Episode transcript
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and readability.
Housing, neighborhoods, and the people behind them
Jaime Buxton: Have you ever looked at someone’s life and thought, “I wonder how they ended up like that?” Maybe it’s a woman holding a sign, a man panhandling. Maybe it’s that same child dropped off at school every day, hungry and disheveled. But what if our knee-jerk reaction is different than we actually think? What if it’s wrong? What if those people we so quickly judge are more like us than we think? This is the Not That Different podcast about the stories behind the statistics of homelessness, the real people behind that word.
Because when we stop and we really start to listen and understand, something surprising happens. Individuals experiencing homelessness aren’t those people. They’re our brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers. They’re our neighbors, the people God calls us to love. Today we’re talking with Ricardo León, president and CEO of the Cuyahoga Land Bank. His work focuses on restoring vacant and abandoned properties across Cuyahoga County, turning neglected spaces into opportunities for safe housing, neighborhood stability, and renewed community life.
Through that work and in partnership with organizations like The City Mission, he helps address one of the root challenges connected to homelessness, access to stable housing. I’m Jaime Buxton. I’m the senior manager of community engagement at The City Mission in Cleveland, Ohio. And it’s my joy to help us pull back the layers of homelessness, to destigmatize what we think we know about people experiencing homelessness. So let’s jump right in and start this conversation with Ricardo.
Thank you so much for being here.
Ricardo León: Well, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate you guys inviting me to be here and shout out to all the listeners. I’m hoping this will be an interesting conversation.
Jaime Buxton: I certainly hope it will, too. We’re humbled to be doing this. I still have no idea what we’re actually doing here, Ricardo, so bear with me. But this is just a conversation and we don’t know each other that well. We’ve bumped into each other a few times over working in collaboration together, so I’m really excited to learn more about you. I know that you’ve got a really big job and you’ve been in that role about 18 months.
But tell me, what even gets you interested in the kind of work that you’re doing? How do you fall into land bank?
Ricardo León: Well, you know, that’s that’s a great question. Land banking is an interesting industry and I guess starting with how I fell into it, my career’s been interesting in that I started my career kind of in the startup world. I did my undergrad in economics at Baldwin Wallace, kind of worked in the startup world. I did my master’s in urban studies at CSU. While I was there, I learned a lot about our ecosystem.
I found out that Cleveland has one of the strongest kind of community and economic development ecosystems really in the country. Okay. A lot of the early community and economic development work really spurred out of Cleveland for a number of reasons. One, because of the Levin School, right? What has historically been one of the best urban studies schools in the country. But also we have that deep philanthropic network here, you know, the Cleveland Foundation and others.
Like we have a history of philanthropy. Mhm. And then along the way I had the opportunity to join a CDC that served the community where I grew up. So I grew up on the near west side of Cleveland in the Stockyards about a decade ago, 2016. My dad passed away unexpectedly and at the time my mom was alone. And so I made the decision like I need to find a job like close to home, you know?
And so the kind of same week that I made that decision, the job the job position I found like someone sent it to me. It was like, “Hey, you might be interested in this.” And it was the CDC gig at MetroWest. I was like, you know, divine intervention, right? And so I ended up applying, got the job. I started working at MetroWest and my first job at MetroWest was working with the vacant and abandoned properties.
So it was kind of like a full circle moment. So at MetroWest, I worked at the CDC with community partners and with the Land Bank at the time kind of more transactionally in identifying vacant and abandoned properties in the community and then helping get those properties into the hands of residents who could bring them back to life. Yeah. And then kind of like a whole bunch of things happened where within 12 months of me being at the organization, I went from kind of being like the person who was like lowest on this totem pole, right?
Like I was I was breaking into abandoned houses every day to running the organization. So that was a interesting turn of events. And then through that work, I ended up meeting my predecessor, Gus Frangos, you know, rest in peace, who was an amazing leader in this industry. I mean, he created the Land Bank industry. I’m happy to kind of go into detail on that, but and you know, he ended up offering me an opportunity to come join the Land Bank 4 years ago.
