0:04 good afternoon and welcome to the way to wow show i'm your host kevin and we are here every week on wednesday 12 30 pacific time 3 30 p.m east coast time and uh before i introduce my guest bob mcelroy um i just want to mention the show from last week so last week i did a solo and i talked about the four questions that every entrepreneur needs to answer if they want to have a successful business and perhaps as important if they want to be able to get funding for
0:40 their business so if you're thinking about starting a company or you've got a startup idea whatever it is i invite you to go to our youtube channel the way to wow show on on youtube and and check out last week's uh episode and if you have any questions my contact information is in the notes and please let me know happy to help you out and get you on your way to wow so without further ado i want to introduce bob mcelroy bob is a new friend and i met him through um a navy colleague of mine uh a fellow in
1:16 the uh navy special forces or special warfare uh world and um have gotten to know bob a little bit over the last few weeks bob is the founder president and ceo of the alpha project and uh i i think bob you may no that's why i kicked that back we've had i've had one other uh uh head of a non-profit on on the show um but um bob has a very interesting professional story to tell and uh so uh bob welcome to the way to wow show thanks so much for uh joining
1:52 me today thanks for having me kevin appreciate it yeah so you know i i generally speaking i like to start as as early as possible in in a guest's um you know life journey if if you will um and uh because i find that a lot of people end up doing something professionally that they never really thought about when they were um you know a child and so uh i mean am i right in um uh in in thinking that um you didn't grow up wanting to start a
2:29 non-profit and you know do what you're doing not a clue 37 years ago i would have never thought i'd be doing this i was always chasing it i was a lashkey kid back in the 50s and 60s you know didn't have a dad raised on the streets and i was very very blessed to have a mom you know that uh to make sure we always had clean clothes and food on the table but she worked from sun up to sundown and and raised a family of three i have two older sisters and um you know i i just i just had to you know she told me i was at the house when i
3:04 was six years old and uh man that scared scared the hell out of me uh and i my my sisters are all 10 years older than me so you know they were out at 17 6 17 18 i was still seven or eight and uh you know i could have the big pity party and stuff but uh you know kind of lived life in my own terms and you know with all the trials and tribulations that brings and uh you know chased the the the dream out you know i always thought you know i'd be millionaires and i thought i was gonna be a movie star i thought i was gonna be a hall of fame football player i thought
3:39 it's gonna be all these things and always seemed to come up short and then i had this you know 30 31 years later had this this revelation uh the pile called the apostle paul experience uh don't know how anybody else uh comes to know the lord but i had a basically shooter get off the pod moment and uh you know the rest is history i i just i followed the tenets of the new new testament and believe me my story is full of pillaging and plundering and you know lived life in the fast lane i did commercials i did some movies uh
4:15 you know but i always just i did there was always this hole in my heart you know i just i never had any uh any any you know knew this i was gonna do for a living i had no to direct you know trajectory of success always just kind of hand them out so you know he's had this has his experience uh and i started uh you know feeding people in the park so with my with this church that i went to i'd never been to a church before i actually went there to chase all the girls it was a it was a very uh it was uh uh mike mcintosh and rice christian fellowship he was a drug addict it was
4:50 this kind of new hip thing and then as i said i had this experience that uh okay i i i need to get some some direction in my life stop relying on myself and relying on the only father i've ever had and that's my good lord because i've never had a dad and so as i said i went to i don't really unders didn't really understand the old testament with the whales and the giants and this kind of stuff but i certainly knew the common sense the new testament don't judge people pick people lift people up don't put people down if you've got the ability to help someone else do it and you know 35 years later we've got 33
5:28 programs in seven different cities several thousand seven thousand people a day have a thousand families in housing uh and and you know just built buildings for veterans we're talking about doing some stuff kevin down the road and everything with me who have 350 employees i mean i sit back all the time go wow nobody's ever accused me of being smart brother but it's it's i believe in divine intervention god brings me the right people at the right time and then make great things happen and uh of my 300 plus employees 90 of us have real world lived experiences
6:05 you know you can't you can't do what we do out of a book you can't read it in a book and apply that to other than maybe the good book but um so it's just you know we're miracles i is you know alpha project our slogan is where miracles happen well that came from our our residents and our guys and our guys and gals in our drug treatment facilities i'm a miracle i'm a miracle and we see miracles every day and it's been in this world it's hard to find i mean if you if you watch the news you get so bummed out you don't want to do anything so it's those it's the people that we see that pull themselves up do the hard work
6:41 that it takes to come from zero and trying to make that a short path to hero and and we've seen those miracles every day uh you know as we've talked about you may talk about what you're you're talking about you know we've got to have more housing that's out there for folks which is certainly difficult in my world we have to rely on tax credits so um but we are blessed um as i said we serve 7 000 people a day it's the children that we're most interested is right now because there's no family housing but we're working on
7:16 it so it's just been great gifts great people been brought into my life and certainly all the folks that are part of the alpha family that do the hard work our staff people that do the hard work never took a day off uh during covet all experienced coved um with our families and stuff but kept showing up and doing the hard work that it takes to do what we do so a long way around the barn so here we are today yeah absolutely uh you know i one of the uh one of my hopes for the
