Episode 91 - Bill Pulte, Founder of Blight Authority, Solutions for Urban Decay/Crime

Do, do, do, do, do. Hey, everybody, come on in here. We've got a very special coffee with Scott Adams. It's the second day of what I'm calling the summer of Love. We're gonna turn from the partisan bickering that we've been enjoying for the past two years. And I do say enjoying because it's kind of fun, but it's kind of corrosive. It's time to start thinking and positively. And today is all about the positivity. Today is about solutions. Today is about coffee with Scott Adams. And we'll be introducing Bill Pulte in a moment. But first, do you have your beverage? And are you ready for the simultaneous sip, everybody? Oh, that's good. Simultaneous sipping right there. So, as I said, I'm gonna. I'm pivoting over this summer to talk about things that work, things that are inspiring, things that are just good news. And I'm hoping that some of you will join me in the switch to positivity. It's easy to be bickering with people, but every now and then you find somebody like Bill Pulte I'll introduce in a second, who is solution oriented, get it done, make the world a better place kind of person. And I think we all need to hear more about that. So let me introduce Bill. So Bill Pulte is a businessman and founder of the Blight Authority. Blight in this context is an urban area that's run down and neglected. And they're involved, the Blight Authority is involved with wide scale removal of blight. In other words, the buildings themselves in America's inner cities. Bill's work has been nationally recognized by Forbes Magazine, cnbc, msnbc. And Bill was named Michigonian of the Year by the Detroit News for transforming Detroit neighborhoods. The toughest place you could possibly imagine to make anything better. And he's doing it into beautiful areas. Bill was named a top 50 philanthropist in the United States by Town and country magazine. I think I'm going to put him higher than that. Top 10, top 5, maybe. And I'd like to introduce Bill. Bill, say hi to everybody. You're talking to a few thousand.

Thanks, Scott.

Hello, everyone.

Good morning.

I'm hoping our sound is good. And Bill, could you describe where you've done this work? Just give us the high level. What exactly are you doing and where have you done it so far?

Sure. So we're looking to bring our model to a bunch of different cities. We've gone to the city of Detroit, which obviously is very famous for non Abandoned homes. In fact, there's over 30,000, it's pretty hard to believe, 30,000 abandoned homes in Detroit. And then the other city that we've done work in is called Pontiac, which is in Pontiac, Michigan. And we've done a tremendous job there as well. We're looking to go to other cities right now. We're looking at Chicago, we're looking at parts of Ohio, frankly. Been talking to Baltimore a lot recently, unfortunately, Scott, so many cities across the United States have this abandoned housing crisis. And as far as we know, we are the only kind of wide scale solution to fixing this housing crisis that exists in urban America, and that is specifically blight, rundown homes. We can talk a little bit about what happens and why this is so some of our cities.

Yeah, let me fill in some texture here. Now, you are a private organization, or is it a public private organization?

We are a nonprofit. Is therefore when we work with government, a private public organization. But I make no money on it and media and everybody wondering money is involved with all this. I am totally 100% nonprofit on this issue. And that gives me total clearance because I'm able to just get the job.

So in a case such as Detroit, Detroit had massive amounts of blight, buildings that were just filled with crime and drugs and prostitution, that sort of thing. And they had a budget to do something. Right. But they just didn't have the resources to figure out how to use that money. Is that true?

They did. So imagine this. So Detroit is actually 135 square miles. So you could basically fit Paris and San Francisco, the city limits of Detroit. But the way that the government had always taken down homes was they would take down one home here, one home here, one here. What we've done, Scott, is we've gone in with a holistic approach. We concentrated in a particular geography and we go into a neighborhood that's really suffering. So for example, and one. But we went into 10 city blocks in one neighborhood. We combined it all together. So we didn't do this scattershot approach. Went into this neighborhood, cleared out 10 blocks of blight, Scott. 10 days. So we cleared out 218. It was a big area for prostitution. There were two prostitutes in the area. They left and fleet the area. The drugs stopped. Everything stopped. When we came in with our bulldozers, knocked down the bad buildings. The people who were living in the perimeter, they were able to live there happily. The gunshots stopped and the prostitution and the drug activity moved out.

