I figured out how to end homelessness, permanently.
Here’s how it works in a nutshell:
You sell shares to investors, to raise money to build apartment buildings for homeless people. Homeless people can then live in their own apartments using their monthly welfare allowance for rent. That rent money is used to pay off the expenses of the apartment building, pay off the investors at ~8% return on investment paid out per month, and to buy back shares. Over ~25 years, similar to the length of time of a mortgage, the investors shares are all bought back and the apartment building uses its revenue to pay for its ongoing management and maintenance.
Here’s a 5 step process that breaks it down further:
Step 1 – Attract investors – Set up a REIT [Real Estate Investment Trust]. Sell shares to investors to raise money to build apartment buildings for homeless people.
Step 2 – Once the REIT has sold enough shares and raised enough money to build its first building, build it.
Step 3 – The REIT collects rent from homeless tenants on welfare.
Step 4 – The REIT pays out monthly dividends to investors at an above market rate of return. [This is especially important now because of the demographic trend of older people retiring and looking to move their investment assets into monthly dividend paying stocks to pay for their retirement expenses].
Step 5 – The REIT buys back its shares over a period of ~25 years, and is fully paid off.
This model works because it appeals to people’s greed [people can invest in shares of social housing and receive an above market average return on investment; ~8% dividend yield paid out on a monthly basis], and it appeals to people’s altruism [people can help homeless people get access to safe long-term affordable housing].
It’s kind of like Kiva, except it’s aimed at helping solve the problem of homelessness.
What do you think about this model?
I would love to hear your feedback on this.
I’m still trying to figure out how to get this kind of vision/plan started. I would appreciate any and all feedback that you may have regarding how this could be started or even improved upon.
If there is enough interest I will go ahead and put together a more detailed plan that explains each of the above steps in more depth.
Thank you.
Best regards,
Moe