Effective immediately, we are starting to implement the following changes:

1. We are shifting our office\'s efforts to providing free business services to
those in need via our venture capital group (the incubator group) and/or our
business training program (MyLife:MyBusiness).  If you wish to follow us and
keep up with what we are doing in other efforts (both in America and abroad),
please sign up for the newsletter on the MyLife:MyBusiness web site
(http://www.MyLifeMyBusiness.com/subscribe_newsletter.html) as we will probably only be sending out one more update before we close this newsletter.  Although this is mostly a \"business help\" newsletter, it\'s nearly always filled with our humanitarian updates and what we\'re trying to do, in order to make this a better world for our children.  Or, if you prefer, just reply to this email and
include your name, state, whether you own a business, and which email you\'d
like to use, and Jared will add you to the list.
2.  We will be migrating our entire database (yes, your anonymity will remain
that way) to a larger organization who is helping continue the housing efforts.
We will be sending out a separate email to all volunteers asking them to begin
altering their efforts as the housing organizations (such as this one) begin
working closer with the Red Cross and FEMA.
3.  Finally, the infrastructure that we current have will be donated to (most
likely) a domestic violence center or something along those lines so that they
can use the platform to further their efforts.

Thanks to your generous offer and the offers of many thousands of your fellow Americans, we have a huge database of beds to offer evacuees. Because of the conditions on the ground in the Gulf Coast and in the cities evacuees are being taken to, finding semi-permanent housing may not be the first thing on people's minds. However, as more and more people reach safe harbor, our database will become ever more useful and hopefully, ever more used. Relief agencies that have coordinated similar efforts in the past tell us that it may be days and weeks.

:An important question and each "placement group" may have different approaches.  For example;  MoveOn (hurricane housing.org) cannot screen applicants, so we cannot guarantee that the people who contact you are evacuees. Please use your judgment about accepting guests. You will be the one initiating contact with the person requesting housing, so it will be your decision whether to offer housing.

-Gretna was not affected by the flooding, but there was quite a bit of wind damage and the area was literally depleted of all resources due to looting. If any of the residents left their town, they were not allowed back in, so most of them were staying in the area, hoping to salvage their homes. Consequently food and water was in high demand. We worked with Friend Ships www.friendships.org to distribute supplies to the locals. Friend Ships founder Ron Tipton was kind enough to let us stay on one of their ships docked on the Mississippi directly across from the Navy ship that Bush stayed on.

-New Orleans was like a ghost town. The city was still flooded in most areas. We walked down the streets of some of the neighborhoods. Each house was marked with red or green spray paint from the local police and military stating the number dead in each house. It was a horrifying feeling to walk through the streets and the houses and know that so many had lost their lives. The smell was almost unbearable. They were tagging the bodies, but not collecting them due to the more urgent need for manpower geared towards rescuing victims and getting them to shelters.

-Slidell was hit the hardest, as the eye of the storm passed directly over it. Our team helped victims to empty out their houses and put everything out on the street in hopes of salvaging their homes. This was probably the most emotional time for us all. These people were having to throw out years of memorabilia, furniture, pictures, etc. For many of them, it’s all they have in the world. This was a very sobering moment for all involved. We shed some tears with the evacuees as we left their ravaged homes.

-Baton Rouge was completely chaotic. It was almost impossible to drive or use our cell phones. We almost felt more helpless there than in the gulf areas. We were only there for a day, but we were able to visit some of the shelters. It was quite similar to Houston; organized chaos.

 

It’s 12am and the beginning of day 12 of The Open House Project.   We’re trying not to send out as many update emails since we’re not really sure how much detail you want to know about what’s going on behind the scenes here.  I honestly feel that Jared, Marilyn, David, Tricia, or Ray should be here writing this with me since they all have pretty much abandoned their lives to focus on this 24x7 for the past week.  Of all the companies that we have built as a venture capital firm, none of them have evolved as rapidly and emotionally as this one.  I have never been part of a team that has put together such a dizzying display of coordinated efforts in such as short period of time.

We were flooded with so many volunteers last week, that we quickly had to scramble to figure out how to manage everything.  We’ve also been flooded with emails (numbering in the THOUSANDS) and phone calls, so PLEASE excuse us for not responding as fast or as detailed as we could.  As organized and as thorough as we are trying to be, building a small project such as this one is simply a matter of trial and error.  We had no blueprint of what a successful house-matching project would look like (although I think that we could write a small novel on it at this point).  Trying to determine the processes that works best for each situation and the best methods to communicate to volunteers, evacuees, host families has been a challenge.  Determining the best use of available man hours has been a challenge as well.  At the end of the day, this project will be measured by its ability not to generate homes, but to get people into those homes as fast as possible, so that people aren’t wasting their savings on hotel bills, or laying on a cot in the middle of a college basketball court.  What we have definitely learned is that the MISSING LINK in a project like this is the physical foot volunteer that can get to the shelters, help get the forms filled out, and get the people matched and out of the shelter

I will continue to say this… Thank you all for being so patient and generous.  The email we sent out about the fax machine result in nearly 200 offers within 2 hours, and we had a fax machine being delivered to Dorothy in 10 minutes.  Thanks again for your support

David has been manning the emails and the phones.  The fax volunteer(s) have been entering the data into the system and sending out matches.  Jared and Ray have been traveling across the gulf working with shelters and the homeless.  Marilyn has become the resident “Shelter Expert.”  Tricia has been working behind the scenes helping to get the process of matching in order.  And I have made my new home on a couch in our bonus room.  This place looks like a small cockpit with the laptops all over the place.

a note from Marilyn (our primary shelter/matching coordinator in Nashville): 

“I've been volunteering for the Open House Project for a week or so now, and many things are starting to improve.  Shelter residents are reuniting with family members, finding jobs and figuring out their next steps.  I have spoken to literally thousands of people across the country who've volunteered their homes. 

The problem is getting those vacancies filled with evacuees.  From all of my experiences (and I've had many this past week) with the Red Cross and FEMA, they are only referring evacuees to websites like this one for housing.  I've spent hours totaling days at a shelter here in Nashville, and Friday was the first time I saw any internet access.  There are many evacuees being left out of the process.  We desperately need foot volunteers to physically get the hard copy fax forms to the shelter residents.  You can make a difference. 

Just this morning I put a Katrina evacuee on a plane to New Mexico.  His process from making his housing request to boarding the plane was less than 48 hours!  In some cases, we can have placements in as little as 4 hours! 

We can get things done, and we can get them done quickly.  Spread the word.  We've got the housing, but we can't place the displaced families without their housing request forms.  And thank you so much for opening your hearts and homes.”

 

Thanks again to everyone!