Greg Voisen
Welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. This is Greg Voisen, the host of Inside Personal Growth, and drew for all of my listeners, they know that I have been working in the area of homelessness for some time, through our own foundation, which is compassionate communications foundation and all the authors who listen to my podcast. Thank you. Thank you for your many years of support and donations. I sincerely appreciate it. It's gone a long way, helping the homeless on the other end of the line. He wouldn't normally have been in San Diego but he's in Vacaville this morning. doing some stuff with his kids is Drew Moser Drew and I, I connected because I was doing some research on homelessness in San Diego and the various nonprofits, and Drew and I connected. And we've now built a strong alliance. And I wanted him to come on the show and talk with all the listeners about what lucky duck is doing in San Diego to assist the homeless drew good data. Hey, Greg, great to be with you. Good to be with you as well. I want to let our listeners know a little bit about you kind of your background, it's always important. Before we get into kind of the important questions around what's going on with homelessness in San Diego, what is lucky duck doing? How can people out there get involved and what are the ways they can do it? So Drew is the executive director of lucky duck Foundation, which raises money to fund activate and lead high impact programs. And for all of you who are interested you can go to lucky duck. It is just lucky duck foundation.com. And we will put a link in the blog to that as well. So that all of you can get there. So it's lucky duck foundation dot o RG I'm sorry. I think I said calm but it's dot o RG um, so he's been in this role since 2019. He's passionate about facilitating the generosity of donors who are committed to immediately helping those suffering from homelessness. Prior to joining Luckey doctor was the executive director and president of the San Diego foul of champions in San Diego sports association. Prior to that, he was the director of basketball operations and video coordinator for men's basketball University of San Diego. Drew earned a business degree and an MBA from the University of Redlands. We also played basketball for the Bulldogs. And during his senior season, his team set the all-time scoring record for the NCAA division by averaging 132.4 points per game. That's a lot Drew. I can see why you guys set a record. He's married his wife Whitney. And then she graduated from University of Iowa, where she played soccer for the Hawkeyes. As you guys can see, they're a sports family. That's what he's doing up in Vacaville with the kids. He has three kids, Blake, Bow, and Remy. And they all share this affinity for sports. Well, Drew, thanks for being on the show and taking the time this morning to speak with the listeners. And I think to give them an idea or an overview would probably be good. What's the challenge with the current homeless situation in San Diego? What are some of the key challenges that lucky duck faces? And how are you working to address that?

Drew Moser
Sure, it's a real simple answer.

Greg Voisen
Okay,

Drew Moser
dealing with homelessness. I say that just first of all, thanks for the introduction. As you can tell, when you boil it all down, I'm just a dumb jock. But I really believe in teamwork. And I think ultimately, that's what it takes to address homelessness is actually something more than teamwork, but like teams of teams coming together to address it and really tried to do so in a unified manner. And that's what lucky duck foundation endeavors to do. Our mission is to alleviate the suffering of homelessness throughout San Diego County. Our co-founders match all donations up to one and a half million dollars per year. And so we raise that and then some and we're always out there pounding the pavement to garner additional support and then we'll invest it into programs that are tangible and meant to have a high and immediate impact. So to your question about what's the current state of homelessness, it's moving in a troubling direction for several reasons. housing costs continue to rise. folks struggle with addiction and behavioral health. There's loss of employment And, and the list goes on. And so where we put our efforts largely is providing immediate pathways off the streets as quickly and cost effectively as possible. Sometimes the government likes to love and loves to talk about adding housing, which I think we can all agree housing is an ideal outcome. But it's extremely costly, and it's very long term. We say if you focus on housing, that's like telling passengers on a sinking ship, hang tight, we'll build you some lifeboats sometime in the next two to 20 years. Because that long if not longer to add or acquire housing. So we, the lucky duck Foundation, has purchased and constructed several industrial tents, structures that can go up within months, and provide hundreds of beds for literally pennies on the dollar compared to the cost of housing. And then we fund a multitude of programs. Once people move off the streets, such as employment and job training, we've supported more than 20 different programs that that help connect people to employment or more provide the training that they need to go out and, and secure livable wage jobs. There's a lot more to it than that. But that's a, hopefully a high level overview of who we are and what we do. And it's an awesome board of directors that sincerely care about driving results, do not care about credit, and really try to bring together the region to roll in the same direction, which I can get into more details, you know, later. Yeah,

Greg Voisen
and I think we should it look for listeners out there. You know, they hear the news at the night, and the evening news, you know about homelessness. Many of them have never stepped into the world or touched it or don't understand it. But you addressed a couple of things there one the psychological issues that the people have, to the lack of homelessness, three, the length of time it takes to get these government housing projects going like father Joe's just finished not that long ago, think 420 some odd units in downtown San Diego. But we have approximately if I'm not mistaken, about 9000 people in San Diego homeless as we currently speak, or is it greater than that?