7:51 the show is is that you know for people who who are going through that period of struggle and uh you know i went through it myself um i don't think is my struggles were anything like yours um you know however each of us has our own thing so um you know would you would you care to share some of you know a couple of the you know biggest struggles you had as as a maybe as a teenager or as a young man that that you know you saw were taking you in a
8:26 direction you didn't want to go or or or that were pampering you from becoming the the person the man that you wanted to be well you know certainly you know not having a dad in the in the 50s and 60s i mean it's not cool today to not have a dad but if you came from a broken home back in those days you were a leper you know and so i always had to be meaner tougher bigger stronger than everybody else walked around i guess my life with the with you know massive chip on my shoulder i was never a bully but i sure was a bully killer and uh you know anybody picking on
9:01 anybody else uh it was on but i always felt that i had to prove something prove something because i was always the scarlet letter kid i was the kid that didn't have a dad somebody called me macaroni and cheese one time and they never called me macaroni and cheese ever again and that's not to brag it's just it's just where i came from and so i always had this this aggressive nature because i felt that uh that i had to prove myself all the time because i had you know i was the kid with no dad unfortunately i see a lot it's almost normal doubt nowadays you know and that's that's unfortunate we see the the disintegration
9:37 of the family uh unit anymore so i i think all those things though kevin that i went through you know you know trying to do my own thing and trying to be a a football player and always being hurt you know doing movies and stuff and that that was kind of a weird uh world uh to be in um always changing the material chasing the material things and not looking at the things that weren't that are basically important friendships family uh i'm blessed to have three beautiful uh kids two daughters and the son might be my beautiful wife of 33
10:13 years uh you know that that kind of rooted and granted to me but i saw those those heartaches that being alone that being alone all the time when i was a kid translates into the people that i see today that we deal with today so for for that first half of my life of wondering why and why this is happening to me and blah blah blah blah and then starting alpha and seeing that i relate to everybody i've done the drugs i've been the lonely kid i've been on the streets i've been
10:49 uh you know the narrative well and you know doing bad things and illegal things and um so i get it you know one one of the things we say around here is nobody is better than anybody else in it elf in the alpha family nobody all of our residents were all we all came from the same stuff and so how are we all going to work together to get out of that stuff and get into something better and that's that's really how we are as a vehicle to to help people transition from
11:24 emptiness and loneliness and homelessness and addiction and crime and criminality and give them an opportunity to jump on the train to success whatever that's whatever success means but better than where they're at because we've all been there so there was a purpose for me kevin to go through all that because i see how it translates today and and we just have fun you know we we see a lot of tragedy but really you you got to focus on all the successes and have if you're not having fun helping people you shouldn't be helping people we're very blessed to do what we do
12:01 so it sounds like and correct me if i'm wrong even from your earliest days you were out there helping people who um either couldn't help themselves or or were being you know put upon by other people which in many ways is is is what you're continuing to do now at the alpha project where did where do you think that impetus came from well we're all spiritual beings i guess the good lord had a plan for me since day one you know i i it was a different it was different road to to travel but
12:39 uh as i said i you know i i always had the stain for people who just as a little kid i'm flashing back as we're talking when i was six seven eight nine years old i was a really good football player and pop warner and these these these these dads that would you know all be your because i was the quarterback i'll be your dad bob and yet their son is over there and they don't they don't even pay any attention to their son i'm going who you know take care of your son and tell him how bitching he is and then you can come talk to me so i kind of saw this as a little as a as a little guy and and as i said i've always been a
13:16 bully killer not literally killer but you know uh anybody pushing around anybody else because when somebody called me mac and mac and cheese i mean that that kind of lit the fuse but i just always and i'm seriously i'm absolutely no no hero but i've always looked out for the the underdog because i guess i always felt that i was the underdog and i'm always looking for help people i don't care what their political persuasion is or anything else if you need help i'm going to be there to help you now if you don't want my help i've gotta i can't waste my time trying to
13:52 convince you you need it i gotta go help people who want it but certainly uh you know there were people along my life that did help me out that did take some of my coaches were really surrogate dads to me and told me that i was good and that everything's gonna be good and if you keep on the right track and you you train hard and you study hard you'll be something someday i had a couple of those mentors along the way that helped me and that's why i always wanted to turn around help somebody else because somebody just gave me the time of day number one
14:28 um with no expectation to be paid back and and gave me an opportunity and that's all we do is give people opportunities i i'm just curious and because i i had a couple of men like that in my life it was actually through the boy scouts i was a disaster in sports jewish book a sports hero have you ever had the opportunity to um you know reconnect with those men who had that impact on you early you know early in
15:05 your life and and i don't know thank them for what they did or or any anything along you know those lines and just just curious you know over the years a couple people because we we got uh fairly well known here in town and stuff and people read about what we do and stuff and and they have they have reached out to me you know i've had an opportunity to thank them so much and uh you know most folks you know when you help somebody and you go on down your road they don't realize how much of it how important maybe one thing they've ever told you made a difference in your life and
