summarise How Finland fixed homelessness while the US fails: home vs. shelter : We traveled to Finland because we kept hearing that this small country had nearly ended homelessness. [Music] In Helsinki, it's hard not to miss that there's no one living on the street here. Instead of building more shelters, they replace them with permanent homes. So this building, it used to be the biggest shelter in the Nordic countries. And why was there such a big shelter here? Because in the 1980s, we had over 20,000 homeless people in Finland. So we really needed the shelter beds as well. It's the same thing that's happening around the world at the moment. We didn't have enough housing for people and the home was this kind of price at the end of the ladder. So we used the staircase model. So if you had any kind of mental health challenges, substance abuse challenges, first you need to take care of those things and then at the end of the staircase there might be home of your own. And it's quite hard to take care of your challenges if you don't know where you're going to lay your head in the next evening. So here in Finland, if you're on the street, you can't physically be on the street. I mean in winter. No. And then then people are with friends and and then we have shelters. But I think what we have tried to do is to get rid of the shelters and and just you know have people to have permanent homes. And that was one of the biggest things when we started with the housing first is that we renovated the places like this big shelters into permanent homes for people 54. And then I think it has been one of those key things why Finland have succeeded the way we have. What does housing first mean? Uh, it's a human right. So, first thing everyone needs is a home and then start taking care of the other things they may have in their lives as well. But without a home, it can be really hard or even impossible. How long have you lived here? Three years. Three years. This is the canteen. This is our office. And there's my friend. So, how long have you been here? 7 years now. Did you spend any time on the street? Oh my god. Yes. Too long time. How long? Uh, it was 2 years. On the streets. Were you looking for housing? Yeah, of course. It was but nobody cares that time. that Cside and this aside that that is the beginner like you you are coming from street there it is like a shelter more okay you move fast for having had a stroke you really move yes I'm happy because I can speak and walk right yeah here they have bread delivery too when you don't have any food but we have one cafe there we have breakfast there from 8 to 9 and uh lunch 11 to 12 and like we are working from 9 till 2:00. So your day is pretty structured. I mean you have Yes, that's a good thing here because there is lot of people they use so much drugs so they can't they don't handle they can't even cook eggs. So are there many drugs in the building? Oh my god it's Oh yeah there is. People aren't are they kicked out if they find out? No no no there this is like a free town. You can use your drugs in your house, your home. Because 90% of people here is problem with drugs. No sir is required. But this is because the people is coming from streets. They are drug users. Most of them. If you live in the street, you can cannot handle it if you don't use something and then it's hard to stop. Very hard. Yeah. So you have your cigarettes? Yes. Yeah. Do you use anything else? I was a multi- junkie. Multi? Yeah. Like lots of things. Yeah. Everything. Everything. Yeah. You still I stopped when the stroke came. That was a good stopper. And not good stopper, but stopper. A stopper. Not necessarily the best way to stop, but at least I finish it everything when I came here. Is that right? I have been clean now more than seven years. What happened? I get the house. I get the place here. So I decide itself to stop it everything. How hard was that for you? Oh my I get two heart strikes. Uh I almost die be Oh, that was very hard. Were you in the hospital even? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. But the the workers the the meaning is they are checking after you because they knew it. I told them I'm going to finish everything and they was Yes. Good. Good. Yeah. It's interesting because I do think even most shelters that I'm aware of in the US I think you have to be clean to be in a shelter. Like they won't let you in if you're And that's a big issue. A lot of people don't want to leave the street. We have a principle here. Home first. What does that mean? Home first. The home is the main thing. So you have the home. You have own home. You can have home and then after things can improve. Yeah. But first home. Yes. That's right. That's important. That is important. Yeah. Because how do you get clean? You were saying you have to use to be on the street. Otherwise, it's so hard to live here if you know no user. So Oh no, you are not surviving here. Not on the streets. No, it's too heavy. And if you are not user, when you've been on the streets, you will be user almost 90% everybody. And for you, what would it what does it take to what are what are you getting from the building? Are you're getting you're saying sort of almost job training because Yeah, it's it's it's the regular life going up on the morning, do your morning thing, go to work, eat meals on the day, and after that go home. And what do you do? I'm the cleaning boss. I I'm delivering the cleaning stuff to people. I'm sanitizing the handles. Handles, right? I go to the beach to get the wipes. I'm the wipe boss. I'm happy for this what I have now. This was much harder before. Yeah. Before I came here, it was so hard. Yeah. I I feel actually a bit funny because I have been here so many times that they just gave me the ghee and why are you here so often? There are some tenants to you for example and and I like to come to see her every now and then and see how she's doing and we have this book club. So I'm always intrigued what she's reading and then she asked me about what I'm reading and yeah. So she's been here a long time. I you know since the beginning which is what how many years? 2012. Wow. So it's really permanent. I mean not just permanent a couple years but no you can live here as long as you wish and then many people they will live here you know for the rest of their lives they need some they need some kind of support. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's the whole point. Some people they might live here 2 years 3 years then they move somewhere else a little bit more independent and these kind of things. But uh the main idea with the housing first in Finland is that it's permanent. That's the idea. That's the idea. Yeah. At least. Are they all like this where you have all the pink? No. Is this This is your Yeah. As you can see, she has always loved the pink cover. It's nice. I like how you've done it. It feels just so personal. Everything. When did you move here? Nine years ago. And where did you live before? Across the street? No. Three years in temporary housing. Before that, five years on the streets. How did you end up on the street? Her husband died and then she lost the apartment. So 5 years, that's a long time. It was really hard. Really hard. Yeah. Then came the drugs, but she have finished all the drugs. And why were you 5 years on the street? Was there no place? Nope. There wasn't. And she didn't get any kind of guidance where to look. We're looking. Okay. What size is this? I think this is something like 22, 23. 