- This and more coming up on the "Whitney Reynolds Show."

- When the judges asked those two brothers to vacate the land, otherwise they would go to prison, they choose to go to prison.

- There are three great things.

There's faith, there's hope, charity.

The greatest of these is charity or love.

And the way that we do as artists, the way that we show love, and we think that the most deserving people of that love are the people who loved us.

- Folks that have traveled across countries, folks that have been unhoused for a decade.

Can we get them into something that says, "You're seen, you're loved, this is yours"?

Let's open your tolerance window.

Let's figure out what you actually need.

- [Announcer] The "Whitney Reynolds Show" is made possible by Simple Modern, drinkware with unique styles for adults and kids.

Take us with you.

Kevin O'Connor Law Firm.

When it comes to your injuries, we take it personally.

Together at Peace, a foundation with a mission to generate financial support for hospitals, schools, and many charities that provide compassionate bereavement care and foster spiritual resilience.

We are here to inspire tangible moments and share the light of loved ones who have passed away, always doing good in their honor.

Children's Learning Place, a school for the earliest learners dedicated to aiding every child in uncovering the power of learning.

Our curriculum is centered around empowering young students with the confidence to overcome present and future challenges to promote a brighter future for our youth and community.

The Adventures of the Harry Moon book series for kids that focuses on becoming your best self with themes of friends, anti-bullying, and responsibility.

At harrymoon.org.

Kevin Kelly.

Joeperillo.com.

Hi-Five Sports.

Fumée Claire.

Respiratory Health Association.

Hearing Health Center.

Mike Dyer with Edward Jones.

(soft music) - Welcome to the "Whitney Reynolds Show."

Today, we're talking forgotten cities and the people on a quest to replant them.

Join us as we delve into the secrets of these enigmatic places, uncovering the tales of their rise and fall and unlocking the new build.

Here we believe your story matters.

(crowd cheers) - Whatever the story is behind those scars, I think it's beautiful.

- I was that story, the one that needed a safe space.

- We can build a stage, speak life back into this community.

- So we created it.

- From this moment on, everything has changed.

- Just treat housing as a human right.

- When I was, I think 15 months old, my mom adopted me.

- I've been transitioning for three and a half years, and I'm nowhere near being close to where I want to be.

(crowd applauds) - You have this charismatic energy.

Is this the energy of like a home-dropping date?

- Yeah, this is kind of everyday energy.

It's sort of like, what does it look like to just rebuild our city one block at a time?

- You are consistently like this.

(Tim laughs) - Designer, urban planner, innovator, teacher, leader, and entrepreneur, Tim's career blurs the lines between architecture, construction, development, and public policy to support a more complete and holistic community.

Drilling down to your mission, Tim, what inspires you to have this fire and vision?

- It's just humanity at the end of the day, right?

We live in a culture and a society where we talk about housing crises or job crises or education crises, but it's a humanity crisis.

And so that drives us every day.

What does it actually look like, wherever you are on the spectrum, to have dignified housing?

- Why do you feel so much passion behind this?

Because I look at you, and I know, 'cause I've been on site with you and now I have you in studio that you love people and you love them well.

But why is that?

- I think it's because there is so much of how we pass each other in the night.

We don't see each other as humans.

And living and growing up across the country and living and traveling around the world, seeing what it looks like when humans are dissonant to each other versus when they're for each other.

That was hard coded early on sort of growing up.

It was hard coded growing up in lots of different communities where you saw hope come from people working together, and it is that need for hope and humanity, right?

And so it's sort of this day in, day out, all right, how do we actually make a house, a home, a block, a community, and a city thrive?

And I don't know where that comes from explicitly other than just a need and a hope to do better with the gifts that I've been given.

- And to be completely transparent, when I started learning about your story, I asked you on one of the Zoom calls, I said, "Why don't you just like sell these homes "and make tons of money?"

That was mind boggling.

I mean, you have a family, it costs money.

What makes you still have this like servant heart of, "I wanna lift others up"?

- We have a wonderful home, a roof over the heads of our kids and opportunity for them.

And so why not make more of that?

Why not live in a mental model of an enough economy, right?

So if I have enough to take care of my children, to celebrate and grow and raise a family, why can't we do that for more and more people?

So for us, the more families that get that, the more families that have that stability, that certainty, the more we cost it out to bring the best possible home to the most people that we can, we're better as a society, right?

It's this sort broad idea that, you know, that tide lifts everybody.

And so why not be for everybody, right?

- And what you are doing too is taking communities that now seem like they've lost the life in them and bringing it back.

He focuses on leveraging his buildings to elevate the human condition in remarkable ways.