15:41 it's a couple of them yeah the unfortunately the two that i remember the most have passed away uh at a fairly young age uh but but i know as i said we're spirits and they know how how grateful i am they were in my life just in a fleeting moment maybe it might be a football season a baseball season but things when i was really down they said a few words to me that i can remember verbatim that just made me stay one more day maybe show up for one more day and put confidence and
16:16 still confidence to me because when you know so when you don't have a father figure especially back in those times um you can really put a ding in your confidence you know so you have to you have to put this play this this this part of being over confident being this macho being this super confident guy went inside you're a broken little guy you know and it's all a facade so uh i get it i get it and that's why i just love to sit down when you come to san diego take it to some down book shelters down there
16:51 that's where i'm the most comfortable we have the pretty offices and the pretty buildings and i don't mind any of those places my comfort level is being sitting amongst the folks down at one of the big shelters and just talking to people because they that's where i come from yeah yeah how let me see what was it like with your perspective you know despising bullies and and people who would use their power to prey on or manipulate other people how is it like having that perspective and being in the entertainment business where
17:26 that kind of conduct is just seems to be so notorious well that's why i wasn't up there very long i remember i was up for a part i did some commercials there one of them was gone during the 1984 olympics and stuff and i got a call from la i had an agent to do a tv role that ended up being a short-lived uh series on tv and i met with these there's like four producers we met in venice beach and for lunch and the conversation was creepy and despicable um
18:01 some of the deviant stuff that they were talking about and things like that i just i and actually before that when one of the commercial i was on i was on entertainment tonight and the after party for the entertainment tonight there were big big piles of cocaine in the in the at the party you know unless i was no prude right but still it was just it was like it was like a it was like a babylonian uh environment that wasn't for me although i wasn't a christian at that time but i still believe there's there's something there's something bigger than than just
18:37 you know we came some pride from primordial goo or something i knew there's always a god out there somewhere i just didn't feel right like i said i was a pretty despicable guy but that was even more despicable that environment than than where i'd come from so i skedaddled back to back home to san diego doing some things here in town i started a clothing business ram enterprises and things and the first ones actually before the the you see these printing on the sleeves over here was native san diego and i was making a fortune on those things um but still always empty
19:13 always empty because i wasn't doing anything anything for anybody else i was just doing it for me and and uh it's far more fun to do something for somebody else oh yeah yeah so you mentioned having i i think you called it a a st paul moment um yeah would you talk a little bit more about that how did it how did it come into being you know what i mean i was at the church on wednesday night they were singing save my heart oh lord i was in there going ooh she's cute she's cute i don't know where's cute down you know i had this spirit you know i've
19:48 never heard i've never heard a voice i've never seen a vision but i had this in my spirit i had this like mcelroy like get with the program or get the f out of here and i mean just now i mean even talk about it now my hair stands up i get all this like it scared the it scared the hell out of me and i ran back to my uh my my condo and i was already doing some stuff on the streets with this with the church the blockbusters feeding people in somebody else's neighborhood and i i'd opened the bible
20:23 many times over my lifetime figuring out what what is this thing and i'd never understand a thing and and i went home and i i picked it up and the words seemed clear to me and here's another thing i don't know you're probably too young to remember this by my first really disney movie i was like six or seven years called old yeller got a guy in his dog right you know like all all disney movies the good guy gets killed at the end well obviously yeller gets killed and that traumatized me my whole life so i don't read a book unless i read the
20:59 ending first i don't go to a movie unless i see if it's a sad ending i don't go so what do i do in my bible i read revelation first because i want to know how this thing ends well that scared the hell out so i just stumbled just like the apostles i've stumble and bumble and you know this and that i'm a horrible example i don't wanna you know we bumble and stumble our way through uh but but as i said yeah but long you know you know decades later just the incredible people the good lord
21:35 has brought to me both at alpha and both in connections like this we talk i meet great people one of my you know one of my best my best buddies mike what i consider my grandpa was bush41 and uh uh george bush41 i was he made me a point of light and my wife and i won the airplane with him he took us to because my big mom took us to we were in 10 days in epcot with uh with the president down there and he wrote me all these decades back and forth back and forth he was like a mentor to me if
22:11 you look at our website he did a little clip for us and stuff but what a genuine irregardless of his politics and how you stand on his politics or anything else he was just a genuine nice sweet lovey guy who reached out to a little former homeless guy in san diego believed in what we did believed in our common sense approach just to to providing services to people in need and he helped me and encouraged me all those years i have letters from all over the office and stuff he would write me back right away just keep going and keep doing your thing bob it might get over
22:47 keep doing your thing and barbara the same way his wife she she was phenomenal also the strength and backbone of their family and i saw their family unit and how uh how tight they are and and i kind of molded my family around the same thing so like i said it's still to this day i have people that come into my life that show me good things or just say a word to me that resonates and and sticks with me and alpha's never been built by me i took alpha out of the bible alpha and omega i'm not a very creative guy but the beginning and every day is a new