Now I talk with my audience all the time about the power of persuasion and especially visual persuasion and how that can affect your psychology, your optimism and everything else. So, as you just mentioned, the old way of doing it was you'd find a building and you'd tear it down, but it was still surrounded by other buildings that are full of crime and problems. So the old.

Absolutely. I equate it to basically like a tree falling in the woods and nobody knowing it even happened. That was what happened before.

Now, compare that to your approach, which is taking out entire contiguous areas. And I understand that you make a big show of that with the big equipment because you do it in a compressed time, which shows you tremendous amount of action. It's visual, it's exciting, it's big, it's. It's noisy. And people just come to watch, don't they?

You fundamentally. It's very well said, what you just said. We fundamentally alter reality in these neighborhoods. We fundamentally change the psyche of people in real time. So when they walk in in the morning into these neighborhoods and imagine it's gloomy, it's dark, you've got these abandoned homes, and then all of a sudden our machines come in and it's a ray of light and it's loud and it just. People's psychology. People come out on the streets, they're cheering for us. It really is a moment that is spectacular in these cities because these people haven't heard. Many of these folks haven't heard from people, Scott, for 10, 20, 30 years. You know, they get. They call the police sometimes and the police won't show up for an hour or two. Imagine if something happens and do that. So we're coming there and we're offering real solutions, as you said, are visual. And so people actually start to believe, right?

So there's nothing that succeeds like success. So everybody believes that whatever they're seeing is a trend, even if it isn't, you know, that your mind naturally goes to, well, if this is happening, there's going to be more of that tomorrow. So in the past, what they saw was more blight every day. Every day they woke up and, well, there's more blight. I guess tomorrow is going to be more blight. You go in there and you totally shake the box and you say, look, there's your blight. It's gone now, and next week we're going to work out another block and that blight is gone, too. And what that does is it opens up possibilities in people's minds, right? They see an empty field in real estate that's within a city you normally don't see that much empty real estate. And you just start thinking, what can we do with this? What's the upside? We'll talk about the upside in a moment, but give me an idea of how important. Well, the size of this. How much have you done? And do you have any sense of how much more could be done in the same way?

Well, much could be done. I think, in fact, I think blight could be totally eliminated from the United States if we had the right leadership. I think that there's a lot of momentum on this issue, frankly, Scott. But if we took a model across the United States, you could fundamentally transform urban America. And I think that people are excited about what I've done. I'm doing. You know, I've gone to the White House, I've gotten great reception, and really, you know, spoken with Larry Carson. I think that there's a lot of momentum and there's a lot of other people who are doing this. To answer your question specifically, we eliminated 10 blocks in 10 days. Just, boom, knocked it. We went to another area of Detroit.

Hold on, let me stop and pause on that, because that is such an impressive number. There were 10 blocks of buildings, city blocks. So, yeah, 10 city blocks of buildings. In Detroit, right? Yes, in Detroit that he made disappear in 10 days. Imagine watching 10 blocks disappear in 10 days. That changes the way. That changes the way you think. And do you have any sense of. Have you done 1% of what needs to be done in urban Americas? Is it 10%? How much of a dent are you putting in?

Definitely is 1% in terms of the total scope, less than 1%, but it's 100% of the areas that we've gone to. And so that's really where I emphasize. So give you another example. We went into a city called, or excuse me, a neighborhood called Brightmoor in Detroit. And anybody who knows Detroit knows that Brightmoor is one of the toughest areas, let's put it that way. Drug activity, gunshots, tough air. We went into Brightmoor and in under 30 days, we cleared out steady blocks of blight. When I talk about it's over 500 lots. So we're able to knock down not only us and our partners eventually were able to knock down not only homes, but also clean up trash and debris. What's amazing, Scott, is in these urban areas, people are actually dumping trash on people's lots. We collected over 300 car tires. We collected. We collected over 200,000 pounds of trash. This is what people are having to live around in our area. And that's what we've been able to clear. So we've cleared 100% of the areas that we've gone to. And to talk a little bit. I know you're going to talk about in a second what comes after, but this is now almost like a park. I mean, people are calling it like the Irish Hills of Detroit. It's got these rolling fields when beforehand it was all trash. So I would say we've knocked out 100% of the stuff focused on and we're scaled across the United States. That's our hope.

