Interview with President of Many Mansions, Rick Schroeder

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Paul Ward: Paul Ward here and welcome to another edition of Farm Talk. I’m so excited today because we have Rick Schroeder, President of Many Mansions.  Rick, welcome to the show. 

Rick Schroeder: Thank you. 

Paul Ward: And this episode is brought to you by Escrow Hub and the Money Store. So Rick, as the President of Many Mansions  what is the mission of the organization?

Rick Schroeder: Many Mansions is a non-profit affordable housing and service provider. So we’re a California nonprofit organization with a focus on developing and managing affordable housing properties for persons and families that are low income. And at the same time providing onsite of what we call “life enriching services” for them.

Paul Ward: Okay. And how many facilities does the organization have throughout Southern California?

Rick Schroeder: In Ventura County, we have 16 affordable housing communities with 538 units of restricted affordable housing.

Paul Ward: And then also Los Angeles County as well?

Rick Schroeder: Yes. We have three properties currently in development.

Paul Ward: And this facility is beautiful. I mean, it’s not what you would stereotypically think of, as, you know, homeless housing. When you walk around, it’s beautifully landscaped, it’s kind of got a Spanish style, tile roof. It’s actually more beautiful than some of the surrounding properties. 

Rick Schroeder: Yeah, it actually is. We’re sitting here in Ormond Beach Villas, which is 60 units of affordable housing, expressly for veterans. Some veterans with disabilities, some veterans that were homeless, but really all of our affordable housing is really well constructed, beautiful apartment complexes. I used to say that you can never tell the difference between an affordable housing apartment next to an apartment that wasn’t affordable housing. But actually that’s not true. You can tell the difference. The affordable housing is probably better constructed, better maintained, cleaner and quieter. So actually, I think there’s some old misconceptions of affordable housing from the 1960s and 70s of high, tall buildings that are just crammed with people, but that’s not today’s affordable housing. These are very nice quality apartment complexes.

Paul Ward: You could definitely tell that there was pride put into the facilities when they were constructed.

Rick Schroeder: Yeah, I think as I mentioned to you earlier, this particular property, Ormond Beach Villas actually won the affordable housing development of the year for 2020.

Paul Ward: Right. That’s incredible. Out of all the nonprofit groups that construct affordable housing and all the facilities in California.

Rick Schroeder: Correct, in Southern California.

Paul Ward: That’s great, congratulations. How has Many Mansions evolved over the years?

Rick Schroeder: Quite a bit, quite a bit. I first became involved in Many Mansions in the 1990s as a volunteer, and then as a member of the board of directors and then as president on staff in 2002. Back then, we were a very local organization. When I first got started with them, we only had two properties all in Thousand Oaks. And our focus was really on developing properties in Thousand Oaks. Since that time we’ve expanded throughout Ventura County and now into Los Angeles County. The properties that we developed now are mainly supportive properties, supportive housing, housing for people with disabilities, people that were formerly homeless. We do our own property management and our own services. So we’ve grown as an organization. When I started, we had maybe 20 employees and now we have close to 80. So we’ve grown quite a bit. But really, I think our mission and our commitment to our residents has never really changed. We’ve always wanted to take people that need housing the most and do what we can so that they can live a wonderful life and thrive in the community.

Paul Ward: And how is the organization funded? I mean, these folks are low income, the rents are reduced. How do you get your funds?

Rick Schroeder: Well, our funding in terms of developing property comes from a lot of different sources. It comes from borrowing money from loans, state, and federal programs that also loan money, but you don’t have to pay them back right away. Sometimes there’s investors actually through a tax credit program. So going into a property, that’s part of our long process of getting enough money to build the project. This project that we’re here, Ormond Beach Villas cost $20 million, but once we receive that money and we build the property, each property generally sustains itself, even though the rents are very low, the operating costs are also pretty low. Our residents do pay rent, but again, at an affordable level. So generally the properties sustain themselves. As an organization, we raise money by donations, by grants, by managing properties. By all sorts of other ways; by developing the properties, etc. So we get our funding through a variety of sources, but the properties themselves generally are able to sustain themselves.

