The Homeless of Radford

The night I hit rock bottom, was sittin' on the old bar stool He paid my tab and put me in a cab, but he didn't have to So you could see I was hurtin', oh I wish I'd got his name Cause I didn't feel worth saving, but he saved me just the same And the day out on the water, when the fish just wouldn't bite I put my phone down and floated around, just so quiet And I could hear my old man, sayin' son just be still She can't find peace like this, in a bottle or a pill From the barstool to the living room, Sunday morning and the church pew And the deer stand on the hay field, and the interstate back to Nashville Chevrolet with the windows down, me and him just ridin' around sometimes Well there I'm runnin' for his mind, that's where I find God Let's go one more round The only thing we have to do is kill ourselves Tear down this wall We will make America great again If I say something and you don't want to listen, don't listen I'm runnin' around One more round One more round Hey, welcome to One More Round Podcast. I'm your host, as always, Keith Marshall. Today we're going to be talking about a subject that you probably, many of you, probably have no clue why in the world anybody would talk about this in the city of Radford. And that is the title of this episode, which is The Homeless of Radford. I'm going to bet, and I may be wrong, but I'm going to bet that the majority of people listening to this episode did not realize that there's homeless people in Radford. You may think, hey, you might see somebody here or there, but for the most part we don't have a situation or a problem with homeless people being in Radford. I want to tell you that I'm sad to say this, but you're wrong. I was wrong. I didn't realize that either. And apparently it's a problem that's crept up just over the last three, four, five years. It's not something that I grew up with in the city of Radford, certainly. Not something I knew about. And other than maybe just an occasional, you know, somebody here or there, we didn't see any kind of thing rising to what's starting to look like kind of epidemic levels here in the city of Radford. Now, why did I pick this subject? Well, you know, it's been something I've been thinking about now for probably about a month of doing an episode on this. And I had, you know, a couple other things that I needed to get out, some things that were more timely. But I've had this in the back of my mind, and I've kind of been doing a little bit of, you know, just slow research, picking up a few notes from here as I went on this subject in case I, you know, I decided to follow through and do it. And, but you know, something happened to me last week that absolutely piqued my thought on this, because, you know, I couldn't help but think about how sad it is to be without a home. You know, this past week, my mother passed away. It's been a really tough, really tough week for me and the family, my sisters and I, and the grandchildren and everybody, and my wife and everybody involved. It's been tough. And I know when you, if you've lost a parent, you know how hard that is, a mom and dad, it's tough. It really is. You really don't understand how tough it is until you experience it. Even if, you know, your parents are ready to go, they get to the point where their quality of life has deteriorated, and you'd like to see them not suffer. It's still hard, though, to see them go, because, you know, having parents around, I think it's almost a subconscious thing about home. You know, when parents are there, even though you're a grown adult, and you probably, you may be in better shape than your parents ever were, but there's something subconsciously about the fact of home and always having a place to go. If everything goes crazy, you can always go see mom and dad. Are you following me a little bit there? And, of course, my mom and dad both now have passed away, and I don't have any grandparents left. So, the idea and the thought of being parentless, one of my sisters said, you know, I can't believe we're parentless. And that really has sunk into me, and it has this feeling of instability. It's really not, in reality, it's not true. I completely support myself, and have since I was 19 years old. But that, in the background, your parent there, there's something special about your parents being around. And there's something taking away when your parents are gone, and you lose that aspect of that idea of home. While I'm on that subject, though, I want to thank all of you that have prayed for us, that have, you know, given me and my sisters phone calls, emails, text messages, Facebook messages, private, public, every way you could. People have sent flowers and food, and just went above and beyond. People that come by and stop by the funeral home and visited for a minute and gave their condolences. I want to know, that meant a lot to us. I mean, it really did. And it's a big deal, if you've gone through a loss like that, that people honor your parents by, you know, reaching out and loving on you a little bit. So, any of y'all that did that, I just want to say thank you. Like I said, it's been a tough time for us. I love my mom dearly. Fine, godly woman. And the world's just a little darker, in my view, since she's gone. But hey, life goes on. She taught me how to do a lot of things. And I need to make sure that my life is a reflection of what her life was. And that was her Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So, I miss you mom, but I look forward to seeing you soon. Now, let's