this I decided to have this session as you noticed 50 years ago when the U.S. Civil Rights Commission hearings were held here in San Antonio housing was not an issue we dealt with civil rights administration of justice employment education and not housing so we this is one of the subjects that we added to this one so I'm very glad that we're here to have a little conversation about that while we're waiting and I think this is our angel who's gonna help us all of us have power I think we got our baby person welcome sister yeah thank you sister so what I thought I do while we are still working on that is introduce our panelists we have a very interesting I think an important group of people who are going to be presenting all experts in housing in one way or another all the way from housing at the federal level and administration of major sums of money for people who work on a daily basis with a community so it's I think the perfect combination to address a very complicated subject Lourdes Castro Ramirez came to San Antonio to serve as president and CEO of the San Antonio Housing Authority before that she had worked in various positions in the housing authority of the city of Los Angeles Lourdes left the San Antonio Housing Authority to join Secretary Julian Castro at HUD in the position of Deputy Secretary for the Public and Indian Housing at HUD and she is now president of the University Health System I had the privilege of working with Lourdes for a year as we put together the we carried with us the Mayor's Housing Policy Task Force report we worked on it for a whole year and it was a joy and a learning experience to sit with Lourdes and have her manage a very diverse group of five people that included a developer a banker an architect and a community person like myself and with her background in housing but with her heart always in the community she made a wonderful chair Jessica Delero for this to my right is the proud product of San Antonio Southside she's an accomplished community organizer and cultural worker she is also strong a strong and independent activist who has the pulse of the grassroots community in her heart I have had the pleasure of working with Jessica for 10 12 years and it has been all working in the community she is she speaks with authority I believe because she is rooted in the community and she is such an incredible organizer that she always wants the people at the table today I think she would have wanted the people at the table here instead of herself because that's the way that Jessica is and she does it magnificently in English and in Spanish Marisol Cortez another dear dear friend it's a writer and a community-based scholar Marisol could be work doctor Marisol Cortez could be working at any university in this country I believe she chooses to be a community scholar and work hand-in-hand with the people of the city right now she's associated with urban 15 where she has among other things has assisted in creating the hidden stories project so when you have time you might Google hidden stories among things that she has done is chronicle the story of the people who have been displaced in the city we always talk about the displacement right but we never asked the question of where do the people go what happens when people are displaced so she did a study on urban renewal we saw that the urban renewal for UTSA is today and she also did one on urban renewal for the hemisphere scientists now what was there before and what is there now along with her husband Greg Harman who is recording us here they have an online journal that again you can Google that's called deceleration and it is an ongoing online journal that reports there's our shared ecological political and cultural crisis riding at the intersection of climate change and social justice journalistically academically and creatively and that's my friend so it's a senior at Trinity University she's majoring in political science and in business administration at Trinity she is the director of business operations of the contemporary of the contemporary a startup publication of public affairs and she is also a McNair scholar and she has research on immigration and on Central American difference specifically and she plans to continue her studies through a graduate program in Latin American studies I met Sabdi in one of many events that I do and once in a while after a presentation or speech I have some person come all enthusiastic and wanting to know more so we became friends and I hope that our association continues for a long time what I you know housing is a very complex issue when we were presenting our report at the V session in September no August right August I was so conscious when we were sitting with the council members that their constituents probably if ever complain about housing to them you know I shared that when you go before your council person or or your senator you're not you're going to talk about your streets particularly at City Council your garbage pickup and so on you're never going to say I have problems with housing because that's just not something that people think government is responsible for so there is very little expertise in the community just the general community on housing and I think it is instructive for me to take just a few minutes to put our our conversation in context maybe a little bit of history of housing in San Antonio specifically and it really starts with a history of the first public housing project in in the United States which was out of some of the courts and that was around 1939 father got me a little bit of our lady with a loop and church actually worked with Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt to call attention to the squalor that people were living in around us the other son freak and they created that public housing project with federal money of course San Antonio has also a history touching on housing that is urban renewal we had a couple of urban renewal projects like I already mentioned one was the destruction of the live lively important neighborhood Vista Verde north and south which is where UTSA downtown is today I wrote a book and I'm selling it downstairs but one of the sections of my book is called analysis on the bus and it's my chronicling of what I learned after 20 years of traveling on the bus every day for 20 years on Martin Street first to work and then to school on how I saw how that neighborhood was impacted by urban renewal even if it even if the houses weren't torn down there it destabilized an entire area the other urban renewal was the one that happened in hemisphere where we displaced a lot of people at some point the federal government did get involved in housing through the model cities project was in the 60s we had model cities some of us got involved in the model cities project not much was done in infrastructure it was really not a very successful program but again it was the federal government trying to dabble in it when the war poverty Lyndon Johnson war poverty came there were efforts in my neighborhood I was raised blocks from our native lake University and Christ the King Church where we actually got training as leaders so you might say that we were working on infrastructure housing being one of them but not very much was done again there was no city commitment to housing at all it was always with federal funds the 70s arrived and we start getting community development block grant money CDBG at that time the cops organization was already very strong and they started doing infrastructure because my growing up was growing up in flooding tremendous flooding in our inner city right here on because the street and West Martin Street and again the the city did not invest city money our tax money in housing however they did impact housing then the way they impact housing up zoning the board of adjustment through historic preservation the code enforcement so you still influence it and in many times cost problems but there is no money to to pay for it the so that's kind of a little history and my point there is that the city of San Antonio has not traditionally spent money our tax money and I don't know how many of you probably weren't hearing what our speaker at noon said but she was talking about the reduction of federal money the way the federal money is today whatever money is coming in for housing which we are still getting some that's going to shrink that's going to go away so one of the things that we one of the recommendations that we had in our task force what it was if the city start investing in housing because the federal government is not going to do it but we as a community but are going to have to make it an issue to to demand that that money is spent okay that's history the other thing I wanted to show you and I hope they're there are just a few slides and that's just to place all of us in San Juan it's encrypted I can't see it but we're going to imagine we can't and my point here is the following we are here commemorating the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission hearings that came to see what was happening with the Mexican-American community in the city the reality is that today the Latino Mexican-American community of San Antonio is the majority we're the majority and it just so happens that if you can imagine a man with loop 410 imagine it 410 and when you see where the largest percentage of old housing is where is it inside 410 if you can okay okay if you can imagine that same inside loop 410 where the greatest poverty exists where is it going to be inside before 10 if you can imagine who lives inside before 10 vast majority of people there are people of color largely Mexican-Americans Latinos and something that has been happening now and I'll just kind of venture into it a little bit maybe it'll come in later is we are predicted to grow by 1 million people all of you have heard that right we're San Antonio is going to grow by 5 million 1 million people by 2040 so okay those are my maps okay you get the idea right that's poverty and then the other one is I think I did pretty good imagine poverty and then the other one is called community some color race ethnicity again the darker areas is where the people live it you get it right so I have a map there that I call the icred map because we are just keep that one there because we are growing the city has to get ready right so what when a city gets to this point you need density instead of growing this way to start growing up so the plans are for the city to build housing to build density so the plan is to do it where in the inner city so interestingly the areas that have been incentivized for housing by city policy happen to be the areas where the people live where there's the old housing communities of color live so right now you know to me this this slide and the others show what our predicament is what our challenges how are we going to to produce the housing that we need to house a million more people which by the way they will not all be people coming in they're going to be natural growth which is where my last two slides are and then I'm going to let my colleagues here speak one of them is well that's a poverty map again but there are two slides that have to do with demographics and that's just to give you a little taste of what our Latino population looks like okay that we don't have that one but if you can imagine a map a graph that has people over 65 you know the bottom or the top and then children the zero to five at the other end we're going to have this pyramid where most of our population is young so the Latino population is young San Antonio is a young city so that's kind of a little bit of history a little bit of demographics just setting what the challenge is how are we going to house people how are we going to not just people for the future but how are we going to address the problems that we have had for generations that's the lack of housing the conditions of housing and the huge issue of displacement when the city is growing and their policies being created what happens to the people so the first person that I will ask to speak is Marisol Dr. Cortez and like I said her expertise is in many things but one of them is displacement and she has journey with the people of mission trails who are the ones that were displaced in 2014 which is the largest displacement of people sit urban since urban renewal and those were 300 people who were displaced from their mobile home park on the river because of high-end housing that came and thank you as well to all of you for organizing this conference and to the executive committee that put it all together it's really impressive and I'm really honored to be here with you as Maria mentioned my name is Marisol and I am a creative writer