Paul Ward: And I heard that you’re about to house 49 homeless veterans that are currently on the streets.

Rick Schroeder: Yeah. Oh yeah. We have a project in the Sun Valley/Sylmar area called Summit View. That will be 49 units for homeless veterans. So for chronically homeless veterans; that is a veteran who’s been homeless for more than a year. It’s a beautiful housing complex. It’s close to being finished. It will be finished in December. And it’s beautiful, set on top of a hill and there’ll be on-site services and we’ll be drawing from the Los Angeles (what they called the coordinated entry system) for getting people that have been in their homeless system for a long time and finally getting them housing and support that they need.

Paul Ward: That’s great. And how is that determined? Cause you have, I mean, thousands, it seems like, of homeless people and thousands of veterans that are homeless and living under freeways and in the bushes. 

Rick Schroeder: Yeah, Los Angeles and Ventura County have a similar system.  In Ventura County, there are about 2,000 persons who are homeless. They’re all registered into a database. Los Angeles is very similar. And it’s like 50,000 people that are homeless and they look at the varying characteristics; how long you’ve been homeless, your health, other factors like your age. And then from that, we will be referred to people that would be considered the most vulnerable so that they are housed first. But again, you have to also be a qualified veteran as well for that particular property.

Paul Ward: Are the developments changing from what they were before? I mean, are the properties that you’re building now different from what they were in the beginning?

Rick Schroeder: I think so. Like for us, we now do mostly new construction. We build them from scratch. Before we were often buying an existing apartment complex and renovating them. So now our focus is mainly on the new construction because we can build them the way that we want with a beautiful community center, so that we can provide services. The units themselves have a lot more handicap accessible features, sometimes a little bit smaller, but they’re built in a way that they’re easy for people that have disabilities. Examples are hardwood floors, different types of development styles. So they haven’t changed a lot, they have changed a little bit. But as I mentioned before, they’re generally very nice and uplifting with the color scheme and the way that they’re laid out. Again, we’re trying to make people feel really proud of where they live and also in a way that’s accessible and that they can interact with their fellow residents.

Paul Ward: And this one has a playground, it’s got community gardens. I mean, you can plant your own vegetable garden and there’s a barbecue area.

Rick Schroeder: We want the residents to be engaged in the community, engaged at their property, barbecue, socialize, come down to the community center for the various programs and workshops that we have. We have offices with onsite staff. So these are things that we can build in if we’re building them from scratch. 

Paul Ward: It looks like you have computers for kids and after school activities? 

Rick Schroeder: Absolutely. You know, most of the kids work on computers. Now with homework on computers and this past year doing a lot of remote learning and Zoom classes, computers are very important for our residents to have. Also for the adults too, in terms of job searches and benefit searches and other things, This property has free Wifi. We also donate lots of computers for the residents. Again, so they can feel connected, and kind of live in our modern society. 

Paul Ward:  How has Many Mansions been impacted by COVID?

Rick Schroeder: Yeah, this has been a difficult year. And it certainly affected our residents quite a bit, obviously, Many Mansions, throughout all our properties, we have over 350 school aged children. And not being able to go to school, they were doing a lot of remote learning through their school. But normally we have children’s programs. So our programs are genuinely an after school tutoring program or a summer camp program. So we’ve had to do a lot of that also remotely through Zoom. For our adults that were homeless or have disabilities, we usually have a case management program. Again, that’s been done remotely. Same time though, we set up, through generous support of donors, a “Resident Needs” fund that residents can draw on if they were short of money for certain things, because they were impacted by COVID. Our rents have been adjusted. So for all our residents, all the rents were adjusted depending on what they were earning. So they weren’t too impacted by that in terms of rent or fear that they’re going to lose their housing, but some did lose their jobs or were laid off for a long period of time. But because of the affordable housing, they didn’t fear returning to homelessness. So I think that’s been good for them, but it’s been difficult on all of us, including our residents.