- So many of our communities across the city, across this country have seen sort of disinvestment after disinvestment, sort of lack of care and concern.

The most recent house that we set into a community, I met the woman who lost her house there 42 years ago to a fire.

There were six homes that burned down because nobody came to put the fire out.

But what she saw was something growing out of that dirt, and she found joy in it.

When we set the very first house in West Humboldt Park, we saw gardens planted, we saw fences mended because we saw a whole community saying, "Oh, somebody is caring for us.

"Somebody's paying attention to us."

And so it's that kind of hope, right?

And it's infectious and it's addictive to see joy come out of a place that has for many people just been ignored or forgotten.

- You know, anybody, I don't wanna say anybody can build, but there's tons of companies that can do what you're doing.

Is there anybody else that has a model like yours?

- Not really.

There are lots of models that exist in each category.

And I think you hit the nail on the head.

If we're just building houses, we could have done that a while ago.

Building's complicated, but it's easy, right?

But fundamentally rethinking how we finance housing to get working-class individuals into housing, that has to be a game changer.

Fundamentally realizing that if you're moving somebody from generational or long-term renter into first-time home ownership, that you have to come around and love and support them.

And so what we found, originally thought we were just, again, building houses.

But if we're building home ownership, then those rings and those circles have to get bigger and bigger to say, "All right, what else gets in the way?"

Is it a credit score?

All right, let's partner with organizations to help people improve their credit score over time.

- Are you doing that?

- We're doing that.

- So you're bringing other experts in with you?

'Cause you know it's not just a one and done.

- No.

As an example, the two leading causes of foreclosure in many of our communities are death and disability of a wage earner.

And so we reached out, we sort of cast that net a little bit further, reached out to Northwestern Mutual and said, "What would it look like "for us on behalf of our families "to provide life insurance, disability insurance?"

So god forbid, something tragic happens, you can grieve because you're not losing your home.

You're not being foreclosed on.

And that's important, right?

So that is one of those things that you don't have do if you're building houses, but you must do if you're building home ownership.

- Having the knowledge and the history of what transpired here over the years, how a very vibrant community went from 135,000 people to now below 35,000 people.

Job loss, loss in hope, loss in an economic engine.

We spent a lot of time talking to the community, and one thing that we heard over and over again is, "Please figure out what to do about our vacant-lot issues."

And so we're championing that, trying to work with community and work with the city to bring back these vacant lots to places where families can call home.

- Getting to know folks on the block, sitting on front porches and having conversations, hearing some of the concerns that people have who may not be able to afford that home, even if it is affordable, spending that quality time.

It's hard but it's good.

'Cause, again, it's human-to-human conversation.

The crew that we've built, they come from the same communities that we work in.

We identify minority and women-owned businesses within those communities and hire them to do the work for us.

- The reason why real estate was so important and critical to my professional life as well, was because I wanted to be able to offer opportunities for home ownership to other people.

And so being able to work for a company has given me the opportunity to learn while also engaging and empowering my own desire to bring homes to communities.

- An amazing example of the house that you just saw set.

A window was open yesterday, somebody was staging the house, and the security guard on that block called his friend two miles away in another neighborhood and said, "Don't you know Tim?

"Can you ask him, let him know that the window's open?"

So these are two different neighborhoods, but this network of how community works together to sort of support each other, right?

That's trust that has to be earned, and it's trust that you have to protect because it's so easily lost in communities that have seen story after story, promise after promise, decade after decade.

- Tim's mission extends beyond rebuilding neighborhoods.

It also encompasses people who have had to leave their homes and seek refuge.

He wants them to know they are not forgotten.

When it comes to the refugee crisis, you are dipping your toe and saying, "Okay, let's actually give dignity here."

And you've actually lived in one of these homes that you're talking about to show what it's like.

- Because, again, to know the experience.

So I was blessed.

One of my 8-year-old twins, Emmanuel, joined me, and we slept on the corner of Monroe and Racine for a weekend in this tiny home.

And we did it so that we could have conversations.

I did it so that I could see if what we talked about actually played out and worked the way it did.

I can't authentically ask other people to do that if I don't know what that looks like and what that feels like.

I can't authentically scale a business and expand into other communities if I don't actually speak authentically and from a place of experience.

And so there is the version where I just kind of fly in, drop a house, sell it for a lot of money, right?

Then I don't care about that fabric.

If we believe in the dignity of housing, then it's every scale of housing.

So whether it is 8,000 square feet or 800 square feet or 80 square feet, right?

If it's dignified, if we can see each other as humans in it.

So we have asylum seekers that are arriving, we have existing unhoused populations that are growing every single day in so many communities.