23:23 beginning for us but um you know just the encouragement enthusiasm it's it's way easier to be a bummer and and and be me and mean and nasty and negative all the time um it's a challenge sometimes to keep a smile on your face uh and the way the world is today but we see miracles every day there's far more good people in this world than there are bad ones unfortunately the bad ones make all the noise but that's okay we just keep going yeah yeah one of the things i found is um
23:59 sometimes the most courageous decisions we can make is to leave behind the hurt because we get so comfortable with it and it feels so safe to leave it behind means now we've we've got to go face the unknown and that's almost always scary right because who knows how that's going to work out well you know the apostle paul said he you know god gave him a thorn in his side he asked him three times he wouldn't take it away and i think that's what our when you're talking about that the pain the disappointment the failures you've got that's a that is a great balance for you
24:34 because if if you didn't have that you could be like wow look at all these buildings that bob built look at all this and bob didn't do none of that stuff it's a constant reminder whoa wait a minute dude when you were trying to run your life on your own terms look at the debt look at the wreckage in the past over here the smoke and rubble's still there it's you don't you don't continue to rehash you don't live there but it's good to have it in your memories there as a good balance to where you're going forward because you can easily go back to that you know failing's real easy succeeding is not so giving up is is for cowards and you
25:09 know the heroes keep on going picking us up dust them off and going on down the road so you've got to have it if you forget where you came from you see where the disaster lies yeah mine fields are all there for sure so how did you how did you start the alpha project you know where did i mean you you've talked a little bit about it kind of tangentially but at some point i guess you you made a decision hey i want to you know do this non-profit thing so i just started feeding people in the parks of my church and you know and then i and i realized
25:46 because i tried to show off and once again here's the corn alley tried to bring some of my football buddies down man watch bob comes down there with his car all these people come and run well bob didn't bring any sandwiches and all those people didn't come and run and i figured like well something there's got to be something better than this am i enabling so i went down without those sandwiches i went down and stayed in the park lived in the park down here and from the recipient side and i didn't realize there was 19 other churches and do-gooder groups feeding in the park food was not an issue uh psa pacific southwest airlines back
26:21 in the day they'd come down monday winning friday with big buffets and jackets we were having they'd give us brand new jackets and and sleeping bags and stuff and we'd have swap meets in the park we're all getting our 250 uh a week gr checks general league welfare checks and having keg parties it was a freaking racket and you know eventually something goes bad you get a crazy personal stab people and this kind of stuff so but i learned i i learned that i was enabling i wasn't empowering people so i opened a little 5x8 office down on the gas line and back in 1986 the gas lamp in san diego was
26:58 just being renovated and moved all the social services the rescue missions from other places around fifth down to move them out to the warehouse district to make way for for redevelopment and i opened a little office there and i just went out i actually lived in the office by bay office because i was selling everything i could to you know keep doors open but i went out to people and said let's clean up the streets let's change the negative perception of who homeless people are and let's work for a living and so the the few remaining businesses that were in the gas oven time is called the soft
27:33 south broadway business women's association a group of ladies were were tenacious and were not going to give up their storefronts and still operate in the gas line but they were harassed by people on the streets and stuff and so i hired those same people to clean their windows to sweep their sidewalks escort their own cars at night ingrid crotche if you remember jim croche uh back in the day his wife uh opened the ingrid coach he opened their first store in the gas up there hired people that i was getting from the streets to work in her kitchen she food service so we've always been work oriented uh martin valerio owns kansas
28:10 city barbecue where top gun was filmed he adopted us we took care of his place we built a restaurant we being just the talent of homeless folks that i had down on the streets that had contracting experience carpentry electrical they were just strung out on crack you know or heroin or anything else so it just worked and the word got out there was a bunch of stories if you look in the archives and see the stories of this crazy mcilroy alpha project guy putting homeless people to work to earn a paycheck to get sober i didn't have a sobering facility i didn't have a state license
28:45 drug alcohol like we have today and things we just went i met people where we are we got to know each other we had relationships and we went through the process together city of el cajon adopted us we started doing work out there and then then you know we started getting contracts i i pitted my crews my work crews against city crews cutting brush we kicked their ass and so we got we've been cutting breasts for 35 years so get you know changing that perception because when people hear the word homeless they think a bad lady dumpster dies a crazy person drug addict
29:20 alcoholic loser instead of mom dad brother sister grandma grandpa and stop being so damn judgmental and so we took these folks gave them an opportunity to work as i said the rest is history now in san diego we put so many people to work over the decades that basically the able-bodied folks we do hire people occasionally now but now people are so strung out so mentally ill um that although our our work crews are still going we have contracts with the city we run the landfills and we do this kind of stuff it's hard to find folks that have the
