[Unified Purpose] Anthony Roberts from Steadfast Veterans Ep. 22

Worst Advice Ever Received

Daniela: Okay, Anthony, for today, before we get the podcast started, tell me, what’s the worst advice you’ve ever gotten? It doesn’t have to be about business. It can be just anything that you think has been terrible, terrible advice.
Anthony Roberts (AR): Wow, that’s a good one. Yeah, I wasn’t expecting that. Don’t trust your gut instinct.
D: Someone said that to you?
AR: Yes. I’ve had some people say, oh, that’s your gut instinct, don’t trust it. And every time in my life that I’ve gone against my gut instinct, my gut instinct was correct.
D: Yeah, I think that’s terrible advice just because you should know when your instinct is telling you something for a reason.
AR: Well, and I can relate a lot of that to the nonprofit since we’ve founded it and everything. You have a board of directors. You have to listen to them sometimes and give them, I like to politely say, give them the rope to hang themselves because they’re not the ones doing the work. They have great ideas in their perspective, in their world, but in reality, they don’t see what I’m dealing with on the day-to-day out at the job site. So that’s probably where that comes from. I get the way the game is played, and I have to listen to sometimes other opinions. So that’s kind of where that comes from, I guess.
D: Yeah, it’s true. And I think that’s a great way to get us started on the podcast.

Introducing the Podcast and Guest

D: Guys, welcome to Unified Purpose. You guys know what we do here. We talk about inspiring tales of compassion, of resilience, and of community spirit. You know me. I’m the host, Daniela, and I’m Penji’s partnership coordinator. And we have a great episode for today. We have an amazing guest, Tony Roberts from Steadfast Veterans. Hi, Tony.
AR: Hello, how are you doing?
D: We obviously got the ball rolling a little bit and have been talking, but I want you to introduce yourself and tell everybody watching about you and about what you guys do at Steadfast Veterans to get us started for everyone who’s not familiar with what you do.

How Steadfast Veterans Began

AR: This has turned out to be my retirement career, building homes for homeless veterans. While I was working as a contractor for the city of Indianapolis dealing with debris removal, I also maintained what was called the land bank homes for the city of Indianapolis. During that time, I encountered a squatter that I was sent out to run off from one of the properties. Come to find out, they knew his name and his cell phone number, which I thought was unusual for a squatter to have communicated with people. It used to be his parents’ house. The family had lost it when the parents died due to taxes and other things. He knew it wasn’t right to be in the house, but he was sleeping in the backyard. His name was Louis, and he was a Marine.

I’m a veteran myself, and I knew about homeless veterans, but I had never looked at it per se. When I saw the issue and the numbers, I decided to do something. So I bought the house from the city of Indianapolis for about three thousand dollars, turned around and invested about sixty-five to seventy thousand from donations, and about ninety to one hundred twenty days later, gave it to him and his family to live in. From that point forward, I’ve wanted to address the homeless veteran issue in our country. I spent quite a bit of time with the other board of directors and family and friends figuring out the best way to go about it. Since we didn’t have a pressing issue for us at the time, we decided to build the best nonprofit we thought we could.

Why Veterans Struggle After Service

D: I’m really curious about this topic, Anthony, because I’m not American. I don’t live in the States. And I’ve heard that there’s a lot of veterans who, when they come back from war or service in the U.S., struggle with getting jobs and homelessness. My question to you is, I’m not familiar with the military system in the United States, but I don’t understand why this happens. Where does this issue come from that so many people are left hanging once they’re back to being civilians?
AR: Boy, that is a loaded question. First part, while in the service, it’s very structured. You know what time you wake up, go to bed, eat breakfast, etc. Somebody else decides your daily schedule. They tell you when to jump, how high, and how often. The other part is that the military, both enlisted and officer, is all volunteer now. We got rid of the draft many years ago. I think the last member of the draft got out about ten or fifteen years ago. So everybody there is there by choice.

Some join because they want to travel, but quite honestly, I think the majority sign up out of a sense of duty or for the education benefits. Many go in thinking about the education more than what could happen while serving.

D: That happens here in El Salvador with priesthood. We have a big Catholic community, and a lot of people study to become nuns and priests for education and housing.
AR: Well, exactly. A good example—while I was a contractor for the city, one of the guys there was a Marine with a traumatic brain injury. His mother passed away while we worked together, so we went down to support him for her funeral. I was born and raised in Indiana, but I was shocked by his hometown. It had a one-pump gas station store—like an old general store from fifty or sixty years ago. The nearest Walmart was over an hour away.

I asked him where everyone worked. He said a plant about forty-five minutes away, and that you had to be on a waiting list to get a job there. That’s what I’d call the working poor class. A kid in that town who wants to do something might jump at a recruiter’s offer: room, board, health care, four weeks vacation, and training.

