 When you meet somebody who's under a bridge or out home, you know Most likely that adult was homeless when they were a kid. This is not a new thing So if you can help a family Really get out of poverty you are becoming a prevention. You're breaking the cycle. You're breaking that cycle So I think if we can go intensive and I believe it takes us all together I mean the mentorship piece is key Getting involved becoming a mentor seeing the world through their eyes if you want to start living equity diversity and inclusion become a mentor This is start of the storefront the podcast will re-inspire entrepreneurship through truth Today's guest is Jill Bellman head of imagine LA a non-profit focused on breaking the cycle of family homelessness and poverty Her organization is certainly not the first to attempt to tackle these problems She's realistic about the need for other organizations to do their part as well But imagine LA is having a real impact on the lives of over 200 families in the greater Los Angeles area Helping what are often families led by a single parent get back on their feet when it comes to financial and emotional instability So listen in is recover everything from my domestic violence is a huge driver of family homelessness How she plans to scale imagine LA to different parts of the state and Her plans to build livable mixed communities with houses and retail shops to alleviate the housing crisis. We're currently experiencing Now back to the episode Welcome to the podcast on today's show. We're talking to Jill the CEO of imagine LA Thanks for joining for people who don't know Everyone's super glad to be here. I love the concept of the show and having been a serial entrepreneur I'm I'm all game. Yeah, Jill's been in the game for a long time her whole life And now she's she's transitioned to imagine LA tell everyone a little bit about what what your your company is working on What your nonprofit is trying to do well imagine ladies like completely dedicated to Ending family homelessness and poverty and I want you to hear both of those words homelessness and poverty When you're talking about generational homelessness the cycle of poverty you've got to deal with the poverty piece It's the biggest underlying cause for homelessness, especially in the family setting So we're trying to do both most people just try to get people off the street and keep them in housing And we're trying to say no, let's get that a whole family on their way Again, get them financially independent and what made you passionate about this? Obviously, it's an emerging problem I think United States. I used to live in San Francisco when I was in tech probably I mean six seven years ago and it was just a function. It was everywhere. It was it's become synonymous with the problem Yeah, obviously, what do they call it skid row people always? I've been in San Francisco My two like Passion issues involved in middle school and high school one was women's rights and women's empowerment and then the other was homelessness and It wasn't until 2006-7 When family homelessness actually became a thing it's still not a thing people really talk about because you don't really see it It's sort of the hidden homelessness but in 2000, I think it was six there was an article on the paper that said there are 8,000 homeless families in Los Angeles and I'm like what and What most people don't think about it again hidden homeless is the majority of these families are actually single headed there's 86% of imaginary families that we work with are headed by single moms A single parent and some single dads who are amazing. So it was the Collision or the intersection of my two issues, you know, it was a women's empowerment issue and you know this Deep-seated no one in the United States should be homeless. This is crazy Probably based on my faith just compassion Issue so they came together and I was asked to get involved with imaginary which The original vision of it was there's 8,000 homeless families in Los Angeles. There's 8,000 Places of worship. It doesn't matter what kind couldn't we come alongside these families and and help them not only get out of homelessness But get out of poverty and I was asked to be on the initial board. They didn't have and I was asked because Nobody on this Initial group of do-gooders had ever started or run anything and I'd never Started to run a non-profit, but I'd built a couple of businesses and so I could ask the questions and Pretty soon it became clear that the people that thought they could run this couldn't they resigned They asked me to step in I did it interim for three months and it's 14 years later Wow, and I've never done another business this long and so when you first got into the business What were some of the things that? You learned that we're very surprising to you and so you mentioned poverty and so is it a function of like in my head I can do quick math right so if I have let's say a minimum wage job And I'm working eight hours a day because that's all I can work because that's what my employer is gonna max me out at It becomes very difficult to find a place to live in a city like San Francisco or Los Angeles or any major city Let's say you can't you can't and there's benefits, but they're tricky and it's just it's a nightmare Is that how it starts? Yeah, and then something happens Okay, like people are they're doubled up or they're they figured out some kind of a living arrangement Something happens and when you say something happens Car accident okay health car accident lose your job just a relatively minor thing that disrupts a paycheck or a benefit and Then rent eviction in your car Couchsurfing at that sort of thing. It's incredibly precarious, especially as a single parent when you meet them How long have they been struggling to either reach out to some but like at what point does someone also feel comfortable asking for help Right, I'm sure that's a part of it So first they probably see maybe if they have friends and family in the area they try to figure it out They realize these situations aren't