Hi everybody. Hi. How is everyone? Hi Councilman Reese. Good evening Councilman Reese. Hello there. I'll change my name here. I'll be having dinner for a bit, so I'm going to have my camera off so you don't see me eating. Okay. I'll have my microphone off so you don't hear me eating, but I will be listening to you and watching you and ready to chime in if and when necessary. Roll call will be shortly. So I'll be ready. One minute. Good evening, Mr. Johnson. Good evening. Good evening. Hope everybody's doing well. Yes. Hello, Anthony. Good afternoon, everyone. Good evening, I guess. Mr. Scott, do you have a presentation? I do. I will let you share it yourself. You should be able to do it without any problems. Yes, I will. Thank you. All right. Thank you. It's now six o'clock. Great. Thank you. Hi, this is Diane Katadi, and it's my pleasure to welcome you all this evening and call to order the meeting of the affordable housing implementation committee on Thursday, September 2. And I hope you all had a good summer. Welcome back. And we'll go straight to roll call with Juliet. All right, Adam's. Levin Barnes. Laura Beatty. Diane Katadi. Here. Lucille Constantine. As Nicole Diggs asked for an excuse absence. Timmy, elder. Yeah, I should get on with my food. Tammy Farrell. Courtney James. Here. Mr. Jarvis Martin, Rita Aura McDaniel. Here. John Parker. Here. Venus Sanders. Here. Timothy Stallman asked for an excused absence. Angela D. Vic Lewis. Here. Thank you. That concludes roll call. Thank you, Juliet. The first thing we'll do now is just review the agenda and ground rules. So tonight we will approve the minutes of the last meeting. We'll have a housing bond update from the community development department staff. I believe people from Moss and Ross or French West Bond will be with us later to give us an update on the Forever Home website. The MWBE contracting firm is not going to be able to join us this evening. Oh, that's already been removed from this agenda. But those of you that saw an earlier one may have noticed that they'll be joining us next month. Then we'll have a property update from the Durham Housing Authority. Time for discussion, time for public comments, and then wrap up. Are there any additions or suggested amendments to the agenda? Hearing none, I'll go to ground rules. And all the committee members received these. Oh, here they are. But you also received them in your packet. So they are to show respect for others and opinions, presume goodwill, be fully present. We'll have one speaker at a time for our virtual calls. And only the speaker will be unmuted to help eliminate background noise. And please all participants will remain muted until called upon. Committee members can raise their hand to speak. Comments in the chat will be reviewed and addressed as feasible between meetings. It's really hard to pay any attention to the chat in the middle of a meeting. Let's see, what else? And then we ask that you please use specific examples in your remarks, and please try to enjoy the process. So next up is Tiffany with approval of the minutes. Hopefully everyone has had a chance to review the minutes. Are there any modifications requested to our June meeting minutes? All right, do we have a motion to approve and accept the minutes as written? I can move to accept the minutes. I second. Angel. Thank you. All in favor? Say aye. Aye. Aye. All right, minutes. Great. Thanks, Tiffany. OK, next up is a housing bond update from community development department staff. Reginald, is that you? Yes, that's me. Good morning, good afternoon, everyone. Good evening. I hope everybody's doing well. I have a short presentation this afternoon or this evening. One of the things I hope everybody had a good summer and wanted to share some work that has been ongoing and provide an update. One of the things that was asked at the last meeting was that I share an update on where we are financially with the bond. And so I'll be doing that. And then two other items that I'll mention that's been a request for me to talk about eviction diversion. And Durham Emergency Rental Assistance Program, ERAP program. So it's not quite in forever home, but since it's in our department's portfolio of work, I'm glad to share the information I do have. And so that's how we proceed. Next slide. So again, I'll give an update on the projects under forever home. Durham, talk about eviction diversion. And then talk about Durham Emergency Rental Assistance ERAP. Next slide. So before I go into this slide, one of the things I wanted to share with you, I think it was Ms. Adams had asked for to be sure to provide a financial update. This is not the one that you will have ongoing, but this is sort of a thumbnail sketch. So our budget office and our financial finance department, as well as community development, are still working through how do we do all of the accounting for the bond referendum funds, those funds. Technically, we have not spent any bond money because we have not gone to the bond market to get the bonds, the bond funds. We're actually spending city money. But what we will do is once we go to the market, the finance department makes a decision to go to the bond market, they will actually get the bond dollars. And then we will do what we call general interest back. So how the bond itself will work was that a total of $95 million and at least a press budget finance director said it's probably going to go to the bond market twice, do half and half, half at one time. So that means that roughly $45 million, because it's expensive to go to the bond market and that's a cost there. So he'll go in at one time and do half and then do another half later. So in the meantime, it's probably going to get up to about that amount of money, $45 million before he or she makes a decision to go to the bond market. So really what we're doing now, we're actually spending local dollars, but we'll basically reimburse ourselves when that occurs. With that said, there are some projects that are ongoing that we have committed bond dollars to. But remember, as they progress, we will only be spending local dollars until we go to the bond market. Most of these projects will be covered with the housing authority because those are the projects that are ongoing. But we have JJ Henderson with New Construction, which is the housing authority and Laurel Street residential. Is their developer total funding of $3 million. The affordable housing bond is just over $1 million will be allocated to that, committed to that. Elizabeth Street, another project with Durham Housing Authority, another Laurel Street residential is the developer. And a total city funding is $2.5 million. And that'll be all with affordable housing bond. And remember, one of the things with, as it relates to the housing authority and most of our work, we're providing the gap financing. So this is not the total project. Total project, when Mr. Scott comes up, will be way more than the amount of money. But we're making basically a contribution to fill a gap. And that's what the funding that we have is all about. So I just wanted to make sure to clarify that. One of the projects that the city is working through with Farrington Road Apartments, now to be Laurel Street residential also, that's basically $3.7 million in city funding. And all of that are coming out of the affordable housing bond. Then there's a project on Duke Street and Collin Bryant's place with CASA, 2.1 million. And all of that have come up almost 2.2, come all the way to come out of the affordable housing bond. And then project on Ross Road, some partners that partnered apartments that are being refurbished, renovated, $6 million in city funding, and 2.6 million in the dollar of that will be an affordable housing bond. And then Fitts Powell, which is a apartment complex on Cook Road, developers Acura, and the amount of money will be $356,000. And all of that will come out of the affordable housing bond. So a total of $17 million in total city funding for the affordable housing bond is 12, almost 12 and a half million. I think that none of these projects are actually, they're going, they just had groundbreaking on JJ Henderson, but we can talk about that when Mr. Scott comes up, he can provide additional information. So that's where we are with the affordable housing bond, which is one of the questions that was asked at the last meeting. Next slide. So this next slide is, I'm not gonna go through this slide because it incorporates all of the projects that are in Forever Home, and this is mainly for your record. So you'll see as of today, whether the different projects that are going through, including the ones I just talked about that come under Forever Home, Durham includes city funding, whether it's affordable housing bond or not. So you'll have that. Next slide. So I'm going to shift gears and go to the Durham Emergency Rural Assistance Program, the ERAP. So this is the funds that the city and the county have received from the US Department of the Treasury, federal government for funds to help persons to pay rent. So the city received the allocation and the county government also received the allocation. City received initially $8.4 million, then we've received another allocation of $6.6 million. And then the county, Durham County initially received 1.1 million, and then the second allocation of just under a million dollars. Next slide. So one of the things that we at the city did, we decided that it would be good for us to partner with the county and through county