get into this homeless issue. You know, I did a little research, and it's full of opinions, obviously, when you go online and you look for stuff. You know, it's not like Radford City. Like I said, it's going to be new to a lot of you that we're starting to have an issue. But we're seeing on the news all the time, especially if you listen to news other than CNN. MSNBC, you'll see that there's quite a homeless crisis across many, especially, just to be honest, the Democratic-run cities across the country. They seem to refuse to do anything about the homeless problem that they're seeing on the streets. I think DeSantis, in a recent debate, I think he was debating the governor of California, Gavin Newsom. He held up a chart, where there's actually an online chart in one of the cities, I think it's San Francisco or L.A. or one of them, where they're literally tracking where they found, I hate to say this on the podcast, but feces in the street. It's like a duty chart where they're plotting where people are using the street as a human toilet in areas that it's found and concentrated. It's just filthy. Radford invented this problem, that's for sure, and we're definitely not in that kind of situation. What I'm going to talk about and try to show you is kind of unique to the city that we live in, but just looking at some of the statistics across the country, right now, there are 653,100 people that are homeless across the United States. Of course, that's an estimate. That comes from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. 653,000, that's a lot. And that's up about 70,000 or 12% from 2022. Now, 28% of that 653,000 are in California, 28%. So, they have the largest problem. Of course, that state is run by Democrat Gavin Newsom. 28% of those are in California. Now, I wanted to find out, and by the way, looks like LA is leading, has the largest number, followed by New York City, if you looked at the two largest states with the homeless population. LA is number one, Los Angeles, and New York City is number two. LA having 65,000 homeless people and New York City about 61,000. So, they're leading the charge. They're number one again. New York and LA are, just for the wrong reason. By the way, both of them, again, led by Democrats. It's just the way it is. You can't hide from it, it's true. Now, as I looked at these national statistics and the fact that there's so many out there that are homeless, and the fact that it's growing, like I said, it's up 70,000 from 2022. What's the number one cause? Well, that's a little harder thing to pin down, just to tell you the truth, because everybody's got their opinion. And so, I just looked and I listed a couple of the number one reasons that are given for homelessness, and you decide what you think's number one. I don't know, but the first number one cause that I found, and it comes from the Arlington Life Shelter, according to their research, 68% of the homeless people have a problem with addictions, addictions to drugs, to alcohol. 68%. That's a large number. Now, the others were less, they just were kind of, they seemed more like opinions, but I looked at the Atlanta Mission. They said that the number one reason for homelessness is lack of trustworthy relationships. Well, that kind of don't float with me. That's just one of those sound better answers, I think, to me. There's another one from another group, Riverside.gov, I looked, and they said lack of affordable housing. And I thought about that a lot, and I guess that makes sense, lack of affordable housing, but couldn't you say that constantly? I mean, you could say, okay, if a house costs more than $300 a month, it's not affordable, because this person only has a few dollars. Well, how far would you go down if you said $100 a month? If they didn't have $100, well, it still wouldn't, lack of affordable housing would still be the reason. If they didn't have $5 a month, lack of affordable housing would still be the reason. There's a point, though, we have to figure out why can't this person, why are they not able to work? By the way, there's other sites that listed mental health as a huge issue. One of them said that the majority of people that are homeless have one or two things going on, the majority, and that is addiction or mental health issues, and also disabilities, too. So, those are major issues. I'm not today going to try to define the reasons for homelessness. I don't know. It's an extremely sad thing, and my purpose today is not to make light of it. It really is not. But my purpose today is to inform you about what's going on in the city of Radford, and I want to tell you one specific incidence that really scared me regarding a homeless man here in the city that's come to my attention, and I wanted to pass that on to you, just so you're just aware and you're paying attention. We do, as Christians, need to figure out a way to care for those individuals as best we can, to pray for them, to love on them within reason and safety for those involved, because I think as we go forward, you're going to realize that some of these situations and some of these people are just in a bad shape and need a hand up, but there's also some people that are kind of scary out there, too. So, I want to try to kind of cover both aspects of it and give you just an informed look at what I'm finding and what I saw here in the city of Radford. Now, before I go deeper into today's subject, I wanted to give you a little bit of an update about the last series that I've just finished, and that's Red Over Black, 