Petty Officer to Municipal Public Works to Community Builder

So good evening, everybody, and welcome back to Love the North podcast. My name is Michael Richardson. I'm the host of the show, if you will. For those of you who have seen us before, I'm a local author. I've written a few fiction books. Right now, I'm working on a project involving my grandfather's memoirs from his experiences in World War II.(...) So on that topic, I've started to take a real interest in history, local history, particularly that of veterans.

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And so far, we've been able to uncover some pretty amazing individuals and different organizations that work with them as well and help them.(...) My guest tonight is Mike.

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And I'm really, really honored to have him here with us tonight. He represents Veteran and First Responders Housing

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and is helping to try and house some of our nationally 4,000 homeless vets.(...) So this is a newer organization or corporation.

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And they are putting together a very sound plan to put this into action. And Mike is here tonight to discuss this with us in the first of what I hope to be a series of shows about this. So tonight, Mike, welcome. Thank you for joining me tonight. I'm very happy to have you here.(...) I think tonight we're just going to get to know each other a little bit. I'd love to hear about your time in the service. Sure. And then we're going to start to peel the layers back on this housing project. Because this sounds absolutely phenomenal to me. Yeah. Thank you. So thank you so much for being here. Yeah, it's a pleasure to be here. So I understand your military career started off in the Navy. That's right. Yeah, so I grew up in the North. I'm from a small town called Iron Bridge. My folks still live there.(...) Anyone that knows any Jensen's in the Blind River or Iron Bridge area were all related. I don't necessarily know many of them, but that's the family connection in that part of.

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88, I joined the Royal Canadian Navy as a marine engineer, mechanic.

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Sailed on the East Coast for about five years and then jumped over to the West Coast for close to 12.

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And then four or five years here in the recruit center here in Sudbury. Oh wow, so you were actually active service here in Sudbury? Yes. So most that are working in the recruit center are full time or part time on a full time contract. A reservist on a full time contract.(...) So yeah, a small community in the North at the time back in the late 80s. Everything was kind of shutting down. Wasn't a lot of jobs. The wood industry was kind of under collapse. Mining was going with Elliott Lake and everything.

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School wasn't really something. I wasn't necessarily interested in going to a formal school, university or college.(...) I had applied for aircraft mechanic.

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Student position in North Bay.(...) I was accepted and thought, you know, I wasn't sure at that point what I was going to do. And then an offer for to be a marine engineering mechanic in the Navy come along. And so that's how I ended up. Sailed by the time I was 20 years old, I had did two six month NATO's. And sailed right along from right from Portugal, right up through Mediterranean,(...) the Spain, France, Belgium, Holland, England, right up to Norway, to Trumps on Norway, which is as far north as you can go. And the first deployment when we went up there was daylight, twenty four hours a day. Second deployment when the second NATO, it was night all day. So it's kind of neat, you know, for a young kid from Iron Bridge to experience that by the time I was 20. Yeah. You know, it was pretty phenomenal. How hard was it to adjust to life on ship?

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You get used to adjusting and basic training. So they it's like drinking from a fire hose, you know, so you learn about teamwork, you learn about individual effort, you learn about being on time, you learn about discipline, you learn about rank structure and who's who in the zoo sort of thing.

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And still keep in touch with a lot of friends that I went through, you know, it's gotten on 40 years now and we still regularly reach out to each other and just say, how you how you doing? It's kind of thinking so the advent of global communication is not always bad, you know, so we we keep track of a few good friends.

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Yeah, so all down through the Caribbean, my first Caribbean visit was Key West and Saint Croix. That must have been terribly rough. That was back on the old steamers. So they were they were caught Cadillac of the ocean at the time when they first come out. Canada always specialize in anti submarine warfare. And that's what their special that that ship. However, I was at the end of their youthful life.(...) So I decommissioned both the Saguenay and the Skeena.(...) Did a couple of Great Lakes tours went right to Thunder Bay on one trip all through the lock systems and it's it's a bit of a PR trip, if you will, because the members of the public can come and see not a lot. If you're not in Halifax or Victoria Squymill there, you don't see a lot of Navy.(...) And so it's an opportunity for the Navy to show off and showcase their what they're capable of, you know, kind of a recruiting drive.