department of social services, particularly since they have the infrastructure already to operate programs like this. And the city does not have the infrastructure, infrastructure meaning we have people, we don't have people that can service people and meet them needs and take applications and those sorts of things because that's not where we evaluate applications because that's not what we at the city do. So we partner with the county and we actually ended into an interlocal agreement with the county for $8.5 million in March of this year. So Durham social services can administer the rental and utility assistance to tenants residing in the city. This allows the city and the county to operate a single program in the city and the county during DSS operates for the city as well as the county. Next slide. One of the things that we thought was very helpful for ERAP is that we knew that there would be challenges with persons in terms of applications for various reasons. And so we engaged some community partners with the administrative funds and some local dollars that the city has as part of the ERAP. So we contracted with five community partners to provide application assistance and support to reach high barrier tenants. Each contract was in amount of about $45,000 from services from April until December of this year. Basically, while the application is online, electronic, you can do it on your phone. Some persons don't have technology or don't have language barriers or have other maybe cultural barriers and go into one of these organizations can help do that and they can actually, you can go to their offices or engage a person to actually help you with the application. And so we thought that that would be helpful and it's been helpful as we go through this process. I think I need to go to a slide before this one because this is, so I think go back. Go to the slide that says applications and disbursement amount, should be the next slide. There we go, bingo. All right, so in terms of applications and disbursements, as of August 27th, a total of 6,000 applications were received and $5.3 million were paid out in rental assistance from city and county funds. Just so everyone will know, a complex reporting is required for grantees like the city of Durham and the county in Durham County to keep the U.S. Treasury abreast of the localities, spending, and programming. And the national to local level program data is accessible and this is a link. And so when you have this presentation you can click on the link is in read. Go to the national website. Next slide. Madam chair, I see a question raise. I don't know which topic because I did change topics but I can entertain that question. Okay, it's Rita. Would you prefer to wait till the end of the presentation or now for you? I can only have a few more slides. So I can, well, we can wait. Okay, so I'm a shift gears to the Durham's eviction diversion program. This is a partnership that the city has with legal aid of North Carolina. This was also one of the requests that came in for some additional information and I'll be glad to share with the group. Legal aid of North Carolina is contracted with the city of Durham to provide legal assistance to tenants facing evictions and administer a successful program in Durham since 2019. The council approved a three year contract with legal aid in amount of one and a half million dollars in dedicated housing funds. The term of contract starts January one of this year and ends December 31st of 2023. Next slide. The eviction diversion resources that would provide to legal aid. This grant funds five attorneys, two paralegal positions, one approximately three-quarter community resources coordinator salary, including fringe benefits and $50,000 indirect costs to support low income households facing eviction in Durham. This is the work that they do. For FY21 allocated $500,000. For FY22 is $515,000. And FY20, 2023 is $530,000. The project budget increases by 3% each year of the grant. Next slide. Summary of legal aid eviction diversion activities up until May of this year. Since then they've been quite swamped and we've been a little late in getting the reports from them with the number of new cases closed as of May 2021 with 296. Number of pending cases working at the start of the month. Total of a pool of 143, I mean, 843. Number of closed cases with no eviction judgment 246. And a percentage of cases closed that preserved Tennessee just under 81%. Next slide. So with that, I'll conclude my presentation. I'll be open to any questions. Thank you, Reginald. I know we have a question from Rita. Juliette, can you unmute her please? I think she can. I bet she is, she's ready. Good evening. I just have a question. I know we're talking a lot about ERAP, the monies that's been on that, but how much of the bond money is spent on the rapid housing? So you went out at the end, but I think the question that I heard is how much of the bond money is spent on rapid rehousing? Yes. Okay, so none of the bond money is on rapid rehousing. Remember, bond money can only be used for basically things that are bricks and mortar. Rapid rehousing is a service. So that's number one. Two, if you look at the former presentations where I broke out what the spending, there is a homelessness component and rapid rehousing is some of the local dollars where it's reflected in that. If you remember earlier presentations where the big one with the big chart on it and I broke down all the categories, that's where rapid rehousing would be. Could you tell me how much money has been, could you quote how much money has been spent on rapid rehousing since the COVID crisis has come up? No, ma'am. Unfortunately, my brain is not that good. They've given me to carry that kind of numbers in my head but I'll be glad to have the staff to work on that and provide that. Thank you. Thank you, Reginald. There's a question from John in the chat which is what is the current trend with eviction diversion efforts since the end of the recent reporting timeframe, June? So my anecdotal evidence, because we don't have the documentation from them but in talking with them, it has increased dramatically. I can't give you a number what dramatically means from them but I was in a meeting on legal aid was there today and they were talking about it has increased which is one of the reasons by understanding we haven't gotten our reports like we need because they've been very busy but I bet I can share anecdotally. Can you say anything more about, you shared the dollars that have been paid out have all 6,000 applications been processed or many still pending? There are some still pending. I would rather give you the number because I need to get that from the county. That's a county number and so I wanna make sure I report it accurately and not off the top of my head. Okay, thank you. Are there other questions from the committee? Lucia? I was wondering if there are any programmatic changes to ERAP to help get the money out faster in light of the eviction moratorium and the new guidance from Treasury? Yes, they are changes and that's one of the challenges there changes almost daily from the rules that are promulgated and so we are making adjustments one the city and the county meet every week as we are telling the program made some significant adjustments in the application process in terms of what is required still looking at some more adjustments. One of those have to be several of those have to be in concert with the rules that are promulgated from or come down from US Treasury which are coming down and are changing. Most of the programs in how we typically operate actually this is a DSS and definitely for the city of Durham and community development once programs are money is issued and the guidance is given it does not change and we operate in according to the rules that come down. This is a program we've had constant changes and so we've had to adapt to those changes on the fly and it has proven to be a challenge. What are some of the changes under consideration now? Well, one of the changes is for example, self attestation where persons can self attest to the bills that they owe and that runs up against one of the challenges that we have because a lot of times we have to provide documentation to say if I owe a bill for $600 well, okay, does the bill really exist? And so that's one of the challenges that we have to work through but we're going to go through self attestation for that but that's one example. Thank you. Are there any other questions from the committee? Rita has her hand up again. Oh, sorry. Thanks. Please go ahead Rita. Thank you. So has anything been put in place for tenants that have passed through rent money in order to keep them from falling into this again and being that there's so much uncertainty with the new Delta variants? How is that being played out or has there been any steps or any kind of steps put into place? So with this funding that we have and when you apply to EREP there's a certain amount of back rent that you can qualify for and it is balanced against how much money that you can get going forward. So, and I don't want to quote numbers Karen a lot of might be on this call and she can talk a little bit more about that but there's a balance between if I have passed through rent and the amount of their rent and how many months that I have in the past as compared to how much I can get going forward. That's one of the considerations Karen if you want to elaborate a little bit more. Yes, sir. So just to clarify