lucky. I'm not bragging, I'm not boasting, but I went from homeless to having now three houses. So you can do it. You can get off the streets. But it's not easy. But staying high isn't easy either. You still have to do the work. So it's very hard. And I think for a lot of people in the community, a lot of just regular residents, we should be able to go to the city council meetings and we should be able to state our opinions on issues and matters that are affecting our neighborhoods. And it doesn't have to be just about homelessness. It can be about anything. Hey, I need the swing at my park fixed, whatever. But we won't go anymore because the chambers are filled with activists. It's usually the same groups that show up and they're always, no matter what cause it is. They wanted to build a new jail in Sacramento. The same people were there. No, stop the jail, stop the jail. Anytime there's an issue on the docket regarding homelessness, anything, there'll be 70 to 100 people in the council chambers. No, no, no, F this, you're not doing that. Signs, everything. You're not even supposed to like, put a protest in the chambers. And the council wrote that into their own bylaws like over two years ago. No protesting in the city council chambers. But then, and it doesn't matter what cause it is. It could be anything. Is it the same people? The same people all the time. And I mean, I think they're hired. They have new t-shirts. You know, whatever the cause is, they're all wearing new t-shirts. You know, stop the sweeps or care not cells, whatever. No matter what it is. And we have a council member who's on her way out now, which I believe is, you know, part of the group. I think she invites them to the meetings, honestly. And I think a lot of the residents in Sacramento would agree with me. She's on her way out and has caused an insane amount of damage in the downtown corridor. By not sweeping. So the compassion, I think it's time for the compassion to turn into tough love. Because if you keep going, say you're my son, right? And you have an addiction. And I'm your father, your mother, whatever. The first time I feel bad for you, oh my God, that's terrible, right? Maybe the second time, I'll get you out of jail, son. What you need is a job, right? Those are the things we'd say. But after so many times, I mean, my own family, my own mom and parents, they say, don't come back. You're done. And that helped me get clean. But to throw a pillow under somebody's head every time they fall is not the answer because they never hit bottom. It's always a soft landing. Oh, I made it, I made it one more time. So do you think because we are allowing the theft and allowing these things, we're making it easier for people? Oh, it's way easier. I truly believe that. I think as long as there's no consequences, if I know, if I relapsed today and decided to go back to using drugs, I would immediately start going to Home Depots and stealing tools because they're not gonna chase me, right? I can sell tools for, like you say, half price, whatever, maybe even full price to some people. Hey, it doesn't matter. I mean, I was so bad in my addiction, I used to go to construction sites, steal tools out of the back of their trucks. And you know, at that time, people spray painted their color on it, right? You get a solid head, like white or green paint on it. Well, I'd have a can of paint and I'd change a different color and go sell it back to them at the end of the day. Wow. So sometimes it worked and sometimes I got my ass kicked, but I mean, excuse me, but without rules, it's chaos. Without anybody being held accountable, police not arresting certain members in government and these activist groups talking about defunding the police the police don't even want to come to work hardly. We're in Sacramento alone, we're about 153 officers short. And the budget has been, I think, don't quote me on this, but I believe over the past two to three years has been dropped by about 20 million. And there's always something on, oh, it's budget time right now. So I'm curious to see what happens next. Our call centers, I went and did a ride along about a month ago, a month and a half. Cause I wanted to do it for me. And the captain, I told him about my background. I go, you sure I'm okay to do this? He goes, yeah, I know who you are and I know what you do for the community. You're a good guy. So part of it, they took me to the 911 call center, right? There were three people in a big building like this had to be 10,000 square feet. Should be probably 30 operators in there, right? At any given time, three people and it was a Saturday. But those three people, Sacramento's broke into two sectors, North and South. So when we call, and a lot of times it happens, either get a busy signal or you'll put on hold. That's when you call 911? Yes. And so it's because there's nobody, there's nobody. A lot of officers I've talked to, I've got friends that are officers and they said, the job isn't what it used to be. And I'm not, I'm definitely pro-police, I love police. I hated them before because they would arrest me, but I get what they were doing. So, I get what they're doing. And today to try and do their job, it's not the same. Anybody walking down the street these days, they can have a gun, you don't know. And so for these guys, and that's the access is again, the, it's a big thing. And they wanted to get a bear cap, which is basically a bobcat, right? The activists says, oh no, that's military equipment. That's a tank. What are you supposed to do when the cops go out to a call and people are shooting? Do you not want them in armored protective gear? Here guys, here's a big roll of bubble wrap. Go for it, you know? See if the bubbles pop and the bullets hit. No, I'm going, I don't think so. We have to protect the people that protect us. Any situation they go into could be, you know, life threatening. And if I was a cop, I would probably be like, okay, you know, my wife would probably be, are you gonna die today? You don't know. So I would, myself, I'm not a cop, obviously, but myself, I would assume everybody is out to get me when I go to work. It just, it's bad. And Matt, you grew up in Sacramento. Has it changed since you were growing up? It's so bad. It's night and day difference. Sacramento was clean, very clean. There were crews of city workers cleaning the trash up out of the streets, teams of two and three. The parks were always staffed. We would have afterschool programs for kids. You know, we'd go up there. Our parents would say, hey, we don't want you in the house right now. Go to the park. Parents aren't gonna say that to their kids anymore in Sacramento. Go to the park by yourself. I had a lady actually tell me when my wife and I, we, she actually took a job as the parks commissioner for our district