and a community scholar primarily based here in San Antonio I did my PhD in cultural studies from the University of California Davis but I choose to work in the community instead of in the University supporting social movement building primarily through writing and research and with Maria who I've known for many years with Jessica who have known for many years and many others I participated in numerous struggles mostly around land and water protection struggles to protect the mother theater against predatory and extractive forms of development and to create and preserve the commons and so that's kind of the ones that I bring to thinking about housing that I wanted to share with you today today what I wanted to do is present some kind of bigger picture ways of thinking about housing from that perspective but before I do what I would like to do is open with the poem that I wrote as I was doing kind of the more scholarly writing about what happened at Mission Trails and in part because I think the numbers that came out of that research are very important but I think in the face of institutional courses of erasure some stories can really only be documented poetically or creatively so I'll open with the poem that is called dedication to the ones who stayed until the end the ones who stayed till the end did not want to go to any parks on any developer's approved list the ones who stayed till the end did not want to post to Craigslist $5,000 homes into which they have poured 15,000 in repairs inside which they rebuilt lives once wrecked by violence domestic or state or both the ones who stayed all the way until the end did so because they saw what happened to their neighbors when their neighbors left on someone else's terms someone else's timeline someone else's I know it's best someone else's for your own good for the good of the city for the good of the tax base and they said no sorry not good enough the ones who stayed believed in the rightness and the goodness of what they wanted and what their children deserved they wouldn't settle they dreamed of keeping their homes were buying a home of buying land that they could move together in this land where rights are founded on removal the ones who stayed until the end with a bravest because they had no choice there was nothing no help for women without papers women without English were mothers of young children the ones who could left early before the rats came the break-ins the machines chewing up the empty trailers with mouths gaping not even stopping when the kids walk past on their way home from school the ones with the least had no choice but to stay in furious tones naming the raw deal they've gotten and how it wasn't enough in the end what they got was near nothing near what they needed but they never stopped insisting on their right to it they fought and stayed till abandoned and failed in the end by the city the developers the organizations even the lawyer even us everyone supposedly trying to help confounded by these women who refused to take the deal and get out didn't they understand what a good deal they were getting weren't they grateful didn't they know they were entitled to nothing these mojones desigtates see this we're not about to leave before they were ready or to move where they didn't want to go to begin with the ones who stayed till the end were non-persons in the eyes of the state with no rights to land or even survival much less any pursuit of happiness which was why they insisted in the name of their full humanity that in fact they deserve the world for what had been done to them and to their children came out as I was working with the scene of the mission trails with Jessica and some other folks to support resident organizing and mission trails mobile home community by documenting what had happened there and the report that we produced try and you can if you go online to this URL you can you can get to that report and download it for yourself but the report that we tried to produce wanted to place the story of mission trails into the broader historical context of both neoliberal forms of urban governance as well as San Antonio's deep history of colonialism we use archival documents to piece together how and why the city made its decision to resolve them and most importantly we tried to make visible the impacts of displacement interviewing 51 families which was about approximately half of those who were moved from their homes for us it was a project of witness to remember and write down what happened and how it affects people was to refuse the city and the developer's preference that it be forgotten or erased or denied because the irony of displacement is that when you push people out of a space they've been living which are also erasing is evidence that it happened so we wanted to make sure that that did not happen some of the things we learned from doing the interviews which we wouldn't have known otherwise in the first that three residents died after displacement two of them were elders one of them was a man who died by suicide this is one of the elders to pass about six months after she was removed from her home about one experience period of homelessness after removal in the longest case for about 18 months a year and a half and these are two little girls the children that were on the eve before they they left mission trails and then another kind of severe impact was that even if folks weren't homeless there was a rise in housing and security for many others about two out of five households that we interviewed had moved more than once by the time we interviewed them so it wasn't just if they were they were displaced once it was it sort of unleashed this chain of removals and relocations about one in five residents that we spoke with interviewed experience life-threatening health impacts requiring hospitalization as a result of the stress of new zoning and displacement and about three out of five reported mental health impacts specifically over half of the households that we interviewed reported negative impacts on their children and one in five of those households reported impacts health impacts on their children primarily depression and anxiety at the time when people were living at mission trails about half of them were already housing burden meaning they paid more than 30% of their their income on either rent or mortgage plus utilities but after they were displaced that number rose to 71% of people and you know the reason was because many had many owner home they had to leave their homes behind you know they lost their home and they became renters after being owners and then lastly about three out of four households that we talked to reported negative impacts on social networks and sense of community which doesn't sound as severe as some of the other impacts but I mean in the case of that one of the elders who passed it was because of the primary factor was the deterioration of the social network she had relied on to keep her safe because she was living in a situation where her housemate was abusive and when she moved away from an adopted daughter who had kind of always protected her that's what that's what happened we she her adopted daughter feels that that had a role in in her death and that abuse that is those numbers are important and we wouldn't know those numbers without talking to people but what I actually wanted to talk about today was this the deeper significance of this case and the deeper issues at stake when we talk about gentrification and kind of the fuller development of these ideas come from a chapter that I did for a book that Rudy Rosales edited that just came out called community as the material basis of citizenship so the chapter is based on the work that we did admission trails but it's sort of a more kind of thinking about these the bigger picture ideas of it we often conceptualize gentrification as a housing rights struggle only and it is that but a rude it is a struggle of the most dispossessed communities to claim a right to the city a right to say what happens to the land that they live on in a legal context where land is seen only as a commodity to be bought and sold at profit and where only landowners have a say in what happens to it so while mission trails might seem like an extreme example of development politics in San Antonio I would argue it's simply the most egregiously visible tip of an iceberg that is the deeper logic at work in all struggles over development both here in San Antonio and around the world what was most striking about the case of mission trails for those who live in Winston is true in a more general sense whether we're talking about struggles over the Haste Street Bridge where we're talking about Vista Ridge the pipeline where we're talking about the South Texas nuclear project and we're talking about PGA from so many years ago or we're talking about the present effort to develop a climate action plan based on social justice not only did mission trails residents have no right to remain in their homes more fundamentally they had no rights to participate meaningfully in decisions about the place that they lived even when those decisions would threaten their lives while superficially they might have had a right to address elected officials their interests and input were of no material consequence and this was true for those whose legal status was curtailed for those whose legal status curtailed their rights to participation but it was also true of all mission trails residents regardless of legal status and it was true too for the broader community of San Antonio residents supporting resident organizing at mission trails none of us have the right to participate meaningfully in such a critical decision about the place we call home and that's really what we mean when if you hear if you hear people talk about neoliberal urbanism or neoliberal urban governance and that's really the root issue thinking about gentrification in these terms however I think we arrived at the other striking thing about mission trails which is why I wanted to open with that particular comment and that is residents fierce insistence on claiming rights that they did not have rights that the system of legal citizenship and neoliberal urban governance are in fact set up to deny in fighting for their homes they embodied his residents embodied in their for called for they invoked an alternate vision of political belonging rooted not in citizenship or property ownership but in residence and inhabitants in a relationship to land outside of commodification a relationship to the political body the law beyond exclusionary forms of citizenship so I want to end by just taking a little time to try to put into words what this embodiment means for all of our ongoing efforts to protect and build the commons in the face of these parasitic forms of development native scholar Daniel our wildcat was a uchi creek professor at Haskell Indian Nations University has argued for the need to understand space or land less as an abstraction and instead as particular home places or what he calls nature culture and nexuses so in other words every place grounds particular interactions between its human and its non-human residents so the right to the city is not simply the right to participate in decisions about what happens to the places we inhabit or the right to create cities that meet the needs of the most vulnerable is that but it also depends more deeply on reconceptualizing urban space as land and reconceptualizing land as nature that itself has a right to be healthy undisrupted and free of commodification this is where the right to the city intersects with movements to recognize the rights of nature for the interest of the mother fiera as in the recent constitutional revisions in Ecuador to include a universal declaration of the rights of mother earth it also points to the global south to indigenous led movements throughout latin america from wendy b a model of social and ecological wellness that stands as an alternative to development when you need is it is a misdeso term such as translation in the Spanish from concepts originally part of indigenous cosmo visions most frequently catch the idea of sum up how say meaning a fullness of life in a community together with other persons and nature as a paradigm when you reject several key assumptions of modernity that undergird the idea of development first is that the single highest goal of all societies is development epitomized by the living conditions of the global north when you be rejects the idea that progress toward the school is linear and that the best expression of this progress is economic growth as measured by gdp most importantly when you rejects the idea which is foundational to western thought that humans