Speaker 0 00:01:02 This is cafe 90.3, FM Minneapolis, and kfa.org. This is disability and progress. We are now with bill Ivy. Bill is a executive director and he is talking to us about homes for our troops accessible housing for vets. Hi, good goodnight or good evening bill organized or good morning, whichever you prefer. It's a strange times we live in, so one never knows when one is listening to anything anymore.
Speaker 2 00:01:32 That is true. So
Speaker 0 00:01:34 Thank you for joining us. We really appreciate that. Um, can you start out by giving us some history about you and how you got involved with homes for our troops?
Speaker 2 00:01:44 Sure. Ah, HomeStore tubes is a five Oh one C3 nonprofit organization that builds and donates specially adapted custom homes nationwide for the most severely injured veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. So the majority of our veterans are multiple amputees, single amputees with limb salvage on another limb, paralyzed or blind.
Speaker 0 00:02:11 Give us some history on you. How did you get involved with this organization?
Speaker 2 00:02:16 I I'm originally from Minnesota. Yeah, except for in the winter. I don't mind not being invasive.
Speaker 0 00:02:26 There is that, although we had a very mild one this year,
Speaker 2 00:02:29 You did, you did a milder. So I had the opportunity to spend 31 years in the us army as an infantryman. Uh, I served mostly in a white airborne and ranger units, uh, at the conclusion of that. I, uh, they all say the army kicked me out when I got back from Iraq because I was too old and the army doesn't care about age discrimination. So it's the way it goes. But, uh, I worked for, uh, uh, an Oregon, uh, company that got me back involved with the army and basically as an operational advisor with an army unit for another seven years, which took me back to Iraq twice and to Afghanistan twice. And then seven years ago, uh, I was asked by the president and CEO of, uh, homes for our troops who is also a Minnesota native and I, with him in, uh, Korea in Iraq and Afghanistan and said, Hey, I need an executive director at homes for our troops.
Speaker 2 00:03:34 I said, uh, well, uh, I've actually got a job lined up here in Georgia, or I live that aren't you guys in Massachusetts? And he said, yeah, well, you know, we'll, uh, we reimburse, we'll reimburse you to fly up here. That's a good deal. Uh, so, uh, so he said, why don't you come on up and watch us do a key ceremony for one of our veterans. And, uh, it was a quiche ceremony in December of 2013 for a young Marine, uh, double above the knee amputee. And I watched him and his, he was probably, I don't know, 23 years old, his wife was probably 2221, uh, expecting the first child. And I watched them roll into their home. And I saw the looks on their faces. And I saw what in a specially adapted home was going to mean, uh, to these two young kids to start restoring some of the freedom and independence.
Speaker 2 00:04:24 He had sacrificed defending ours, and my boss knew that was going to happen. So I said, sign me up, let me wrap up. I turned down the job in Georgia and, uh, joined homes for a trip. So I've had the privilege of being with, uh, the great team here at homes for our troops for the last seven years. And, um, it's, it's a great opportunity for me to give back a little bit. And of course, uh, I get the opportunity and the pleasure of associating with, and being with the same men and women. I spent the majority of my adult life with, uh, helping veterans a bit badly injured, uh, get going again and rebuilding their lives.
Speaker 3 00:05:02 Ah, excellent. So give us, tell us again, what the mission for homes for our troops is.
Speaker 2 00:05:08 So the mission for home short groups is to build and donate specially adapted custom homes nationwide to the most severely injured veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan to enable them to rebuild their lives.
Speaker 3 00:05:21 So let's talk about the specialty housing. Um, what does especially adapted mean to homes for our troops,
Speaker 2 00:05:32 Especially adapted means for us, Sam, that our homes are completely accessible to an individual in a wheelchair. So not matter where you go in the chair or going to home, you can do a three 60 in your chair. You can get into all the rooms and you can completely be, be completely functional in the home. We just joined some of that freedom and independence that our veterans have sacrificed defending ours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hmm.
Speaker 3 00:05:59 And so talk a little bit about, um, who qualifies for this. I know you said, uh, double amputees is that the only qualification
Speaker 2 00:06:09 The, the main qualification is having the veterans administration determined that a veteran is entitled to especially adapted housing benefits. Uh, Congress sets the rules, the VA does the adjudication, but essentially it boils down to a loss of, or loss of use of two or more limbs. So multiple amputees are paralyzed, uh, being blind or a single amputee that has, uh, was what is called limb salvage on another limb. So although that other limb is there because of loss of muscle, mass and tissue, it is not, uh, uh, not as functional as it should be. The essentially it's it's folks that have lost their sight or have lost her mobility.
