Mornin Bitches
A cursing, foul mouth old ladies take on the present world!!! Filled with her opinions, views on current events, and special guest appearances!
Mornin Bitches
What If Everyone Had A Place To Call Home?
Your TikTok Bubbie speaks from the heart about homelessness in Los Angeles, weaving personal experiences with powerful insights from a recent LA Times editorial. Having faced housing insecurity as a child, with family furniture repeatedly placed on the street during evictions, Bubbie shares how the safety net of grandparents prevented her family from becoming homeless – a luxury many don't have in today's housing crisis.
From her "hip-hop building" in North Hollywood, Bubbie has witnessed the neighborhood's transformation as unhoused populations grow. When discussing the shocking statistics – 75,000 unhoused people in LA County and 45,000 in the city – she emphasizes that behind each number is a person with unique circumstances and challenges. The poignant stories shared from Carla Hall's editorial humanize this crisis: a neatly dressed man who lost his retail job and simply wanted a room somewhere, a woman who couldn't find shelter options in her community, individuals trapped in cycles of poverty despite their efforts to improve their situations.
The podcast takes a firm stance against ineffective policies like anti-camping ordinances that merely relocate people without addressing root causes. Bubbie challenges listeners to welcome affordable housing developments in their neighborhoods rather than opposing them, arguing that housing is a human right rather than a privilege. With compassion and clarity, she advocates for practical solutions – small houses, supportive services, and community acceptance – that preserve dignity while addressing immediate needs. Her closing message reminds us that advocating for housing justice isn't just policy work – it's acknowledging our shared humanity and responsibility to ensure everyone has a place to call home. Will you join the movement to create communities where no one sleeps on the sidewalk?
MORNIN BITCHES PODCAST
Hi everybody. It's your TikTok Bubby on my Morning Bitches podcast. Of course it's a little past morning, but you know today is a Bubby free day. What I call, but I mean by that is and you know, I don't edit this, in fact I don't even have it on camera Well, I see myself, but you know where you can see me. I got to figure that one out, but it's like I want to talk about yesterday as I went to get my measles. You know, I'm a vaccine, I'm pro-vaccine, that's all I got to tell you.
Speaker 1:So glad I got all of my vaccines because my illnesses as a child were pretty horrible. You know, I got the German measles when I was young, very young. I don't know why they call them German. Well, where did I get my German measles? In my vagina. I mean, that was a horrible thing. My father, god bless his soul had to carry me to the bathroom because when I peed it was so painful. That's where I got my scab. I mean, come on, boil on my ass when I was a kid which left a dimple germ. Measles in the vagina, measles which gave me 104, 105 fever. Oh no, wait a minute, chicken pox. That's where I got it. I got it in my. That's where the germ. I don't know where I got, I don't remember, but I remember being very sick. So when I went to get my COVID vaccine, which I did a couple of days ago, then I went to get my measles vaccine yesterday, it knocked me out. I was very tired all day as I was walking around.
Speaker 1:When Ed and me moved from the Hollywood Hills, we had a beautiful house. It was like a mansion 3,700 square feet but two people. My mother lived there until she passed, which was that was one of the greatest things that I was able to do caretake for my mother before she passed. We did not have the best relationship, we just did not. I loved her dearly, whatever reason she was like an enemy of. She did not like me I still haven't figured that out, whatever Okay. So basically, but we took care of her at the end of her life and she lived a great life, I have to really say, and that's the truth At the end of her life got her hair done all the time, her nails, her toes, you know, took her gambling, had a great time, took her to Palm Springs what a life. Breakfast, dinner, whatever. She had a great life the last year and then she passed and you know we eventually had to sell our house. Come on, I mean, you know, our life was not the greatest in a lot of ways Financial mistakes here and there.
Speaker 1:Nobody's perfect, but you know, when we moved to the valley 10 years ago, north hollywood, we moved into this building, which I love because it's the hip-hop building. A lot of hip-hop artists, a lot of people who support hip-hop artists, live here. It's a multi-generational um, every color black, white, brown every sexual proclivity is, and I love that about this building. You know, and we're Ed and me and one other guy we're the oldest people in this, we're the old folks. We've lived here for 10 years. But the neighborhood was, you know, wasn't. It wasn't a unhoused or homeless enclave or enclave, whatever you say enclave, and I say enclave. It wasn't that, not yet. But things began to change and that's what it is now.