1, 2, and 3. If you haven't listened to those, I encourage you, get your rear end back and listen to those three episodes, because, you know, the works I've done on this podcast, you know, I put a lot of work into those, and you need to hear what's going on. And before you even listen to 1, 2, and 3, you might want to go back and listen to Will Radford Remain in the Independent City, because I really believe that everything kind of melds together, and the decisions that were made just the other night kind of show why Radford is in the shape that it's in. In my personal opinion, it does. So, the other night, this would have been Monday, let's see, is that Monday, yeah, Monday the 11th. That was the day slated when city council would vote on the incentive package that was being offered to the Radford University Foundation, the Ready Agreement for the new hotel. Of course, we went through all that, and they had a work session, which is a meeting that they have before the council meeting to dig deeper into a subject, and I listened to some of that and talked to some people that spent some time there and were around some of the people in the discussions. I think it was a pretty sad state of affairs, just to be honest, the way I heard it and the way I saw it. It looked like the mayor did take some heat, but it also looked like the lawyer came in and had some proclamations about some things that I don't consider accurate, just to be honest, about whether or not he has a conflict and whether or not he can vote in all situations. The problem that I found with the presentation that the lawyer gave, which by the way, I felt like the way he sounded, it was like a guy who was trotted out there with a do or die kind of threat behind him. But anyway, he came out and he gave that speech and stuttering and stammering and kind of unsure of himself, it sounded like. But the thing it didn't cover was the fact that in my personal opinion, the mayor used his position in order to effect change on behalf of his employer. It went well beyond the fact that he had a conflict. He actually used that conflict, in my personal opinion, to the benefit of his employer, which I believe is not covered under any provisions or any carve-outs to allow an elected official to vote on an issue that he has a conflict with. And I don't believe that those specific incidences were sent to where they should have been. They were pursued the way the legal department within the city and the way the rest of council should pursue them. So in the end, the mayor did recuse himself from the vote. Now there's a second vote coming up. Anytime on council that you have an issue like that and you don't have a unanimous vote or you don't have at least four or more that vote in favor of it, you have to have a second reading of the ordinance or whatever it is. So we're going to have that second reading on the meeting coming up. I believe it would be this Monday. I haven't looked at the calendar, but they have a second reading on that. So we'll see if the mayor recuses himself for the final vote. I kind of doubt he will, but we'll see if he does. But either way, it passed three to zero. All the remaining council voted in favor of it. Both the mayor and vice mayor recused themselves from the vote. The remaining three members voted in favor of the incentive, and it passed. So that issue, I guess I'm sure it'll pass on the second reading. It falls under one of those deals, you know, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. You just got to do your job. You got to do the best you can, and that's what I'm doing. I'm putting the information out there. People can make the decisions that they want to make for or against, in favor or not in favor, hate it, like it, love it, whatever you want to decide. But I'm going to try to get you the most accurate information I can, and you can make a decision based on that. But in my personal opinion, what happened there on the 11th in the city council chambers was shameful. It was shameful all the way around. And my personal opinion, it did a disservice to the citizens of Radford, and it's definitely not indicative of the integrity and character of the city that I grew up in. But it is what it is. So let's get on to today's subject. Now, I mentioned to you that I've been looking into this homeless situation for some time. Actually, it's more than a month. The story or the, you know, my interest peaked in this subject when I got a message from a man that lived in the city wanting to let me know what was going on with he and his family and the situation that they had had with a particular homeless man in the city. Now, I'm not going to give you the person's name. I'm not going to tell you where they live or anything. Because I think they've been through enough, and they really don't need any more trouble. But when I tell you this story, I promise you, if you ever watch any horror movies, you've seen this in one of these movies somewhere. I think everybody should listen to what happened to this family in Radford, okay? In Radford City. What happened to them? And just realize how scary one of these situations could be for you if something like this were to happen to you and your family. Now, this particular family I'm going to tell you about, they live near a wooded area in the city. It's within walking distance from their house. You know, fairly close proximity. This particular piece of property, this wooded property, is private property. They do not own it. But they're friends with the landowner, and they