Today we’d like to introduce you to Garrett Underwood.
Hi Garrett, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
The story of how this all got started only makes sense when I look at it backward. I believe your experiences in life are the breadcrumbs to your destiny. It is so important to pay close attention to your experience, whether it’s good or bad, and find out the root of the feeling it brings.
One of the many breadcrumbs was an individual named Cameron. After starting a Christian clothing company, I then started an employment program. We partnered with various shelters throughout the country, conducting career development workshops. We not only helped with job readiness, but we also employed them for the day to add to their resume. For those who had no experience, this was a huge help. Within a year, we employed over 98 young adults. Cameron was one of them. We were able to consistently employ him and support him in moving out of the shelter. He was able to find his own apartment as well as purchase his own car.
Things were really changing for him. Cameron had a substance abuse background, and he stayed in a supportive sober living home for a year. Within a couple of months, after he moved from the sober living program, he relapsed. This caused him to lose his job and eventually lose his housing because he wasn’t able to meet the cost of rent. I let him stay with me for a couple of days, but due to his high anxiety, he left. A couple of days later, he called me, and I remember like it was yesterday. Due to me being busy or selfish, I didn’t answer. I knew it would be a call that ultimately made me feel bad. It was like the times we walked past people experiencing homelessness and make no eye contact because we don’t want to take responsibility.
Cameron left a message that day, and I still have it on my phone. That was an hour before he overdosed, committing suicide. I remember going to his funeral and constantly telling myself, “If only I had answered the phone.” I went weeks playing the scenario in my head over and over. This put me in a deep depression, so I asked myself, “Am I really making a difference. I remember telling myself, “I have two choices. I can either do nothing for the rest of my life and play the blame game or do something radical and let this experience be my ‘why’.” I realized that the source of growth is the power of imagination.
Growing up, I had always had the support I needed to imagine the impossible. If I wanted to play in the NBA, my family was there to support me by investing in my dream and putting me through basketball camps. Or when I started my own business, my parents were the first to invest.
This support in action sparked the imagination of the impossible. I felt if my family supported me, I knew the world would. As I reflect on the life of Cameron and the many other youths I have served, I realize the energy of imagination was not there. Every day for them was survival, and if they made it out alive, that was a success. Imagination of possibilities was stolen from our at-risk youth the day they were born, and the only imagination they had left was a limitation. Cameron’s biggest fear was becoming homeless again, and I believe this fear is what took his life. Instead, the imagination of possibilities is what would have saved him.
After this revelation, I used the home that fueled my imagination into a space for at-risk youth to explore the possibilities. Within a month, I asked all my roommates to move out and told them what I was doing. They thought I was crazy. But I would rather be crazy than be normal and watch how other people die over small things we can do something about.
My childhood home is dedicated to Cameron because, without his story, the men who live at this home would probably never have a chance to imagine again.
Seed House truly took flight when it opened its doors to a group of young individuals in 2018, providing them with not just survival programs such as housing, food and employment but thriving programs such as lifetime support of mentoring, helping individuals discover their unique purpose and the skills to accomplish their goals in pursuing their purpose. As well as an academic success plan and a customized financial literacy program.
Over the years, the Seed House Project has continuously grown and evolved. They have forged partnerships with local governments, nonprofit organizations, and community stakeholders who share their commitment to addressing youth homelessness. These collaborations have allowed them to tap into additional resources, expand their services, and enhance their impact. As the organization expanded, they have been fortunate to welcome dedicated staff members, skilled counselors, and compassionate volunteers into their team. These individuals’ expertise and passion have played a crucial role in Seed House Project’s ability to encompass a healing-centered engagement approach focusing on each individual’s assent and not limiting to the deficiency society labels them.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It has not always been a smooth road. The first two years of our launch was working a full-time job to pay for my bills but also using my own funds to meet the need of the programs we provide. I was also living in a travel for six months of that year to save money to provide for the program. This was not the funniest time. I was embarrassed and filled with shame. Every day I had to wake up early enough to go to the gym to take a shower and charge my phone for the day. This experience helped me feel what all of the young people I serve feel almost every day. It’s one thing to know how someone feels but to actually feel what someone feels puts a whole new level to it. From this point on, I was dedicated to making this dream possible so the young people I serve can dream like I did.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Seed House Project (SHP) is a Housing & Hope Accelerator Program. We currently have two co-living facility. One is located in Northridge and the other in Westwood.