Speaker 3 00:06:56 Ah, gotcha. Okay. So you've mentioned that you're a five Oh one C3. How are you funded?
Speaker 2 00:07:06 We are primarily funded about 65% with individual donors around the country and foundations and the other 35%, uh, is corporations. Whether they donate products for our homes or they donate cash. So we're, uh, we're a publicly funded, uh, five Oh one C three that really relies on the American people. And although we are nonprofit, we don't see what we do is charity work. What we see is we provide a vehicle for American people to repay a debt. We owe these men and women for the great sacrifices they've made, defending our freedom.
Speaker 3 00:07:45 Mm I wonder, um, do you only build new houses or do you adapt any existing homes?
Speaker 2 00:07:55 Very early on, we did some home adaptations, but we build new homes. And what we found is when you go into renovate a home or adapt one, you don't always know what you're getting. So we we've think that by building a home from the ground up for our veterans and we build where the veteran wants to live, uh, which is one of the things that makes us different. We know that we've got a solid, a solid foundation for this veteran and his or her family to start rebuilding their lives. We stand by our construction. All of our homes have a standard one year warranty, but if, if something goes wrong and it's not apparent for six or seven years, we don't tell them too late. You're after the one-year Mark, we go back in with our inspectors and if it was original construction problem, we're going to fix it at no cost to the veteran because we tell our guys and gals that, Hey, we're building this home for you to spend the rest of your life.
Speaker 2 00:08:49 And this is where the grandkids come for the holidays. This is where you can grow all together with your spouse. And, uh, and w we're going to stand by it. Our tagline is building homes and rebuilding lives. And one of the things that makes us different from a lot of nonprofits is we stay in contact with our veterans once you're in the home. So when we hand them the keys, it's not, here's your, here's the keys to your new home. Good luck is here's the keys. Welcome to the homes for our troops family. And we will be there for you going forward.
Speaker 3 00:09:24 So when you provide assistance, you say you provide assistance. What does that mean? Is that just the house? How does that work?
Speaker 2 00:09:33 So the home is obviously a good foundation, uh, for our veterans to get, get moving forward because we build in their lives. We link all of our veterans with a financial planner on a pro bono basis for a three-year periods. So that not only are they have the home is a foundation to rebuild their lives. They're established and strong financial foundation also. So although there's no mortgage for our homes, uh, the veterans still has normal homeowner responsibilities. They've got insurance, they've got property taxes, they've got to plan for maintenance and repairs. So we've linked them up with their planner about a year before we finish the home. So we know when we hand them the keys based on that veteran's income and expenses, the veteran's going to be able to afford to be a responsible homeowner.
Speaker 3 00:10:23 Does this cover like all of the military? Like, does it cover the army, the air force, the, how does that work?
Speaker 2 00:10:33 We cover all branches of service, army, Navy, air force, Marines, coast guard. Uh, the requirement is that you were injured, uh, serving in the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters of war after post nine 11. So it's post nine 11 veterans injured in, in the fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Speaker 3 00:10:53 Um, I see things mentioned such as the V a S a H what is that?
Speaker 2 00:10:59 The SEH is the special adaptive housing benefits that the VA provides to veterans who are severely injured. As I mentioned, early loss of lots of use of two or more limbs or loss of their eyesight, the VA authorizes a grant for veterans to either build or modify a home. Currently that grant is about a hundred thousand dollars. Uh, you really can't build a home anywhere in the country for a hundred thousand dollars, and you can make some modifications, but you cannot completely adapt to home. So, uh, the, uh, the veterans who qualify for that, that's the first step for qualifying for our homes, for our troops programming. And we don't have the medical authorities on staff to make those determination nor flank, frankly, would. I want to be in the business of, uh, deciding who comes into our, into our program. So VA makes that determination.
Speaker 2 00:12:00 Then we do a very extensive background check on our veterans, because again, it's all about setting our men and women up for success going forward. So we don't want a hand, a home over a home to a veteran. Who's not prepared financially to take care of that home. So if we bring a veteran or we look at a veteran, for example, who meets all of our criteria, but his or her finances are a complete disaster. We'll link them up with a planner early and work with them to get their finances. The point where we know when we finished the home and hand them the keys, they will be able to, to afford to live in that home. We've had some of our folks link up with a planner for up to two years prior to bringing them into homes for our troops. Again, to get that debt paid down, we can get out a good budget and develop the habits that they need to maintain that budget going forward.
Speaker 3 00:12:49 So, um, interesting that they, they have the sh grant that specifically, it sounds like used for helping things be accessible. There are some homes that are like halfway accessible, you know, like that they need they're, they're one floor plans, but they might need bathroom help. You know, as far as grab bars, things like that, and maybe some counter stuff done. Could the grant be used for that then if you wanted to stay in your house or do they really push you to maybe apply for a new house?