29:57 mental capacity they have the physical capacity but because of the long duration certainly with fentanyl coming on board people are severely strung out now there never has been anything for the 15 to 20 percent of the folks that are so severely mentally ill they're homeless for only one reason because of their mental health distress and they can't even be in low barrier shelters and nobody once they shut the facilities down in the 80s these folks are just left to be walking bile hazards and to die publicly through
30:32 no fault of their own simply because of their their untreated severe mental illness and and i i guess that's that's been a huge uh campaign of mine obviously i haven't done very well because it's been three and a half decades and i still can't get anybody to reissue those facilities nobody when i mean governments and you know mayors and council people and governors and state nobody wants to take that battle on there is some some talk about doing something now with the conservatorship of the state but i'll believe it when i see it but that's the truth that's that's really the most
31:07 repugnant and tragic uh aspect of our the folks that are out there right now we just simply allow them to kill themselves publicly and i'm that that's that's the biggest pain um the biggest tragedy the biggest hurt that i have is i know so many of them in a lucid moment we sit and talk and then and next day they're out here butt naked in the middle of the street screaming and invisible people and that's just not fair that is that's that's just despicable that we allow that so anyway off the bandwagon no no no not at all i mean the
31:43 facility that um i worked with um we we our residents were generally suffering from schizophrenia in addition to other whether it was addictions or whatever and and it we had you know full-on social services on site and even with that it's it's just it be because we couldn't force them to stay there right it was it was very and it was it was heartbreaking in some cases because we would have someone who'd be a resident for a while and then they would want her off and the next thing we know the police was you know telling us the person you know
32:19 had had died on the street well that that's a tragedy today our mental health institutions are jails and prisons you know what kind of what kind of decency humanity is that i mean but unfortunately that's that's that's all we have i it's better i mean it's better than hitting the streets i go in the penitentiary to talk to me all the time it's better than dying on the streets but it's just despicable that that that we as a society who claim to be so humane from every side of the political spectrum and yet you overlook the these folks who need who you know so many of our grandmas and grandpas who
32:55 you they you expect an irrational person to be able to make a rational decision and that's that's that's ridiculous and that's because you and i kevin we have we we know this stuff we've seen it up close in person we know people by name we've had relationships with them and it's easy for folks who who have their own issues trying to support a family trying to buy gasoline trying to find housing they're not that's not their priority but it's certainly their taxpayer dollars goals go to uh indirect services for these folks you know these folks their their primary care physician emergency room at 36
33:30 3600 to 4 000 per day over and over and over again the police calls 80 percent of police golf down there are for that population and the calls for service of the fire department so if we we did something humane to give these folks a chance of humanity and some peace and some dignity because the cost of doing something is far less than doing nothing but nobody has has taken up the gauntlet to make that happen so we continue to do the best we can do so you you started out it seems to me almost bringing dignity
34:05 to the folks you work with through giving them an opportunity to work and and and you know redevelop perhaps a sense of self-respect um and and that that's from from my you know knowledge of of the you know the problem of homelessness that's that's a big part of it right yeah your dignity is taken away living in a tent on the street or living on a blanket you have no dignity or self-respect we have a program at all of our shelters called wheels of change it's privately funded because it has to be and we give we send for we spend 20 people out every day they make
34:40 52 bucks for four hours and you can be in a wheelchair a walker crazy is alone i have some of the folks out there who are just talking about that our schizophrenic thing but because they have purpose they get to go out and clean up neighborhoods all day uh or for four hours and the cool thing is you know they get their vests on their alpha vest wheels of change they get all slickered up and they go out into the same communities that used to tell them to get the f out of here get out of it embracing these folks thank you guys for being here here's some free pizzas here sodas one guy jumped out of this car gave everybody 10 bill
35:15 um and in the communities as i said that that in many cases rightfully so didn't want them in the neighborhood now as i said embrace them the self-esteem factor the mental health uh benefit that people have purpose and value everybody does it doesn't matter whether you're just big struck strapping young man i'm 77 years old i'm at my walker out there with my pickup stick and i'm having fun and people are honking their horns and waving at me just to give people value and purpose demonstrated publicly you know the business as i said that are just it's a phenomenal program uh it
35:51 doesn't affect their social security uh or their disability uh but they get a chance to be part of the solution and two hours of that time it's not we don't have a timer on it but part of their time out there is mentoring they're social workers they're representing the alpha family and they're they've brought stay being this group of moms and dads and grandmas and grandpas and brothers and sisters have brought so many people in that have never had any idea that there was shelter resistant they weren't going to shelter but because pops did or moms did it and we get to work out in the community hey and the food's really good and they
36:26 treat us with respect um they come in because these these folks they're mentors people they've been out there using with and camping with and doing all their stuff with for 20 years say hey this works for me come on in and try it they're the greatest ambassadors in the world absolutely you know and uh uh so it's a beautiful thing once again i get i mean i'm i'm a i get chills over everything but yeah i'm just so proud of the folks and see if it gets suited up we doing about mount helix a private park up here in san diego and they're down at the beach community the commuters are calling us all the time hey can you guys send wheels the wheels
