Discussing Live Music, Tech Frustrations, and Homelessness with Ellis Benus and Wendy Sweats

Whether we like it or not, he's the self-proclaimed governor of mid-Missouri, and he's the host of TTBS, the podcast. Since we can't shut him the hell up, here's Tom Bradley. Thank you, Nikki Garment. I appreciate that. We're live from Truman's Bar and Grill, where I've got to tell you who's going to be playing tomorrow night at Truman's. Sometimes they have live music. I don't know that you're not … You don't usually go out, Ellis, and check for live music somewhere, do you? My wife and I love watching live music, but with four kids at home, it doesn't make it really easy to get to go out and see, but yeah. So you're like a Friday night, late at night, with a big band at Truman's. That is not the spot for kids. Not the spot for kids, but yeah, we love it. We love it. We used to take the kids … Back when people smoked in bars, we'd take the kids to the bars, but they'd be in pumpkin seats, so we'd set them on the floor. They were below the smoke line. They were below the smoke line. I think that's just something bad parents say. They're below the smoke line. That is funny. This guy over here is Ellis Bennis, floatingaxe.com is his website. Hey, let me ask you a question. Fire away. I hate technical stuff, and it goes from passwords that I can't remember, to websites that have changed, to updates on this thing, and then there's Microsoft saying, oh, but did you remember … Microsoft, get out of my life, please. My question to you is just simply, with you working in tech stuff all the time for Floating Axe, do you ever get pissy about having a tech day? Do you spend three hours in living hell? Yeah, it bugs me, too. Whenever you're wasting time on technology, as opposed to learning something new, absolutely. I yell at my computer from time to time, too. I've never thrown it. I've never hit it with things, but I do get a little angry from time to time, because it's supposed to work. So yeah, when it takes away from my life, instead of adding to, absolutely, the blood pressure goes up. I have no idea how great that makes me feel, that you get upset with things like that, because it happens to me all the time. I know. And you do know that. Okay, so let me mention a couple of things right off the bat. I enjoyed last week with the live open mic that we did, which was really, really great. Oh, yeah, yeah, the live music at Truman's, since we are at Truman's with our live broadcast show. Show? The band tomorrow night is called the Rusty Ford Band. Now, I have a question about these guys. Is that a name, an homage to a truck, what? I want to know if the lead guy's like, welcome back, my name's Rusty, I'm going to play some tunes tonight. Actually, it's a rock band, actually. He could still sound like that as a rock band, it's possible. I know he can. My question is, is there a guy named Rusty Ford? That's what I want to know, because we know a Rusty, we know a guy with the first name of Rusty. Well, and they used to have a Ford dealership. Yeah, and they used to have a Ford dealership, so. Rusty Ford. Or do they just call themselves, because they're like, yeah, we call ourselves. We have a truck, and they drove around in the truck. And then I'm like, so I went to look at their video, and they're actually wearing like mechanic shirts from a Ford dealership, they got hats on, and they got their names embroidered on there, just like you would. They're not all Rusty on the name, they have their own individual names. Well, I saw a guy that said Rusty on there, and for all I know, they're all named Rusty, I don't have. Maybe it's an homage to a dealership, maybe they're just paid by a dealership. This is what dealerships are doing now to drive revenue, they're just rock bands. We have a guest this morning, disclosure, I've known Wendy for a long, long time, and I'll never forget the first evening that I met her, and I don't even know that we'll have time to go into that. But if you're watching the video, and you see the broad view of her show scape over here, and you're like, man, she's kind of hot, what is this? Is it Tom Bradley's deal to try and just only get hot women on his podcast? I want to be honest with you, no. If you're ugly, I'll bring you on too. I'm here, so clearly. But it doesn't hurt that someone like Wendy Sweats could be the one coming on here. It's also way better when it's a video podcast as opposed to just a radio show, because it doesn't matter how good looking you are on radio, that's how Tom has had such a long distinguished career. For a long, long time. Wendy is a real estate agent in Columbia, and she's not originally from Columbia, but she's been here since she was really, really young. And so we'll go through that a little bit as well. And there's some things going on in Columbia with, well, it's more homeless talk, and it's a major, major problem that we have. And when we get into it with Wendy, I'll tell you what my belief is on where we're going with the homeless problem. So we'll get into that also coming up at the end, and this will not be about homeless. Keep Your Eye on the Crap, brought to you by Family Focus Eye Care at famfocuseye.com. And I got some crap in my eye, and I was working on it this morning. That's how you get pink eye. I almost called Dr. Rich, and I was like, I need you to make a house call. And then I thought, no, he'd actually be visiting me here. Like meet me at Truman's. I've never had an eye doctor make a bar call to me before. That would be interesting. So I'll look into that, but we'll get into that and talk about keeping your eye on the crap. It's a whole different thing that we will be keeping our eye on. Housekeeping notes. Someone asked about where our video and our podcasts are. You can catch it live on Facebook and on YouTube. And then you can catch it as a video and audio on both of those in archive form after the fact. That's right. If you like listening to it as a radio podcast, you can do that as well with audio only. And you find that at Spotify, Amazon, Apple, whatever the hell. Yep. Everywhere. Tom is everywhere. Yeah. As a matter of fact, as a matter of fact, I am. With all that being said, and I've still got a lot of stuff going on over here that I have to keep my eye on. It is time for us to move to this particular program so that I can, as a matter of fact, release the house. All right. Announcements this week brought to you by, by the way, the cousins are in as we refer to two of the grandkids from up north and they love Daisy Jane. Oh good. And they help us walk Daisy Jane. I even got them picking up her crap. Keep your eye on it. Keep your eye on the crap. When you get your grandkids to