RSI Dream Communities, the Newport Beach nonprofit organization founded by Orange County entrepreneur and philanthropist Ronald Simon, and Olive Crest joined forces in late September to break ground on a 16-unit apartment building for transitional housing.
The building, to be built on a parking lot behind Olive Crest’s office building in Santa Ana, would house homeless and housing insecure adults within Orange County. It is the first of five such buildings in the works across Southern California.
Simon’s RSI Dream Communities is donating the entire project to Olive Crest, a nonprofit that provides counseling, education, housing and other services to children and families in need.
RSI Dream Communities, as part of a$100 million campaign to build transitional housing for unhoused young adults between the ages of 18 and 25, also plans to build similar apartment projects in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Palm Desert and Riverside. The campaign would also fund housing projects in Washington state.
The effort is the latest initiative to reduce homelessness by Simon, who in 2021 announced an initiative to boost assets at the Simon Foundation for Education and Housing from $33 million to more than $400 million.
He was approached to help fund Olive Crest’s transitional housing project as part of a campaign to provide scholarships to teens and young adults who needed more secure shelter, according to Jim Palmer, president and CEO of RSI Dream Communities.
The Olive Crest supporter told Simon, “Hey, we’ve got these young people that could be candidates for Simon scholarships, but they don’t have reliable housing. Would you be interested in helping us with your professional understanding and engineering of homebuilding?”
“That made a lot of sense to Ron,” Palmer told the Business Journal. “He saw that as a bridge for these young people to be able to succeed in life and maybe even join his scholarship program.”
The Simon Foundation has funded more than $100 million in scholarships for high school, college and grad students.
Palmer, who took over his position earlier this year, is well known as the long time CEO of the OC Rescue Mission shelter that provides, meals, rehabilitation and career placement services for locals struggling with homelessness.
Simon Fights Bureaucracy
Simon has successfully built three companies, Perma-Bilt Industries, a bathroom cabinet manufacturer begun by his father in 1949; RSI Home Products, the world’s largest and most profitable kitchen and bath cabinet manufacturer that was sold in 2017 for $1.1 billion, and homebuilder RSI Communities, which was sold for $500 million.
He ranked No. 37 on the Business Journal’s most recent list of the wealthiest in Orange County, with an estimated $1.5 billion net worth.
One of Simon’s passions is to help reduce homelessness in Orange County. In 2008, Simon set out to develop housing using public funds in Santa Ana. His efforts were met with pushback by city officials and residents.
The Simon Family Foundation built affordable units in Santa Ana, and later in Buena Park. The foundation, however, hung up its housing arm after struggling to navigate through the bureaucratic red tape of local governments.
Today, RSI Dream Communities is aiming to dodge the cumbersome bureaucratic process by using private funds, which shaves three to five years off the development process, according to officials.
“The most difficult places to accomplish this are areas like OC, where there’s very expensive land and there isn’t an abundance of it,” Simon told the Business Journal earlier this year. “But we are going to work our tails off to make this happen.”
Aiming to Serve 1.2M Children by 2030
Olive Crest is Orange County’s 7th largest nonprofit, with a reported $78.2 million in revenue for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2023.
Olive Crest’s employees are building the apartments as part of Operation Independence, a program that helps young adults who are homeless or housing insecure find a stable place to live and transition into becoming self-sufficient adults.
The 16-unit Santa Ana building is scheduled to open by the fall of 2025 and would house up to 32 young adults, between the ages of 18 and 25, at any given time. Each unit features two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen and a living room.
Anyone taking up residence in the new apartment building will have access to counseling, educational programs, mentoring and one-on-one case management.
Olive Crest will be able to provide the young adults with shelter at one of its five locations once they are operational, according to Olive Crest CEO Donald Verleur II.
“When we were celebrating our 50th anniversary, the board said, ‘How do we really have a bigger impact,’” Verleur told the Business Journal. “They came up with a vision, which is to serve 1.2 million children by 2030. And we’re doing that through expanding our children and family resource centers but also building housing for youth.”
Olive Crest places about 600 youth a year in transitional housing, including about 60 in Orange County.
Besides RSI Dream Communities, Olive Crest partnered with The Crean Foundation, The Larry and Helen Hoag Foundation and The Oltmans Foundation to develop the transitional housing project in Santa Ana.
Orange County, according to statistics provided by Olive Crest, has 27,000 people between the ages of 12 and 24 who are homeless or housing insecure.
“Without housing and support programs, these teens [and young adults] are less likely to complete their education, find employment and make healthy relational decisions,” per an Olive Crest statement.
Olive Crest was founded in 1973 and serves more than 5,000 children and families per day in Southern California, Nevada and Washington.