22. And we have a little kitchen, a place to sleep, and living room. Yeah. A bathroom in each one. Totally. And the toilet, you know, it's not a micro apartment by no means. It's a quite sizable studio apartment where you can have all all the necessities you need, your own kitchen, bathroom, and then living room and bed. So, yeah. All pink. Yeah. All pink. You're right. And when you were a child, did you have a lot of pink in your bedroom? Was it like this? Yeah. No, but the clothes The clothes were pink. So they called her the pink devil. No, your closet. Oh, yeah. Oh, it's very neat. You keep everything very organized. When you moved in, what was here? The closet and the bed and then the kitchen table. This is all your things that you bought. Yeah. Where do you get the money to buy things? Do you work now? Ah, so she took parts of the work activities in the building. So she have been washing some sheets. Do you enjoy it having work? Okay. Did you have a job at one point before moving here? Oh, yes. What kind of work? Packing. Packing things. Packing things. Oh, okay. And then when you lived on the street, you didn't work. No. You cannot go to do work if you're on the streets. It's impossible to even think about going to work if you don't know where you're going to stay next night. How did you live for 5 years without a home? It was horrible. Yeah. Without substances, it would have been impossible. What did you use? Everything. And did you get clean? Do you use now with that guy? No. Nothing anymore. How did you stop? She looked the mirror and decided that now it's time to stop. When you were here, here. You could come here even though you were using Yeah. You can live here if you're Yes. because you needed a place to a home in order to feel safe maybe to stop. Yeah, that's correct. Yeah, it depends on yourself but then you need the safe place that you you are you can make the change as well. Now you look back is it hard to imagine living on the street every day she thinks about it every day. Do you really? It's Yeah, it's in her. And what do you think about do you remember a lot of bad things happened during those five years. So yeah. Yeah. It stays in your mind. It stays in your head. And I think especially being a woman on the street, it's probably very difficult. It's really scary when you're a woman. Yeah. Yeah. I'm so happy that you found something. It's obvious that you you're happy here. And things are well now. Is this you? Yes. Do you think that Finland has solved homelessness? Yes. How do you think people could stop being in the streets for so long? Everyone doesn't know how to seek help. And even the ones who seek help, some of them don't get the help in time or on time. So, first they need a safe place and then they can change. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. You're not going to do book book club today? No. But I I got a book hint from Tui actually living in Escobar. Escobar. We read the same books. Really? Yeah. Yeah. More or less. Sometimes this problem of homelessness dehumanizes and it creates this frontier, invisible frontier. Here you don't see it much. It's how do you create this permeability? How do they think themselves as a part of society? It all starts inside the unit. It's the tenants home. Yes, they are former homeless people. They may have some kind of challenges in their lives, but then again, who doesn't have some challenges in their lives? start from there that this is their home and the employees for example they are sort of like the visitors in the building thank you welcome and that's the main thing and then they build the community together so the employees and the tenants so for example they make the house rules together is this board a what's happening during the week weekly schedule for example here is that the work activities are closed today there's a cleaning cleaning day building meeting feels bit like a apartment building. Yeah, exactly. For the breakfast and the lunch, you need to bring your own coffee cup. One part of the Finnish housing first has always been this kind of normality aspect. So when people need to use the social and health services, they use the same services as anyone else. How are people around here perceiving this place? And do they want this place to change its location or this place has been here forever and now for the people living in this neighborhood it's a better thing that people have permanent homes because when it was a shelter in the morning people would have to go out and where would they go to the streets. So actually it has created this whole neighborhood more safer place. This would have been all shared room or a dormatory. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It was a big place, 250 people during the nights and and the support was basically non-existent. So if there was a fight or something like this, the guards could throw you out. But that was more or less what the people got. [Applause] [Music] It's not as big as I thought it would be. How many people are in this building? 88 people. So, but there's not probably seating for 88 here. Yeah, but it's not mandatory to eat here. So quite many people they eat the breakfast, lunch, dinner in their own homes and they cook by themselves and then I think the breakfast nowadays it's free but the lunch is maybe€2 year and a half. So it's not like free so people can choose but I think it's a great way also to do this kind of you know communal work as well. So you offer people a place where they can eat together. They find some community. So that's probably healthy to to have some interaction every day and and that's why the breakfast is free of charge. Here is the outside patio and this is so for example I heard that today 2:00 there will be barbecue there. Usually there's some kind of music as well and and just have a nice time together. It's nice. I mean it's there's nothing that feels sort of like cheap. No. And that's the case when we talk about affordable housing in Finland is that the quality has to be good. So, for example, when you walk around the city, I would say that you don't know which one is like affordable housing and which one is like private housing because from the outside they look the same. I think it's quite special to be this up. It really is. I mean, it's a nice building. It is. And even the fact that this building wasn't something you had to buy. I mean, it was already a shot. So, it's like changing how you changing the mindset. Yeah. You know, Finland has been voted happiest country in the world eight years in a row now. And I I think it comes to these basic things that we take care of each other and then we don't demand too much. When we have a home, health, we can buy groceries from the store, friends or family or both. We are quite happy to be honest. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So this is why we are the happiest country in the world. We need to have sona in our buildings. And I I really love this building in a way that every time I walk in there is this certain kind of atmosphere, this kind of calm atmosphere and you know there are tenants who who don't recognize me or don't remember me and they just come and start having a discussion or a chat and I think that's that's wonderful. It's shows a real comfort level. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're not fighting for sort of your space or your Exactly. Yeah. This is one of the reasons this is my personal opinion why Finland is the happiest country in the world eight years in a row that we will we have sown. It's really really important for the Fins that we can have a place just relax and it's a communal thing too. Yeah, you can you know there can be six people in the sauna and it can be totally quiet but that's also you know sharing the experience with the others. So some people they like to have a chat in the sauna. So, it's not a luxury to have a sauna. It's just a piece of what it's just a necessity almost for you all. How cold does it get here? Can still be minus 20° every now and then and a lot of snow as well. So, there's a big difference between the street and and a sauna. Exactly. And of course, we work towards that. You know, at one day there would be home home for all in Finland and one day we will get there. How close are you? Well, in if if I say that in the 1980s we had 20,000 homeless people. Now the number is 3,86 homeless people. So the decrease have been like 82%. We've seen a lot of spaces and it's usually temporary housing still even if it's not a dorm and it's it's all tiny tiny units that just fit a bed boxes. Yeah. I was this February I was in Toronto and I saw these tiny tiny homes. So they were like you know small boxes. only thing people could do was to sit down or lay down. They couldn't even stand up because they were so tiny. I saw one man entering into one of these tiny tiny homes and I I went to him and asked you must have a social worker who comes to see you every week at least and and he was like off I haven't seen anyone in the past 6 months really. So I was like, hm. So it's not like, you know, it's a bad way to do some permanent housing. For me, it looked like it was just, you know, get people out of sight, out of mind more like, but that how it goes sometimes. Yeah. I don't think the cost is lower in some. No, no, no. I will take my stuff. All the studies, they have the same conclusion more or less that if you are actually housing people with the support they need, you actually end up saving money. anything between five to 15,000 euros per person per year. So on a financial sense, this kind of operation makes perfect sense as well. Cesar Street. The finished model depends on housing that's actually affordable. In Helsinki, a studio apartment rents for €6 or $700. In the San Francisco Bay area, that same space costs more than $2,000. Without enough affordable housing, housing first becomes harder to achieve. This looks like a lot of work doing this. So, you have to do this every time you move the because I get better energy. Winter time is the sun's way over that way. So, you have to take them off every time you move the car for street cleaning and that kind of thing. No, you can't leave them up when you're driving. Yeah. And it's worth it. Oh, it's worth it. I mean, a lot of people don't do a lot of the homeless don't do nothing. These packrat and some of their places are really bad. The crazies, the junkies, and I don't hang out with the junkies. I mean, I'm not a addict. Never got into the alcohol and or the drugs. This ballpark is starting to come alive here. I'm going to move over there to the Almea. So, you're really specific about where you park? Yeah, this is safe parking here. So, you're a senior? Yeah, you are 67. 67 now. Yeah, I don't want to be living in this thing forever. I want to get into housing, but I don't know if I ever will. I'm a list for two one place here in Berkeley, then a couple other places. But it's normal to be waiting a couple years for housing as a senior. Yeah, you could be waiting some people did it in two years, get lucky and hit it right, and then some places you wait 10 years or better. What do people do? So, you all just stay in cars or van. I mean, what what do you stay in my RV until then or that if I find an affordable place I can afford. Right. So, how much solar do you have on here? Well, I have nine panels. Nine panels. And how much? Oh, I paid about 5,000. Mhm. Do you have a lot of stuff in here? No, just a basic. I don't like clutter. I don't heck rat. It's not bad. It's a good thing person. So, okay. So, that light is all coming from solar, right? Yep. Ah, see this is a portable generator battery pack. I have three batteries down there and one there and two there. And I got another five batteries on that side. They're all big batteries. Do you have gas? Yeah, the stove is gas. Oven's gas. So I p just paid it off January. This thing is painful. How much you buy it for? Uh 11,000. Well, that's with interest. Yeah, but it wasn't bad, you know. I'm I'm okay with it because you in rent here in Berkeley. What would you pay? A rent? Oh god. Yeah. I I rented on in Berkeley. A room. Single room occupancy kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. A rooming house. Well, good luck with your move. Bye, Dan. Good night. Hi. Good to see you. It's been a while. We first met Patrick Kennedy almost 15 years ago when we toured his first micro unit. We're on a site that was that we found 5 and 1/2 years ago. We wanted to show how much housing you can get on a typical single family home lot. And as it turned out, it's 39 apartments. This is sort of like a new take on residents hotels. It's going back to something that was big a 100 years ago in a lot of cities that kind of we got away from. That's exactly it. This is a modern take on the residential hotel. If you live in the California climate and you have a Mediterranean weather, then why not take advantage of it? All of the units have access to the outside. All the units can see their neighbors. And I think it makes for a much more connected environment. I think not having an elevator must be I mean elevators can tend to get messy. They're a place where you can hide away. It's bad stuff happens in elevators. They're expensive. Um yeah, I do think that the this layout feels conducive to sort of light and air. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And you're not like you're stuck on the fourth floor, the end of the hall, and you basically just share a corridor with your neighbor. The key difference that we wanted to demonstrate here was the value of having a courtyard apartment instead of a residential hotel. That allows us to have every unit with light and air on each floor and every unit can see what's going on on the other unit. So, we were hopeful that the architecture itself would lend itself to community building. It just makes it a lot easier for people to naturally interact with one another. Have a good one. Thanks. You too. This is a typical unit. And what's changed? You have no space chewed up for circulation because you enter in the middle. And we do some other things that make the space feel bigger. 