are outside of and above nature that humans are subjects over an object to be controlled and manipulated in this linear process of things getting better and better first articulation in the post war united states modern western nations have not stopped seeking to impose development on the rest of the world as a supreme social aspiration including among the poor within their own cities and that's idea of economic development whatever internal contradictions or unintended consequences arise from this paradigm we attach prefixes to soften the edges right we call it sustainable development and we call it human development or equitable development but the core logic of this paradigm remains according to the Ecuadorian scholar Eduardo Bolinas development is a he calls it a zombie category we slay it and it returns so even as it's declared defunct he writes in his next step it is promoted as the only way forward how many times do we go to the zoning commission or the city council and feel like we have to say it's not that i against development but before talking about all of the ways that a particular project inherently threatens access to housing or clean water or air or even our lives when we beat however breaks from development entirely as a paradigm and one of the primary ways it does so is by rejecting the idea that idea that nature is an object to be controlled or mastered in the interest of progress Ecuador's universal declaration on the rights of mother earth for instance defines the earth as quote a self-regulating community of interrelated beings that sustains contains and reproduces all beings and which has such possesses inalienable rights to continue its vital cycles and processes free from human disruptions so the earth too has a right to remain when you read then abolishes the nature culture dualism that feminist philosophy bell plunge would has argued is central to western ways of knowing and being in the world and which alberto costa argues is also the root of colonization within the americas in africa by contrast when we read past it's not only a way of knowing and being but also a political body a polity in which nature has agency and political subjectivity to be fully realizable then the rights of the city the rights would have it our home place as well must be grounded in a more primary description of rights to nature itself to be free from commodification like the communities of the south we are done with development as a model of well-being we who call this place home who stood with the ones who stayed at mission trails until the end who tracked their dispersal across the city the state the nation indeed the continent after their removal and who insist on a right to remain and to migration both know that place is important because it is a polity to paraphrase tony risham samara our power resides in our connection to the places where we belong and the strength of that connection derives from our knowledge that the earth itself the river on whose banks mission trails sat is alive and cannot be owned it has its own rights to be healthy good afternoon everyone i'm on lumbis castro ramirez and first i wanted to also echo marisol's comments thanking maria baguio salam for inviting us to be part of today's discussion about housing affordable housing neighborhoods and really the importance of working together to ensure that everyone has a place to call home as maria baguio salam mentioned i had the really the honor of serving as the chair of the mayor's housing policy task force this was a task force that was created last august of 2017 by mayor ron nerver and you know i think that as i was reflecting on like what prompted the mayor to create you know to create this task force i was thinking about some of maria's comments regarding population our our city is growing right by 2040 as maria mentioned we will have a million new people moving in to san antonio or being born in san antonio the other thing that i think you know triggered this really interest in beginning to better understand housing was mission trails and so as dr corces pointed out this was probably the first time in recent history in san antonio where we didn't know what was happening we at the city sort of government level didn't acknowledge that people were being impacted didn't know how to deal with it and yet the the faces the experience the reality as as dr corces pointed out are very clear that these were families that were living in this community that may not have had the financial means or were with all and did their best to organize and you know to have a voice and we when i say we i mean we the sort of collectively city council because this is again you know sort of the impetus for why why create a mayor's housing policy task force i don't think we dealt with this you know correctly i don't think we understood it i think it goes back to a point also that money i made that housing is very a very complex issue and yet it's not because i think when we think about housing i think we think about housing as an individual issue an individual problem and we don't think about it as housing is part of our collective community responsibility and there are forces that play that put pressures on families and those forces play that put pressures on their families are created not necessarily by individual families but by the fact that we don't really sort of dive in deep into understanding the social economic priorities that we have as a city so in august of 2017 mayor Ron Nuremberg created the task force with kind of a very simple singular charge which was to create a comprehensive and compassionate housing policy a framework to guide the city's focus on housing but not just from a data perspective but also to better understand the reality that families were facing at a human perspective so if you can fast forward and so these were our conclusions you know i'm going to walk you through the process and some key data but i think it's really important that we now lose sight of what we found which you know sort of built on on the fact that san antonio like many other cities is having an affordability crisis and housing affordability is impacting neighborhoods across the city and when we don't have access to affordable housing it affects housing stability family stability student success it also affects our health and it does affect the economic prosperity of a city what we also found is that this housing affordability and a security issue is having a disproportional impact on low income individuals and households and you know we saw the map earlier and we saw sort of the areas of our city that have been maybe not as where we have not provided the level of infrastructure support where we still have deep you know pockets of poverty so as a result we also saw that latinos are disproportionately more impacted by housing affordability and insecurity issues finally you know what we saw very clearly was that housing has not been a priority in san antonio it has you know it has not been something that we have been able to understand and rally behind and sort of commit to a set of policies and dedicate resources and implement you know it's it's also something that i think as a country we struggled with right in 1968 50 years ago the housing fair the fair housing act was passed and this was just a focus on basically non-discrimination based on race religion gender and you know nationality as it relates to the sale rental and access to housing and so you know Maria mentioned earlier that as we go back 50 years housing maybe was not as you know critical of a was maybe not sort of on the agenda here locally the way that maybe education was but housing has been a struggle i think here for the last 50 years and it was very clear to us that in san antonio we have not been able to to really make housing central to the conversation that we're having and we have not really acknowledged that housing is part of the infrastructure of our city as one of our colleagues said you know housing is the fourth pillar of our economic infrastructure just like water just like energy just like transportation we need to focus on housing and when we don't focus on housing when we don't focus on affordable housing when we know that you know there is also this history of disinvestment a history of redlining a history of discrimination then we end up also with vulnerable populations being disproportionately more impacted so those were the findings in a very sort of succinct way in terms of what the mayor's housing policy task force has captured in the report that we produce and you know these are just sort of images this is context for everybody this is not happening just here in san antonio it's happening across the country housing affordability whether housing is a right or not homelessness housing and security this is happening across the country and san antonio i think and i think we collectively in our report also put forward this recommendation that while we do have a housing crisis here in san antonio it is not as severe as certain other cities and we have an opportunity to intervene we have an opportunity to be proactive we have an opportunity to be thoughtful and we have an opportunity to put together a set of policies that will help guide the future development of our city when it comes to housing rental housing home ownership housing and other types of housing options so what the task force accomplished in about a year collectively and together with many people was to build or develop a comprehensive plan for an equitable housing system that's how i view it you know i went back and read the report and that this is exactly what we produce it was a bottom-up process that led to the creation of this report and set of recommendations it was community led it was also data driven we wanted to understand the history the data the best practices and to analyze you know what had been done maybe in the past to inform our recommendations it was also a very inclusive community process early on in the development of the mayor's housing policy task force we adopted a set of values as a task force that were really grounded in ensuring in many ways and really creating a different way of developing policy we focused on transparency and accountability accountability meaning to each other but also to the people that were part of this process we also were committed to listening and understanding the community experience it was not just our experience or our perspective it was really trying to understand what is happening on the ground how do we sort of elevate those voices what solutions do people have that will help formulate this comprehensive and compassionate housing policy we did rely on technical experts we brought in about four different groups the National Association of Latino Community Asset Builders, LISC, San Antonio which basically supports the creation of affordable housing a group from Denver that did a lot of the market analysis economic planning systems and also Humanities and Associates which helped with the community facilitation and planning meetings that we held quickly and then you know of course you know history matters and so we went back and took a look at the policies both from the federal level the state level and the local level that have influenced the development of San Antonio and the current sort of state of neighborhoods of housing and so that was you know important for us because you can't develop policy without you know ignoring sort of the history of the community and we were also very keen and focused on understanding the impact that housing is having on vulnerable populations vulnerable communities and for us I think in many ways we defined that as individuals that were making less than 60 percent of AMI individuals that need access to housing and support services and so on something very key that we did early on you know and this again happens across the country when people think about affordable housing they immediately think about public housing or they think about those people or they think about why are they in subsidized housing and we thought it was important to really recalibrate and redefine affordable housing and really affordable housing is the ability for everyone to be able to not spend more than 30% of their income towards housing whether you are a teacher whether you are receiving social security whether you are a city employee whether you are you know working in the restaurant the ability to not pay more than 30% that is how the federal government defines affordability and that is how we define the affordability and the other thing that we thought was really important was to understand the economic situation of San Antonio and understand the number of families that are