Your Transformation Station - 52. "Inspire Real Change" Treacy Dobbins w/ Favazza

Episode Date: August 23, 2021

"How can you create a transformation in others if there's no transformation in yourself?" Greg Favazza, creator and host of Your "Transformation" Station, interviews (Treacy Dobbins) Founder of "Inspire Real Change". Treacy reveals his objective for Inspire Real Change and the reason why the Housing First Method is so crucial to the eradication of "homelessness recidivism". --- New episodes on Mondays for free. All episodes ad-free. https://PodcastYourTransformationStation.libsyn.com/site Find us on social media (YTSthePodcast)   Support the showPODCAST INFO:Podcast website: https://ytspod.comApple Podcasts: https://ytspod.com/appleSpotify: https://ytspod.com/spotifyRSS: https://ytspod.com/rssYouTube: https://ytspod.com/youtubeSUPPORT & CONNECT:- Check out the sponsors below, it's the best way to support this podcast- Outgrow: https://www.ytspod.com/outgrow- Quillbot Flow: https://ytspod.com/quilbot - LearnWorlds: https://ytspod.com/learnworlds- Facebook: https://ytspod.com/facebook- Instagram: https://ytspod.com/instagram- TikTok: https://ytspod.com/tiktok- Twitter: https://ytspod.com/x Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

People that are homeless and then they get housed and then they fall back into homelessness. So they recidivate back. We know other people have that question. And that's a question that we need to answer. We're tapping in to surpassing expectations from the most successful people in the modern day and honing in a new foresight, methodologies, and clairvoyance you never knew. This is your transformation station with your host, Greg Favaza.

Tracy Dobbins, you're a nonprofit leader, founder and CEO of Inspired Real Change. You're a veteran. You're a published author to the title, Juice, a 40-day devotion into a journey of ordinary to extraordinary. Is that correct? That is correct. You're spot on. Excellent. Welcome to your transformation station.

give us a little snapshot of who you are, what you're doing, and what your message is. Yeah, what I'm doing right now is I am leading a nonprofit organization called Inspiral Change, and we're a brand new organization that was incorporated last year in the summer of 2020. And we were actually birthed out of or just came from this, this, this continued problem of homelessness. And as an individual that's been working in the homeless social services community for about seven years, I just found myself surrounded with other people that I worked with. They were like, man, why do we continue to have this huge homeless problem?

And I see some things that, you know, where people get help with this or that and the other, but it just like it continues. Like it never, you know, it's like I didn't feel like we were making progress. So that's where we as a kind of a group and an organization got together and said, you know what? We need to start a business, a foundation to where we can start to try and solve this problem, try to figure out what in the heck is going on as far as why we're not making progress in this area and just try to move this thing forward. So I've really dedicated my life to trying to help others because I really feel passionate about helping others.

And I've always felt like my gift was with people. So when I put that together with, you know, people that are on the streets and when I engage people, it just kind of puts everything together for me and I connect with people. and then I'm able to kind of better understand and try to figure out and trying to solve these problems. No, I like that. I mean, you're a man with a mission that sees a problem that is getting worse and you are correct. I had to pull up some facts and figures. I mean, let's paint a picture here.

The U.S. Department of How is in Urban Development, also known as HUD, defines a person as homeless if he or she lacks a fixed regular. or adequate nighttime residents. And then I pull up the numbers for just the U.S., it's over half a million individuals in the state of homelessness. Yes. And I keep finding different sources that are about 30,000 people off. So there's definitely some hedging going on. I've been finding reports saying that it's getting, it's improving when, in fact,

it's actually not. I mean, U.S. is shown an increase in four consecutive years. And this is just from the state of Missouri. We are able to get better facts and figures right. So why are we hedging the numbers? And what's the point of that when this is a serious issue? Yeah, I think that it's a multi-layered challenge. And just to explain to your listeners how these numbers are came.