working. They could be unhealthy. They could be abusive I wanted to actually say in terms of the event Is domestic violence is a huge driver in family Homelessness and if you buy any chance watch the Relatively new show the maid it is spot-on of what happens and then what the person that's run away with their kids try it has to navigate It's incredible. It's so hard. That's a great show It's a really good show. It's so good and she keeps running so you keep solving the problem But it's also like it's like whack-a-mole. It's it's a whack-a-mole something else and that's put a pin in that because How they show you what's going on with the social benefit system in our country is the most well researched It's I'm constantly when I'm watching TV about our issue. I'm like, oh, which they knew what they were talking about But the maid is spot-on they did their homework But so one of the events can be domestic violence. So usually so when We started looking at the problem like okay These were a bunch of do-gooders that wanted to come alongside families, but where do they get them? Where where are they in their journey? Well? Step back. I'm an entrepreneur. You guys are entrepreneurs. What's happening in the market like What happens? Okay, people get homeless. They finally after help they end up in the shelter. They're there for a while They stabilize families It's more of small apartments or large bedrooms rather than like the cots Okay, you know just visually it's more. It's a little bit more human and people can stay even longer More recently because it's so bad. It's become motel rooms There are thousands of families in LA that have now been with COVID and everything and the lack of housing have been in a Motel room for over two years. Can you see it's like really bad? But so they're there and they're basically waiting whether they're at a place or in a motel room And they're getting some basic making sure their food and shelter and basic stuff's happening Very hard to navigate getting a new job in those situations very hard It's really survival kind of mode right at very trauma trauma trauma Then They've eventually get into some kind of permanent housing. They get a section 8 voucher or there There's a special building or something and they get in there. Well, usually Wherever that is is far Like they fell out of housing in the valley and they are moving to South LA because that's the only place They can find an apartment that will take section 8 and the place that was taken care of them doesn't have funding To keep in touch with them and so forth in their new home and they get there and if they have one more event Guess what happens? They go back in so that's the gap that we identified when we took a look at the system at that point And we realized that we needed to come alongside the family as they were getting into Housing and help the kids find their schools help that the parents get Accimated with all the services that were there help them then find a job But it was only when we looked in the gap in the market And there was no government funding available for that and when people tried to throw some government funding at us They were telling us what to do and we were like doesn't seem quite like what we should do So we just Started working with families about two three families our first year in 2008 now We're up to over 200 families a year and we're starting to work with whole buildings of families where we're on site Where we get the families is from referred from all those shelters, right? And there's now a coordinated entry system for LA City and County that refers families Not the best well oiled machine So we still tend to go directly to to the shelters the transitional housing Yeah, you've been at this since 2008 how have things changed since then from your perspective in terms of both You said there was no government assistance offered at the beginning unless it came with checks and balances sort of system and then also how have you seen the Progression of the homeless population as it is today. I mean I can think we can all agree It's worse than it was in 2008. Yeah, and how have you seen that change in a way that? Maybe you see solutions that aren't being offered Maybe you see things that we can do differently, but from a big picture perspective What are your? Thoughts on how we can as as a community as a state as a country Because I don't think anyone's gonna ever get rid of all homelessness in the United States. That's not the issue It's the issue of making it as good as we possibly can and and managing it where possible So how do you view the best outcome for that scenario? first of all, yes homelessness has gotten a lot worse and Particularly it's flowing out of the recession and the economics But it's also a lot about our cost of living here in Los Angeles and the lack of housing period You know people can talk all day long about drugs or da da da da da, but really we've got a supply and demand problem I'm not gonna go. I'm gonna not gonna go down like what do I think? All the you know the solutions are but mostly we've got to figure out how to house people Temporarily and they get them into housing and build the housing both the temporary and the long-term as fast as we possibly can with Trying to streamline all the costs associated with that. It's just absurd There's so much technology now that can make it faster But I'm gonna focus on families because I feel like and why I've been in it for so long is family homelessness Has grown even more than regular so we haven't had a homeless count for two years, but from 2019 to 2020 single adult house whether or that Portion grew whether you're talking about the city or the county between 13 and 16 17% Family homelessness grew by 49 45 percent. I mean like come on How big are these families on average? Is it four or five? Three point five is the average parent, you know parent two kids to parent five kids I mean it ranges, but how do you end a family's homelessness? It's how do you end the family's homelessness? So they're never homeless again So they're