 between Hawaii think tech Hawaii on a beautiful Monday morning. It is breezy outside maybe 82 degrees. The tourists are coming back and they are being treated to paradise. Speaking of paradise my esteemed guest today is Brandon bills, marketing director for palette. Shelter my goodness. They have they are catering to the homeless and the very very poor people providing shelter for them. And my goodness, are they doing a great job. This is a for profit institution that is able to scale that is to multiply themselves. There's no site after another after another after another. And those of us who have been really regretting the number of homeless here in Hawaii. We're saying how in the world, and you do that. Well here is Brandon bills marketing director for palette shelter to tell us all about it. Thank you for joining us from 3000 miles away the wonders of electronic. Yeah, thank you for having me with a pleasure. Seattle has just about the same weather that we do right now so rare fix right there. Yeah, so Brandon. Most of us in Hawaii are really really concerned about the homeless problem. On the one hand we feel for the homeless on the other hand it is just not a pleasant experience to be around a lot of these people. And we have a lot of organizations out there who are providing shelter and otherwise trying to help the homeless. Well there we were just kind of shooing them from one site to another to another to another to another, and we found out that's not a very good solution. Finally, a lot of organizations have pitched in and begun to give their to these people who are just at their wits and and not very happy. Brandon, can you begin by telling us, well number one, why that title that I had trouble with. Sure. Then let's get into the meat of it. Great sounds great thank you Howard for for having me and it's a pleasure to meet everyone that's tuning in. Yeah, the first thing I want to acknowledge is you mentioned that the challenges that Hawaii is having with just the incredible unfortunate number of people who are living unhoused and the first thing I'll say is Hawaii is not alone. Right now, estimates are that there are more than half a million people across the entire US that lack housing and are living and housed. And that's really why palette shelter exists and that's why our company exists is because we have reached a humanitarian crisis, like that is in this country, where you can walk down the streets of most any major city and even you know in a lot of cases small cities as well and see people who are just living in conditions that are not fit for human habitation and that's why we created palette was to provide a rapid and dignified shelter solution for this population that desperately needs help And as you mentioned earlier we want to do it at scale because we don't have time people are living on the streets tonight, tomorrow night and every night until they have access to some form of shelter so you'd asked, you'd asked how the name palette came about. So as a dual meaning the first thing I'll dispel a myth that our shelters are made of wood pallets that is not true. The name palette actually comes from our first design was shipped flat on a wood shipping pallet so those wood pallets that everybody knows are our shelters and they fit on a wood shipping pallet. We've since evolved the design a little bit but they are still shipped on wooden shipping pallets. The other reason for the name palette is the word palette in addition to that wooden shipping container definition There's another definition that's lesser known, and that is a bed on which to raise someone. And at our company what that means is we provide the shelters to raise someone out of their current living conditions and on to something, something better not always literally but to raise them out of their current sense their current living situation and as I'll get into later in the slides. That is true in the field where we build these shelter villages but it's also true in our factory headquarters where we employ people who have experienced homelessness addiction and or the criminal justice system so pallet exists to lift people up. Whether you're living in one of our shelter villages or you're building them in our factory headquarters. So I'll, I brought some some slides and if that's okay with you Howard will queue those up and give you a you and your viewers a synopsis of what we're doing. Absolutely and that that figure of half a million people on house. I have heard that figure before and that is just horrendous you know we're supposed we're supposed to be the greatest nation on the face of the earth and this is really really not not acceptable. Yeah, we agree. Yeah, yeah. So please launch the slides here now. Yeah, so the first thing I'll say is for people at home that want to follow along. A lot of this information is on our website at pallet shelter.com and you can see a virtual tour or shelters if you wanted to get into it. But I'm going to take you through. First, the summary of what pallet is doing, what's making our work so successful the outcomes we're seeing for people that are living our shelter villages. And then I've actually brought some photos of some of these villages so that people can see what they look like. Another misperception we face is a lot of people think that our villages are you know strewn with garbage or whatever they're actually very well managed and kept clean so I'm going to show you some of those photos unless you kind of experienced them for yourself. So first thing I mentioned earlier, pallet is a company that employs people who have lived experience in homelessness or people who have lived on house. They've experienced the criminal justice system they've experienced addiction. The vast majority of our employees fit this group and we are very glad to have them from the moment we started pallet that was a core piece of our mission was to actually employ this population because we believe that the solution that we want to offer should come from the population that it's intended to serve and our shelters are sleeping cabins are actually designed by people who have experienced homelessness. And when I talk about the features in a little bit you'll see some of those things that that population has advised us to include. Let me move on though I also want to acknowledge that pallet exists in this ecosystem with two other sister companies so pallet is a social enterprise, all of our profits have to be reinvested into our mission. It's kind of like Washington states version of a b Corp, but then we also have these two sister organizations the first one is called weld Seattle weld is a nonprofit that helps people exiting the criminal justice system gain access to