have permission. They oftentimes would go on walks through the woods. It wasn't something uncommon for them to do, just to go out and walk in the woods a little bit, just for exercise or whatever reason. On this particular day, they were out walking in the woods, and they came across a camp. A campsite. Someone was living outside in the woods, and it was in, you know, fairly close proximity to their house. Now, what jumped out at them about this campsite? First of all, you know, for most of us, you know, we may have camped in the woods. We had a tent, whatever. But we've never really went out and seen a homeless camp. I have. As part of this research for this episode, I've done that, and I'll tell you a little later what I found. But in their particular occasion, they come out, and they find this campsite out in the woods, and they realize pretty quickly, you know, this is really close to our house. But something caught their eye at this camp, and it was an item, or more than one item, from their, they have a little garage-like barn near their house that they don't keep locked. And there were items from this garage, their garage, in this campsite. So they realized immediately that this, whoever was staying in this camp, had been on to their property and taking a few items, I think it was some rope and some other things, that they'd taken from the garage. So that worried them. You know, obviously, you know, something like that, you know, would worry you, too. So a little while later, they decided to revisit. Now, I'm not going to go into the details of what they did. But a little while later, they decided to revisit. Now, you say, why couldn't they see it from their house? Well, you know, when the leaves are on the trees, and, you know, it's in the woods, you can't see a lot of these locations. If you start looking now around town, though, you can start to see those. And I'm not going to tell you where they're at. You'll have to figure that out for yourself if you want to. The reason I'm not going to tell you is that almost all of these places are on private property. And no one, including me, should be tramping around on these private property without permission from the landowner. And I don't want to set somebody up that owns these properties for people, you know, causing them any kind of trouble. So I want to avoid that. But anyway, so they see a few items from their garage at this location. And so they decide later, you know, they hadn't seen anything. They decide to go back and to look and see if this camp was still there. Well, the camp was still there. And what they found in the camp really, really threw them. Because in this camp were items from nearly every room in their house. This person, this person that was living in this camp outside in the woods, not far from their house, had figured out a way to get into their house. Now, this obviously lit their minds up. You can imagine that you're a father or a mother and you look at this homeless camp or whatever you want to call it. And you see items from your cabinet in your kitchen. You see items from your bedroom, from your bathroom in this, in this camp. And what really upset them, and I can just, oh, it just, it just, I mean, honestly, it tears me up. There were items from their daughter's bedroom in this camp, personal items, pictures. And it scared them to death. It scared them to death. I mean, you can just imagine, this person had figured out a way to access, to get inside of their home. Now, they didn't have a security system, they do now, you can imagine. They didn't have a security system, but they did have dogs. You know, and I don't know about your dog, but if the mailman comes to put a letter in the mailbox, my dog goes crazy. So you're thinking, what about the dogs? Well, this guy had been feeding their dogs. He'd made friends with their dogs. In fact, they found their brand of dog food that they fed their dogs at this camp site. So it was pretty clear this guy had befriended their dogs. He was coming in and out of their house. And once they'd seen this, once they started thinking about this, and the initial just absolute shock and fear subsided, they started realizing that they knew something was wrong. He told me that his wife, several times while she was home alone, sensed, just had this feeling, that someone was watching her. Like she had passed somebody in a room that was there, but she didn't see them. And there were instances where they heard noises at night that sounded like someone walking, but they just passed them off. Because, you know, we all hear things in and out of sleep, halfway awake, that we think we hear, and it turns out to be nothing. You know, the house settling or creaking or whatever it is. And they started to recall some of these instances, and they realized that when they were finding doors left unlocked, that they knew they had locked, or finding things changed or moved around in their house that didn't make sense to them, they were realizing that this person had been coming into their house even while they were there. The man recalled an incident one day where he was in the shower, and he heard someone coming through the house, he heard them walking down the hall, and he thought it was one of his kids. He'd come out and no one was there, so he checked, and he found out it wasn't any of his kids. Nobody had been through the house. He heard the person come through the house, and it undoubtedly was this person. You know, it's a horror story. Now, the good news is, no one has been hurt. But