I used to say common sense was common. It's not. Common sense comes from being in relationship and sharing experience. Basically, it's the native tradition of the elders talking to somebody else who's coming up. In aboriginal culture, one of the things that an elder has spoken to me about is that it takes seven elk to build a teepee. In order to get those seven elk, you need the entire village to go out there to hunt the animals, you need the entire village to process them, to tan the hides, to distribute the meat, to use the bones. So housing really is a community effort.
It's the same approach with this organization. When people come in, they don't know how to talk to the utilities. They say, I'm going to be a little overdrawn, can I make payment arrangements, or my furnace isn't working, what do I do? You go over there and say, this is this the switch way up here and you turn that on. Somebody thought it was a light switch. There are basic thing like that that would be common if you've been taught them.
What we do is this. I mentioned that in my office I have a living room. I take out the administrative portion and I allow people to come into the living room where we can have coffee; the kids can watch a little bit of TV, Netflix, and we can sit and talk. That way, we can take advantage of that whole mentorship process that I call “housing college”, so that people can receive the knowledge they need. That step-by-step approach, in the housing continuum, actually gets people from the social housing that we have on through to home ownership, because they then get interested in education. I've got several people who have gotten their journeyman's ticket and they now own their own electrical company and plumbing company. Where they have been able to get to from where were before is all part of my being able to speak with them. It's people whom I know, the board members who have professional designations and letting people know they can do it, that they've you've just got learn how to do it and that we will help them with it.