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Standout Quotes From This Episode\nWe can honor the dignity, self-determination, and support the empowerment of people who are experiencing homelessness.\xa0\nIt is not the job of anyone to go out and fix people. If we think we can fix someone it means we are starting with the belief they are broken.\xa0\nGet in the habit of recognizing the difference between fear and danger or comfort and safety. Uncomfortable and socially unacceptable behaviors we may experience are off-putting but not a direct threat when listening to people on the street.\xa0\n\xa0\nWhen he was a teen, Julian Plumadore was living on the streets of Seattle, Washington.\xa0 His lived experience as a trans teen, experiencing homelessness, and his own twenty-year work sustaining his own mental health have created a beautiful and loving conviction to do right by people struggling with homelessness and mental health crisis.\xa0 In this interview, you will learn and be inspired to take up the work of humanizing homelessness.\nPolice and Crisis Intervention in San Francisco\nNow a trainer for MentalHealthSF.org who offers Crisis Intervention Training to newer San Francisco Police Officers and the general public, Julian has seen first-hand the impact of changing the way we think about homelessness and mental health.\xa0 People who were previously wary of police, now feel supported.\xa0\nIf you are going to call the San Francisco Police Department for help with someone who is struggling on the street ask the following\u2026\n \xa0 \xa0 We need help with a mental health crisis\n \xa0 \xa0 We need a Crisis Intervention Trained officer\n\xa0\nDo You Have Any of These Stigmas About Being Homeless?\nJulian and I talked about the wrong stigmas that we hold about people who are experiencing homelessness.\xa0 That they are lazy, choosing this lifestyle, and somehow deserve living this way. All of which are not true and Julian's own story helps us see the larger truth. The research I quoted about our brain\u2019s predisposition to fully not recognize as human people struggling with addiction and those experiencing homelessness can be found here.\nTo make a difference in the life of someone homeless, humanize them, was the big take away.\xa0\nBut there are things we need to get straight so we can humanize rather than objectify.\nWe are not the experts on what they need and what they feel.\nWe have to earn trust.\xa0 Just because our intentions are good we may still be met with hostility.\nWe have to have inner resilience so we can accompany someone struggling even if that means they hate what we represent in their minds.\nWe have to let go of our need to be \u201cthe good person\u201d \u201csaving this person\u201d and instead have real humility.\xa0 Otherwise, our service is to help us feel like a good person rather than truly being of service.\nThere is a real difference between our own conditioned fear and genuine danger. We have to lean into discomfort to serve folks who are on the street.\nThere is very real hope for growth beyond mental illness and homelessness but we, as a community, may not see the impact of our service to this group of people.\xa0 Keep going.\nThese are just a few of the wisdom points Julian offers but listen to the interview.\xa0 You will be so overjoyed to hear Julian's story and be infused by possibility and you will come away hopeful that there are people like Julian in the world doing this work.\nYou can learn more about Julian\u2019s work at mentalhealthsf.org and if there are other organizations in your part of the world that you think deserve a shout out, we would like to know about them.\xa0 Post a comment with a link to their work below.