pick up your own dog's poop, I think that's ultimate. I'm pretty sure your peak grandpaing, yes, that's it. I am hitting the peak of grandfatherhood. I think the only level after that is if you were on your riding lawnmower following them while they walk the dog. I think that's the apex. I don't have a riding lawnmower. You don't have a riding lawnmower? All right. Well, then you can't reach this level, Tom. You can borrow mine. I just want to sit in the chair and drink a nice cold beer and watch them in the hot sun doing this. That's good. Thank you to Creekside Pet Center with the mid-mow dog boarding and it's Creekside Pet Center. It's Bed and Biscuit in Columbia and it's also in Boonville with Dirty Harry's. The big announcement this morning, the pet-tacular coming up in, what's the date on this thing? I want to make sure that I get this thing right. No, that's not right. What's the date on this thing? You know, this is going to be their 10th birthday. That's amazing. I cannot believe they've been around for that long. You guys have all the notes and I don't have the date on here. I'm just looking at you on the screen to make sure it keeps working. Is it working? It's working great. And your lips are synced up and all the audio is perfect. It is September 13th. September 13th. And it's from 10 in the morning until, and we'll go over this more when we get closer to that date, but I wanted to mention it to you how great that is. So God, 10 years. I absolutely cannot believe that. That is impressive. That is. Any business that lasts that long is impressive. Man, it really is. Okay, so we've got that taken care of and that brings us up to time to bring in our guests this morning. I don't want to dilly-dally around. I was talking with a number of people last night and emailing and texting with people throughout the last week or so about going to this discussion. Wendy Sweats and I have known each other for a long, long time and I'm appreciative of that. You really are a neat individual, Wendy, a hard worker, very, very successful. And let me tell you something. She's the kind of person that says, I'll do your podcast, bitch. Well, you didn't call me bitch, did you? I could. Maybe I should have, but no, I did not. And again, you've got to tell people I do not normally sound like this either. I'm here because I'm a champ. That's what I was going to say. You hit me this morning. She hit me with a message, but it wasn't like a voice to text. It was an actual voice message. So I can't, I can't do you, but you were like, you were like, this is what you're going to get this morning. It's like a preview. Yeah. And I'm like, I really, and you're like, I will not cancel on you. You are a champion. You're not feeling good. I'm not. I haven't since Friday, but I'm going to be, I'm going to be just fine. I mean, I'm doing all the things, elderberry juice, my mom makes them, I'm doing turmeric, I'm doing Dayquil. I mean, I've got antibiotics since the last couple of days, just because I feel like, now I'm getting out into, you know, the, uh, into the neighborhood and I feel like I'm now around people where I feel like I need to protect myself in them. You told Ellis you wouldn't shake his hand when he walked in, but you told me you were willing to kiss somebody that I didn't like that you didn't like. I'm not going to mention who she is. We all know. No, we do not know. You weren't here. So you, you don't know. I'm, I'm assuming you don't know what happens when you assume. I do not assume. You do not know. Wendy, thank you for being here and you are a champion for coming in. Congratulations on the great performance that your niece and her team put on. Yeah. It was World Series softball or whatever it is. It was regionals. Um, we, you know, we just, we had a little bit of jitters going into it for the first game we lost. We should have won. So we got in the loser's bracket. So we ended up playing an extra game. We played a double header. So we played more ball than everyone, but we did have the most scoring out of the entire tournament. We lost 18 in one game to nothing. We really, really had mad. They lost that first game. Didn't they? They crushed it. We crushed it. And again, I just want Indiana to win the whole fricking thing because they beat us. So, and you brought this, you brought this junk back from Indiana. That's the problem. That was a problem. You went to Indiana. Don't ever do that. Did I see your picture on, on the television screen or something? And they put auntie and Wendy on ESPN. I think. Oh my gosh. That's awesome. You've gone national. Yeah. It was like, that was really, really cool. That was awesome. I thought so too. I was really, um, I was very honored, honestly, around those girls are just amazing. I mentioned you're successful and you are. Is it just the two of you growing up? You and Ellie? So we have an older sister also. She lives in Boise. No wonder you don't talk about her. She's been, she's been gone since she was, I think, 20 years old. So she doesn't come back often and we, you know, it's very, very difficult to get to Boise. That's her for God's sakes. Well, I'll tell her. But Ellie, Ellie also successful and it runs in your family. You guys are from Herman originally and then you moved up to the big city of Columbia when you were, when you were what, at junior high or something? So it was 1989, I was 12 and we had 50,000 or 56,000 people in this town. I remember seeing the sign crying that I was moving to Columbia and I was moving out of, out of my cabin and out, you know, my, my parents were divorcing, so that's why, what brought us here. So wait, wait, the 56,000 is like, why do you take me? It's like New York to you. Is that what this was? Well, and then I went to Jeff junior, so that was kind of scary too. We lived in the Highlands, but I was bused downtown. It was like, well, this is where I'm going to school. What is this? And it's like this huge school. There's no air conditioning. Not that I was like, you know, it was just, it was just a big change. Your air conditioning in the cabin was a window. I had 12 people in my class, you know, in Herman. So going from that to going upstairs and downstairs and having, you know, 20 people in a class, it was a lot. It was a lot of change. I guess it was. But, but you guys just really excelled here through all that. So you are, you are truly a product of Columbia, not just junior high. And then which high school did you go to? I transferred to Hickman because the sports that I played were better there. What were your sports? I loved volleyball and basketball. That's awesome. Yeah. Rough Ridge has a killer golf team. When I was there, that was, that was the only sport we could