Today we're going to talk
about homelessness in America, but it's really happening all over the world
and how the real estate industry can help.
The reason I'm doing
this video is because I believe this is going to be
the one of the bigger issues in the next ten years
that we're going to have to address.
And it's going to have to be solved through a public private partnership.
By dealing with the politicians and the real estate developers,
we are able to put affordable housing for people
so that they don't have to live in their cars and on the street.
So I don't really want to go down the hall on what homelessness is
because there's lots of components to it, obviously on this one website.
It talks about housing choices in training and of course
symptoms and supportive services.
But the area I want to focus on, of course, is providing homes
as a stable foundation for all the rest of the issues.
Housing First approach, which I really resonate with,
simply provides home for people experiencing homelessness,
regardless of whether they are sober, have jobs or just have health problems.
Because solve the issue about affordable housing, then we can put more pressure
on the other training and services that they obviously need.
So what we can do as real estate professionals
as be part of the solution in helping some of these homelessness issues.
So most of you know that there's lots of pressures all over the country
for affordable housing and red carpets and all kinds of things.
And I can't blame people for wanting to try to put those on.
There are three things in this chart here to the left, obviously,
lack of affordable housing, which is something that we can do
to help to the suffering economy, can really do a lot about that.
But it's certainly happening,
especially with this high inflation and lack of support of health services.
We also know that that's an issue.
There's many different kinds of homelessness.
Everyone has this perception that the majority of people that are homeless
have some kind of addiction.
I'm here to tell you that that's just not true.
It is true for a certain percentage.
The overwhelming majority of the people who are homeless are in
some kind of transition and then they fall further and further behind.
They want to work.
They can't get ahead and they don't have the jobs or the resources, provide them
enough money just to get ahead and move into better situations.
If you watch it of these scenarios, you'll see that many people are working
12, 14, 16, 18 hour days just to provide housing for themselves or their family
because most of the housing in that particular area is just unaffordable
or the wages that they're working for are also very low.
So as real estate professionals, how can we be part of the solution?
Put a small dent in this big problem in our local area.
Providing solution to homelessness and affordable
housing is something that a lot of people are working on all over the place.
As you can see, there's a number of people fighting for this cause already.
There's a number of studies on this issue.
Here's a great one with the Urban Land Institute.
You should go take a look at their studies from the L.A.
County, their studies from all kinds of places.
Some of these are market based solutions, and some of these are public
based solutions.
As you can see, investing in rates or putting together funds.
Those are really market based solutions on the public side, which we're going
to talk about in a second.
There are some states that are really stepping up
and take an a proactive approach so they can fix this in the future.
One of those public agencies
is the housing authority of the city of Atlanta, Georgia.
This, I believe, could be a model for many states
moving forward, because as you can see,
just these three things that they're working on.
This is current.
They're working on a strategic plan for affordable housing programs,
and they have an entire dashboard that you can look at right now on the Internet.
The Housing Authority of Atlanta has also approved a five year strategic plan
rate and preserve, which is a big part of affordable housing, 10,000 housing units.
As you can see from this third article, they have over a half a billion dollars
of funding to provide more affordable housing for the city of Atlanta.
This is something that you can do in your area to provide additional pressure
on your elected official to try to work towards something like this.
So this issue is world wide.
And I also found this article, which I thought was really interesting,
because this is a government program in the U.K.
or the United Kingdom that actually says one in 200 people are homeless
and how this fund can leverage real estate investing to reduce homelessness
and provide solid 7.5% returns.
So whether you agree it's public
or private, it's still is an issue that needs to be solved.
So some of you may or may not know that 30% of the country's homeless population
and 50% of those who sleep outside, as opposed to shelters
or temporary housing, is in California.
Whether you like the governor of California or not is irrelevant.
But he has $3.4 billion in homeless funding for California alone
for just 2023.
So the big question is, is 3.4 billion enough
to turn the corner on homelessness for California, you or not?
There's all kinds of debate on this.
This is a public solution that doesn't actually address
the affordable housing issue.
It simply just funds homelessness.
These two issues also California show the bigger issue and it's much more complex.
This L.A.
group says in order to build 500,000 housing
units needed in California, they need policy change.
This is another area that you can advocate.
So this issue is not going away.
And what it needs is leaders like you to be able to step up
and create policies that affect change for long term issues
around affordable housing and homelessness.
Now, the one thing that you're going to find around homelessness
and affordable housing is a lot of blame game.
So the reason I put this article here, because this has been tried
before in many states, as you can see from this article,
nothing about publicly subsidized, affordable housing is affordable
because what happens
is by the time you actually build something like this, the fees and costs
and people with their hands out to get something like this done
drives up the cost for the housing itself in this particular article.
You can see that this one alone exceeded $500,000 per unit.
And I can tell you, as a builder that that should be at least half.
One of the things you have to navigate is the government bureaucracy
and the special interest groups themselves.
So here are five things that I'm personally doing
and things that you can do to, number one, contact your local state housing
authority, find out what their needs are
and get involved and be on some of their committees.
The number two is our policy changes needed, and one of those is simply zoning.
So can you get one house, four houses, 820.
How many houses or condos can you get on one acre piece of land?
That's a policy change.
Obviously, if you can get 20 on one acre versus one,
you're going to solve the supply issue
going to be lower cost housing and it's going to be more affordable.
Three funding sources.
This can change from state to state, county to county,
but there's lots of federal and state money
out there to be able to find these kinds of projects.
There's money for developers
and there's money for tenants and residents and homeowner.
Go take a look at the different funding sources
because it can make the difference on whether you do something or not.
Number four, take a look at what is working in other areas,
things like the Atlanta Housing Authority that I just pointed out.
What are they doing right?
What are some areas not doing right and bring those ideas to areas
that might need them?
I know that many elected officials are looking in other areas to see what's
working in those areas because they're trying to bring those ideas back home.
Embrace those and also be an advocate to know what those are.
So when you sit down with these elected officials,
you can actually bring them solutions because they are facing
the exact same issue of high homelessness and lack of affordable housing.
And many, many, many areas are doing this well.
And lastly, get involved and be part of the solution.
This sounds obvious.
You really do need to get involved and understand
it from every angle, so you can start solving problems.
Wrap up here.
There are lots of studies about what is the actual cost of homelessness
and the United States.
Some people say 15 billion.
I've seen reports of over 20 billion a year.
You could see from California they got 3.4 billion just for that state.
The irony is that every single homeless person costs around 30 to $50000
in supportive services when you actually put a price tag on each one.
So the public actually pays more to keep people homeless
than they pay to give them homes, which is completely stupid.
So many of you want to know what I working on.
This is something that's coming at us and this is something
that we could all help solve.