out of poverty and what can we do to stop the flow of more families? Into the homeless system because you know we're housing and doing all of this, but it's actually flowing faster than we're Picking it up on the other side so the main thing is that you we've got to come alongside and equip families to build economic mobility and To actually deal with their trauma and make sure the kids are and everybody's doing well from a wellness Point of view whether it's mental health whether that's regular checkups It's all of those things, but it's dealing with the two generational is it jobs specific Is it a function of now? Well, you know, it's really interesting. So imagine like we do case management Which is you know with MSW with master social workers professional people that come alongside the family And they sort of help figure out where they are and and help the families Think about where they want to go and do and then So that's one piece is just getting people heard and seen and then at then there's another piece about bringing social capital and Bringing other people to come alongside and that's we do that through mentorship Where every member of the family over five gets a mentor and they really they become their biggest Each person's biggest fan and you know think about boys without fathers involved and it you know and somebody who's Caring about if you're going to school every day other than your mom and remember a lot of these families have come and completely isolated That's how they got homeless their family units and their Ties have not to start building a village around the family and then it's not about just a job to answer your question It's about creating economic mobility So after 11 years of work with us, we're looking at our families. They got jobs Their kids are doing well in school. Everybody's healthy But they're not getting out of poverty We're not really doing it So we decided to go deep and look into living wage jobs not a job a living wage job What kind of job can they do? That's high demand. They can be trained in in less than a year and Be able to start off out and is that does that have a number of the living wage? Depends on the number of kids you have and how they're ages Okay, so the absolute minimum minimum is like 18, but it can be 25 Dollars but eat but that's only if you have subsidized housing Yeah, you do the math without subsidized housing. It's sort of a no-win no matter what yeah with a single parent So what jobs did you find that met this? qualification we have nine different pathways some are in healthcare some are Starting with an apprenticeship program at UPS, you know, so in transportation. We have some in tech. It's called Code talk is a is the provider. There's there's nine different ones And what we did was we actually went deep into the data into where were job demands and what were pathways that our family or head of households could actually do and then we did focus groups with them and You know, what did they want to do? Because if they don't want to do it, it's not gonna happen. So it's not just job living wage jobs It's also childcare and it's also what we call financial fitness and And and I'll talk a little bit more about that but and then it's also Navigating the social safety net which as it is right now is a great big black box of Benefits that are coming from federal state local like, you know Department of Agriculture Department the housing department like there's literally 14 different kinds of benefits that families have to navigate and Things happen when their wages all of a sudden as their wages go up something falls away So there's all this fear around actually making money and trying to get ahead and We've only found this by partnering with USC by going into the deep research And now we've created the algorithms that kids so people can actually see what are going on and Imagine is about to embark while we've already started the coding on creating an app for case managers and families to actually navigate these benefits so they Can help them get out of poverty as opposed to feel like they're playing whack-a-mole I remember we had on the the former mayor of West Hollywood on the podcast and she Abby No, Lindsay Lindsay Horvath and we're talking about rent control. So the real estate developer I don't do residential for a number of reasons From just like if I'm looking at a financial Just a pro forma it doesn't pencil And so it makes it very difficult to solve the housing problem Unless there's some sort of new market tax credits or some sort of tax credits And then you're only building section 8 and it has really nothing to do with desire Developers are simple where they're just following the carrot The hard part is who's gonna subsidize the cost of construction, which is just skyrocketing. It becomes difficult To make it work. And so when I was asking the mayor about housing She was telling me that even though she's a mayor in West Hollywood She can't even afford to live here and she has two jobs and So, you know, it's really eye-opening from that perspective Recently West Hollywood went on to there's the highest minimum wage in West Hollywood in the whole country. It's here It depends on what you do specifically. It starts at I think 1540 depending on the job and it goes as high as 1785 something like that for the minimum wage depending on what you do But it's still not a living wage and that's and so when you were saying this I was just thinking but it's still not a living wage And it reminded me of the conversation we had with you know How can you be the mayor of a town of a city and you can't even afford to live in here? It's a real problem. There's also a lot of talks I've gone to around economics and it's just it's it's kind of as simple as you put it We're around housing. It's just a housing crisis. It's it's supply and demand and the inland Empire has seemed to figure this out And so they're thriving because they've created so many jobs But what has led the growth of jobs was not jobs or industry. It was the housing It's it's the more housing