According to the Los Angeles Housing Service Authority’s (LAHSA) Homeless Count 2020, there are over 4,600 young people experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles County on the streets each day. UCLA (2020) reports that over 260,000 students are experiencing homelessness in California and are faced with making decisions that impact their ability to foresee completing their education goals, obtaining a career, and are losing hope in a community that continues to displace them.
Our philosophy at SHP is homelessness does not start with the absence of a home, homelessness starts with the absence of HOPE. We view housing as a necessary tool for executing our core mission which is to provide hope and purpose. About 90% of our youth exiting the foster care system struggle with their personal Identity and purpose of existence. Youth are labeled as “at risk youth,” “foster youth,” “homeless youth” and this creates a belief system and identity-based on these respective labels. Our goal at SHP is to create an environment of inclusion through individualism rather than exclusion by deficit-based classifications.
We developed the core of our program from the philosophy found in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. In this motivational theory, there are two tiers of needs, growth needs and deficiency needs. Deficiency needs include:
Physiological (basic survival – food, shelter, physical health)
Safety (physical safety, job security, stable income, etc.)
Love and belonging (social interaction, friendship, intimacy, family, and love)
Esteem (recognition, respect, competence, confidence, independence, etc.)
Seed House Project’s programming helps residents address each of these needs. Our housing model identifies and secures existing vacant spaces and leverages local partners and resources to build sustainable pipelines of shelter. We offer a full array of supportive services at a fraction of the cost of traditional housing. Our program also supports members who lack financial resources and family support, poor or no credit, lack of rental history, and/or other barriers preventing youth from obtaining proper housing. While this is crucial to help our young people stabilize and progress, we know much more is needed beyond just a physical place to live but also an environment that supports them.
Recognizing that our members are equipped with the financial, family, and social resources that many other young people rely on to navigate school, employment, and career development while transitioning into adulthood, we provide students with holistic support with live-in staff and a network of nonprofit partners. We realized more was needed to ensure young adults gain the internal motivation to carry them forward despite additional challenges adulthood would bring, long after they leave our program.
Our solution involves focusing additional and equal efforts towards “growth needs,” the top half of Maslow’s hierarchy pyramid. These needs include:
Cognitive needs
Aesthetic needs
Self-actualization
Transcendence
Without a connection to something positive and hopeful within this tier of need, young people often try to fill the void through trauma bonding via substance abuse and other destructive behaviors. We help them connect to their purpose and explore the variety of opportunities available to them through positive and creative avenues, addressing our youth’s full spectrum of human needs to avoid cycles of poverty, substance abuse, trauma, and despair.
Our Approach
At SHP, we utilize a Healing Centered Engagement (HCE) Approach (Ginwright 2018) that focuses on empowering, developing and mentoring youth in a community of support and care. We focus on the strength and resilience of each of our members and equip them with tools to establish and reach their education, employment and long-term life goals. This is accomplished by providing skill-building workshops, committed adult and peer mentoring, and collaborative opportunities for our youth to participate in program design and systems-change efforts so they can experience a more empowered healing process.
To mitigate their barriers and increase their chances of success, we maximize members’ time in our living community by providing numerous resources and opportunities for them to develop skills necessary for lifelong advancement. Once members have stable housing and access to three meals per day, they are no longer in survival mode. They are then more willing and able to participate in our wrap-around services, which help them build knowledge, resilience, confidence, and hope. Each member has access to the following support, all provided under our roof:
Life Skills Development Coaching: Members receive 1:1 support to ensure they progress through their scheduled classes and build academic confidence. With volunteers and partners, we host training, workshops, and experiential learning opportunities on topics including but not limited to the following: persistence and motivation, accessing community and campus resources, time management and work/life balance, note-taking, test prep and anxiety, effectively communicating with professors, and more.