under the current EREP program that we're in right now individuals can receive 12 months of rent and utility assistance or rent or utility assistance, you don't have to both. That it can start, essentially there's a start date with the emergency declaration in March of 2020 that's as far back as we can go and then you can receive 12 months of total assistance. So that could be nine months of pass and three forward it could be three past and nine forward it can be all go forward. The, with EREP two that period of time is extended to 18 months. So essentially if somebody receives 12 months of assistance with EREP one they could get another six months of assistance with EREP two. All of this of course is subject to funding being available. At some point we run out of money but until we do those are the rules that we operate under. There is no dollar cap on how much money a household can receive. Thank you Karen. Any other questions? All right, seeing none, I'll go back to you. Reginald, do you want to introduce the Mohsen-Ross and French Westbarn people or? Yes, actually I do. Actually I'm going to let Karen introduce them. Okay, great. She's the project manager for this great team. She can introduce them. Great, thank you. So we are very pleased to, as you're aware you've met the team before. We are working with a joint partnership of Moss Plus Ross and French Westbarn. We sent you the link to the website that was launched in June. And then we have Susan Ross from Moss Plus Ross here and Jenny who's last name I'm going to Butcher because I never use it to Poulouski. Poulouski? Poulouski, okay. Poulouski, you got it. With French Westbarn and I will turn it over to them. And I believe you're going to need to share a screen, correct? And Juliette, do they have authority to do that? They should be able to do it. Okay, because what we've asked them to do is sort of walk through the website. There we go. Thank you. I assume that means you see it. If I get a couple of nodded heads there. Okay. So I'll start with some overview and Susan feel free to chime in at any time. Like Karen said, we launched this in June. I'll give you a couple of, I don't know if you've had a chance to spend time on the site. I will speak as though you have not and hope to not leave anything out. I will preface it to say there will be updates coming very shortly. So what you're seeing on the site now is accurate up to June and you will see that that's reflected on the site. Very clearly we want to make sure it's always clear for any visitor how up to date the data portion of the site is and we will be updating it quarterly at minimum as numbers increase and as there's progress to report. So this is the homepage you're looking at. Of course, a couple of things to call out sort of crowned you in the site. I believe received or heard this information up to this point, we're doing all that we can to and I was so, I continue to be so proud of Mayor Shul who's getting the talking points in a lot on Forever Home Durham and you're all familiar with that now but our new name for the program and this is to help spread awareness among those interested in paying attention of where the bonds and city funding is going. Of course, as Reginald was talking about this is gap funding, so this is contributing to projects that are of larger size and it's not always forward facing what those projects are. So we want to use this Forever Home Durham logo you see at the top left with the affordable, livable, inclusive tagline. We're trying to use that as much as we can and materials as much as we can to start help with education and awareness of which projects and programs are supported by the city of Durham and the bond money through Forever Home Durham. So calling that out and then a couple of things as before I start clicking through to the site. It is a five page website with roughly four types of content and you see by five pages we have the homepage here and you see your upper navigation with progress, impact partners and resources and so those interior four pages where our goal was to keep it as simple as possible. We're trying not to recreate the wheel. There's a lot of information already either either on the city website or in other partner websites this is intended to be a hub. So when we try to have everyone start here because if we can start through this portal we can direct people through to other resources and other information but this is the starting point. So this homepage here one of the content types that I mentioned is other than these overview and I'll scroll back up to flip through on these buttons that are live and can take you to other portions of the site but one of the content types is of course data. So we've worked to have this be as visual as possible and as simple as possible focused on the goals that have been established from the start of communications about the bond and what the bond is meant to do. So those are reiterated here and just again to re center you on the site I'm here on the homepage and this is just about a halfway down scroll. So here's an overview of those goals you're all familiar with them but they will always stay present here on the website. When you scroll down further we get to a progress charts and this is where updates will continue to come quarterly again you're seeing this and you see the peer at the top current data updated as of June and in order to and I believe we've gone over this with this committee before but just in case it's a refresher we have bucketed the progress here into four categories to help establish an understanding of the process that this has to go through. So what's completed is very different than what's under contract what's in the pipeline and what's remaining left to work on. And so I may have to refresh it won't do this again but every time someone comes to the site and they scroll down these this populates right of course you'll see that change over time as progress is made. If we scroll further down this is where each goal then is charted and tracked on this bar graph. And again visual simplified means of helping there be an understanding of how far we're going. And in each category. Further below is a timeline. Our intention is to keep this as comprehensive as possible dating back to the start of or when the bond was passed. How this shapes up over time because of course this will live on and there will be lots of milestones charted and within this timeline we'll look to make it digestible again an easy visual and easy to navigate but this of course is updated as of June we've got some great milestones as recently as last week with the groundbreaking at JJ Henderson. So those types of things are what you'll see start to appear here on the timeline big milestones major moments as the bond continues. So that is the actually let me call it one more thing before I flip through partners here there is a full page within the four interior pages that I spoke of before that will have a section and I'll thumb through to it in just a minute on the partners but this scrolling picker here on the bottom of the homepage will always remain as well in order to highlight the partnerships in place making the success of the bond possible and these are all clickable so they can go out to the partner website. So I'll scroll back up here and click through on the progress page it is where we are going to be featuring housing and support overview and let me let me show you an example of what happens here which is what I was speaking to as far as making this a hub also clicking out where needed where needed and we're helpful but right now all of these buttons if you click on they just take you to a different part of the webpage to help you get quickly to what what information you may be looking for so clicking through here to progress housing and support that's how we have broken out what this interior page provides and so up at the top here we have listed housing and progress that's happening in that category and then here at the bottom and of course this is where we can go out to partner organizations to be directed in the right to the right location but the support provided by these partners and then further down more information on which housing kind of the bricks and sticks of it and right now this does not do this but this was for the first first phase of launch it will we will get to this with feature updates these will click out to project websites where applicable where more information can be found about where these projects exactly stand and more information about each but right now these are the highlights and this is new as of this week that we are running into this problem so we have a we have a request out to our server to figure out why this is not loading correctly and of course that's all time for me to be showing you all in this meeting but so it goes we are getting that updated and hopefully it'll just be a matter of days before this populates correctly but this shows a nice visual within the city where all of these projects and services can be located throughout the city so I'll scroll back up and I know sometimes navigating a website as you look on can feel quite motion heavy so apologize for that the second interior page impact we are looking here to tell really great stories we've got a couple in the works of residents actually which is the hardest story to tell we will be featuring also stories from partners who can speak about the impact being made as a result of this bond so for instance ideally we will