Speaker 2 00:13:27 The grant could be used for that. Uh, Sam, uh, when we bring the veterans into our program, though, we say, we're going to build you a new home where you want to live, obviously with good reason. If you want to live in downtown New York city, we can't buy the land. You can't afford the land to build your home and downtown New York, that's not going to happen. And there are certain high cost areas around the country that we're not going to be able to build in because we need to be responsible, uh, to our donors and our supporters with the Mo the harder money that they donate or fundraise for us. But we do tell them that because we're going to stay with them for life, and we expect them to live in the home. Uh, we, we want to know what we're getting, and we want to know what they're getting, and we want to build it from the ground up. If they do own a home, uh, that's fine. Uh, they can use that home as a rental property, or they can sell it and put that money towards retirement funds, uh, five 29 plans for their children to go to college or whatever the case may be. So being a homeowner is, is, is not going to prevent a veteran from coming into our program. It just gives them an additional asset. Once they come into the home and we take mortgage or rent off the table for them.
Speaker 3 00:14:43 Excellent. Um, and I presume this means like if you were discharged because of sketchy,
Speaker 0 00:14:52 Maybe you couldn't apply for this, right?
Speaker 2 00:14:55 We, we do look at the whole person concept and is part of our background investigation. And, and if you have a Mo multiple felony conviction says probably not gonna work for us, uh, because there are a lot of veterans out there who don't have multiple felony convictions, either adapted, needed, adapted housing, our veterans, um, I don't think we have any that didn't receive an honorable discharge. They were all retired or medically retired from the military because of their injuries that they received in Iraq and Afghanistan. And, and again, so we work with them to find a location, uh, that where they want to live. And they, a lot of factors go into the veteran decision on where he or she wants to live. Uh, geography and climate are one, uh, access to, to, uh, major military medical facilities, such as San Antonio, uh, the Naval hospital in San Diego, uh, Walter Reed complex in the DC area.
Speaker 2 00:15:56 Unfortunately two out of three of those are pretty high cost areas. Um, the camp of VA is very good with spinal cord injuries and brain injuries. So a number of our veterans who suffered those types of injuries have decided to stay in the Tampa Bay area, obviously not in Tampa, but moving out into the suburb area. And we can generally find, uh, uh, the land that we need to build a home and, uh, and put on which reasonably costs may not be the exact location where a veteran wants to live, but it's close enough that they're close enough to family medical facilities, jobs, or in the part of the country where they want to live.
Speaker 0 00:16:36 Do you find that most veterans want to be near a VA?
Speaker 2 00:16:41 Uh, quite a few do, uh, the, uh, the, the major medical centers are extremely good. They're, state-of-the-art, they're cutting edge on a work for dealing with nerve damage paralysis and, uh, and assisting amputees to, uh, to move forward. So a number of them, do we have a high concentration in San Antonio, Texas varia, high concentration, about an hour North of San Diego, and at a high concentration about an hour outside of DC. Cause much closer than that. It's very difficult to find reasonable, reasonably priced land, to build for one of our veterans.
Speaker 0 00:17:21 Um, so you talk about them being able to kind of choose where they live. I presume this is within the U S yes,
Speaker 2 00:17:31 So far it has been. And so far it's been, was set in the Cottonelle and the United States. Although we do have our first build in Alaska, we'll be starting later this year to be completely honest with everybody. I'm not, I'm not really looking to build in Hawaii cause I'm not sure we can afford to build it. I'm
Speaker 0 00:17:50 Not sure the people in Hawaii before, but uh, Oh, what a beautiful place to live. Um, can they be out of the U S if they wanted to, or do you not go that far?
Speaker 2 00:18:04 We haven't had to cross that bridge yet. Uh, so I, I can't tell you for sure what we would do. I can tell you that we probably wouldn't think that was a really good idea primarily, uh, because of our ability to find land and build the home form. Um, and of course there's all kinds of tax implications with living outside the United States. And frankly, having a choice of up to this point 49 States to live in, I think is a pretty broad, pretty broad spectrum for our veterans in terms of choosing where they want to live.
Speaker 0 00:18:39 Well, I've now planted the idea in somebody's head, but how many veterans are accepted a year and how are they chosen?