And I joined the Land Bank originally as the chief operating officer. Was chief operating officer for about 2 and 1/2 years and then unfortunately, you know, Gus passed away in summer of 2024 and when that happened, I had the opportunity to jump into the interim role just to kind of keep the keep the ship going, right? Because he had built this amazing thing. And then the board in September of 2024 hired me on as the CEO, so the permanent CEO.
So yeah, about 18 months in now. It’s been fun. It’s been exciting. You know, there’s like the world is constantly changing, right? The environment, the housing market environment is constantly changing. So it’s really exciting to be kind of boots on the ground in neighborhoods. And I think one of the coolest things about the work the Land Bank does is that we work anywhere in the county, right? We serve all 59 municipalities, but we almost exclusively work in those historically disinvested neighborhoods, right?
The neighborhoods that have the most challenges, have the least investment, the least amount of resources, where partners you know, can help us you know, meet our mission of bringing properties back into productive use. And I think that’s really exciting about the work of the Land Bank and City Mission is that how we have come together to not only help families, but help neighborhoods and communities, right? Because one house at a time yes, neighborhood scale you know, development is important, but ultimately it happens one property, one person, one family at a time.
And that’s what I think is most exciting about the work that we do and the work that we get to do together.
Jaime Buxton: Yeah. Wow, that’s so much in such a short amount of time. Like you graduated grad school and just you were like going and that’s just amazing. I love that you mentioned you’re Cleveland native. I knew I knew that. I love that and so exciting to be landing in a work that you’re passionate about. You know, neither of us were in the roles that we’re in right now, but we have a rich history, The City Mission and the Land Bank of working together.
And so I love that we kind of get to still interact and find ways to collaborate. And really for the sake of this podcast is educate and destigmatize what it is that we do and the people that we’re really serving. Tell us because I’m sure there are going to be many people who listen to this. What is a land bank?
What a land bank does
Ricardo León: So a land bank it’s at least in the context of Ohio. So Ohio is actually kind of one of the leaders in land banking in the country. So land banks have existed in some way, shape or form going back to the 70s. Most of them when you think about land banks, they’re municipal land banks. So like the city of Cleveland, pretty much every municipality in Cuyahoga County has a land bank. Those are essentially just kind of departments of those municipalities, you know, it’s just like a department at city hall and they’re passive in the sense that they just use them to hold land.
Jaime Buxton: Okay.
Ricardo León: So it’s just a way for the cities to hold land and then they can figure out how do you how do we redevelop this? How do we partner with folks? County land banks, so like Cuyahoga Land Bank is one of now 71 county land banks in Ohio. We were the first. We opened our doors in 2009. So we essentially serve as the community improvement corporation for Cuyahoga County. And so we have the powers to do community development work, economic development work where we can transact, we can buy homes, we can rehab homes.
The bulk of our work for really the first decade of our life was really to target vacancy and abandonment. Okay. So while Cleveland wasn’t necessarily the epicenter of the mortgage foreclosure crisis, we were definitely one of the hardest hit communities. And there were a handful of neighborhoods, you know, I think of Slavic Village, Stockyards, the neighborhood I grew up in, and a handful of others that were really hit hard.
Jaime Buxton: Right.
The housing challenges facing Cuyahoga County
Ricardo León: These neighborhoods were neighborhoods where more than half of all the properties in that neighborhood went through foreclosure. I’m a firm believer that everyone every resident of Cuyahoga County, right? That’s our service area, should have the ability to live in a neighborhood that meets their needs, that has the amenities, that allows them to have a prosperous life. And for a whole bunch of reasons that we can’t control, that’s not the case today.
So for 17 years we’ve been steadfast, working to create those conditions, you know, in collaboration with folks like you all.
Jaime Buxton: Yeah. I love what you just said there because that really that’s the goal for us, too, is when our residents leave us, we want them to have the choice in where they live, the kind of home that they feel comfortable, near a school that they are excited about for their children, in a community close to where they will work or you know, all the things we think about. I think so many times people would look at our work and say, “Oh, those people should just be grateful for housing.” And that is not that is not our heart at the mission.