have a story here that talks about perhaps JJ Henderson and the funding and a lot of the if anyone was able to listen to the remarks made last week some of the comments made about the impact that the bond is having on the ability to actually embark on the great milestone there at JJ Henderson so this is where we're going to tell a lot of those real stories they could be individuals they may be partners they may be individuals who work within the partner organization who can speak you know in a real human way about the impact that this great program is having so those will all be featured here and I'd like to add that some members of this committee may have some stories they'd like to suggest for this page that would be really wonderful people or partners or we're looking for them thank you Susan absolutely absolutely and at the bottom here stories and activities is what we're calling this this is where we're going to pull in some external news it could be as you see here some city life updates actual source if I clicked out it would take you there I won't do that just not get too confusing but where you know there's some positive news stories that happen here we'll pull that in here this is where you will see the update on the JJ Henderson groundbreaking we have a wonderful visual and a story written up that will go in this next quarterly update so here's where you'll get more information from the an impact in storytelling perspective third interior page partners it is as it sounds this is where we have all of our partners featured you again I'll do this just for fun you'd click out here and go to the Durham Housing Authority website same goes for all the partners this is intended to help again explain who the partners are how it's how the city is contributing what the services of these organizations provide within the community and hopefully direct some people for how to get how they can get you know the help that they need and where they can where they can turn to so a lot of all you know really great partners all listed here and then the final page of the site resources we wanted to make sure that you know thinking about various audiences that come to this site of course some may be wanting just community members wanting to understand what the status of the bond is some could be people looking for you know certainly assistance and that's why the partners are listed so they can go to the partners to get the assistance they might need of course we know we there might be contractors and developers coming to understand where where the city is in in listing requests for proposals or fees for potential jobs so those will be populated here and then we've got an FAQ section there's a whole bunch of this is quite dense but of course a whole bunch of knowledge and a lot of people especially as you know you go through something like a bond to don't quite understand how the this process works what what some of the terms mean and that sort of thing and so that's where you can find all of this information in the FAQ section saying for definition of terms and that I think it's all I have planned to discuss here I haven't kept up with chat or if there are any questions or Susan or Reginald Karen if you have anything else to add please do thank you Jenny I assume you can see the chat or do you want me to note there are just a couple comments and they're not questions let me stop my share essentially the nice comments thank you oh wonderful I'll take a look I couldn't I couldn't while I was sharing but right thank you yeah well thank you are there any comments from the committee and I will note that Jarvis somehow is in the attendees list different zoom link but Jarvis if you I guess you could maybe send a message in the chat and we could let you in but are there again questions from the committee I wonder if it's possible or it looks like the website it's a really good skeleton it's really got a lot of a lot of things that can be done with it so it's off to a really good start many of the partner organizations have tremendous needs you know there's a number of section 8 vouchers that aren't being used there's a number of the waiting list at CASA is a couple thousand people of course that's triangle wide but I'm wondering if there's a way to kind of expand out a little bit so we can demonstrate in the community what the great needs are and I'm not saying it should be done that way just I know we want to tell a good story but we also want to tell a story about what the needs are any any any direction that you have that's going with that I don't know if anybody else wants to speak to that I think it's a very valid you know point and I do think you know part of our and Susan you may want to expand on the support more but of course you all know part of the big goal of the communication plan is to ensure everybody understands the reality of the need as it compares to what can't what is what is being you know spent or can be spent now and just how how much or how little impact that's going to make over time I think that certainly in the the stories section that I had pulled up that's from kind of the news section on those stories and articles I think where we start to tell some impact stories and feature you know really what the partners are doing and what can be done I think that that will shine through organically in many ways but I think it's a great comment and something for us to continue to consider as well and the only other thing I think it's great that we're showing the partner organizations but you know many organizations have ways that the community can participate CASA has their annual fundraiser September 23rd and I realize that you know it's got to stay generic and everything but I just want to point out that if folks do go to the website they want to check on the progress they're probably already interested in the issues so you know that there are other things that can be done that the community could actually plug into the partner organizations as well yeah that's a great comment really good point we hadn't thought about that I like it any other comments or questions from the committee I was just going to say to John's point and I know you guys put in so much to this website so you know putting in more probably is overwhelming but the same way that you have the progress bar that gives all of the high-level statistics it might be interesting to have a similar bar that gives high-level statistics of the reality that you know that we're faced here with just again not not delving too much into the details but just so people can see what what this reality actually is because I do think that's important to understand it's a great comment Courtney it seems like we haven't heard from Anthony yet but the whole issue of the before and after if you had a before shot of some of these apartments in an after shot on the two spectrums the more we can make it visual for people I think because a lot of people are going to scroll through things but we are making a big difference and that's what we want to tell the story yes and we have good visuals coming with some of the impact stories that show just that I definitely agree great any other and I would like to see I do I just have a comment I would like to see a report from the builders like when they're delays how far they've gotten on different projects I think that would be helpful if we enlighten the community to feel like things are progressing as far as where they're living things where the bond money is being spent and just okay thank you Rita any other comments before we move to the DHA presentation Reginald do you need to do you want to introduce Anthony or do anything else yes I do the first thing that I would like to do if you don't mine is introduce Miss Melva Henry in my presentation I didn't introduce her she has the unenviable task of being the project manager for e-wrap and eviction diversion she has both of those and they're coming together right around COVID in this time and so she's working very very hard which we greatly appreciate but I do want to recognize her and thank her for the work that she's doing she prepared all of the information that I just I shared but I did not realize that she was in the meeting and she had to do some work last night and so I didn't expect her to be here tonight but I just want to thank her and recognize Melva Henry thank you and with that I will also Melva did you want to say anything about your hearing not really but but thank you I'm not here in official capacity I was actually just listening and not watching the screen so when I heard my name that's when I picked up my phone so so thank you for saying my name to prompt me but yes it's a pleasure working I'm a native of Durham and this is very important it's near and dear to my heart and I'm doing as much as I possibly can we all are to make this process as fluid for our citizens and residents I should say thank you all right thank you Melva very much appreciate you with that I will introduce Mr. Anthony Scott the president and CEO of Durham Housing Authority hopefully he will provide an update on what has transpired over the summer and also some questions were raised so I hope he has some answers for those that he can share but he's had some good news I know he has some good news and so I'm looking forward to him sharing that what has happened over the summer and the last few days so Mr. Scott thank you Reginald much appreciated I have a short presentation as well so I'll meet a few minutes to get to