For some context, besides having a criminal record, I was/am a solo founder who somehow talked his way into Y Comb. Perhaps most surprising is my age: I'm 68. To my friends I grew up with, I'm f'-ing Steve Jobs. To you guys, you'd no doubt see me as the bumbling great uncle at Thanksgiving that isn't allowed to touch the TV remote control.
So it's all been pretty weird. (wanna see it get weirder? google me and check out my past)
As you all know, doing a 2-sided marketplace is always tough. But imagine if neither side of your marketplace was convinced they wanted your product. Chances are you keep your distance from such an undertaking ("Build something people want," my YC t-shirt says). I build something arguably no one wanted, but I knew they needed. Does that make me a schmuck? Probably.
But to those who've never gotten close to someone with as record--particularly someone with a different color than you, who was brought into an unfair world from Day One, someone who wanted the same things as you, but never quite figured out how to get there, I'm here to say that some of these folks are the most honorable, humble, appreciate, hard-working people you could imagine. They just want a peaceful life, to take care of their family and get a good night sleep.
So that's where the mission comes in, and that's when zealots are born. The truth is, I have nothing in my life other than my work. No wife, no kids, no home, nothing. But the satisfaction I got from helping these heroic folks, and the smiles I'd see on their kids' faces when they were reunited, meant/means the world to me. If you don't have something like this in your life, I urge you to find it. Your karma will thank you for it.
I invite you all to ask your questions and continue to opine. If you have something to share that isn't merely an attempt to win an argument, I'd appreciate your taking the time to email me. More importantly, if you're ever in a position to hire someone with a record, take the chance. Life is too short not to take chances. Richard
My grand idea is creating an intentional community with some glamping areas for cashflow, a community garden, shared tools and worker space with 3d printers, recreational vehicles, brooms, rakes, etc...things you really don't need to 'own', and cut back on too much consumerism. The idea being if you had 2 city blocks and everyone was related or at least friendly and built a huge garage to share items they maybe use infrequently, how much space would that free up for more people to live, or to work on a hobby or something?
My idea is build a homestead, in an area where zoning and building codes allow, maybe use some earth-friendly building methods like earth bag homes, there's an awesome youtube channel called My Little Homestead where they basically built free standing buildings as 'rooms' for each of their kids and it's basically like their own studio apartment. Each one cost < 10k, and is something you can live in any time of year.
If you could build like 50 of these things, you could maybe house 50-100+ people and maybe just charge like 300/person 100 per child, and build bigger buildings as needed for larger families, etc. Rinse and repeat across the USA and bring rent and home prices down because you'd flood the market with cheap homes anyone can afford. The glamping section might have 5-10 spots each bringing in 50-200 per night throughout the year.
The community would be gated, and protected well, and work best probably for those who could work online or from home, or willing to commute as it'll probably be in a rural area.
They might not even be places you'd want to stay in forever, but great starter homes to live in while you save up money for something bigger or build up some investments or passive income sources.
Alternate to earth bags, we also could use tiny-homes which are roughly 50k per pop, possibly less if we manufacture them from kits.
I just have no idea how or where to begin to launch something like this, or if the brilliance is just in my own head, or if people/communities would actually find it valuable.
it sucks, no two ways about it. hope you can find the next thing quickly.
But I think ultimately you’d be building a trailer park for the more troubled parts of society and that might cause it to be less idyllic than you envisage.
I’ve previously done some marketing work for an apartment building that focuses on mixing previously homeless in with other tenants plus support services on site.
> I'm here to say that some of these folks are the most honorable, humble, appreciate, hard-working people you could imagine. They just want a peaceful life, to take care of their family and get a good night sleep.
Not my experience with many felons. Not trying to be rude here, but how do you tell the food from the bad?
Not everything, particularly employment, can be self-serve through a website.
It's one of the biggest things you can't automate and there's a certain kind of person that fits this role. These people reach out to companies, find out if they need work and would be ok with these kind of employees and then they have to work out an agreement. It's very personal and very human.
In his follow-up comment it really sounds like their jobs were either shit or the compensation wasn't good enough. Lots of companies paid their workers well and didn't have retention issues, but the 'big boys' just treat labor as disposable.
As other commenters have said, it isn't just people with criminal records who get marginalised. Members of my family experienced social exclusion due to PTSD following military service. Many vets come back with similar issues as ex-prisoners. What happened to those who served in Vietnam and Korea is shameful. But there are also people who are simply atypical, low IQ, old, queer, disabled, or the wrong skin colour. We have a very, very long way to go to become the society we imagine ourselves to be, one where everyone doesn't just "get by" but prospers, and feels wanted and fulfilled in life.
I know it will be unpopular to say here, but amongst all nations the USA seems particularly brutal with regard to its social exclusion, and I think it will only ever be solved from the political level, not bottom-up. At 68 you're still a spring chicken for politics, so I'd go into that if I were you, as a single-issue candidate on "jobs for the marginalised". Judging by the size of the US "excluded population" you'd win a landslide. :)
Ic.org is a good place to visit to see what exists and you could emulate, it was started from a community called Twin Oaks that has quite a radical approach :-) I learnt about it from a book called "Is it Utopia yet" picked up in of all places Nuremberg... honestly agricultural land is cheap (2k a hectare) in non productive places and vegetable gardening or just plain planting stuff for lols like from "plants from a future" (pfaf.org) interspersed with a couple of weed plants should cover expenses... strawbale housing, adobe or trailer parks are much cheaper options at least initially... Gas made from compost, shit or wood chippings is a great alternative... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compost_heater
I think that workers at this level (blue-collar, light industrial, low-skilled, whatever) have become empowered within the economic turmoil. I think that whereas before, they'd take any job at any wage out of desperation, now they recognize there's much more demand for their services, so they can jump around, seeking for the better option. I suspect that it'll all normalize over time, but that's the one commodity we can't afford, at this point.
Could you please add a publicly visible email to your profile so that it is a bit easier to contact you off-site?
The shared garage idea seems hopelessly naive to me. What is stopping someone from stealing the items? Who maintains the items? What happens if the items break either via negligence or normal wear and tear? It is a classic tragedy of the commons problem.
I live in a low-income neighborhood and we literally can't have anything nice. Neighbor gets a BBQ and puts it in the courtyard literally chained down. Someone gets some bolt cutters and steals it. The courtyard regularly gets trash dumped in it and if you clean it up people will immediately just dump more. I stopped trying to clean it up when people started just tossing entire garbage bags of trash out there. Our shared laundry space got vandalized by bored kids now there is only one functional washer and dryer. These are usually full of clothes (some people leave their laundry in them for days) so you have to drive to a laundromat if you want any chance of getting laundry done on your day off.