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Learn how Richard McLemore II is bridging the gap between housing resources and those who need them most.

By Chris Garner, Communications Specialist

"There are too many resources in Minnesota for folks to be unsheltered," said Richard “Rich” McLemore II, executive director and founder of One Day At A Time (1DAAT).

In the last decade, more Minnesotans have found themselves unhoused than ever before.¹ Often, individuals who need available housing resources are unaware that they exist or how to use them.

That’s where 1DAAT steps in. With housing education at the forefront, the organization offers support to youth, single adults and families in five metro counties:

Ramsey
Hennepin
Dakota
Washington
Anoka

“It's about connecting those dots and getting our families to believe that we have the best intentions for them when we know in the past they’ve worked with programs that offered funding, but weren't considering the human factor,” Rich said.

Personal Experience with Homelessness Leads to a Career in Housing

For Rich, it's important to make sure people feel like they are more than just a number. He’s personally experienced homelessness twice in his life, once as a child with his mother in California and later as an adult when he was released from incarceration in 2013.

“Being homeless really messed with me mentally because here I am a healthy guy, gainfully employed,” said Rich. “I thought I couldn’t find housing because of my background, but in hindsight it wasn’t that, and that’s one of the things we talk about at 1DAAT — creative ways to minimize those barriers.”

One of the key ways to doing that is making individuals look more attractive on paper to potential landlords.

“Housing is kind of like gumbo,” Rich said. “You must have income, a form of transportation, food support, education and good health to successfully maintain your housing.”

1DAAT provides customized care for individuals and families seeking secure housing. They offer direct, rental, and damage deposit assistance, as well as cleaning products, household goods, financial support for application fees, car repair, rent debt or other bills through their Family Homelessness Prevention Assistance Program.

“It was always in my heart to make that journey easier for others by providing a better understanding of what is available, because for me it was a lack of information,” Rich said. “When I got into housing professionally, I found out landlords' major concern is making sure they get paid and paid consistently.”

“ I just think it's important for our community to understand that everything starts and ends with a person's house, where they can get away, store their things, have peace and get the rest. That shouldn't be a privilege.”

Richard McLemore

Personalized Housing Assistance

Rich is all about turning bruises into blessings. From his own experiences he learned the red flag barriers landlords look for that make it hard for people secure sustainable housing. Rich would go on to use that knowledge to build the housing stabilization program at Ujamaa Place and later, in 2022, he would establish 1DAAT after the death of his son.

“I knew I had something with our housing education and our stabilization model at Ujamaa Place but were limiting who we served, so I decided to invest in establishing this organization," said Rich.

Since launching 1 Day At A Time as a nonprofit housing organization, he has built a solid team of people who have worked in housing and/or experienced housing instability. Together they create personalized housing plans for their clients based on their roadblocks and household needs.

“We hire from our past participant pool at 1DAAT,” Rich said. “We work with a program called the Ampact Housing Navigator Program, where we help individuals who may be transitioning gain a viable source of income.”

What they’ve learned is that most assistance programs aren’t made for the BIPOC population, and often people who are experiencing homelessness are also dealing with multiple traumas that impact their safety and security.

“I just think it's important for our community to understand that everything starts and ends with a person's house, where they can get away, store their things, have peace and get the rest,” Rich said. “That shouldn't be a privilege.”

Rich sees affordable housing as an issue we should all invest in and hopes many will soon see the importance of ensuring everyone has a safe place to lay their head.

“We don’t believe that money solves the problem. If it did, it would have happened during COVID,” said Rich. “What we need is direct funding to be able to educate our folks out of ignorance. We must start exposing our folks to the information that they need from people they trust, be it me, a teacher or their parents around the dinner table.”

In the future, Rich hopes to continue spreading awareness about their housing classes to more service centers and eventually secure a mixed-use building for 1DAAT that provides housing and services.

The Foundation's Impact in Action

1 Day At A Time is a grantee of the Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation. We stand with many people and organizations like 1DAAT working toward a future where families and future generations of Minnesotans can live and thrive by making stable housing affordable. Through our largest application-based grant program, we have made 155 grants totaling $5 million to 80 organizations in the Housing & Transportation category over the past five years.

See Our Housing Impact

¹Minnesota Homeless Study, A Project of Wilder Foundation

As communications specialist, Chris Garner supports the Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation’s work by highlighting it to the community through words, photo, video and other media. Chris has a Bachelor of Arts in Communications from Alabama State University and a Master of Science in Journalism from Northwestern University.

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