the screen share can everyone see that okay yes okay great yes so as we did last time around in June I gave a brief update on sort of some of the things that are going on within DHA operationally so through the months of July and August we have been hard at work at filling vacancies that is actually coming along come along pretty well well we have positions that have been vacant we use temps so now we're actually in a position that we're feeling those positions permanently we've had some good candidates for that we've also had some folks that have left us which is provided us another opportunity as well so that's going pretty well on our work order front I think we talked about we have been trying to get a series of contractors to assist us in dealing with some of our our work orders backlog and other repairs that we needed we ended up having only one qualified bitter and we were struggling with that because of the procurement process but we went to HUD and asked for approval we were finally giving approval to bring on that contractor as a sole source contractor and by the way he is an MBE contractor who we've worked with over the last couple of years so we know his work and he has finally gotten started over the last few weeks and we're seeing progress there uh-oh I forgot to put the numbers in here for this so forgive me on that next bullet but our work orders have been cut in half I believe we had around 1400 at last month now we're down to a little over 600 so a big part of that is having that contractor on board getting those permanent employees in place apologize for not having those numbers included in this particular presentation and then the last thing I'll speak on is our work order call line we have been moving to a process so that we could better track our work orders we have heard complaints from residents that work orders are being called in either they couldn't get through or they've gotten through but there would be no record of those and so we're moving to a process where we have one number that people can call and that is a third party company that will handle those work orders and those work orders that they receive will be directly inputted into our existing system the challenge has been is getting the connection between our software program and this particular vendor which we've been working on for the last several weeks we're very close now we suspect by I'm going to say now October we'll have this finally resolved and put in put in place there were issues with having number on our software having them being trained on it and then also having something called a VPN which will allow them to access our software in a secured manner so we're working through all those internal issues with the vendor and the software company that we use and that's the only thing that's holding us up with that and so we'll be able to launch that in a way so that all our residents will be able to have a work order they'll immediately get a work order number it'll be documented and we can cut down on those missed work orders at least claims that we've had missed work orders next I want to move on oh this is an old slide from April ignore that so I wanted to talk a little bit about the rental assistance program that we're engaged in and thanks to the previous speakers you understand basically how the program works this is what the numbers look like for us we have almost 1600 active leases throughout our various programs of that number we had almost 700 people that were behind in their rent that was to the tune of almost 940,000 dollars over 940,000 dollars and because of that we implemented something we called a fresh start and that was an attempt at making sure that all of the 691 families would be able to have a fresh start help them access the available rental assistance funding as well as we've applied for some additional funding as Karen spoke about the amount of well not the amount but the time frame in which residents are eligible for that funding is only a 12-month span we're now in September and if you were behind from the beginning of the pandemic till now you're already missing out on three months worth of opportunity to get to get funding so there's going to be a gap there with the available e-wrap funds for people who have not been able to pay rent up to this point so we know we have to work on outside sources to try to help families and getting that gap built and just as a reminder to everyone the housing authority no housing authorities across the country have the ability to forgive rent that is not allowed HUD has been very clear about that and so we really are trying to work hard with our residents to make sure that they can access these funds to do so we brought on staff people on a temporary basis to work with our residents we're doing outreach in terms of emails phone calls we found that those two methodologies have not been as successful so over the last month or so we have started doing direct door knocking and outreach to our families so of the 692 families that were been behind in a rent 269 have actually begun the process of getting funds from the ERAP program 135 of that 269 were assisted directly by DHA the other 134 either work applied for it on their own or they use one of the other partners of the $940,000 that's owed the 269 families represents $196,000 of what is owed so that's about 21% of the total amount in total so you can see there's been some progress it's been slow but we also happy to see that at least some of these families are actually taking full advantage of the program we've been doing all kinds of outreach in terms of Facebook and Twitter and our website has information we've mailed out information to each family directly we've done that for the last three months that we've finally gotten staff on board so in their monthly rent statement there's a flyer that speaks about the Fresh Start program and how they need assistance in applying we have staff people that can help them there are other organizations that are in partnership with the county that can help them or they can apply directly themselves anyway shape or or fashion if they may need assistance we have a team of people that are there and working with them to provide and now I want to shift to our DHA downtown neighborhood plan or DDMP you guys have seen this graphic lots and lots of times and this is kind of where we are starting with JJ Henderson you've heard already director Johnson talk a little bit about our JJ Henderson project the rehab portion of this which is the existing building we are about 13 percent complete with the renovation work that's ongoing we have fallen a little bit behind there's two things that occurred one just some supply issues that they've had but we also had another sort of tragic situation where the lead person on that project did pass away and so they had to do a little regrouping to be able to replace that person on the contractor side but they're back on track now and moving forward we're still expecting them to be complete their work by the end of next year the NBE participation is at 21 percent and it will be growing as more and more work goes on as well and some of that really good news is that we closed on our Moorhead seniors project or the JJ Henderson new construction meaning that we are actually finally able to get going on this project we had our official groundbreaking last week Friday had a nice small turnout because of COVID we restricted the number of people that actually attended and then coming up in the in this actually this week this next coming week they're going to start the demolition of the auditorium space which will be part of where this will be located and our NBE participation is at 29 percent we're very excited that this is our first new construction underway of the DDNP coming up soon we hope is moving over to the Liberty street side and main Liberty Main Street side again this is the overall site plan that you have here top phase one is what we're expected to start on right away that starts with the demolition of phase of the first portion of the building will be tearing down 36 units and in place of those 36 units will be phase one A and B that you see represented here and to director Johnson's point the city support is about two and a half million dollars on this but the overall cost of that first phase is 19 million dollars interesting about interesting thing about this we talked a little bit about in June is that instead of going after a 90% tax credit application for the two or for phase two or three we've actually retooled our process because of some changes that were made to the 4% program and the fact that we could do a combined two and three phase instead of phase two and then the next year to phase three we were able to see savings by doing a 4% tax credit application instead of a 9% tax credit application that's rare but because of some of the changes in the program it made that possible one of the things to keep in mind with the North Carolina tax credit program is that there's kind of a sweet spot of about 80 units you know she never see more than 80 units that are attributable to a 9% tax credit program so that means that you have to do a bunch of smaller projects that's why you've seen so many different phases here rather than larger phases the 4% however does not have the same because it's not competitive it doesn't have that same sort of sweet spot of being smaller so you can combine two sites get more bang for your buck because you're not doing two different two