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Got to go to Sault Ste. Marie and my whole family on both my wife's side and my my side. They all visited the ship and had a chance to see where I was working. And that's incredible. They all shook their head and couldn't believe I was actually doing that. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it was I think back on it and oh boy, it was it was something to you could write a whole book on that just being at sea as a. Yeah, I couldn't handle it. I don't do big water very well, but sometimes very rough, sometimes just as flat as this tabletop.(...) You never know what you're going to get. I did take a tour through the HMCS Haida at the Ontario place when I was a kid and was amazed by the size of it, but could not even back then imagine myself out and heaving seas.(...) Yeah, I just be looking for a life raft. Yeah, so you know, it's not uncommon and rough, whether it's 40 or 50 feet swells, you know, and it's hard to sleep. It's hard to eat. It's hard hard to work. So you're just trying to maintain to stay alive, sort of thing. And you're in rough seas like that.

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But you'd be having to make repairs in those conditions. Yeah, we do sort of three levels of maintenance. The first level is just like grease, routines, oil, you know, that sort of thing. And then second level, a little harder to do at sea because it's a little more incorporates a little bigger type of maintenance. And level three is generally done when you're alongside with the help of civilians and that sort of thing. So if it was broke down, we had some part of my training.

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As an engineer, what we learned was gas turbine engines. We learned about steam boilers. We learned about steam turbines. We learned about evaporators to make our own freshwater, air conditioning, refrigeration. In order to fix all of that, a lot of hydraulics and steering gear, anything that makes the ship move is an engineer's job.

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And so we're all machinists as well. So we learned how to operate a lathe because you can't just go to Napa and pick up a part. And also we learned how to build things with different types of metal in case we had to build apart at sea. So it was quite the experience over the 20 years. So you start out in school. My first level of school was, this is a hammer, this is a screwdriver. Don't use one where you're supposed to use the other. Very basic.(...) And so everybody is trained the same. It doesn't matter what level of expertise you had. And then as you get promoted and you get a little more time in, you get higher advanced.

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The journeyman course that I was on was close to two years long. And that was two years of Monday to Friday, eight to four. Not like a college where you got a class today and one tomorrow. We were there all day, every day. Two weeks off in the summer for vacation, again at Christmas.

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So a lot of schooling. We did that course, we did a lot of chemistry.(...) Metallurgy, we learned all about. And once we learned about the different kinds of metals, for example, then we went in and learned how to use the lathe after we knew the properties of the metal. So in the morning we were doing the bum and chair school stuff. And in the afternoon we were in the shop machining. So that's how the Navy generally is very hands on in that regard.

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I had mentioned earlier, probably wasn't really for going to university or college myself. Although I teach there, I've been at Cambrian for more than a decade now.

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Strangely enough, my Myers-Briggs, it says you'll be able to have the concept and build a school, but you will never be a student in a school. And that is my, that's me right there. A lot of big ideas and wanting to follow through, but sitting and learning certain things. So the Navy, it was fortunate for me that the way the Navy trained us, I didn't necessarily have to, it wasn't that formal regimented. Now you don't know, it's not an accredited university or college education either. You're accredited in the Navy. So that kind of hounds folks as they go along.

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I did, after I was getting close to pulling the pin here in Sudbury, I took some Millerite courses and I got my Millerite Red Seal license. Is that still the case now, the accredations that they receive in the military? You, so they'll train you what you need to do in the Navy. So there's some things that you're not going to get in the Navy. So those that are interested in a civilian accreditation, you follow that on your own.(...) But the hours that you get when you're at sea or on the job, those are accredited.(...) So it's, you might have to get some schooling and maybe some trades training and that sort of thing in order to be fully, provincially accredited. But if it's an apprenticeship sort of thing, those hours count. So we've got hours and spades. The 20 years I was in, I was 12 years at sea accumulated.

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It varies. It varies. It varies to what level of readiness the ship is at.

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So after the East Coast, I went to the West Coast, that was my first Canadian patrol frigate, the Vancouver.

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It was then one of the brand new ships. That was one of the gas turbines. Yeah, gas turbines. Yeah, there's two. Two still in service. Yep. Two of them, 2500 gas turbines on there.

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17 megawatts of power. So they make a lot of power.(...) So they're pretty big ship, about 200 crew of 250. There's a helicopter on board, anti-ship harpoons, 57 millimeter Bofors, close in weapon systems, anti-submarine. There's all sorts of, it's a really good platform. They've extended the life now and put on some new equipment.