Drew Moser
Yeah, it's slightly more than that, if you're going off the Point in Time Count, which is the annual count done, which is just a snapshot, it's one day over the course of the year. Right? The more accurate number is, you know how many people touch the system over the course of a year. And unfortunately, the numbers probably three to four times that. And so there's far too many pub people suffering on the streets. And that's where we try to whether it's purchasing and constructing industrial 10 structures or pushing on government to open and activate underutilized government properties. providing those immediate pathways off the streets is critical to help people start the process of recovery, and then getting on to a much safer, and

Greg Voisen
I think rehabilitating to be honest with you, because as I've been out there on the streets, just speaking with people, as I told you before, the number one issue will come out is the rent was too high, they got kicked out, something happened, they lost a job. There's a slippery slope many times toward homelessness. A lot of people just think that it's drugs, drugs could have aggravated it because they maybe didn't have enough money. But frequently it is this loss of housing, what are the critical aspects you're addressing homelessness, is ensuring access to food and shelter, which you just said temporary shelter. And what I find really, very interesting is that lucky dot collaborates with a lot of other local entities, or non-governmental entities, most of them and some governmental entities to provide the essential services speak with us about this teamwork that you're doing in some of these other agencies. Because I know you guys have a program where people can come and volunteer. They can make lunchboxes, those get distributed by another organization, not your organization. Your some of the people that drive the trucks are people that have rehabilitated through your program. So I think it's important for all these touch points for people to kind of understand how you're lucky duck is basically taking this whole team of people and trying to collaborate with most of them.

Drew Moser
Yeah, I'll give you a few examples. We have a food and water outreach program. that's meant to provide sustenance and hydration to people living unsheltered. And it was launched in response to COVID When all the community and faith based feedings went away. And so we provide cold nonperishable meals to anywhere from 500 to 1000 people daily, where we purchase the food, we pack it through the help of volunteers, and then anywhere from 20 to 30 different organizations and outreach teams pick up those meals from us and distribute them throughout San Diego County, we've distributed over 1.7 million meals to date. And really, the objectives are twofold. It's one to provide people with some sustenance and hydration, but to it's to equip those outreach workers with a meaningful tool to build trust and rapport and relationship to help people move off the streets. And it's something that we can't do on our own. But by collaborating with the 20 to 30 different organizations, they can go out and distribute those meals. And we surveyed the outreach workers to say, “What’s this working? What do you see in and 85% of them said it improves their interactions with people such that so that they are more likely to connect to the resources that exist and move off the streets and find a brighter pathway. So that's one example. Another example, as I mentioned, the more than 20 different employment and job training programs that we support. One of them is a partnership between the Salvation Army feeding San Diego and the lucky duck Foundation, which hires shelter residents at the Salvation Army. As Food Rescue route drivers feeding San Diego provides the rescue vehicle and all the rescue routes. And then funding from the lucky duck foundation covers all wages, plus gas and maintenance and insurance to employ the shelter residents. Well, so far that programs rescued over 600,000 pounds of food. And every person that's gone through it has secured full time as long term employment, and they're still housed. So that's something that none of us think about

Greg Voisen
speak about rescued food. I mean, you use the term lightly. I know what it means, but I think some listeners might not be right. So when you're rescuing food, speak about what actually happens. Because you know, when you look at sustainability of these things, most of these organizations like yours, even you got a pretty good budget, but they're running on minimal budgets to try and keep this stuff going. They may be getting some grants from the government, some of them, many of them are by donation, just like lucky duck. But when you rescue this food, what do you mean?