Speaker 1:So yesterday morning I walked down to the pharmacy which is right next to my building. You know, it's a multi-use building. There's the golf store right underneath and then the CVS pharmacy right around the corner. I see this woman and the police and the fire engines are there. Where do you want to go, ma'am, we will get an Uber or a taxi to take you to Cedars. She didn't want to go to St Joe's, I guess. Well, st Joe's is in Burbank, it's very close. But it just made me very sad and I shared about it on my TikTok. You know my TikTok that I love so much. And if it goes away, there's nothing I can do about it. I've got my Instagram Lemon, I've got it all so, but whatever, and I thought about that, I thought about when I started this podcast a couple of years ago I just wanted to give my opinions up, my unfiltered opinions.
Speaker 1:Homelessness was a very important thing for me because, growing up in Brooklyn, which I've shared so many times with my family, my father was a ne'er-do-well, came from a wealthy family, but for whatever reason I don't know what happened to him when he was a kid His mind went kablooey and mother was angry and he was, you know, a ne'er-do-well. So we were always moving or being kicked out of a place to live. By the grace of God, my grandparents took us in, thank God, so we were very lucky. We didn't have to live on the street, but our furniture was out on the street and that's what happened. All that beautiful mahogany furniture was on the street. So, you know, I started doing research on the unhoused, which used to be called the homeless, you know. So there was only one unhoused person in Hollywood, where we live, dennis Woodruff. He was very fun but very famous with his Cadillacs. He was the only one back in the day on Bronson Avenue, if you know. You remember.
Speaker 1:Okay, today's is an article in the Times. Okay, by Carla Hall, member of the editorial board. First step on homelessness listening to the unhoused. Don't we all want better for people who are this impoverished? Our community isn't thriving. It's summer for us to live on the sidewalks, she writes.
Speaker 1:When I began covering homelessness through the editorial brand of the Los Angeles Times, a service provider told me something that has guided me to this day If you meet one homeless person, you've met one homeless person. So, in addition to writing about homelessness policy and fights over housing, I wanted to hear the stories of people I encountered in my neighborhood and around the city. I wrote about the well-kept man who lived in an RV outside my condo building with its fluffy white dog. I urged my concerned neighbors to help him get services and not get him towed. One neighbor a lawyer was kind enough to do free legal work for him. Eventually he drove up the street and never returned.
Speaker 1:I met a woman sitting on the sidewalk outside a wine store in an old industrial stretch of culture. She's on the west side of Ackottner Avenue. One evening before the 4th of July 2019, her name was Michelle, she was in her 50s and she told me it. She said I called the non-profit hotline 211, but the only thing the operators could find for her was a bed in an antelope valley For our firm, where we were on the west side. After a while, michelle slumped down and said she wanted to go back to the hospital. The owner of the wine store and a staffer walked outside to see what was going on. I expected him to complain. Instead, they asked how they could help. I called an uber to take it to the hospital. When the car arrived, the owner of the store pressed cash into the driver's hand, asking him to take care of her. When I got back to work after the holiday, michelle had called my office zone and left a message thanking me and saying she was okay. I never heard from her again. The Los Angeles Homelessness Services Authority now has a computerized system that tracks many shelter beds across the county in real time. It was rolled out to service providers this month and will be made available to the 911 hotline system in July.
Speaker 1:Another time I befriended a neatly dressed man who sat on a bench and politely panhandled outside a whole food store in Santa Monica. James, in his mid-50s, had lost a job at a big retailer and when his unemployment benefits ran out, he became homeless. James told me he wanted to meet. What wanted was to rent a room in a house somewhere. He watched as luxury cars whizzed by and he said surely someone had an empty room to offer him. Eventually, a service provider found him a room in a six-bedroom apartment just west of USC. I visited once and brought him groceries. He shared the kitchen and dining area with the rest of the residents. At one point we heard a woman yelling people here are crazy. He told me with chagrin. This was not the room of his dreams. I lost touch with him after that, and then there was Joshua, a homeless man I had kept in touch with for years.
Speaker 1:I was the foreperson on a jury that found him guilty of a misdemeanor battery on a life and why he had a Metro bus in 2019. I was curious about his life and why he'd gotten in trouble. After the trial ended, I spent hours on the phone with him sporadically as he violated his probation, went back to jail, then emerged again, usually with a new phone number. He found a trade school and took computer classes, wanting to learn about some kind of skill that would help him find a job. Eventually, he said, an instructor told him he was too unprepared to take the course and she couldn't devote the time necessary to catch up. These days, he exists on general relief and CalFresh food benefits delivered on an EBT card. He has spent nights sleeping on benches and trains and more recently on buses, where he has found sympathetic drivers who chat with him and look the other way when he doesn't have the fare.
