EP011: 2023 Fleagle Lecture
Transcript available here.
On February 19 2023 Rex delivered a sermon during morning worship at the University Unitarian Church in Seattle. He focused on homelessness in Seattle and building relationships between people who sleep outside and people who are housed. Below is a full length video of the speech.
Full Length Video of the Lecture
2023 Fleagle Lecture: Rex Hohlbein
Lecture Transcript
Hello, everyone. Good morning, I want to first share my deep gratitude to all of you for accepting tent city. Three, into your congregation to onto your property. It's a big deal. Thank you very much.
Being in this building, this unbelievably beautiful building, designed by Paul Haden Kirk, in the late 50s. I felt like maybe it would be best to start with an architectural analogy. And it goes like this. You're in the middle of the design process. And you are crazy in love with your idea. And as architects are often finding themselves, and you're struggling, though, with this idea, it's actually not going as planned. And you have this moment, this oh moment, and it just appears. And it says to you, Oh, this isn't going to work. I've got to think of something new, I've gotta go down a different path. And that's a really difficult moment for architects because, as I said, you are in love with this idea. And at the same time, you realize it's not going to get you there. And so you have to entertain a new thought. I see this same ol moment for Seattle right now, around homelessness.
We've been working at it for some time, in earnest, a lot of dedicated people putting a lot of effort into resolving homelessness. And we've not only not solved it is it seems to be getting worse. In that light, I want to make a suggestion to all of us. And that is that when we think of homelessness, to not think of it as a homelessness crisis, but rather to think of it as a community crisis, and this is a big difference. When we say homelessness crisis, we talk about those people over there. And all of our questions are centered on what can those people do to change to fit into the rest of society, and help us end homelessness. But when we think of it, as a community crisis, we have to include ourselves, because we are all part of community. And we also have to ask the same questions that we were asking of the homeless, we now have to ask them of ourselves. What do I need to change to be a part of the solution for ending homelessness? Now, this means that we all have to be on a personal journey, we really have to ask ourselves, where do we fit in to the solution of ending homelessness. And while that is a unique journey for each person, there is a common condition that we that affects us all. And that is proximity.
I want to give you a quick example of that. Let's say that you are out enjoying an evening with a friend, maybe somebody that you love, and you're having an amazing time. The food is excellent. The conversation is perfect. You're really settling into this moment. Meanwhile, next slide, please. Across town, we'll under the Spokane Street Bridge is bedding down for the night. He's cold, he's hungry, and he's alone. Meanwhile, you are still back at your table, enjoying the evening. And the reason that you can do that is because the distance from Will's bed to your day dining table is far enough that the emotional moment does not take away from your experience. Next slide, please. This is Dave. Dave is sleeping under the Yesler Street bridge where he is or crosses the ifI freeway. If we take Dave, and we place him on the floor, right next to your dining table. The question is, could you continue to enjoy this beautiful evening that you were having? Would you lean in to Dave? Or would you lean away? Would you offer Dave some of your food? Or would you ask the waiter to move you to another table? This is the beautiful thing about proximity. When we come close to the suffering of other people, it forces us to look at our own life, to ask ourselves, who do we want to be? Who are we? And how will we come to these questions when other people are suffering? How will we respond?
Part of why we lean in or we lean away is the knowledge that we carry within ourselves. Most of us here have never experienced homelessness, I'm guessing. And most of us here have not spent a great deal of time with someone that is homeless. Because of that, we don't have first hand knowledge about homelessness. So we're left with second hand knowledge. And second hand knowledge is primarily the negative stereotype. If you don't have first hand knowledge, to refute question or challenge, the negative stereotype, it fills you, you take it on, and if you hold on to it long enough, it becomes your own view, you forget that it was given to you. Next slide, please.
This is Steve coming out of his tent in the middle of a Blackberry Bramble in the inner Bay Area. And when we see Steve through the negative stereotype lens, we can think we know him without ever having met him. And when a lot of people look through that lens, and think they know Steve, and have never met him, it is debilitating and isolating to him as a human being. What would change our opinion of Steve? Next slide, please. If we met Steve in an office wearing a suit, would that change how we feel about Steve even though Steve hasn't changed? Next slide, please. If we saw some of the art that Steve does, like these elves that are stacked up to form a Christmas tree with Santa with that change how we feel about Steve. When we make judgment, or moral decisions on people using the negative stereotype, we have to know that the information is incorrect. And we have to know then that we need to find our own firsthand experience to understand who Steve is if we're going to make decisions about him. Next slide, please.
