98: Shared Housing Solutions & Kate's House Foundation with Sherri Candelario

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Welcome, everybody, to this segment of the Women Investing Network. I am your host, Sharon Lechter. And today I get to introduce you to somebody that has a unique, unique model that's so needed in today's world. Sherry Candelario. Thank you so much for being here with me today.

Thank you, Sharon. Thank you for hosting me. I'm delighted to be here.

Well, I just love your story. We haven't really talked about part of it because you were involved in pharmacology and then you were actually also a registered patent counsel. My husband's a patent attorney. You've done so many different things and yet you found a need. And I always talk about the most successful businesses, solve a problem or serve a need. And you certainly have found that throughout your career. So I liked we're going to be talking about a shared housing concept, but tell us a little bit about little Sherry and how you got into the fields that you did.

Well, it's interesting. When I was a youngster, I was interested in chemistry and that led into going into a science degree. My first child had disabilities.

Rather than go to medical school, I chose to become a research scientist. But then I realized I wanted more. I wanted faster action. Faster action meant biotechnology, still wanting to solve problems for people in need. But my life completely turned upside down about a week after I graduated from my doctoral studies, when I met a little girl from Russia and she needed a home, I did a transcontinental adoption, brought her home. And like most people, I thought housing, nutrition, schooling could fix anything. But I was really wrong in the fact that trauma at an early age really colors the life of a human being. And so I was going off in my career. I was now a mother of a six year old and at the age of 12, Maria Katharine became invested in alcohol, then drugs. My background was in pharmacology and I knew a lot about this area. I'd researched it. But when it hits close to home, all the answers are gone. You don't know what to do.

I became a student of saving my child's life. That meant we're going to put her in a hospital, we're going to get her treatment, we're going to put her on medication. And we did this not once, not twice, but a dozen times. By the time she was 18, she's a young adult. After we have done treatment and she's failed again, we were introduced to the system of recovery homes, sober homes. You leave the hospital, you live in a group housing situation, and that's supposed to be the cure. And I believed in it. But what I didn't know is that there was no regulation in that industry. I didn't know that me as a person who's in medicine, who believed in the power of her antidepressants and her medication, the minute she entered the home, they would take those away. She would go right back down that rabbit hole again. I think the worst thing that happened was there's a system that's gone on for 50 years where people who are in these homes, addiction is considered a moral failing. And if they fail for any reason, you didn't do your chores, you're out on the curb in 15 minutes. As I experienced that over and over and over again, I thought, if someone who knows a lot about this area is completely being slayed by the system, what happens to average, typical, everyday moms? I do know so much of the time, it's the moms who are trying to find the treatment in the housing and rescue their kids.

Well, I'm very sensitive as our youngest son went through the same process. And it's something that there's so much judgmental stuff going on. And at the same time, a child, it is an illness and you have to find a way to solve the illness.

We went through several different treatment facilities as well. I certainly understand what you're talking about. You took the bull by the horn and created a process that would help them. So share a little bit about that.

So thank you for sharing that with me. We've met so many parents who've been in our shoes. And so I think it was about home number 15. And what I realized is when kids or young adults are removed from their homes in 15 minutes, that they end up homeless again. And it was this latest home where they didn't make my child homeless. When she failed, when she relapsed, they called me and they said, we don't believe in putting somebody out with a genetic disease. I had been preaching that message for years now. Somebody in San Diego with a beautiful home was in agreement. It was at that point, for the first time, after we had struggled for now 14 years with this, then my daughter found recovery and sobriety. I'm newly married to my husband, Frank. I've been doing this as a single mom.

Like many people too. We talk about credentials But I had also found out that having credentials or having a job did not mean job security. At the same time, we both lost our jobs. We looked at each other and we said, we can go back into that W2 rat race again, or we can take this burning experience that we had and do something with it. And we said, we can do better. What we're going to do is the only way we can do better is if we buy the house, we buy the real estate, we create the program. And we have two essential elements of that program. One, the houses have to be in great neighborhoods that are appreciating where people can have peace. And two, there has to be a requirement of Zen tranquility in kindness in the house, which means that people aren't disposable. They're not going on the curb for any reason. And that was going against every norm that was happening in 2015. And even today, we find that we're kind of the lone voice in the woods saying, no, this is how we treat people. And we bought a home and rehabbed it, and we set up a structure of rules with no visitors, with medically assisted treatments allowed. So if you're on antidepressants, you get to stay on them. If you need a drug to stop your cravings, you can stay on those. And again, not commonly accepted practice, because we treated addiction as the disease that it is not a moral failing, not bad parenting. And what we found, within one month, we had eight moms, women ages 18 to 30, who had been incarcerated because while they were using a drug, they had been involved in a crime. So they were put to prison. None of them had masterminded a thing. They were all moms. What we also found is that we could rent by the bed. We could put eight to nine people in a home, and they love the community, and federal government would pay us a substantial amount for that bed. So we now owned real estate that was triple cash flowing. People were healing, and they were referring other people in. So before we knew it, we were buying another house in expensive Seattle because they had eight friends. And a few months later, they had eight friends. And so this referral process went forward, and we were told one of the things that was so unique about us is we asked every woman who came to the house, write us an essay about what brought you here.