8ft tall door. Our windows are 5 ft tall. Ceiling heights are 9 ft. We wanted to have lots of light, which obviously with two big windows, you do. In fact, I can. We also wanted to see how small you could get and still have a serviceable unit. And I think this is about it. We are by one of the busy streets here, but the the sound is not too bad, right? So, yeah. No, we we have double glazed windows and we've tested the sound. In fact, University Avenue is the busiest street in Berkeley and if you test the noise level here, it says quiet library. You just hear the vent or fan or something. You're listening to the fan. We have a microwave here. Microwave, convection oven. You can heat stuff up. We wanted to limit the amount of cooking inside the units cuz it's an issue with the insurers. Sink and dish rack. And we wanted to keep costs down. And then over here, desk and work area. The dayb bed also has storage. and under the bed. So, you can put your luggage and things like that there. If you really need more space, you can lower this. But, we wanted to make sure that the dwellings not only had a bed and a desk, but also a place where you could socialize, hence the folding table. Wow. Easily folds and unfold. That's great that it just pops up. Yeah. And it's pretty We we we tested this in our in our offices quite a bit and it's pretty indestructible. This actually was a specially designed wardrobe that we worked on for several months. Space for a guest chair and then also space for a pantry and for other things. It's also got a lot of hooks. My wife says I have a hook fetish and I I believe that you cannot have too many hooks in a small space. The other thing we have are metal mirrors here. Unbreakable. And a nice thing about having a metal wardrobe is it's magnetic. And so, and this is where you put your mail that's going to go out. Turn on the light. So, I'm guessing no wet bath. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's not a wet bath. The ground floor units are all wet baths cuz they're all accessible. And this is a grab bar right here. We're very proud of our toilet paper holder, which is also a grab bar and which you can set an iPhone on top of and not worry about it. It's also great, easy to change, too. So, everything's built to be kind of bombproof. And the flooring is vinyl tile. It's pretty indestructible. You can put a cigarette out on it, but it also looks decent and it's easy to maintain. The furnishings are also pretty indestructible, but they don't look institutional. This does feel like you've been doing I don't know what version 5.0 6.0 of what you've been working on on tiny studio. This is 9.0. Is it 9.0? This is our ninth studio. And ninth studio design. I think we're reaching optimal performance and size. I don't think we can get it any smaller and still have it work. Another feature about it that I wanted to experiment with was having the community room right at the get-go. So, you can see people coming and going and connect that way. This Michael, another one of our residents. He just dung it in blood. Let me go change in my pajamas. Caught him. Definitely caught him off guard. It just seems like you guys are already a community. Yeah. Like I don't think that happens in apartment building. Similar circumstances circumstances that brought us all here. We've come from the from being homeless. You all have. Yeah, definitely. I definitely was. At one point, I was living in my friend's car. I my mom passed away so I just like forget it and went out on the deep end. Didn't have anywhere to go. So I was homeless for a while then I got into the tiny homes. And And how does that compare to here? This is a lot better. A whole lot better. If you ever been camping It didn't feel like a home house. No. No, it did not. Everything's just pretty standard. Washer, dryer. Do you ever come in here and it's been used and Oh, yeah. Of course. We just wait for it. Sometimes we kind of rotate it out ourselves a little bit. Nobody tends to get upset. It's sort of like unsaid, but but we all kind of randomly just like put our things in there. So, you don't even know who's that. I mean, you're not going to take You just know it's yours. Exactly. So, the honor system really works. I mean, you haven't had anyone. We all don't touch each other's things. Isn't that like a It's like home here. Like, I can say this is home for me because I'm comfortable. I'm around people that helps out. And both of you are now taking classes. Well, I'm taking a class in property manager right now and I'm trying to get uh into CC Berkeley right now. I'm in school before human work and social services because I want to be a drug addiction and mental health counselor. That's great. Wow, that's really great. It wasn't easy and it's days where I can say that I sit back and I think like, man, what I wonder what happened if I didn't get this place like what would I be doing? Where would I be at? Everything I can think of is either jail or in the ground. And I'm like, I'm thankful to God that I have a place over my head to call my home. Oh, yeah. Very nice. So, you got the nice corner window. Oh, wow. Nice and brief in here. I I appreciate it. Oh, good. I really do. I'm glad. Well, Latoya says that you are one of the allstar residents here. Oh, I appreciate that. She says you just got a job at Target across the street. Wow. Talk about an easy commute. Yeah, that's I was uh joking with one of the 18-year-olds that worked there. She's like, "Where do you live?" I'm like, "I just walked to my house." She goes, "You walk? You don't have a car?" I'm like, "No, I'm poor." Yeah. She goes, "You're poor?" I'm like, "Yeah, I have to walk across the street anyway." Yeah. You feeling okay? Feeling dizzy with all the no getting blood? No. Sorry. And did you get to pick which unit? No. No. They just uh assign it to you and it worked out. It's pretty quiet for the most part. No, I I'm blessed. recently got a job at Target, so things are I was homeless for three years. Well, how were you living? So, when I first became homeless, I was sleeping in my car. I had a car at the time, so I was sleeping in my car behind grocery stores. I didn't I didn't hang out in the main camps or anything like that cuz they're to me they're dangerous. I got a job at Lies and my car broke down in the parking lot. So, I stayed on that parking lot for like 13 months. But uh they were cool. I gotta be honest because they didn't kick me off, you know. But I don't like I didn't steal or like shoplift or break into people's cars or anything like that. And then I was in a tent for like 9 months and then I got in here. It's neat. Well, yeah. I got I got a Swiffter. Honestly, I've always liked to clean cuz it's the one thing you know you done something and you see the