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My son actually just joined the Navy. He's on his first deployment. He left on Monday. Wow. He's on his way to an operation off of Hawaii called RIMPAC. And so they'll say, yeah. So there's about 20,000 to 30,000 troops, if I remember.(...) Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, they're all, so they have this blue force and orange force and they play these war games. Right. Yeah. And so that's his first thing out of the. He joined, he went to basic training in October. He was a power engineer. So when he was younger, I said, you got to pick a job here, bud. What are you going to do? So, well, I kind of like the stories you talk about. Well, you want to join the Navy? No, no, not the Navy necessarily.(...) I like the engineering world. And so I said, okay, I can get a grip on that. So in the civilian world, they call it power engineering. And that's what Cameron specializes in. So he went through two years of that program. He's a third class engineer, power engineer. And then he decided at some point after a few civilian positions that he wanted to join the Navy. So he started the process back in March, went through it, can be lengthy. We talked a little bit about that, the medical and, you know, some of the other screening that you go through.

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They have greatly accelerated it though. So it's changed inside, even when I was in the days of recruiting.

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Yeah. He joined in October and he got his first assignment to HMCS Regina, which was the last ship I was on. And the Regina was, I was in the Persian Gulf, Straits of Hormuz actually, it was big in the news right now. So when we were deployed in Operation Apollo,(...) Apollo was, we were in the Straits of Hormuz in the Gulf of Oman, looking for Al-Qaeda.

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They're fleeing now because they're getting a lot of pressure from NATO. The Canadian soldiers are in Afghanistan and they're forcing them out. And so they're looking for, and the easiest way to get to another terrorist friendly country is across the Straits of Hormuz, because it's very narrow section of water.

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I tell people it's like the North Channel. You can see the island on one side and the mainland on the other. That's about how wide it is across there. And there's only just a very narrow strip of international waters.(...) And so the Iranians, even when we were there, they were trying to block and they were always hailing the ship. I'd go up on the bridge now and then and you hear the radio.

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They'd say something along the lines of, "Worship 334, identify yourself." And they wouldn't talk back to them. They wouldn't engage. So you just stayed in the international waters and kept to yourself.

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Now and then they'd start up their missile defense or offense weapons. And we'd all go to action stations, which is always fun in the middle of the night. You don't know if somebody's going to lob a missile at you or not. You don't know.

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So it was a six month deployment and we were in the Gulf Oman region for three to four months of that. It's about a 45 day trip from Victoria over to the Gulf Oman. It's quite a lengthy journey to get there.

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During that time in 2003, it was a major effort to get there. That's when the United States decided to go into Iran,(...) Iraq for the second time.

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Prime Minister Kretchen and the day decided, and we know now, hindsight's 20-20, it was the right decision to make. We had our efforts in Afghanistan. So that's the way we sort of chose politically. That's how we went.(...) Then we were, I was a peon on the pond and in the Gulf of Oman. You can look back at this now and think, "Wow, you're a part of history," sort of thing. Absolutely. So I joined the Vancouver for a short time after my 24 month journeyman course went to

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the Calgary, which is my son's ship now. So that's his posting. He's just temporarily detached over to Regina for the trip. That's amazing. And after that, I was on Winnipeg for a short period of time and two tours on Regina. So a total of 12 altogether, but a lot of experience on the CPFs. Absolutely. When I left the Navy, my rank was Petty Officer First Class, which is equivalent to a warrant officer in the Army or the Air Force.

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So I did pretty well.

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It was a great experience, tremendous experience. Congratulations. Thank you. After I left the Navy, I joined the city and the water and wastewater department.(...) And city here in Sudbury.(...) They were looking for a maintenance manager.(...) And so we get that in spades.(...) As a marine engineer, you're learning all about, and as you get promoted into middle management, you're learning about scheduled and corrective maintenance, and planned maintenance, and all of these maintenance things that you need in order to make things run less expensively. So I was hired on back in 2008 after I left the Navy. And I spent 17 years in a few different roles

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in the maintenance manager role for a fairly long while, probably close to eight or 10 years. And then I was a manager of wastewater for a period of time. And the position of director came available, and I was director for three or four years.(...) So I had the whole shooting match then.

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After 17 years, I got to an age where I could collect my pension. And I had a lot of projects in mind, one of which is what I'm here to talk about today.(...) And so I sort of retired. And now I'm as busy or busier than ever, but it's just things that I would rather do. Yes, absolutely. So once I got to a place where I was financially sort of free,

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I stay at college. I call that my Mexico Mad Money. So I like standing in front of a group and teaching my experience. I love that. So you see these young students, not always young students, sometimes they're adult learners,(...) but I teach a various water and wastewater course. So in order to be in the field, you have to be accredited provincially. So I teach a course to get people prepared to write that provincial exam.(...) And I also was in the power engineering. So I taught first and second year students.