Wow. All right. So that's amazing. And in a moment, I want you all to be thinking, who are watching this? We're going to ask you for some suggestions about what would be the best thing to do with this new land that's available. What's the best thing for the inner cities. So think about that while I talk about this. I've been trying to figure out, talking to people who are smarter than I am about how do you handle the total problems in the inner cities? And the thing that people who know more than I do, which is a lot of people say consistently, is that if you don't fix the crime, nothing else works. There's definitely a starting place, and starting place is crime. And since you're making such a big dent in that, one would think that you've gotten closer to the root problem than I've ever seen anybody get with any other kind of project.

Thank you for saying that. I absolutely agree with you, Scott. And we can talk about education, we can talk about employment, but fundamentally, you have to change the visual landscape of these neighborhoods and the environment that people are living in. And for instance, when a kid can't walk to school safely because they're afraid of a predator being in one of these abandoned. By the way, this is a true story. I mean, most people don't know this, but, you know, in Detroit, there are kids who are worried about people coming out and dragging them and raping them. Excuse the word, but it's true. We. We got to identify the problem in order to solve a solution here. So, you know, a lot of politicians don't like me saying, you know, these things, but that because they're more interested in poll numbers, I'm more interested in solving the problem. But, you know, literally, kids get raped in these buildings. I mean, this shouldn't happen in America. So we're going in and we're knocking down these buildings. And so when that kid does get to school, if that kid gets to school, if the Kid gets to school, they can properly study. So I appreciate you saying that in many ways it is the root cause. I actually believe that it is and I've never seen anything like it. And many people who have done urban work for decades have never seen anything like what we're able to do when we go into these neighborhoods.

Yeah, and so in your introduction, when I was saying that, I think, you know, you're closer to the top, philanthropy wise in the United States is, you know, somebody can write a check, but who knows where that's going, how well that's being used. But people don't like to do the dirty work. Yeah, I mean, you're going to some of the worst places and doing the hardest, least, least rewarding kind of jobs, but it is the root cause. So you went after the actual problem. You know, it's not just for the show. So let's talk, let's change this to the positive now. It's all positive that you've gotten rid of the blight. But rather than talking about the blight, let's think of some ideas for what to do there. I'll prime the pump here by. I'd suggested that there are a number of companies, startups especially, who are trying to figure out how to rapidly build low income housing with robots and everything else. So there may be cool things that people can do as projects. There may be experimental companies that just need cheap real estate, possibly startups. Bill, have you seen other ideas that people suggested for the use of this, this cleared property?

Well, one of the things that works really good is that people can actually expand their properties. So for instance, let's take the 10 city blocks, right? Beautiful land now, totally clear what these people actually can do in some cases for like a dollar a lot, they can take an adjacent lot. One of the things is in order to keep kind of the integrity of the area and the beauty of the area now that it's been officially cleaned up, is how do you preserve it? And so what we've done is in the government that we've worked with have turned to the residents and said, hey, would you want to own the property next to it? So I would say, you know, you could build onto your home in one case, Scott, and you know, again, better remember the environment that these folks are in. You know, they were able to add on, they were able to add a playground for their kids. And so, you know, we've actually been able to increase their property ownership by the people who have a vested interest in the success of the land. The Other thing that I've heard and I have no interest in doing it myself, and I'm on the philanthropic. It is, I understand in some of the areas that we've gone to in Detroit, there's been a lot of developer interest. So what happened was when we cleared the slate, it finally gave people the visual understanding of what could happen in area, and so you could basically see a way where developments could happen. Another thing that we've been talking about with a actual NBA team has been putting a basketball court in one of the areas that we worked in. So these are the kinds of things that we've looked at so far, Scott But I'd like to ask you and your audience what ideas do they have to put into these areas? Because that really is the part of the equation we haven't figured out. I'll leave you with one last thought and then maybe, you know, you can take it or we could hear some ideas. But, you know, people always say, you know, what goes here after the fact. And in my opinion, there's kind of like four steps to this whole thing. I'm only step one, but I can tell you right now we won't get to step two, three or four until we take care of step one. I would just leave you with that thought, but I really need help figuring out step two and four because we haven't quite figured that one out, admittedly.