results right away. Very Spartan. You don't have a lot of stuff. No, I don't. But that was one thing when I became homeless. I got rid of a lot of stuff because I hated like having to go through my car and like find things and and the less stuff you have, the less you have to steal. When you were on the street, did you have some of the same stuff that you just had? I had all all the clothes. I had that everything fit in that. You literally just had a bin. Two bins. Yeah. So, you just kept everything in your car? Well, at first and then when I had the tent, I was clean. So, I never got, you know, bothered by the police and I just kept the things in my tent. How'd you end up on the street? I got divorced and my life just kind of went I was a layabout. Yeah. Honestly. Were you using I was at times. Yeah. Not anymore. When did you stop to come in here? Yeah. Cuz I got rid of I left trouble for myself. I moved in here and then I just started looking for work and got hired at Target. And you haven't had any trouble staying sober. Same clean. No. No. Honestly, like I I'm kind of a weird one like that. Like I can go through the withdrawals cuz I don't break I don't want to get beat up or shots. I don't break into people's stuff, you know. It's my my main problem is when I get paid. What changed about being in here? Cuz it sounds like there was a real mark the moment you came in. I mean, you said since May when you moved in. I just I think you get tired. I didn't want to go back on the street. They were very nice, you know, to give me a place and I didn't want to blow it. So, I I try to keep it clean. You know, I'm quiet. I don't bother people. And so, you still have things that you've kept. Most of the clothes I have I've had for like 10 years. This is like one of the last things my dad bought me. So, I I I'm I'm sentimental. Does this work? Does the setup work? Do you do you feel like the space works? Absolutely. It's better than a tent room in a car, but like my brothers bought me some things. What do they think about you being here? Well, obviously they're happy that I didn't die out on the street, you know, and all that. I mean, and then pretty low on food right now. Where do you go shopping? Yeah. Yeah, I get it. Target. Wait, you're working at Target? I'm working at Target. And it's just a few blocks away, right? Right across the street. The commute's easy. And then this the bathroom. Mhm. You know, it has like a fire hose. And it gets hot super quick. No, it's I'm I'm blessed. And then I just have a little bit of civil civil wear. When you got this, did you go out and buy stuff? Little by little. You know, I didn't have a lot of money, so you know, most of it went to food. And I think once you're on the street, it's hard to get off. not having a steady like for instance when I worked at the Lies when I I can't wait to get off because I'm gonna go home but my home was the parking lot right there so you just get discouraged pretty easy especially if you're not making good decisions like my brothers were all police officers they made good decisions they got houses so I guess everybody has a black sheep but now you're having a second chance I mean it's not over I understand that now my my next goal is just to get my kids back in my life does it feel permanent to you this is my home now We have 31 people that are very much on track back to leading normal lives. In almost all their cases, it was just a matter of finding a stable place and getting a decent night's sleep. So, we wanted to show that a combination of private and public sector could dramatically bring down the cost of this kind of housing, which allowed us to have the freedom to build the building that we wanted to build. The building doesn't have an elevator, which was a deliberate decision on our part because we wanted to keep costs down. We wanted to keep maintenance costs down. And we thought that a lot of people would benefit by having to use stairs. And in fact, we have a 75year-old resident here who deliberately picked the fourth floor because she liked the Golden Gate view and she wanted to get some exercise on the stairs. There's the Golden Gate. There's San Francisco. Oh, yeah. And so far, we've had no complaints from the neighbors. If you drive by it, you would never think this is a supportive housing project. It looks just like a garden variety apartment with the courtyard. I've always wanted to try my hand at building an updated version of the residential hotel, and this is what we came up with. This has been sort of a labor of love for the last 6 years. We spent close to a million dollars just figuring out how to build this and meet section seismic 4 code, which is the most stringent one here in California. But we did it and we're happy to make the plans available to anybody. I'd love to see these duplicated uh all over the state. Making it open source then. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. We're happy to make these plans available to anyone else that would like to do them for free. Always nice to just look back around real quick and see how beautiful everything is. The other day I caught myself. I was walking in. I had looked up and I was like, "Ooh, flowers." And I just started looking around and then I'm next thing I know I caught myself sitting here and almost fell asleep. Is that relaxing? Yeah. It's the relaxation. Like to me once you enter those doors everything on the outside shuts off. Really? Yes. So it's like okay I'm having fun here. I have my own space. I have wonderful neighbors. I can come and go whenever I please. I don't have to answer to nobody. I don't get in no trouble here. It's easier and it's better for me because I am easily prone to trouble. But since I've been here, I can honestly say I've been more relaxed. Like I haven't been wanting to go outside or do anything like that. I've been wanting to be in my room or go to school, come back and relax. Kind of gives you like almost like a second win or a little bit of inspiration towards everything you want to do. You're like, "Oh my god, I have a home. Like, I can come back to my home. Like, I got a beautiful home." Like, you know what I mean? Like, it's clean all the time. Like, it's very secure. It's always this plain. It's always this plane. You guys, uh, kind of everybody. Everything. Like, if we see a mess up, we'll pick it up and clean it up. Cuz you feel some sort of ownership. Of course. Yes. Are you paying rents? Yes. I didn't do it. This year I had ended up losing like my uncle and like my mother and and I kind of felt like I was like I don't know. I don't know if I want to get up anymore. I don't know if I necessarily want to do anything on top of like being on the streets just like laying down on the pavement just like not really having any hope. I'm like I don't know if I really want to continue and stuff like that. But I finally got called up and they're like we finally have a spot for you. I immediately started like not even going to lie. I started crying a little bit. I did. I did. I'm like man this is another opportunity. Yeah. a really great chance to change