So the way it's set up is HUD, they mandate that every state have what's called continuum of cares. Okay. For example, here in South Carolina, we have four continuums of care. So basically, if you could just take a bunch of counties and you put them together and you make an organization or an element in charge of those counties, they are the organization that are responsible for counting how many homeless citizens are in their continuum of care. Okay. So each year we have what's called the point in time count. It's in January, it's usually at the end of January of each year where the organization that's in charge of the continuum of care,

they will go and they will put volunteers together and they will go out into the community. And then they were literally count people, how many people are unsheltered, how many people are living in shelters. And then they take those numbers and then they report those numbers up. So that's how these numbers come. That's where these numbers come from, actually. But in a lot of cases, and I can tell you from experience here in South Carolina, there's a lot of times where people are, people that go out and do these counts, they're not really, I guess, equipped or they're not really trained to go and do these type of things. And, you know, there's, there's duplications of people.

There's a lot of different things going on. So there's out in Maryland, this is a recent bill that was passed. And it was the HB12. And it's for veterans who reside at veterans' homes. that are supervised by the VA. So now that gets, this has me wondering if they have a residence or someplace to go, does that mean they are no longer considered homeless because they can go someplace and sleep?

Right. So the way it's set up is VA for veterans, they have what's called transitional housing. So if, let's say a veteran is on the street. and they are eligible for transitional housing. The VA will put them in a 90, usually a 90-day program facility in which that's why they call it transitional housing because it's supposed to be a 90-day transition from the streets into permanent housing. So while they're in transitional housing, they are still considered homeless because they're not,

they're not in a permanent residence. Okay. So if you can't think if it's really an equivalent of if you're a non-veterate and you're in a homeless shelter, it's the same thing. Okay. You know, it's, I mean, you're still homeless. If you're in a homeless shelter, you're still consider homeless. What happens after 90 days and they don't, they're not able to get to a house? Well, here's what the, here's what the, here's the idea of how it's supposed to work. An individual and we'll go specifically. with veterans. A veteran is on the streets. They're engaged by an outreach person. The outreach person verifies their eligibility for the program. They go into a transitional housing setting, which is usually a non-profit organization that has that type of facility. The VA will actually

put the person in there, pay the expenses for them being in there. Within that 90-day period, the goal would be find out what their needs are and get those needs addressed. Because and really how we believe it with Inspiral Change is we believe that homelessness is a result of underlying issues or needs. People just don't like automatically become homeless and that's it. There's a reason or a cause behind that. So within that transitional 90 day period, that's the goal is to, hey, let's figure out what the individual need is, get the need field. And then once we get that need field, then we can get them into stable housing. And they will hopefully be able to maintain that house.

Okay. I'd like to ask a couple more questions with federal efforts. And then we will segue over to your organization and what you do and how. how you impact the community. In your line of work, have you noticed any evidence on the effectiveness for federal efforts in reducing homeless population? Massive, massive efforts. So, you know, federally wise, and I'll say on the veteran side of the house, there are a lot of

different programs to help get veterans off the streets. We've got, like I talked about with the transitional housing, We've got what's called HUD-Vash vouchers, which is basically a HUD voucher or, you know, some people refer to it as a Section 8 voucher or an income-based voucher. But these are specifically for veterans. So there are thousands of these HUD-Vash vouchers that are active right now and they're being utilized right now. So that is a huge program. And they're using the housing choice.

It's a housing choice voucher. And that's based off the housing first model. Correct. So, yeah. So the housing first model is it's kind of a different, it's kind of a different, I guess, technique you'd say. But what it is is somebody, when we want to, in order to end a person's homelessness, we need to first get them off of the streets.

So instead of, if you think about instead of saying, okay, well, let's put this person in a treatment program. And then after that, then we'll look at housing. Housing first is, hey, let's get them into housing, get them stabilized. And then we can start working on what their needs are. Okay. Yes. No, that's been, that's a fantastic program. Now, is there anything you would like to address with the ineffectiveness of previous federal policies and reducing homeless population? I think the only challenge that I have seen is that I don't think that we really have a good pulse on the needs of our communities. And I'll say it for here where I am in South Carolina, that's one of the things that we's inspire will change are focusing on is really truly