And when we start to see them as other, then we start to sort of separate ourselves.

And so what we said is, "All right, if we can build beautiful housing "that people can own, "can we build beautiful housing "that people can just get a breath in?"

Folks that have traveled across countries, folks that have been unhoused for a decade, can we get them into something that says, "You're seen, you're loved, this is yours"?

Let's open your tolerance window.

Let's figure out what you actually need.

- Wow, you are incredible.

Tim, thank you so much for coming on.

- It's my pleasure.

Thank you for helping us tell this story.

(soft music) - Next up, a famous filmmaker who introduces us to "Silver Dollar Road," a family story of perseverance and not getting left behind.

Welcome to the show.

- Thank you for having me.

- "Silver Dollar Road" changed my way of thinking.

I had no idea that this story exists.

- So you still have land that are basically stolen by promoters, lawyers, entities, private entities.

And in that particular case of the Reels family, they were born on that land, their grandmother was born on that land.

They have been on that land forever, for more than 150 years.

- [Whitney] "Silver Dollar Road" is a real-life story of a family fighting to keep what they believe is theirs.

- [Family Member] Growing up here on Silver Dollar Road was so magical.

It was the one place you could go you wasn't worried about being targeted by the law.

- It's theirs.

That's where they farm, that's where they hunt, that's where they fish.

There was never any problem.

They provide for themselves.

They had an economical basis.

And starting in the '70's, they start having problem with that.

Their great-grandfather bought the land, 75 acres of land on the coast.

And he lost it by not paying taxes.

Especially in that region at the time, that's something that can happen.

I don't even think it's a lot of money.

But one of his brother was able to buy the land.

And the problem started when that brother died.

- [Family Member] This is our club, our space, anything!

- [Family Member] There's word a part of the property being sold to someone else that the family had no knowledge of.

- [Family Member] We was getting threats.

It came down and put eviction notice on Licurtis and Melvin houses.

- Hey!

- My uncle Melvin told me, "I need your help.

"If they're saying we have to sign our rights away "or go to jail, I'm going to jail."

It was heartbreaking to see them shamed.

- [Licurtis] I went in at 52, come out at 61.

They took the best years of my life.

- This documentary follows the story of the Reels family as told by the matriarch and her niece, two women who are determined to safeguard their ancestors' land.

This doc, based on a 2019 ProPublica article, examines the legal system when it comes to Black land ownership.

- For the family, it was a feeling that that cannot happen.

And when the judges asked those two brothers to vacate the land, otherwise they would go to prison, they choose to go to prison.

But the big scandal, and also I would say the most racist part of the story, is that you decide to put two older man in jail without a limit.

The urgency is to make sure that the rest of the property, meaning 65 acres that are left is safe.

- Do you think it will eventually get resolved for the Reels family?

- Grandmother is now 96 years old, and she still has the memory of everybody.

So nobody can come and say, "I want this."

She has the memory of the whole place.

But new people might come out of the bush and pretend to have part of the land.

And one of the first reaction of Mamie, the matriarch, was that, you know, she felt much more safe now because now she was not the only one having to tell the story, that the film now can speak for her.

So it was important for me to put that family on a pedestal and show them as the beautiful people that they are, despite the injustice that have come upon them.

- Academy Award nominee, Raoul Peck, is a Haitian filmmaker of both documentary and feature films.

He is known for using historical, political, and personal characters to tackle and recount societal issues and historical events.

Did you envision what you're doing today, or how did that evolve?

- So my life as a filmmaker started when I was around 26.

So when I went back to film school.

I knew that if I go into film, it was to tackle subject that I deemed more important than just entertainment.

I grew up in a country that had a dictatorship, the Duvalier dictatorship.

My parents had to leave Haiti to go to the Congo to work for the UN.

And as a young man, it was clear that I will have to go back to Haiti one day to fight the dictatorship.

I was privileged to grow up in a environment where it was not yourself first.

It was always about the collective.

As a filmmaker, and I did both, I do documentaries and I do scripted film, I do cinema, I do TV.

So you know what a story is.

As soon as you have incredible characters, you have a drama, but you have also people who has, you know, a real life and a real story to tell and who are able to tell the story.

- What do you want your passion and legacy to be when it comes to these programs?

- I came into this field for very clear reason, for social, political reason.

So when I decide to tackle a project, I'm much more in the mode of, how do I transmit what I felt, what I see, what my characters are going through to a wider audience?

That's my goal.

And I'm like the surgeon in the operation room concentrating on what I'm doing and not much thinking about myself.

You know, because I can't mix both.