Speaker 1:I repeatedly urged him to go to a shelter, but he refused, saying they weren't safe. I have listed the reasons why it was worth a try. I know you want better for me, ms Hall. He said, hearing my exasperation. It won't be like this. I want better for all of them the unhoused people I met and those I never did, don't we all? They don't have to be heroic figures to deserve housing any more than the people who already live in housing are heroic. I can't guarantee that some of the folks never napped on your lawn or, worse, went to the bathroom on it, but such cases only underscore that society should provide for every person's basic needs to be met with dignity eating, sleeping and other bodily functions and I have written editorials calling for more public ballots throughout the city editorials calling for more public ballots throughout the city. We should want better for all the people who are the impoverished, who have got waylaid, possible by illness or substance abuse, but above all, poverty. They are hamstrung by an economy which is housing, where housing is a commodity, an investment that skyrockets in value for no reason beyond it, is scarce and therefore increasingly valuable to its owners and decreasing accessibility to the vast number of Angelenos who can't afford housing of dollars a month in rent. There are 75,000 unhoused people in the county of Los Angeles. About 45,000 of them live in the city of LA. They all need permanent housing.
Speaker 1:I once spoke to an assembly of students at a private school alongside Emily Marchunk, a woman who was formerly a homeless. She started by asking the students in elementary and junior high what they wanted to be when they grow up, hands shut up as she ticked off various professions. Now she said how many of you want to be homeless? Every journey in homelessness is different. The one thing unhoused person shares is this no one intended to be homeless. In Marta Chuck's case, crippling illness and depression caused her to lose a job and a family. My life fell apart, she told the students, but with medical care and help from social workers she found permanent supportive housing, then another apartment subsidized by a housing voucher, and now she speaks often to work group various groups as elected officials about her experiences. I spent years and thousands of words arguing for measuring measures that would increase finding in both housing and services for homeless people's needs the sort of services that helped her.
Speaker 1:I have scolded people for opposing homeless housing in their neighborhoods and when they voted for the measures for anti-camping ordinances. The way homeless people get out of the neighborhood. Anti-camping ordinances don't make people vanish, they simply get pushed to someone else's neighborhood. Homelessness housing is a misdemeanor, really. It instantly eliminates the problem that it names, because as soon as people stop in their apartments, they cease to be homeless. Those who suffered from mental illness or substance abuse and crushing poverty still will have those struggles, of course, but now they can face them without the knowledge of a secure place to sleep every night. This matters. This is a problem you have to be faced, and how much harder if you don't have a place to shower, store your possessions or use the bathroom. What a great piece this is. Thank you, carla Hall.
Speaker 1:In this last piece, I write as a member of this honorable editorial board that has cared about people and their fate in Los Angeles and beyond. I challenge you to care about providing homes to people who never have them anymore. I challenge you to welcome new, affordable housing when it is proposed in the community because, as an Angeleno witnessing the crisis, you know how many lives that housing could change, how many lives it could save. Hold the Los Angeles politicians accountable, not by insisting they keep these developments and out of your neighborhood, but by demanding they build more of them up. Los Angeles cannot thrive if there's a community safety and homes.
Speaker 1:Another force out onto the sidewalk. Onto the sidewalk, and that's the way I feel. And when our mayor came in years ago, inside housing or whatever she called her referendum. Tell me where is it now? Just tell me, Mayor Baird, I'm just wondering. So if you've got any kind of an issue with this. As I said, I'm so grateful my Bubby and my Papa took us into their house when we had no house, because we had no houses we would have been out on the street living. You know that's where we would have been. So I love you all and this is your Bubby talking, your TikTok Bubby, who loves all of you so much. I'm such a believer in providing places for people to live. Little houses, small houses, it doesn't matter. Everybody needs a place to keep their possessions and things. So I just thought I would tell you, if nobody told you, they love you today, and I hope you listen to this podcast and download it. We all need a place to live. Okay, and I'm looking at the sky in here, miles Templeman, who was an unhoused person, celebrates receiving a room through LA County's Pathway Home Program.
Speaker 1:Congratulations, miles. Tiktok puppy is sending love to you and I love all of you and please take care of yourself. And let me tell you, if I had a lot of money, you know what I would do. It's the truth. I would go around to each unhoused person on the street and give them something 100 bucks, 50 bucks. My son, cameron, and I used to do that. We used to feed the kids online for Thanksgiving. Back in the day they were online. That's what we did. We gave them money and I had the money. So that's my dream. For LA, it's a small dream or a big dream, so it's a dream and I love all of you. Thank you.