struggling financially so there's a lot of sort of area medium income data that was gathered and collected another key piece of information that was really important in our development of our policy recommendations was looking at housing costs basically over the last 20 years or so housing costs have been increasing at a much faster rate than incomes and so you know you see in this graph in the last maybe 10 years housing costs increased by about 5% per year while incomes increased by less than 2% per year so what's the impact of that the impact of that is that we have about 30% of households in San Antonio that are spending more than 30% of their income and you know that equates to one out of five homeowners one out of two renters 80% of households that are making less than 30% I mean less than $30,000 a year so when we talk about vulnerable populations we have an issue with housing access housing affordability but we also have an issue with the amount of money that they're spending for that limited housing and in some cases for that housing that is not in very good condition that housing that may not be healthy housing right or housing that is really in need of repair or in need of additional investment if you can just look back the the other really important piece was also that 66% of all Latino households are cost burdened or spending more than 30% of their income so again vulnerable populations who are they understanding how housing has a disproportionate impact on certain communities more so than others the other really important piece of data or information that we gathered was that housing production has not kept up with the the growth of our city in fact we saw that for the last 10 years or so we have been increasing the number of jobs in San Antonio maybe about 14,000 new jobs per year the last 10 years but we have only been creating about 6,500 new housing units so what happens right you're growing you're not producing enough housing so either families will leave the city and look for housing that's affordable outside of the city or they'll stay they'll stay they'll pay more because you know sort of a kind of a supply and demand right you're paying more because there's limited supply this also impacts home ownership rates we also took a look at the impact that these changes in the lack of housing is having in terms of our home ownership rate in San Antonio and one specific sort of factoid was that in the last 10 years or so our home ownership rate has dropped from 61 percent down to 54 percent and so again all of these factors create pressures in families and neighborhoods Marisol spoke about gentrification and displacement so it's important to understand all of the things that are happening right and to to understand that it's not an individual problem that we have a system problem so as we move forward towards our recommendations this is a a very short summary of the recommendations it's in a very high high level but these are basically the five areas that we recommend the city focus on or city leadership focus on these five areas of recommendation include about 11 specific policy implementation strategies along with you know 22 different steps i'll just call on a few of them because i think it's important just as you know we move into implementation i think it's important for you all to be aware i think our highest and number one priority and i think Mania would agree will agree with me was ensuring that our city leadership our community sort of under basically the the recognition and this actually came from the people that were involved in this process right that we don't have a good way of coordinating and sharing information and really focusing on housing that that it's important for us to develop a system that is well coordinated it's important for us you know to have leadership at the city level it's important for us to have the resources necessary to be able to coordinate this housing system and so our number one priority was the creation of a coordinated housing system a coordinated housing system that's not just about staff and programs but a coordinated housing system that would lead to the development of a one-stop housing center where families that are looking for housing information or support would have the opportunity and access you know to to go there a coordinated housing system that would move the city of San Antonio from focusing on housing as a compliance issue to focusing on housing as an opportunity to innovate an opportunity to expand housing options so this is our number one priority we also recommended that the city hire a high level housing executive to lead this effort someone that really cares about housing that is collaborative and that would become basically the face of housing and and basically the face of the city or more than the face you know that would provide the the leadership necessary to make housing a priority the other he recommendation that I like to focus on is this last one on ensuring accountability to the public and this goes back to really the the history of reports that have been maybe produced in the past that lead to a certain set of conclusions that don't get implemented and they don't get implemented one because either there is not sort of the implementation plan which we did include in our task force report or two because there's not the political will and the governance structure necessary to make it happen so under number five we've recommended that the housing commission that was created a few years ago be reconstituted to focus on the mayor's housing policy task force recommendations we also recommended that the city develop a process to keep residents informed about their progress implementing these recommendations and that we also build in accountability measures to ensure really the intent of these to ensure that the implementation was occurring in a manner which was respectful of the intent of those recommendations you can of course read more about the recommendations by you know getting copy of the report it's available online and on page 12 we have a detailed list of all of the things that are included I know of page 11 I know several of you that are in the room also participated and you know we can thank you enough for being part of that process and I just I'll leave you with this while the numbers may be fuzzy we would say what we did see in the city was a commitment to increase funding granted some of these new dollars are dollars that are coming from the federal government because there was a bump in cdg and home dollars but some of these dollars were general fund dollars which was a strong recommendation that we made that the city began to increase its level of investment and its level of resources and and also just kind of thinking ahead we also recommended a change to the city's charter to allow the city to be able to put forward an affordable housing bond similar to what austin has done similar to what many other cities have done to increase resources for affordable housing so with that I'll turn it back thank you thank you I have a situation here that we run out of time however I still have people who need to go to another session please you know feel free to leave you know anybody we think anything about it however we do have other sessions so as you're walking out I would like to call our third person here jessica I'm sorry but we started late but if some of you want to stick with us we'll stick here there isn't another session huh there isn't another session in here okay well she's going to hurry through hers yes I will yes just really quickly I think probably yeah there's another session in here yeah I'm going to she's going to close it real fast we're going to we're going to um I'm sorry but we we've got to be late by the first session we're going to close with where we started right the reason all of this has has come to fruition there was another task force right after Mission Trails happened and a subsequent housing commission was started then now there's this other task force that worked to another level went a little bit deeper and did actually you know hold the community perspectives with more higher regard and respect and you know recognize the community for our knowledge and expertise in our own experiences um and now you know as Lourdes said that task force is uh creating another housing commission to oversee the implementation of the recommendations and the community once again is coming together to monitor that process and to make sure that that process continues to be informed by community so if you are interested in joining that group there are some people that are already part of that if uh you are interested in maybe just learning more about that group because we don't have time to go too much into that but um the only other thing that I would mention is um you know again in different spaces a lot of credit is given to um the public officials that you know brought the political will to bring these groups together in this official capacity and I always make sure that we that it is really clear that is Mission Trails the residents of Mission Trails mobile home community had not raised their voice and insisted on raising their voice once they were ignored and ignored again and ignored after that and even after that first task force was created they did not reap any benefits from that initial effort and now and actually before Mission Trails there was a smaller mobile home park further up the Mission Reach area called Rolling Homes mobile homes mobile home community that none of us even knew about we didn't hear about it until afterwards so we have no idea where those people went and what there what happened today we are still in contact with a lot of people that live at Mission Trails mobile home community and understand that these impacts are ongoing and unfortunately we see also soports and town center coming up again and this group these tenants also spoke up or ignored and are also not going to bring the benefits that this task force process this new task force process might bring about so it comes down to us again to make sure that these five recommendation areas are implemented and really have the impact that we needed to have so I hope that you'll sign your name on there really quick and uh then just your phone number and email that we can we can let you know more about how we're trying to do that but my concluding comments were that the the three women who spoke included an expensive part of the issue of housing you know what I call the the kind of thinking that we as humans we're going to have to engage it and talk about and those are the values that Marisol brought out you know it's not just housing it's the way we live as humans and the way we live with the earth and it's all one what Ludis talked about is we have to work in systems we're a democracy we're a representative democracy we work we have to have people like Ludis inside representing our our interests and and then people in the community who are able to garner the wisdom of the community because without that public policy is not good so this is an example of the kind of leadership we want and for me I am delighted to say that in in my future these women are going to be the leaders in in all that we have discussed today and to tell Sati that she's going to have to take it further than anybody in her studies and also as she finishes and becomes a professional that we need thank you very much