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I taught some mill rates, a time or two.(...) Industrial instrumentation as well, from an environmental perspective. So these environmental technicians, they have an understanding how instruments work.(...) So it's wide and varied. And I credit that all to my experience in the Navy. So we did all that. We went to school for it and then we practiced it. So you're a military person, you're a veteran.(...) You've spent time in the trenches, if you will, within the city council.(...) And in that infrastructure, you're a teacher. You're very well spoken.(...) And you're very passionate about this project. I don't jump into anything with only one tool. No. Everything's both feet. Absolutely. And so let's bring the ladies and gentlemen into what this is. So your plan, from what I understand, is to,(...) with the help of some government funding, you are going to build a building, and from what I understand, it's a sizable one that will help homeless veterans here in Sudbury.

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So maybe give us a little taste of that and what's to come. And then we may have to do a whole other segment on this, because I think we're just scratching the surface. No doubt. This is exciting. It's pretty deep. I mean, it can get deep. Absolutely. So a few years ago,(...) my vice president, Dan Draper, he's big in the veteran community.

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Him and a few other veterans got together, and they formed a veterans group.

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We've since named it the Sudbury Veteran Peer Support Network. There's about 100 on our list.

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So we get together, for example, once a month on a Sunday. We have a light lunch, talk about veterans affairs. A lot of the folks in the room are going through various stages of applying for benefits with the Veterans Affairs Canada, or they're looking for a job, or they're looking for a place to live, or something.

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What we all have in common, for the most part, is hardly anybody is from Sudbury.(...) When you're in the Navy, Army, and Air Force, you relocate, and more than likely never go back to your hometown.(...) It's very uncommon for people in our group. So we're a whole bunch of folks that have served, either short or long periods of time. Various age groups. We have some as young as 25 and 30, and some as old as 80.

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There's no age limit sort of thing.(...) The group gets together, and we just talk about veterans things.

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Now, if I may, the necessity for that, what kind of veterans assistance is there before you guys came along?(...) Veterans Affairs mostly. If you're disabled, let's say you have a common one is hearing.

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If you're in the artillery for a number of years, and hearing protection or not, you might have problems with your hearing.(...) You remember Adrian there from Good Morning Vietnam. Play it loud!

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You might have problems with hearing. In order to apply, it's a bit of an onerous process to be... One would think I'm a veteran. I serve in the artillery for how long? It should be a no-no. My hearing is probably not the greatest.

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It's quite common for the first endeavor into a claim to be denied.

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There's a process for a grievance to go through and reapply. It can be quite onary.

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Veterans Affairs has changed over the years. They're being a little more straightforward, a little quicker, to respond, a little more helpful. If you don't say the right thing at the right time, it's reason to be denied.(...) Our group, we've got a lot of people at various stages of application.

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What do you think of this? Don't say that. Here's what worked for me. You should incorporate this into...

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They'll give you a case manager and that sort of thing.

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We're just there as peer support.

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You just need a hand to hold, a shoulder to cry on, somebody to talk to.

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That's what we're there. We're non-judgmental. We don't care your background, where you're from, experience, that sort of thing. Army, Navy, Air Force, always some good nature humor between the three.

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What we all have in common is we march in a pair of boots. We march for our country. We put our lives on the lines in a lot of instances.

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So we support ourselves. Nobody else is going to do it for us. So we get together.

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The Veterans Peer Support Network has changed a lot of our folks. And so I can't count on two hands that list of 100 of those folks that were either suicidal or close to... Unfortunately, we lose a lot of people to PTSD and suicide. A lot of Veterans, they can't handle.(...) They don't get the help they need.

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One thing about a Veteran, for a Veteran to ask for help, it's very hard. And that's not because he's a Veteran. It's because he was brought up in a world to be a team member, but an individual as well. And you take care of your own.(...) And the old saying was, "Suck it up, buttercup." So it didn't matter what kind of pains and aggravations. You'd never fill out a medical form. It was reason to maybe not get promoted, maybe not to get posted, maybe not to go on deployment. So a lot of folks were and are working out there that have injuries, then they will not report it. Now, if you don't report it when you have service,(...) now try to go through Veterans Affairs to get that. So what we're advocating,(...) current forces members, it doesn't matter if it's a hang now. You got to get that CF form filled out so it's on your medical file. And so it's not a burden and it shouldn't be shameful to go and ask for assistance. And that is a message that should be spread far and wide to anybody that's ever served.

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Ask for help. Please come forward. There has to be organizations like this widespread, I would hope. If anybody that sees this outside of Sudbury, hopefully across the north of Ontario, of course, but across the country, if you're having difficulties, please reach out to anyone that you can.

