Giles Deacon Quotes

I've been homeless on a few occasions.

The challenges that the homeless face aren't dissimilar to those in developing countries.

What in the name of humanity is to become of them—where are they to go?

When people are economically or socially dislocated, they are always more vulnerable to being radicalized.

I'm not going around touring the U.S. when I've got nowhere to live.

I moved around 13 different times before I was in fifth grade, not having money, not having a lot of friends.

Being homeless is like living in a post-apocalyptic world. You're on the outskirts of society.

The questions that consume me, that keep me up at night, are the people that are sleeping on the streets.

I grew up in constant fear of eviction.

It's a mistake to think that there's a difference between someone on the street and someone not on the street.

There is nothing compassionate or safe about relegating people, particularly those suffering from mental health or addiction issues, to sleep on our streets.

I think that so many people don't understand how easy it is to be broke, how easy it is to find yourself in a situation where you're in an absolutely foreign place.

In principle if I could not have a home I wouldn't. But not having a home would be too difficult procedurally, going from hotel to hotel, the gap of three hours where you're hungry and tired.

I worked out; I moved 16 times from the age of 19, just hopping about from different flats, because I couldn't always afford to stay.

Look at the Palestinians with the huge, huge percentage of unemployed. What does that breed? Anyone who's unemployed in the world, you feel there's no meaning and there's a risk that you drift over to something desperate. Yes, we have to tackle the social problems as well.

The people who do not get jobs are often the most vulnerable in our society, and joblessness is a terrible plight for anyone who suffers from it.

There are all these people in this country who are just not participating in the American Dream at all.

What too few people mention when discussing crime is the degree to which concentrated poverty, hopelessness and despair are the chambermaids of violence and incivility.

If there is a spot where you have dictatorship, where people are not free, people are not satisfied, they do not find food and shelter, they are under the poverty level, this is a dangerous spot for the whole world, because those people will move, and they will move to different places. They will be carrying bad feelings towards others.

I think it is really sad that when people lose their homes they kind of lose their minds too.

When people lack jobs, opportunity, and ownership of property they have little or no stake in their communities.

Some kids don't know where they'll spend the night. How can we expect them to focus on learning?

When I was 5, some financial things happened, and I moved seven times in a year. We moved from apartment to apartment, sometimes living with friends. My mom would always say, 'Don't get comfortable, because we may not be here long.'

Since we had little money and few documents, we had nothing.

We were so poor that my mother would often leave me in a foster home until she could raise enough money to rent rooms for us.