I will say that this particular person, and they know who it is, is still at large and is still camping around the city of Radford. Now, you could say this person's hungry, this person needs that, but I think we all know, I was talking about home earlier, how important and how safe that space of our home is to us, for you husbands, for your wives and your children, for your mothers, for your babies, how important and sanctified that particular place where you live is. And for someone to come through your house, to be watching you, to be coming in and out of doors and figuring out a way in, I mean, undoubtedly, they had to believe that this person at some point had gotten into their house and had his own key. And by the way, the items that were taken were not items that necessarily, for example, he mentioned that he had money on the dresser one day. He didn't take the money, yet he was taking personal items and things like that. They found an old Halloween mask. You know, I mean, some things that really just freak you out when you think about it. And so that story, when he told me about that, now I know, let me just say, I know that may be an extreme case. And I do not believe that the majority of people that are, they're out and about in the city that are homeless are like that. I don't want to believe that. Okay, so I don't want this episode to paint a picture of all people that are in a tough spot like this as criminals, as pedophiles, as someone who's seeking to do some type of harm to you or your family. I don't believe that's the majority. But I believe we need to know what's going on, what's happening around the city of Radford. So we collectively, our city officials, elected officials, can come up with a plan to deal with this, other than just not talk about it like we do most things. I do believe that most people, or I want to believe, that most people that are homeless, if given the opportunity, would like to get out of that situation, would like to get back on their feet with a clean and dry place to stay where they can get themselves cleaned up, they can get a job, they can get back on their feet and back to being a productive member of society. I want to believe that most are like that. But I think we all have to be honest with ourselves and understand that they're not all going to be like that. And they're not all going to be capable in the state they're in of moving to that next step because of drugs or alcohol or mental illness or some other aspects that may be causing that. I believe that most can, but there's going to be some out there that are not. And we as dads, we as moms, we as families, we do have to protect our families from situations like that. And the first way to protect yourself is to actually know about what's going on. So I'm going to try, and I wanted to tell you that story. It tore me up when I heard it, and I think it will you too. But I wanted to let you know about it. And I want to tell you a little bit about what I saw personally when I went out and looked at some of those camps. You know, I don't know what I expected to see, really, when I went out to view some of these camps. I get, you know, I think of a campsite on the river or somewhere down in the woods somewhere. I mean, that's kind of what I think of a campsite. You got a tent, some sort of shelter built with, you know, a place to cook out and some things like that, a pit or a fire pit or something like that. And so that's kind of what I was looking for when I went out. And I saw it was a little different than that, though. What I found, and I observed at least four different sites. They were abandoned, the ones that I looked at, or I assumed they were abandoned. They looked abandoned to me. And here are some of the things I found. Wine bottles, beer bottles, liquor bottles, I found some of that. Odd things, things that you don't really understand why someone would collect. Just, you know, just baseball equipment. Just random desks and beat-up dressers. Things that you wonder how in the world did you get to. And these were in, the areas that these were in were pretty tough areas to me. It wasn't like you just, a little easy walk. No, you're going down hills. You're climbing over logs. You're having to move your way through some kind of treacherous rocky and wooded areas with blowdowns. So these weren't areas that were super accessible that you would think that you would pick. But they were areas like that. Some things that I found that disturbed me and some stories that I heard was, one was a baby's bath. One of the things that I found was a baby's bath. One of the little things that you give babies a bath in. And I had heard from one of the landowners that he had noticed that there was a couple that were clearly, they seemed to, this person to be kind of strung out on drugs. But they had a young child, like a two and a half, three year old child living in the woods with them there. Man, that really bothered me. I did see like some, what looked like maybe like a homemade weapon, like someone had took like a, something you'd use on a grill, like to flip, you know, maybe pick up hot dogs and move things around. And they had cut it off and made a wood handle for it and kind of filed it into something sharp. Who knows what they'd use it for. But I found things like that. There's some other items. And I worked and worked through the area and it looked pretty good. I did encounter somebody that was in the woods it was a little spooky. They were clearly hiding from me, which I'll be honest, I wasn't