PBD Podcast
"Stole $1,000 A Day" - Ex-Skid Row Addict EXPOSES California's Homeless & Drug CRISIS! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 534
Wed, 15 Jan 2025
Patrick Bet-David sits down with former Skid Row addict Jared Klickstein, who shares his harrowing journey through nearly a decade of homelessness, drug addiction, and crime in California. Jared reveals how policies like Prop 47 and billions in wasted funds enabled theft rings and deepened the state’s homeless crisis. He details his time working with cartel-linked drug operations, stealing $1,000 worth of goods daily, and the nonprofit corruption fueling the homeless industrial complex. Jared’s firsthand account exposes the dark realities behind California's growing addiction epidemic and offers bold solutions to break the cycle of homelessness and crime. —— 👕 GET THE LATEST VT MERCH: https://bit.ly/3BZbD6l 📕 PBD'S BOOK "THE ACADEMY": https://bit.ly/41rtEV4 📰 VTNEWS.AI: https://bit.ly/3OExClZ 🎙️ FOLLOW THE PODCAST ON SPOTIFY: https://bit.ly/4g57zR2 🎙️ FOLLOW THE PODCAST ON ITUNES: https://bit.ly/4g1bXAh 🎙️ FOLLOW THE PODCAST ON ALL PLATFORMS: https://bit.ly/4eXQl6A 📱 CONNECT ON MINNECT: https://bit.ly/4ikyEkC 👔 BET-DAVID CONSULTING: https://bit.ly/3ZjWhB7 🎓 VALUETAINMENT UNIVERSITY: https://bit.ly/3BfA5Qw 📺 JOIN THE CHANNEL: https://bit.ly/4g5C6Or 💬 TEXT US: Text “PODCAST” to 310-340-1132 to get the latest updates in real-time! ABOUT US: Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller “Your Next Five Moves” (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
Chapter 1: What personal experiences led Jared Klickstein to Skid Row?
Yeah. What else? Started drinking probably around 13, 14. And, you know, didn't abuse it, but, well, I guess I did abuse it. I mean, I drank heavily in high school. Every weekend, blacking out.
Every weekend, blacking out?
Yeah, pretty much, yeah.
This is in Northern California now?
Yeah, Northern California.
Okay. Yeah. And then how about the hard stuff? When do the hard things, hard stuff show up?
I'd say freshman year of college, everyone was doing... All my friends were experimenting with heroin. My parents were heroin addicts, so I was, like, super against that. But OxyContin was floating around, so... You know, at some point when I was 18, I tried an OxyContin. It was the greatest feeling I ever felt.
And slowly over the next... Over sophomore year, I sort of replaced drinking with OxyContin. Started selling OxyContin. Got very addicted. Started using it every day. And... I did some Google research. I realized Oxycontin is essentially heroin, and it's a lot cheaper, and it's a lot more powerful, so I made the switch to heroin.
When that happened, do you remember the moment where you're like, I'm going to start, even though you know and you saw what happened to your parents, do you remember the first time you used heroin?
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Chapter 2: How did Prop 47 influence homelessness in California?
Oh, signs. Upper-scale areas that maybe were less concerned with shoplifting, so maybe less security, less locking things up. Anything close to downtown was pretty much untouchable. They had everything locked up already. So, you know, I didn't really go to the Valley, but, you know, we'd hit Culver City, Malibu, Palisades, things like that.
Fox Hills Mall, like you'd go to the Fox Hills Mall, or was it more like... No, not the mall, drugstores. Okay. Yeah. And so $300,000 to $400,000 worth of stuff you shoplifted, never got arrested, you got tickets, never paid for it, three times you got tickets, three or four times you got tickets.
Yeah.
So what other bad policies in the state of California... almost influenced negative behavior that kept happening.
Yeah. So this is, this is very, yeah. So the policy, the policy, the broken policies incentivize bad behavior because they don't punish bad behavior. Um, like I told you in 2011, I didn't shoplift cause there was a felony. Uh, you know, you would get a felony if you got caught shoplifting. So I didn't do that. once it was removed, the incentive was there to start shoplifting.
So that's just one policy. But, um, you know, I just was allowed to use drugs openly wherever I wanted. Uh, I was allowed to act out antisocially in public spaces and restaurants. I was allowed to not pay my fare for the subway or the bus. Um, and I was allowed to sleep outside any, anywhere I wanted. And, um, You know, these sorts of things, you know, people will do what you let them do.
You know, it's a pretty basic concept of human psychology that for some reason the people that are in charge of making policy, they just won't listen to me. You know, it's very obvious, you know, you will do what you, and then another thing is that I wanted treatment. I wanted detox. I wanted treatment. There was incredibly few resources to achieve that.
And at one point, by the end, I actually wanted to go to jail, and I couldn't. And I got blessed. You know, I prayed, and I said, you know, send me to jail. You know, get me—I need— a nonviolent felony or something like that, I need to sit in jail for like six months. Like that is what's going to help me.
So now you're looking for a nonviolent felony to get.
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