37:02 folks out here so uh it's it's a fun fun thing to do and just as i said the the whole vibe we don't call our shelter shelters their communities and i invite anybody to come down and see you'll never see we've had 80 delegations in 60 cities including ben carson uh came out we just had major league baseball uh come down in one of our facilities the other day and they're just going wow this is pretty cool because every it's run by the inmates our facilities are spotless we have at any given time 40 50 dogs and we have some cats you never hear them you don't smell anything i mean
37:38 everybody takes care of their house because i tell people if i came to your house i'm not gonna let my dog poop in your front yard and not pick it up i'm not gonna smoke a cigarette throw it in your front yard over here this is your house let's take care of it so they have ownership they being our folks have ownership in our facilities they have ownership in the whole process and alpha was was built not by me by the men and women who have said bob can we do this let's try this let's they've built alpha and all the things that we do so how did you get into you you expanded from providing work to providing housing how did you make that
38:14 that next step well developers need a non-profit partner okay to qualify for tax credits i bought some old i didn't mean by my two more for a dollar uh [Music] well actually our first five uh complexes came in 1989 it was called the housing preservation act through hud and what these were these were hud properties all over the world actually but all the continental united states these are properties that hud came to
38:51 use so you you had a 200 unit property hud wanted to preserve that housing for 20 years and so they would tell you you would have a no interest or zero one point four point something interest for 20 years if you kept this affordable after 20 years you could sell the property and go market rate well those all expired in like 1989 and so they're saying well we're going to create another 50 million homeless people because now all these property owners are going to say hey here's my thing 20 years i can kick them all out so hud bought these properties and turned them over to non-profits
39:27 and we were the first one in line for those some some of my board members heard about it so we picked up four properties and not like anything else kevin you know the the the bogus non-profits got in they weren't really non-profits about preserving the housing for clients and they bought up some of the other stuff but we were fortunate to have our first four second has put us on the housing map and we still have those properties today and they're all family housing and then i bought a piece of price and i i bought an old sro single room occupancy that was in the redevelopment zone in east village in san diego they tore down 8 500 units of srl singer room
40:04 occupancy those were traditional houses back since the depression that poor folks grandma could live in there for 250 a month okay and they were shared bathrooms down the hall well i bought this one or i got it for a dollar and i preserved it because i knew at some point in time in redevelopment the city is going to have to replace us at some point in time so long way around the part of that i go around the barn a lot i did a land swap with the city when redevelopment came in because you couldn't have that sro anymore we built alpha square we owned the building
40:39 the housing commission we did a land swap with them day on the dirt we built 204 units of pristine beautiful housing it's a model uh uh for for uh the mostly informed senior citizens uh coming out of shelters and we built it with all glass floor-to-ceiling glass and waterfalls and parks and so now these these housing advocates from outside should come out and see how you do it it's just as it costs just as much to build something pretty as it does the bill the old bunker style low-income housing thing we got retail and pizza shops and all kinds of stuff
41:14 so we've kind of continued off on that but once again it was uh we didn't have the money to do it these were this this was a tax credit property so you get a developer and uh and the banks own the only the the tax credits for 30 years and but it gives us as as providers an opportunity to have a nice building to put people in and then we manage all the residents we bring all the services are in the building the clinicians the nurses the mental health workers the caseworkers and navigators everybody located in the building so our residents if they're having a bad day or need an issue just come right downstairs and boom there's their there's their folks 24 7.
41:51 so i don't even know if that answers your question my ocd kicks in so no i'm all over the i'm all over the place it did it did i mean it it was it sounds like it was really a partnership between you know the public sector the private sector the non-profit sector right they all it is yeah all came together to you know to make this work so so where where is the you you mentioned a little bit about this in the beginning where is the alpha project at now and and where are you looking to take it in the future uh you know i i i
42:26 people ask me all the time i don't know it's wherever google wants this to go i mean opportunities come up uh you know and if it looks like something that we can help the most people um that's what we do uh we're we're in the process of building 273 units down here a new building that will be up here uh in a couple of years i got to work out some of the bugs in it i mean i want this focused on provisional services and sometimes your partner developers are just looking for the developer fee and skedaddle down the
43:01 road so we don't we don't have to do that um you know it's our basis we're at the point in time where it's our way the highway the emphasis and the the reason for these tax credits to help low income house they're low income people qualified people and families and that's where the the uh the emphasis needs to be not on a developer fee so i understand i understand the mix there but we'll see and this is why you know i'm not i'm not an advocate of housing first certainly but we do housing first
43:37 housing first is a piece of the puzzle that was the big initiative that came out four five six seven years ago from hud housing first housing first but the reality it sounds good but the reality is not everybody wants housing um not everybody is a good fit for independent housing listen i've been alone my whole life i'm gonna go sit in a box by myself now i have people that want to stay at the shelter because all their friends are there they don't want to be now sequestered or cloistered in a box somewhere i've been there before multiple times over my life