Speaker 2 00:18:50 The, uh, as I mentioned that the first step is the VA determining that they're entitled to especially depth of housing benefits. And then we do a very extensive background check finances, criminal background, as sort of thing, to make sure that we're going to bring somebody in, that we can set up for success. The final step in the process is we bring the veterans and a spouse or a parent, or a buddy or somebody to Foxborough Massachusetts, uh, for about three days to do a very extensive here's how our program works. Here's what we're going to do. Here's what you need to do. And again, it's, and we do interview because up to this point, it's all been phone conversations, emails, telephone as sort of stuff. And it's, you know, interviewing somebody in person, uh, is a good final step, whether you're applying for a job or coming into our, into our family.
Speaker 2 00:19:44 So we have not been able to do that for the last year and a half because of COVID veterans at risk. So this last weekend, I was fortunate to be in California to not only kick off, uh, builds for two of our veterans out there, but to sit down and explain the program to four of our veterans who live in the end of the century, where we were and bring them into the program. And then on this, this past Monday, my boss did the same thing driving over to Tampa to get three veterans there. So although not ideal and not, not the same as bringing them all to Massachusetts, uh, we went to them so we can keep bringing veterans into the program. Currently we have completed 315 homes in 42 States, and we have 67 veterans in our program to include the seven. We just brought in, who are clearly in the land search phase. And the remaining, uh, remaining 16 veterans are anywhere from construction where we're going to finish the home in may to permitting, to plans, to engineering, or also in land search. So 67 veterans currently in the program that we're working on, and 315 who were in homes already around the U S
Speaker 0 00:21:00 So since you kind of touched on it, let's go there. Um, this is, as you pointed out has been a very strange year and a half. Um, talk about how that has changed, how homes for our troops work, where you, I mean, obviously you could not, as you said, fly them to Massachusetts, did you do anything else different with the building of the homes? Did that stop the building? How did that work?
Speaker 2 00:21:26 We, Sam, we were very lucky in that most States looked at residential home building as a critical infrastructure, and they didn't with the exception of one state that shut everything down for two weeks, our homes were able to continue to be built. Uh, it was so much slower. Our builders needed to, uh, spread out the subcontractor. So they didn't have as many people on the site as a normally would. So it added about four to six weeks to our build. We, uh, obviously, as I mentioned, were able to do a, uh, a, uh, uh, a veterans conference in Massachusetts, but we were able to keep things moving forward. Uh, as you would imagine, revenue was down a bit, uh, I think probably a number of our donors who stopped donating, probably lost their job. And I wouldn't expect someone to have not, did donate, but we were able to make it up. I'll make up a portion of it, uh, with a lot of our corporate partners that, uh, that understood that, uh, donations may be down. So they helped us out a little bit. Uh, the other thing that hurt us is, uh, construction prices have gone up astronomically in the past year. Uh, lumber went up over 77% in the last 12 months. Uh, so we're not getting quite the same bang for the buck that we got on our, uh, uh, prior, but, uh, we're moving through and doing okay. The,
Speaker 2 00:22:59 The veterans have, uh, for the most part been doing okay and, and moving forward. And again, our, our, our, our folks, we have five folks, their only mission in life and homes for our troops is to stay in contract with her, stay in contact with our veterans. So they're constantly checking in, for example, the snowstorm that Texas had, uh, back in February, cut power. A lot of people, we, uh, we build all of our homes with a full home generator, uh, very happy as we checked in with our veterans, as we do.
Speaker 0 00:23:32 I bet they were, huh? Go ahead.
Speaker 2 00:23:39 The wheels fall up whenever there's anything in any around the country fires in California, hurricanes the in, along the coast, uh, on one for Shane blizzards in Texas, we follow up with our vendors to make sure they're doing okay. We also, it brings me up to a great point. Our, our tagline is building homes and rebuilding lives. And one of the things that makes us different is for us, the important thing is assisting our veterans with rebuilding their lives, which is what the five folks I just talked about. It's primary mission in life is we assist our veterans by naturally helping them solve what problems we can help them with. But we continue to expand our network of other nonprofits corporation, government entities, so that if a veteran of ours has a problem, somewhere in the country, we can link him or her up with an organization that is geographically close to where they are, give them a name and a phone number and an email to contact and get them linked up with the professional assistance.
Speaker 2 00:24:38 They may need to solve whatever that problem may be. Whether it's finding jobs, writing resumes, uh, we can help them to a degree working through any challenges they have with the VA or that sort of thing. So again, it's all about setting our men and women up for success going forward. And we measure our success of course, by counting the number of homes that we've completed, but also by the number of babies that are born, the number of college degrees by the number of jobs, uh, by the number of, uh, jobs and degrees as spouses can do, because we find that the impact isn't just for the veteran is for the whole family.
Speaker 3 00:25:16 So, um, which brings me to do you have different, I presume you have different size tomes, like not, everything's a three bedroom home.