brag about. That's good, man. I like golf. You, you, uh, and Ellie successful. You have been successful, but you did your real estate agent, which we're going to talk about problems with some of the vacant homes in Columbia that are for sale right now. I'm not talking about boarded up vacant homes. I'm talking about beautiful homes and what's going on. We'll get into that in a moment. You went to college here also. I did. You got a master's from Columbia college in what? Criminal justice. Whoa. Cause I wanted to be a lawyer when I grew up. When you, when you looked at me, she was like criminal justice. Are you coming after me or were you thinking about defending me? She's thinking of me. Oh, I would defend you. Thank you. Columbia college proud. I'm a graduate too. And so is my mom. I love Columbia college. How has the real estate business been for you? Amazing. I mean, I always feel like I'm busy, but I work, I work a lot. You like working a lot. I love it. And you've been very successful. I love my clients. They become my family. And that is, that is what it's about for me. I have two bulldogs. My son is in Denver. We're hoping he's going to be moving back soon. Let's just see about that. Let me mention something right now as we're getting deep into this conversation, we're talking to Wendy sweats. Now somebody hit me last week and they were maybe the week before Ellis and they were talking about when we were talking with Brian Newner. Right. Okay. And about halfway through it, they, they put a post on to Facebook saying, Hey man, would you mind telling us who this is? Cause we have no idea who this is. Oh wow. Okay. There's an issue with using the capacities we do online to get this show on to Facebook. I cannot put a post up at the beginning of it that says, here's who we're talking to. Oh, interesting. But if you go find us in archive form, whether it's with video or it's just the audio on those, I can say this is episode 13, which is what this is. And this is Wendy sweats. And so you'll know it when you click start. Okay. That all makes sense. But for those who are catching this live on Facebook, maybe even on YouTube, you won't know. So for you guys, I'll tell you now you're looking on the camera at Wendy sweats and she is real estate agent. People find you where in town? Um, I, my office is in Copperstone, front gate drive. And the last name is S W E T Z. Right. And do you, did you guys ever, or your family ever pronounced that as Svets? No, never. No. Sweats. She said it. She said that like, again, she's looking at me like, yeah, bitch, this is what it is. Yeah. It's not that. It's not sweats. I've always loved. I've always loved your attitude. I really have. And I'm so glad you posted online and talked about what's going on. I didn't know that this was taking place. My guess is it's been going on for a little while and that you're not the only one that's having this problem. You put a post on social media saying it's happened again or something that I have homeless. And they're squatting it probably in more ways than what we've got home squatters in our vacant home properties that are for sale. Tell me what, what, how long has this been going on? So the first time that it happened to me was downtown. I was getting ready to show a loft executive apartment and I went to show and there was a homeless lady that was literally kind of in the, just in the doorway and with all of her things. And I knew the client was literally like moments behind me. And I'm like, excuse me, I've got to get in this door. And it was, it was, it's scary because you don't know how they're going to react. She was sleeping. And so that was the first time I had like that interaction. And that wasn't a break in. She was out. She was outside the property, but she's again, that was the way, and this was, this was last year. Okay. Um, and then I just, I've just noticed so many more problems downtown since then because I have leased more properties downtown. And again, that was the first thing that I, that had happened to me and she just didn't want to move. And then, and the person did not want to rent because of that situation. That was a done deal. Talk about red flags in real estate. Homeless person on front door is, is a very big red flag, red flag. So, but recently, um, it's gotten so much worse because they're inside the home. So, um, the first episode happened, um, probably about four and a half weeks ago I had an agent that called me that was literally looking at a property that I had for sale. They walked in with a family. Oh my God. Oh my gosh is right. She literally said the man, the huge man literally walked like, like right past her and she was so scared. She literally took the family and they ran outside of the car and they left the residence, called me and she's like, what do I do? And I'm like, call nine one one. Like please call nine one one and have them call me. So this was actually in the county and the sheriff did call. They were very, very, very nice. They couldn't find the person. But when, when I went over there afterwards, there's drug paraphernalia. I have to clean this up inside, inside. Um, that was the first, the first time that that happened. And again, that was about a month ago. They kick a door in. So what I think what happened with this particular, um, this particular property was that the gate didn't have a lock on it. Um, they went through and some other agent, cause it was a listed property, left a back door open or, or they got in with a credit card. You know, there's all kinds of ways you can get into a house, obviously. Tell us all those ways, Wendy. That's what I'm assuming. Criminal justice major. That's what I'm assuming. But obviously, I mean, these are, these are, that's a huge, huge issue and he was a huge man. She didn't know what he was going to do. You know, slam the door on him. By the time they got there, he was gone and they didn't even lock up. So again, I'm going over there by myself afterwards, which I probably shouldn't have, but that was the first time that I was like, Oh my gosh, this is crazy. When I went to the back porch, I found all these weird things and I guess I just don't know what drug paraphernalia really looks like. That's a good thing. Yeah. Right, right. And I'm like, what is this? And, and, and all of these, and I've got pictures of all of this as well. So that was the first time that the, the second time, which was more intimate was, um, I have a lady that works for me that was going over to just literally dump out a dehumidifier at a different property, completely different property. The night before I had an HVAC guy in there because the AC had stopped working. So this is 6pm the night