So I'm seeing people saying ideas like urban farms and after school programs, midnight basketball, just looking at a lot of people are saying farming ideas. We'll talk about that in a moment. Corporate headquarters Bill, have you done any research on if you could do what would be the one most useful thing to do? Is it put a charter school? Is it put a basketball court, if you could. If there was one thing that made the most difference, Boys and Girls Club, somebody say education, where do you think is the biggest leverage? Trade schools.

We've also seen urban farming and people actually being bringing bees and honey into some of these urban areas that we've cleaned up. To answer your question specifically, I think that after we've done this, really what folks in these neighborhoods need is jobs. And I think that if there were some kind of incentives or some kind of security, I think that the fact when people walk into these neighborhoods, when they're beautiful and clean people, from an economic standpoint, say, I want to put a manufacturing plant here, I want to put a business here. So I actually think that that would be a huge thing. I know they have these economic zones and I've Been doing some work there in terms of understanding that. I think that if you were really able to match this blight removal across the United States with some of these incentive programs, not only could you clean up areas and make them beautiful and potentially add development and housing to them, but you could actually have economy thriving with neighborhoods. I really firmly believe that, Scott. I mean, these people are looking for employment. These people are hard working people to that point. Actually, Scott, I got to mention one thing. We're going into these neighborhoods and people say to me, you know, how are you able to get away with not getting shots or something like this? And I say, well, I partner with the community. And I would just say they're real humans who are amazing people. And when you come into their neighborhood, they will work tirelessly. I mean, these are hard working people. We actually employed, Scott, most of the people as laborers, they would clean up. We trained them as operators. Asbestos in these homes, and we've given them jobs. So I really think the positive force here is employment. And then obviously there's ideas around it. But if we have a thriving economy in these areas, you'll have a real estate market, you'll have good education, you'll have these things.

So employment. So if you could do one thing to make it better, it would be jobs that are reasonably good jobs. That almost requires a factory, doesn't it?

In some cases, yes. In some cases, no. You know, there's been a lot of stuff talked about with urban farming. For example, there could be some urban farming businesses that could support the local. Now, when you have abandoned homes, you can't clear 2038 about urban farming. So yes, I think factories, I think business urban farming would be one. It could be pretty incredible, the possibilities.

Have you ever heard of the phrase food equality?

No.

So that's something I heard from Hawk Newsom, Black Lives Matter. Now, apparently one of the big variables in school performance and also violence is food. So if people are eating the right kind of food, in other words, they have a good diet, they perform better, they're less angry. And apparently there's some science to that. Now, when we talk about urban farming, I don't think it would be efficient to actually just grow outdoors. Right. You're talking about an indoor farm farming facility or.

No, actually both. Actually both. I mean, it's amazing what's happened in some of these urban. But again, and I'm trying to stay positive here, we haven't yet had that opportunity to really expand that because some of these areas just don't have the land These abandoned homes are scattered all throughout the city. In Detroit, they've got an interesting thing going on right now. People actually using bees and using honey and using that in terms of like. And actually, I think those are pretty viable business. So, again, I don't have this solution figured out. That's why I'd be really interested, folks, what they think.