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And hopefully with an organization such as yours, that will become much easier. So that's the peer support network. We haven't really got to how we're going to get there.(...) The peer support network. I've got a lot of friends,(...) a lot of brothers, and sisters, and they'll knowingly admit to us(...) and open up about things that they experienced that maybe they didn't share or maybe they share with a psychologist, a psychiatrist, but not with them. But they feel comfortable opening up to other veterans. So we give them that space, that nonjudgmental space for them to be able to say what they want to say. And then can we help? Right? Oh, I know a guy or I know a gal or I know an organization or let's get them pointed in the right direction. So some of the folks I said, I can count on both hands, the numbers of folks that said, you know, before I joined this group, I was suicidal.(...) I came to this group not really knowing I was kind of housebound. The curtains were closed. The doors, I didn't go out if I didn't have to.(...) And now they're productive members of the veteran society. Some have picked up jobs again. They're picking their life up from where they left off from a uniform.

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We help folks with their disability claims and that sort of thing. Sort of pushed them along, asked them how it's going and that sort of thing. So it's just that comer- a comradeship and, you know, that brother and sister ship. So a nonjudgmental space for a veteran. We'll get pizza for lunch. We'll get some chicken wings maybe. We'll get a, you know, Popeyes or- But it's not so much about getting the free meal. It's about getting everybody in a room and sort of talking about their experiences. And hey, how's it going today? You know, it's of a real benefit to a lot of veterans. So- Just that is fantastic. Thanks. But now comes the one-two-thousand. Yeah, so a few- A couple of years ago, they started talking about homeless veterans.

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There's some numbers and reports out there to indicate between 3,500 and 4,000 veterans in Canada are experiencing homelessness. Now that might mean sleeping in a car, surfing on a couch.

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You know, I don't know if I'm going to pay the power this month or, you know, the buy milk kind of thing. So they're close. A lot of pensions are not very big. The cost of a pension, when I got out in 2008,

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let's say for argument's sake, it was $2,000 a month in 2008. $2,000 a month doesn't go very far in 2026. You're not finding somewhere to rent and have all your utilities and be able to buy groceries at the end of the month. That's not happening.

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Veterans are not entitled to an increase until they turn 60.(...) So if somebody joined 18 like I did and got out at 38 after 20 years, that's a long mile to get to 60 before you get an incremental, you know, so you get a cost of living increase.(...) So what do you do in between? A lot of veterans work. You can't make ends meet. You're definitely not living on the amount after 20 years or 25 years experience.(...) And they're able to work. Yes. And so this is it, right? So a lot of veterans are doing fine. I think I've been fortunate in, you know, my experience has been very much different than a lot of veterans. A little bit of anxiety, but PTSD for me is not necessarily a thing.

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Anxiety is something that, you know, we all sort of deal with, but, you know, you come to terms with it. The other thing we're we're we talk about openly is things like PTA mental illness.

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It's still a lot of stigma around mental illness, but in our close knit group, we talk about it like going to get a quarter milk and a dozen eggs. We're used to that language. We're used to understanding what the illness can do. And we're used to just listening and just reaching out and making sure everybody's okay. A buddy checks or thing.

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Once you get used to that language, it's not so much of a stigma anymore, which means you're a little more open to talking to someone about your experience and hopefully a medical professional that can help you get down the road where you need to be. Are you going to be 100%? Maybe not. But you're going to be a lot better than you were yesterday. Hopefully. Right. Yeah. And that's our goal. So we start talking about homelessness and 3500 to 4000 people homeless forces veterans.(...) And we're like, well, why what's happening? So there's a number of reasons. Quite a few universities studied it and I'll share a piece that I got from a university. And they did it.(...) Somebody did a doctorate, if I remember right, and they've got sort of eight or 10 points of why veterans are more prone to be homeless than others.(...) And so there's, you know, they've really narrowed in on the reasons why. I joined when they were 18, had no college education, nothing. So now I'm 38 or 40 years old, and I don't have a single I can hang on the wall to get to a table to even get an interview. I've got a lot of experience. But so that's only one of the downfalls of, you know, the experience in within the Canadian armed forces.

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Great when you're in there, you're earning a good paycheck, you're getting a lot of experience traveling the world sort of thing, meeting a lot of good folks.

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Like we talked about earlier.(...) But those other reasons, there's all kinds of reasons why they're a little more prone to homelessness than maybe the average person. So I'll share that through the link.(...) Once we get that all set up. So then we found out that was eight or 10 homeless veterans here in Sudbury.(...) And we're all like, pardon, what do you mean there's homeless veterans in Sudbury? You know, it's that's a far off place must be Vancouver, maybe in Montreal or Toronto or something.

