Why I’m Starting a Lifelong Project to Bring Universal Housing to All

There’s something that I call the world’s most obvious problem. It’s that if no one asked to be alive, why do we have to pay to be here? Even if we have no other way to live but to pay, I wonder if, deep down, we still know what is right. I hold the view that we all deserve a roof over our heads, regardless if we can afford it. People are born on this planet with no choice at all and have to spend most of their lives working to pay for their own survival. That sounds like a … crime. The world we live in has made housing a commodified product. It’s profit-driven and has been capitalized, but the illusion that it must be this way is a veil that is waiting to be lifted.

Universal housing seems impossible, or something that perhaps one day, long into the future, can be achieved. But I can’t swallow that. Waiting for a response to a violation seems like poor judgment.

In fact, the human race has a long history of poor judgment. We like to wait and deny. Before the 1800s, public education was largely reserved for wealthy families. In America, you couldn’t go to school if you were born in a lower-class family. You were expected to do manual labor, because public education wasn’t seen as necessary by the government. However, some people questioned that premise and after challenging the world, education is now accepted as a human right. It’s not that time passed, it’s that minds opened.

But our minds stay closed most of the time. Only 80 years ago, millions of Jews were persecuted during the Holocaust for nothing more than their identity. Only 60 years ago, Black Americans were sprayed with fire hoses and attacked by dogs. And only 40 years ago, authorities allowed lead poisoning in homes and schools and turned a blind eye because of industry profits, all while generations of children were forced to suffer life-long damage. This is all to make one big point: we cannot just accept the world we inherit. To do so is to betray our own potential to change it. Yet no one wants to address one of the most pressing and overdue birthrights of all: shelter.

Actum is a nonprofit organization to create free universal housing for all. It’s about guaranteeing a place to live for everyone. It’s a mission of the heart and I needed people with good hearts. I gathered a group of three of my best friends from school and said, “Would you like to embark on something worthwhile?” They immediately jumped on board. We’re not very conventional. When my friends clock out of their jobs, all of them in different careers, they come home to brainstorm how to create free housing. We played video games together, we were all broke together, and they value goodness as a virtue. These guys have nothing to gain but to see this mission through. We may not be the smartest humans in the world, but the smartest architects out there aren’t working on this. If they were, Actum wouldn’t need to exist. I knew my friends were the perfect people for this mission because they care. So in the blink of an eye, we filed paperwork to be a 501(c)(3) organization, opened up a bank account, and launched our website.

The models that currently exist offer “affordable housing,” or target low-income individuals, but human beings don’t deserve low-cost, they deserve no-cost. I want Actum to be about building a home for everyone, regardless of income, location or circumstance. How do we do it? We fundraise money and reinvest those earnings into stable index funds, so Actum can buy or build apartment buildings every year, forever. On a lottery basis online, people will be invited to live in Actum residences. It’s their home for however long they’d like. And as long as the building stands, it won’t just house the current tenants, but humans across the ages. This would be the first ever collective effort to address free universal housing as a human right. One building that alters the lives of generations of humans after us. After the second residence, Actum will build more, and more – all across the world. Actum will scout cheap apartment buildings, look to renovate abandoned motels, construct space-efficient buildings for larger amounts of tenants, and in other areas, buy land and assemble tiny homes.

I’m in my twenties. This is the age where people typically start to get selfish. In our twenties, we want experiences and freedom – but I think this is the exact time when good dreams die; when you’re young enough that you have the energy to do, but just old enough to want to look out for yourself. I don’t know how long I’ll be alive, so instead of being distracted, I want to seek the truth. And the truth says something is missing. And I have a deep desire to look for it – because it’s fair. Both my parents struggled with housing. My father died in the bathtub of his government subsidized unit in San Francisco. My mother slept in her car while I studied Shakespeare in college. I have a passion for cinema, but no fictional plot compares to the urgency of the real-world mission of universal housing. Actum is a new story I wish to see through. In Latin, “actum” literally means “to act.” And that’s what the world must do if it seeks change.

Culturally, we may not accept at first this idea of universal housing. But the alternative is to rely on the government to define fairness for us. How is that going? California had $24 billion to fight homelessness in five years, and the state reported it can’t even track where the money went. If you look further, you’ll find $145 million was spent to build 407 living units. But if you and I bought tiny homes at $25,000 each, for 407 people, it would only amount to 7% of what the government spent. And let’s look at the headlines this year. The U.S. government was audited and exposed for having billions of dollars’ worth of untraceable payments and other counts of fraud. Meanwhile, what does the nonprofit scene look like? Well, the CEOs of nonprofits are known to be paid high salaries – the CEO of one of the leading NGOs makes $450,000. That’s why I told my friends, “None of us will ever get paid. We aren’t them. We’ve never been them.” And we’ll set the example that not everyone is an investor seeking a return or an entrepreneur expecting a profit. Greed is not the status quo. Kindness is sustainable.

Some argue that giving people a free place to live will make them lazy. To them I say, “A basic need doesn’t need to be earned.” Lazy, productive, whatever you are, the larger issue isn’t what housing does to you – it’s ensuring that you get housing in the first place. Unfortunately, too many people are rooted in the idea we should “work hard” to deserve a place to live. They’ve been lied to. Not that a human right needs a reason, but consider the stability that allows people to pursue education, personal development, passions and the opportunity to see the world or raise a family without the constant stress of a made-up expense we’ve accepted as part of life. Just imagine if we never made public education available simply because society feared it would lose farmers? The right for all children to read was deemed too disruptive to us! Disruption is a great consequence for a step toward justice. And too expensive! Thank God we prioritized long-term benefits over short-term costs. Presumptions and opinions don’t negate the ethical standards for humanity.

Actum is more than just a nonprofit trying to solve a housing crisis. It is sending a clear message: we are now in the beginning of a worldwide movement to recognize free housing as a birthright. I think this is a transformative era and we’re on the brink of a change that will shape the future of the planet.

Admittedly, many of us don’t see eye to eye. The world is at war. There is so much anger. And so many reasons to be angry. But deep down, we’re not so far apart. Our hearts still beat in our chest, whether or not we speak the same language. Not so long ago, we were kids who could barely reach the kitchen counter. Now, we can reach our hands out to help others. Forward isn’t in the advancement of our feet, but in the holding of our hands. I am thrilled to see how far we go.

Featured image, showing Kristian Ventura on the set of School Spirits, is by Ed Araquel / Paramount+; all images courtesy Kristian Ventura.