I have a small investment in a company that's building indoor farms. I'm not going to pimp the investment, but the point is that I've seen it up close, and there are a lot of firms that are in this space now, and I would think that they're looking for cheap space, cheap labor to take it to the next level because they want to build something. But cost is. Cost is really everything. Right. If you're doing indoor farming.

Yeah. Well, I'll take you to the neighborhood in Detroit. We can work on it.

So if anybody listening this has a connection to any indoor farming people. By the way, if somebody had a great idea and wanted to take advantage of this, how could they contact the right person to. I don't know, would they contact Blight Authority or somebody else to actually use the lamp?

Sure. Yes, Just Blight Authority. Email is our email. We've gotten a lot of volunteers through that, through Twitter. Scott.

Can you say that again? We lost the connection just for a moment when you said the address. It's an email address.

Yes. Blightauthoritymail.com we have folks who will be responding to emails today. We've gotten a lot of volunteers in from that. From that as well. Also, my at symbol on Twitter is olte. And I encourage people to tweet ideas at me. Frankly, Scott, much like you've done, I've been able to get such response from this. So many good ideas. So I can direct message people on there. And what. If anybody has ideas, please tweet at me. Pulte pul.

All right, so U L T E or email Blight Authority. I saw a question go by that I meant to ask who owns all this land after it's cleared?

This will shock people, but in many cases in these urban cities, the government is actually the largest or one of the largest landowners in the city. We didn't talk a lot about this earlier in this segment here, but the big problem is foreclosure. And what happens is a lot of these homes gets foreclosed, and so inevitably the government owns them. So that's actually one of the good things that happens in terms of being knocked down, the blight. It's Terrible. The other thing. But the government owns them. So, you know, the largest owner landowners.

It'S sort of the good news, bad news. Whenever I see a disaster, I always say to myself, well, there's something good in here. We just have to figure it out. And urban blight is an enormous disaster. But one of the. The odd outcomes of that, after you've cleared the land, is that the ownership of all these contiguous blocks is the same entity, the city. So that's like an opportunity that you wouldn't get if you hadn't had this problem. So it's sort of the.

Absolutely. And the government would like to give it away. The government would like to give it away to people who could do something with it. And frankly, that's where the opportunity is for your listeners and for a lot of other people across the United States. States is the government, probably in many cases from governments I've spoken to, they don't really want to own this land.

Yeah, the government doesn't want this land. And they would give it to you, sell it to you for a dollar. What's the situation there?

In many cases, a dollar apiece. You know, I don't. I'm not too up to speed on it, but if you wanted large swaths of contiguous land, it probably costs more. That's just, you know, me thinking out loud. But the government does not want to be in this. I mean, if you may remember, when Detroit went through its bankruptcy, there was a whole thing of whether this land was an asset or a liability. And what we're trying to do is take it from a liability and turn it into an asset. Unfortunately, though, you know, a lot of this land is still available for a low price. But if we go in there and do a good job and then other people come after us, hopefully it'll be worth a lot more than a dollar in the future.

There's a question that says, what are the lots zoned for? Which is a good question.

And.

And related to that, I saw another question, which is, are the local governments helping or are they part of the problem? I'm going to say that they're helping. Otherwise you wouldn't have been able to do what you've done.

Well, let me say this. I would say that I've been uniquely able to go into these governments and deal with politicians, both Republicans and Democrats. I call this a bipartisan issue. So I go in there and I really partner with people. You've talked a lot about the prisons of the mind, Scott, and I firmly believe that by talking to people about this solution, we are breaking people out of how they thought about it. When you're able to do that with some of these folks, that working, both the bureaucratic people as well as politicians, we've actually been able to break them out of that mental prison. And they've partnered with us beautifully. In fact, they've thought through some of the solutions on this issue. So my experience has been that it's difficult. It is difficult, but when you get the right partners or you work closely enough, the government can work very easily on this. To get to your second question about the zoning, that definitely is an issue, but I would say it's a very small issue because if you go to the government, and my experience has been if you go to the government in some of these urban areas and you have a legitimate good idea that the community is behind, often you can rezone. So it really comes down to the merit of your idea and whether I think you can get it done.

