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On this edition of Farm Talk Paul interviews Rick Schroeder of Many Mansions. They discuss how Many Mansions lives out their mission to provide affordable housing to those in need and also provide essential life enriching services to their residents.

Transcript

FarmTalk: Interview with Rick Schroeder – Many Mansions

Paul Ward: Hi, it’s Paul Ward here and welcome to another edition of Farm Talk. Today, we are so excited to have Rick Schroeder, the president of Many Mansions. As you may know, my team has teamed up with Many Mansions and is making contributions for every sale that we do. So, Mr. Schroeder, welcome to the show. 

Rick Schroeder: Thank you, Paul. Thank you for inviting me. It gives me great pleasure to talk to you and to your audience about Many Mansions. 

Paul Ward: Great. What is the mission of Many Mansions for those that don’t know about Many Mansions? 

Rick Schroeder: This is a nonprofit and we were founded 41 years ago in 1979. We actually have two missions. Our primary mission is to provide affordable housing to those in our community most in need. And then the second mission is to provide essential life enriching services for those residents. So there’s really two components of the mission. One is to provide the housing. Then there’s a social service component to provide services for those residents.

Paul Ward: Okay. And I saw in your mission statement that there was talk of anti-discrimination as well. I know there’s a lot of discrimination in real estate having been in the industry for 18 years. Maybe you could speak to that a little bit. 

Rick Schroeder: Yeah. Unfortunately real estate does have a history of that. Our housing is open for all. We make a real point of that to the people that live with us. So when we develop housing, we’re developing the housing by building new apartment complexes or by buying existing apartments and then renovating them. The population that will be living in that housing are those in the community. Usually that is low income, extremely low income, very low income seniors, whatever. We make a very point that the housing is open for all. There’s no profiling. Anyone that needs the housing and that qualifies for it can live with us. And we have quite a diverse group of residents living with us.

Paul Ward:  And where do you find your residents?

Rick Schroeder: We find our residents all over. Most of our housing that we have developed is in Ventura County, not exclusively, but mostly. And we have developed over 20 properties. Rental properties in Ventura County for over 634 units of housing. We maintain a waiting list. Sometimes we joint venture our developments with the area housing authority of Ventura County or the housing authority of Oxnard or some other government agency, but we draw from the waiting list and almost everybody on the waiting list comes from Ventura County,

Paul Ward: All walks of life.

Rick Schroeder: Unfortunately over the years, our waiting list has grown to over 3000 households. 

Paul Ward: Wow. 

Rick Schroeder: We had to close the waiting list, unfortunately, because it was just too large. It’s a very diverse set of people. People that are interested in housing, the need, the housing they have not been able to find or decent housing. So it really comes from all over. But most of our Ventura County properties are populated with people from Ventura County.

Paul Ward: And, how many units do you have?

Rick Schroeder: As I said, we had ownership and interest in about 640 units of housing that Many Mansions actively manages. We also manage the housing 16 of those properties. Okay. Over 640 some units of housing. Okay.

Paul Ward: I’ve had an opportunity to tour the Oxnard facility and it is beautiful. I mean, it’s not your, what you would typically think of as homeless housing. It’s, you know, Spanish architecture and beautiful grounds and vegetable gardens and an education center. I mean, there’s a playground. There’s a lot going on there.

Rick Schroeder: Yeah. I think that’s one of the things that distinguishes Many Mansions. You know, we’re not just an organization that’s going to build housing. We’re going to work closely with the community on the housing, on its design, where it’s located, who’s going to be in it and then manage the housing and own the housing as a community asset for 30, 40, 50 years. So it’s very important that we have a great design that is well-built, it has all the energy saving features, water saving features that it’s efficient, but it’s also provides some dignity for our records

Paul Ward: Right.

Rick Schroeder: The property that you toured. Our Ormond Beach Villas property in Oxnard. That’s 40 units of housing. Brand new housing.  One, two and three bedroom housing and five buildings with the community space. And that is all for veterans housing for low income veterans. 

