Andrew Gregor on Architecture, Resilience, and Writing ‘Roscoe’ About Homelessness in San Francisco

[00:00:03] Hi, I'm Dr. Russell Thackeray and welcome to Resilience Unravelled, a podcast with new ideas, new thoughts, and new thinking about resilience. Guests with remarkable stories, products and services that can really power up your own mindset and resilience. You can also go to our site for more information, to ask questions, or to access some of our resources at resilienceunravelled.com. Let's get started.

[00:00:32] Hello and welcome back to Resilience Unravelled and welcome to my guest, Andrew James Greger, who's sitting in front of me resplendent with us. He's got a very intriguing t-shirt. I know it's his audio only, but it's got a cat written on it, which is absolutely it. Andrew's now standing up. Please don't take it off because I couldn't cope. But first of all, welcome my guest, Andrew. How are you? I'm very well. Thank you, Russell. Thank you. And where in the world are you today? I'm in California in the San Francisco Bay Area.

[00:01:01] Very nice too. Well... I've lived here for 22 years now. That's very rare to find American on this podcast, so you're very special. That's all I need to say. So I'm actually British or a new... I know. Oh, you do. Okay. Yeah, absolutely right. But I'm also American. Look, tell us a little about who you are. Who I am. I was born in the Middle East in Beirut, Lebanon.

[00:01:23] I grew up... At the age of 10, my mother... My parents divorced when I was two. My mother sent me to boarding school in the UK. And I ended up in Tunbridge for a while and then went to university to study architecture at what is now Brookshire University. People often think I went to Oxford University, which I did not. It was the Oxford School of Architecture at the time. Yeah.

[00:01:46] And I graduated from there, worked for a year in London, and then moved to Germany. I fell in love with a German girl, moved to Germany, and set up an architectural practice, which was award-winning and very successful. I had 12 to 14 people working for me at the end of my time then. I founded another company, then fell in love with an American girl. Oh, wow. What happened to the German girl? That's... She actually happens to live only a couple of hours up the coast here. Oh, my goodness.

[00:02:15] We went our separate ways after a while. That's a much longer story. Yeah, don't worry. Spare you the pain of that one. No one wants a messy divorce. It's actually not. We're very good friends still. And then when I came here, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do. And I ended up... I like building. I've always liked building since I was a child. I like watching building sites.

[00:02:35] So I started a home renovation and construction company. We do residential remodeling. We've won a lot of awards. Been doing it for a while. But I've always also written. And more recently, I've transitioned to become an author. I've now published my second book. Wow. So you're still doing construction? Yes. Full-time. All right. So you're... Yeah. So it's a bit like all those waitresses who are like actresses, aren't they? Yes. Thank you. You're a writer who's in construction. Yep. Exactly.

[00:03:04] And actually, there's no shame in that. And I think for a lot of people, there's a problem, isn't there, with being authors and being these worlds? Because actually, most people become... ...notice you when you become an overnight success. People don't realize that it can take 10 years to be an overnight success.

[00:03:17] No, there's no... J.D. Salinger was discovered decades after he wrote Catra. Nobody wanted it, you know, for a long time. And I don't pretend I'm going to win the Pulitzer Prize, but my latest novel did win some prizes and I'm very proud of it. But it's also just a long slog to get... If you don't have an agent, it's hard work to get sales up. Yeah. But it's also fun. I'm having a great time doing it.

[00:03:41] So how is being an architect? Because I'm guessing you're... That's a very... One of those interesting jobs where you have this combination of being very creative, but also very methodical and being able to have really great spatial awareness. I mean, I can see how that's useful for a book, but before we get there... So how do those skills of being an architect serve someone in the modern world?

[00:04:05] J.D. Salinger was a very all-around education. In fact, I didn't really learn that much at college. I was not a good student. I spent most of the time in a student bar and working at gigs, concerts for bands to make money so that I could spend time in a student bar.

[00:04:24] J.D. Salinger.

[00:04:52] J.D. Salinger's career, all so that all jobs don't have to be super expensive when tuning can't... It was a really interesting time in my career. And I still do design-build here. I'm glad. Okay. So their skills, they sound to me like skills that never be replaced by AI. But it's true? Or is that another vulnerable profession? Russell, I don't really know. I'm sure AI can design buildings. I'm 64 now.