Speaker 2 00:25:25 We built a, uh, pretty much a standard home. Uh, it's a single story because stairs are not the friend of someone who has a mobility challenge, right? It's, it's what we call about a right size home. It's about 2,800 square feet. So it's big enough to raise a family, but not so big that taxes and utilities you're going to eat up your budget. We build to energy star standards. So it's an energy efficient home. Uh, the V it can be a, uh, we have two basic models, kitchen in the front kitchen in the back. Uh, it can be a four bedroom home, or it can be a thread, three bedroom home with an office. Uh, we put, uh, floors, luxury vinyl plank, which wears better than hardwood with wheelchair use. But again, it's not carpet because again, carpet stone.
Speaker 3 00:26:16 Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:26:17 And there's over 40 major adaptations in our homes. So clearly they have wider hallways, wider doorways, uh, windows are a little bit lower, however, and they're not double hung. They slide left and right. Cause if you're in a wheelchair and the windows up, do you want it down? That's a challenge, right? We have roll under sinks, roll under count counter tops, roll under stove. Top the oven is a little bit lower than would be in a normal home. Uh, the showers, a roll in shower with a bench so that the veteran can roll into the shower transfer from his or her chair to the bench, take a shower, not get the real chair wet. And, uh, and, and again, restoring some of that freedom and independence to our veterans, uh, that there's sacrifice in it. That's the big thing. It not only restores their freedom and independence, as you can imagine, uh, independent folks, it is, uh, I think a lot of people are, and certainly most of our veterans are, do not rely like relying on another individual just to do the basics in life. So this frees up our veterans to be independent, but also frees up the spouse or the caregiver from having to be a caregiver and allows them to have a life also.
Speaker 3 00:27:32 So as you have pointed out as well, there's been a lot of, a lot of difficult climate things that have happened as far as wildfires and, and some tornadoes now and, and even, um, you know, really bad storms. So how, what happens if a person loses their home through some thing like that?
Speaker 2 00:28:01 Well, one of the things we do is we stay in contact and stay on top of our veterans to make sure that they keep their home insured. Um, we, uh, we do place a ten-year lien on the home. So although there's no mortgage, um, they also have no equity upfront. So that, that has enabled a couple of our veterans to tell the they're well-meaning father-in-law that although they'd like to use the equity in their home to start an auto repair shop, they don't have any equity. And of course, we don't want the veterans to put their home at risk for some good ideas like that. So the, uh, we unfortunately did have a veteran, uh, lose his home the day after Christmas, a few years ago, uh, to a fire, his truck caught fire, and that caught the home on fire. He w he and his service dogs were able to get out, but he lost everything else.
Speaker 2 00:28:53 However, he wasn't sure. And that's one of the things we follow up with our, with our veterans to make sure they keep insurance up to speed. So he was, we linked him up with a builder and although the rebuilding of the home was his responsibility with the insurance company, we provided our specifications so that they could rebuild the home to the lower countertops to roll under sinks. And we also had our folks checking in to make sure the quality job was being done, that the, uh, the builder who did such a good job of rebuilding this Marine's home out in Western Massachusetts is now building a home for us, your Hampshire for a wounded soldier.
Speaker 3 00:29:37 Cool. So is all these, are they as comparable price wise as just building a home? Are they more expensive? Are they less expensive? How does that work?
Speaker 2 00:29:52 They are definitely more expensive. Sam. We probably have about 140,000 to $180,000 worth of adaptations in our homes. Uh, we modify which adaptations we put in depending on the injury. So for example, for a double army amputee, we do it a little bit differently than we do for doubling amputee. We, we build all for home. So it's role learned role under capability, uh, based on the concept that as we age, there's a good chance if we live long enough, we'll all be in wheelchairs trying to get around our homes. But for example, if the double army MPT, we didn't lower the countertops, because the way that the prosthetic spending over an extra three inches was not something he wanted to do, uh, for our veterans, who've lost their sight. We put in a lot more voice activated, uh, capability, uh, so that, uh, to, to accommodate the challenges, uh, that they have. So again, we tailor those, the adaptations to a degree based on, based on your injuries. Again, the whole idea is to restore as much freedom and independence as we can, uh, to our veterans based on the injuries that they sustained.
Speaker 3 00:31:10 What happens if you know, stuff happens is, you know, so what happens if the vet dies or if they need to move to somewhere with higher care, does the family get to still stay in the home? Does the home remain his, how does that work?