This is a photograph of 10,000 faces. It's a quarter of the number of people homeless. in King County, it's two thirds of those that are homeless in Seattle. I've minimized the photos in this photograph of each person so much so that they slip into the oneness of the photograph. Or you could say the oneness of homelessness. This is how the negative stereotype against homeless the homeless sees them as a group as one human though they're not. Next slide please. But if we come closer to see 112 faces, we can begin to differentiate from one person to the next. And if we come even closer, next slide please. To see 28 people something remarkable happens. We can not only differentiate, but we can identify with this person looks like my hand or that man reminds me of my father who passed away years ago. Maybe that person, I feel like I would really like to get to know. If you come down to the second row, and go down all the way to the end, to the right, you see James. Next slide, please.
And if you sit down with James right next to him, you begin to see his humanity. And what you also see almost instantly is the James has a twinkle in his eye. And very quickly, you find out that he's a funny guy. I mean, really funny. And if you stay longer, you will understand that James was homeless for 40 years. And that his erratic and violent outbursts on the street when he was panhandling in the Mont like neighborhood, were a symptom of all those years of trauma. A lot of people were afraid of James. Some people were mean to James. And some people love James sorry. Next slide, please. This is a photograph of James receiving over 100 birthday cards on his 50th birthday, we made a post on the facing homelessness page, asking people to write and send cards and letters. And I can't explain to you the level of joy that he received finding out that these cards came from all around the country, including to overseas from Japan and Norway. And being illiterate. We read each one of them to him. It meant the world. Next slide, please. In this photo, it is the very moment that James was told that he is going to be moving inside.
On the right is a woman that is his case manager and on the left is Blair Jordan. Blair Jordan was a University of Washington student when she read one of my posts on the facing homelessness page about James and she said to herself, you know, I'm just gonna go meet him. So she pulled her car over. And she walked out to the center of the road where he was panhandling. And she began a friendship. And it changed her life. When she graduated from school, with a business and a finance major. She decided rather than to work for the land developer that she'd intended to, she would apply to a local nonprofit agency that was doing social outreach. And she became a case manager doing street outreach. Next slide, please. This is James two weeks after he moved into his department. He was radiating. Next slide, please. And this is James in the hospital at the University of Washington, where he spent a lot of time over the years and so much gratitude for the kindness that he was shown there. During his last days, Blair was there constantly. Their friendship was this amazing and beautiful thing.
This is the question, really for all of us. Do we want to step forward? Or do we want to step back? One of the crazy physics about this is that when you go about thinking you're going to do something in service for another human being. The crazy physics is that you are actually the one that gets enriched the most. It's not every once in a while, it's truly every time. I want to take a moment now to share a little bit about what happened to me when I leaned forward into meeting people that were homeless. Next slide, please.
This is the house that I moved my architecture office and practice into in 2010 in the Fremont neighborhood. Next slide, please. It was a long the Burke Gilman trail that I rode my bicycle to work on. And next slide next to the Ship Canal. And it was on this bench that you see on the left there that I started to meet a lot of people that were homeless. I had just turned 50 And it was the first time in my life that I had really met people that were struggling I had successfully orchestrated my path In a city that had an homeless problem, including I grew up on Queen N, and worked downtown Seattle and somehow had missed it all. I still don't understand how that was possible. But at this bench for the first time, I began to meet people. I was also designing extremely wealthy people's homes, people that had what seemed to be a never ending stream of of available funds, and also meeting people that had nothing to their name. But what was on their back. And for me, that was extremely confusing to see these two worlds, so opposite right next to each other.
And one morning, when I was riding my bike into work, next slide, please. There were these two art carts parked in front of my office. And they were filled with art. And I got off my bike. And I don't know why I did this, but I tapped the man that was sleeping on the bottom shelf under a blanket, tapped him gently on his shoulder. And I said, if you want, when you get up, you're welcome to come to the gray house for a cup of tea. And now hour later, this man, next slide, please. came into my office and introduced himself as Chaka. And as we were sitting for this cup of tea that we were having, he asked me if I could listen to a children's book story that he was writing. And I hesitated because things were super busy as they always are. And in my hesitation, he pulled out 20 pages of notebook paper, and began and he wasn't so much reading it as he was performing it. At one point, he started to sing another poor point he began to dance, and about three quarters of the way through, I just began to tear up. And then he was crying. And then I was crying.
And when he finished, I just blurted out, I have this shed outside, it's eight by 10. And it has a lock on it. Why don't you leave all of your art in the shed instead of having to traipse it around the city. And then, a few minutes later, I said what I was initially afraid to say. And that is and you can sleep there too. Next slide, please. The next morning when I came in Chaka was already up. And he hadn't gone to bed that night, he had organized the shed and on a six foot by three foot section of brown craft paper, he had painted me this giant painting of a lion goddess to give to me in gratitude. What I discovered very quickly was that Chaka was this beautiful, talented artist. And he told me that he had been on the streets of Seattle for 10 years. And that he was extremely frustrated that he had been not able to sell his work that he was giving it away mostly for food and for supplies. And I just said, Look, why don't I start a Facebook page for you, we'll call it Chaka. And we'll just put photographs of your paintings on there and see if we can get them sold. So we did that. A woman in Bellevue immediately bought the first painting that was put on the site for $400. And she was like what? It was the most money he had seen in a long time. We did this for probably five and a half months.