44:14 so we we build our facilities interactive with lots of stuff and bring their folks in the shelters that's number one but number two is it takes seven years it takes seven years to build 200 units or it takes seven years to to build 60 units so you're never going to build your there's never going to be not going to happen there's no workforce housing you know there's no works housing for teachers and cops and you know working stiffs so low income we're always at the bottom so just deal with the realities here that we're not going to build our way out of this thing ever um
44:49 but we're certainly you know we do our stuff as we go along incrementally but we're not gonna it's putting lipstick on a pig we're not gonna we're not gonna limit the population on the streets by building more housing it's just not gonna happen it sounds good it's a political it's political rhetoric if you had all my money in the world you're not going to be able to do it and then you know if i'm like my employees you know that work their butts off uh every day providing services and changing people's lives and and doing all the things they do they can't afford anything and so you know it's kind of a we were just talking about this the other day we've got
45:24 somebody who's been strung out on heroin out here for 30 years and all of a sudden he gets a housing badger moves into a brand new place and these folks are paying two thousand uh twenty five hundred bucks out of their paycheck which is fifty percent of their salary to rent so you know there's a there's a rub all the way around on this thing let's build some work for it if we're building low income let's build some workforce too so it's a fair it's a fair uh playing field for everybody well we'll see so you've mentioned several times your your faith how that's impacted your life how it helped you turn things
46:00 around what part if any has that played in the work that you do at the alpha project it's everything because i would have caught this job a long time ago you know uh it's it's just i have a specialist i'm not a preacher i wasn't called to be a preacher i don't you know bible thump people because i know back in the day before i was saved uh you know people trying to bible thump me i probably slapped them beside their head it just it's i can only talk about my personal experience but you know when people come and we've got this big board
46:35 room down alpha square and people come you know they want to do different things and interviews or they want to do talk about this and they always go you know bob how did you do this and i always say are you a believer if they say yeah well then you know how he did it's divine intervention as i said i believe this is true i'm not trying to be funny nobody has accused mcilroy being smart but if you're not a believer i can't tell you how i did this i didn't do this opportunities came along that are i'd had nothing to do with and for some weird reason i'd make the right
47:10 decision and good things would happen and i can't sit here you see behind my desk or there's a red box over there this this that was my first bible this whole building burnt down 20 years ago burnt down to the ground nothing left that bible's barely even scorched so you know so my staff put it in a box for me as a memorial or you know uh and uh of that time i've just had things like that happen to me you know and and i talk to other people to happen to them i mean there's a lot of reasons why
47:45 people don't believe in something better greater than themselves it scares the hell out of me to think that i'm in this all by myself here's the thing we're all going to find out someday so i'm not a betting man but i'm putting all my my my money in the good lord's uh letting out him because i just think the life's too short uh and too fragile to think that this all this is all there is i you know when you get old i'm the bird man now in my neighborhood so i i i i appreciate creation i look at i'm a weird guy man you know this this
48:20 is why we're talking right i look at flowers and how they're like painted with a paint brush i just can't believe that that came from primordial goo so a random chance so and i know that alpha has not all the the awesome things that we get to do and have the privilege to do is just some random chance but everybody else i'm not i'm not responsible for anybody else's salvation i'm not i would never want that responsibility i just know it works for bob and his family alpha that's all that's all i know
48:55 for for people who are interested called to do something like what you've done um what's two pieces of advice that that you would give them just just straight stay uh true to your faith and your family i mean that's all i have is my family i mean i never i can say i don't have any grant i never had any grandpas never any grandpas never cousins we did that 23 and me i can't find anybody and i i felt i
49:32 always felt sad for my kids because they'd be in school and they'd have to do the family tree my mom's side of the family had all these branches she was from sweden to erickson she was from over here my dad's side had like a little stump off the side of a tree he he came from europe with uh nine kids they got off the boat in ellis island and they they're all put up for adoption so we don't we don't have we don't have any we don't have any family foundation and then certainly being raised without a dad i you know i didn't i didn't have uh i didn't have the traditional uh you know roots in the family there
50:08 and then your faith if you're a believer if you're not whatever it is i'm a believer i stay in my faith i it's always perverted human beings always get out there you watch these tv preachers and stuff and hell i'm going to beat the out of them too but um you know i just read i just read i read the new testament and it's just so common sense to me i don't understand everything but i know it works for me and it again it keeps me it keeps me i got somebody to talk to and uh yeah do i wish jesus would come down here and me and him before have lunch
50:44 and shoot the breeze and have a glass of wine cocktail um but i get it i got to believe in something and it's worked for me and there's reason to everything that's happened in my life good bad and different and uh and it's put me in a given me an opportunity to be a part of many many people's lives and i need that for my life i need that for my life i need the fellowship of people who have come from where i've come from we're in this thing together
51:20 and uh it will always be that way well all my my all my my state license drug and alcohol treat facility is all run by addicts and alcoholics you know to know the pain to know the loneliness you know being disenfranchised having nobody and now you get to have people i'm surrounded by hundreds of people every day it's a great thing when i had nobody so my my life is let me know by example i believe it when i see it i'm a skeptic i'm always a skeptic i'm the you know