Paul Ward: I hear that you’re getting into the tiny house business.

Rick Schroeder: Yeah, a little bit, you know, because so much of our housing is for people that are homeless. We are the largest permanent supportive housing organization in Ventura County, that has most of our units housing people that were formerly homeless. We’re kind of looking into ways that help the existing homeless population. How do we get them off the streets as quickly as possible? So we’ve been investigating tiny homes. There are companies, especially one out of Washington that build very small little homes, 64 square feet, 128 square feet that can easily be put up in vacant land, parking lots, whatever. And that the people can immediately come off the street and reside in that little tiny home on a temporary basis, but they’re very comfortable. They have their own heating and their own air conditioning, beds, etc. And then if you develop a kind of community where there’s bathroom facilities, there’s eating facilities, there’s onsite case management to assist them, it’s  amazing. And this is a way that communities, instead of going through the enormous expense of building a permanent emergency shelter, can put these things up as needed on a temporary basis. So we’ve been looking at that concept and we’ve been working with the city of Thousand Oaks and other communities to see if that’s something that can be established. I think there’s a desire in Ventura County, especially to try to get people off the streets as soon as possible. So when they’re off the street, we can then look for permanent housing for them. It’s very difficult to put people into permanent housing when they’re on the streets. And we have lots of people that die on the streets and they can’t get the medical services that they need. We have a whole property that we’re going to begin construction on next month, also in Los Angeles that focuses on chronically homeless families, children that have been homeless for more than a year. We were actually approached by the Los Angeles school district because in that particular area in Sun Valley, I think over 40% of their children that go to elementary school had experienced homelessness in their life. 40% at some point in their life, they’ve experienced homelessness. So they desperately want more housing to get the children and families more stable. Get them off the street, get them into housing. Very difficult, I would think to go to school while you’re homeless.

Paul Ward: Yeah. Really can’t focus, concentrate or learn.

Rick Schroeder: Absolutely.

Paul Ward: And you’ve got a project going on in Fillmore?

Rick Schroeder: We do, yeah! And this isn’t supportive housing. This is low low-income housing for families. It’s going to be about 76 units. It’s currently in construction. It won’t be completed until March of next year, but this is just for working families that need more affordable housing, one, two and three bedroom units. So pretty excited. This will be our first property in Fillmore. And it’s something that the city really has been very supportive of to help local families meet those housing challenges.

Paul Ward: And the design looks beautiful. They have a farm house theme?

Rick Schroeder: Yeah, so again, we’re working with the library for the huge community center. I think we’re working with the Fillmore library system to actually really play an active role in the programs for the children and adults there. We’re excited about that. 

Paul Ward: That is so great. So where would folks go to find out more about Many Mansions?

Rick Schroeder: Well, they can certainly check our website. It’s www.ManyMansions.org. We have lots of information on our website, Instagram or Facebook. Our whole Facebook page really focuses a lot on pictures of  the developments that are currently in construction or our programs and features some of our residents. Lately we’ve been featuring some of our scholarship award winners; Many Mansions has a whole scholarship program. This year we’re giving out, I believe 25 scholarships to our resident youth that are going on to higher education and the scholarships range from $1,000 to $2,500 per student. So we’ve been featuring some of their stories and a little bit about them. Anybody can give me a call. If they’re interested in volunteering, our onsite or in-person volunteer program will begin again in the fall. And we rely a lot on community volunteers to help us in our after school tutoring program, service projects helping beautify the property, working in the office or some of our fundraising. So normally, we have several hundred volunteers that volunteer at Many Mansions during the course of the year.

Paul Ward: Success stories? I read online quite a few stories of folks that were homeless and now getting bachelor’s degrees, or just stories of the hardship of their life.