[00:05:17] I'm hoping that I'll die before AI becomes something that I need to really concern myself with much more than I do. I haven't, I don't really use AI for anything, but I'm sure that it's the design of houses and buildings is an ideal AI experiment, of course. But like I said, I'm leaving that behind and moving more towards being an author. I'm planning to retire in a couple of years. I'd like to move to Mexico, sit on a beach and write and go scuba diving.

[00:05:47] That's my plan. So you need some money for that. It's interesting that you say you're born in Lebanon as well, because I was trying to remember this Nassim Taleb, who talks about being a citizen of Lebanon, makes you a citizen of the world. Yes, it gives you a unique perspective. It does. Yeah. It was a very, it was a very cosmopolitan city. Beirut was buzzing when I was a child. Of course, when I was 13, the war, the civil war broke out and I experienced that the full force of that.

[00:06:16] My mother was stuck there for years. I was flying back from England for vacation. Sometimes I missed a term at school because I couldn't fly out. But one of the things is that as a boy, I grew up speaking three languages, English, French, Arabic. And Arabic has always been called the key to all languages, which I had never really understood until I went to Germany, where I didn't speak a lick of German and then learn German.

[00:06:42] And the reason for that is that Arabic uses really all of the, the buccal cavity, everything that, you know, so we make all the sounds.

[00:07:18] Yes. You've got languages, which is really brilliant for brain and diversity and such like you've got all this travel and the way you were brought up. You've done architecture and it's, and it really bears you well, doesn't it? And you're doing these career changes and you're rootless and living all over the world. And that's fascinating in itself. So how much of the, when you're writing a book, how much of yourself do you bring to a book or how much are you creating a new world?

[00:07:44] My, the, the first one was much more first book. Them was much more a new world. I just invented a family in Kansas and went off from there. But this one, Roscoe, which is about a 12 hours in the life of a homeless man in San Francisco. He is my friends and my wife say that he's 90% me. You know, it's, it's, I, he rants and he raves and he, he complains about things that I complain about. It's my voice in a lot of these things.

[00:08:13] And I had a lot of fun doing it. You know, I wanted to say these things to the world and I had an opportunity to do it. Why homeless man? Why would you pick? I, when I was, when I was at boarding school in England, I read, I read George Orwell's Down Note in Paris and London. And I hadn't really thought about homelessness before that. And I found it fascinating that he did this experiment to go and see what it's like to live on a bench in London and Paris. And I thought I can do that. So I hopped on a train and went to London, took no money with me. Wow.

[00:08:43] And, and then I found it was exceedingly difficult. It was absolutely torturous. It was freezing cold. It was incredibly uncomfortable. I could not sleep. And in fact, what actually ended up happening is that a, a man asked me if I was okay, because I was huddled in a doorway. It was so cold. And I said, I'm just hungry and tired. And he took me to his flat in Brixton, made me bacon and egg, let me sleep on his couch for four hours.

[00:09:10] And then I got up and realized that I wasn't made for this homeless life. I did not have the resilience for that. And went back to school and have thought about it ever since. Every time I've seen somebody sleeping on the streets, I've really realized that is a tough life. And when you talk about resilience, facing that life and those, those people are tough. Yeah. Not a lifestyle choice. Is it? It generally is not.

[00:09:39] Although in, in, in my novel, I echo a German professor that I spoke to. I always approached him as the unhoused and tried to have a conversation with them. Not always, but very often. And I met a professor in Germany who he was a, an unhoused man. I didn't know he was a professor. And it, I just asked him how, how he ended up there. And he was a professor at the university of Mainz for history prior to this.

[00:10:06] And he said that he came to a point where he just did not want to take part in this society anymore. He didn't want to be told what to do. He didn't want to be told what to teach. He didn't want to pay taxes. He didn't want to. And so he was there with his bicycle. And I recognized that there's a certain aspect of mental health that is to be addressed here. And yet it was still his choice.

[00:10:31] And in my book, Roscoe is a former architect who, his life unravels when his wife decides to divorce him. And he makes a, it's less of a choice to become homeless as much as he didn't want to make the effort anymore to stay above that and in society. And I, myself back in 2009, when the crash happened, the housing market crash here, I was in, I was a, I was a general contractor.