before. The next day, about 2pm, um, she goes over to, to, to, to dump out this dehumidifier and walks in. And there's two people that literally are, are like, they, I've got again, pictures they've been doing their laundry in the sink, they've showered, there's drug, there's drug pill bottles everywhere. There's, there's hypodermic needles, all their shit. I mean, backpacks, like they were ready to just stay in this house. So she runs out and I'm actually in the car like outside and she's calling and she's running out. I'm like, what's going on? So we, we, we move out of like the area and talk, call the police, please come. They said, what do you want us to do? And I said, I want you to try to arrest them. They did. So we went back in the house cause I was so afraid that they'd come back for their stuff. Of course. Because that's what the cops said too. Like they'll, they're going to be back. You, you realize they were going to be coming back for their things. So we packed it all up. How soon could they come back? Like if you're arrested for trespassing, we didn't know if they'd be arrested at the time. I just wanted to get their shit out of the house. So put it back in that shopping cart that was, that they rolled up with. So they would just take their stuff and just go and not go back to the house. That's not what happened. They were arrested and the other homeless people came and then there was, oh my gosh, all the stuff that we had put into these bags nicely for them were all over the sidewalk. So then I've got call, I'm getting calls from neighbors and people that are trying to walk their dogs on this. Like you need to do something about this. I'm like, oh my gosh. And I've got all this. Let me, let me understand that. You're saying that there, there were two that were in there. Are you saying more homeless came around? Correct. So there's a little network of the homeless there and are they like letting other homeless people know that they've made it into a house? I would say a hundred percent. That's how it's happening. I would say a hundred percent. They get their free government cell phones and they're blowing each other up saying, hey, I've got a great house to come. Check it out. So they took, the other homeless people came and took the drugs and then just put everything else that was like their clothes and whatever scattered all over the sidewalk. Again, I have photos of all of this. And then I'm in trouble because I need to go back and then re rebag this stuff, which Pam did. It was just, it was just so disturbing because again, they were so high and it's so scary. And now it's like, I don't feel, you know, very safe going into any vacant house. This is so much worse than what I was picturing when it really is. I mean, it's, it's already bad enough. You know, my father did some work on homes when I was young and I had to go in and clean up after, like, you know, this is in the early seventies, hippies that would just commune out in the house and they would trash the whole thing. It was a rented house, you know, and there's a clean up ever renters, not squatters. Right. Yeah. Right. I mean, but it was horrible. Right. Yeah. So I was, I was thinking to myself, okay, you're going to be talking about, you walked in, you found a bunch of stuff. And it's nasty as I would know. And it's horrible. It's wrong. And it's illegal and everything else. I don't know that I was picturing that you walked in there and or, or your associates did and you're finding people that are right there. And you've got drug paraphernalia all over the place. And it's, I mean, it's a, it's a current living situation for people that don't belong in there. Same house, different day. This just happened just yesterday or the day before. You said it happened again. Yes. So a cleaning lady came back to that same house and someone, a homeless person was showering when she walked in. Oh my gosh. Different one. They didn't already get out, did they? The people that were arrested. It's a totally different homeless person. So it's a different homeless person and they did call the police immediately and they gave that person a ticket. What do you mean a ticket? A ticket for trespassing. So they were not arrested. Why? The first couple was arrested. The second person that was showering in there. Why were they not arrested? I have no idea. And this was, this was in city proper? Yes. And it was, it was the Columbia police department. That's correct. Oh wait, did, this is the same house though. So the police did arrest the other two people. Correct. That wasn't a sheriff. That was police. And that was two weeks apart. And that's because, because they asked you and you said, yes, please arrest them. But there wasn't anyone to tell them this time or why, why are they not arresting someone who has broken into a house, is trespassing, is taking a shower in there? This is not someone that tripped and fell. They're doing it on purpose. They've done it before. They're going to do it again. Why are we? They didn't call me. I know that because I don't have this house listed anymore for various reasons. And um, that the cleaner may not have been as, um, I don't know, as direct as I was because he's like, what do you want me to do? And I was like, you need to find them and arrest them is what you need to do. Absolutely. I mean, I know it's, it's a, it's a drain on resources. They're going to be out. I mean, I know. Do you have any idea how long they were in after being arrested? I don't know if you knew that. So, okay. Well they were arrested on a Friday. So I would assume they would have gone to Monday with what, I don't even know what the options would be for someone like that. Like did they just stay in jail? Well, you're a criminal justice major, right? The only way to get out is if you pay to get out, if you bond out. That's correct. Well, hold on. Most people don't have bonds most of the time, right? Maybe not. Hold on now. We've got a whole different set of rules. Do we? For homeless people. Yes. And we've talked about this before several times and there's a whole different set of rules. There's a whole program set up. If they're homeless, what are we doing? What do we do with them? How do we take care of them? What do we do with their things? How do we explain things to them? What are we looking out for with them? There's a huge program. And as the chief of police, Shaluti, mentioned to us two weeks ago, three weeks ago, she said it's 20 to 30% of their calls every day. Oh my gosh. See, and we don't know that because we don't have any investigative reporting going on. And like it takes a lot of work to figure this out. She came on the show and she offered that 20 to 30% of our work