51:55 skeleton's leaving a skeptic without putting too many profanities out there but i believe it when i see it and i have seen i have seen miracles happen in my life you mentioned in the beginning having a great mom has has your mom been able to does she is she still around to see what you've been able to build but she was she was part of it she she passed away about uh eight years ago she was 88 and uh phenomenal woman uh same thing came before her dad was hung himself in her garage when they
52:30 were kids she was all sisters and they they had all their trials and tribulations and stuff and it was there was a lot of tragedy involved but she instilled in me a work ethic she worked worked worked my dad left she took care of the family no uh she never got a lick of support um from too proud to go after the guy to get the money back in those days and as i said if you're from a divorce family um you know you were the other folks and uh and she just like i said she she we we always had clean clothes we always had
53:06 food on the table and and she did the best she could do i'm very proud of her and it was very blessed to have her uh as my mom and uh as i said instill the work ethic you don't get nothing for free you know if you want to if you want a better car then you got to work for it if you want a better apartment you got to work for it you want a better pair of shoes you got to work for it nobody's going to give you nothing my mom never took welfare nothing she worked as i said from sun up to sundown so and then she was involved many many years she got to see alpha square open
53:41 we named the kitchen after her kay's kitchen and uh uh she she lent me money uh when i ran out of money to keep alpha going yeah paid her back every penny never asked for it but out of respect for her i would have never let her take that down but uh phenomenal woman phenomenal woman yeah for people who were watching this or or will watch the recording later how can they help you continue your mission at the alpha project you know i'm a lousy fundraiser i never
54:17 ask anybody for money never have uh if uh you know everything from socks and shoes and work clothes and tennis shoes and women's stuff uh we don't do any thrift stores uh that's one thing i've been very blessed not to the bible says freely receive freely give i understand that it supports a lot of good agencies with their stuff but we give everything away and there's a lot of folks a lot of companies and stuff that donate strictly to us because they know where it's going to go i always encourage people to come down and see it you know if people want
54:52 to come down we'd be happy to show them around our facilities and you want to bring down a pair of socks and hand it to somebody bring it down brother sister you know we have stuff on our web page if you want to get involved in different things i don't know anything about the web page it's all the youngsters know how to do that but like i said i i the good lord sent us people that in every capacity that can bring assistance to other folks and uh and makes it happen so i'm not going to sit there and ask you for money
55:27 we're fine yeah so um and people can go your website is the alphaproject.org is it not appleproject.org org so for anyone who who wants to know more about the work that you're doing they can go to your website i've i've been on it there's lots of information there and there's a way to contact you and your your folks through that so there isn't if they ever want to contact us and go down and see one of the facilities uh more than happy to show people i love for people to put their eyeballs on stuff yeah and you know it's really it's self-serving now we're actually gonna be able to start serving dinner congregately down
56:02 to shelters now because kobe's really kind of thank god to calm down and uh that was really an opportunity uh because most of our programs center around work is difficult to volunteer at alpha but we have people come down and serve dinners and as i said it's self-serving because not only do you get the warm fuzzies about making people smile our residents love to see people come down uh and hang out with them and serve a meal a smile a hug a kind word that goes a long way to long way to
56:38 giving people relevance and saying you know somebody does care about me so it's an interactive it's a mutual uh warm and fuzzy uh opportunity for folks i love people to come down see but majorly baseball having all these these young prospects get off a chauffeur-driven bus down there and a lot of these kids from all over the united states come from pretty pretty uh pretty scruffy tough backgrounds and they were just sitting down there talking to our folks and it was a great
57:14 day and for me it helps because the whole vibe just chills for days you know those guys came those young guys came down and hung out with us major league baseball and you know ben carson you know he was under trump at the at hud he came out it was supposed to be a 15 minute spent over an hour because me and him were and i said what's a great guy like you doing a crappy job like this that's one of the one of the sweetest gentle most articulated bitching people on the planet and he hung out with all the folks and he came back again he wasn't supposed to come back again he just loved hanging
57:49 out with the folks so anyways get involved if you you know if you're ever in san diego most your folks are probably i don't know where they're all probably all over the place but if you're ever in city they'll come by give us a jingle and we'll we'll we'll take you down and talk to some folks we'd love to we'd love to well we are out of time here because our time limit is 130. so uh i i want to thank you bob for for sharing your story for you know talking openly about your life and about how you've been able to really make a huge difference in the
58:24 life of so many people i mean that's it's i don't use words like this very often but it really is inspiring to to hear to hear your story so for for wrapping up the show that just leaves me with the opportunity as i always do uh to remind you all about um a friend of mine who inspires me every day a a woman who uh who i got to take care of toward the end of her life and was a gentle um humorous woman we're lucky to really touch each other's hearts so uh marie up there in heaven
59:00 just remember darling you are still my belle bob awesome why are you hanging out with my mom right now bro if they're partying they are i i'm sure murray is telling her stories and making her laugh we'll see her again someday brother indeed we will bob thanks so much