[00:11:00] I had, I remodeled houses and there was no work to be had. My ex-wife and I divorced. And I suddenly found myself unable to rent a place because I didn't have regular income. And I started sleeping on the floors of friends' houses. And then I became embarrassed to do that. I started sleeping in my truck. My truck was broken into. I started getting tickets because my truck was unregistered. And eventually I knew what would happen is that they'd come and impound it.

[00:11:29] And then I'd be on the street. And just by sheer luck or maybe with tenacity or I, the first reasonable size job that I got as a remodeler, I went and paid off the debt that I had on my truck. So I had that back at least. And shortly afterwards, I was able to move in with my current spouse. It is interesting, isn't it? How quickly people, because you hear these stories, don't you? People who are on the streets and it can happen. A divorce or a mental health situation.

[00:11:59] And it can be as quick as weeks and in a short number of months. Suddenly people find themselves on the streets, don't they? Yeah, especially here. Especially in the United States. There's absolutely no safety net of any kind. It takes weeks, sometimes months to get unemployment benefits or anything like that. It was really terrifying is too big a word, but it was scary. I saw this precipice coming up towards me and I didn't know how to stop myself.

[00:12:26] I was getting, I felt I was being pushed by a force that was just shoving me over this edge. And I was very lucky. And since then, I've done Outreach for the Homeless here, which is a program that distributes blankets, foods, food, that kind of thing. And I would always offer them five bucks or $10 or something to tell me their life story and how they got there. And I've woven those little vignettes into the book as well, because it's a, there are many different ways how people end up there.

[00:12:55] Abuse, loss of a job and suddenly nowhere to go. And I was very impacted by two things. One was a, an unsight. There was a man pen handling in front of a supermarket in Berkeley when I first started moving here. And he asked me for a dollar and I didn't, I had nothing. And so I just walked past him and he shouted after me and he said, you could at least say hello. Yeah.

[00:13:22] And I was so ashamed by the fact that I had just neglected this human being that I turned around and I went, I spoke to him for almost half an hour. I walked home. I got some cash. I came back, I gave it to him. And ever since then, I, every time I see somebody who's panhandling or asking for something, I, even if I have nothing, I'll talk to them. I'll say, Hey, I'm really sorry. I don't have anything.

[00:13:46] And this just brings some dignity to these people who, especially in America, the, the unhoused are viewed as losers, that they can't get their shit together, that they're, they're drug addicts or they're, what are any number of things? Yeah. It's lazy when, and some of them are, but some of them have mental health issues, but the truth is they're human beings. And as a society, we should be helping each other. That's how we became homo sapiens.

[00:14:15] We, we built groups and we helped each other. We, the, the poor, even in the middle ages, the, the village idiot was fed by the village. The, the cripple was fed by the village. We supported each other and in this very incognito society that we now live in, where you don't know your neighbors or anything. People there's a toll channel on, on Instagram called invisible people, which I really recommend people to watch the stories are really remarkable. So anyway, that's the gist of how I, I decided.

[00:14:45] I just thought, what is it like to spend a day as a homeless person in San Francisco? And yeah, the truth is I started the story. I had no plot. I just started it as if I'm waking up on the streets and I ran through the, I wrote it in four weeks, I think. That's really fast. Yeah. Did you have a, a reader in mind when you were reading this? Cause it sounds like it's in a genre all of its own in a way. I did not have a reader in mind. I didn't, I didn't, I didn't. Russell, I'm not.

[00:15:14] A lot of people, my friends say introduce me as an author now, but I don't view myself as an author and that I don't have any formal training writing books. I just have written bits and pieces all my life. And I started this just like that. I just started writing as if he wakes up on the pavement. What does he do next? And I, so I didn't have any idea who I was writing for either. It sounds, it sounds very, it's kind of a Dadaist way of writing maybe, but I like

[00:15:44] it and it keeps me very entertained and really eager to find out what happens next. For me, it was good. And it's obviously had a, like I said, it won first place at the New York book festival. I'm very proud of that. And it's found a lot of very positive reviews from independent reviewers. Do you think a book such as this has a particular chord in a time such as this where you have, you know, in America, it seems to me the antithesis of this going on.

[00:16:12] You have quite a large number of very, very wealthy people who care nothing for people with nothing. And the sort of, and the sort of interesting, isn't it? You look at history. There's a period of history about a hundred years ago where similar things were going on, where you had this move to the far right, far left. And it just strikes me. I think people look for humanizing tales, don't they? To make sense of the world in which you're in. I just wonder how much that was an aim or that was just something that happened.