and resources right now as a police department are going toward homeless people doing who knows what. And when people say that they want us to immediately think, well, what about that person, what they're going through? Wendy, I'm worried about the people that are innocent walking up to the house illegally, your associate, their potential customers right there and what they're facing. That's horrible. It is. Well, and if you want to zoom out like, okay, you're worried about the person. Absolutely. That's important. We want them to get help. Most of them don't want help because they want to just keep doing drugs. I know that's a generalization. I'm saying most, not all. But here's the thing. How many of those stories have to leave our town until our town becomes unsellable, right? We have a really hot real estate market right now, but how many of those stories have to proliferate into other areas that they're like, I'm not even going to go look in Columbia because just one realtor has had three different instances of homeless people. I mean, look, you're the, you're the pro at this thing. So is that, is that a concern for you? I mean, you have the immediate concerns. What the hell am I doing? What am I going to do? Of course it's a concern. I do feel like there's things that we can do though and be very proactive. And I think that there's, there are, and they're not that expensive. I feel like maybe, again, why should we not have to put a sign in the yard because of this problem? But that may be one of those things where I just don't do it. I don't put a sign in the yard. We've got enough places to market to. I know I might miss some buyers that might call, but again, to me, that's one option. We need security, some sort of game cameras set up. That's cheap. It's 200 bucks around there. We could do something like that. What's the point of doing the security? Because they're not even going to get arrested. Or if they do get arrested, they're out two days later and they're like, here's your free stuff. And other than recording something on site, you'd have to have notices from the security camera going off, which means you're going to have to have either some kind of a cellular connection on there, or you're going to need the internet to the house, which may be disconnected at that time. Don't they have the SIM cards and like the game cameras though? Yeah. So you could, you could have proof that someone was in there. But to have an alert that somebody just arrived and the shower just turned on. I cannot believe this is taking place. And you said it's all over. It is. It is absolutely all over. You don't want to tell us the places, the neighborhoods. I just can't because I feel like it's vacant houses that are all susceptible to this behavior. Like I was sharing with you before. I don't think you list bargain basement, cheapest houses. These were not cheapest properties on the, these are nice houses. I will tell you, I will tell you that one of them was just, just shy of $400,000. These are not crappy properties in bad areas. They're looking for these. They are finding them. Unbelievable. Good grief. Would you also say that these properties, let me back up for a second. You're not the only one this is happening to in real estate sales. I'm pretty sure I'm not. And I've actually gotten a couple of phone calls from other agents that are like, you know, do we call the cops and just let them know we have a vacant house for sale so they can kind of keep an eye on it. And that is what the cops said when they arrested those two particular individuals that day. We will, we will be policing because those, those, their friends are going to be coming around. It's like they do talk to each other about it. And that can happen. But how many homes are for sale in the Columbia area right now? That are vacant? Right. And they're going to come out here and ask the sheriff and the chief. Probably 300. Yeah. So we can't patrol all those things. Right. And even the monitoring thing, like, do you mind saying how many listings do you have right now that are vacant? I mean, 10, 20, 30? No. No. Under 10. Okay. Under 10. Because typically someone's still living there until they sell. Right. Even if it's under 10, if you had to monitor all of those, like if your phone is blowing up all the time, I mean, that's untenable, especially when you scale out to all the realtors in Columbia. They just have to have, pay for all the cameras, pay for all this stuff. And then also talking about the cost of any of this stuff. You don't have to share this, but I'm curious. You had to pay somebody to clean up all this stuff. There was probably damage to the property. Do you mind sharing what the total cost was for this? And we're not even talking about the opportunity cost of the fact that you lost buyers because nobody's going to buy that home when they're running away from somebody. Mom and dad, we want to see the drug house. Yeah, we want to see the drug house. We like it. So how much did it cost you in losses that you had to pay to clean up this stuff that vagrants are destroying properties of your clients you're trying to sell? Do you mind sharing that? I mean, again, it was about an hour. So I mean- So it's not like the other folks that we had that it was how much money? $10,000. $10,000 clean up. No, it's not like that. Because I was in the back. That was like tending out. But it's still something you should not have to deal with. You're right. There are other issues at play here. Not to mention, like, what do we know what they did in the house? Well, right. Yeah. Because now, are we going to have to bring in a hazmat crew to take- Methamphetamine. Yeah. Like, I don't know anything about what happens in a house where meth existed in there for some time. I mean, you'd have to get, like, the service master, the master of disaster in there. There wasn't anything that looked like that. And I actually do have experience with that in a property that I own in Warsaw, which is even worse than Columbia. Oh, yeah. Boy. So let's not even go there. But anyways, I was going to say, too, I was going to share with you, as well, is one more of the incidents is when I saw the tents. And this is in a new subdivision, in a very nice subdivision on a sub street where all the houses are brand new. I looked back there because I was showing, and there's tents beyond the trees. And I was like- Is that- Really? Is that real recent that you saw those? Yeah. Like, in the last two weeks. So this is with full trees. I mean, all the leaves on there. I didn't see any people, but there are tents back there. Yeah. I'm assuming you called the cops and- Oh, yeah. Yeah. I just let them know on the non-emergency line. But