i'm soledad o'brien. welcome to matter of fact, from academic all-american college football player with nfl dreams

to homeless, addicted and living on the streets. now it's hard to play football. it's really hard to play football if you smoke crack all night. now he's making his own comeback decades later in a remarkable story of recovery and paying it forward. plus. owning a home is a staple of the american dream. housing is become somewhat of a luxury good. i talked to this real estate professor about the impact rising home costs are having on people's ability to save and retire, and about 20% of our electricity still comes from coal. cutting this rock and stuff. so much dust. uh, guys in their 30s needing double lung transplants. will new mining rules be enough to protect those who work underground? and those stories. right now on matter of fact. since 1999, more than a million americans have died of a drug overdose. in fact, a recent survey found that more than 40% of u.s. adults say they know someone

who's died of an overdose. as the drug epidemic touches millions of lives and every day, people across the country are locked in a battle with addiction, jerod thomas was one of them. it completely undid his life, but he took that battle, that understanding and that empathy. and he's now using it to help hundreds of people every day. our correspondent, jesse gomez shares his story. when i came to play college football, my father said, hey, boy, it's not like playing anywhere else in the country. you. he said, you can play at bigger schools, you can play at better schools. but if you play at marshall, you have a responsibility to that community to rebuild it. we are marshall university in huntington, west virginia, where the annual spring football game kicks off like this with a tribute to the marshall football players, coaches and fans killed in a plane crash more than 50

years ago. they didn't need us to win. they needed us to play. and that's special to me. jerod thomas, a walk on in 1987. he quickly worked his way up to starting free safety, but his skills over shadowed by a family legacy of violence and addiction. and you got this feisty guy on defense or come up and just, you know, just hit you. i remember certain times off the field there might have been a few fights here and there. i had my click, we went out, we drank, we got in fights, we caused trouble. all the drinking led to drugs. and jared's dreams of going pro died at nfl training camps. now it's hard to play football. it's really hard to play football if you smoke, crack all night. a lot of times this was my house. this is where i lived. eventually landing in lexington, kentucky. jared's addiction led to years of homelessness. he was a self-proclaimed con

man. you just say to a stranger, hey, i've run out of gas and i need a couple dollars for gas. well, crack a hit cost $20. he met his wife, yvette, in an aa meeting, but the sobriety never lasted. i always slept when he went to jail. that's when i could sleep. because i knew he was safe. i'm going to drink that first one. that's going to set off my craving. it was in a jail like this one where things changed and i thought, man, if you'll get me sober and i don't know who i'm talking to, if you'll get me sober, i'll spend the rest of my life helping other people, all while still behind bars. jared created a substance abuse program that would eventually be implemented in correctional facilities around the state. one with solutions to the excuses he had made for so long. we teach them how to work. we teach them how to to be parents or to be kids. we give them every little skill

they need. it was guy huguelet who hired jared to bring his vision here to the shepherd's house. a long-term recovery center in lexington. i was an alcoholic, a drug addict, lost all my family. i was real mean. now, a shepherd's house manager, frank junior evans, spent most of his adult life in prison. i needed the accountability and the structure that they gave me, and from there, it's led me to, uh, a life that i never thought i could ever live. today. i mean, i get to be a dad. i get to be a son. you know, i get to be a husband. and 35 year old jacob ratliff, a successful home builder who almost died of a drug overdose. i look at me as what i am now as opposed to where i came from. dear heavenly father, we come before you today and we ask that you bless this meal from one facility to more than two dozen under jared's watch, the

shepherd's house helps some 600 people every day. the reward that i get from helping them and putting them back in the game, it is priceless to me. jared thomas we are a story of hope. he brings back to marshall university in a city that rebuilt after tragedy, only to be hit hard again by addiction. i've been sober 16 years, wife's been sober 20 years. he will drive two hours to meet with a guy for a half hour and drive back two hours. i mean, how many guys would do that? i'm so proud of him. it always bothered me to not be a good teammate. what i did wrong, i want to make it right. my dream was to play in the nfl. man, i'm so grateful i didn't play in the nfl. if i did, i wouldn't have the shepherd's house. and man, that's the greatest gift i've ever been given in

huntington, west virginia. for matter of fact, i'm jessica gomez. thomas tells us that shepherd's house is making plans to soon open a recovery facility in huntington, west virginia, next on. matter of fact, homeownership is really critical for people being able to have an affordable retirement. so what's the solution for the millions of americans being priced out of the housing market? st. plus, as a young man, he weighed personal safety versus financial security. when you got a wife and kids, you'll do you'll do whatever it takes. his advice to youth in appalachia today, plus bracing for impact. we have an insurance crisis that's increasing how the risk of natural disasters is creating a different crisis for many communities. you're watching. matter of fact, america's number one nationally syndicated public affairs news magazine.