trying to find anybody. I was just trying to quietly look around, you know, with permission of, obviously the person's property that brought me there. But this person was a very large man and he was hiding in the brush up ahead of me, trying not to be seen. And I did not indicate that I had seen him. I moved on fairly quickly because I didn't want, you know, any kind of confrontation there. That wasn't my goal for being. I wanted to learn a little bit about it so I could be a little more educated so I could tell you, so I could explain to you a little more about what I had seen. And I've noticed, and I think you can too, and I'm not going to tell you where, I just think if you pay attention, especially now that the leaves are off the trees and the woods are more open, if you're driving up and down some thoroughfares in the city and you can see up into the woods, you know, obviously be careful when you're driving, but you know, take a look. Look up in there to the tops of the hills along the edges of the hills and you will notice, you'll be surprised, you will notice some things that when you're looking for it that are camps where people are living up in the hills and the areas around Radford City. Someone had put posted signs down on Wildwood Trail where people walked and they couldn't figure out what was going on. My sources are telling me that was actually a homeless encampment. They had actually come up with their own idea and they had posted, put up posted signs to try to keep people away from their encampment while they were on city property in Wildwood Park. So you know, people are coming up all around different areas and wooded areas on the outskirts of the city and you know, they're making their way. They have trails and they have ways to come in and they're getting food from different sources for free food and they're taking it back out into the woods. But you know, it's a really sad thing. It's a sad thing to see. It's a sad thing to see people getting addicted to something like Jeremiah Johnson, you know, living out in the mountains and you know, hunting for your own food. But instead, you know, what I'm seeing is just an area that I just cannot believe someone can survive in and that someone would put themselves in that situation purposely. So I have to believe that you know, something along those lines, I have to believe that at least some of these people are most assuredly suffering from that. And some of them, you know, may truly be without a place to go and this is all they can do right now. You know, I mentioned that I went down and I checked out a number of these sites but I also did, you know, a little research, talked to a few members of the law enforcement community about what they're seeing. And you know, they're seeing, you know, some similar things. Sometimes these camps can be quite large and there is crazy stuff down in these camps. I mean, people are, you know, setting up their own personal bathroom setups with mirrors and things out in the woods and they're also finding some things that are a little scary. They're finding some crack pipes and some needles and some other things that show there's some drug use going on down there and you know, it kind of goes back to what we were talking about with some of the reasons for some of this homelessness. So, you know, they also let me know that, and actually, there was a picture I got of a man that was sleeping down in Wildwood Park at the shelter that's used for instruction. I think one of the local teachers or former teachers or somebody had a shelter built to do some classroom instruction down there at Wildwood Park and one of the guys was sleeping down there on the table in the morning. They're using the bathrooms down there. They're using the bathrooms at Visit Park to sleep in at times and to take baths of some sort while they're there. So, you know, it's starting to get out of hand and I know many of you are not, you haven't heard this and you probably wondered yourself, Keith, I don't know, it sounds a little far-fetched. You might say, you know, I haven't heard this on the news or read it in the paper. It seemed like somebody would put this in the paper and I tell you what, we haven't had any real coverage from a newspaper in the city of Radford in many years. What we have is what I would call planted coverage, which means officials within the city plant the story that they want the newspaper to print and say, hey, come over, I want to tell you about something. They come over, they put their article in the paper and, you know, some of it's good stuff and not complaining, but there's no real reporting going on anymore. The Radford News Journal, in my opinion, they don't teach you anything about what's really going on in the city. They're really good at carrying water, but they're not any good at sifting through any kind of sand. I can assure you that they're not a real newspaper, okay? They're not a real newspaper. We used to have some real newspapers that printed some stories and talked about situations that was going on. Every now and then the run-up times will, they'll throw an article or something out there, but for the most part, they're just used to, you know, carry the water for the Democratic Party, whether it be in the state of Virginia, whether it be in the city of Radford, and they're not going to tell you any negative news about a city that's run by Democrats. They're just not going to do it, and right now we definitely live in a city run by a Democrat. But, truthfully, these things are