understanding the needs of the community. I can't sit at a, you know, administrative level and understand what people are going through or what the need is in the street. I can't. I have to be in the streets. I have to have those relationships with people. And I have that that's the only way that I'm truly going to understand what the needs are. So I don't think literally, as I talked about with, you know, the annual point in time count that takes place and people go ahead and engage people or count people, you know, I don't think that reflects a good pulse of the needs of the community. And in turn, a lot of times needs don't get met because they're misunderstood. And I'll give you a real simple way to think about it. If I go down and I talk a little

bit about it with our organization, our research project, but if I go down, when I've been doing research, our organization, we have a research project right now. I've already worked with 20 individuals currently experiencing homelessness. And 19 out of those 20 people have health care related issues that are not being treated. So, you know, I can't, you know, so for me, I wouldn't go back and say, well, no, the problem is housing. We don't have enough affordable housing. Okay. Well, in reality, if what the data that we're collecting is, we don't have enough resources to help individuals with health care needs that don't have health insurance.

I can see that's you see what I'm saying so that like that's the the need is resources healthcare resources for individuals that don't have health care insurance to address and fill those needs because at the end of the day that's going to promote their ability

to enter into stable housing and maintain housing so that's how I would frame hey this is to really understand the need we need to i don't think we've really done a good job of communicating what the actual needs are in a lot of communities so for those that don't understand you're you're down in the trenches and people are just looking at it from numbers from what he said she said with your experience

can you relate to our audience how somebody gets into this situation of being homeless Yeah, so there is no there's no cookie cutter model. There's no typical case. When I first got into the social services arena, you know, I just thought, you know, I step into somebody's problem. And then they go, oh, I need A, B, and C. And then I move them over to A, B, and C. And then they check that box. And then they move. going and they're good to go. And I quickly realized that is absolutely not how worse. So what I realized was you have to get down to a grassroots level. You have to embed yourself into the community to one, like I mentioned earlier, understand the need, and two, to better understand people

and to work with people at their level. It's like meeting people where they are and then finding out what their needs are and then navigating them through that process to get those needs filled. Is there any – No, go ahead. Is there any particular, I would say, like, reason on how they end up? Is it like I'm thinking of a possibility maybe they got fired, and then something to do with drugs or something that they started using.

And then it's just been a downward spiral from there. Is there a common theme on how this occurs? I understand it's a case by case basis. But what have you came across where you are starting to see like, okay, this is a continuous pattern? I think the alcohol abuse, I've seen a lot. I've seen a lot of behavioral health. And believe it or not, I've seen a lot of relationships. One thing that really stands out to me, and this is something that, you know, for me,

I always find out, like, well deep into the relationship of working with somebody. A lot of people find themselves in the, and being unsheltered to where, or as a result of a death, of a family member. You know, and yeah, so, for example, I've worked with somebody recently that, you know, they had a significant alcohol abuse problem and we were working on that. We were focusing on that. And then when we started to peel back the layers, you know, we got down to the point where this person said, you know, my father passed away 15 years ago.

And I said, well, when did you really start drinking heavy? And they said 15 years ago. And I said, well, do you think they're really? He goes, I absolutely think it is. And I said, okay, well, then we've got not only alcohol, we've got some grief issues. So it sounds like the grief drove you to the alcohol as a way to cope. In turn, that alcohol took you down a road to where you are unable to maintain steady employment and then followed by becoming homeless.

It's just a series, step-by-step series. That makes a lot of sense now when you put it out there like that. There's a situation that occurs, something that's very emotional. And the next thing they know, they start self-medicating. At that point, it's happening too long where they don't know what to do and then just continue to self-medicate. Yeah, yeah. And it's a vicious cycle. And I don't know, it's one of those things where it can happen to anybody, really.

I mean, I mean, I think we could probably all relate somewhere in our lives to where something impacted us in life. And we went, how do I deal with this? I don't know. But you know what? I'm going to grab that bottle or that can. and then I'll just, I'll pour down my throat and I'll forget about things for a few hours. And then tomorrow, hopefully I'll wake up and I'll get it figured out. And then we wake up the next day and we haven't got to figure it out.