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increasingly unobtainable. all why? well, the cost of a house has risen more quickly than people's salaries. for example, 1972, the median household income was around $11,000. the median price of a home was about $27,000. 2022 median income is about $74,500, and a home costs about $479,000. more than six times the median income. so how do we get here? and what does that mean for people's wealth? christopher mayer is a professor of real estate at columbia business school. it's so nice to have you. thanks for joining me. great to be here. soledad. so i want to start with what i saw online this morning. this. 384 square foot bay area home just sold for considerably over its $1.7 million, asking price.

this is insane. what exactly is happening? well, you know, we don't build enough of it. and the problem is there are a lot of people who want to have houses and we don't have enough houses. and you know, the stock market is doing well. that's pushing. up prices. and it's made it really difficult for, you know, ordinary americans to be able to afford to buy a home. so to what degree are mortgage rates responsible? so the first thing is mortgage rates are a headwind, not a tailwind. so so you know, that's very business school speak. but what does that mean. it means that home prices are rising despite high interest rates not because of high interest rates. a big part of why inflation continues to be high is the housing market and rents, you know, which have continued to be strong. so that's what's keeping inflation high. and that's what's making it tough for people who are looking to buy. and so there are a lot of people who are having a hard time buying because of the high interest rates.

and those people are having a hard time saving for a down payment. and and as a result, there's a lot of demand for rentals as the pandemic seems to have had a big impact on this. it is, um, as people are working from home, what that's meant is people want more space. and because of the desire for more space, that's made it even harder because you've construction costs have gone up and and it's just kind of exacerbated this whole cycle. in many urban environs. that's one of the big challenges is commercial real estate. you have millions of square feet of non-used commercial space, lots of people who'd like something affordable. well, is there a way to connect those two ideas? it would be really wonderful to be able to do that, but it's just just incredibly expensive. there are enormous numbers of rules that they have to follow. but, you know, you look at places in the south and the midwest that don't have the same set of rules and don't have the same set of restrictions. they also don't have as much of a affordability problem as we

have in the coast. and so this is a place where, you know, just sometimes government just getting out of the way is helpful. if we think about your home as one of your biggest assets. yes. and we're seeing more and more people and certainly lots of young people just unable be priced out of the market altogether. what does that mean for how we think about wealth in america? i think it's something that, you know, many people worry about. one of the problems this country has had is for a long time we had overt discrimination that kept black households out of the housing market and which keeps them their wealth significantly lower. they didn't have the wealth and interesting early. it goes through generations. so if you ask many people how they get the money for their down payment comes from their parents, well, if their parents don't have the wealth that they accumulated in their home, they don't have the ability to potentially help their kids. it reinforces the challenges and it's just it's pushed off

homeownership further. and unfortunately, and i say this with, you know, real sadness, what we've started to see in the last few years is housing has become somewhat of a luxury. good. how does that impact somebody who's, let's say, 65, 70 and their ability to actually retire? so homeownership is plays an incredibly important role in people's ability to to retire. and if you look at people who are renting, half of renters are cost burdened. they pay, um, you know, more than 30% of their income in retirement. and significant numbers of renters pay more than 50% of their income in retirement. so owning a home can be a way of getting into retirement. and and, you know, having the affordability to live. christopher mayer is a professor at columbia business school. thanks so much. appreciate it. great to be here. coming up, life in coal country.

it's a special breed of people. as america's coal miners get black lung at younger ages, this former miner explains why he'd do it all again. plus, he led the federal response to natural disasters for nearly a decade. people are having to move out of their communities, away from their jobs because they can't afford or cannot find housing. how? he says more frequent storms are changing our way of life. welcome back to matter of fact,

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new rules are going into effect for america's coal mines. the mine safety and health administration is cutting the amount of permitted silica dust exposure per shift by up to 50%. silica dust damages and scars lungs when it's inhaled, it often causes what's known as black lung. the hope is that these new rules will help reduce the number of miners who develop the illness, goes into effect on june 17th. for one, appalachian clinic. that date couldn't come soon enough. it's seen a particular spike in black lung cases from 2013 to 2017. they diagnosed more than 400 people with the disease. our producer, teresa krug met with one of the retired coal miners from that clinic, john robinson shares his story in his own words. tell me about your your breathing and how. how is your shortness of breath? i thought i was superman when i first went into mines.

