Matt Blansett became homeless six weeks ago.
"I mean, I recommend that everyone take the clothes off their back and the shoes off their feet. They leave everything at home and go off and be homeless for two months and then come back and tell me how they feel about homelessness," Blansett told ABC10.
Blansett was evicted and now lives out of his car.
"If you look inside here [you can] see just the randomness that happens in a car like mine. Here's some canned food. What's left of my clothes. They all need to be washed and I'm trying to figure all that right now," Blansett said.
After speaking before a Lodi City Council meeting, Blansett decided to run for mayor.
"It's like people want to get rid of them instead of help. Their answer to the homeless crisis is to ship them out or something," said Blansett.
As someone who is recently homeless, Blansett says he has firsthand insight into what the homeless need.
"Couldn't the city put a few strategic port-a-potties, so that when all the parks close up there is at least an option? If there was a clear resource center, that literally, that helped at all levels of homelessness, because there are many tiers of it. There's the newly homeless. That's what I was. There's the long-term homeless. There's the seriously mentally ill homeless. There are homeless that are starting to work, but still homeless. There are homeless with cars," Blansett explained.
Blansett says he is a chef by trade and owned a catering business. He is hoping to get work before winter sets in and says it can be difficult to get work as a homeless person.
"When you are dirty and smelly and sweaty from walking to a job interview, and you have no clean clothes, I mean, is that the way you really want to go to a job interview?"
Invalid signatures made his bid for mayor fall short. He says one day he wants to try running for mayor again.
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