And then we repeat that same cycle over and over and before we know it, we're in trouble. So I think it happens a lot more than we think in regards to homelessness. But one other thing I wanted to add to was, and I always tell people, and we believe this is an organization that, you know, just handing somebody, you know, somebody's homeless and just handing them a set of apartment keys and say, hey, we're going to pay your rent for six months. It doesn't solve the problem. You know, I always use the analogy of imagine that if you have a health care need and then you go to the doctor and then they put you in the, And they take you, check you in, and they put you in a waiting room, but the doctor never shows up. It's the same equivalent for homelessness. I can hand you the keys to an apartment and say, hey, I'm going to pay your rent for six months.

And then, you know, I've, you know, quote, you know, now you're not homeless, but I haven't solved your problem. Because the chances are great that if your needs are not met and we haven't fixed that, the field your needs, you're going to, six months later, you're going to be back out on the streets. No, that makes perfect sense. Which brings a thought, what about for people that are driving by, they see somebody that's homeless, they have a sign up, and they give them a dollar. They give them $20. Now, is that solving their problem?

Obviously, no. But what can people do that goes beyond that? I'd say find out what resources are in your community that work with that population and going and get involved with it. You know, whether it's spending some time, you know, if you have a shelter that's close to where you are, go and volunteer there. Go do something, you know. There's a various different levels of things we can all do to not only get involved, but to impact

to people's lives and to help people in need like that. But, you know, some people, you know, like to go and they serve food to people and they're good with that. And then some people like to get in there and say, I want to teach class or I want to be a mentor to somebody. They want to get down to a deeper level. And that's where I believe that life change begins is when you start to get at that deeper level and you start to really understand that. Because, you know, I'm not going to learn anything about you handing you a plate of spam and a scoop of sticky rice, man. You know, but if I spend an hour mentoring you once a week or taking you to lunch or whatever, I'm going to start to get down in that, get down in there in that relationship,

and we're going to start to figure some things out. We're going to make some progress. I can guarantee you that. There's resources in every community. I just say reach out, find out what they need, find a need, fill it. It's simple as that. That's spot on behavior with my understanding. And being a sergeant in the military, just having soldiers beneath you, it's more than just

delegating authority. You're their parent. You're their coach. You're their mentor. You're everything for them. And you develop that relationship, that camaraderie. when you talk about all those things, and that can be put into that approach

with helping out to homeless and just pushing them in the right direction. I mean, knowledge is definitely worth more than $5, telling them what they can do with the resources they have or going above and beyond and teaching a class. I think that's fantastic. Let's segue over to your company, your organization,

and inspire real change. Tell us about that. Yeah, so inspire real change, like I said at the beginning of the show, was birthed out of a, I guess, a desire or a drive to trying to figure and solve this problem. And working at a street level, service level for seven years, I just really felt strongly that, you know, there has to be more. There has to be, but we can never get to a point. And I mean, we're talking about people's lives here, okay?

We can, we should never get to a point where we're just, just satisfied with where we are. We should never be there. We should always be trying to like, hey, what's next? What's next? We can, let's try this. I mean, and that's what, that's where inspire where change come from is, is with, a group of us sitting down and writing out kind of bullet points of, you know, what do we want to do? What do we want to change?

What do we want to? What do we want to? And then it all just came together to where we put a board together. We started to work on a business plan. We started to kind of pull some things out of work. we were doing that we felt were different, not because we wanted to be different, but because we wanted to make a change. So we thought, in order to make a change, we have to do something different, but we don't want to sit at a high tower and tell people what to do. We want to be at a

street level standing beside the people that were trying to serve and advocating for them. and educating people on these stories because these stories were just, I mean, some of the people that we worked with, these stories were just like incredible stories of resiliency, of, you know, compassion of just amazing.

And we thought we have to tell these stories. Like we have to, I have to bring these. I have to show people what I've seen. I've have to show people who I'm working with. Because it's so powerful to see somebody go from the streets through a process into stability. And that's where inspire change came from was, you know what, we want to inspire something new. We want to, because we believe we believe we can make progress towards ending homeless.