Speaker 2 00:31:27 Uh, the way we worked at Def, uh, if a veteran passes away, uh, which unfortunately does happen, uh, we, uh, of course want them to have a will. And we tell them all to get a will, but they don't all listen necessarily follow that advice. Uh, so if there is no will, and, and we've had a number of veterans pass away during have wheels, what we were able to do is put the home in a trust for their children, and then name the spouse as the trustee to administer the trust. So the spouse and the children, it needs a state in the home, or in one case, uh, the veteran passed away while, while we were building the home, the home into a trust, uh, and the, and the, uh, the spouse and his three children moved into the home was once they, uh, once it was completed. So again, that that's still part of the family. So, uh, we've had, uh, we've only had five veterans move. Uh, we put a 10 year lean period on the home. We only had five veterans moved short of that lean period. And, uh, in, most of were related to significant changes in family situations, having to move to another state to take care of aging parents or something like that. We're always able to work that out with the veteran as we go forward.
Speaker 3 00:32:55 So can you give the steps of kind of the application process and about how long it usually takes to be accepted?
Speaker 2 00:33:04 Sure. The first step is, is, uh, applying to the veterans administration for the special adept housing benefits. Um, depending on if the veteran has his or her paperwork available, that competes slower path, but once they, uh, once they have their, uh, their benefits and they, they apply, then, uh, it really goes through the process of us doing our background, check on the veterans, and then getting them to either Massachusetts for veterans conference, which will start later this year. Once we get a little bit farther beyond the COVID world and more people get vaccinated, or we go out and do a mini conference like we did this past week in California and in Florida, once we are, once we bring them into the family, how long it takes to get into home really depends on where the veteran wants to live and how difficult it is for us to find land where the veteran wants to live.
Speaker 2 00:34:04 So, where else tell them the more flexible you are on terms of where you want to live the quicker this process goes, once we start building it's anywhere from six to 12 months, depending on, uh, challenges, we can't necessarily control like how long it takes to permit and particular location. Uh, weather challenges of course will slow things up. But again, the goal is to build a high quality custom home that especially adapted for veterans. So we're not going to sacrifice on the quality. So it takes a little bit longer to get a good job. We'll take a little bit longer to get a good job.
Speaker 3 00:34:44 So is the veteran allowed to get another job, even if they get a home?
Speaker 2 00:34:54 Oh, we strongly encourage our veterans to get back into the workforce. In fact, I'll share a couple of statistics with you every other year. We survey our veterans while we call by the numbers. And it's, it's, uh, we asked them a series of questions about your life before you moved into the home and your life after you moved into the end of your home. And, and we do it with veterans who've been in their home or a year or more because you've got some time to actually have a, get a feel for what the impact on the home is. So in terms of getting back to work, uh, our last survey was done last year. Uh, the veteran employment work and employment rate from before moving into the home to after moving home almost doubled. Wow. But what really jumped out at me, Sam was the rate for the spouses and caregivers went up almost triple what up by 285%. So that 10 really jumped out at me at the impact, uh, on the spouses. Uh, another statistic that, uh, showed a bigger jump for spouses and caregivers, uh, before receiving at home, only 15% of our veterans have been able to either pursue or achieve a college degree or a trade certification that jumped from 15% to 71% for the veterans as
Speaker 2 00:36:23 It is. But for the spouses, it went from 14% to 80%. Wow. So again, this is just not about the veteran, it's really about the veteran and her or his family and, and moving forward. Uh, I'll just share one other statistic with you very quickly, but well, two, I lied, I'll double back
Speaker 3 00:36:46 Over
Speaker 2 00:36:47 95% of our veterans and spouses said that they had reduced stress after moving into their home. And of course there's enough stress in everybody's family. And anything we can do to help reduce that we think is, is a big step towards helping our veterans. We build their lives. Uh, the other one is, uh, as of, uh, last week, we've had 220 babies born to our veterans. We started counting in 2010 and, uh, uh, to me, nothing speaks to rebuilding lives better than the next generation.
Speaker 3 00:37:19 Mm. So what I ask you the statistic about the education statistic, um, would that be because the, I mean, it's, it's incredibly high. Um, would that be because the vets are injured quite young and had not done the college yet? And so then they get a chance to go and do that?
Speaker 2 00:37:43 Well, that's part of it, Sam, but it also measures, I think because although most of our veterans were fairly young when they were injured, most of them don't come to us until three to eight years after being injured. So it does represent what their life was like, uh, post-injury for a fair amount of time. But I think what really speaks to is that because th the veterans can be independent and not have to rely on people to do the basic functions of life, the veteran and the spouse both have more time to do something besides just get through the day. And, uh, uh, and I think it also comes back to the stress a little bit, too with, with, with the reduced stress of not being able to get into your children's room to them in at night, not being able to get around independently.