All right, welcome back to the class. Just before the break, we started to look at how the Old Testament scriptures were transmitted through the ages. Was it accurate? Was it done carefully? So we saw that in the early 1900s. I think maybe the people in the early 1900s had no other work. So they did a lot of criticizing and all of that. So they said this 935 AD document which we have with us. Yes, it's been written by the Masurids, those people who were very careful about how they did the copies. But how do we know whether that copy which they have written is from some source document, which is identical to the original scriptures which were written by Moses, by Isaiah. What is the guarantee that accuracy was preserved over the ages? That was the question which these critics raised. And the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls helped a lot in settling these arguments. So let's look at a little bit of the background of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Now, about 300 years before the birth of Jesus Christ, these were generally called the silent years because Malachi was the last prophet through whom God spoke directly. And the Lord, in fact, warned the Israelites that after that, even if they long to hear his voice, they will not hear it until that person comes who will prepare a way in the wilderness and straighten the paths for the Messiah. So this was all prophesied in the Old Testament. And so during the silent years after Malachi is gone and now you no longer have the prophets actively speaking. So during that time, they were about 300 years before the birth of Christ. They were this godly group of Jewish people who were very displeased by what they were seeing in the Jerusalem temple. The people had become so corrupt. No one was honoring God. All the rituals which they're supposed to perform are now just superficial outward external actions. There is no repentance. There is no genuineness. And so this group of Jewish people, they decided that they would go away. They would separate themselves from this corrupt community and they would go and live out in the wilderness where they would devote themselves to spending time with God, learning his scriptures, growing in him. And so this community began or came to be known later as the Qumran community. They were a group of people called the Essenes, E-S-S-E-N-E-S. So they were the Essenes people. So this community started to live out in the Judean desert and they would no longer mingle with the corrupt people of Jerusalem. And so they spent their entire time in prayer and meditation upon the scriptures. And they also began to make a lot of hand copies of all the scrolls. So this is basically what they were doing for almost around, yeah, 370 years. So around the time before the birth of Jesus, the Romans began to attack. And so the invading armies, the Roman invading armies began to destroy what do you call them? The synagogues, they began to attack the Jewish people spiritually. So when all that was going on, these Essenes, they thought to themselves, it's risky. If one of these invading Roman armies comes to the Judean desert and destroys all the scrolls, which we have so carefully copied out, it would create a lot of harm. And so they took their entire collection of scrolls and they hid them in caves. So then, of course, Jesus was born. I know he did his ministry. And then finally in AD 70 is when you have the Roman general Titus, he comes, he completely destroys the Jerusalem temple. And at that time, he also attacked the Essenes community. Most of them were killed. But even though they died, the scrolls, which they had carefully hidden away in the caves, those remained safe. And so for the next 2000 years, nobody even saw those scrolls, all very carefully, safely hidden away by God in the caves near the Dead Sea. Finally, it was in 1947, 2000 years later, that a shepherd accidentally discovered the caves. He found the scrolls which are there inside. And so, totally 11 caves were found with scrolls stored inside. Now, why is this an interesting thing for us? Because you see that 935 AD document, that complete copy of the Old Testament, which was hand copied in 935 AD, these scrolls are 1000 years earlier than this 935 AD manuscript. So the critics were very, very curious. They wanted to compare the Dead Sea scrolls with this 935 AD manuscript to see how many defects there will be in the 935 AD manuscript. And when they did a comparison, a careful line by line comparison, except for some spelling mistakes, they could not find any major defects. No teaching was changed, no doctrine was affected, accuracy was preserved. And so they realized for a thousand years, so when the S&E's community made copies and then they perished, other people continued making copies. Till finally, someone made a copy in 935 AD in that entire span of time, accuracy had been maintained. Yes, small spelling mistakes were there here and there, but no major teaching was affected. Some names changed, some numbers changed because of the copyists were a little careless in the way they copied. So some numbers changed, names changed, some sentences changed, but no doctrine, no teaching in the Old Testament was touched. So it was completely laid to rest. Now this fact that the transmission of the Old Testament was done most carefully, most accurately. So if you were to look at the Dead Sea Scrolls, they were written over a long period of time, right from the time from about 300 years before the birth of Christ, all the way up to AD 17, the different copies were made and then these were stored in the caves. So among them, one of the oldest manuscripts that we find is one portion of the book of Samuel, which is almost 300 BC. Yeah, so that is one of the oldest manuscripts found in the caves. And of course, there were two Isaiah scrolls which were discovered and that was also a very helpful find because those two Isaiah scrolls proved that one single Isaiah wrote the entire Isaiah and not three different Isaias. Now we talked about that in the Old Testament course, so we will not touch upon it now. So the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls helped prove that the transmission of the Old Testament scriptures was done very carefully always. Let's look at the New Testament. How reliable is the New Testament? New Testament is highly reliable because the writings were written almost immediately after Christ's ascension, like no time was left in between for wrong ideas to come in, for memories to fade and people to forget the details, almost immediately after Jesus ascension, these New Testament writings began to be written down. So the crucifixion of Jesus was probably around 30 AD. About two years after that in 32 AD is when Paul becomes a believer. He has his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus and he becomes a follower of Jesus. About two years after Jesus' resurrection and ascension. And immediately after he becomes a believer, he starts preaching in all the synagogues about how Jesus is the true Messiah. And he begins to write his epistles. First Corinthians is one of the first letters which he writes. So they say that maybe he wrote it in around 40 AD, around 40 AD is when he would have written it. So at this time, you know, the Jerusalem temple has not even fallen. I mean, Titus has not come and even attacked us yet. So right there in this early days itself, Paul and the others began to do their writing. Now, why is this important? Because you see, whatever they are writing, not only will the believer community read those things, even the hostile Jews also will be reading it. And so if they have written any tall stories which are not true, if they've written fiction over there, the Jews would have risen up as a community and said, look, you're writing all lies in your writings. So even not only eyewitnesses who love Jesus have given their accounts, hostile eyewitnesses, those who are against Jesus, even they have looked at these writings because these writings were not written hundreds of years later, when you can cook up stories and say, ah, Jesus did this miracle, Jesus did that miracle. These records were written when the people who hate Jesus are still alive and none of them could raise a finger and say, ah, look, you're writing lies. So you see the accuracy of the New Testament scriptures is very easy to establish. So it was probably in around 40 AD that Corinthians was written. And many of the epistels were, many of these letters which he wrote, he would have written in the 40s and 50s is when he would have written it. So which means like just about 50 years after Jesus ascended, he's already writing down these things and all the churches are reading these things. Mark was probably written in the late 50s. Matthew and Luke were probably written in the 80s. So Matthew and Luke were written after the Jerusalem fell down, so after the attack of Titus. So Mark would have been written in the late 50s. Matthew and Luke were probably written in the 80s and John was written probably around 90 AD. So that was like the, you know, the last gospel, of course, the gospel of John and his letters and revelation were all probably around, written around 90 AD. So today, do we have anything from that time? We have some copies, you know, and of course we don't have the originals, but then we have very ancient copies which were handwritten in 200 AD. Eight of Paul's epistels and a large portion of Hebrews, copies which were handwritten in 200 AD are available with us today. So in that brief time of 200 years, not much corruption, you know, would have happened because the details would be very clear in their minds and the early church would have made sure that no wrong things are being produced. So we can rely upon the authenticity of the New Testament scriptures that have come down to us. Now, there's something which critics say about the New Testament. This is what they say.  It says, you know, they say that the New Testament has got 200,000 defects and mistakes. And that sounds like a very large number. So they are saying that there are 200,000 mistakes in the New Testament copies. You know, if you were to place 10 handwritten copies in front of you and start comparing them, when you start comparing the different copies, according to them, you will be able to find defects. What is there in one document? We'll be different in the other document. So according to them, there are 200,000 variations and differences, but actually the number which they are quoting is wrong. They are cheating in the sense. Let us say, let's just use an example, a fictional example. Let's assume that in one hand written copy, the copyist made a mistake and he put the wrong spelling for the word gospel. Now someone took that document and then another hundred copies were made using that defective document. So which means now all the hundred copies will have a wrong spelling of gospel. So now what do the critics say? They'll say that, oh, there are 101 mistakes. So the same, but actually it's not 101 mistakes. It's one mistake, one spelling mistake, which is repeated a hundred times, but it doesn't mean there are 101 mistakes. So they have a wrong way of calculating the variations and they say there are 200,000 variations, but actually what they're doing is they're repeating the same defect in each document. So the word gospel is misspelled in 500 documents. They're saying, oh, there are 500 defects, which is actually not correct. It's just one mistake and that one mistake has been reproduced in different documents. So actually what they are saying is wrong. In reality, 95% of all the documents match, there are, how many are available to us today? 5,520 handwritten copies are available today. I mean, they're available in different museums. 5,520, I think is the number I don't really remember. That many copies. And if you go to compare all the copies, you will discover that 95% they match. The remaining 5% is the mistakes in spelling mistakes. And things like that. So we can say that the scriptures are highly accurate. The scriptures which have been transmitted down the ages to us are highly accurate. Now, it's very biased, very prejudiced, the kind of criticisms that these people raise against the Bible. Because when it comes to other ancient writings, they accept them at face value when they say, yeah, these are accurate. But when it comes to the Bible, they come up with all kinds of criticisms. You know, I mean, in the eighth century BC, there was this person named Homer, and he wrote a book called The Iliad. So the Iliad was written by Homer in the eighth century BC. And now today we have 643 handwritten copies of that particular book. And when you compare all the 643 copies, there are mistakes, but most of it is identical. And so based on that, the people today accept that this copies which they have in their hand is matching the original. Even though they do not have the original in their hand. On the other hand, when it comes to the New Testament, like I said, we have somewhere around 5,520 copies. And when you match that many copies, you're able to find identical content, 95%. Only 5%, there's small variations. So when they're so happy about accepting the Iliad as being original, why are they so reluctant to accept the Bible as equally, you know, original and authentic? So it's actually the prejudice of critics which makes them attack the Bible more than they attack the other ancient writings. Another example that is given by one Christian scholar, he said that the same man Homer, he wrote another book in the eighth century. It was called the Odyssey. Now the Odyssey was written by Homer in the eighth century. The earliest handwritten copy that we have of the Odyssey was copied 2,200 years later, which means there was a gap of 2,200 years between the original document and the copy which is there in our hands now. Even though there's such a long gap, people are willing to accept that the Odyssey is authentic. But when it comes to our scriptures, you know, like I