And so when we get to link arms with people like you who understand that and the dignity that it instills when we give choice to our residents in where they’re going to move on to, you know, and how they’re going to move on. That’s that’s what gets us excited about ministry. So let’s talk about that though because there’s a lot of challenges in housing in Ohio, but especially in this Cleveland area.
What are some of the biggest challenges that you’re seeing in Cuyahoga County?
Ricardo León: Yeah, Cuyahoga County is super unique. I mean, we are with challenges, of course. I think it’s happening across the country. Cuyahoga County is unique for a couple reasons. One is we have some pockets of super successful housing markets, right? Like where homes are buying and selling and you can own a home and to your point you have those amenities and then we have kind of the opposite end of the spectrum where there are communities where there’s no investment happening where unfortunately there’s a lot of speculative investment so there’s like you know out of state buyers coming in and buying up the properties and not that there’s anything wrong with that but they’re often not taking care of them the way they should and to your point giving dignified housing to the residents of our of our of our city and our county.
So we’re kind of in this stratification of we’ve got some areas we have the challenge of rapid price appreciation, right? Neighborhoods that maybe a decade ago you could buy a home for $70,000 or $80,000 and today those homes are maybe $300,000 or $400,000 and so you end up being priced out. Right. And then in those more challenged kind of historically disinvested neighborhoods the challenge is a broken housing market, right? The cost to build or renovate a home is more than what you can sell that home for.
So no one’s making the investment. Banks typically aren’t lending. Again unfortunately what ends up happening is those communities end up becoming marginalized. They don’t have access to the transportation and the jobs and the neighborhood amenities and so it becomes kind of a cycle. And so in those communities while we work to preserve affordability where possible of course sometimes in those communities the strategy really is like well let’s let’s bring housing investment to this neighborhood so that you know Mrs.
Johnson who’s lived in her house for 30 years can finally see a little bit of price appreciation. When it comes time for her to give that you know that property to her family, right? When her heirs receive that property they now have the opportunity to create generational wealth. And it gives them the opportunity to get that leg up and kind of continue again the positive momentum. And so that’s I would say kind of those two components are probably the biggest challenges we face is like we have this dichotomy, right?
And then I think the other challenge that we see just kind of generally is overall across the county is just a lack of inventory. Right. So we don’t you know when you think about like coastal cities or some of the you know more populated regions of the country we’re not seeing that kind of rapid change in housing and kind of gentrification I guess everyone has their own version of that but we’re not necessarily seeing that in a real way and the way you know the New Yorks and LAs and San Francisco’s of the world are.
You know our problem is actually that there’s just not enough housing to go around and so our argument is like we should be investing in housing on all different typologies all different price points with all different partners so that we can increase the total inventory that then will help create more housing opportunities for everyone.
Jaime Buxton: I’m learning so much. It’s like actually hard for me to think about my next question. I read a stat a couple years ago that said something like Ohio needs 280,000 housing units to be able to house everyone in our state and a lot of that is right here in our Cleveland area and so when I talk in you know in big generalities because this is not you know everything I know really well but when I’m talking to people about the mission when I say lack of affordable housing you know it really is very difficult for our residents.
You know they come here they get stability they’re empowered over their issues they’re ready and it really is very difficult. You know yes there are vouchers but there is a waiting list and really just not enough housing. And I heard you already say that you know that’s what you’re working on but I really think that if our listeners are here in Cleveland I don’t know that people really understand that outside of the city like how can we help people know that more other than just you know really there’s a lack of affordable housing?
Ricardo León: No absolutely. I mean you hit the nail on the head. Where I think where we think about this too and kind of what we’ve kind of added to that description is not only lack of affordable housing but a lack of quality healthy affordable housing because what we see a lot of and I saw this a lot more in my in my role at the CDC and Metro West because I was more proximate like in the neighborhood.
You know you know I think there was a recent stat that said Cleveland is like one of the most affordable rental you know cities in the country which is fair, right? It’s certainly again compared to like the coastal cities. But what we saw a lot of unfortunately was residents renting a home that maybe didn’t have running water maybe had a hole in the roof and it’s leaking. There might be mold there might be you know there all these different rodents getting into the basement.