Family Influence and Service Challenges

AR: So that’s one reason they go in. A lot of them do it because their parents did. I went in because my grandfather on both sides served in World War II. My mother’s father survived the Battle of the Bulge in the Army. He went in with jet black hair, earned two Purple Hearts, was shot in the head, and came home with white hair.

I think the reality is that some service members make bad choices, and I want to be honest about that. But there are also regular people who are homeless because they made bad choices, so that’s not unique to veterans. The other part is that when you get out, you’re used to that structure. You don’t fit into the nine-to-five world. You don’t fit in with micromanagement or the “big fish in the little pond” scenario. You don’t put up with it. In the military, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s called a duck. In the outside world, they call that a manager.

That’s one reason I feel veterans don’t fit in. Then there are people who’ve been in roles where they’ve never served or followed orders. They may have personal issues with what the military does because of what they see in the media. They forget that nobody in the military chooses all of their missions. They are told to go do them. People may not like what the commander in chief does, but he gives the orders, and it’s your job to follow them.

D: Yeah, I feel like a big military thing is to not question orders. I understand that perspective because if you’re in the middle of a war or battle, you can’t debate the ethics or logistics in the moment. But I can understand how having that mentality outside the military can be difficult to adapt to.
AR: Right. And there are also people who joined with certain goals but were placed in positions that conflicted with their values. I can’t remember the name of the movie, but it was about a kid who signed up to be a medic because he didn’t want to carry a gun or take a life. He fought to serve in that role but still had to face difficult moral situations. That can haunt people and lead to PTSD.

My father was in the Air Force, a crew chief during Korea on a helicopter. They didn’t call it PTSD back then—they called it shell shock. Late in life, I learned he had seen the pilot of his helicopter shoot a child who was approaching. The parents had strapped a bomb to the child to try to take out the helicopter. The pilot made the right call to protect everyone, but that moment deeply affected my father for the rest of his life. He was just a mechanic, yet witnessing that event changed him, our family, and his children.

D: I think we don’t talk enough about trauma and how much it influences how you interact with the world. It happens on a smaller scale with parenting or daily experiences, but I can’t imagine having to witness something like that—or be the person who had to act in that moment—and then go on living as if nothing happened. That’s impossible.
AR: Exactly. When they come back, veterans are all processing something, whether it’s mental or physical. Many get physically injured, and then they’re prescribed opioids for pain. Doctors were handing them out freely—take your oxy, take your oxy. It relieved the pain, but it also created addiction. Then the addict can’t work, loses the job, lashes out at family, and ends up homeless. It’s a vicious cycle.

D: Yeah, it’s just one problem stacked on top of another.
AR: Right. And that’s why I always say, if we provide a veteran with a one-bedroom, one-bath home, the rest—mental, physical, and holistic care—can follow. But without that roof over their head, without knowing where they’ll shower or cook, they can’t heal mentally.

Female Homeless Veterans and Housing Statistics

AR: There are some that I’d be kidding if I said no veteran will ever overdose in one of our homes. I can’t tell you that. I hope that by providing that home and the community amenities we offer, they’ll see the light not to do that, but you can’t control everything.

The other thing I point out—short and sweet—is that the military needs to do a better job of transitioning service members out of service. I think they could do more. And I think the homeless veteran numbers aren’t even accurate. They fluctuate between fifty and sixty thousand when counted in January each year, but I don’t think they reflect the true number of female homeless veterans.

Statistically, if you have X number of men and X number of women in the military, there should be a proportionate number of both genders homeless.
D: So you don’t see females in the numbers?
AR: No, you don’t. And if you think about it, if your family or friends knew you were homeless, would they be more likely to offer a woman a couch before they would a man? Probably. So those women are still homeless—they’re couch surfing, staying with friends for a few weeks, or housesitting for someone. They never hit the statistics.

Housing Models and Challenges

D: I have a question because I’m from El Salvador. We have a lot of homelessness and poverty, so housing programs are popular. But what’s happened is that nonprofits build houses for people, and then the recipients struggle. They can’t afford upkeep or manage the finances, and sometimes they say the house caused more problems than life on the street. I wonder if that happens to you, because it’s common here.
AR: I kind of equate that to giving someone a car. If they don’t know how to change the oil, check the air pressure, or even put gas in it, you can’t expect it to run well long-term. That’s why we took time to build what I think is one of the best nonprofits.

If you look at the homeless veteran issue, there’s the housing side and the wraparound services side—emotional, physical, financial, and addiction support. You’d be shocked how many groups offer wraparound services but not housing. They expect private landlords to handle that.

With rentals, veterans who qualify get a HUD-VASH voucher, where the government pays rent for a period of time to help them rehabilitate. The wraparound services come from another agency. What we do is provide the homes. We own and maintain them. Our homes are 525 square feet, one bedroom, one bath. Unlike most tiny homes with cramped bedrooms, ours fit a bed with nightstands on both sides and space to walk around. The bathroom is wheelchair accessible, though a veteran needing a wheelchair may require assisted living.