happening. They're going on, and we're going to have to do something about it, even if, you know, certain people don't want to talk about it. So I think there's still a lot of good stuff going on and I think there's three things, three things that I believe have to happen. Now, I don't guess it has to happen. We can ignore it, right? We can just not do anything and it'll grow worse, and eventually somebody will be walking down at Bessett Park and something, you know, might happen or someone may get in somebody's home and there may be an attack or an assault or a misunderstanding that causes something. And let me say this, too, and I wanted to, before I get into any of these things, I want to say something. If you see one of these people, you know, don't be unkind to them. Don't do that. And definitely, certainly, don't take matters in your own hands and try to run them off your property or do something. Follow the right rules. Contact law enforcement and let them handle it. We have an unbelievable police force in the city of Radford. They are well-trained. They know how to handle people in situations like that. You do not and I do not either. Plus, you know, as I mentioned, my purpose here was not to attack people that are homeless because I still believe that the majority of them, they don't want to be in that situation. They would love to find a way out, a hand up to get out of that situation. So I just want to encourage you, don't be cruel. I mean, you know, we're all God's children and, you know, we need to treat each other like that. So, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't, there isn't some basic societal rules that shouldn't be followed. And we need to follow them, but we need to do them, you know, the right way and the careful way. And so, you know, there's three things that I want to say. These are my opinions and I'm just going to put them out there for what they're worth. They're not worth anything. They're just my opinions, but you may agree or disagree. But I think they're common sense. Number one, just basic rule here. These camps cannot stay. They cannot stay. If there's an unwanted camp on private property, that is trespassing. We are built on the fundamental principle of property rights in the United States. And if there is someone squatting or living out in the woods on someone's private property, they cannot stay. That's trespassing. And law enforcement will have to be contacted and law enforcement must get involved. And I've told you that we have an excellent police department, but it's entirely possible that they could be held back by public officials. They could be told, we don't want you to get involved in that. And they gotta follow what their bosses tell them. So, you know, and I'm not getting in the middle of that. I don't know the right hand or the left hand about what could or would be going on there. But if there's a situation where someone is squatting or living out in the woods on someone's property, they should ask them to leave first. And if they will not leave, then they need to be removed by force. And done by law enforcement, of course. Now, to continue with that, for the camps that are found on city property, they need to be cleared out as well. Just because it's city property does not mean, and it definitely does not mean, that someone has the right to just go out in the woods and set up a camp. I mean, I guess, in case you haven't noticed, city property is aligned to next to public property where we have our homes and our neighborhoods and where our kids are playing. There are people that are walking in Wildwood Park, you know, for their recreation. Those trails are provided with taxpayer dollars. And, you know, our wives and our daughters and our children and everybody else should feel safe without any thought to go down there and walk, you know, in the trails at Wildwood or Bissett Park. They shouldn't have to worry about that. So, the fundamental principle to this, if there's camps in the city that are unwanted on private property, they must go. We have to clear those out. If they're on public property, period, they need to go too. They need to disappear. They need to be gone. I believe number two, that the city of Bradford and its officials need to work with appropriate state and federal agencies to provide these camp members that are willing, a decent opportunity, to transition out of the woods, you know, and back into normal society. That's what we want. We want the best for those people. Okay? We want them out of the woods. Can you believe they're living, some of them are living out there with children? We want them out of those woods. We want them into a safe environment where they can, you know, live out to their best potential. And, you know, we're going to have to use state agencies to do that. And, you know, if there's some there that are not willing, that are not willing to be helped, that are not willing to listen when you try to provide them with an opportunity to leave for those that refuse to help, well, I'm sorry, but there's appropriate penalties for breaking the law, and we have to enforce those to the extent of the law. You cannot allow someone to just take over someone's personal private property and we just stand and say, oh, it's okay, we just can't let that happen. And, you know, no one should feel uncaring or unchristian for being concerned or worried about that, for being scared for their family or their children. You know, we have a God-given kind of a flight or fright kind of sense to us, you know what I