We truly believe that. And that's where our mission statement came from, too, was transforming homeless social services to do better serve people and communities. Transforming, meaning it never stops. Like, you know, we just don't go, okay, we've done this and this and we're done. No, no, no. We continue. It's always transforming. And then we believe that when we transform people, that it automatically transforms communities. So we're always people first. We're always about never accepting, hey, this is just what it is. because I really felt in some circles and social services that I worked in, that people were, they were okay with, oh, well, yeah, I mean, we've housed this individual twice

and he's back on the streets again. So, oh, well, and I'm like, no, no, we need to go back and we need to find out the entire history of what happened in this process. to figure out what went wrong and then we need to fix it. Yes. You know, it's like if you think about it like, you know, and I make that comment like, oh, we've housed him twice and he's back on the streets again, you know, hey, we did what we need to do.

You know, I'm like, no, think about this. So you've probably spent, I don't know, maybe $8,000 to $10,000 on rent. that doesn't even include how much time was spent manpower-wise, case-managing, referrals, all these other things. So we may have in this situation, we may have anywhere from $20,000 spent on this individual, but yet they've made absolutely no progress. So there is a, there is a, there is a issue somewhere in there. And I'm not going to just sit back and say, oh, well, no, we need, we need to find out where that broken piece is and we need to fix it.

So this doesn't happen again because that situation, imagine that happening 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 different people. I mean, it's wasted. And what I see is they're looking at these people like they are just a number. Like I attempted. He's made no results, no positive change. Okay, I'm going to give him one more shot. Then at this point, I'm going to let him go and move on to somebody else. When it takes more effort than that, if you just get down and talk with them one to one and understand why and then interacting with them, being emotional and seeing where the trauma lies.

because we all suffer from this. This is much deeper thing that I'm going to go into is we all have past trauma we deal with. For the people that have their homes, that people that are successful, they figure it out a way to live with those traumas and look at it from a neutral perspective. For the people that don't, they have not yet figured it out. And that's where we are supposed to teach them. And once they get past that, then there's nothing holding them back. Yeah. And I think I always tell people, and you brought it up earlier, housing first, I always say it's housing first, not housing only. Because housing first means that you house them first,

but yet then you step in and start filling those needs through that, you know, professional relationship, case management, whatever you want to call it. But it's not just, here's your keys, we're going to pay your rent for six months. I hope everything works out. Because if that's the case, I'm confident it's not going to work out. So you were in the Air Force for over 21 years in intelligence and force protection operations. What inspired you to tackle this issue right when you transition out of the military? That is a great question. And, you know, honestly, when I got out of the military, the trip for people that did what I would, as an intelligence channelist, the typical track was I go get a government job, I sit in a cubicle. And, you know, I had a real high level clearance.

So, you know, I just sit and do my thing and make, make good money. And I couldn't do it. I just, I said, man, I want to do something like that was bigger than myself. And something that really helped me make that decision was when I got out of the, or before I got into the material, I went to spend a week at the Dream Center in Los Angeles. So I live there for a week. And that just like blew me away. It changed my life.

And I said, man, I want to do something that's bigger than me. And I just want to serve people. I don't know what, what it is exactly. But I'm just going to put myself out. there and just start working with people. And that's where I came into working with the homeless demographic. And the crazy thing, too, was that in the military as an intelligence analyst, I used to analyze data. I used to problem solve a lot. I used to go through processes and all these different things. And now I'm finding, you know, I'm able to use a lot of those skills in

working with people in this demographic because I'm like, hey, you know, we've got all these processes, we've got all these things. And I'm able to, you know, to extract a lot of this data from it and come up with some good assessments or come up with some relevant information that we think could like really be a game changer. So that's the crazy part about the whole thing. And that, I mean, realistically, it just tells me personally, I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. I'm where I'm supposed to be. Tell us what, what is the Dream Center? What is that?