later this fall, we're going to wind up seeing a lot more. A lot more. As the trees- Because, yeah. Absolutely. You sent me a message this morning. You did an amount of prep and wanted to give me a little heads up on some different facts and figures and things that you have available or things you want to talk about. And I don't want you to miss any of those things that you want to talk about this morning because the time will fly by and next thing we'll know, it'll be over. Is there something, before I ask any more questions, you'd like to talk about with what's going on with the homeless in our area and from your perspective as a real estate agent? Anything you'd like to bring up? Well, I just, I mean, I have empathy. You know, I do. It's not like I'm here because I just want to complain about homeless people being in houses that they shouldn't be in. But this is a huge, huge problem. I mean, I feel so bad for downtown Columbia. I mean, I used to want to go downtown to celebrate occasions. I wanted to go down. I mean, it's a place that it's dirty. It's disgusting. It's literally a place that people stay away from now. I mean, the poor people that honestly own property down there that bought these properties for so much money, they can't lease because of our issues. I just feel that it's just such a huge problem. We have got to put our arms around it and get a lot more resources to figure out what we're going to do instead of it just, it's going to go away or just, no, it's fine. No one's doing anything. You've lived here long enough. You care a lot about Columbia and I think that's the perspective people need to understand. Let's say that you don't live in this area at all and you're catching this conversation. And when you say, I mean, we're talking about trash and dirt and homeless and horrible and we're going downhill. It's because you're here to watch and you've been here and you care about Columbia. That's where all of this is coming from. When do you care? I absolutely love this city or I wouldn't still be living here. I raised my son here. I mean, I could cry talking about how much I love this town and it's really just going downhill and it's very sad to me. I'd love to hear some comments from, so like, let's say you are a kind of person that your gut reaction to this is, well, we need to worry about those people. Okay. I want you to leave us a comment or you can't call in, but I want you to leave us a comment and let us know how would you feel if you're trying to now sell your home, which is your single largest asset, single largest thing that you're probably ever going to sell in your life. And while it's vacant, homeless people show up in there. Are you going to have that same attitude of, Oh, well, I really want, I get it. You want what's best for them, but they are also actively destroying your lifestyle. I think it's a really easy thing to know what people would say if it was their home, they'd be like, my God, no, get out of here right now. But the way you phrase that, it makes me picture my home. And let's say we're a few years down the line and something weird is up with Deb and I, let's say I finally say, okay, we're going to go to the beach in Florida. You get it. Or St. John or wherever we're going to go. And so we're out of town and Wendy's going to sell our house. And you hit me up, Wendy, and you say, you're not going to believe what just happened. But I went to go look at the house today to show it to some folks and there were people living in the house. I would lose my shit. And I would be on the first bus or train or running down the road to get back. And I would want their asses in jail for more than two days, for more than two days and more than a ticket for darn sure, because what's the likelihood they're going to pay the ticket? Showering. They're homeless. Here's your ticket. That's all you get. I love the showering. You should have seen all the socks that, because they were washing all their clothes in the sink. There was no washer and dryer. That sounds like something Kramer would have done on Seinfeld. It kind of did look like that, actually. That's unbelievable. They were all matching socks, though. Well, probably new from a store they lifted from very recently. Tom, you don't think they'd steal that stuff, do you? I'm not sure. I know that, I know that it's, I know that it's going to get old. I want to bring this up though, and I mentioned earlier, I would say it. We're to the point now. You ever hear of people talking about a half-life? I was looking at my Cialis the other day. No, I'm serious. And I think the half-life on a Cialis pill is 12 hours, I think. Don't think of half as size. I wasn't until just now. Thank you for that image, Tom. I really appreciate that. Just to let you know. But, you know, or you talk about like a nuclear disaster, and you know what the half-life is on something. Right now, if we were to begin to turn back the tide, and the problems we've allowed or even caused, and I want you to keep this in mind. The homeless campus, as they call it, is we're still probably a year away from that opening on the business loop. A year away from it opening. Right now, the half-life of where we are, if we stopped everything, we would probably We have, I'm going to guess, this is not based on anything except educating myself over the years, three years of problems that we'd still be going through. If we started working on it right now, we have not started working on it. So if you get upset about me sitting over here on a podcast like this, or maybe on other social media, or just sitting on street corners, because lately I'm telling anybody to listen. If you get tired of hearing me talking about homeless, I don't know what to tell you. It has to be stopped. I said over a year ago, we are way past the point of rescue. We are even further now. There are more and more people coming in. And what you're talking about, Wendy, you weren't seeing it to this level three years ago. Absolutely not. Like, absolutely not. This has quadrupled, if you ask me. And I also- You've been a real estate agent for how long? Since 2008. Yeah. So a long time. A long time. A long time. Yeah. And before that, I was mortgaged, so I was with agents as well. But no. You've got a long history of seeing this. 100%. Did not happen. Absolutely not. And yeah, I also, I'm so worried about just safety. Just safety. For me, I'm extremely bold. I am brave. I have been single for almost five years. It's like I can do things by myself. And I also don't think probably as much as I should now about walking into a vacant property. I do it every single day. Every single day. And I feel like all day long, this is what I do. So I also