employment, employment is housing. It kind of eases that transition back into society. So we've got that experience at that sister company and then our other sister organization is called square peg construction, similar to pallet employees people coming out of the system people have experienced homelessness. But that's a for profit company here in Seattle, that's building affordable housing market rate housing for for Seattle. And it's important that you understand how these three groups work together and that's been key to pallets success is that we aren't just the manufacturer of shelters. We have this experience on the nonprofit services side and we have this experience with the construction side that has made us really successful at scaling what we're doing so that we can apply this thinking to every single community that invites us to to build a shelter village there. So with that, let's move on to the next slide, and we'll get into the shelters themselves. So here you see the shelter in its collapsed form. I'll show you what it looks like when it's fully built, but this is how they're shipped. So the whole goal behind these shelters is designed something that is scalable, dignified, and versatile so that you can build these villages, let them run for a year to three and then as the needs of the city changes, you can actually take these shelters back down and relocate them or you can store them flat in a warehouse or in a shipping container until they're needed again. That makes them very versatile very flexible and also makes them really cost effective to ship. So we're shipping our shelters all over the US, including Hawaii, and it makes the shipping costs much more affordable, compared to traditional construction. So I'm going to flip over to the next slide and we'll get into what's inside when the shelters are built so you can see here on this slide, an interior photo. So we have features like a folding bed so during the day the resident can fold up their bed against the wall they've got a little bit more floor room. We have shelving throughout so they've got some storage space because we all have things we bring with us. Every shelter is fully insulated, and then we have air conditioning heating, we have openable windows with screens we have obviously a front door that locks. And then a long list of standard safety features so things like a smoke detector carbon monoxide detector, a fire extinguisher and an emergency egress door so these are designed to be safe, durable and dignified. It has their own personal place to sleep, but it exists within a community setting so that you get the dual benefit of privacy. You have the network of your neighbors, and you have the onsite social services with onsite case management you have onsite bathrooms you have onsite meals. So we wanted to take and kind of combine the best of both congregate shelters, which give you that sense of community, but sometimes they don't have the dignity that residents want because it's a you know caught in a larger bed, or sorry in a larger space. And we wanted to combine that with traditional housing where everybody has their own space, but just in a smaller format. The last thing I'll say before we move on is that these are not meant to be a replacement for that permanent housing, these are meant to complement all of the strategies that your community is already employed to help people who are unhoused transition to stability. Again, there are so many people out there experiencing homelessness, our goal is to create one more menu option for people to choose if they are looking for a safe and dignified private space with onsite services. Any questions, Howard, before I move on to the next section. You're, you're a very, very articulate young man and your story beautifully so I'm not interrupting at all. Well, yes, I will because the shelters that we've created here in Hawaii, aside from yours, do not have air conditioning. They don't need any heating. You don't have smoke detectors co2 detectors fire extinguishers you you've got the whole shooting match there. That is really something and obviously it's very, very, very affordable. Yeah, yeah, remarkable. Yeah, thank you and that's a good point our shelters. They are priced to be very affordable so they come in at about, they started about $5,000 each, you know shipping and assembly add a little bit to that and that always varies based on where we're sending them to but our goal is to create a scalable solution because again as I mentioned earlier, the crisis has reached, you know, humanitarian crisis level proportions so I like to think about homelessness and our response to homeless this on this sliding scale or the spectrum where we could either send it to everybody, but how many penthouses could be afford to build, or we let everybody continue to live in tents and cardboard boxes and neither of those are a realistic solution so what is that median place in that spectrum, where you could help as many people as you can, the most affordably that you can, and still provide exactly what is needed from a safety and dignity perspective and that is what palette is palette provides scalable dignified sleeping that are transitional in nature. And maybe you'll get to this but I believe you charge $200 or $300 a month for the space, because a lot of these people, even though they're on the street, they have some funding. So we actually do not charge. And yeah, ultimately, the long answer to that question is palette does not manage its shelter villages so we build the shelter villages but then we always partner with a local, typically nonprofit management organization. They're thinking behind that is this group knows its neighbors and its residents who are unhoused much better than we do. We have some expertise through that nonprofit that we have. But at the end of the day we want to build the shelter villages and then let a local group come in and manage services. We don't charge, you know, anything for the ongoing operation of these shelters. We have one community that I know of that charges a nominal rate of, I want to say it's like 15 to $30 a month but then when the residents move out, they get that money back as a deposit on their first department So, yeah, it varies a little bit by site because of the differences in service managers but pallet does not does not charge for rent. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, let's go back into the slides and we can move on to the next section. So, moving into the village format and I mentioned earlier we don't build these in isolation we always build them in a village format so that you have an onsite community room you have onsite case management. You have bathrooms, laundry. So you have everything that you need to get yourself, you know, whatever that is that you need to get to the next step. And there are three groups of people that we think this model is really successful for. First is obviously the individual that lives in that shelter. They have their own dignified space to sleep at night. And if you put yourselves in the shoes of somebody who is living unhoused. They're probably worried at night about their safety and their security because they're living in a tent that somebody could just slice open and steal their things. So you're not getting a really quality sleep at night and as you and I and your viewers know it's really hard to function if you don't have a good night to sleep. So with our shelters, every one of them has a locking door which is one of the most important pieces of our model so people have the security and dignity of their own space. It also helps them to be able to lock that door when they leave to access a job or access services so they know their things are safe and they know they have a place to come back to each night. So with our providers that manage our sites. This is a really successful model for them, because you can imagine if you are a case manager and you're trying to track down Joe, who tonight sleeps on a park bench on the east side of what the city is going to do, but then tomorrow night he goes to downtown Honolulu. How do you keep track of all of these people with our model service providers know exactly where Joe sleeps every night for continuity of services and ultimately more successful outcomes. And then the last group is of course the neighbors around where our shelter villages are built, because they are so cost effective. They have less money on the shelters and that leaves them more money for services which ultimately is the secret sauce. People need people they need case management. So that our model allows for more funding to go towards services and other aspects of the neighborhood. I've, I've shared here a map of where we've got some of these shelters built. So you can see in Hawaii, we are very grateful to have two sites, one on Maui, one on Oahu. Those have been operating for a little more than a year now, we have shelter villages in about one in five states. The majority of our work has been done up and down the west coast and Washington, Oregon, California. We're pushing further east, we're in discussions with a lot more cities right now and in the future. But to date we've created thousands of new shelter beds. Most of these have gone up in the past few years palates been around for about five years total. And we've really seen a lot of interest in our shelter villages, especially in the past past few years. And then for the last part of this presentation, I'll just share with you a couple glimpses of the shelter villages that we have. Again, these are all on our website at palletshelter.com if you want to take a deeper look. This was a village we built in. This one was early 2019 in Sonoma County. We engaged with Sonoma County in December 2018 they've reached out to us and say we've got this trail where people are living unhoused they've got tents they've got you know they're makeshift structures. In a matter of weeks, our team went in built these shelters. Each of our shelters can be assembled in about 30 minutes each so we're able to respond with speed and get people housed and sheltered right away. This site is about 60 individual sleeping cabins with a community room it's got a dog run medical tent bathrooms. That one's been around for for a while now and I believe. They've had some great successes already. I don't want to get this number wrong, but last time I checked I want to say they've had about 80 people moved through that shelter village, and probably about 50 of them have moved on to permanent living accommodation so we're really proud of that one. The next one I'm going to show you is a little bit of a newer site this one opened up in the past nine months this one's in San Jose, it's called Casitas de Esperanza. This one is built about 100 square foot shelters so they're a little bit bigger than the ones that have shown you so far. This site is built exclusively for families. So families can come here and move off the streets, just like our other villages you've got access to a community room on site case management that's going to help you move on to permanent housing after your stay there. Across all of our sites, the average stays about 60 to 90 days but we recognize that everybody's on their own timeline. Some people come in and they're ready for permanent housing. Other people need a little bit more time, ultimately the onsite service provider makes that call and you know when people move on and the individual is responsible for that that timeline. And the last site I'll show you this is one of our more interesting sites this one is actually painted. This is in Los Angeles this is called Alexandria Park. This is about 100 individual sleeping cabins. You can see that shot that photo in the middle bottom is an overhead drone photo showing you how they're all arranged. I really like the way they did this one because they've arranged the sleeping cabins such that nobody's door faces another door so when you open up your front door you don't look at this somebody else's private space again the goal here is dignity, safety, and they've arranged it in a way that kept it, feeling very private but you still exist in this neighborhood. And then I think that's all I brought from a shelter village photo standpoint. My last slide here. I'm going to share with you how or this has some videos that go deeper into each of these villages it talks a little bit about how pallets got started again this is all on our website at palletshelter.com. I know we have you know less than 10 minutes left and I want to save some time for questions that you might have. So I'll wrap it up here and again thank you for taking some time to hear me out and learn more about what pallets doing. Wow, that is really, really impressive. Brandon yeah. And first question is, people are there for some people could be there for as little as a week or two, and then be ready to move on. How do they transition I mean they've been on the street, presumably they have very, very little money, if any, how do they get into permanent housing what are some examples there. Yeah, good question. That's ultimately the goal is that everybody moves on to permanent housing our shelters are not meant to be a place that somebody lives for years at a time ideally it's temporary in nature. The way that that transition happens it's always led by the onsite service provider, so they're providing individual personalized attention to every resident