Rick Schroeder: Our scholarship program actually is not for just the children graduating from high school to college. We’ve had a number of adults decide to go back to school or get some type of higher education or trade school. We actually have a couple people here at Ormond Beach Villas that are doing that, or have done that and have received their degrees. We have one person get his culinary degree. And he’s now working as an assistant chef at a restaurant. We had a person who just graduated from the University of California at San Diego who wrote this really nice letter to us saying that he was a child that lived all his life at Many Mansions. He came to the afterschool program every year, he participated in our summer camp program every year and he was a scholarship award winner. He said he never would have gone to college without that scholarship. And he’s graduating from UCSD and he’s going on to get his MBA in finance.

Paul Ward: Wow. So do people, if they get set in life, do they transfer out of Many Mansions into the regular housing market?

Rick Schroeder: They do. This past year, 2020, has actually been a year where we’ve had the most households move out of Many Mansions because they were going to buy a home, but they were able to save money while living in Many Mansions. They’re paying rent, right. But they’re paying generally between 30% and 40% of their income toward the rent. That gives them enough to save. So then they can actually think about buying a home or moving. But if someone’s income rises, we don’t kick them out. We don’t want any disincentive for someone to improve their life or to improve their income. Again, they may pay more toward the rent, but once you’ve qualified for Many Mansions, you generally can stay.

Paul Ward: So you can stay there indefinitely?

Rick Schroeder: Right. But again, people do move and we actually had somebody, one of the people that moved out this past year, they said, “You know what? Our income has risen and we actually want to give another family a chance to live here because it helped us so much that we think it’s just right to move and give someone else that opportunity.” Unfortunately, we have a very long waiting list. We had to close our waiting list two years ago. It’s still technically closed because we had over 3,000 households. Household could be one person or a family, but 3,000 households on our waiting list. And these are all households from Ventura County, just looking for more affordable housing. 

Paul Ward: 3,000 people were families waiting?

Rick Schroeder: Yes. It’s not necessarily all people that are homeless. It’s just someone that wants to live with Many Mansions. So we think we may open the waiting list in a little bit, especially for two and three bedroom units, but we haven’t done that yet. But yeah, we’re trying to build more housing, that’s really the only solution. We have other projects and it’s not just the Fillmore project that’s under construction. We are close to three other projects in Ventura County that we hope to begin construction. One is Oxnard, which is our Central Terrace Project. There’ll be 87 units, mostly supportive housing. We have one just outside of Camarillo, 50 units for seniors who are homeless. Actually our senior population is the fastest growing homeless population. And then we were working with the housing authority on a project in Camarillo. That again, will just be for low income families. Hopefully we’ll start construction in a year or so.

Paul Ward:  Where’s Many Mansions headquarters?

Rick Schroeder: Our headquarters are in Thousand Oaks, right on Thousand Oaks Boulevard. We were actually coming up on our 42nd anniversary. We’re founded in August of 1979 in Thousand Oaks, California. And it was really just a bunch of concerned citizens that came together and said, “what can we do about the high cost of housing that existed in Thousand Oaks” back in 1979. So they got together and they decided to kind of pool their money together and give donations to help people pay rent. So that was our first program called the Adoptive Family Program where they would adopt a family and help pay part of their rent so they could stay in the housing that they were in. But then we realized that that wasn’t very sustainable because the landlord just kept increasing their rent. So we decided back in the mid 1980s to begin to develop housing. But it’s difficult. And it was a slow process. And we didn’t do too much for the first 15, 20 years or so. 

Paul Ward: That’s an interesting transformation to go from helping a few people pay their rent to building thousands of units.

Rick Schroeder: We’re projected if all of our development projects go forward, we will double in size in the next four years.

Paul Ward: Really, in four years? Yeah. That’s incredible. And then continue to manage those and keep them sustainable. That’s a great success story. Well, Rick Schroeder, thank you so much for being a guest on this edition of Farm Talk. We greatly appreciate you filling us in on what’s happening with Many Mansions.

Rick Schroeder: Well, thank you very much for inviting me.

Paul Ward: And this edition was brought to you by Escrow Hub and the Money Store, and you can find us online on Amazon Music, Spotify, Apple Podcast and of course, YouTube. Be sure to check in for the next edition of Farm Talk.