because we're tired of it and we loved our park and we've done so much there. We thought, why not? We can help other parks get cleaned up too. I had a lady tell me, I was talking about finding a bunch of needles in the park, right? And I think I was seeing a picture of that. And the lady says, well, we should just put sharps containers on the playground. I gave her the look I'm giving you. And I'm like, why would I put a container full of needles on a children's playground? Because most kids are gonna be like, ooh, there's treasures. And they're gonna reach there, try and reach their hand in there and see what's in there. And they're gonna be stabbed. We should not be at a point in our society where we should even have to think about installing, maybe in a bathroom. But even at that, like I tried to explain to her, I said, she goes, well, what if they're insulin, whatever? I said, well, most people who are taking care of their diabetes and stuff like that, they're not gonna leave the house before they've had their shot, if they're gonna be anywhere for the same time. So it's not those people that are leaving the needles. Plus, those people aren't gonna throw them on the ground when they're done, they're not. They have a little red kit that they keep with them to keep their stuff while they travel. So just the audacity of certain people's belief system that we should have to once again cater to junkies and people experiencing homelessness, that we have to make it more accommodating, that we should have to put sharps containers in our public parks, it's ridiculous. Now, Matt, do you have any advice for our state leaders? I would say that instead of the Housing First program, like I said, I get paid from here down, those guys get paid from here up, right? So they're the big power players and all that. But it seems to me that the simplest thing as a recovered addict is there has to be, if they go into treatment and say, the new program, the pilot program, they start using it, right? There has to be a behavior modification element. People can't just be expected to go from living in the walking dead conditions to, hey, I mean, you can't. You can't go from being fight or flight into, okay, I'm a welcome member of society. Your mind doesn't think that way that quick. So giving a person just a house is not gonna solve the problem. That is just buzzwords that people are using to keep the money flow, I believe. It keeps the developers happy as well. So the money needs to go from this, from what you're saying, the effort and the money needs to go from to this transition part. I think it's a, yeah, it's kind of a threefold thing. It's their steps to getting clean. For me, treatment was just like the first step, right? Even after that, then there's the meetings, if you choose to do those, but there has to be some kind of aftercare as well. So say somebody, say I was homeless and I went into a shelter, right? And I got to stay, let's say I got to stay a month. A lot of those people, they didn't move from beyond where they were when they came in to where they are when they got kicked out. They were still doing the same thing, expecting different results. So without some kind of behavior modification treatment, and that maybe sounds scary to some people. You know, it's like, ooh, what are you gonna shock therapy? It's not shock therapy, right? Maybe it'd be better if it worked, but I don't, you have to be, you have to be taught how to reenter society. The things aren't fair right now that you and I in California can't only burn a fire in our fireplace maybe a couple of times a month, right? No burn days, right? Spare the air, all that. But a homeless camp can set fires all over the sidewalk any day of the week, any time, and oh, it's a cooking fire. Why is it different for them versus us, right? So the laws have to be the same for everybody. Like you steal something, you're going to jail. Why are you going to jail? Oh, because you have a job and you can pay for things. They're bad, they can't pay for things. That's not okay. It has to be the same across the board. But I think getting anybody back into society after addiction or even a mental health issue, there still has to be some, with somebody suffering from a severe mental health issue, it still has to have some kind of counseling or behavior modification so, you know, they're in medication so they're not lashing out at people the way they were. And then, hey, okay, well, maybe you're okay to come back. And then there has to be check-ins afterward, just like with recovery. Like in Alcoholics Anonymous, we have what's called a sponsor, right? It's kind of like our mentor. So I check in with him all the time. Hey, I'm going to do this, eh, you might want to do that. You might want to rethink that, right? He keeps me in check. He goes, ah, that's probably not a good idea, you know, and your wife might be really mad, whatever. So I go, oh, okay, well, that might still be some of my messed up thinking because I only knew how to manipulate and get the things I wanted, right? You have to learn how to reenter society. And jail doesn't do that alone either because you sit in jail and like I told you, I got out, I was doing the same thing within like an hour. So there's no rehabilitation there either. I mean, and I did go to some meetings there and the big thing is joint Bible study. Well, it's just to get out of the cell, basically, because you don't want to be in that cell for 23 out of 24 hours a day. And that's if you're lucky, you get one hour to go outside and maybe take a shower, but it's, no. It can't be so fun for everybody that everybody wants to keep doing it, right? Now, do you have any other thoughts for our audience? As far as Sacramento goes, I think you really got to watch the election and really know who you're voting for. It's the only way I think we're gonna make any kind of change. We've got a few people on the ballots that I think are pretty good for mayor and it could kind of shift things in the chambers to a more proactive council. But I just think you cannot be so blind and a lot of people, I think, go through life with their blinders on. I just, I want Sacramento to be, and it never will be, but I want it to be the way it was when I grew up. I want to be able to tell my grandkids, hey, go outside, go out front, go play. Come home when the lights are on. You know, street lights come on, you come home. But nowadays, it's just, it's bad. You don't know who's coming down the street. They might look normal, but they might not be. It's sad. It's a sad state of affairs. Well, we hope that Sacramento will turn around soon. Well, we do. Matt King, recovering addict and community advocate for Sacramento. It was great to have you on California Insider. I appreciate being here. Thank you so much. Thank you.