Drew Moser
This is a perfectly viable food that would otherwise end up in the landfill. And so these residents at Salvation Army go out to places like Costco and Amazon, and Starbucks and other retail locations to snag this perfectly viable food, and then they bring it back to their food pantry to distribute it to folks who are homeless, or on the brink of homelessness. So they've got some sustenance and feeding San Diego, that's their bread and butter is Food Rescue. And the Salvation Army is all about rehabbing people putting a roof over their heads and giving them meaningful employment opportunities. And so by these three entities coming together, we can accomplish something that really none of us could do on our own. And so that's one example of the

Greg Voisen
clients are these agencies drew like, you know, where you're rescuing the food. You said Starbucks, Amazon and Costco, and you mentioned three big names that everybody knows that, you know, obviously, there's probably a lot of agencies that would like to rescue food. And I know feeding San Diego gets it from Vons, and they get it from other places as well. Are you also going to those grocery store chains, or are you letting feeding San Diego kind of be the primary source for their trucks to drive into feeding San Diego to get that rescued food?

Drew Moser
Yeah, feeding San Diego takes the lead on which locations to rescue from they have contracts with those retailers, those companies, and so that's where we're all trying to leverage each other strong suits were about raising money to fund tangible programs that can be quantified and help rehab and support people feeding San Diego is all about rescuing food and they know where to go and what time of day in which what vendors to provide it from. And then the Salvation Army is putting a roof over people's head and giving them meaningful employment opportunities in a much brighter pathway.

Greg Voisen
Give an example of the Salvation Army, giving some of the homeless the opportunity to work what would that look like you find somebody out in the street? I think these real life examples are really true. You have a couple that you profiled at your website, but about gentlemen that have actually made it from being out on the street, to now driving a truck to helping other homeless. So it's

Drew Moser
a full circle. Oh, for sure. So like Emiliano is an example he was on the streets battling addiction, and, and Salvation Army would outreach to him and hey, you know, come on, come on inside, let's help you find a much healthier pathway in life. And he resisted and resisted, finally said, okay, I need to turn things around. So he came in, got a place to stay. And they gave him this employment opportunity. Well, he did gangbusters, he ultimately moved on or moved up to oversee the program. And, and when you've got that experience, and credibility to then do the same for others, that creates this great full circle type of experience where they can then go out people like Emiliano can go out, save other people's lives, give them meaningful employment opportunities, but there's room for growth. And these jobs are, they're meant to be a steppingstone to something more long term and live, you know, livable wage type jobs. And he's a living example of that, in fact, I think it was Good Morning, America came out last year and did a profile on that this particular collaboration and Emiliano himself, I'm sure it's on our website, if you want to see it. And so yeah, and those types of individual success stories are what it's all about, where you see the individuals life change through meaningful collaboration and a little bit of resources to help them move onward and upward in the world.

Greg Voisen
at a fundamental level, though, you know, I'm old enough to remember when we had very strong mental health programs. And I'm not going to say that the people that I speak with don't have some mental health, many of them do have mental health issues. And a lot of me will tell you that they don't want to get off the streets, they don't want to go back into housing. Right, you can actually speak with them. And they'll say that, you know, this issue is that you deal with includes a diverse range of individuals with unique needs, let's face it. And how does lucky duck Foundation, kind of you've talked about this, how you're getting food. Let's talk about the mental health thing, if we could for a minute, you're dealing with families, you're dealing with individuals that are struggling. And in many cases, there's mental health issues there. Who are you collaborating with in San Diego that you've had the most effective results with, in helping people with the mental health issues associated with homelessness?

Drew Moser
Yeah, when we look at how we think we can have this strongest impact. Ultimately, we settled on let's focus on seniors, and let's focus on youth for this year. And the needs of each of those populations is much different seniors. Unfortunately, it's the largest and fastest growing segment of the homeless populations is, so many of them live on a fixed income. And we all know what the cost of housing and inflation is doing. So it's just it's bad economics. That population though largely becomes homeless for economic reasons. Very little addiction, very little mental health. Very little criminal behavior.

Greg Voisen
It's always it's always money with them. Yeah.