[00:16:38] Yeah, it certainly wasn't aimed to make an attempt to have people view homelessness as something other than just a problem. And here, San Francisco is one of the cities that really does try to solve its issue. But we have eight and a half thousand homeless just in San Francisco alone. And it's an issue. Germany and the Netherlands have got excellent programs where they've introduced both, both

[00:17:05] countries have this housing first program where they, the idea is give people back some housing, give people back some dignity and see where they go. And it's very successful. And I'd like to see that start here. I've actually, anyway, given the mayor of San Francisco a copy of the book, he's, he liked it. So I think, I think that the idea was to try and introduce a new way of viewing homelessness as such to, to the average person, not just to think this is somebody who's littering my streets and is in my way.

[00:17:34] It's it's these people need support because they, like you said, it can be so quick. I remember seeing in one homeless encampment, there was a, a, a girl, she was maybe, or a woman, she was 25 or 26 maybe. And she was wearing a very clean yoga clothes and had a brand new tent and was sweeping in front of her tent. And I, I, in that moment, as I was passing, I saw this story where she, she lived maybe

[00:18:03] on the friend's floor or something. Then finally she had to get a tent. She bought a tent, but she still thinks it's temporary. And it's, it's sometimes very often. It's not in, I hope she got herself out of that, but it made me really sad to see that. Yeah. Yeah. See this, this hope of the future. And maybe she's fine now. Maybe she's an executive at MasterCard or something. Who knows? Yeah. Who knows? And hope. Or maybe she's just happy. Yeah. It's interesting because one of the things I find oddest about the states is I think it's

[00:18:30] about 5% of the total homeless population in the states are veterans. Yes. And we have all this, thank you for your service. So boom, we got, yeah, no hypocrisy of them living on the streets and being completely often because it's a mental health situation, but that seems to be a particular oddity. The hypocrisy of the, the military is so adulated here, as long as they're in uniform, there are so many contradictions here.

[00:18:57] All of the pro-life people are for the death penalty, for example, in the same way, all of the, we love our troops and support our troops are the ones who, when the, when they come home and I, America hasn't fought a single war for freedom of any kind since World War II. All the wars have been hegemonic and, and attempts at taking more materials or whatever. And, but as soon as they come home when the war is horrific, I went through it. I experienced it.

[00:19:27] I, I was in Beirut in 82 when the Israelis invaded and bombed the city to bits. I pulled people out of the rubble. I experienced the full thing. And the fact that I'm even vaguely sane is remarkable. And I know that soldiers who fought out in the field, they come back with PTSD and the kind that doesn't permit them to just reintegrate into society. And that's why, like you said, and I don't understand that either.

[00:19:55] The support our troops, the veteran, the homeless veterans, that's their problem now. It's very hypocritical. Indeed. You're right. I suppose we better care for not, so we don't mention Israel that way. Cause they always blameless and all wolves. So anyway, let's, let's not go there. So back to your book then. Back to your books. Where can people find it? David Pérez It's available on every platform actually. Uh, Goodreads, a million books, Amazon. And you can, the easiest way to look it up is under my name, Andrew James Greger.

[00:20:24] And it's, it's called Roscoe and it'll be there. And, um, grateful for anybody who supports a starving author. And I see, and I see you've got five star reviews and it's sitting in the UK shop as well. So there, Amazon version there. So that's good work. We'll make what's his face very rich. Not what we can see. You can get four and a half P for selling a book through Amazon. So exactly. Andrew, it's absolutely fascinating. Thanks for spending time with us today. It's really great. How else, if people want to engage with you more directly, how might they do that? David Pérez

[00:20:52] They can, they can do it through my, my publisher, BC craft, or they can look me up. I'm online. I'm easily findable Facebook, Instagram, whatever. I'm an open book, basically. Hey, thank you for spending time with us today. It's been a real joy and pleasure to meet you and good luck with the book. Thank you, Russell. I hope you found that episode useful and entertaining. If you want to support our work, please go to resilienceunravel.com. And you can become a member there as well.

[00:21:22] You can also send us a question there and even apply to do a podcast. You can also leave a review on Apple Podcasts or any of the other podcast hosts of your choice, as well as getting hold of some useful resources about resilience and a whole lot more. Join us next time on the next edition of Resilience Unravelled. We'll see you guys in the next edition of Resilience Unraveled.