We target ambulatory veterans who need to get back on their feet. Steadfast owns the homes, maintains them, and collects the HUD-VASH rent from the government, which allows us to keep growing.

Adjustment Challenges for Injured Veterans

D: I can imagine a veteran would also need time to adjust if they come home with an injury. Some return without limbs, and that’s a huge adjustment—figuring out how to live without legs or arms after having them your entire life. There needs to be time and support for them to become stable again.
AR: Exactly. We’ve also realized there are many good groups doing great work for homeless individuals and veterans. But I approached it differently.

If a company donates or sponsors a home, the money goes only to construction. It doesn’t pay the executive director’s salary, office phones, or overhead—it’s completely separate. Donations are only for the build.

We looked at organizations like the American Red Cross. Sometimes only thirty to forty cents of every donated dollar goes to the mission, because they have massive operational costs—vehicles, insurance, etc. That’s not necessarily bad; it’s their model. But we wanted a different model from the start.

We have donations on one side, and on the other, the federal government pays the HUD-VASH voucher rent. That rent covers staff growth and the loans we took to build the homes.

D: That’s amazing. I think people forget that nonprofits need logistics and business operations just like companies. A nonprofit is like being a business owner—you have employees, people depending on you, and desk work that keeps everything running.
AR: Exactly. I’d never run a nonprofit before, but I’ve gotten a Ph.D. in it over the last six or seven years. I’ve studied a lot, taken courses, and followed people like Dan Pallotta.

He told the story of a Boys and Girls Club CEO who doubled both donations and the number of kids served. In the private sector, she would’ve been rewarded greatly. In the nonprofit world, she was criticized for her salary. That’s why many top-tier executives stay in the private sector—they donate money, sit on nonprofit boards, and avoid the scrutiny that comes with running one.

D: That happens a lot. Companies like to make donations for PR or tax write-offs, but the nonprofit’s actual needs can get overlooked.
AR: Exactly. I reached out to American insulation manufacturers—none were interested. But a German-owned company with a plant in Indiana, Knauf Insulation, donated insulation for all seventeen of our homes. A German company saw the need for U.S. veterans when American companies didn’t.

Sometimes I don’t even need money—just materials or cost pricing. Skipping the retailer and paying the manufacturer’s cost can save thousands.

Business Priorities vs. Values

D: I can understand if a small business can’t give much, but there are big companies that have plenty and still choose not to help.
AR: Over here, every April, people complain about paying taxes. I tell them: choose where your money goes. You’re not going to avoid paying taxes, but you can direct some of it to causes you care about. Would you rather give a million to the U.S. government with no control over its use, or $750,000 to nonprofits and $250,000 in taxes, where you know how most of it is spent?

D: In capitalist societies, the competition to grow a business often clouds values. It’s not just an American thing—it’s the hustle culture everywhere. As businesses grow and more people join, they can lose sight of their original mission.
AR: Agreed. And in construction, there’s a lot of “this is how we’ve always done it.” But with modern technology, is it still the best way? Many don’t want to change.

D: That happens in many industries. Some have more power or privilege, and they should use it to help others, even in small ways. It doesn’t have to be building a house—it could be something as simple as opening a door for someone.
AR: The hardest nonprofit to start and run is housing. A friend told me I’m really a real estate developer who happens to help homeless veterans. Most developers focus on maximizing profit.

When I was working with the city for approvals, the battalion fire chief suggested installing a residential fire sprinkler system instead of widening the road for fire trucks. That trade-off saved me over $100,000. And the sprinklers cost less than 1% of the home’s price. I learned I’m the first homebuilder in Indiana to willingly put fire sprinklers in homes.

D: We should be more concerned with safety and comfort than financial gain. Unfortunately, money often comes first.

Closing and Call to Action

D: Before we end, Tony, I want to give you space to promote something—if anything resonated with our audience, if they want to work with you, donate, or learn more, where should they go?
AR: You can find us at steadfastveterans.org. If you choose to donate, you can do it there. One hundred percent of donations go to the build process—permits, contractors, electricians, plumbers, supplies. That money may pay an electrician’s paycheck, but that’s fair—it supports the mission, not our overhead. And I want to stress: be good humans, think of others, and put people first.
D: I’ll add your website link to the video description so people can easily reach you.
AR: That works for me.
D: Thank you so much for being on the podcast today. It was great to learn from you and hear about your mission—especially as someone outside the U.S., I see this issue happen a lot, so I was curious to hear your perspective.
AR: Thank you for having me.
D: Have a great day, everybody. I’ll see you on the next episode. Bye.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-roberts-54b50a131

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