Paul Ward: Oh, I didn’t know that everyone is a veteran and about half of those units are reserved for veterans that actually were homeless.

Rick Schroeder: Okay. So you have to be a Veteran. You have to be extremely low income and be homeless. And when we came, you know, when we were developing the house and we were shocked by the statistics that showed so many of our veterans and so much of our homeless population actually were veterans. And we wanted to do something about that.

Paul Ward: One of the gentlemen that I met there, actually, he told me how he was living in his van. And now that he has a house he’s actually able to live with his daughter. I think he might’ve even been living in his van with his daughter. And so he was just extremely grateful for, you know, the opportunity to live there. I knew that one of the lucky ones,

Rick Schroeder: Sometimes we don’t fully appreciate the importance of housing, but we see that a lot. Without stable housing, it’s difficult to obtain or retain a job. Often families get separated because you don’t have the housing.  So we’ve, you know, brought families back together. Some people that have other medical challenges, they can get the proper services because they now have stable housing, a place to go. And it’s something that our residents can really live and thrive once you’ve, you know, have them in a place that they can afford. All of our residents that we have pay rent, this is not free housing. People pay. They generally pay a percentage of their income toward that housing. So they can live in dignity, but then they can build from there. They can get reintegrated into the community, into the workforce, develop their life skills, become really active and productive members of our community.

Paul Ward: And there’s an education center there too. I saw the kids had workstations with computers and they might not even have a computer in the house, but there were education centers. 

Rick Schroder: Yeah and that’s a big part of Many Mansions because the housing, while it’s important, it’s really only the first step, right. Too often residents who just receive housing, especially those that have been homeless, slipped back into homelessness. So at all of our new complexes, we have community buildings, community centers, where we provide a variety of programs for our residents. So for the children, we have active education programs. We have a homework club where the kids come after school with staff and volunteers and work on their homework, computer access projects, different things like that. During the summertime, there’s a summer camp program. We just gave out backpacks to all of our 350 resident youth that are going back to school backpacks with school supplies. They get that. And so we try to do what we can for the youth because we know that you know, we want to break that cycle of poverty. We see generations of people that are poor generations of families, and we feel that if we can help the children stay in school, they will thrive in school. We have a scholarship program. We gave out over 20 scholarships. So our graduating youth can go on to higher education. I feel that’s one way that we can break the cycle of poverty and open up opportunities. Same time we do provide programs for our adults, especially our adults that have been homeless. So, like I mentioned at our Ormond Beach Villas, we have a case manager that works with the residents on job development. Maybe life skills, maybe addiction counseling, financial counseling, lots of different ways that a resident can really improve their lives and improve their income and just improve their opportunities to live.

Paul Ward: What are the expansion plans for many mansions in Ventura County?

Rick Schroeder: We have more active, affordable housing development, ongoing projects than we ever have in our history. We’re currently in construction on a project called Summit View, which is in Los Angeles. It is 49 units exclusively for veterans, again, veterans that are homeless. So that we’ve been in construction since the beginning of this year. And even through COVID-19 our contractors are out there working. And we expect that property to be open sometime in mid 2021. We’re about to begin construction and Fillmore that we call Mountain View. That’s 79 units of family housing housing for low income families. Again one, two and three bedrooms, a big community space that we will have children’s educational programs, programs for the adults that actually can start construction in October. We also have another property that’s going toward construction next spring, hopefully in March or April called Sun King. That’s also in Los Angeles 29 units. And that is for families that were chronically homeless. So families that were homeless for more than one year. 

Paul Ward: Wow. 

Rick Schroeder: We’re working with the Los Angeles school district on that project because they noticed this is in Sun Valley. A lot of them, I think almost half- 40%, I believe, of their elementary school kids have experienced homelessness. 

Paul Ward: Wow. That’s incredible. 