Speaker 2 00:38:39 Um, that gives them more time to start thinking about pursuing a career, whether it's a trade certification or going back to get an associates degree or a bachelor's degree. One of the things that I have observed is that many of our veterans, when they come back into the workforce, they go back into a service focused workforce, teachers, counselors, a lot of them go into nonprofit work that, that same desire that caused them to serve others that caused them to come into the military in the first place has not been diminished because of their horrendous injuries that they still want to serve others. In fact, uh, we've got a veteran up in per a Minnesota near Detroit lakes, which will be our next build in Minnesota. We've completed four homes for veterans so far in Minnesota. Uh, Lucas Schmidt's up there and perm was with, uh, Minnesota army national guard, uh, deployed with them, was injured, lost one leg in a head, severe damage to his other leg. And he's from Purim. And of course you wanted to live in perm. And it took us a little while to find some land for him in perm that that would work, but we've got the land and we should be kicking off his home this summer. And, uh, probably finishing it up, uh, sometime in, in January. So, so I'm looking forward to coming back to Minnesota to kick them off to summer. Probably not looking so much to come back in January to finish them up.
Speaker 3 00:40:06 Well, maybe not, but look us up. We'll, we'll sit and have coffee, something hot.
Speaker 2 00:40:12 That sounds like a good idea. We, one of the four veterans we have up in, uh, in Minnesota that are already in home is, uh, is our Marx who is up in, uh, in Morehead and Eric, Eric lost his eyesight, uh, serving in Iraq. And so we, as I said earlier, made some different modifications at his home. So there's a lot more voice activated, uh, capability in his home. Uh, so he can continue to live independently and, and allow his, his spouse to, uh, to live much more of her life for herself, as opposed for Eric's.
Speaker 3 00:40:51 So how has having a job like this? How has it changed your perspective?
Speaker 2 00:41:00 Well, it certainly made me much more aware of the challenges that people with disabilities have, and it is also made me much more aware of how capable people are overcoming those capabilities, their disabilities, and that, uh, uh,
Speaker 2 00:41:22 It's, it's amazing to see the sheer power of the human spirit that these men and women have looked at. Why from the perspective of, well, that didn't go quite as planned. So what do I do next? And the way these men and women have overcome every, every adversity that has been thrown up against them. And part of that is losing their careers. Most of them had planned on staying in the army or the Marine Corps, the Navy, or the air force, or the coast guard as a career because they liked it. They were good at it. And all of a sudden, not only did they lose it or eyesight, or did they lose their limbs, they lost what they thought they were going to do for the rest of their life. And as you know, that that can be quite a, uh, quite a psychological challenge to overcome, but these men and women are absolutely amazing. Um,
Speaker 3 00:42:20 And not just the careers, right? Not everyone's spouse stays with them when something catastrophic like that happens.
Speaker 2 00:42:26 That is correct Sam. And, uh, in, I can't say enough about the spouses who not only have stayed with the veterans, but a number of our veterans are married to a spouses that they met after they were injured. And, uh, and they are just tremendous teams getting on with life, raising families, getting back in the workforce. And as I mentioned, a lot, a lot of our veterans are going back into nonprofit work and, uh, continuing to give back, uh, we've got, uh, uh, one of our veterans out in, uh, California, Southern California lost a leg in an arm. Um, it was a high school graduate, loved the army wanted to be a Sergeant major, uh, after he got out, um, shortly after he was medically retired, uh, he went back to college, got his degree in counseling. And then he's now working on his master's degree in counseling. Cause his goal in life is to go back to counseling veterans, uh, who, uh, who have had challenges. And I can't think of a better coach and mentor and counselor than someone who is lost two limbs talking to an individual who is overcoming the struggles that he or she is facing.
Speaker 3 00:43:39 Yes, yes. And those struggles can go on for a long time.
Speaker 2 00:43:45 Absolutely. Uh, Lucas Schmitz up in Khurram is a high school teacher and counselor. His wife is a nurse and they and their three children are, are making it work. And they're not adept at home. But what a lot of folks don't understand with, with folks who suffered amputations is although we've made great strides and prosthetics over the years, and you see people, you know, running marathons with their running legs and people climbing mountains with their mountain climbing legs, and people go into work with their normal walk around legs. At the end of the day, they want to take those legs off and get in a wheelchair because your mid thigh, your mid cap was not designed to support your body weight. And once they move into homes for our troops home, they can come home from work or come home from school or come home from whatever they're doing, take their legs off and be completely functional in the home and not rely on a spouse or a caregiver or a buddy or a parent to do things for them. Uh, something as simple as getting stuff out of it, out of a cupboard, we have pull-down shelving in our, in our cupboards, in the kitchen. So the veteran doesn't have to try to climb up on a counter to get something out of a cupboard.