had just told a little while ago, we have epistels, Paul's epistels which were hand copied in 280. So a gap of just maybe 170 years or so between the original writing and the copy. So imagine how much more authentic and reliable our New Testament handwritten copies will be because the time gap between the original and the handwritten copy is much less, it's much narrower. So therefore we can trust what the scriptures which we have with us today. So let us very briefly look at some of the kind of copyist errors which we see in our scriptures. Okay, so that we will have a clearer picture about these things. So what are the different? Now many of the copyist errors happened because when the person who's copying from the source document may not really understand the handwriting which is used in the source document. So sometimes, especially when it comes to yeah, even the Greek language, but especially when it comes to the Hebrew language, the alphabets are so similar, it's easy to think that one alphabet is actually the other alphabet. No, because they are so similar in their shape. And so sometimes mistakes happened because a person who's copying would think that one alphabet is being used when actually another alphabet is being used. So as a result of that, one example would be Genesis chapter 10 verse four and first chronicles chapter one verse seven. Now in both of these places, Genesis 10, four and in first chronicles one, seven, it gives a list of the descendants of a person named Jawan. Okay, so this man Jawan, his descendants are mentioned in both of these places. In Genesis, one of his descendants is referred to as the dodenim. Whereas in the chronicles passage, the descendants are referred to as the rodanim. So the the and the re got interchanged. That's because the is shaped like this. The re is also shaped like this. The difference between the and re is that the will have a little bit of the top line sticking out. So it's like this, but it's a little line sticking out. The re on the other hand is just like this. It's that similar. So which is why some poor person who was copying probably thought that the re is re or thought maybe that the re is the. We don't know whether the rodanim or the dodenim. There are small variations like that because of difficulty in understanding the handwriting. So most of the mistakes which took place took place with regard to numbers, the numbering. They would use the Hebrew alphabets to write down their numbers. So sometimes they would be, they would either, they would, they would understand that alphabet wrongly. And so you'd end up with wrong numbers. So for instance, you know, Jeho Yakin, when he came to the throne, we don't know how old he was because second king's chapter 24 will say that he was 18 years old, but second chronicles 36 will say that he was eight years old because you see that the, no, because 18 is one eight, right? So we don't know whether the copyist added the one over there or whether he removed the one over there. So we don't know whether Jeho Yakin was actually 18 or eight when he came to the throne, but it's just this small matters like this. In the same way, we don't know whether, yeah, in Ezra chapter two, it says that there were 200 singing men and women. In Nehemiah seven, it says there were 245 singing men and women. So small errors like that, which will not affect teaching in any way, which will not affect doctrine in any way. So most of the mistakes are that type, where there's a small change in the name or there's a change in the numbering. Now, sometimes when the person was copying, accidentally added an alphabet or removed an alphabet, sometimes it led to a change in the meaning. So in that case, let us say the error was more serious, but even then no doctrinal matter got affected. It's just that the sentence changed into something else, but the teachings, the important teachings which are contained in the Old Testament and New Testament, those were not affected ever by any of the errors. For example, one very popular copyist error, which is discussed generally in the internet, would be who killed Goliath? Oh, that's actually a very simple answer, because we're exactly first Samuel chapter 17 versus 45 to 50. If you read that, it's very clearly given how David went, what he did, what he spoke and how he killed Goliath. It's very, very clear. There's no doubt about it. If anyone who looks at first Samuel chapter 17 versus 45 to 50 will have a clear picture of exactly who killed Goliath. But this event is mentioned in another place, second Samuel 2119, and over there in second Samuel 2119, if you were looking at the original Hebrew, the original Hebrew, you know, the Masoretic original Hebrew Bible which has come down to us, if you were looking at that, the wording over there, it looks like as if Elhanan, the son of Jair killed Goliath. And that's because there is a copyist error in that particular verse. Now, most of our Bibles will give the correct version. They will say that Elhanan, the son of Jair killed the brother of Goliath, not Goliath himself. And in the footnote, they will mention. So if you have your Bible in front of you, if you were to look at second Samuel chapter 21 verse 19, and if you look at the footnotes for that particular verse, or there it will be written, in the original Hebrew, it does not mention brother of Goliath. It just mentions he killed Goliath. So that's because the person who was doing the copying made a couple of small errors. Basically the person was copying in, how do we know what the defect is in second Samuel 2119? Because second Samuel 2119 is almost identical with first Chronicles chapter 20 verse five. So the verse which is written in second Samuel 2119, and the verse which is written in first Chronicles 25, both of these verses are almost identical word for word. They're both talking about the same event. So when we compare the second Samuel 21 verse with the first Chronicles 20 verse, we realize what the defect is in second Samuel 2119. So in second Samuel 2119, the copies just basically made two small errors which led to a complete change in the sentence itself. First mistake he made was, in one particular word, he added the word burr. The second small mistake which he did was, another word which has got three alphabets. He changed the middle alphabet because those two alphabets look very same. Instead of putting kerr over there, he put ter, because kerr and ter look very identical. Kerr is basically like this. Kerr is basically like this. Your ter is also like this. Only thing your ter will have a small comma attached down below. That's the difference. So the second mistake which this copyist made was, when he was writing down the second word, he changed that second letter which was there. And the third letter in that word is just one small stroke, one tiny little stroke like this. That's it. That's an alphabet. And that's actually called the yod. He forgot to mention that. Now because of that, that verse sounds very different from the first Chronicles 25 verse. And you get the wrong impression that Elhanan killed Goliath rather than the verse which actually should be saying that he killed the brother of Goliath. So sometimes these very small errors led to a change in the entire sentence. But it doesn't affect the teaching because we have another passage which clearly talks about who killed Goliath. So even the small errors did take place sometimes. It did not affect the doctrine of the Bible in any manner.  Oh, that's basically means if I'm placing 10 handwritten copies in front of me. So I have basically 10 texts in front of me. And then I see small variations between the 10 texts. The spelling over here is one thing and the spelling over here is another thing. So those are textual variants. Now, small, small spelling mistakes don't really affect us in any way. But sometimes you see an entire Bible passage missing from one of the old manuscripts. And that is when people start criticizing and they say, oh my, was this additional passage added later? Was it not there in the original thing? Or is it, was it missed out accidentally? It leads to controversies like that. So there are three such controversies which maybe we should keep in mind because it's important. Because especially the Muslim community criticizes the church regarding these three passages. So let's look at the first one. Okay, before we look at the first one, maybe we need to have a little background. Now, you might have heard people raise this criticism. Yeah, just go ahead. Usually like when someone is like, when we are in conversation with someone and rather than clarity, just for the sake of discussion and disrupting, if they keep asking such questions and things, is it wise to just refrain or seek some time and respond? Or is it okay to get into the conversation and think? Because their primary objective is not about getting clarity. It's more about just trying to confuse us. So what would be the right, especially when you're talking to a Muslim community? It all depends on whom you're having the discussion with because recently someone had sent me some YouTube clipings of this gentleman wearing white, that Arabic kind of thing and is attacking some Christian and saying, look, we know that this Bible passage is contradicting this Bible passage. What is your answer to that? Another poor Christian is looking very puzzled and doesn't even know what to say. So when that person is in full onslaught mode and attacking, maybe even if this person speaks up and says something, maybe it really wouldn't work because that man is trying to prove his point and he's in a very aggressive state of mind. So in such settings, maybe it would be better to just be quiet and leave it at that. On the other hand, if someone seems to have a cool mind and they seem open to an actual discussion, then maybe you could talk about how there are textual variants, how there are spelling mistakes, but there are no mistakes in the original manuscript and you can go into a discussion of that if the person seems open and receptive to having a discussion. But when a person is in attack mode and they just want to prove their point because they're so heated up in their mind, they may not really be open. It'll only lead to a argument. And because that person has spent months researching that topic and now is coming and attacking you, you may not still have that required research from your side to be able to combat. So in such situations, it would be better to just pray silently and leave it. But if you know that person personally and if you get an opportunity to someday bring up the topic again after you have done your preparation, you could always reopen the topic. It would always depend on whom you're talking to and the state of mind of the person. What is their motive in having brought up this whole conversation? Is it, they just want to attack Christians or are they genuinely wanting to know what my outlook is regarding this particular thing? Then I can present and I can openly present what I. And so yes, we are not all well researched regarding these matters. So when such a thing happens, maybe the wise thing would be to say, I don't really know the answer to this, but I'll definitely find out. I'll talk to someone or I will look up that and then I'll get back to you and then we can talk about it. So that way it kind of keeps the door open where you can actually go back one day with better equip, with better information and actually have a discussion with that person. And even as you're praying inside your heart, who knows the Holy Spirit may convict that person and point out to them the authenticity of the Christian scriptures. So that would actually help. So I guess it's all a matter of setting, based on the setting, you would take your step accordingly. All right, some people raise this question and they say, this NIV Bible, it leaves out entire passages. What a terrible thing to do. So on the other hand, the NKJV has got all these passages which are correctly in place. Why are not those NIV do that? Why does it just throw out certain passages and don't even include them? That's one argument which people make. So just for us to understand a little bit about the background of that, because that will help us to understand more about this textual variations which critics attack us about. The King James version was the English translation was done in the 16th or 17th century. At that time, whatever documents they had, the manuscripts which they had in their hand, they use those manuscripts faithfully, sincerely, to do the English translation. So most of the manuscripts which they had in their hands were the handwritten copies from around 600 AD, 700 AD, all the way up to 900 AD. So the documents