There’s all these different things that are happening because unfortunately what has happened is that kind of speculative investment market that not again not all of them but sometimes those investors don’t really do what they need to do to make sure that those homes are quality homes. And I think that’s the challenge too is like yeah in theory you can get a cheap house you know whether it’s renting or buying it but are you going to be healthy?
Are your kids going to be healthy? You know is there lead in the home? And then if you’re and if you happen to be buying the home you know is this really an investment that long term is going to help set your family up for that generational wealth and success or is it going to be a money pit that’s just going to end up hurting you more than helping you, right? But then also you know I got to give credit where it’s due you know the city of Cleveland really is trying to kind of move the needle in this space as well as is the county.
Executive Ronayne and his team have a whole team of folks dedicated to help solve for this issue. Where again we need housing of every typology at every price point that is dignified and healthy and it allows it allows all of us to be better off. You know I think if we can you know we talk about this a lot at the Land Bank like if we can help those of us who have the least resources and the least means then all of us are better off even those of us who have the most resources and the most means because the more that we can help the people at the bottom and give them the opportunity to you know give them that hand and pull them up we all benefit from it collectively.
You know we’re all better off for it.
Making homeownership achievable
Jaime Buxton: For sure. What do you think about how do we help educate people perhaps who are coming out of generational poverty? You know many of the residents that come to us have been raised in poverty and so the dream of owning a house is exactly that it’s a dream like or it may not even be a dream it is probably not even on their radar. And so I think a lot of that a lot of the work that we do you know not homeownership isn’t for everyone, right?
But as we as we lean into that and teach people what kind of resource do you think we need more available to people to help them understand that this can be within arm’s reach for them?
Ricardo León: That’s a great question. I think some of the things because we kind of run into this a lot. I think there’s a handful of things and thankfully a lot of this stuff is happening and growing. A lot of it I think is homebuyer education. Thankfully a lot of our financial institutions in town but also our nonprofit partners in town have been investing heavily in educating folks on what being a homeowner is and to your point homeownership may not be for everyone and that’s okay.
If it’s not it’s okay. But if you want to be a homeowner and you believe it’s in your future let’s start you early educating you on like what it takes to be a homeowner. And then the third piece really is the financing, right? You know getting folks to a point where they can they can get a mortgage and own a home. Historically we have had some challenges you know here in Cleveland of access to capital particularly in historically disinvested neighborhoods.
And so one of the cool things that I can say is that is starting to change and I do got to shout out our partners in this is CHN Housing. You know they have CHN Credit and their Believe Mortgage and it’s a mortgage that allows folks to I think it’s like a 540 minimum credit score and allows folks who don’t have that opportunity or maybe historically haven’t had that opportunity to be bankable in a traditional way.
Now they have this opportunity to pursue financing to own that home. So you know again it’s to your to your point it’s not for everyone but if you can if you can pair the inventory with the education and the financing component it at least makes the challenge much more feasible. There’s still a lot of work that needs to get done. It’s still a massive responsibility. You know there’s there’s you know homeownership is just it can be a challenge at times.
But at least here collectively in Cleveland it is really cool to see that we’re reaching this kind of this momentum. You know it’s kind of like this flywheel where all of these elements are coming together at the same time.
The City Mission and the Land Bank’s partnership
Jaime Buxton: So let’s rewind a little bit and talk about kind of our history. I know again neither of us were kind of in those roles where you know we were breaking ground together you know 12 years ago but there was a there was a time in The City Mission’s history where we were looking at this available housing dignified housing and said we want to be part of this. I love this kind of part of our history.
It’s not something we’re currently doing because we were we weren’t contractors and so we had this great partnership where we were finding homes that were dignified in neighborhoods. You guys held the home for us. We had people working on construction and rehabbing homes and then moving families into them. And then what we were doing was another like two years of wrap around services. I remember very vividly sitting in a meeting where I had heard that one of our mothers had a really high water bill and everyone said what’s going on?