Career Development: We provide a 300-hour paid career development program Students explore career interests and pathways, connect with professionals, and develop job skills through workshops, internships, and networking opportunities. Our workshops include: choosing a major, resume building, developing a career vision, and more. We partner with organizations to place interested and qualified students in short-term internships where they build a competitive advantage before they graduate. In monthly events hosted at our space, we engage adult volunteers with a variety of professional backgrounds to provide students with opportunities for informal networking and mentorship.
Financial Literacy: We host workshops and training to equip our members with knowledge and skills in fundamentals like budgeting, saving, banking, credit, and investing. We also help our members apply their knowledge and actively build a financial foundation by opening checking, savings, and retirement accounts.
Mental Health & Wellbeing: Our in-house licensed clinical staff provides our members with consistent access to counseling and therapy to help them cope with stress and anxiety as well as address more acute mental health needs. Therapy focuses on processing complex trauma; healing and growth; exploring feelings, core beliefs, and strengths; managing behaviors, and more. To address the complex trauma many students have experienced, our staff serves as a liaison with hospitals and treatment facilities and develops plans of ongoing support for members’ short and long-term mental health.
Healing Centered Engagement: We host training and workshops that combine a diverse pool of creative-learning modalities with evidence-based practices. This is a strengths-based approach that advances a holistic view of healing and re-centers culture and identity as a central feature in personal well-being. Utilizing trauma-informed care, cultural competency, and positive youth development frameworks, HCE focuses on supporting our members on seeing the asset within by transforming their trauma into a personal mission to serve their community.
Purpose Therapy: A large portion of our approach to fulfilling growth needs is actualized through our Purpose Therapy Program. Purpose Therapy is an accelerator program that teaches our young people how to transform pain into purpose through proven psychological and neurological interventions. We believe those who have experienced the most pain have the greatest potential–pain is the root of passion and once one transforms pain into passion, the purpose is revealed. Through our Purpose Therapy Program, our youth transform their traumas into missions to serve and help others. This is all led by a licensed Mental Health Therapist with additional certification in Neuro-linguistic Practices who implements these teachings through proven psychological and neurological interventions. In addition, each member has a personal Purpose Coach guiding them through the curriculum (The Cycle of Potential) and our Purpose Habits Framework (see framework attached in Appendix of Resources).
The Cycle of Potential consists of three milestones towards discovering their “why”: Pain, Power, and Purpose:
Pain: Identifying trauma in each individual, followed by clinical interventions designed to find their source.
Power: Identifying new tools to navigate around previous limiting beliefs around traumatic experiences.
Purpose: Facilitating and guiding the Transformation of a traumatic experience into a mission and purpose.
Imagineers Academy: Imagineer’s Academy is an entrepreneurial program through which we teach our youth the fundamentals of project development & business. The Imagineer’s Academy is designed to challenge our youth to plan out the goal and follow through with the necessary steps to reach that goal. This involves an array of development courses as well as 1:1 coaching around website development, business coaching, marketing and accounting. We partner with various consultants and agencies to donate services within our program.
Building trust among residents and staff while creating a healing, supportive learning environment is essential within our community. In contrast to many social service providers, which have more clinical settings, SHP feels like home. We have a large living room for group classes, training, and social gatherings; a private therapy room; full bathrooms and showers; a clothing boutique stocked with business casual, active and formal wear and toiletries; a full chef’s kitchen for preparing and serving nutritious meals, and cooking classes; dining room; laundry facilities; and computer lab and library.
What does success mean to you?
What defines success for our program is for every young person that comes through our program is granted with the internal gift of Self – actualization. We believe strongly in the concept of the Heros journey, and we believe without a hero’s journey, life can be painful. But if we can teach all our young people the power in the pain, to see it as an asset rather than a deficiency, then homelessness is temporary and an asset to their future success.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.Seedhouseproject.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seedhouseproject/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/seedhouseprojectLA/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garrett-underwood-49685653/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@seedhouseproject9504