Speaker 3 00:44:57 Good idea.
Speaker 2 00:45:01 Our master bedroom closets are steel reinforced concrete storm rooms that we built as a FEMA level five standards. So particularly in Minnesota, and I'm pretty sure you're still getting the tornadoes. I remember growing up there, the family can, can go right into their, into their storm room, close the 400 pound on the closet door and be safe. Should a tornado come through their area?
Speaker 3 00:45:23 How nice some people don't have that.
Speaker 2 00:45:27 No, and we don't obviously don't build our homes with our basement, so that's not an option for us.
Speaker 3 00:45:31 Right, right. So can you tell me how people can find out more about homes for our troops?
Speaker 2 00:45:40 Uh, our website is H F O T usa.org. And when H F O T usa.org. And thank you for keeping me straight on that. My marketing director will be very helpful to help thankful that you were continuing to help a guy who screws it up all the time. But when you go to that or you can Google homes for our troops and our website is very, uh, very comprehensive in terms of talking about what we do, where we do it and how people can get involved. I always tell folks, there's, there's three things they can do to help us Sam. The number one thing anybody can do for us is welcome our veterans into your community because we have found that community is absolutely vital to our veterans rebuilding their lives. And to us, our tagline building homes, rebuilding lives, rebuilding lives is real. The important thing, the home is good.
Speaker 2 00:46:40 Having a specially adapted home is great. That's just a starting point for us in terms of our veterans moving forward and rebuild it in their lives. The second thing that we asked folks to do is tell people we exist. So shows like this are fantastic for us to get the word out. We work very hard to keep nearly 90 cents of every dollar we spend going to the mission of buying land, building specially adapted homes and assisting our veterans with rebuilding your lives. So you can do the math and figured that doesn't leave a whole lot of whole lot of money for advertising. So we don't have paid spokespersons. If you ever hear people that are famous talking about us, and there's a few, uh, they're doing it because they fully believe in our mission and they fully believe in repaying, this debt we owed these veterans.
Speaker 2 00:47:28 So we asked to get the word out, whether it's work, school, church, neighborhoods, families, social media, tell people we exist. Like I said, when we keep a knife, nearly 90 cents for every dollar going to the mission, we rely on word of mouth and, and great shows like this to get the word out in. And we understand word of mouth is probably not what they teach in marketing school about getting the word out. But we think we owe it to our supporters and donors and fundraisers to spend the money that they donate and earn for us and donate to us going where they think it's going to go. The third thing of course, that they can do for us is fundraise or donate. And if you go, when you go to our website, H F O T usa.org, there's a lot of ideas on how people can fundraise or how you can donate. And we've got fundraising coordinators. If someone wants to do a fundraiser, uh, they can contact our fundraising coordinators and our folks will walk into the process. The only thing we ask on fundraising, it's, it's gotta be legal, moral, and ethical, but that keeps it pretty broad for most.
Speaker 0 00:48:36 Oh, that's funny. Do you have any other comments you'd like to say before you go, you want to give your website once more?
Speaker 2 00:48:42 Yes. Our website is H F O T U S a.org or Google homes for our troops. Uh, really excited about what we do that probably comes through. I want to thank you all for this opportunity and it's, uh, it's, it's always good to talk to for lack of a better term. Homie's back there in Minnesota, and to look forward to, uh, to get you all up to perm. Uh, Detroit lakes is a bit of a hike from Minneapolis, but not, not too far. We'll make sure we keep you apprised on what we've got going. But, um, I guess one thing we would ask folks to remember is we're about building specialty depth at homes, but we're really about helping these injured veterans rebuild their lives and move forward in overcoming the, uh, the challenges that their disabilities that, uh, uh, provided to them.
Speaker 0 00:49:41 Well, bill, thank you so much. I appreciate you coming on and good luck in the future and, and may the building be with you?
Speaker 2 00:49:49 Well, thank you ma'am and you all have a great evening back there in Minnesota.
Speaker 0 00:49:52 Thank you. This has been disability and progress where we bring you insights into ideas about and discussions on disability topics. The views expressed on this show are not necessarily those of cafe or its board of directors. My name is Sam. I've been the host of the show. Thank you so much for joining us. Charlene doll is my research team. Annie Harvey is my engineer. We've been speaking tonight with bill Ivy. Bill's executive director of homes for our troops. We were talking about that and accessible housing for vets with disabilities. This is cafe 90.3 FM Minneapolis cafe.org.
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Speaker 1 00:50:42 <inaudible> thanks for joining us. Good night.
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