Drew Moser
When you when you shift to youth, on the other hand, 50% of the chronically homeless population was homeless as youth. And so it's we believe it's critical to as one service provider says, to catch those kids while the cement is still wet, because you can completely change the trajectory of their lives. And so in their mental health needs, and issues are much higher and more common than seniors. So some successful collaborations we've been able to implement is there's a few of them. One of them was through the monarch School in San Diego, which is for homeless youth. They have a solid model that in addition to the education provides their youth and families with mental health, supportive services is that trauma those youth are dealing with and their families is significant to say the least. And so they We've got a pretty solid model that they wanted to take beyond their bricks and mortar of their current location to a few other schools that have a high homeless population. So we said, Alright, let's we offer to the matching challenge, if they could go out and raise the other half is a fairly significant contribution, you know, we would get behind them. And they were able to go out and raise it fairly quickly implemented, that several different schools, and nearly 500 youth benefited from these increased services. So that's one example. Another example is there's a 13 year old, who started his own nonprofit organization to benefit youth. And he, every week, goes down to Perkins Elementary, which is actually right down the road from the Mara Monarch School High homeless population. And he simply bring some basketballs and a coach and he plays basketball with these kids for an hour. And the reports from that principal in that school are through the roof for how powerful of a program, it is simply to give kids an opportunity to be active have that feeling of, you know, being included in a group. And so we were able to support him, we were able to organize a Harlem Globetrotter out there to come and visit the kids and the Harlem Globetrotters were in town. And you know, something simple, like that was totally brighten those kids days. And the principal just completely raved about it. So those are a couple examples, the, for folks who are unsheltered out on the streets dealing with, you know, severe mental health issues. That's, that's a challenge to say the least. And where there's simply not enough behavioral health beds and resources throughout the county. It's an area that we'll focus on here in the future. And we think that the county is poised to do some, some fairly impactful things, given their resources and focus. But, you know, in the meantime, there's several others, I could rattle off, but hopefully, those are two good examples of where and how we've gotten involved largely on the youth side. Because that's where the issues can start and simply are much more common.

Greg Voisen
Well, I think homelessness in any city, San Diego included, becomes a political issue, to say the least, you know, hey, you're not going to build housing next to me, you're you've got these issues, let's get these people off the street. You know, all people have to do is read a newspaper, go on the internet and or watch television, they're going to see all kinds of conflicting stories. And with that, brings a question to me. You know, it's really this homelessness is, you know, you got all these intersections of all these agencies, some governmental agencies, you got people with lack of health care, you're trying to death youth and aging population who are homeless. And you know, health care becomes an issue, an issue, how does lucky duck foundation advocate for systemic change, to create some lasting impact on homeless in San Diego? Because, you know, I know that father Joe's has always said, the primary reason is housing. Well, you said at the beginning of this podcast, you know, yeah, it's a sinking ship, you want to wait and, you know, two years, 10 years, however long it's going to take. And so you guys have done a wonderful job at putting up what I would call permanent temporary housing, because that housing is really a little more permanent than most of them. What how do you see this getting from where you are now to someplace where I'm not saying we're going to end homelessness, but at least so that we don't have quite the issue? Were lucky Doc is heavily involved in that.

Drew Moser
Yeah, when our group got involved. Peter Seidler who's the owner of the padres, he's, he sits on our executive committee and is very closely involved. And Dan Shay is also a longtime business and civic leader. And those two teamed up back in 2016. To say, you know, this issue is getting out of hand there's seemingly little leadership or action around the around helping people and so they organized a weekly meeting of other business people in town to determine how the private sector plus philanthropy through the lucky duck foundation could influence change, and set out from the B Beginning saying that we do not care who's a Democrat or who's a Republican. Everything we do is going to be based on facts. There's no concern for credit. If local electeds take meaningful steps forward, our group will be the first to pat him on the back. But if the efforts lacking the pat on the back is going to be lower and harder, as we're not afraid to publicly call out, you know, political inaction or missed opportunities. That said, we're not afraid to applaud them when they aren't moving forward, you know, with meaningful decisions. And so, Peter and Dan, that that weekly meeting that they organized, happens every Tuesday, and call the Tuesday group with Tuesday group has not missed a meeting, weekly meeting since 2016, including Christmas Day and New Year's Day. And those are a discussion largely around strategy for what the private sector and philanthropy can do to influence change and how best to collaborate with or push on government to implement system type changes. That will move the needle, an offshoot of that as our group regularly hosts, symposiums led by Peter and Dan, which is a wider discussion of key leaders in the space from government to the regional task force on homelessness, the Housing Commission to service providers, business community, other philanthropists to get people in the same room, dialoguing on a specific topic with clear action steps following and when Peter and Dan first got involved, they realize the people in this space weren't talking to each other who should. And too many people were trying to put on their Superman capes and solve the world's problems. Instead of collaborating and having discussions around, you know, what are you doing? What are we doing? How can we better work together. And so it's that those are a couple examples of how we're endeavoring to create systems level changes throughout San Diego. Another program we've implemented is something called shamrocks and shipwrecks and it's a public grading system to measure political will and effectiveness around addressing homelessness throughout San Diego County. Good actions, good shamrocks, bad actions or inactions, good shipwrecks and the whole point is to shine a light on what's working so it can be replicated, but also highlight what's not so it can be corrected or avoided altogether. And it's includes all 18 cities throughout San Diego County, as well as the County of San Diego. And again, meant to create that unified approach of you know, if somebody if leadership is our electeds are doing good things in Carlsbad? Well, let's look at that. Let's study it. And can that be scaled to the 17 other cities throughout San Diego County? Or if somebody's doing something in Chula Vista that's taking too long? Or why is that and what can be done to move things along? So those are a few examples of voucher,