Well her toilet was running and no one ever told her before because she’d never been a homeowner like hey this is going to make an impact on your bill and so she was hit with this you know huge bill that she couldn’t understand and had never she was like I just thought you know when the toilet is doing that someone’s always fixed it or it just stopped and it was such a learning curve for me just sitting in that room going there is so much work to be done about the education and still walking with people in this process.
So I’m glad to hear there’s so many people across the city that are passionate and working in this. So we had I think I we were trying to guess the math about a dozen homes that we did that with and we had families living in them. It’s been really cool. I know one of the families has actually the mom had I think seven kids when she moved into that home. Lots of her kids are now out of the home and she has grandchildren.
So, she actually sold that home Nice. And was able to downsize into a condo but be able to afford that and like that’s life-changing. That’s what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about generational wealth and so cool to continue to see that. Well, we’ve kind of gotten out of that side of things because like I said, we weren’t great at contracting. You know, we just recently added transitional housing. And so I we have transitional housing at Laura’s Home.
I know that wouldn’t have happened for us. I know that wouldn’t have been kind of a part of what we’re doing now without those trailblazing days with the land bank and Gus Frangos helping us understand all of those things. And so grateful for how we still are connected whether you know, it’s directly or indirectly at this point. What role do organizations like The City Mission play in the broader solution to homelessness in our community?
Ricardo León: Oh my goodness. I mean I believe organizations like City Mission are the backbone of the work that’s happening in our city. I mean without you all coming to the table and helping people, we the work that we do would just happen in a vacuum. So, I to your point, you know, the work we’ve been doing for over a decade together you all were pioneers in that space. You all were one of the first kind of faith-based organizations to come to the table and say, “Hey, like I think we can do something here that can create these generational opportunities and can get people out of this cycle.” And so we started working together over a decade ago rehabbing those homes and through that partnership.
And since then, yes, we’ve done about a dozen together, but that model that you all kind of pioneered and created, the land bank has done over 150 of those with a whole bunch of other partners, too. And we took that experience of working with you all which allowed us to see kind of what worked and what didn’t work and try and recreate and implement it and find different ways to work through that to solve for that issue.
But like this most recent kind of iteration of that work which is the work that we did with Habitat together where you all were able to find folks to then take on that home ownership component and then this transitional piece is super important. We don’t we often don’t think about it, you know, for those of us who’ve been blessed with the opportunity to be homeowners or at least be on that path to stable housing.
Mhm. You don’t really recognize or realize how important it is just to have kind of that roof over your head.
Jaime Buxton: Right.
Why support systems matter
Ricardo León: I had the opportunity to serve for a few years on the board of a permanent supportive housing provider here in town. And it was fascinating just kind of hearing these stories of you know, you the way you opened the segment was really fascinating of like we assume folks like we assume people’s stories when we see them. It was fascinating to see how many people was you know, they missed a couple paychecks and those couple paychecks are what created the situation and you know, I had a colleague of mine former city planning director Freddy Collier and he used to have the saying the average person is about three missed paychecks away from not having a stable housing situation, you know?
Yeah. I remember thinking about that in the moment like, “Man, that’s you know, that’s fascinating.” And then now fast forward five, six years later, I’ve had the opportunity to be kind of involved and in partnership with organizations that are that are fighting the good fight and it and it’s so true. And so that’s why I think our type of partnerships and establishing these partnerships and supporting them and ensuring that organizations like City Mission and others have the funding that they need, have the strong leadership and have the ability to really have a seat at the table when decisions are being made is what’s ultimately going to allow us to continue solving for this issue.
You know, the reality is that you know, the economy is the economy. There’s always going to be challenges, but the more resources and the more that we can offer kind of that wrap-around service and supportive service, I think the better off our residents will be. And again, shout out to you all. You all have been a leader in that space of we’re not just going to give you a house. We’re going to give you a house, but we’re going to meet with you.
We’re going to work with you. We’re going to make sure you understand what it means, what it takes to really be in this space. And if for whatever reason things don’t go well, we’re going to be here to help support you. And that support network, that support system is such an amazing thing that again, so many unfortunately so many people don’t have. It’s amazing to see where a partner like you all is really kind of hand in hand helping deliver the these services that are so needed in our community.