which they had in their hand, those were handwritten copies ranging from 600 AD to 900 AD. Those are called the Byzantine manuscripts. So the KJV was translated into English based on the Byzantine manuscripts. At that time, the more ancient manuscripts had not even been discovered. It was only in the 1900s that archaeologists accidentally discovered older manuscripts from 200 AD. Like the one we were talking about, the epistels of Paul which are available, which were handwritten around 200 AD. And also they have found two in the early 1900s. They found two complete copies of the New Testament, one which was handwritten in 325 AD and another which was written in 350 AD. These two copies have the complete New Testament in them. So these are also part of the Alexandrian documents. Now in the 17th century, the people who did the translation for the KJV never even had these documents in their hands simply because they had not been discovered. It was only much later in the 1900s that these older, more original Alexandrian manuscripts came to light. And when a comparison was done between the Byzantine documents and the Alexandrian documents, people realized that the Byzantine manuscripts seemed to be longer in length. In fact, they have 6,000 extra words. So the older, more ancient Alexandrian manuscripts have less amount of words. The Byzantine manuscripts have much more 6,000 extra words. So people began to think maybe as time went by, just to give a little clearer explanation, maybe some of the copies added some extra things into the documents. So which is why NIV and many of the modern translations, they prefer to do their translation directly from the Alexandrian manuscripts rather than the Byzantine manuscripts, which is why sometimes some passages are left out because those passages were not there in the more ancient earlier manuscripts. So based on that, they will put it in the footnote saying that the earliest manuscripts do not have this passage. They'll just explain and they will not mention that passage in the content. So which is why there's a difference between NIV and the other modern translations when we compare it with KJV and NKJV, which are based on the Byzantine manuscripts. So this being the case, let us look at some passages which are considered controversial. On the other hand, we may not have time to go through all of them. Okay, we will talk about textual variants maybe in the first hour of next class and then enter into doctrine of God in the second hour. Today maybe we can talk about another small aspect. I want to cover this controversial passages properly. So we will do that in the first hour of our next session. And then in the second hour of our next session, we'll get into the doctrine of God. The reason that I spent more time on the doctrine of the word of God is because our entire faith is and our entire lives are based on this word of God. So it is very important for us to have a clear picture about its origins, about its transmission, about the arguments which are raised against it. So we will not spend this much time on all the other doctrines, so but this was something important. So we will look at these controversial passages briefly in the next class, but today I would really like to touch upon our translations. I mean, now that we actually brought up this whole idea about NIV and KJV and all of that, there are some people who ask, they say, are all the translations correct? Because if you compare two Bibles, two translations and keep them next to each other, the verse says something completely different. The verse looks almost completely different. So which version is more accurate? Now, the simple truth is this, all the people who have done the English translations, from the bottom of their heart, they wanted to translate as accurately as possible. Nobody did a lighthearted translation just like that for the fun of it. Because when a particular translation team sits down to do the translation work, it's something that they do over many years. They check, they cross check, they look at the meaning of those original words, they look at what all the scholars are saying about the meaning of those words and then they translate literally word by word, sentence by sentence. It's done very carefully to use an example. When NIV was trying to bring out its second edition, they had five or six teams and five or six teams would work on the same Bible passage and then they would come together to see how each team has translated that particular passage. And so then based on the differences in the translation, they would sit and discuss and debate and decide which is the best way to do this passage. So for every single passage, you would have three, four teams working on the same passage and then comparing and contrasting to see which is the best fun, which should finally be undertaken. No translation was ever done carelessly, ever. So whichever Bible version you're holding in your hands, please know that hundreds of people worked day and night most prayerfully, most sincerely to bring out the translation which you're holding in your hand. So don't just criticize any of the translations and say, these people didn't even care what they were writing. Now, maybe you can say that about the paraphrases but not about the actual translations. What do I mean by that? Let's, we will talk about it. There are basically three kinds of English Bibles that we have. There are Bibles which use what is called a formal translation method. So Bibles which have a formal translation method, they are interested in doing little word by word translation of the original Hebrew and the original Greek. So they will take that original Hebrew sentence and then they will try to translate it literally word by word. So that is called your formal translation method and for them, the main emphasis for them, the goal is to be as accurate as possible, literally word by word translating. So they are not that interested in making the verse understandable to the modern reader. For them, accuracy is important. So they don't emphasize on the modern reader understanding the meaning. They're more interested in preserving the accuracy. Which are the translations, which use this formal translation approach. You have MKJV, of course, and then you have NASB, you have the ESV, you have the NASU, you have the HCSB. Now, these are all, which will have a literal word to word translation. So if you're looking for that kind of accuracy, these are the translations which are best, but for them, the important point is not bringing out the meaning. So you have a second translation method, which have been used by other translators, that is called the functional translation method. Here, the goal is not to preserve that Hebrew Greek structure exactly. The goal is to bring out the meaning, which is contained in that particular sentence. So when they are doing the translation, they will not do a literal word-by-word translation. They do their best to bring out the original meaning, which is there in that. Let's use an example. So Acts chapter 10, verse 34. Now, I don't think any of you have a KJV Bible with you, but if you had a KJV Bible with you, Acts 10, 34, this is the way the verse would be rendered over there. Acts 10, 34, it says, of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons. That is your actual literal KJV translation, where it says God is no respecter of persons. Why on earth would they write something like that? That is because the Greek word, which is used over there, that word literally means an acceptor or a respecter of a face or an acceptor or a respecter of a person. So they wanted to literally translate that. And so in your original Acts 10, 34, the English KJV, it will say, God is no respecter of persons. But that meaning sounds very wrong to our modern years. It almost sounds like I said, God doesn't have respect for people. That is not what they were trying to convey in the Greek word.  I care about treating people equally. That actually is the Greek meaning. But when you do this literal translation, the meaning of that word doesn't come out. So which is why, in fact, even NKJV also follows the more loose translation. So NKJV, NIV, this is the way they translate it. They say, God does not show favoritism. So that term, God does not show favoritism, is not a word by word translation. The actual word by word translation would be, God is not a respecter of faces or respecter of persons. But the actual meaning is, God does not show favoritism. He treats everyone equally. So you see the functional translations have tried to bring out the meaning of what is being said. So that would be your NIV, NLT, GNT, NCV. These are all your functional translation. Where they're not translating word by word, they are rather translating thought by thought. They want to bring out the actual meaning of the thought which was conveyed in the original. So they want to convey that. It's a third kind of translations which exist today. And these are what you call the paraphrases. These are not very accurate. They are more reader friendly, but they are not accurate. Living Bible and the message Bible are two very popular paraphrases. The living Bible was written by a man, forgot his name. He basically wanted to translate the Bible for his child, for his son in simple English in a way which his son will be able to understand. So he's not very accurate in the way he translates. In fact, he gives, in some places, it's almost as if his interpretation of those verses is coming out. So it's very, very simple, very readable, very reader friendly, but it's not very accurate because it's a paraphrase. It's not an actual translation. It's a paraphrase of the original. Now I grew up with the living Bible from childhood because that was the easiest Bible available. So my father presented it to me and I think up to 10th standard, I lived on the living Bible. And so by the time I came to my 10th standard, I knew what is there in each chapter in the Bible. I knew all the thoughts and ideas which are there. And then I was able to move to NKJV because the NKJV English is high and half the time you don't know what on earth they're talking about because I had already become familiar with the scriptures in the living Bible. It was easy for me to move from there to NKJV and understand what is being said. So for some people, a paraphrase may be easy to read but do not expect accuracy, all right? So you basically have these three types of translations available. And so based on what you're looking for, whether you're looking for readability or whether you're looking for accuracy, you would choose the translation which you feel is best for you. So when you're presenting a Bible to a new believer as a gift, it would be best if you don't give them the word-to-word translations. It would be maybe more, if they're comfortable with English and they read journals and they read newspapers and they're comfortable with that level of English, functional translation would be better like NIV or GNT or NLT because the English in that is easier to understand. But of course, maybe it's not a good idea to give anybody the paraphrase because the paraphrase is not emphasizing accuracy. So the message Bible is something that you read for the fun of it, just to see what new twists they have given to the verses. It's interesting the way they write some of the verses. It's interesting to read, but when it comes to accuracy of translation, that is not found in your paraphrases. So those are all the things that we could touch upon today. There are a few aspects of this doctrine of the word of God which we have left out. I will quickly cover those things in the first hour of our next session. So let's just close with a word of prayer. Lord, we just thank you that you guarded your word through the ages of Lord. You placed people in the right positions at the right time to make sure that your word was transmitted accurately so that it will come to us the modern reader in all of its power with no corruption. We thank you a lot for what you have done for us and we thank you a lot that you gave us your very own direct words so that we can use them to bring life to our bodies, to bring life to our inner spirit so that we can grow in you and have a new life in you. We thank you a lot for this word of God and we pray a lot that we would be people who would spend time meditating upon this word, discipline ourselves and carve out the necessary time to spend meditating upon this word because a lot of people went through a lot to be able to present this Bible to us today and Lord, we should not neglect it. So we pray that you would help us to become sincere, disciplined students of your word. Thank you Lord, in Jesus' name, amen.