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It's right here in Sudbury. And so we started working with an organization here.(...) Andrei Buribant is our main connection.(...) He's kind of the social services behind the city.(...) And so with my connections in the city, I was involved a little bit as homeless veterans rep(...) with Gail Spencer from social services. And they hired this gentleman, Andrei Buribant. There was some funding received, and he's paid by the government in order to solely look after homeless veterans here in Sudbury. So he's on a reach out an outreach program. They have client navigators here in the city that go out every night and sort of knocking on the doors, if you will, not the right term, but you understand what I'm saying. Just checking in with all the homeless folks, because at one point we have more than 500 on the by name list.(...) And so they're asking questions like, did you have military experience? Or are you a veteran?(...) And sorry, the other way around, they'd ask, are you a veteran?(...) A lot of folks would say no.

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They don't understand at the bar, like we talked about, was graduated basic training, and you were successfully discharged.(...) Honourably.

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If you had three or four years in the Army Navy Air Force, you don't consider yourself a veteran.

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Veterans Affairs does.

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So what I was able to help with is some of the language. So the client navigator, when we got together in a group session, and I said, stop asking if they're a veteran. No one will admit they're a veteran. They don't like that term. They don't feel worthy almost, because those are like the World War II guys, and the Korean War, and World War I. They're veterans.

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What we have to do is change that stigma, that if you graduated and you served, and you were honorably discharged, you're considered a veteran. Which means you're entitled to, could be entitled to benefits, depending on your circumstance. So Andre's out there sort of gathering all the information, asking people if they had military service. Sure enough, you know, every month or so, my phone would ring when I was working with the city, and Tony Chacuti was my boss then, general manager of linear, sorry, growth and infrastructure here in town, and Ed Archer then was the CAO. When I told him I wanted this as part of my portfolio to help out the homeless, they're like, anything you can do with the homeless, you take as much time as you want, because they were really dealing with a crisis. And they still are. And so my little segment was to help out with the veterans through Andre. So I don't get involved in the details of, you know, what sort of social services do you need, or mental illness help or whatever. That's Andre's job.

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Generally, the stages are, we identify a veteran from the street, we get them the social service and mental health wellness they need, move them to a motel for a period of time, get them off the street, which can be daunting. So your community is that homeless network. And now you're by yourself in a motel with no friends. So it's difficult, that transition. Sometimes there's some recidivism, so they go back to the street again.

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For those that are successful, Andre was able to secure some funding from the government to pay some extra over and atop what the rent managers here in town need for a one bedroom apartment. So we've recently housed, I say we in the Royal sense,(...) Andre's doing the lion's share for sure. 10 or 12 vets are now living in one bedroom spaces.

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The ODSP amount only pays up to $500 or $600 a month. But you can't find a one bedroom apartment for less than sort of $1,500 a month or more. Andre was able to secure some favorable vendors here for about $1,200, $1,100 a month. So there's a gap there from $600 a month up to $1,200, say. So that money that Andre has is used to top up and subsidize these folks so they're not living on the street anymore.

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We've integrated some now. They come to some of our veterans meeting. We reach out to them and let them know, hey, we're having a meeting if you're welcome to come. Some do. Some are a little more integrated than others. And the whole thing is to have that community that they left behind. Start with another community that is probably a little more familiar to them and hopefully a little more supportive. Supportive.(...) And so birds of a feather sort of thing. Start hanging around your own. Right? We're all, we're not in uniform anymore, but we're all veterans.(...) And so same thing as we just talked about. Are you ready for a part-time job? Do you want to do some volunteer work? Do you need any mental health assistance? Do you need help with Veterans Affairs? These sorts of things. So those are the conversations we have.(...) And then as we forayed into it, we thought, well, if we need houses, let's build houses.(...) Seems simple, but it's not easy.(...) Right? So how are we going to go about that? So probably a couple of pops involved, you know, you get a little bit of lubricant and you start thinking about these things.(...) And affordable housing was big. And the, you know, that's been very big as of late with the way the economy has gone. And so a few of us kind of kicked around an idea that,

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what if we built an apartment complex large enough? The idea is to have a series of just less than market rent,

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affordable housing for those that are on a lower income,(...) and then subsidize some of our own that need the help in order to live in a one-vision space.(...) So that's sort of the very high outline of our business plan.

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So we hired Ricky Alawaga as our architect.(...) I reached out to a gentleman in town, John Corsi, is a very familiar name here in town, big constructor. He owns the property beside Harley Davidson and the Legion in the South End. That's the space that we're sort of targeting.