Greg Voisen
I'm sure you've seen plenty of roadmaps that have been built by various agencies to say I think this will correct the problem. And have you ever seen any, quote, social impact investing from the outside world? Because this takes lots of money to solve your one agency out of many? I don't know how much money is being, quote, invested or now given into this homelessness problem to solve it. Here in San Diego. I don't have a thumbnail view of that. But maybe you do. And then how are we measuring the impact of all this money that's being spent to help resolve the problem? And I know that in some areas, you know, you could call this social impact investing. That's where an investor from the outside world comes in and says, hey, I'm going to actually make an investment but I'm looking for a return. But I want to put people to work, or I want to do something like that. Do you have any examples of that working in San Diego or can you give us what you believe would be a viable roadmap for some of the many problems that you've addressed here in the last half an hour that we've been on?

Drew Moser
I'll give you a one example of a social impact investment. Our most recent employment job training program is something called Tin Nice place. It's a pizzeria and print shop run by homeless youth at a youth homeless center downtown. And we provided the capital cost open the doors, and then we'll provide some operating dollars until it becomes cashflow positive, because it's meant to be a sustainable enterprise that will benefit or employ about 50 youth per year. So that's, that's one, that's a good. Yeah, we're not looking for a return on that we're looking to employ youth create a sustainable business model, that's a social enterprise. Well, you're

Greg Voisen
a nonprofit, so you're not looking for a return. But there are investors that invest in businesses, or basically are taking people and trying to help them off the street. And they are for profit, meaning nesters or for profit,

Drew Moser
yep. There. So that's one example on the folks looking for return. There are some housing funds designed to add housing for the middle income working folks, because housing is so expensive. And so this fund is set up to Inc, increased housing inventory for you know, teachers and firefighters and policemen and generate a return for those investors over time. And the understanding from those investors would be, you know, it's they're going to take a smaller return than they might in the private sector, but they're benefiting the community at large. And what that does is it helps people know the working class find homes, but it also, in theory, will help break up the logjam that you see in housing where it's so expensive, and there's such little inventory available.

Greg Voisen
Yeah. And that's a great example, because there's a company in Florida called DLP. And what DLP is, they're gonna do, their goal is a million housing used units for middle income, lower middle income people, right. And so they're hoping or that impact that has, and they are paying their investors and investors are putting millions and millions of dollars in this to have these units. They're either existing units that will be rehabilitated, or units that they're bringing online. So DLP is doing a big impact investing funds in that arena. And I love the Timmies place example, because you're a nonprofit, actually saying, look, let's employ youth, and you didn't make a loan, you basically gave money to temiz place to help people I presume, get themselves back on the street. But all these little initiatives you've talked about, take all kinds of time to not only find but then that and get approval, and get down the stream. And you've talked about many of them. And I want to congratulate you from really managing so many of these because as the executive director, they have to come across your desk, then you're taking them to committee, and you guys are talking about him, and you're finding places where you can take the money that's coming into lucky duck, and actually put it out into the homeless challenges that we have and help solve some of the issues. In addition to the financial resources, and the volunteers really play a critical role in supporting the homeless individuals, how's lucky duck, engage the community and encourage volunteers to participate in many of these efforts? Because look, you're not out paying many of your people but you have lots of people that want to donate time. I know that on certain days, people go down to National City and box up lunches and put them in and people come in. What how else? Are you utilizing volunteers that are out there maybe listening right now? And saying, hey, look, I would like to volunteer my time. It is always in the nonprofit world. Time talent treasures. You know, it's an important element.

