Business ethics professor Dr. Andy Gustafson fixes up old apartment buildings and homes, but that avocation has turned into more than just preserving unique architecture: He has renovated lives.
What started out as a hobby has turned into a community-changing effort. Gustafson grew up in Aurora, Neb. and purchased his first home there. After teaching himself different renovation techniques, he moved to Minneapolis and then came to Omaha. Gustafson now owns properties in the area around 30th and Chicago streets, including his own home.
Gustafson renovates these homes with the help of the men he met through purchasing the homes: The prior tenants. Most of these men were unemployed. He taught many of them trade skills including dry wall, glasswork, window installments, tiling and flooring. Gustafson’s neighborhood had previously been wrought with prostitution and drug use. While he wanted to remove the crime from his neighborhood, he didn’t want to completely alter it.
“I didn’t want to just gentrify the neighborhood and kick out everybody and make it a completely different neighborhood. My goal was always to fix up these buildings and keep them as original as I could,” Gustafson said. “I wanted to keep and rebuild these old houses because I thought they were really cool. But I also wanted to have more control in the neighborhood, of who is going to live in the buildings. If you have control of who lives in the buildings, you have more control of what type of community is there.”
Gustafson owns 14 properties total in Omaha, Aurora and Minneapolis. Through his efforts he has changed the lives of many, including the men who work for him.
Mike, one of Gustafson’s workers, appreciates the work Gustafson does.
“I had raccoons and squirrels living inside my house. I had a prostitute living next to me, so I had interesting visitors all the time – drug dealers, people with guns standing on my front porch,” Mike said.
“It was horrible. And then he bought the house, and six months later it’s all cleaned up everybody’s gone – there’s no trouble, there’s no bad people.”
Currently, Gustafson has five men working for him on his homes who, without that work, might still be unemployed.
“My goal in doing that – I knew it would be better for my tenants if I had less cop cars and less prostitution in my neighborhood. They help me and I help them,” Gustafson said.
Gustafson works very closely with these men, both on a professional level and a personal level to ensure they receive compensation for their work and helping them learn the trade of renovation.
“The changes he has made in our neighborhood have been life-altering for residents,” Mike said.
Gustafson said he, too, can see the changes. While he restores the homes in the neighborhood to support the community, he also ensures the homes keep their unique architecture and originality.
“You can’t just go from knife fights and prostitutes to an upscale neighborhood, but there is an in-between there, which is a more bohemian and artsy feel. I actually wouldn’t mind if it always stayed that way,” Gustafson said.