Before Roberta Hoskie became famous for founding the Ms. Millionaire Mindset and the Outreach Property Management, she was a single mother living on monthly welfare.
The Beginning
Roberta was born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut. When her parents divorced, 8-year-old Roberta and her 3 other siblings stayed with her mother. Sadly the family struggled financially for years.
At age 17, Roberta got pregnant and began living on monthly welfare. She had to provide not only for herself but for her son as well. About 22 members of Roberta’s family lived in the same housing projects. Asides from the environmental factors, the young woman had scars from trauma and abuse.
Her breakthrough moment came in a church service, where she was standing in a prayer line holding her son. The pastor had pointed to her child saying “Look at your son. His life is directly linked to yours… Directly linked to what you do.” Then he laid hands on her and she passed out.
That experience made Roberta do some ‘soul-searching’ by asking an important question, “What was her life?” She had seen first-hand the poverty she was surrounded by and wondered the kind of life her son would have. Her son’s father was a drug dealer and she was surrounded by generational poverty. Roberta decided her son would not deal with drugs or live in poverty and started to work towards keeping her promise.
Breaking out
Roberta obtained her associate degree in office administration at Gateway Community and Technical College and fortunately got an internship at Yale University at the age of 20. She was able to buy a home through Yale’s home buying program and after four years, was able to sell it off at a much higher price.
She left Yale University in 2002 and joined the staff at Albert Einstein College of Medicine as a departmental administrator. Two years later, she bought a new house and started her real estate business—Outreach Property Management. It was not all business for Roberta, in 2006, she founded Outreach Foundation, a non-profit organization that provides affordable housing for low and moderate-income families. She also founded the Outreach Realty School to provide training to individuals going into the real estate business.
Even with these achievements, Roberta took a step further and founded Ms. Millionaire Mindset Sisterhood, a faith-based group for women devoted to breaking the curse of poverty over them and their loved ones.
One Good Deed
Roberta had been trying to write a book, desiring to tell her story but she was not sure about including her experiences in it. She began to write journals to accompany her 21 days mindset cards and discovered she could not help but add some of her experiences.
One day while roaming the streets of downtown New Haven, Elmer Alvarez, a homeless man, made a shocking discovery on the floor: A check for $10,000 written out to Roberta Hoeske. Rather than see it as an easy payday, Alvarez searched for the owner.
After meeting Roberta, she said, “He didn’t know whose name was on the check, he didn’t know that at one point I was a single mother, I was at one point on welfare, and at one point found myself homeless.”
Hoskie recorded her meeting with Alvarez as she paid him handsomely with a cash reward but did not stop there. She secured an apartment for him and paid his rent for seven months to help him get back on his feet.
She invested in him going through her real estate school and they are currently working on a project together. They plan to build a transition house for homeless teenagers and adults, with Alvarez serving as an advisor. “I know what it is to be homeless. Nobody deserves to live like that,” he said. Today, Alvarez is on her board of directors. “It is his vision that God gave him when he was in shelters that is helping us shape what we are in the process of putting together right now,” Hoskie said.
Helping Alvarez gave Hoeske the strength she that she needed to write her book where she shared her experiences and how she grew from having nothing to earning six figures.
Today, Hoeske is happily married with three children.
Everyone has the potential to be great, only if we look unto GOD and work hard towards that dream.
Ruth Soro has been a journalist for over 20 years.