you have the more people can flourish and they'll move there and by default They'll end up working there and creating industry and so it's always housing that leads the surge and in LA We're just at this massive deficit at the moment And I just don't see a way out on the housing side in that vein though We just as a state we eliminated the R1 zoning and enabled people to build ADU's Duplexes triplexes instead of just single-family homes. Yeah, do you foresee? Down the line 10 20 years that playing a factor zero Zero that won't make that just gets the rich richer frankly in Nashville This is something I want to ask you about Nashville did this study where they basically recognized They were creating poverty and so what did that mean that mean that meant they were Building section 8 housing affordable housing and then the people that would go to that would live in these areas these counties would end up going to these schools That were underserved and basically it's like they live in not so good settings Then they get educated and also were settings and so it was creating they basically did a study and it was they were creating poverty Is what they found out and so Nashville ended up moving to this new model and they're just starting It's like it may be opened recently where it's it's its mixed income housing with an amazing charter school and they're an earshot of each other and Everyone's a different color. Everyone's a different background Everyone's a different race and the education is top-tier Love it and it's an experiment. We got the tour the facilities and Pretty amazing. Honestly, the teachers were so amazing and you knew they had their work cut out for them There was no It cons like as much as they loved it and you could feel the love that they had for it It was work It was real work some of these people weren't coming from the best backgrounds and so they're just as much as they are a teacher They're psychologists therapist mom dad all of it But in that it was an interesting angle from a real estate perspective of does this mixed income housing work? It certainly doesn't lead to the problem of a bad school system that that it solves for that for sure And so it was almost like education becomes a big part of it, too the one real estate slash community Solution that I've seen that I'm actually I went wait. I want to help you. This is good it's called livable neighborhoods and It's headed by Lindsey Sturman who was the brains behind large Mont Charter and all of that and I think we can all agree that Los Angeles is a collection of neighborhoods Mm-hmm, and if you're learning that as someone who's new to LA Circle and each each one has its little magic and basically their concept is to take these neighborhoods and Build up the neighborhoods, but not in a way that's high-rises or creating projects But to create mixed income housing Basically if we think about Like large Mont Boulevard or Westwood Boulevard, we're there basically one or two stories where you got a retail on the bottom and You've got an owner and saying to them We've got these different plans where you can create a ten unit building With two three four stories, but still low on this getting it not to be more like large Mont Boulevard or not, you know and Creating common parking areas so you can take away the parking equation and create both equity So buying and running mixed again income and doing things with transportation to Major hub lines, you know, whether it's the metro or bus lines or otherwise to basically create walking biking neighborhoods and If you just do the simple math You do three or four of these and you can create 60,000 units, but it's low-rise. It's creating neighborhoods It's going to the person that owns that building and helping them finance to do this They don't have to sell but they're gonna get more income and it's not too hard to see To start putting these all over the place at Lamert Park different parts of West LA out in the valley and Pasadena You know like all over where you can get to that for 500,000 unit deficit that we have without thinking about swaths of land huge tax, you know like in it at least for me, you know, we talked about earlier before all this how Being an entrepreneur or being trying to think innovatively is about connecting dots and that and seeing things and I feel like this is connecting the dots of how Neighborhoods are so key to what imagine lay is we aren't a city-centric sprawl It's like lumpy pancake batter, you know, it's kind of all poured out and I don't know I think it's a pretty cool idea. One of the things you mentioned earlier was your frustration with the 14 government Entities and agencies. It was kind of this like murky water for people to wade through So do you do you feel like it would be better served if there was just one? Agency versus the 14 that they're currently are would they be better served combined into one to streamline the process of Navigating through subsidies and grants for the the homeless and those experiencing poverty well Maybe in the long term, but in the short term if we can just get them in the same room and Start showing them exactly, you know, we now have these Things and we can start showing them what's actually happening and use I mean the vision of we're calling it the social benefit calculator is That you can show them what would happen if you tweaked your policy You know, what would that do and would it make it less of a Creeks and valleys and you know like a rocky road and more of what I would call like a Springboard out of poverty rather than a sticky spider web, right? What I think it's Showing people what everybody has pretty well intended and there's I think there's just so much Bureaucracy and so, you know, there's huge engines behind these things But they are policies that can be tweaked and can be modified But you know, it's very hard for them as silos to see the effects of their work unless it's it's done I mean the way that we're looking at it Like we're literally bringing all those we've got the Federal Reserve Bank involved to