Jaime Buxton: Well, thank you. But I think what you’re drawing my attention most to in this conversation is really that we’re not alone in that really there is an army of people that have empathetic leaders and who are excited and passionate about this work. And so we don’t have to do it in a vacuum, you know, we don’t we don’t have to be contractors anymore, right? Because there’s lots of other people and ways for us to link arms to solve this in the ways that we’re good at and then to depend on the people who are good at the other things to do well.
So
Ricardo León: Absolutely.
Jaime Buxton: That excites me.
Getting involved in your community
Ricardo León: It’s It’s a beautiful thing to see. I’m sorry. You know, it’s a beautiful thing to see and I think that again, you all you all and a handful of others I can think of have blended very well the faith and community together. And it’s it’s just a beautiful thing to see and it and again, the innovation that comes out of it is fascinating from where I sit.
Jaime Buxton: Thank you. I think you know, we’ve talked a lot about a lot of big issues on this in this episode. And so if someone were to talk to you and say, you know, housing issues are too big or too complex to understand, what do you want them to know?
Ricardo León: Well, that’s a great question. I guess the biggest takeaway out of it because I you know, I do have those conversations a lot with folks is they are super complex and kind of heady and very academic at times. But the bare minimum that we can do is just get involved and get to know your neighbors. It’s fascinating what just a small group of like-minded individuals whether it’s a block club or a church or a neighborhood association can come together and really have amazing impact in their community by using their voice, by being civically engaged, by partnering and showing up.
The more that we can be engaging with each other as neighbors in neighborhoods, in communities kind of working you know, fighting the good fight together. I think that is ultimately going to be beneficial to all of us. And again, I’ve seen really cool stuff happen when you just get folks in a room together and say, “Hey, we think we can help solve for this issue and we may not have all the answers, but we think we think we have something there.” And then you see you go back two years later and you’re like, “Whoa, like you guys did it.” Yeah.
Amazing. And so that would be kind of my take with folks is like just get involved. Find a way to get involved however you know, whatever works for you, you know, it’s going to be different for everybody.
Jaime Buxton: Yeah. I think I think about the young man that you were you’re a young man now, but the young man like just showing up in that community in your community. I mean, what advice would you give that person? Because it really you were making it you were faking it till you make it, right? Is that it?
Ricardo León: 100% yeah. Yeah, no, spot on. That’s a good question. You know, it’s funny. I think about this a lot. What I’ve learned is just take the leap of faith. Like you got if you believe in something like again, in community, right? Like I everyone told me like, “Why would you leave like the corporate world where you’re you know, making good money and you’re traveling and you’re doing all this cool stuff? Like why would you go work in the neighborhood you grew up in?
Like what are you talking about?” You know, like And again, I had multiple reasons why I was doing it. But taking that leap of faith and just trusting and saying, “You know, like I don’t I don’t know what’s going to come of this.” I had no idea I’d end up where I am today, you know, like I was just going to like I see a problem in my neighborhood. I’ve experienced it.
I grew up next to an abandoned house that burned down. Almost burned my mom’s house down. Like I’ve seen it firsthand. But at the same time I’ve seen other neighborhoods where they’ve been able to turn around turn it around and become quality neighborhoods with amenities with where people can you know, have access to resources. And so I said, “Well, if they can if we can do it over there, we can do it here.” You know, and then and I got to again, to your point I got to jump in kind of headfirst and faking it till I was making it trying to figure it out.
And then we look back and you know, and I see the you know, the neighborhood I used to serve, you know, Clark-Fulton, Stockyards specifically, you know, major investment from their anchor institution. There’s a major commercial corridor investment underway right now both in the Stockyards and Clark-Fulton neighborhood. We’ve seen the homeownership rates increase. We’ve seen the average condition of homes improve significantly across the board. And so yeah, it’s incremental and it takes time, but you see it happening one step at a time.