That's wonderful. I love that. And so this solution that you created also created an opportunity for real estate investors. So. And I think that's what we want to take us into on that journey, because you have now taken this and scaled it and are teaching other people how to do it. So share a little bit more about the, the investing side of what you do.

Well, what we found early on is when you're getting $8,000 a month for a house in rental receipts that would Normally cash flow $2,000, or you would receive 2,000 from a family that you're able to move very rap. There were three things that were important. One, you had to have a good neighbor policy and get along in the neighborhood. Two, you had to understand fair housing law allowed us to do this. The third at the nascent stage, were national certification standards for sober recovery homes. We said that's what has to happen throughout the United States. We have this huge vision that everybody who is housed would be in a stable house with standards.

And when you put those three together, you have an ideal real estate investment. For the passive investor who wants to be make social impact, they can give you money, help you buy the house and get a return. Or for the active investor who wants to copy the model we had created the model that was reproducible. In fact, in about 2017, we started speaking on national stages to real estate investors. Don't have a single family home with a husband, wife, two kids and a dog. Impact your community. With at least one of your homes, you don't have to worry about eviction moratoriums. You don't have to worry about landlord tenant laws because they don't exist when you're doing a recovery program. As the more we learned about the process, we were growing with federal legislation that stated the recovery home process. When we talk about recovery home, it's not just people with substance use disorder. We're getting foster kids who have lost their housing at age 18 because the funding is off. We're getting disadvantaged women, we're getting domestic violence. We are getting Vietnam vets. People who just want to be in a shared housing environment. They can't afford their own home, they have enough money for one bed, but they want to live in community. And so when you think about the term recovery, the term recovery is broad.

I love this. I just love the whole model. So tell me how people can find you, Sheri. How can they find out more about what you provide and how they can get involved?

We would love to have people be involved in a couple of different ways. So we created a nonprofit foundation. And it's very unique. We don't take donations, we just use it as the structure. Because what we found is that most of the government funding, the billions of dollars of government funding. Funding only want to go to nonprofits. So that nonprofit is in Seattle, Washington. It's national, it's 501C3 and it's named after my daughter Kate. Kate's House foundation.org.

For the person who wants to invest in this model. We're actually opening homes in Florida and in Seattle, Washington as a passive investment in a syndication.

And that's a second way because a lot of people want to help, they don't have the time and they want to know that their money is going to a social purpose to raise the country. And that is shared housingsolutions.com and I think the third way we also have people who would love to learn to do this themselves. Now Frank and I wrote a curriculum and we've been teaching for many years in coaching students and that is under the umbrella of recoveryhousingacademy.com I think we can supply all those links and find us anyway. One thing we know is we threw out an intention in 2015 that we were going to end homelessness because we realized that all of these groups we're serving became homeless not because of a choice, but because of where they were at in their life. They didn't have credit ratings, they didn't have money. And shared housing will solve that.

I want to just add that my experience, the shared housing is really important, but I think the shared housing with standards of care are very. I think adding that element to it, you've provided a little bit more consistency in how they will be functioning. I think that's fantastic and I love it. We will make sure that the links are in the show notes and I just, I just applaud you. Tell me what you see for the future of what you're doing.

We like to say we're an overnight success after six years of 18 hour days. But in the last couple of months we've been getting national attention for the model because in 2011 there were no standards for recovery housing. And it wasn't until 2017 we brought those to Washington state, we've brought them to several states that the federal government is stating that they will give billions of dollars for recovery housing to homes that meet standards. So we think we are in the forefront of getting housing throughout the country that lifts people up. The other piece is we were one of the first to say you need to be on the medication your doctor prescribed. Now we don't have medical personnel in our home. People are responsible adults who are working or taking their medication. Now that has become the norm and the accepted model. One of the things that is chilling to me as a medical person, medical scientist, is that the drug fentanyl, which is 100 times more potent than heroin, is the predominant drug on the streets. And we're seeing it in the schools with kids as young as 12. We want to be a voice for protecting our youth and our young people by educating people that some of the things that you're being introduced to can not only just harm you, they can kill you. Housing is one thing, but how do we stop this drug crisis in America? We found out housing does it. Housing and education.

I love this. I appreciate it. I think for everybody listening to this podcast, I think it's really important to understand that this is. You're just scratching the surface. There's such a great need for this and it's a great opportunity for people to get involved. Please check out the links that Sheri has given us. I just want to applaud you, Sherry, for putting your heart out there and creating something that's a solution for many people that need it and more and more every single day. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time and I want to congratulate you and I'm honored to meet you and I look forward to more opportunities to get to know you.

And Sharon, I'm honored to meet you too for giving us a voice because without the voice, we can't do this.

Well, your heart is even stronger than your voice because it comes through. So thank you so much. And for all of you listening to this, thank you so much for being engaged. Engage in the Women Investing Network. Please share this with your communities. I'm Sharon Lechter. Anything you want I can support you in. Please reach out to me. Infoheronlector. I will look forward to hearing from you. Infoeronlector.com Go out and have an incredible day because you are fabulous. Thank you so much.

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