The Dream Center is Matthew Barnett's. It used to be the Angels of Mercy Hospital. It's in pretty much downtown Los Angeles. But he bought it now. I think it's about 20 years ago now. But he turned it into a 24-7 homeless center. where you can go and live there. You know,

they've got family, a family wing. They've got a cafeteria where they serve meals every day. They got a, a food distribution where they send out like seven or eight trucks every morning. And they get the, the stuff that they're going to throw out from the grocery stores. They bring it back,

sort it through. And then they go and they deliver it to neighborhoods. And it, and the crazy. thing of it was. It's the hospital where they filmed one of the first nightmares on Elm Street. And if you watch the movie, you can see the hallways and you can see the stuff and it's such a, you know, horrific movie, if you will. But when I was there, I'm like, wow, man, how powerful. Now, this place is just life change. This place is just like, I mean, I mean, hundreds of people in there

every day. You know, so the cool thing with it is anybody can do what's called a mission. So you can sign up and do a week-long mission. You can go and stay there. And then they give you an itinerary every day. And you, you know, hey, you're going to go down to Skid Row at 9 a.m. And you're going to do outreach. Then you're going to go to Compton at 1 p.m.

And you're going to do food, food giveaway, you know, and you just do these events every single day, but it's, it's an amazing experience. Now let's transition over and cover some business aspects. With your organization, it's a 501C3 nonprofit. What does that mean in terms of taxation and registering for our listeners? Yeah, so basically when you start a company or you start an organization or whatnot, it's all under the, I'd say the business umbrella. So, you know, you have to be incorporated.

That's a process. And then once you're incorporated, then you have to apply for what type of tax code you're going to fall under. So based on your mission, based on, you know, what you're going to be doing, that will determine whether you fall into. a certain category or not. So a 501c3 is tax exempt, meaning that, you know, we don't pay federal taxes. And there's there's a bunch of different, I mean, there's other types of nonprofits. There's a, I think it's a C4, I think is a different one. It's a little bit different to where it's kind of a membership type of organization where people become members. and whatnot, but it all falls under, like I said, the business umbrella.

And then the business is incorporated. It's formed. And then it has to fall under a tax bracket. And then based on what you do and your mission and, you know, a service, are you going to provide a service? You're going to be asking for people to pay for the service and whatnot. Based on all of those factors, you will fall into whatever category, the IRS is dictated based on those descriptions. So it is a lengthy process.

I would highly encourage anybody who is thinking about doing it. One of the first things that I would encourage you to do is figure out what your mission is. Figure out what your mission. And it sounds so simple. Like, well, of course. Yeah, but you know what? Let me tell you, when we get. ideas and we're so excited about it, we just want to grab that football and like start,

you know, green running the sideline, right? Agreed. Right. So it's like, you know, and then we get to the end zone and we turn around. We're like, hey, where is everybody? I mean, but anyway, yeah, what is the mission? And what do I want to do? How am I going to do it?

And literally put together a business plan. I'm pretty sure every state has this, but in South Carolina, we have a small business association, which is a state-back group, and they will help anybody, like they will mentor people, and they will help people to put together a business plan. And that's what I did. I got with a small business person that was, and they assigned them to me, and they kind of walked me through the process and gave me homework and told me, what are you going to do? What problem are you going to solve? What's the problem? How are you going to solve it?

Okay. Who else out there is doing what you want to do? How are you going to monetize or how are you going to operate? How much is it going to cost to operate? So all of those different things that, that they helped me work through. And it really helped me focus because I was kind of like all over the place in the beginning. Because like I said, with my, I got had my little, my little football. I'm ready to take off. And then I'm like, oh, hold up then.

And he was the, I guess he was the ref that was kind of whenever I wanted to take off, he'd blow the whistle and say, stop. I want you to go look at this. And then I'd go look into that. And then I would try to take off running again. He'd be like, blow the whistle. whistle stop, go look into this. So it really helped me focus. It really helped me with trying to pin down exactly what I wanted to do. And it, and it wasn't like I just did it. And then boom,

there it is. It was a, I call it a whittling process. Like you take a piece of wood and you just, you're just whittling away and, you know, you take and change this and do a little bit more of a here and, you know, and then eventually it just starts to fine tune itself to where you get down to you. You were like, wow, man, this is pretty good. And I'm just not saying it because of me, but it's actually pretty good. Yeah, did I do this really, you know, type of thing. It definitely is a process and consistency is will be very important to establish in your

schedule. But for those that have been organization already started, they would like to know what is the hardest decision your organization recently had to make and how did you evaluate the trade-off involved? I think the biggest decision was what type of research project we wanted to do. And that was pretty much right out the gate of, well, actually it was the end of last year. So we were trying to figure out what research project we wanted to do for 2021. And just kind of wrestling with a bunch of different ideas and this, that, and the other.