worry and I'm fearful of me actually packing or having a taser or whatnot and hurting someone if I had to, to protect myself and me getting into trouble. You always heard that. Like the guy breaking in, trying to break into your house and falling through the roof and sues the homeowner. I don't know. I don't know how that works. I've done conceal and carry classes, so I've gotten that. And we've gone through a lot of this stuff. And I've worked with Stratagos International. They teach a lot about when to use lethal force and stuff like that. Our castle doctrine normally only applies, and our do not retreat rules only apply normally to your residence or your car. So as a real estate agent in a house that you don't own, but you're listing, I don't know what the legality is. Again, if somebody can leave us a comment, let us know. Well, we've got a master's degree over here in criminal justice. And if you're defending your person, I mean, if they ran at you, I think there's no argument there, of course. But yeah, if the argument, somebody, you know, defense attorney is like, well, he was just sitting there and she shot him. Like, you know, I would never do that. Of course not. Wendy, you brought up about like having a taser or whatever, and then whether you have to hurt somebody. Well, there are a lot of people that will say, hey, man, next time that thing happens, just pull your gun out, walk out there. It's like, OK, hold on, John Wayne. That's exactly what people say. There's nothing. There's nothing that says you that you can't defend yourself. But if you think it's easy to take the life of another human being, I'm not saying that you don't have the right or that we had no other choice. I'm saying if you believe it's easy to take the life of another human being and just sleep like a baby that night, I don't think it's quite that way. And even if it was the legal ramifications, the cost of you financially just to make sure everything's taken care of and then what your life is like for the next 10 years, you don't want that. But the idea, Wendy, that you're supposed to just be loading yourself up with pepper spray and a taser over here and dart guns or whatever the hell else you need, that'd be a good one. Wouldn't it? Sleeping darts. Oh, I like to sleep with that one. I might not affect them if they're hopped up on meth or something. That's true. Sleeping. But that's not that's not the answer. No. To what's anybody that says that also has never taken a human life like I'm sure, you know, people that have gone through this in righteous actions, whether it's law enforcement or military. I've known these guys and they deal with it every day for the rest of their lives, even in righteous actions, even when they had to. And yeah, it's not anything that's like it is. It is very true. But is there. Let me ask you this as we start wrapping things up. And I cannot say enough that when he's not feeling really good. When you said you were losing your voice last week, I thought it was because you were cheering on your niece. And then it was like, no, that was just the beginning of the funk that was coming into your life. Yeah. But you'll get over this thing and we'll move forward. But thank you for being a trooper and making it out here as we start wrapping this up. Are you hearing from any other business like I didn't know real estate agents were going through this. So that's why I saw your post and I was like, what the hell are other people coming out to you and talking about their line of work or where they work and what they're seeing as any of that coming out. So other than, again, just being in the downtown sector, like and what they are facing as far as having problems selling, having problems leasing and just the crime and just, again, not wanting to even go downtown because they're harassed. They want money and this and that. And then it's just, again, it's just, it's not a very pretty sight. And my sister went to San Francisco state. So I have was in San Francisco visiting her on and off for four or five years. So I understand what that looks like. That is what I feel like we are going towards. If we don't do something about this, that is truly how I feel because I was so shocked to go to San Francisco and see all of these people just laying around all over the place. And I'm like, hmm. It looks like a third world country. It's starting to look like downtown a little bit like this. And I think part of the problem that we have is people will look at that and they'll say, well, of course, they're homeless in the streets because the cost of housing in San Francisco is some of the most expensive in the United States. It's like, dude, these guys weren't living in the one point eight million dollar house and then got kicked out because they couldn't afford the payment anymore. So they just went ahead and started living on the streets. That didn't happen. That's not how that works. I am interested in also, and if you want to stay in touch with me in the next year or two, in what's going on with the value of homes because of the perception that we have locally or what people on the outside have and when you've got homeless on a street corner that are sleeping under a shopping cart in the street median and the people that are going to look at a home are passing right by this with the kids saying the same thing that our grandkids say, which is, hey, gee, Paul, what's that guy doing right there? And then you have to explain it. So stay in touch with me and let me know about those things. But thank you so much for being here this morning. Thank you, sir. We appreciate it. And if there was anything else you'd like to throw in right now, you could do so because and if you need to hang around, you can. We're going to be taking the camera off you and bringing the mic off you. And if you need to go because you're like, finally, I can get out of here from these sons of bitches over here. I certainly understand that also. But Wendy Sweats, thank you so much for joining us. Such an account. And at some point we'll deal with where we first met. All right. And that was I'll never forget that night. What a tremendous professional Wendy Sweats is and has always been. OK, so that's our guest bed that says it's time for us to wrap up a couple of things over here, which includes my good friend, Ellis Bennis, keeping your eye on the crowd. All right. I mentioned last week something about Mutombo and I was very, very serious about that. Are you ready? You got to keep your eyes on the crowd. You can't handle the crowd. Looky here. There's a big difference between shit and shinola. As my great grandfather always said, Mutombo, keep your eye on the crowd. Yeah, I wasn't kidding