And one morning when I was coming in to the office and turn the computer on and read on the Facebook page. A comment from an 18 year old woman that said, Oh my God. I think I just found our father. And then another comment from her sister 17 years old. That said it is her dad and then comments from his mother in all of his sisters saying Chaka we love you. Please come home to Pittsburgh. Right when I finished reading that Chaka came in the door, he had his paintings with him. And I said to him, I have to read you something. And when I did, and I turned around to look at him. He was just streaming tears. He said to me, I have to go home. He told me that he had left his daughters when they were seven and eight. Because of his mental illness. He was and is bipolar and has serious anger management problems. And he didn't want to damage them in any way. Later, I found out there. Chuck, his father had done the exact same thing to him when he was seven.
That evening. We went to Fred Meyer Chaka was getting rid of all of his food stabs and he said, We're going to eat like kings tonight. He then spent the night in our house and in the morning 4:30am. Next slide, please. I drove this man to SeaTac to say goodbye to someone who had become a really good friend. And when I'm driving back to my office on i Five, I'm just bawling. And thinking about what had happened, this blizzard rushed in and, and suddenly, in five months, I'm, I'm emotionally really sad about losing this friend. I hadn't seen it coming in, I really hadn't seen it leaving.
And I realized that next slide, please, that I needed to start another Facebook page, and do the same thing for folks that I was meeting to show the beauty of the people that were on the street. And my hope was that in doing that, by sharing this beauty that other people would step forward, and together, we could begin to address the crisis of homelessness. Next slide. When I did that, my architecture office instantly turned into a drop in center. I didn't see that coming either. It became unstoppable when word spread from Ballard through Fremont, the district. My office also had a bathroom that was free to be used. And this is Cesar and Garland in the photo, just hanging out. Next slide. This is Steve, who you met in the BlackBerry Bramble doing a crossword puzzle. The Facebook page at this time was really growing fast. A community was forming. And I was changing. I found that the closer I was coming to people outside, the closer I was coming to myself. Next slide please. This is Johan flying a remote helicopter in my office. No, I was not getting any architecture. Next slide please. This is Mark having a cup of soup. Next slide. Feature John playing his guitar. There was constantly music in my office free all day long music. Not from preach just from preacher John but from a lot of people. Next slide please.
The Facebook page reached 50,000 people. For 10 years. Every request I made for those out on the street a couple times a week was met instantly. I saw that community suddenly has this giant empathy reservoir that just needed to be tapped. People extremely kind people. Also were just showing up not calling, not emailing, just showing up with lots of things. These people brought food and sleeping bags. Next slide please. Boots, next slide. Musical instruments next slide. tents, tarps, sleeping bags. What was happening when I was working all day is donations would just show up they would cover the floor. People would come in and take them away. It was this ebb and flow all day every day. Next slide please. This is a photo of Ronnie who was in the office when Karina came in with her mom and 53 boxes of Girl Scout Cookies Ronnie is photobombing the photo I was trying to take of Karina if you look on Corinne his wrist you'll see a little wristwatch. When Karina had handed Ronnie a box of Thin Mints he reached into his backpack, and he gave her a small watch he had found on the street. It was her first watch. It meant a lot to her. Next slide please.
This is Johan. He brought in a goose that he grabbed off the Burke Gilman trail because he wanted to have a picture of him holding his goose next to the decoy goose. I had that shock it gave me I don't know if this was the moment when I realized I'd gotten in too deep. I would go home in the evening my wife would say, Honey, did you get any work done today? And I say I would say no. Do you know what happened today? And then I would tell her that One day I would be in a tent doing CPR. Another time a woman came in, that was all bloody, had been raped every single day. Things were happening.
And what occurred to me was that the people that were walking into my office were more important, infinitely more important than anything I was drying. I knew I needed to close my practice and start a nonprofit. Next slide, please. And the focus the singular focus of this nonprofit would be to provide easy entry points for the community to get involved to address and ultimately end homelessness. Next slide, please. We started this talk with this slide. A man sitting on a bench with a blanket over him. If we don't lean in and step towards this person, this is all we'll ever know of him. And what we know of him will be the negative stereotype that we have adopted. But if we step forward, come close to find out for ourselves. Next slide, please. The journey begins for us. Thank you