Actually has a whole database of all these policies all over the country and you know, like how how it Helping everybody navigate when we think about entrepreneurs Oftentimes we're looking at a bunch of different things and trying to make it simple Trying to make it easy for a consumer trying to figure that out and I see that is What we're going to be trying to do with all these different things like all these think of like cottage industries and wanting to bring them together And have them pointing in the same direction and helping families not hurting them What do you guys view as like your your success metric? So if we were just making this about entrepreneurial like what were you You know 14 years in here at what point are you saying? Okay? This is You know, this is what I don't want to say the end of the journey But at least like the completion of the end of the journey looks like or maybe you've learned something where it's never enough To some extent you just have to keep you have to stay with them Well, I think the good news about the imaginary approach, which is this Case management plus mentorship and then plus the economic mobility is they're geared towards a pretty intensive experience for about two years and getting people on a path And the family is the mentor people choose to graduate I mean, they're like we got this And the often the mentors stay involved and we're always there, you know, we're family forever So well like during the pandemic. Thank god because we helped a lot of our alumni, but We're seeing that this works the issue is we've been doing it one family at a time How can we do it in a scaling way? So the economic mobility plan And that program We're just trying to expand it and if we can put that together and start offering it More wholesale to other lots of other agencies Then you start seeing it and the metrics is easy. Are they in poverty or are they out? Are the kids flourishing in school? Are they not it's really Not that hard and we've been tracking it and it's easy to See the circular path of homelessness and poverty that cycle Especially in black and brown communities been going on for many generations And so I said it sounds simple, but there's lots of work there and Chris co who's you know, one of the big guys at united way Once said when we were on a panel together He said jill when you meet somebody who's under a bridge or out home, you know Most likely that adult was homeless when they were a kid. This is not a new thing So if you can help a family Really get out of poverty you are becoming a prevention. You're breaking the cycle. You're breaking that cycle So I think if we can go intensive and I believe it takes us all together I mean the mentorship piece is key Getting involved Becoming a mentor seeing the world through their eyes if you want to start living Equity diversity and inclusion Become a mentor. Do you partner with like the big brothers big sisters or do you guys have your own? We have our own you have your own. Yeah, you know, we have our own training Yeah, I would imagine background checks and all the different things and we guide and we you know, we've built that over time Most mentoring organizations, whether it's big brothers big sisters or others Usually are just dealing with one You know one kid and one adult or one another adult and another adult We're dealing with a this metrics of a family where we have You know one mentor for every member of the family over five and we're coordinating that So as far as I know there aren't other people sort of doing that but the amount of love and confidence and resources and opportunities that that brings to the family It sort of is like, um, it's gas. It's fuel. It's part of the magic Um, they're learning a new job and going in this new thing and they have all these questions and they just want to They don't want to do it. It's hard You know, uh, they're kids sick. They're this that but if they've got that mentor team and the other people Cheering them on, you know stepping up so they can show up Then they can get on that path. So it's it's it's it's more than It's human. Yeah, it's humans helping humans I had a big brother growing up with the big brother's big sister's program. Oh, I love that. It was like so amazing and then when I was in College and after college most of my friends were Jewish and so they they signed me up to be a Jewish big brother Oh, I love that But it was working with people with disabilities and so we and I did that for three four years When I was living in boston, I mean we would all do it together So it was like me and three friends that would all just do it together And uh, my guy was Eli, but it was It was special, you know, I think receiving it is one thing and I don't I don't like people listening I think it is important to mentor. It's it's a pretty Selfless thing, but you're gonna make a lifelong friend. Like I'm still in touch with my big brother And I love that. You know, I'm like a full grown adult here and You know and he has a daughter and it's a it's a really amazing the relationship that has spawned from that and I I almost hate to say it's a mentorship because it really just became a friendship You know what I mean? It wasn't like he wasn't there to give me advice, you know, although he like maybe Taught me like what baseball glove to buy or something like that, right? But it wasn't he wasn't a parent And that was amazing because he was just there to know to be yeah, he was your buddy. Yeah Yeah, and that's you know, I think that's Companion you can call it lots of different things and uh One huge areas, especially when we got youth that are in the high school stage Middle school high school and and showing them about College or trade were not hell bent on uh, you know the college path for everyone were You know helping find whatever path really makes sense for him I love that you've mentioned uh Jewish big brothers big sisters. They actually Totally stepped up when we were designing our mentorship program. They Meant in with us and you know Helped us with logic models and