Jesse Gonzalez, owner of Liberty House Realty in Nashville, detailed how he became a successful business owner after being born into poverty in Texas on Monday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
Gonzalez said he was born 46 years ago in Houston to a troubled single mother who was involved in frequent lawlessness, including illegal drug activity, prostitution, and abuse.
“I grew up in adverse poverty. Sadly, things did not work out with my biological father, and [my mother] ended up moving back to Dallas with her stepfather and her mother and went through a cycle of abuse and that abuse led to drug addiction and, to some degree, prostitution and just a horrible set of circumstances that seem so far removed from me today,” Gonzalez said.
“I lived the life of a child who grew up in poverty and grew up in crime like most inner city youth that were born during that time and had those struggles,” Gonzalez added.
As a child, Gonzalez said he remembers always having to move residences and attend different schools and even experience homelessness as his mother was in and out of jail and prison.
“Jail was almost an every weekend kind of thing [for my mother]. It was drugs, alcohol, abuse, prostitution, anything theft,” Gonzalez explained.
Gonzalez said the first time he experienced a sort of “permanence” in his life was when he was a young adult around the age of 14 or 15 years old when his mother violated her probation was incarcerated, leaving him to be under the care of his Sunday school teachers at Park Cities Baptist Church and volunteers with Exodus Ministries in Dallas.
“I stayed with my Sunday school teachers for about three weeks…The second day they called Exodus because Exodus knew me. I was a product of Exodus. They called many of the volunteers who had worked with my family during that time, called child protective services, hired an attorney for me, and about three or four weeks later I was blessed, I got to sit around a table and pick between four families who wanted to open their heart to me and let me into their home,” Gonzalez explained.
Gonzalez said he chose to live with Ted and Jeanette Warren, who he refers to as his foster parents.
After living with his foster parents in Texas for about a year and a half, Gonzalez said he and his new family moved to the Nashville area where he ended up attending and graduating from Hendersonville High School.
After high school, Gonzalez said he immediately enrolled in College of the Ozarks, however, did not complete his studies.
After working a string of what he described as “odd jobs,” Gonzalez said his foster mother suggested he work in the real estate business.
“That’s where God’s grace came into play and that’s where my foster family stepped up,” Gonzalez said.
Now, as the owner and operator of Liberty House Realty, Gonzalez said his real estate firm specializes in offering homeowners the ability to list, market, and sell their home for an upfront flat fee of $999.
As for his biological mother, Gonzalez said he does not have a relationship with her, but has heard from family members that she continues to live a life of a carer convict.
“She’s still living that gangster lifestyle in Dallas. Selling drugs from her house, public assistance, doing what a career convict will do…She’s actually disabled from what I’ve heard,” Gonzalez said.
“But when that’s the only life you knew, the only life you want to know, it’s the life you do,” Gonzalez added.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