different loan processes two different closing processes so you do save some money there but you also save money in terms of economies of scale because of the number of units that you can build and then give time so that's why the 4% strategy made more sense than doing the traditional 9% strategy so that phase will begin and we it says July 2021 all that got pushed now because of ongoing issues with the tax credit program that's been impacted by COVID-19 so what has occurred is that a lot of the lenders our lenders partners the partners on this for us is Lowell Street residential their lenders because of COVID and kind of a lot of the issues with prices rising and interest rate uncertainty a lot of them kind of backed up a little bit and slowed down their processes and things when they get dragged on it means that your completion date which you have to complete these these developments within a certain time frame by the end typically of the following year so now there's concern by the lenders will if they start their work now will they be able to complete the project by the end of a particular calendar year in this case 2022 so these are all things that have kept a lot of people very nervous about moving forward with 9% tax credit projects the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency is well aware of this this isn't a North Carolina problem this is a tax credit problem nationally that is that all tax credit programs have a placed in service date associated with them in order for the tax credits to really work so they're expecting some guidance to come from the national scene that is the federal scene which allows these tax cutters to work but then there's also the ability to do some things at the state level so there's been clear signals by the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency that they are going to make modifications and adjustments and allow projects to be able to extend their closing date if you will this has been part of what has slowed down the Elizabeth Street Apartments in getting started we initially expected this to happen back in July in terms of the construction and demo but now our new dates are looking at sometime in this fourth quarter being able to get started with the demolition and the construction of this particular site and we hope that both the phase the demo and the construction work will happen then and then we can get back on track we're expecting the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency to make an announcement on their expected adjustments sometime in the next in the next month and again our shared prosperity goals at 30% that we are there with the expected vendors for this so far and Commerce Tree Apartments is part of that phase two and phase three we'll have more updates on that in the probably by next next week to give you a better sense of what the phase this is phase two and what phase three will look like I believe ah well this talks a little bit about those major challenges again I should mention that the construction pricing which we were very worried about back in June has finally stabilized and in fact has actually come down some now the supply lines have began to to loosen up a bit and I just recently talked about the the lender concerns and hesitancy so I believe that is pretty much my overall update on the DDNP phase one DDNP phase two which is the three remaining sites the DHA office space Forest Hill Heights and Fayette Place we released the RFP in June for that we are expecting our proposals later this month on the 23rd that's when they're due and we are excited about the interest that we've seen thus far we had a a bitters conference which is where you anyone who's interested in in the work are interested in putting a proposal I should say um come come to us we we answer any questions that they have generally explain the RFP questions et cetera we had over 50 people on that call doesn't mean that we have 50 different developers they just meant that we have 50 people which is a really really great sign so we're excited about potential responses to our RFP for one or more of those particular sites and I do believe that is yes that's my last slide thank you Anthony I know John had put a question in the chat and then we'll entertain questions from committee members John you want to go ahead yeah a million million years ago I did energy audits for the Durham Housing Authority and I had the opportunity to go door to door and knock on doors and tell people how they could save energy in in their unit so I know how getting that person to person interaction is so critical and I'm wondering you know how many as these folks are going around there probably a real wealth of information that they know about you know what's going on in these units and with with the residents and they're probably messengers as well I'm just curious how many of what their experience may be and I realize it's anecdotal but do they have emails do they do they have the internet you know what means of communication may exist to other than having to knock on the door which I think is a great thing to do okay I thought you were going to say you were willing to do some more volunteer work on that average so we are finding that some of the email addresses we have no longer work we're finding that the biggest issue the telephone numbers we have are not working right so that's why we shifted to knocking on doors and doing direct engagement the other thing that that actually has done is helped people understand a little bit more about what this is because they've gotten the flyers they've seen the information that we've sent out and so what we're finding is that through that engaged conversation we're able to get them then to go to that next step so in terms of the types of access is there people have cells cell numbers but they've just changed the emails actually tend they're they're the things that have been really the best that people have responded to then then phone calls will you understand but again some people don't have accurate emails so part of what we do is each year we do recertifications we have to verify people's income etc so we're making sure we're getting updated information in that process and then obviously as we're knocking on doors they're doing the same thing they're getting updated information with respect to internet access because so much of this can be done on cell phones we're finding that people are essentially using their phones for their necessary and needed internet access we are in a phenomenal partnership with the city and that we are providing free wi-fi to all of our family sites in the first round we hope to expand it to all of our sites in the second round but all of our family sites that is expected to be completed before the end of this year McDougal Terrace has been the first to actually get this wireless service and so any resident at McDougal has free high speed internet access right this moment Cornwallis and Oxford Manor are next up and so all of those family sites are going to be first this was critically important obviously because of the people having to go to school at home and that sort of thing and who knows where we might end up in another couple of weeks or a couple of months but the city is working in partnership with Duke and DHA to get all of our households wired so that they will all have free high speed wireless internet so we're excited about that but it's a ways in the making to actually come to be able to complete all of that it makes me wonder Anthony when folks are knocking on doors and somebody opens the door and invites you in and you have good news for them they're usually happy to see you and don't want you to leave right away as a former teacher I used to do a little program called I used to but now with my students to show how how much they're improving and this kind of ties back into the website but as long as a person is there and is doing this and say well what did it used to be and how is it now and can I quote you on that can we put that on the website can we get the word out that there's probably so many things that are going on that we need to let people know and your your person knocking on the doors is really like a gatekeeper for us yeah that's a great idea and I think we'll try to incorporate some of that we have gotten like when we get information from residents that actually is being logged and reported back up secondly no one is going inside units because of covid so whatever interactions it's going to be sort of on the door stoop if you will we're not sure having people go inside units right now but those are great great points in terms of trying to get more of those and adult all kinds of stories that there but in terms of concerns issues curiosity that housing stability specialist team is actually engaging folks in that way this this has been a huge effort on our part whereas we thought okay we're knocking on the door letting people know this is a way for you to be able to get caught up in your rant and and avoid the the the threat of eviction we thought we would get a lot of enthusiasm around that we haven't seen it work as as well as we might thought we've had to actually increase the number of people that we're pulling together to actually go out and knock on doors we initially had a we're thinking a three member team we didn't went to a six member team but now we're going to actually have to expand it to probably another three to five more people maybe even six more people just to make sure