Out of the ashes of disaster: Homes 4 the Homeless with Steve Schneider

Homes 4 the Homeless is a nonprofit organization dedicated to eradicating homelessness globally through innovative housing solutions. Today, SVYEP officers interviewed its founder and CEO, Steve Schneider.

Steve’s story started in 2017, when the Sonoma wildfires destroyed his home in California. Inspired to help others who had similarly lost their homes, Steve set out to found Homes 4 the Homeless.

What are the specific housing innovations that Homes 4 the Homeless uses to address homelessness?

The idea started almost two decades ago, when I was in China for business. And I noticed: there’s no homelessness there—they’re housing a billion and a half people. How are they doing that?

So I discovered they were making hotels and apartment buildings and all kinds of housing out of shipping containers. And so when I started this project, we got all these inexpensive houses from China, these little units for $1,200. And they would fold up and pop up in what was called a flat rack, and you could fit about 10 of those houses in a single shipping container. That was a great solution.

What challenges has Homes 4 the Homeless faced in its mission, and how did you overcome them?

Well, we had gotten the houses at that point, but if you look in the news, there was a big emphasis on dignified housing—every other word is dignified housing for migrant workers, dignified housing for the homeless. And so when we looked back at our housing that we provided that was fully code compliant, but still looked like, you know, a prison without bars.

To solve that, we approached Vessel, a luxury tourism manufacturer for luxury tourism market, nothing to do with homelessness whatsoever. We showed them what we could do, and said, what if we could add a lot of technologies—sustainable technologies—to the equation, and come up with one of the greenest, most dignified houses on the market. And we did; in order to do so we had to commit a lot of time and money to making these new houses fully code compliant and meeting all the US standards, but we did it. And next thing you know, we had signed a government contract for exclusive distribution of these new houses from Vessel.

How do you reflect on the success of your nonprofit?

First and foremost, as a business acumen, when you start a project, you stay on the project. If it's a real project, and it has real merit, and there's a path from the beginning of the middle to the end, you have to stay focused on it until you get it across the finish line. Most people get close to the finish line on their projects, and then they get derailed by something and they end up abandoning it. My successes have always been making sure that everything gets across the finish line, and they stay on it and stay on it and stay on until it gets across the finish line.

This housing project is something I’ve looked at from every different angle: affordable housing is 100% needed. The state needs it, the counties need it, the cities need it, the world needs it. But on the other hand, that's not enough: it's not just these goals but the real business models that made it happen and got us over the finish line. So I would say, this is a trap for many businesses, especially nonprofits, but you have to consider it from both sides.

Homes 4 the Homeless, I think is an example of a business view of how you can positively impact the world. Everybody wins: philanthropy investors earn a return, the community is being enhanced, dignified housing is being provided, somebody's off the street. That's how you make a good business, making sure everyone gets something out of it. I’ll leave you with that.