yourself. Yeah. What makes this work? What makes this work is not letting them feel that they're in jail. Letting them know that they have a voice, that they are heard, that we're not, you know, clink clink all the time, that they can come and talk to us. That's what works. Cuz I've noticed when you start to do so many curfews and you have to do this, you have to do that, nothing works. Nothing works. You have to have a common ground. Just showing them that you they have someone they can talk to, you know, not just someone who's gonna come and bark bark at them, you know, showing them, hey, I've been through this walk of life, too, you know, and as long as we keep our best foot forward and we have the people here that'll support you. You have no sky's is the limit. Sky's the limit. We're We're our family. We're a family here. We're a family. That's how I explain it. We're a family. Have you had any luck getting housing? Yeah. No. Nothing. No. What's the process then? So you just you put your name on a you apply. You apply and you never hear from these outfits. Yeah. Why? Why are you in California? You from here? I lived in Hawaii for like 30 years. Work died out. So I came back and and I worked for like seven years and then I retired. I bought this. I figured three to five years I'll get into housing. But it's not working that way. And I don't want to live in this thing forever, you know, and find an RV place to put this. All the park RV parks in the in California. They're all charging like 1,500 a month. But it's a good investment, though. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I I run off of all solar. I don't even use my generator. Oh, nice. I like your setup. Wow. It looks cozy. Yeah. You have a this bed set up. Oh, I have a bed in the back. Oh, that's your bed in the back. Oh, yeah. Oh, that's nice. And you have a microwave that works. Stove. I don't use microwave very much. They full uh juice. Okay. I have a solar generator here and three batteries down here. Two batteries over there. It's supposed to be a 12vt system. That's an inverter. 3000. And that one down below there is a,000. Do you ever run out of juice? Not really. Did you use the TV? Oh, yeah. That's entertainment. Low mileage when I got it. What'd you buy for? Uh, I paid 10,000. Then the tax was 3,000 and insurance. I have full coverage on this thing. Cost me 300 a year. Originally, I had a bench here and I was trying different things. I decided I put it back the way it built the couch. This is new. The other couch was here was a small little dinky thing. You built this? Yeah. There's a handle right there. See, this is a regular electric refrigerator. You eat really well. Twice a day. I I keep it down to twice a day. I keep my weight down and well, still gain weight. Toilet, bathroom, working toilet. Oh, yeah. I service this thing every two weeks. Dump my tanks. But you have a shower. Shower once in a while. You're very neat. Yeah. I I don't like clutter. I'm not a packrat. You got to keep it. You're going to live in something. You got to keep it neat. I was growing in a barn. My mother cleaned everything. And you know, you learn after that. And I tell everybody, you want to park in the street, spread out. Don't group together cuz that's when And then people want a packrat. And I said, "No pack reading." The police don't care. Uh, they do. They I move every three days or four days. Sometimes I'll stay a week in one spot. They know me. They know I'm not a troublemaker, not a junkie. They see the union stickers. They sort of really bother me. They know I'm union and retired, whatever. Well, well, I've been on this street for 5 years. Five years? Wow. Here, I put over there. They all know me. The cops, they don't bother me. I don't bother them. I keep a very low profile. I help them with I see somebody dump out the garbage can, I let them know. And nothing big. So, nobody's going to bother you. They're okay. Five years I've been in this on this street. Phoenix, it's a large city from a land mass. We're the fifth largest city in the US. A lot of the homeless issues that we've had, it's been centered in one location downtown. We have what recently was called the zone. So, this was covered in tents, this whole area. [Music] I think it got up to about 1500 people on the street. On the street in that one block. Oh, that's in one block. Yeah. City was required. It was court ordered to deal with the zone because it was in in the city rightways. And so it's an unbelievable effort to take a thousand people and house them. This immediate solution was we're going to lease a bunch of hotels. That's not a very good sustainable solution long term because it's expensive. And part of the challenge is it's not about moving people out from the urban area, but trying to disperse people so that it's not all focused in one neighborhood. Your angle is you can do something fast. Yeah. So once you go through a development process, then you kind of understand how difficult that is. You're for the X-Wings, right? Yeah. The the main strategy for what we're doing is one, it's completely off-grid from electrical standpoint. I don't need to deal with the power company to set it up. And so when you have something like this that can literally set up in one day and no electric bill, it it can't be beat. So this was a building that was used for the Department of Transportation that they've now turned into a shelter. Yeah. So dormatory style living, right? So if you go inside, um, we have a total of four separate dorms in here. We have up to 79 people in one of the dorms. We were dealing with a major influx of individuals experiencing homelessness and living outdoors. City came to us and said, "Hey, can we add 60 more beds and here they didn't need the space. It was empty parking lot." Yeah. Yeah, I mean they they have people who work here that need the parking and there's a few people that the clients that are here that actually drive Uber and so they'll use the parking also, but typically there's a reduction in parking that's needed, you know, for any type of shelter if you're coming off the street. I mean, obviously from a, you know, a campus setting with landscaping would be much nicer, but really getting people off the street is the priority. So for you, you could just bring a crane in. These are already prefabed, right? Yeah. So, everything we fabricate offsite and then six trucks come over with with each module and then we we pick them up with the crane and put them in place. The real advantage here is that in a development process, there's a lot of time it takes to get utilities run to a building. And so by avoiding that with the off-grid nature of it, we're able to not wait for our power company to show up with a meter and set the meter or run power underground to that building, which is expensive and takes time. So it's completely off-grid and it takes about 6 hours to set up. Say, so you have how many total? 