because we went out and said, you know, like to these those organizations We because the best poverty breaking statistics that are out there still is around mentorship I mean the the stats is are there. So we went to them and we said hey Have you tried this with families not just one-on-one? They're like, uh, no, we you know, we can barely We're just can do what we can do But we'll love to try to help you and part of what they said is if you're going to deal with families You really need that case management piece You really need somebody that really understands mental health physical health trauma All the stuff because there's so much in the whole family system And in fact, I even said I had you know, we did all these interviews I had so many people that said My one rate limiting factor of being a mentor, which I was one of the most was the fact That I couldn't deal with the whole family. It was just my mentee That was part of our when we were just deciding to do the mentorship part that was part of You know, we heard those voices. Yeah, I think from from my perspective like this is the problem I've been solving for myself for my whole life. It's like when you move to this country So I was born in Peru and you move here. You couldn't point to a successful Peruvian Couldn't do it wasn't on tv wasn't in sports wasn't anywhere And so It was almost like you look around and you start to think nope nobody's successful or nobody is your Whatever your metric of success is at a very young age And then what was galvanizing for me was okay. I'm gonna go be that guy And what mentorship taught me on both ends receiving it and giving it was some people just need a window And you're the window And whether they want to look through it or not doesn't matter But you've given them another color in like the cryola box And that is so huge It's it's like a seed and it can be whatever it wants to be But it's so huge And it means so much and that's what I've learned personally on both sides of it I love that. It's a window To another world to another world, but also framed with safety. Yeah in in a way Yeah, and if you think about like simple things like my big brother would come pick me up in a truck I'd never been in a truck. It was a green Ford f-150 We'd go we'd go fishing fresh water. I'd never put a worm on a hook And I'm like, why am I doing this? But I got to do that window, right? He had this fascination with making wheat toast and putting honey on it I'd never experienced that And so it's like little things that to him. I'm sure were this is him living his life But to me it was like Oh, we were going to quab in reservoir in massachusetts had never even heard of this place taken roads I'd never seen hanging out with someone who lives in a totally different world than I do And that was that that was it like just that was enough You know the fact that he was cool and funny and all that other stuff that was just a bonus, but that was it And then like I would have dinner with his family And like getting this they were Polish until like pierogies were a thing And so all these little things, you know, and it just kind of like snowballs But you really get a window into how other people live and it's really interesting Because when you're stuck and I can imagine this in poverty your world is so small And and and what do you see and what do you exactly those four walls are it feels pretty enclosed? Yeah, and so I think you know just that I can imagine that escape being so huge It's really magical. I often meet families in the when they're first getting involved and you know, Especially the younger everybody's eyes are down the kids. They're sort of Sort of off and then when it's not cove it we do these Quarterly where the everybody the family a whole family a whole all the mentors get together just you know pot. Look, you know And they talk about their goals and they talk about their Experiences and they just over time You just see everybody it's like everybody's candle got lit and in the beginning You know super shy then more and more and more And then you also are seeing every all the mentors just Beaming and my favorite moment is is when the adults mentor Really understands what it took for that mom or that dad or those parents To actually keep their family together through what they've gone through and the family member That house those heads of household those parents become the hero of the mentor that is a transformative moment for Everyone involved when they all of a sudden go. Oh my god. I don't think I could have done that Totally, you know most people can't you say that you currently help over 200 families. Is that correct? 700 individuals. Yeah, are there are there any situations where you have to turn someone away or you you Run out of mentors or whatever might be where you you have someone coming to you for help, but you just Whether it be one reason or another you can't help them. Like is that an issue for you? Yeah, we have capacity like I guess my question is like aside from just capacity and the team members within your network Are there issues where Someone is is too mentally unstable or maybe it's drugs or maybe like they're just like Any other host of problems that would prevent you from embracing them into your organization So in terms of That's just say the intersectionality and complexity of a family The answer is no we can be given our structure. We can handle anything But the family needs to want to participate. We're not some kind of a mandatory program like One of the things we've learned and this may answer help sort of put a little bit more around it is When a family is still in shelter or transitional and not doesn't have a permanent Place to live They're still very heavily in a trauma-informed state And once they actually have a place that they know they're going to live in for a while Then they're ready to have think about this idea of a mentor think about jobs, but until that so our program is about helping families As they move into permanent housing or just after So that's one the other thing is We