that we have enough people that are getting out and being able to knock on the doors and engage the residents in the way they need to great thank you both any other questions oh levan I see your hand up please go ahead good evening everybody mr. scott I want to commend you for the work that you're doing I'm definitely more impressed the work that DHA is doing I have two questions one is the folks that you're needing to knock on doors are there any special qualifications that they need to have is that something that we can hire residents that work in that live in DHA can they be the ones who advocate and be able to explain to their fellow neighbors what's you know all this good news and the last question would be is you know the folks who are already experienced the experiencing this the new renovations you know I think it's uh I would employ the chair and the vice chair as well as staff to see whether or not we can get some residents to kind of speak on their experiences good battle to ugly about how they how they how they're doing what their updates are you know do they feel like you know this is uh this has been a good thing for them you know I would love to hear from actual residents about their experiences with being displaced and then being put back into a a newly renovated uh apartment or room so to your to your first question about who can do this we we've actually had quite a bit of turnover with our team that was the other other challenge we had but we do have at least one one resident that was hired the the challenge with this is that it's not just door knocking but we're having to go through a series of things because as Reginald had indicated we're having to deal with a lot of sort of government bureaucratic stuff right so we have to have people that are able to navigate through that it's a lot of data intensive things so with with the base level skill set yes we're hiring anyone who's eligible we've advertised this we we put it out for our residents and we're still continuing to hire folks so we don't have a we never have a restriction on anyone that we hire we we actually have several residents that work for DHA currently and so sometimes when I hear that question that you know we say well we're not restricting who can apply for these jobs and we certainly try to let people know that these jobs are available we certainly want to we know the benefit of having residents in fact the one resident that we have on that team has been excellent she has been phenomenal and just helping staff think through how to do things how to say things and just her natural enthusiasm in terms of her engagement has been you know off the charts so we know how valuable that is and we are trying to get more and more of our residents to actually be applicants and so we can actually in fact hire them and that's what I mean I didn't mean no no disrespect that y'all weren't doing that actively no no no but you know I think it would be a great moment for DHA as well as the city and the county that we actually are employing local residents to do work for other local residents and giving them those opportunities to share that story because I think that's the only way that authenticity is different when somebody you know is knocking on that door compared to somebody who is never really understood or experienced that and just is kind of just going with the flow so that's that's the one why I suggest that no no it's an excellent point and not to take away from that the other thing is that some of the other folks that we have hired like one person work for during public schools and and other things so they they have great familiarity with our communities in some respect and again to your point that has been helpful and and making sure that communication gap is less on the second point about stories that that was something that that the the folks from French West Vaughn have also been asking for we've been trying to get more more of those because we want to see that on our on the website as well and so we're continuing to look at that as you said good bad and ugly we want to hear those stories because any range of those stories help us adjust to the better of how we do our programs just as we talked about several months ago when we had some pickups at JJ Henderson rehab towards the end of last year those are those are lessons for us that help us adjust as to how we do this so all of these are kind of our first rounds so the first new construction of that first rehab with people in place so those become lessons learned so that we don't we don't repeat those mistakes or just that we can do a better job at whatever we're doing the next time around so that feedback is is real important for us thank you again good suggestions any other questions from the committee all right seeing that I'll just close that portion out thank you again Anthony for presenting and sharing all that information the next section is a brief opportunity for discussion among the committee so this can be wide open about anything but one thing I do want to say is we especially want to hear from you if there are is information that you want to see or suggestions you have for these meetings and thank you Lucia for raising the question so that we got to see more information on ERAP and eviction diversion numbers so this is just an open time for the committee and then we have another 10 minutes or so to hear from the public after that so anybody have any burning issues or thoughts other than the suggestions already made okay I don't want to cut this off early but if there aren't any comments let's go ahead and go to entertaining comments from the public at one point we had 14 or 15 attendees it's dropped to seven I do want to recognize that former Mayor Bill Bell has joined us tonight thank you it's great to see your name Bill and know that you're there so I Juliet remind me how they can comment do you let everyone in now and then they can sign up in the chat if they want to speak yes I can let all seven of a man okay so if any of you are interested in speaking just put a note in the chat and I'll call on you thanks they should be able to raise the hand as well okay I think everybody's been allowed in I think I see everyone I don't see any hands at this point does anyone in the public have any comment going once going twice okay I will turn the meeting over to Tiffany to close out then thank you again for joining us tonight thank you to everyone for those presentations um and I know many of us are excited to see the updates that are coming on the website as well so thanks for that and to the housing authority and to city staff much appreciated our next meeting and closing will be October 7th that meeting we will see or have a chance to see a presentation from the MWBE contracting consultant so look forward to that we will also be discussing our 2022 schedule so have any dates in mind that we need to discuss on that schedule but that is it for closing this out thank you for attending and we will see you next month on October 7th great good night everyone have a safe holiday and be safe mess up yes send me your presentation please good night everybody that was a fantastic meeting I really appreciate the information


we're expecting this interest rate hike of around half a percentage point it could be more do you think that will be enough to curb this stubborn inflation? Thanks for having me on yes you said it could be 0.5 but also looking like the markets predicting 0.75 percentage points increase which would be the largest rate race since 1989 but we know today's main driver of inflation is it the international gas price which Andrew Bailey the governor of the Bank of England has himself admitted they have no control over so today's rate rise will do nothing to curb that we know that bringing down the energy price cap increase would lower inflation you know the the predictions have already come down a bit after the government's announcement so it makes no sense whatsoever to be raising interest right now especially so aggressively you know driving at the cost of household debt across the country at a time where record numbers are being pushed into until that day it makes a recession much more likely and it may even risk a financial crash it eventually further down the line. So we know that inflation is the biggest eroder of household incomes and obviously it needs to be brought under control if you're saying the Bank of England shouldn't bring down interest rates what should they do what are their other options sorry raise interest rates. So you know we have to deal with the crisis we're facing now which is huge inflation driven by gas prices international gas prices possible fuel prices and to an extent corporate profits is also playing a role in that you know I think we've been having this conversation since the crash that the Bank of England is is out with tools in the same way that many of the economic tools we look to use you know are tools of the past not the present so you know what the Bank of England needs to be doing is exploring alongside the Treasury and the government what are the big challenges of today and what should our approach be but we have to be honest with ourselves you know today an interest rate rise will push people into poverty it will increase insolvency now that is not good for the country's economy it's not good for for living standards and so I think that you know good question is when are we going to have this honest conversation about the fact that that these tools