Rick Schroder: I mean, you can imagine being homeless is really extremely difficult, but as a child that has to go to school, it’s very, very difficult. So the feature of this particular property is that the apartment complex is going to be really literally next to the elementary school. Okay. So there’ll be a close association with the elementary school and the middle school. And so 29 families. So we hope to start construction next spring on that, but we have other potential projects that we’re working on in Oxnard, downtown Oxnard in Camarillo, outside of Camarillo. Most of our properties are supportive. Most of our projects will be supportive housing for individuals and families that have experienced homelessness. Some veterans, other special needs considerations. So yeah, we are expanding and, and yeah, real estate development takes a long time. I mean the beach property in Oxnard, by the time it opened, we actually first looked at that site and put an offer to purchase that land six years prior to that. So it’s like six years, that’s a long time. And you know, it’s not unusual at all. 

Paul Ward: Yeah. Not unusual. Yep. How can folks get more involved in Many Mansions 

Rick Schroeder: Lots of different ways. You know, unfortunately, volunteers are really important for many mansions and most of our programs with the residents, the children, especially we use many, many volunteers. We use volunteers for our special events. We use volunteers here at the main office. We’d have service projects where volunteer groups get together and, you know, help beautify one of our properties, painting whatever. Unfortunately, because of the social distancing requirements, we’ve kind of cut back on our volunteer opportunities. So those that want to volunteer or those that just want to learn more, you know, please look at our website, our Facebook page, Instagram. We’re hoping that our volunteer programs will be able to reintroduce them in the new year. That’s what we’re hoping is that manymantions.com. It’s manymansions.org, cause we’re nonprofit, manymansions.org. And especially our Facebook. If you look onto our Facebook, we’re posting different things that happen every day with our residents with donations. Obviously, we get a lot of in kind donations. I mentioned that all of the backpacks and school supplies that we gave out to our 350 youth that all came from the community. That came from donations, by groups and individuals that purchase those items. So we’re always looking for kind donations, monetary donations, sometimes just political support. You know, when we have a new property that we want to propose we always, almost always have to get approval by the local jurisdiction, by the city council or the planning commission. And they’re looking for community support. I mean, does the community support this? And sometimes we just need our supporters to give their voice and say, yes, we want more affordable housing in our community because we think it’s important. So that’s sometimes the most important way that someone can support us.

Paul Ward: Great. Well, Hey, Mr. Schroeder, I appreciate your time and filling us in more about Many Mansions and hopefully our listeners learned a little bit today and it’s greatly appreciated. So thank you for coming on the show.

Rick Schroeder: Well, Paul, thank you. And thank you for doing what you do. And again, if anybody is interested in Many Mansions, certainly look at our website. They could always email me rick@manymansions.org, (I’d) be happy to provide more information. One of the things that we do again, once the social distancing restrictions are lifted is we give tours of our properties. That’s sometimes when the best way to really learn more about Many Mansions, is to visit a property. I think people that come and look at our affordable housing properties do sometimes have some misconceptions. But once they see them, they see what a beautiful set of buildings they are, how well maintained they are, the people that live there, how they maintain them themselves. And it’s something that I think more communities would welcome.

Paul Ward: Yeah. I would say that the facility that I toured was actually the nicest building in the block. I mean, it was.

Rick Schroeder: I used to tell people that for our properties, that you could not tell the difference between one of our properties and a neighboring property, but that actually isn’t true. Our properties are nicer. They are nicer. 

Paul Ward: So I think they actually bring the values of the neighborhood up.

Rick Schroeder: They do, they really do again, but sometimes the communities are unfamiliar. So I thank you for your effort to kind of bring some of this information to people that might not know much about affordable housing. And it’s something that I think is important for people to learn more and the role that it can play in a community and the benefit that it can play. So thanks. 

Paul Ward: Absolutely. 

Rick Schroeder: Well, thank you very much. 

Paul Ward: Good. Well, thank you.

We’d love to hear from you! As always, feel free to email Paul@homeandranchteam.com.