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He already did all the permits and everything, which is important. So we have to do a few updates and that sort of thing. When I phoned Mr. Corsi, I felt like a job interview. And he called me back three or four times and he said, he asked me a few questions and I explained it to him again. He was like looking for loops in my story or something. I don't know. And he said, okay, I believe in that cause. I'm sort of paraphrasing, but I'll never forget when he told me, I'll hold that property for you until you can get your funding and everything together. I was ecstatic. That's fantastic. Yeah. And so current day, they have build Canada homes.

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Has to be permit ready, which that property is pretty much ready to go. So we could have shovels on the ground as early as this year, if we get our funding. So Rick Yalawaga here in town, architects,(...) they've been helping out a lot. He assigned Denver Farquhar is an intern sort of thing. She's apprenticing as a young architect. She's been helping us out with, and we have a design model out now, a few different design models that shows what the,(...) conceivably what the space could look like. Once we know the square footage of all the space, then we can apply dollar values and we have to be able to pay the mortgage at the end of the month. And so that's what we're doing right now. It's the business and financial plan. Once that's solid, we'll put our application into the feds. We've been working with the city all along. There's a big forgiveness for development charges.

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When I talked to some of the folks in downtown that know about DC charges, if we weren't affordable like this, it would be $30,000 a unit.

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So 60 units at $30,000 for development charges.(...) So there's no way you would even be able to get that off the ground. If it wasn't affordable and you were receiving funding, you'd have to have some pretty big deep pockets and a lot of backing, a lot of finance involved, right? So it's very expensive to build.(...) So affordable, they do have a lot of policies around and it's not just DC charges. There's a lot of other things,(...) healthy communities initiative and these sorts of things that they have now. They get money from the feds in the province and they allocate as projects come in. So we're taking advantage of that. Absolutely. Yeah. We haven't really got involved in the province yet, but we know Doug Ford is a big first responder veteran dude. And so eventually we'll reach out to him and say, "Hey, we're doing this project."

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They did just build a 60 unit apartment.

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In North Bay. And its focus was more for First Nations.

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But what we're saying is, "Hey, 60 unit apartment, we're looking for similar funding. This is for veterans and first responders." Yeah, you got a map almost. Yes, exactly. So we haven't knocked on that door yet, but we're reaching out. The other thing that because we were kind of swimming with sharks almost, three veterans sort of trying to figure it out. And so we hired a consulting company that's familiar with this kind of a build in affordable housing. Tim Walsh Consulting, TWC.

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And now they're ramming the rod sort of thing. They're doing the business plan, the financial plan. They're taking the design concept and what we're requesting and trying to make it all fit in order for us to apply. And so we've got that firm on board as well. Now, none of that stuff is cheap. So the soft costs, we call it.(...) We'll in a future podcast probably get into a little more in depth in that. Suffice it to say the consultants are estimating $25 million total.

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Soft costs are the last portion, but the construction itself is about $18 million.(...) So $18 to $25 million is all the lawyers, the architects, the legal, all of the things that we need, the professionals we need in order to make this thing happen.(...) And so it's not cheap. Nothing is cheap if you want to build.(...) So yeah, so we were sitting around at a sort of, you know, Sub-Ary Veterans Peer Support Network.(...) Anybody in the crowd actually that wants to come to our Sunday meetings,

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email me at our website and I'll hook you up with our, we have dates set and establishments and you can come on out and meet everybody and be part of the, you know, part of the gang, so to speak. Yeah. So we, that's how that all started was let's get some houses built. Now what we said is, because it's national, what we'd like to do, I call this the beta test. We'd like to get this one built and then we're going to move probably to North Bay next. And then we'd like to move to other cities and eventually federally. So nationally across and have buildings in every province.(...) Sort of take the one bite of an elephant at a time, if you will. That's right. And so just start here. Let's make this work and we'll roll.

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I was talking to the president of Veterans Homes for Heroes and they're an organization called Calgary. They built, I think they're in Kingston now and maybe in London area. There's a couple other places. When I talked to Brad, he said, I'm very interested in this. We're actually thinking about building something similar to our concept anyways. He said the tiny home idea that they have, they get all the social support network and social services that Brandon takes care of us for us. He's got all these staff on to help with that. And he said it's transitional in nature. So what that means is I don't have to worry about housing anymore. Let's focus on my physical and mental well being.

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They get to a point where they're ready to move out, transition out into a proper home,

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forever.