You know, I really have to be sure of what I'm capturing, what I'm observing, how I am transforming it into a film much more than my own personal feelings.

I think that's something now I can start, that the film is finished, I can start to leave something else because I can see the interaction between the characters of the film and the audience.

- Oh, beautiful.

Thank you so much again.

- Thank you.

(soft music) - Now to another familiar face, Harry Lennix.

Now, he's played several roles I've personally watched, yet this new project is one I learned about firsthand.

When we did our TEDx together, he went right before mine, and his talk captivated me so much, we wanted him to come in studio and share it again.

What is your why for giving back in this way?

- When I was in high school, this is an interesting thing, my motto was a button.

I used to wear it on a button.

It was purple.

In black print it said, "Why?"

Why put into Bronzeville the arts and culture and performance and a means of expression that was invented there, but they do not have access to in an organized way and have to go other places to entertain it?

Black American culture really, performance culture is among the only indigenous art forms to the United States.

What we've done with music, what we've done with dance, what we've done with the spoken word, with the living word and for it not to be in ready access to the people who live in that community, where much of it was born, it is a sacred obligation.

And to fix that.

And we can do that.

We can build a stage, we can make a microphone, buy a microphone, write a speech, speak life back into this community where we saw when it was taken out what followed.

And so we also must know then what putting it back has the potential to do, and I think it's to bring the life back into that community.

- What did happen to make a collapse of this in that community?

- Having been there as a school teacher on the south side of Chicago, I was a music teacher at the elementary school level, and they cut the programming.

The economy was further shrinking because the industry in the '70's of course when auto industries and steel plants were closing for some very good reasons, when that was taken out, the money that funded it, both the philanthropy and the lack of funding at the governmental level made those institutions evaporate.

- So I wanna know, what was it that stirred in you, besides seeing this lack of or being there when it went away, what made you say, "Hey, I really need to go back "and create something for these kids"?

- At church, at school.

I went to a little Catholic school, but we would do a spring play and these things.

The children from other schools would come and see it.

There was this ability, almost a celebration, that we are of the belief that charity should begin at home.

As there's faith, there's hope and charity.

The greatest of these is charity or love.

And the way that we do as artists, the way that we show love, and we think that the most deserving people of that love are the people who loved us.

God has blessed me to become a kind of symbol of this, of a kid that made good from that neighborhood.

And that's my future.

That's the way that this would go on, the same thing that was given to me I can give back.

- So what exactly are your plans for Bronzeville?

- To assemble a system that can manage properties while artists can do their art.

But the idea, Whitney, really is to be self-sustaining in the sense that we can combine the commercial aspects, hotels, living places, tickets, sales, merchandise, these things in addition to providing the shell, the frame in which the art can live.

- How far are you away from seeing this come to life?

- This is generational really, in a way, to make it successful.

It has to outlive, certainly, me and my involvement with it.

We need, you know, in order to build what I think would be self-sustaining, about $100 million.

That's for this phase.

But in time, who knows, we might need a billion.

The question becomes what that's worth, what value that brings.

If I can spend a billion dollars and get something that's worth 2 billion, then I've done great.

And I think what we're trying to do is worth far more than that.

- I love it.

Well, thank you so much for coming on here.

- Thank you for having me.

This has been great.

- Stories of the rebuild.

That's something we can all learn from.

Remember, your story matters.

(soft music) (soft music) (soft music) - [Announcer] The "Whitney Reynolds Show" is made possible by: Simple Modern, drinkware with unique styles for adults and kids.

Take us with you.

Kevin O'Connor Law Firm.

When it comes to your injuries, we take it personally.

Together at Peace, a foundation with a mission to generate financial support for hospitals, schools, and many charities that provide compassionate bereavement care and foster spiritual resilience.

We are here to inspire tangible moments and share the light of loved ones who have passed away, always doing good in their honor.

Children's Learning Place, a school for the earliest learners dedicated to aiding every child in uncovering the power of learning.

Our curriculum is centered around empowering young students with the confidence to overcome present and future challenges to promote a brighter future for our youth and community.

The Adventures of the Harry Moon book series for kids that focuses on becoming your best self with themes of friends, anti-bullying, and responsibility.

At harrymoon.org.

Kevin Kelly.

Joeperillo.com, Hi-Five Sports.

Fumée Claire.

Respiratory Health Association.

Hearing Health Center.

Mike Dyer with Edward Jones.

- [Announcer] Want to stay connected to all things Whitney Reynolds?

Well, follow us on social media, and you'll get exclusive content and updates from the show.

(soft music) All episodes are available for streaming anytime.

- [Kids] Our mommy!

(soft piano music)