about Mutombo. It is actually it's a beautiful name in Africa. I told you it was African. And I gave him the name Mutombo because I didn't want to use his real name. OK, so I so I grabbed that out of thin air, but I knew it was African. It's a it's a well, it's a couple of different things. Let me give you the good or the bad. Let's start with the good surname of Bantu origin, primarily associated with the Democratic Republic of Congo, signifies a lineage linked to strength and leadership. All right. And therefore, Mutombo is also an organ meat and organ. It means both of those things. Yes. An organ meat, which changes the whole feeling of the term organ grinder, if you will. An organ meat. OK, keep your eye on the crap brought to you by family focus. I care at FAM. Focus I dot com. And Dr. Rich, I might be coming by to say, get this thing out of my eye. I think I have an eyelash in my eye. I know. You just got to flush it or something. I'll go see the doctor. That's good. I will go see Dr. Rich. That's good. Keep your eye on the crap. Family focus. I care. I saw this this morning and I was going to talk about something else, but I want to bring this up. There are people in our community that believe we've got a problem in downtown Columbia with our pavement, our asphalt, that what we need to do is rip it all up and get down to the bricks that are underneath it. Oh, geez. You want to go back to the eighteen hundreds? Because the brick is still there. And yes, some people do. As a matter of fact, the post on here said, step back in time with the district's brick streets. Swear to God. Oh, man. Step back in time with the district's brick streets. Ever wonder what's under that asphalt? Those brick streets date back to 1909. You're walking through Columbia's history. What do you think of our brick streets? And then they've got pictures of it. Have you driven on Cherry Street any time in the last twenty five years? It's horrible. It's horrible. It beats you to death. Yeah. Then they go. They go, is it pretty? I'm like, are you serious? Do you want to push a baby stroller across there? God help your child. You got brain damage after bouncing through that. You will have a child with shaken baby syndrome if you're doing that. You know what people love in the Columbia area? What they love? Exercising. You're going to go running on that thing? You're going to trip and fall. That's a great way to snap an ankle. What about people who bicycle? You can't bicycle on those roads. How would I know these things? Because I've done them. I get it. It's pretty. It's pretty. I'm taking my Harley Davidson on those brick streets. God be with you. The last thing you want to do with a bike, with you, your passenger, a couple of other things on there, and you're weighing in at about a thousand pounds, is come to a stop on a brick street where you don't know exactly what's going to be happening when you put your foot down. That's right. No. Keep your eye on that crap. Do not let them do this because they will try to. That's why the district put that out there. This is the downtown association. They said, step back in time with our brick streets. You guys think it's cute? Like we're going to have this little horse buggy clippity cloppity down, and like, oh, isn't that nice? Shut the hell up. Shut the hell up. Tom, don't hold back. Tell me really how you feel about it. That's why I'm here to help make sure that you keep your eye on the crap. Thank you, Family Focus Eye Care. Do we need to let somebody know that we don't want that? Is that like a public poll or anything right now, or we just need to leave a comment? Well, let me give you one more thing, and this is for anybody who was stuck around the entire time this morning to our podcast or broadcast or streamcast or whatever the hell you want to call it. I want to give you one more thing. Are you and I friends on Facebook? Do you see my personal page on Facebook? I think so, yeah. Did you see the page that I had this week that I posted about making iced tea? No, I missed that one, making iced tea. Oh, I think you want to see that. All right. I will have to check it out. As we were talking with Wendy, and I said, look, Wendy is talking about these issues because she cares about Columbia. When you have been invested in something throughout your life, and it's your personal life, and it's also your career, and you see that thing do really, really well, you want to tell people about it. You want to say, this is really, really cool. When you see something you've worked so hard on, it's been a team effort, many, many people have worked hard on, and you see it failing, eventually you get to the point that you have to say, guys, this is a damn disaster. That is what happened, and I finally broke down, and I had to get public with that. Are you looking it up right now? Are you looking at all the … I mean, everything is gone. Everything is empty. Yeah. I'm not going to mention what it is, but it's a business in town, and the reason I'm bringing it up is not just to hammer on them right now, I'm bringing it up right now because I'm pretty sure at some point in the very near future on this podcast, I'm going to talk about them. Yeah. I love the way you phrase this, relieve the top blank of their burden of getting paid. That's the nicest way I've ever heard to fire somebody. That's fantastic. Apparently, it's a burden for them to keep picking up a paycheck because they don't want to because they're doing a bad job at it. The reason I'm bringing it up is because I want to let you know, they've reached out to me behind the scenes. This company? That company did. Okay. Because I posted on social media and allowed that post to become public to anybody who has access to Facebook, that they reached out to me, so now we're talking. Wow. I don't know where that, that's a surprise to me. I don't know where that conversation is going to go. I really don't. My cynical, the cynicism I'm carrying around in my soul right now is the highest it's ever been toward a lot of different entities in Columbia. Absolutely. Maybe I'm just an old man now and I'm getting all pissy about everything and get off my lawn and put pavement on my bricks. I don't know. I don't know. But. Those seem like pretty basic things. Give me pavement and stay off of my personal property. I'm pretty sure those are the kind of the foundations of our society. Give me pavement or give me hell is I think what we've said for years and years. All right. We got to wrap it up. Thank you, Ellis Bennis. Thank you, Wendy Sweats. Next week, it's another stellar episode coming up. My friends, live this day as if it were your last. I say to you, okay. I say to you, okay. I say to you, okay.