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They can't find anywhere to live. Even affordable is hard to get. So what I'm saying is it could be a partnership there. Brad and I talked a little bit about once we get this one built, I think he will come on board. We'll look at where he's already built these and he needs agent place, we call it.(...) So when these folks are ready to move out and transition from the tiny homes to make more space for another veteran, they can move into our building and they can live there forever. So we're doing agent place. We'll have everything. We're checking all the boxes for seniors, the older folks,(...) younger folks.

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There's three demographics that we're seeing so far. We're seeing the very young. So members of the Irish regiment, for example, they're all students.(...) They're in college and university. A lot of them just get their first jobs. But as long as they're a member of the Canadian forces, Canadian forces, they're eligible to live in our building. So imagine if you're in a one bedroom apartment and you're trying to find somewhere to live to go to university and college. What we're saying is we'll have space for you. And it's at the affordable level. And it's brand new.

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Utilities and everything included for a two bedroom right now, what we're shooting for is between $1,500 and $1,700 a month. And that right now, depending on the financials we're working out of, we're hoping for everything from parking to power. The only thing you have to bring in is the internet.(...) So it's very affordable.

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We're currently going through the throes of going from a not-for-profit organization to a charity.(...) A lot of corporate donors like to donate, but they want that receipt.

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And so we'll talk about donations and that sort of thing. But in order to get some serious money, we got to be a charity. And so the Canada Revenue Agency considers four reasons to become a charity. One of which is relief of poverty.

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So even at market rent, we're going to be a little bit less, which fits in the under the poverty, the rules and guidelines. Sorry, policies within charity.(...) Then affordable definitely fits there. And then helping out, subsidize those that need help because they're on ODSP. That's definitely in the charity. And so that's what we're sort of shooting for. Like I mentioned,(...) Weaver Simmons here in town is going to help us with that. All the information I looked at said, do yourself a favour and find a professional because you'll just end up hiring them anyways. Once you get, once your application is denied, it's scrutinized.

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Rightfully so. And so for us to get through that, it's going to be pretty important for us to have that charitable status. And I got that advice from Brad from Homes for Heroes. He said, if you're jumping into this, don't fool around with an not-for-profit. You got to be a charity. Synergy already. Yep. And how long have you been doing this? So a couple, two and a half years ago, we started kicking around the idea of what can we do.(...) Then some other organizations were talking about building homes. They did build the Legion and the Sioux built the multi-unit 105 or 108 unit complex.

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We did go with a federal member of parliament, Vivian LaPointe, one day last summer for a tour. Got to meet the president there, Pierre Breckenridge, and asked a lot of good questions. Learned a lot, both sort of the good, bad and the ugly about what we would like to incorporate. Maybe we won't incorporate that sort of thing.

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Their business model is a little different than ours. We're not in it to make money.

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The Legion, they're trying to support an organization that's bringing in money. That's not our mandate. Our mandate is at the end of the fiscal year, we're at zero.(...) We have zero dollars. So everything is accounted for.(...) So the three of us that are on as part of the team in the Veterans of First Responder housing, we're all financially secure. Otherwise, and that frees up our time a little bit to be able to help out veterans. Yeah. And first responders, why do we include them? Well, they're subject to a lot of the same things that veterans are. So PTSD, anxiety,(...) you know, fear of being in public sort of thing, like who's going to, who knows me and what's going to happen to me. Imagine for folks that have all marched in a pair of boots before, you're living in a building where you know everybody in there has got your back.(...) Right? They've all served. It's trustworthy. So it's very nice to know that you're in a secure place that you can feel safe. Everybody in that building is a friend, you know, so that's pretty important. I call it birds of a feather.

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So once we start, you know, you'll have that community within the building.(...) We're going to have hotel services to bring in psychologists,(...) barbers, cooperatives, you know, the medical, whoever we need.

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We're going to have a meeting space. So you want to have the grandkids over for a birthday party? We'll have a space for that. We'll have a space for our Veterans Sunday meeting. We'll have, you know, all the amenities that we need.(...) The apartments will include each one. I'll have its own washer, dryer, microwave, you know, fridge and stove, the whole nine yards. Everything is very modernized.(...) And so that's what we're hoping for. That's how it all started. Fantastic. Yeah, thanks. So that is the Veterans and First Responder Housing.(...) The website would be https://veteranandfirstresponderhousing.ca. Please feel free to check that website out. Absolutely a good cause. I think, like I said, we've just scratched the surface here. I'd love to have you back, Mike, so we can go into detail with this. That would be great. Thank you so much for coming tonight. It was nice to meet you. And I look forward to more. This is a fantastic cause. Thank you very much. Thank you, everybody, for joining us. Please check out their website and follow us. Please follow and subscribe for more so you can see when more of this comes out because

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