also have done a little bit especially during covet of working with families that were on the verge of losing their housing and trying to Shore them up, but they already but they have housing. So one thing is they've got to have housing Which goes back to our big right housing first and then everything else can come secondary So that's that but again the family needs to want to do this and I think part of the reason we have so many single adults and many people with special needs kids and Or they have a history with domestic violence or something they've learned that in order to keep their family together and go they need help and When we're able to say well, this is how we come alongside You get to choose You can choose Mentors you can choose this we got these we think these are but this is driven by you and your goals and your Then they succeed if we Were mandated in any way. I don't I don't think it would work When it comes to financing, how do you guys do you guys raise capital? Do you have a gala? Do you have events? What is your source all of the above? Not no gala is the last two years Um because of covet. Um, we don't actually do a gala. We do something called imagine ball Which is probably the it's an anti-rubber chicken dinner. Um, it says it's a celebrity Sort of concert comedian thing in one of our Board members is john turzian. He runs h wood and a lot of really cool night clubs And we get one of his night clubs and he gets some amazing talent to come like jave schappell and Buster rimes and we get to honor cool people like serena williams and we raise a lot of money In the night, um and don't spend a lot of money So we raise a net but we grew up until we got some phenomenal government funding from dhs department of health services Who just basically gives us money to do our program? They don't And to report the way we report All of our other funding is private. Uh, whether it's individual donors or foundations It ends up being about a third a third a third and we're right now With our social benefit calculator and growing our economic mobility program We're really looking at those being a fee for service Which is really I think the Future of sustainable modeling in in nonprofit. You got to create something that is of value That will generate income and not basically start from zero every year and raise money. It's it's just not Otherwise the other is not is not sustainable So that's where we're heading right now and and essentially our contract with Department of health services is a fee for service contract contract So that's what we're doing and you know just like raising capital for a good Entrepreneurial idea if you've got a good one raising the money is not the end of the world It's just something that you do when you think about five years from now How do you want your organization to look is it roughly the same or are there like you talked about the the service contract the dhs? Are there other Systems or programs like that that you'd like to see implemented or is it like we're on a good path? And we just need to continue that path. It's almost like golf too where it's like you want your You want zero customers, right? Yeah, right you want to put yourself out of business Yeah, I don't think in five years we'll put ourselves out of business But if I dare have a crystal ball, we've just gone through a strategic planning exercise with a really cool combo The center for nonprofit management plus McKinsey So it's been really fun pretty next level and What we're looking at is our overall model Which we call the family partnership model, which is this the case management plus the mentorship plus the economic mobility That works with families We're looking at growing that model both in the scattered site way and in the building way And then licensing that model to other nonprofits It can be an la they can be around the country. So not just growing it family by family building by building here in la but actually and we've done one called imagine wittier And we'll be looking at at that. So both growing it as its own social service entity But that can also train others to do our model Then the economic mobility Program itself, which is its own little pod I'm looking at scaling that and I would love to think in Five years I would love to think that we could get to hundreds of organizations utilizing that both here and and elsewhere Maybe more. I don't know like we're we're piloting the scaling next year. So Check in with me again And then on the social benefit calculator My hope is in the next 10 years to actually I mean, this is my personal dream not necessarily just imaginations My personal dream is to get our social benefit structure aligned to help Families and people get out. I mean truly go towards financial independence and for our Our structure of the benefits to be Both a safety net right now people fall through too easily They don't get caught. So that's part of homelessness But they're also not propelled out and so I'd like it to truly be a net and a springboard Well, thanks for coming on the podcast Thanks for opening our eyes and our listeners eyes on a different take someone who's in the know Thank you for your work. Honestly. Thank you for doing what you do. This is fun Yeah, I really appreciate it. Do you want to tell everyone where they can find your organization? Yes, we are online at Imagine la.org And uh, there's information on everything we've talked about there. Thanks Jill. Thank you. That was it our final episode of season three and our last one of 2021 We thank you for tuning in whether this is your first episode or your 130th This year saw us go from virtual recordings over zoom to in-person conversations from our new studio in west hollywood We've learned a lot from our guests and we've grown as a team We hope you've done the same This is a perfect time to reflect and plan for what's to come next and we've already set ambitious goals that we'd like to accomplish in 2022 We'll be back in january, but until then have a happy holiday season and thank you very much for listening