How long do you think it would take for somebody who had a good idea to get rezoned, even though it's possible. Possible and the system exists for that and everybody wants it, could it still take a long time just because that's the way cities work?

It could, but you know, if you're aggressive about it, probably get it done in a few months.

Okay. And I would guess that if you were behind the idea, it might get down a little bit faster. But yes. All right, so I'm looking at the yes look for somebody asked to clarify your Twitter. It's Olte P U L T E. All right, so just looking at people's comments coming by, somebody's asked you a few times what you think about cops on foot instead of being in their car. Is that that's a little off of your beat, but it's one of the things you can imagine for these areas once they're transformed. I don't know. Do you have an opinion on that?

Yeah, my thoughts on it are pretty simple insofar as if you get rid of the blight, the need for the police and the need for the fire officials, frankly goes down significantly. So that would be really my only comment. And I'll tell you, in some cases there are thousands of fires on a band homes in many of these cities a year. And in some cases the fire department is one of the biggest parts of the budget because go out there and fight fires on abandoned buildings. You know, people are arsoning these, these buildings. So I would just say that if you get rid of the blight, it Takes care of a lot of the problems with the police and a lot of problems with the fire. And these people in these urban neighborhoods, in my experience, they. They're amazing people. They just want somebody to help clean up and they don't have bulldozers and machines to go in there and knock the stuff down. So that would be my thought.

Yeah. Okay, so I'm just looking at the comments now. So any other ideas for what to do with that land? You know, I do like the idea of using them for technology forward ideas. There must be people who want to build structures that are the best technological structures, the one that's the cheapest. They're the companies doing the 3D printing. If you ever wanted a place to do a thing that hasn't been done before and is also cool and helpful, it feels like this would be the place. I have to say indoor farming looks like a good bet for some of it, but I don't know how many jobs that produces. So I think I would go for chop for jobs over indoor farms, although that might be part of it. Bill, have you seen any types of businesses in particular that are just ideal in terms of the types of people they need for the jobs and it uses a lot of them. I'm thinking of things like call centers, where there's a high density of employees to space. Has anybody suggested anything that just jumps out as the obvious kind of business you'd want there?

Yeah, I think call centers would be a huge one. To your point about do we need factor, I think call centers would be huge. The other thing is that in many of these urban neighborhoods, Scott, the infrastructure has not been updated for 20, 30 years. And so if somebody wants a job right now in an urban environment, there's a whole thing in Detroit right now about how, you know, if you want a job in the suburbs, you. You have to travel God knows how long in order to get to suburbs. So we really create kind of a, you know, you call it the, you know, the golden age. The golden age of, you know, being able to move factories into these urban environments and really create an opportunity for people who frankly haven't had opportunity in 10, 20, 30 years.

Wow. So, yeah, just by, just by having affordable housing where closer to the jobs has got to be a big part of the solution, Right?

Yes.

We're having a little bit of clipping on the audio now, so I think we're going to wind down because I think we said what we need to say. And thank you so much not only for joining me on the Periscope, but for the work you're doing. This is exactly the sort of thing that the golden age, as we like to say, is sort of perfect for that. I like it for its example. I like it for its optimism. It's inspiration. And I think the country owes you a big debt. And if there's anybody who thinks they can help out in some way, you know how to find them. And I'm going to thank you for joining us.

Thank you. Thank you. Let's get it done. Let's clean up urban America. We can do it. So all together, let's do it. Thanks, Scott.

All right. Thanks, Bill. All right. That was Bill coming to me, coming to us through the WinHub Interface app. Our connection wasn't as strong there at the end, so the sound got a little choppy. I'm not going to go too much further on this. I want to keep it on this single topic. I'm going to figure out how to get better audio to do this model. Having a microphone on a phone is not ideal, but we can improve that as we go. Let's keep it optimistic. Let's focus on what works, and let's have a great summer.