i got more short winded. seemed like it's passed since summer, and this winter i'd always heard, you know, guys like going up in their 60s and 70s getting black lung. but when i hit 47, it wasn't so old. and then i started having some issues. uh, shoulders and knees and back issues and stuff. uh, they said he needs to see a breathing doctor. so i go and sure enough, over time, they said, yeah, you've got first stage black lung. you either work in deep mines or you work on top of a mountain strip and coal, or you can flip hamburgers or bag groceries. if you're going to work, why not make what you can make. when i get out oxygen, it's like a car running out of gas. you know you ain't going to go far. things the wife likes to do. i can't do that thing. it's tough when you're used to going and doing and working all the time. then it's just like cutting a light switch off all that's gone. it's. it's pretty tough on you. it really is. it's a real failure as far as being underground. uh, it's a dark, wet, damp, dusty.

it's just it's a different world. i don't think it's for everybody. i think it's a special breed of people. you know, i really do. uh, it can be hard work, brutal brute work. you know, uh, i liked it, though. i loved it. they're fun. they always ask how we're doing. if i was able, my body could take it and i could do it. i'd go back in the mines right now. so when you got a wife and kids, you'll do. you'll do whatever it takes. my wife's, uh, two of her nephews, they come to me. i don't know if i'd help them get on in the mines. of course they like me. they had big dreams and big hopes, and they wanted to make the big money. and so i helped them get on, you know, and but i tried my best to talk them out of. i realized i wasn't superman, you know, i just want them to really, you know, get in there and make sure that we're taking care of these guys because eventually it's going to get them in time. ahead on matter of fact, what the upcoming hurricane season

could bring for those along the us coast. and these sneakers are made of plants instead of plastic. we take a look at the growing sustainable options for footwear to stay up to date with. matter of fact, sign up for our newsletter at matteroffacttv dot tv. we are just about three weeks

away from the start of hurricane season, and it is expected to be an extremely active one, researchers predict 23 named storms and 115 named storm days, which is any day that a hurricane or a tropical storm is active. this is according to a report from the colorado state university tropical meteorology project, which found there's a 62% chance of a category three, 4 or 5 hurricane hitting the us coastline this year. it's not so much the storms, but

rather the recovery that could become an issue back to back storms put a strain on resources on workers who are helping those in need and of course, on donations. craig fugate is the former director of fema or the federal emergency management agency. i think we're at that tipping point where we're continuing to see more of this risk transfer to the federal taxpayer and the homeowner will find that these programs that are administered by fema, hud small business, in many cases, will not allow them to repair and rebuild their homes without insurance. and so that gap is something we need to address because it leads to basically eliminating affordable housing. and many of these communities. hurricane season officially ends on november 30th. the national oceanic and atmospheric administration reports the most activity usually happens between mid-august and mid-october. the peak in september. still ahead on matter of fact. why? these sneakers were designed to

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stressed out about the amount of garbage and plastic we put into the environment, but don't really know what to do about it. could shoes show a solution? as we walk, our shoes wear down, leaving behind microplastics and rubber and other synthetic materials that can end up in the soil and in the water? on top of that, americans throw away at least 300 million pairs of shoes each year, and a majority of them go into landfills as well. now, several companies are coming up with solutions to make shoes more sustainable. take a look at this sneaker by streetwear brand. unless it's made up entirely of plants and minerals. and when it's time to dispose of the shoe, it can be ground up and turned into soil. in mississippi by a company called bloom uses algae as a substitute for plastic. the company converts algae into foam for shoe insoles and other products.

harvesting the algae cleans water. algae itself removes carbon dioxide, which is a greenhouse gas from the atmosphere. the other companies are also working on shoe soles that deposit nutrients back into the ground. some creative solutions that can help those of us who have a little shoe obsession can maybe be a bit more sustainable. well, that's it for this edition of matter of fact, i'm soledad o'brien. i'll see you back here next week to watch more stories like this. any time. head to matteroffacttv.

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do this? invisalign is better oral hygiene and no drama. when i teed up, i said, man, i'm going to beat you. golf legend gary player on why he still going strong. people can see that you have a stomach that's like a piece of iron on the next in-depth tonight at midnight on nbc bay area it's a beautiful day to fly. it's an all new monday with whoopi goldberg today on asian pacific america. award winning filmmaker ramona diaz joins us from manila to. talk about her film. and so it begins. set in the philippines. and it will be the closing night feature film at the bay area's cam fest film festival may 18th. then prominent actress nico