Drew Moser
Yeah, we and none of this happens without the help of volunteers. I think it's 93 cents of every dollar we raise gets invested in in programs. So we take pride in operating a very lean organization. We have a staff of two people that we're able to accomplish these things with and it's really through an excellent board of directors and a volunteer base. And so there's lots of ways people can get involved. If you go to the share your luck tab on our website, it'll give you this big, long drop down of different ways people can plug in, but we do need help. A couple example this is packing meals through our food and water outreach initiative every week, down in nationals City for a few hours, you can come out and assemble those meals and make a difference and help feed a heck of a lot of people. And then we also have a program that's called the lucky ducklings, which is all about engaging high school youth around our mission. And we're in eight or nine different high schools locally over 100 youth through that have signed on in support of our mission who volunteer who give back and design their own programs and strategies. They help fundraise and go through several other exercises, it's sort of a built in to call it a curriculum, but a program that makes it really easy for them to plug in and make a difference. And they can bring their parents along for that ride as well if they want. So those are a few examples of

Greg Voisen
what those are good examples. And people just need to go who are listening to lucky duck foundation dot o RG, you'll see a great website there. There's videos posted, there's all kinds of things about the programs they're doing, and how you can get involved. Also, there's a donate page there. For those of you who live in San Diego County, there's an upcoming event. And I wanted you to speak with that, because it's September, what's the date again? September 28. Okay, and that is, how would people get involved in that, just go to the website and click on the button.

Drew Moser
Yep. Okay. So the showcase soiree, September 28, at the sound in Del Mar brand new music venue, and we're going to have kind of an entertainment and variety show, and we try to keep it light and fun and casual, it's not your traditional Gala, it's an opportunity to come out and, and, and share your luck and be inspired and hear some, you know, encouraging stories and get a better feel for who we are and who's behind our organization, and then how we go out and make a difference. So September 28, and yeah, everything, all the information is on our website@lucky.foundation.org. Great,

Greg Voisen
You also can sponsor your own page. So they have it set up so that if you wanted to go out and help raise money, you literally could have your own fundraising thing and send out an email or link to your friends or family or neighbors or Facebook ad or whatever you want to do. And that's all there. And it's all pretty much automatic, you can just push a button, and literally help them raise funds by all the people that you know, because now you're supporting lucky duck. So it's just a way to kind of trickle it down. let more people know about lucky duck foundation. Look, and kind of wrapping up our interview here. I have two more questions. One is homelessness. We know you and I know and many people now it's kind of stigmatized. There's leading misconceptions. There's prejudices around this. And it's almost in a lot of cases, like, people don't want to touch it. They're the outcast group. You know, these are the lazy folks, these are the people that don't want to get up and do anything. And I'm not saying that's true with everybody, but people see it. But it's almost like, well, I see it, I don't know what to do about it. But I don't know if that's a charity Avon really want to support and I'm just gonna be really blunt, because I know what it's like. And you know what it's like? How does lucky duck work to raise awareness? And the challenges with these stereotypes about homelessness in San Diego? What are you doing as far as you're concerned to campaign to let the people know about this, and to try and remove some of those stigmatism is that this particular area has?

Drew Moser
Well, kind of like I mentioned earlier, let's we focus on the facts. And everything we put out is based on facts and the decisions we make are based on facts. And in addition to that, we put out a fairly steady stream of content on social media, highlighting, you know, individual success stories are successes of programs that we invest in. Because it might sound cliche, but it really is one life at a time and you know, if there's 5000 people on the streets, there's 5000 different stories. And so telling those stories in those success stories of people who've have, you know, overcome some really challenging circumstances. That's really what we try to focus on and do it in that collaborative spirit of, you know, everybody can own their small piece of the puzzle to make a difference whether that's donating whether that's volunteering, or like yourself, Greg figuring out a way to use your, this podcast and this platform to raise awareness and raise some money and help people. And so that's where we really try to give people every opportunity to plug in and bring whatever strength or gift or resource they might have to make a difference while telling those stories about Emiliano, or there's a lot of stories about youth that we didn't get a chance to get into today that, you know, are in a much better place, because of people coming together out of out of, you know, a place of caring and wanting to help.