It’s like one foot in front of the other. And so you know, seven or eight years later being able to look back and still be involved in some way, right? The land bank still participates to some extent. Not as much as I used to for sure, but being able to see that work is like taking that leap of faith is what, for me at least, initiated all of that, you know? And so that’s kind of my advice to folks.
Jaime Buxton: That’s awesome. And you must take so much really healthy pride in that. And so that’s awesome. Before we wrap up, what gives you hope when you think about the future of housing and community development here in the Cleveland or Cuyahoga County?
Ricardo León: That’s a great question. I mean, what gives me hope is it’s this. It’s like the work you all are doing, the work that our partners are doing, the work I get to be a part of. I get to meet with bright, amazing, talented individuals who genuinely care about our community, who want to see it better off. You know, I don’t know if it’s like an underdog thing with Cleveland like where we all kind of band together, but like we seem to have kind of this very unique kind of approach to the work at least at the community economic development level where we all understand that it’s better off if we partner together.
I am blessed with the opportunity to I get to go to conferences and I get to kind of travel and meet you know, other leaders in this space, you know, from wherever they’re from and it does while it happens in other places, too, it does seem like we have kind of this unique like very unique kind of blend of kind of right place, right time, right people all working together towards a collective goal.
And I think and I think it’s exciting. And again, we have amazing leadership at the city level, at the county level, at our organizational levels. And so I think we’re we’re kind of in this beautiful moment in time where like I think we’ll have the opportunity to really see some dramatic impact over the next few years just because of the willingness of people to come together and engage with each other.
Looking beyond the circumstances we see
Jaime Buxton: You said something a little bit ago when you were talking about somebody saying to you most people are three paychecks away from crisis, right? Is there anything that you would want to tell our listeners from your perspective about that? When we see that person who’s standing on a street corner and we quickly judge and say, “Oh, they made.” Fill in the blank. What do you know differently, and what would you challenge people to understand better about those experiencing homelessness?
Ricardo León: What I would tell them is to try to understand that this can happen to anyone. One, it can happen to anyone. Two, it doesn’t define you. Your challenges don’t define you, the same way your education doesn’t define you or your job doesn’t define you, right? That moment in time of what you’re experiencing doesn’t define you. And thirdly, I would say that we should always be thinking about what can we do? How can we help?
Whether it’s getting more involved with your church, whether it’s donating if you’re in a position to donate, whether it’s finding ways to show up in community with others. That person that we see is a symptom of a societal issue, right? A societal problem. Certainly, you can always point to, well, they must have made some personal decisions, and sure. But realistically, as a society, again, shouldn’t we all want to help that person who has the least so that we can all benefit from it together collectively, right?
So that’s kind of where my mind goes. I do this a lot with my colleagues, my team, challenging: what’s the other side of the coin? Let’s not allow ourselves to just understand what we see. Let’s try to understand what we don’t see and then start there. I think bringing that kind of humility to the conversation, in everything that you do, is again what allows a lot of this positive momentum to happen too.
Because I think in the same way that we do that with that person who’s standing at the corner, we do that with the person who’s in the boardroom, and we do that with the person who’s at the podium, right? If we treat all of them equally or think about them all equally, I think ultimately we’re going to be significantly better off.
Jaime Buxton: Well, I think Ricardo gets my job now, so welcome to his new podcast. Thank you so much.
Ricardo León: I appreciate it. This is fun. This is awesome.
Jaime Buxton: Thank you so much for sharing your passion, for clearly communicating what you do and helping people understand, for the advocacy for the people that we serve together. Just thank you for what you do in the community.
Getting involved
Jaime Buxton: Thanks for joining us on Not That Different. We’re so glad that you joined us, and we hope you learned. If this episode resonated with you, like Ricardo just said, get involved. Get involved in your church, in your community. If you’re interested in the work we’re doing here at The City Mission, go to thecitymission.org. Sign up for a Volunteer 101, join our associate board, find a way to get involved. You can donate here, but you can find a place that’s close to you as well.
We want you to be involved. So thank you so much for joining us. We hope that you’ll like and subscribe. See you next time.