mean? It's one of those senses that we have when we can kind of recognize when we ourselves are in danger or our family's in danger. But the scariest thing now is for someone to talk bad about you on social media. We replace the fear of what other people are going to think, and we put it at a higher priority of what's best for our family, our wives, our husbands, our children. We're scared to death of social media. We're scared to death of what they might say on one of the Facebook pages there in Radford City. But hey, you know, when it comes to your family and what's best, forget about that stuff. You know, do the right thing. Do the right thing for your family. Do the right thing for your neighbors. Do the right thing for the people around you. Treat people kindly and fairly, but we should all have a reasonable expectation for the law to be followed, our property rights to be protected, and that, you know, we live in a safe place. And Radford City is overall a safe place. It's a great city, but when we see an issue like this, we need to go after it and take care of it. We need to fix it. We don't need to let it fester. We don't need to hide. We don't need to go around go Radfording everybody all the time. We need to dig into some problems. We need to fix them. It's okay that they're public. It's okay. Just take care of it, and let's not hide them anymore. And that brings me to my last point, although I'm already giving it, and that's to stop pretending that these things are not happening. You know, you cannot solve a problem that you will not admit that you have. It's like the city running out of money. They've got a problem with paying their bills. They've got a problem with income versus outflow, right? But they've ran around telling everybody, oh, there's no real problem. Oh, it's just a little clerical error. It's just a bad time. Now they won't admit the problem, but it tells me it's going to continue to happen, and this time next year we may be worse than we were this year. I don't know. I hope I'm wrong about that. But stop pretending it's not happening, and when you have a problem, admit it. It's not a failure to have a problem. Everybody has problems. You have a problem in your personal life. You have problems in your marriage. You have problems in your community. Whatever it is, your club or whatever you're involved in, you're going to have problems. It's not a failure to have a problem, but it is a failure to have a problem and do nothing about it and allow it to get worse. Now that's a problem. That's bad. That's bad. So let's not let that happen. Let's dig into this, and let's fix it, and let's clean up those camps. Let's give those people an opportunity for that hand up, and for those that are just here that got problems with drugs or mental health or whatever it is, let's take the appropriate steps to get them out of the woods, the good, the bad, the ugly. Let's get them out of the woods and get them the appropriate help that everyone, depending on their situation, needs, because the people that we need to stand up for first are the citizens of Radford, the husbands, the wives, the children, the daughters, the families in the city. We need to make sure that even if it's far-fetched that something bad can happen, let's get out front of it. Let's make sure it doesn't, okay, and let's clean up the city of Radford when it comes to the homeless issue. Now, I've pretty much covered it. I think the best that I can. I'm sure there's more stories and more things to say. Again, you know, it's a terrible problem, all right, and we should have compassion for those people. We really should, but allowing them to just stay and continue this cycle of whether it's mental health or drugs or just being out there in the middle of wintertime when it's cold, that is not helping those people. It's really not, and, you know, I've heard some people say, what are our churches doing? There's only so much a church can do, and you cannot bring those people into churches as permanent housing. That's just not going to happen. They're not set up for that. That's not what they're there for, maybe for an emergency situation, but not for daily situations that are going on right now. So, hey, we do need to pray about it, but you can't just, I told somebody once, and I think I've used this before, you got a flat tire, you can pray about it, it's not going to fix it, okay? You may pray for help. You may pray for the ability to do it. That'll help, but you got to, at some point, roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty, and you got to take care of the problem, and we have a problem with homelessness in the city of Radford, and it's growing worse. All right, that's it for today. I really, I'm sorry I missed you last week. Like, I think you understand, I wasn't able to do a podcast last week. It was a time for bereavement for me and my family. It's been tough, but the Lord's good to us always has been, and I hope He's good to you. I know He is, if you'll let Him be. And we're going to finish today with the theme verse that we've always used, and it comes from Ecclesiastes, chapter 12, verses 13 and 14. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Fear God and keep His commands, for this is the whole duty of man. Hey, thanks for joining me in the ring today. I think it was a cool subject, and I hope to bring a few more of those to you in the future. God bless you and your family. I'm looking forward to Christmas. It's getting really close. We'll see you soon. Thanks. [♪ music playing ♪