Greg Voisen
Well, there's lots of stories and people can go to the website, and they can learn more about the stories and what you're doing with jackets, and what you're doing to build temporary housing, what you're doing to put meals, what you're doing to, as you said, aggregate this food that's, you know, kind of lost, you're doing so many different things. And the touch points are so many, that it's really quite impressive. So that being said, what are the lucky ducks future goals, and kind of an ongoing effort? Let's kind of wrap it up this way. In other words, if you're at a project, you know, you're the executive director right now. And I presume you'll stay on as Executive Director, leading and forging forward into the future, looking at one regional area. I mean, because we're not Los Angeles, we're not Orange County, we're not Riverside, or San Diego in particular. But if you looked at our footprint, and you looked at California, we're going all the way up to San Francisco and beyond. You see, we have more of an issue with this because of our weather. People say people migrate here, many of the people that I've talked to on the streets came from somewhere else, right? They took a bus trip here, they got here on a train, however they got here they got here because we do have some of the best climate in the world. And obviously, if you're going to live out on the streets, this isn't a bad place to live out on the streets. What do you see trending? What are you doing to kind of put a plan together to continue to grow resources, money, volunteers, whatever into the future? And what impacts do you see yourself making and the next couple of years that could be major impacts,

Drew Moser
meaningfully reducing senior homelessness starting there, given it's the largest and fastest growing segment of the population, and one of our primary focus areas for this year, but likely beyond same thing for youth, we think is more manageable and within reach to end youth homelessness. And like peterside there in the San Diego Padres that's that is very important to them as well. So we continue to collaborate with the Padres and several others around youth homelessness. And the third is calling on local governments to reduce the criminal element or criminal behavior that revolves around the homeless population. And we think if we start with those three focus areas, we can make inroads speaking globally about homelessness really isn't going anywhere, but picking off, you know, chunks or segments. And really focusing on those particular areas we think is the best way to go. And so that's really what I would see for the foreseeable future. And then we're also

Greg Voisen
When you say law enforcement, reducing impact you're saying of homeless people that are out on the streets, reducing the potential repercussions of something they might do because of the fact they're homeless?

Drew Moser
Well, there's Yeah, we're talking about violent criminal behavior that can persist out on the streets, right? There's a youth center downtown that was dealing with it for four months of people just acting unsafe and unruly, when at the same time you're trying to help youth move off the streets and find a healthier, safer pathway in life. Simple things like that, that, you know, city, law enforcement, at the direction of mayors and city managers can create much, you know, safer environments and cities by having just a more a higher level of presence to increase public's health, safety

Greg Voisen
to you talking about AI or presence of law enforcement in those areas. Yeah,

Drew Moser
yeah. And when somebody does something that's violent, you know, get them off the streets immediately, instead of saying, hey, our hands are tied, like we've had some cities tell us. So, and then more broadly, we're working on a county wide strategy, I'll call it that I can't quite share yet but hopefully in the not too distant future we'll be able to share that and it's very much based on what we talked about here unified approach immediate pathways, working throughout the county in a truly region wide team oriented effort to start the process of reducing homelessness, it's really starting largely with youth and seniors.

Greg Voisen
Well, you've really amplified for our audience kind of the complexity of this. And it is a complex issue, because you've got law enforcement, you have all these other agencies you're dealing with, and you have these initiatives, these programs you're dealing with, we know that the homelessness issue, I'm not going to say that it's not. It's not simple to solve. It's one of those things that there's so many elements and factors, and I think you drew attention to it. You know, for every one person, they've all got a different story. And that's what I've found is all the stories are different. And to really work to change those mindsets really requires a lot. It can requires a lot of patience. It requires cooperation, it requires the fact that I want to change, you know that I really want to get out of this situation. You know that I've reached my breaking point, whatever it might be. And however that is I think the key is whether it's brother bentos, or its father Joe's or in San Diego rescue mission, or its lucky duck or it's the soup kitchens, or whatever it is, we're all trying in some way to make an impact to reduce the challenges that we all face. And I think we're all out there. And I just want to thank you drew for being on this morning. And giving the listeners a little bit, just a little bit of insight into how your agency or your nonprofit works, I should say, to help to reduce these challenges and what you're doing to do that. And we're going to profile more people, I want to let my listeners know, because about once a month, we're actually going to be interviewing more people that are associated with Lucky DAC or people that Drew's recommending, so that you're going to actually be able to get somewhat of a more insight into this as well. So Drew, thanks for being on inside personal growth. Thanks for taking the time to share the lucky duck story, your story and how it's all working together and intertwined together to help homelessness.

Drew Moser
No, thank you so much, Greg, appreciate you spending some time here and featuring lucky duck and what you're doing to support our efforts. And, and so it's our pleasure. Thank you very much.

Greg Voisen
Thank you.