aren't going to do anything useful but in fact they're just going to make what looks like to be quite a really tough winter even worse for a lot of households across the country it looks like the bank are going to be raising interest rates where do you see interest rates going I know you're saying that they shouldn't be rising at the moment but I think it looks like they will be so what do you see happening going forward then we've heard over a third of mortgage holders think that that will make their mortgage repayments affordable obviously we've got really high levels of credit card debt and other forms of household debt and borrowing as people are struggling to get by you know choosing between eating and eating you know so I said as I said this is going to make that debt burden worse and it could push many more people into insolvency obviously already people that have defaulted on their debt and this will make the situation worse so you know it looks like we are headed for quite a deep recession potentially in the UK and you know that financial stability risk is there so you know what we're hearing from both the Bank of England and to an extent the government and the Treasury you know isn't looking at the tools we need to solve the challenges of today and just quickly we're expecting the mini budget tomorrow we've been discussing it this morning what do you want to hear in that tomorrow from the government so I mean we'd love to see less of what's been coming out from the Prime Minister and the Chancellor around you know we need to take away the Bankers bonuses cap we need to de-regulate the city we need to make also they're looking to put tax cuts on the housing market which can fuel a housing bubble and actually we need to see more about what's that support for the people on lowest incomes because they're the people that going to be hit hardest by the the current inflation the current energy cost you know obviously they've brought the cap down but it's still going up you know ideally they'd be reversing the energy price cap to pre-april levels I mean that would be the kind of top the top request but I think on top of that we need to see along the term plans for insulation home insulation in the country we need to see investment and we need to see that support for people on lowest incomes if we're going to curb a kind of wave of intolerance and people getting pushed into poverty and into very difficult situations this winter


Hi, I'm Kyle and this video is brought to you by the Old Road Zine. Today we're drawing the kelp scrubs and I'm going to talk to you about how to read art. You can conceptualize just about anything as having a code or being a text or having a grammar. That is to say, the more you know about the way that something is put together, the more you can have fun just understanding how those components are interacting and vibrating and adding meaning to the next part of it. In the game design space, there is sort of a default assumption that writing and design is going to be done through text, going to be done through rules, but writing can be done through drawing and visuals as well. We even use the term reading a map to understand it and that is not to say you are only reading a map when you are reading the place names, you are reading a map to understand how it is all fit together and what it has to do with you. The first step to reading any kind of text is to make a thorough inventory of symbols and understand how they fit together. It's like learning the alphabet, learning to read, learning how words modify each other, all of these things. It's the same way with visuals as well. The first thing that you need to do is take a thorough inventory of the symbols in front of you and this is where things get really exciting and really interesting is because symbols are slippery and there are ways to have fun with that and to project your own creativity onto a reading of a text and it gets even more fun when you include people you trust with you to help you interpret the the symbols to help you recombine this thing once you've taken it apart. This is why I don't like using words on my maps and I definitely don't key my maps to a list of corresponding room descriptions because what I'm trying to do, my whole mission here is just to get you to have fun with your friends just looking at art. For instance, let's take a look at this kelpie. Don't go reaching for that monster manual. Don't go searching things on Wikipedia. Just what do you know about seaweed and naked witch ladies and in deals and fairies and bargains and adventures? Just what do you know? This isn't an academic symposium. You don't have to defend yourself. Just what are the assumptions that you bring with you when you see this and respect other people's interpretation of that as well. When you look at an image of a kelpie sitting out on a rocky outcropping with a bridge going to it, what are you curious about? What would you ask her? Are you afraid of her? Does she need help? Where do you go from there? However you interpret that can be true. You just have to talk about it and negotiate it with your players or with your GM or however you want to put it. But I know, I know, people are very used to having the answers, to being able to look up the monster stats, to be able to look up the weaknesses or the backstory and to have a concrete answer. This is going to take time. This is going to take practice, but I've got an idea. I've got an approach. Maybe you'll find it helpful. So I wanted to talk about this little book of games that I made. It's just kind of a little zine called The Book of Common Games. I wanted to talk about this one in particular called Sea Feel Wonder, the game of aesthetic attunement. Just by going through a piece of art, an illustration, a map, whatever, and kind of going through these steps of saying I see, it makes me feel, and it makes me wonder, you kind of get at a way of involving yourself in the artwork in a very personal and intimate way. So let's try this out. I see several conjoined sea mammals. It makes me feel uneasy. It makes me wonder what is causing these conjoined sea mammals to land here on this beach in particular. I see this hanging jibbit. It makes me feel sad and unsafe. It makes me wonder who is kept there? For what are they being punished? I see a giant horse skull covered in snails. It makes me feel frightened.  This can really enrich any art experience, including game experiences, and attuning with the details that you see there and kind of seeing where the adventure is. I see that there is more to be gained from art by being curious about it and being in tune with your own experience about it than just learning what all the correct answers are and solving all the puzzles before you even learn what mysteries there are about it. I think this would be a great way to involve art at your tabletop in your game, in your preparation for your game, if you're the GM, or if you're doing a solo RPG and you have all of these maps and books out in front of you of just like drawing more nectar out of the experience for you.  Thank you for indulging me on that. I know a lot of people are just watching this to see me draw a pretty map, but I want you to think about how you are engaging with the arts just by looking at them. You are creating your own experience just by being a thoughtful observer and I think that's a really powerful and important thing for everybody, not just for artists and not just for GMs, but just like for people. Now, this is really just like the tip of the iceberg, the very beginning of talking about art critique and postmodern theory and if you want, I can get more into it in a future video, but this might just have to do for now. That's it for this video. If you heard something you thought was pretty nifty, leave a like. If you want to see more videos, hit the bell or subscribe and maybe one day we'll meet on the old roads. Until then, farewell.


Marketing is an incredibly complex subjects. There are products where marketing campaign is good, but the results may not be and there are products where results are good and campaign may not be. Many a times what is visible versus the efforts put in there could be a disconnect. This jury was a fantastic experience where we could go behind the campaign, evaluated across multiple dimensions as jury members had a varied background and it was really a fun experience to figure out how brands gets built, how marketing plays a role in building the brand. One there should be a purpose with the brand, second there should be a connect with the target audience and third the brand should leave certain sustenance. The campaign should not be effective only when it is made. In fact as someone posted on social media yesterday, this was in the context of Arun Gobil who played Bhagwan Ram's role in Ramayana coming out of Ayodhya airport and people touching his feet. I think brand campaign also should be like that. It should not be effective only when it is on. It should be lingering in the memory of target audience even when campaign is not running. Well there is an ocean, there is not one campaign which one can pick up as a favorite one. But undoubtedly I have been mesmerized by Amul. It is one brand which has connected rural and urban India, young and old India, India and Bharat as well. This is one brand which resonates with the current events and despite passage of time the memory of Amul girl always lingers. So to me Amul represents epitome of value, connect and sustenance.