44 total beds. Okay. Yep. So this is dormatory housing. This is Yeah, it kind of wraps around. It's a lot with 79 other people in one room. That's challenging and especially if you're trying to work, right? We have people that work overnight, so they need to sleep during the day. It's pretty amazing what people can achieve when they're given a dignified space to live, some privacy. That's my room. Did you furnish this? This is all mine. This was all I came into this place with. This is all about except for the bed. So, how long were you on the street? For about 5 months. Was this the first time you were homeless? Yes. That must have been a shock. Well, it was. My sister passed. So, my family needed money. I had a little money and I said, "Well, don't worry about it. I got a job back in Arizona. I stayed a week, came back, the house was empty. So, that I became homeless." Do you have your own space? I have my own space, my own dignity, my own my own privacy. That's what this room is about. Sanity. Keeping your sanity. get your thoughts together, motivate and say, get your plans together and do what you want to do. And keeps me away from ignorance and people that are not about trying to take care of their business. You know, I needed parts for my scooter. Couldn't find a job without that. They helped me with all that. I got my scooter running. I got moved into this wing and I just got on that train and went forward. I'm a chef. Um I cook. I've been cooking for 45 years. I just got an executive chef job um at a at a restaurant here in uh Phoenix and I'm on my way to trying to get my own place. And your location here, you're in a parking lot. I mean, that works. That's fine. That's fine with me. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. What do you think about being in a container? Compared to being on the streets, I love it. The elements of this world can hurt you. So, being in this container keeps me out of the elements. You know, it's all solar panel. We have uh circuits here charging or your my phone and my speaker. I'm safe. I'm sound. My door locks. I'm able to sleep and rest well. I'm able to get up and go to work when I need to go to work. I just thank God that I'm alive, you know. I mean, I guess you're just you're in here and then do you take the train? No, I ride my scooter everywhere. That's right. That's Oscar de La Hoya. That's a knockout. When I got here, my my scooter was broken. Needed parts. I got it running. Found a job the next day actually and been working ever since. You found a job the next day. That was fast. As soon as my scooter got to running and I moved in here. Yeah. It makes a difference because you had a scooter, you had a house. I had transportation. I was able to move and get around back and forth to work. You know, kept my sanity. You know, you you you're not thinking right when you're in an environment where you can't think, you know, where everybody's complaining about their problems. So, took my problems into this room and settled them myself. The idea of living in the X-wing in a way lifts people up. That's why I kind of like the idea of the X-wing. It's really about moving through the housing continuum and knowing that you're in something that's very innovative. Kind of gives you some confidence to move your life forward. To build 40 beds, which we're seeing right here, no electric bill and a one day setup, it can't be beat. So, one of the one of the ways that you can see where these come together above, you can barely see it, is where the AC duct work connects. And so, there's a gasket on each side. And so, by being able to just bring these in and by pushing up against that, it allows that air conditioning to be fed from the center core into the unit. That not having to spend a lot of time on those connections allows for this to work much faster. Yeah, it's important. So, this is all the off-grid stuff. Yeah. So, this is the central command of of this side of the X-wing. So, what what's happening here is here is our air condition and this is actually a mini split and so this what this does is it modulates infinitely up and down and that makes this a 21 sear unit. So, it's super efficient unit. You can see the quick connect above for the fire sprinkler system which is being fed from this tank, this home hydrant at the end because this gives us 250 g. The fire sprinkler riser is integrated into it. And so this allows us to extinguish a fire in an individual room if there is a fire. This is 90 kilowatt hours of battery storage. And so for a place like Arizona, this works because you have a lot of sun. So you have a lot of heat, but you have a lot of sun. So, and we're running four two-tonon air conditioning units. And you have to remember we're in the desert and it gets up to 120° here where we're at 100% already. And you know, we're at noon or just about 11:45. We we've ramped down now. We only we are only using 604 watts and we're taking in 850 watts. And so that that allows us to now stabilize the batteries. So each one of these batteries is in parallel. And so when we get to 100% we're able to stabilize that. And so last night, you know, it got down to uh probably 70%. And then back up uh because of the amount of of solar PV panels on the roof, we're able to get back up to 100 pretty quickly. The air vents are CNCed into the panels, so there's not something to remove and hide something in inside. Everything here is built based on durability. Everything is 100% about cleanliness and security and nothing touches the floors here. You know, you can see the bed's floating and you can see that there's even a gap around the bed so that anything there's no crumb catcher there, right? And so everything floats so it's easily cleaned. You could come in here with a hose and and hose this entire unit out. How big is this space? 8 8t by 8 foot bedroom, so 64 ft. So this platform will hold 500 lb. Yeah. and it is attached to the walls. And again, this was about storage and cleanliness to be able to clean so that nothing touches the floor. Yeah. Everything here, if you see underneath this, was CNCed and it all locks into the wall. So, from a fabrication standpoint, these are all cut on the CNC machine. They they interlock together and then lock into the wall. And the desk is exactly the same. You can't lift them out either cuz they're so heavy. This material, this material is incredibly durable. Each each sheet weighs about 280 pounds. So, it's it's very very dense. It's basically thousands of layers of paper that is soaked in with resin and compressed. And so, it's antimicrobial and very durable. And again, from a design perspective, it was how do we design this so that it can be manufactured quickly and still provide quality cuz this is going to last you 20 years. And this is a a tough environment to for stuff to last, right? And so the material will last. You need to change air filters, but other than that because this was designed to last at sea. The container was Yeah. across the ocean and and hurricanes, right? Here's your fire sprinkler. So that pops off in in the event of a fire on these walls. In this particular unit is an FRP, a plastic panel. So we have a 1 hour fire rating between each bedroom. And then we have fire dampers in the duct work. So if smoke was in the unit and it starts