Homeless Man Turns Abandoned Fast Food Restaurant Into Hidden Home With Heat And A Secret Entrance

There are more empty commercial

buildings in America right now than

there are homeless Americans. Let that

sit for a moment. Approximately 14% of

all strip malls in this country sit

vacant. Tens of thousands of standalone

restaurants, big box stores, office

buildings, [music] and warehouses across

every county in every state are

completely unused.

By the most conservative estimates,

there are over a million empty

commercial structures in the United

States with intact roofs, intact walls,

and intact infrastructure.

At the same time, over 770,000 Americans

sleep outside or in vehicles or in

shelters tonight.

The problem is not a shortage of

buildings. The problem is not a shortage

of people who need them.

>> [music]

>> The problem is that the buildings are

tracked by one system and the people are

tracked by an entirely different system,

and neither system is designed [music]

or permitted to bring them together.

The empty buildings sit on real estate

ledgers as commercial assets that have

to be sold for a price the owners want.

Even when the owners are out-of-state

investment firms that have not visited

the property in years.

The homeless people sit on social

service intake lists waiting for shelter

beds that will never become available

because the shelter system was designed

for a crisis a fraction of the size. The

buildings rot. The people die outside in

winter storms. And nobody in any

official capacity is allowed to look at

the situation and [music] say what every

honest person knows when they see it.

There are buildings sitting empty. There

are people who need shelter.

The math is not complicated. Only the

systems are.

One man named Russell Garrett looked at

the situation and decided to solve it

for [music] himself.

Officer Brian Holloway has driven past

the same closed restaurant on Route 41

in Southwest Indiana every Tuesday and

Friday morning for the past 2 years and

3 months.

It sits at the corner of Route 41 and

Crescent Boulevard. A single-story brick

building with the iconic red roof that

anyone who grew up in America in the

1980s or the 1990s will recognize

immediately.

It was a Pizza Hut from 1986 until the

chain consolidated locations in 2021.

The windows have been boarded since. The

parking lot has cracks running through

it that have grown wider every season.

Officer Holloway has, on more than one

occasion, made a mental note that

someone really ought to do something

about that building. He has never seen

anything unusual about it. He has never

noticed any movement. He has never

observed any vehicle in the parking lot

during the hundreds of patrol passes he

has made.

As far as Officer Holloway knows, that

building has been completely abandoned

for over 4 years. He is wrong.

A 51-year-old man named Russell Garrett

has been living inside that building for

19 months.

He has running water, heat, electricity,

a kitchen, a bedroom, and a private

entrance that nobody, including the

police officer who drives past it twice

a week, has ever identified as a door.

Russell is invisible. The building is

invisible.

And what he built inside that abandoned

restaurant, with knowledge that took him

29 years of commercial building

maintenance work to accumulate, is one

of the most quietly ingenious adaptive

reuses of failed commercial real estate

that has ever been documented in this

country.

Russell was a building maintenance

supervisor for a regional commercial

real estate management company in

Evansville, Indiana for 29 years.

He maintained dozens of strip malls,

office parks, and standalone retail

buildings across three counties.

He understood every system in those

buildings on a level most people never

have to think about.

Where the water shutoff valves are

located. Where the electrical service

enters the structure.

How the HVAC ductwork is routed.

Which walls are load-bearing and which

[music] are not.

Where dead spaces exist between drywall

and structural framing that the original

architects designed in for utility runs

and never bothered to fill.

He knew on a granular level that almost

nobody outside of facilities management

ever learns exactly how a commercial

building is actually put together.

In 2022, his company was acquired by a

national real estate services

corporation, and his entire local

maintenance crew was eliminated within

60 days.

The new owners contracted out

maintenance to a different national

vendor that paid less [music] and

provided no benefits.

Russell was 50 years old, had a

mortgage,

>> [music]

>> had two adult children he was helping

with college tuition, and had no

transferable credentials to a different

industry. He sent out 112 job

applications in 5 months. He was offered

three interviews and zero positions.

He watched his retirement savings drain

at a rate of $1,900

a month while his health insurance ran

out and his wife of 22 years moved out

because she could not [music] watch him

fall apart and stay sane herself.

His house went into foreclosure in May

of 2023. [music]

He was evicted in August.

The shelter system in Evansville had a

5-month waiting list for a working-age

adult man without minor children.

He had no 5 months. He had a pickup

truck, a tool chest, and the only

knowledge his hands had ever known how

to use.

So, he started looking at empty

commercial buildings the way a normal

person looks at apartments.

He found the abandoned restaurant on

Route 41 in the second week of his

search. He had driven past it hundreds

of times over 29 years of working in

that area.

He knew the building. He had even

subcontracted on its HVAC service in

2007 when [music] it was still

operating.

He knew exactly where the buried

waterline entered the foundation.

Exactly where the electrical service was

located.

Exactly where the gas line had been

capped when the chain pulled out of the

location.

He spent four nights parked on a side

street watching the building.

No headlights ever passed through the

lot. No security patrols ever stopped.

No real estate agents ever showed it to

anyone.

The building had been forgotten by every

system that was supposed [music] to be

tracking it. On the fifth night, after

midnight, he walked the perimeter of the

structure with a flashlight wrapped in

red cellophane to preserve his night

[music] vision.

He found exactly what he was looking for

at the rear of the building.

>> [music]

>> A utility access panel about 18 inches

square set into the brick at ground

level that had been used during

construction for HVAC installation and

had never been permanently sealed.

The panel was held in place by four

bolts that had rusted in place over 36

years.

Russell removed them in 20 minutes with

a socket wrench.

The panel came off in his hands. Behind