And when it came down to it, I'm like, you know, what is like, what is the, like, if you could pull, extract one word that you feel is the most, I guess, powerful word in what we're doing with the homeless population? what would it be? And the word was recidivism. Oh, I never heard. Yeah. So recidivate or recidivism. And we're like, okay. And they're like, yeah.

So we've got all these people, just like I talked about earlier, we've got these people that are homeless and then they get housed and then they fall back into homelessness. So they recidivate back. So why in the heck are these people recidivating back? like it doesn't make any sense. And I'm like, so you know what? I think that's what our research is.

Because if we've got the question, we know other people have that question, and that's a question that we need to answer. So in order to try and answer that question, that's what our research project should be. And that's what it actually ended up. That's what actually ended up being. That's fantastic that you came up with that. Now, with the information that you're gathering and going to

gather, what do you plan to do with the future of your business? So what we're, what, what, our, our vision is, is we released our, uh, mid project report in, uh, July last month. And we are finishing the last half of the project through the end of the year. So by December, we'll be done. And we're going to put together, um, the data and show how many people we've worked with and then we're going to break down all of these individual factors. So how many people were housed and then fell back into homelessness? How many people, if you fell back into homelessness, what do you feel was the main reason you fell back into homelessness? Is it related to your original need when you originally became homeless? So we're

asking all those questions. We're going to gather all that data. We're going to take that data and we're going to put it together, build some assessments on what we think the data shows, and then what are some potential solutions. And then we're going to take that and we're going to go up to higher levels to program directors, state, federal, any organization that works with homeless population and grants or funding or whoever it is and present this data to them. Because it's kind of the premise of what we're doing is we want to take that street service level data. And we want to take it all the way up to the top. So the people that are making decisions on programs and fundings can see, hey, this is what's going on down at this level in this location. And there's some things that we may be able to do to change it and enhance it and bring some solutions. Wow.

It established a new standard in this operation. Yes. That's awesome. The way you put it together, that makes so much sense now. For those that have heard the show and that are inspired and they want to help you out, how can they do that? Yeah, they can support us at inspireo change.org. We've got a lot of information on a website. I've got some of the information from HUD is on there.

But also, we have a blog. and we have some, that mid-project report is actually posted on our website too. So just go check us out, check us out on social media as well. I mean, we just want people to know what we're doing and just to be involved in what we're doing and support us because we are laser-focused on this. And we're not going to stop because we believe in people. We believe in second chances. and we believe everybody deserves a home.

So we're going to fight for this. And we are, we've got too many stories to share. We've got too much information to keep to ourselves. We want to get it out there to the public so people can see what's going on and to help us and support us and driving some real solutions. Well, Tracy, do you have anything else you'd like to add? I just appreciate the opportunity to be on your show, man. And I know you got some great listeners.

And I think that overall, this is a great opportunity, not just to talk about us, per se, but just to talk about the problem as a whole within the United States. Because like I said earlier, this is a problem. I believe we can solve this problem. And we're not going to stop until we do. So I appreciate it. That's fantastic. Tracy Dobbins, everyone.

Tracy, I appreciate you coming on the show. My pleasure. You've been listening to your transformation station. Rediscovering your true identity and purpose on this planet. We hope you enjoyed the show. And we hope you've gotten some useful and practical information. In the meantime, connect with us on Facebook and Instagram at YTS The Podcast. We'll be back.

soon. Until then, this is your transformation station. Signing off. LifeLock, how can I help? The IRS said I filed my return, but I haven't. One in four taxpaying Americans has paid the price of identity fraud. What do I do? My refund, though.

I'm freaking out. Don't worry, I can fix this. LifeLock fixes identity theft guaranteed and gets your money back with up to $3 million in coverage. I'm so relieved. No problem. I'll be with you every step of the way. One in four was a fraud-paying American. Not anymore. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com slash podcast. Terms apply.