because everybody's different just like you and I have different housing needs, people who are unhoused have different housing needs as well. And so many cities have great programs like housing vouchers or other resources. And the challenge sometimes is for these people who are unhoused to find an access them and navigate all these programs. Sometimes the sheer number of programs can be intimidating for people, especially if you don't have access to a cell phone or an internet connection. So these onsite service providers can connect residents with these resources because these service providers know these resources in their own community like the back of their hand. And that's ultimately again why we like to work with a local service provider, because they know those resources they know their residents and they can connect the two to get them on to permanent housing. Another big piece of that transition is, you know, people who are living unhoused have been living unhoused for a personal reason sometimes. So if there is somebody that is, you know, challenged with a substance use disorder, or if they're fleeing domestic abuse. And the service provider can help navigate the individual challenges that that person is having while they're staying in the shelter villages so that when you move on to permanent housing, they're ultimately more successful and that stay in permanent housing is more sustainable. So you know that brings something close to home I think for all of us during this year of COVID. None of us have been having a good time or maybe occasional good times but we've all had our struggles, and we are good solid middle class people living in good solid homes with lots of friends lots of safety net. And still, we have had a hard time. I think I don't speak just for myself I think I speak for everybody. We could use a service provider or sympathetic voice or a voice of guidance. So you think about us all nice safe and secure. And then you contrast that with people out on the street, especially my heart goes to moms with little kids and out on the street. Lord, do they need a service provider made some guidance. And offshoot of that might be that when they get stabilized, then they can start applying for jobs with with the aid of the service provider. Once you've got a job you've got income and your whole perspective changes. Totally. And that's what's really difficult about living without a home is from the stories I've heard from the shelter villages I visited and our own team who has experienced homelessness. It's easy sometimes for people to ask why don't, why doesn't this population just get a job, or why doesn't this population just blank and the number of challenges that people who are on house base are massive and I even after my few years of working with the Palat, I still am often surprised the challenges that this population faces and the, the, the challenges they've got overcome to move on to that next step in their life. So yeah, absolutely. And we think they providing sleeping cabins, paired with on site case management is a winning combination to help them in that transition on to that next step. And you also said that you provide medical services. I read about one homeless person here in downtown Honolulu, and you're probably familiar with Queens hospital or major hospital downtown. He had cost that hospital over $100,000 in one year, simply because he came coming back and back and back with this element that element this wound, whatever. And if you can provide people medical services elementary right on the spot, you are improving their health, and you're putting far less of a burden on emergency room providers. Definitely. Yeah. And the hospital store you gave is a great example. And just like, you know, whether it's hospitals or whether it's policing or if it's housing in general, everything that we're doing is thinking about working with this population upstream in a preventative manner, so that we don't get to that further crisis point where they're at the emergency room, or they've run into an issue on the streets with somebody. Everything we're doing is try to work upstream, be preventative, get them the stability that they need so that they can make the good choices that they want to make, give them the ability to do that, and then watch them flourish and make their life their own the life that they truly want it to be. Something else just a taxpayer standpoint just a hard-nosed taxpayer is there are certain areas in downtown Honolulu as you know where these people congregate, and you go there. And especially on a weekend, here's a car with a blue light on it, i.e. a police car, sometimes two such cars sometimes three. They've gotten themselves into trouble in the middle of the day, and they're tying up police services. Whereas if they're in shelters, now they're getting their act together they don't have to act out like this on the street. Again, tax saving taxpayers dollars and keeping everybody safer. Yeah, definitely there's there's so many benefits to the village model and we're big proponents of it. We also are big proponents of all solutions, whether it's congregate shelters or if it's building additional permanent housing which is also desperately needed in so many communities we think we need to be doing all of the above. And more we can be doing the better because like I mentioned earlier we are at a crisis point in America where there are just too many people who lack access to shelter in any form. And I think there are a lot of groups out there doing great work to create more solutions and I think we need to do all of the above. And finally, we've got about 30 seconds but something I really like is you've got a pet house also. There's a lot of benefit from our pets, and you see a lot of the unhoused people with the dogs and such, and you know what comfort those dogs provide so you, you, that's one of your services here. Absolutely yeah and we, we try to make it as easy for people to access shelter as possible. Sometimes people won't accept congregate shelter if pets aren't allowed or partners aren't allowed. So we try to produce the barriers, let people in, bring your pets because we know that pet is an important piece of your life, and let that pet be a part of that recovery and that transition that you're on in a pallet shelter village. Wow. Brandon, we are out of time. Thank you so much, Brandon build show project shelter very, very, very impressive. And this program will be archived so that people can come back to it and get your, your resources here. Great. Thank you so much Howard pleasure to be here through inspiration and with that on that very cherry note from zinc take Hawaii Howard wake code green farewell. See you next time.