This is stock number 9873. We are here at Summit Automotive in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Your new and used heavy-duty truck headquarters. Today we are checking out this super clean 2012 Ford F450. Remember we are the guys with the trucks on 41. From this HD video you will be able to tell that for the age and miles on this vehicle. It is in excellent shape. Front bumper is in really nice condition. No major dents or dings. Front fenders in nice shape. Tuxedo black. Over gold is the color scheme. We shoot all of our videos in 1080p so if you have HD capabilities on your computer tablet or smartphone device turn them on right now because it's like you're right here looking at the truck with me. Comes with the polished aluminum 17-inch factory rims. It has BF Goodrich all-terrain LT-245 75R17 tires on it and these tires I would say have 80 to 90 percent of the tread. Frame and underbody is in nice shape as well. The hood is in excellent condition. I didn't see any dents or dings on that. The front grille, no chrome peeling or anything like that. Headlight lenses are nice and clear. No dents on the front fender. Passing their side rim is in nice condition as well. No major scuffs or scrapes on that and that tire has just as much tread as the driver's side. As you go down this side of the truck you can see just how clean the body is, how reflective and mirror like that paint is. We take these HD videos so if you are far away or even if you're close by and just cannot make the trip down you can still see the truck, hear the truck and have confidence in the vehicle that you're looking at before you even get here. Cab is in excellent shape. I didn't see one single dent or ding down this side of the truck. The lower rockers all look really good. The back rims are in really nice condition as well. Back tires have just as much tread as the front tires and these tires might even be almost brand new. I mean they're, you can still see the little line on there tells you how new they are. Back tires on that side is just clean. Frame and underbody is in really nice shape. Box rails all look really good and the frame and underbody is like that all the way underneath as all the remaining exhaust underneath here. Body and underbody is really clean. Cab corner is really clean. It does have the camper package. That's what this thing is right here. That's your anti sway bar with the camper package. Front of the dually tub. Pretty clean. It's got just a little bit of rash but that's pretty common on these duallys especially when they're seven years old. Rear bumper is in excellent condition. No dents or dings and that does have the backup sensors. Tailgate is in excellent shape. You can see that metal flake in that tuxedo black. Has the tailgate step assist. Also has the backup camera. Very nice spray and bed liner and you might be wire all these boxes in here because these boxes go with the truck. We have a set of factory King Ranch floor mats that go with it. The air intake, the original air intake is in that box right there and in the front box there are some mud flaps. Factory mud flaps for this truck. Does have a goose neck hitch. You can see the bed is in excellent condition. No major dents or dings on it and that spray and bed liner is in really nice condition as well. As a good on this side of the truck just as clean as that passenger side. No dents or dings on this box side. This fender is in nice shape. For full disclosure this back rim is in excellent condition and those back tires have just as much tread as the rest. Driver side doors. Absolutely perfect as well. Has the power scope mirrors. Inside the King Ranch package gives you the brown leather interior. Always really like the King Ranch leather. Always gets a little bit of its own uniqueness to it as it ages. Got just a little bit of wear there but they all age different. It's kind of neat because the weather tech floor mats in it including the factory ones that come with it has the power scope mirrors. These mirrors power fold in. They also power telescope out and in. Power windows, power locks, power mirrors has auto headlamps and power pedals right there. As we hop inside the truck we see that this one does have 57,886 miles. Has the leather wrapped steering wheel that is in really nice shape. No rips or tears on it. Has the audio controls on the right and cruise controls on the left. Does have sync so you can hook it up to your Bluetooth cell phone device. Has the six speed automatic transmission. Has the AM FM serious XM radio capabilities and the radio. Has factory navigation. This is also where your backup camera shows up. This truck does have the reverse beepers as you can hear and this one also has a hard drive that you can put music on which is probably one of my favorite radios from Ford. Has a turned out four wheel drive factory brake controller. Four upfitter switches has the heated and cooled seats for each side and your dual climate control. This one comes with the traction control system. Your sync system. You can have an AUX and a USB jack and sync basically means you can hook it up to your cell phone. Passengers seat is absolutely perfect. No rips, no tears, no scuffs, no scrapes. But yeah these king ranches always get a little bit of character to the seats themselves. You know just through use. Headliners nice and clean. It does have the power sunroof. You have your homelink buttons for your garage door security systems and lighting systems and your power sliding rear window and map lights up there. We'll take a quick look at the back seats and then we will check out under the hood. Back seats are just as clean as the front seats. No rips, no tears back here. These seats are in really nice condition. Smells very clean in this truck. I don't think it's ever been smoked in. You get the power sliding rear window with the built-in rear defrost and it does have a storage bin underneath the seats for valuables and stuff. It has a locking storage bin on here that locks with the ignition key and of course we have the weather tech floor mat back here as well. It has a 110-150 watt plug-in and you can see that the carpeting is nice and clean underneath this floor mat. Behind the seat I believe there is a subwoofer as well. We'll check that out quick. Yep there is a subwoofer back here. Then you have your latch tether anchors back here. We'll take a quick look under the hood. I would personally like to thank you for checking out the video today. Hopefully from this HD video you can make a smart buying decision based on the cleanliness and overall quality on this truck. I know I'd highly recommend it from a quality and condition standpoint. Engine bay is very clean, runs very smoothly. You can see it as the K&N cold air intake right there. We do have the factory intake in that box that's in the back. This truck has been fully safe and inspected by our service shop. It has a fresh oil and filter change. All the fluids have been checked and topped off. 6.7 liter power stroke diesel. This truck's been gone through mechanically 100% has like new tires all the way around and is 100 percent ready to go to see more pictures of this truck or one of our other 450 new and used cars, trucks, SUVs, minivans, Wranglers, half tons, recorder tons, one tons. You name it, we got to go to our website www.summitauto.com. Full pictures and descriptions of every single vehicle on our lot. Videos of every single used vehicle that we have all at summitauto.com. Thank you so much for checking out the video. If you want to make this one yours, give us a call right now<PHONE_NUMBER>. Ask for one of our sales associates to make this truck yours today. Once again, that number is<PHONE_NUMBER>. And if you want to check out more HD videos, you can go to youtube.com slash summitauto. Remember to like, subscribe, and share on this video and all the videos that you see there. In fact, in a second you will see a link to subscribe to our YouTube channel on your left. A link to more heavy duty truck videos like this one on your right. And if you have not been to our website on the bottom, link to this vehicle on our website. Click those, check us out. And we really look forward to helping you with this super clean 2012 Ford F450 Crew Cab Long Box dual rear wheel King Ranch. Thanks again.


Antibodies directed against DNA in systemic lupus erythematosus are functionally diverse. This study demonstrates that DNAs 1L3 is the primary target of a subset of autoantibodies previously considered specific for double-stranded DNA. This article was authored by Eduardo Gomez-Banuelos, E. K. U., Jessica Lee, and others.