pulling smoke back in, the damper will close in between each unit and the unit will the air ignition unit will shut off. And so that allows us to not spread smoke to the other units. And fire is a huge problem if you look at the stories in Oakland where the pallet shelters caught on fire. And one of the things I really like about the X-wing and the way that it's modular is that if there is a fire in this unit, we can pull this entire module off and put a new one on cuz the container is not burning down. how economical that can be around 28,000 per bed. And so that price compared to a lot of other housing options for the life safety components that you get here, no electric bill and a one day setup, it it can't be beat to to build 40 beds, which we're seeing right here, is not going to be set up in 2 days. So you could basically drop them anywhere, right? Because there are plenty of empty parking lots and things, right? We're headed to another campus and this campus is was was in process of being set up. Okay. So, what this has this has been set up as is a space where not everyone wants to accept services, right? And that's kind of a reality to homelessness is how do we deal with people who aren't willing to live inside? So there's an opportunity here to live outside. Kind of like a sanctioned campground here. These are installed on a really cool new foundation system called ground frame. So this is the ground frame and it's a steel galvanized tube. There's these pins that are driven down through that into the ground. So we're pinning this tube to the ground. that that allows us to go in without pouring concrete and install a foundation system that meets the building code in a very quick way. You just have to cut a little bit of concrete. So, here we cut the asphalt so that we can get down into the dirt, but it's very minimal. Yeah. And it's amazing because then without going out there and laying rebar and excavating and digging around it and pouring the concrete, this allows you in a day to just come in and lay the foundation. The idea is really not to necessarily have these posts, but because this site slopes so much of drainage, we created these other pieces that attach to the ground frame. It's literally just steel pipe 2 inch tube. But that's that's supportive. That's structural. Yep. And so because it pins it into the ground, similar to when you think about a queson, the ground applies pressure to the pin, right? And then they go in a cross pattern like this. And then when you tighten these bolts, these bolts tighten up and lock the pins in place. And the difference in cost between this system, for example, and trying to build a foundation that is more conventional. So labor is the huge difference, right? to if we're going to come out here and do this, it's going to take more than a day in concrete, right? You're going to be laying out, excavating rebar, pouring concrete. And so something that would take four or five days to do with concrete with a crew of four to eight, we can do in one day with a a crew of four. And so it really speeds up your labor costs. From a cost standpoint, it's pretty good because it's really a lot of offthe-shelf materials. Like this tube is what's called an HSS. It's a galvanized steel tube, and this is 2-in galvanized pipe. You're just taking stuff that's really common in the structural world and using it in a really smart way. And these are not meant for temporary use. So, this can be permanent. These are designed for a permanent foundation system. Yeah, this does not require a lot of equipment other than electric jackhammer. You know, each one of these pins will take anywhere between 4 and 12 minutes to hammer into the ground. So, all this could go in in How long does it take? So technically if per X-wing you spend a day on the foundation and then a day installing the units and then depending on the stairs and ramps you have another day. So you're three days to get your 20 beds in. It gives you a really quick assembly process. A lot of times people will not come into shelters if they can't stay together. So, this is an example of a double room. We have two beds, but still the same. So, everything here is floating. Nothing touches the ground. And it's all uh about cleanliness, right? So, the idea is if you need to come in here, hose it off, you can. We've kept the bed frame floated off the wall. There's these openings that are are CNCed in, and you can see right here where this piece will slot into that hole. Oh, yeah. And so it all locks together. There's not even a back to them. They all lock together. And my goal is to eventually get to the point where I can build this without anyone having a tape measure. So instead of having these cabinets and measuring and level where they go, the holes are already CNCed into the wall panels. So there is nowhere else they can go. They go up, lock in, and that's it. What prevents you from moving them, cuz that's one of the concerns, is that they are attached to each other. What that does is, you know, because this material is so heavy, you can't pull this many pieces out of the hole. I think that's part of things that we can do to lower the price. You know, the same thing with the beds. We have a jig that you put down on the ground, you take your angle, and so a lot of people are worried it doesn't hold enough weight, but it holds 500 lb. It's very, very stable, and it has a 3-in angle that spans from wall to wall. None of the rooms have a, let's say, a bathroom situation with a shower. Here on site, there is a separate bathroom and shower facility. Yeah. Separate from the X-wing. You see the floor is just beautiful. This one really something dragged across it and there's it's missing a lot of pieces from it, but it just creates a really cool texture. And you can see this panel here was replaced. The metal it's really nice. Yeah, it ties in well. I think the dark ceiling and even though the ceiling is low here, it doesn't feel like it's a very small space. How high is it? I think this one is is 78. It's a very good solution for dignified housing and it sets up in one day. I mean, I don't know how you can really beat it. I think it's it's there's a need for it. It feels less like a storage container and more like a camper. Yeah. I mean, a lot of them are really it's like feels like the Department of Transportation, right? It's like everything is beige and there's really nothing there that I think can at least make you feel a little bit better about what your situation. I I think you have to solve the problem at all different levels. X- Wings can help from the bottom side of that scale and rent rates have increased so much in the city that a lot of people aren't able to afford it. If we're able to provide more housing for those people who may just need 6 months to pay rent cuz the goal is to solve the problem of getting people off the street. And people will have many comments about how to solve homelessness and housing first or not housing first or what it is that people need, but is such a complex problem. What I know is that without housing, it's very very difficult.