I'm Victor Turner, Chief Bottle Washer with Neighborhood Services Department. Welcome. Before I get started, the bathrooms are right out here. As soon as you walk out the door are the restrooms in case you've never been in this facility before. Just a little bit about it, those of you that don't play golf, you probably hadn't been here before, but this opened in 2017. So the city was really wise in having a space here that can be used by the community for meetings like this.  So I thought this was a really great idea. This course is ranked number four in the state of Texas. So, excellent facility. The greens are closed right now, so they'll be back to normal beginning of September. So if you do play golf, come out.  But anyway, I wanted to just have some brief remarks. We've been working at this for a little over a year now. And there was a presentation at council yesterday, but we wanted to have an opportunity for our stakeholders and folks in the community to hear firsthand from our consultant. There have been opportunity for you all to ask questions of him and staff and also ways that we can collaborate and folks in the community can help us get some of these things done. But before we go any further, we have a short video that kind of summarizes it. Scott will do a little bit more and we're going to have our moderator, Dr. Ashley English, come up afterwards after the video. And before we do that, those of you who don't know her, she's a professor at TCU, Ph.D. in public administration. She told me not to give her a long introduction. I always tell this quote. It says, a person that deserves an introduction doesn't need one. A person that needs an introduction doesn't deserve one. So we're not going to go any longer on that. But we'll play this video. Sky high interest rates, low inventory, high property taxes and home prices and rents keep climbing.  A meme from a decade ago still ringing true today. The housing crisis in 2023 is affecting every corner of the country. And of course, it's made its way to the doorstep of Fort Worth. Zip codes 76104 and 76105 had some of the biggest increases in property values in the state. A report in the Texas real estate source shows that in seven years, home values tripled in east and southeast Fort Worth neighborhoods like Polytechnic Heights and Stop 6. Residents we spoke with have seen enough and would like city leaders to act. We need a more affordable housing. We're going to get it soon with some of these apartments, but we've had a lot of infill. We had a lot of empty lots and people are buying those and they're building homes. Fort Worth leaders are concerned about affordability and neighborhood quality. They've created a roadmap to invest in our neighborhoods and provide stable housing so Fort Worth families can thrive. This roadmap is called the Neighborhood Conservation Plan and Housing Affordability Strategy. According to the plan, strong neighborhoods and stable housing for families are intertwined. A median income family today in Fort Worth cannot afford a median price home. We feel like this report gives us a roadmap to help those individuals and help the city reach that. Those families not being able to afford a home affects their dream of achieving home ownership, which in terms affects neighborhoods, generational wealth that those families can build to climb out of poverty. The plan finds that in order to have everyone in a home that they can afford, 32,000 affordable rental units are needed to close the current gap. The Neighborhood Conservation Plan and Housing Affordability Strategy lays out a clear plan of action for what's needed to be done in the next five years to improve neighborhoods and make housing affordable. The city has to make investments in day-to-day efforts to maintain neighborhoods and keep them in good condition physically and socially. We have to continue to make strategic investments in neighborhood assets like parks, libraries and community centers as well as our neighborhood commercial districts. We need to build up the ability of the city, neighborhoods and nonprofit partners to invest in neighborhoods. Meanwhile, the prices are only getting more expensive. Last few years across the country we've experienced rising costs in materials, labor, land that has all impacted the price of housing. Also, we're in a high growth area. The Dallas Fort Worth area is growing tremendously and so that has made it difficult to keep up with the demand. And so with that being the case, price of housing has gone up. The plan says to improve housing affordability, the city needs to attack the cost of building and preserving housing by creating a land bank, reducing the cost in time in the development process, expanding zoning opportunities and provide capital. Attack the cost of occupying a home. Now this includes expanding and improving city rehabilitation programs for low-income homeowners and creating a community land trust.  Continue providing assistance to create more permanent supportive housing, implementing a functional zero approach to family homelessness and expanding eviction diversion programs with Tarrant County. The full report contains housing and neighborhood data as well as a clear plan of action. Some residents are already taking notice. And thank God that we're getting some affordable housing apartments. They really need to be a little bit more done for the sectors, the areas that need all of this affordable housing. So while the housing crisis is at our doorstep, it's how we work together to keep Fort Worth home to everyone who wants to be part of the neighborhood. Will you join us on the doorstep and help solve these issues together? Okay. So lovely. Thank you so much for that video. I'm Dr. Ashley English. And I just want to first off start by giving us a little opportunity to get to know each other a little better. We're going to have a discussion and a dialogue after our presentation from the consultant. And so I just want to level set us getting here because usually in the morning we have a couple of things going on. There are some people who are not morning people in here. They're on the struggle bus. Okay. There are people who like me have their kids start school this week and I live in Dallas. Hey, don't throw me out. I know Fort Worth. I'm here. I'm at TCU, but I did come down 20. And here wasn't working this morning for kids. I barely got here on time, folks. And so somebody else is in the same boat. So before we just jump into the content, I would love for us just to have a chance to meet some people at our table. So two questions that you can explore right with the person next to you because we'll get a little loud in here. So you won't be able to talk across the table, but to the person next to you, could you just answer one of two questions? One, what excited you about this meeting or brought you here? What brought you here? Or number two, what are you grateful about that you get to contribute to the City of Fort Worth? What are you grateful about the work that you get to do every day on behalf of the constituents or the people, the stakeholders, the community members you represent? So one of those two, what are you excited about as far as this conversation or what are you grateful for regarding the impact you get to make on a regular basis? Let's just take a couple of minutes with the people right around you. Go ahead. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for taking a minute to introduce yourself to your table mates. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Usually with my college students, I have to get a bell out. We have to do all kinds of things to bring it back. So thank you so much for engaging in that conversation. Can I just hear from one person what brought you here and can I hear from one other person? What are you grateful for about the ways that you get to impact the community? So one on the, what are you here for? And then one on the gratitude. Uh-oh. Hey. Okay. Look, engagement is the name of the game today. And if you just say your name quickly for us. Michelle Goodrich, I am grateful that I get to play an intricate part in creating affordable housing across the city, but more so in stop six. Thank you so much. First volunteer, second one. What brought you here? What are you excited about being here today? My name is Demetri Elijah, but my part is we get to help my community, which is 76104. We offer programs to that area. So I'm happy to hear about that. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for entertaining me on that. I asked because number one, gratitude actually opens the pathways in your brain to think about new solutions. So when we reflect on what we're grateful for, we're actually increasing our capacity to think innovatively and creatively. So thanks for engaging in that. And then also we want to come here with great intention. Many of your leaders, you've got so many meetings. I mean, my goodness, agendas, agendas, agendas, so much to do. And if we don't stop, we'll forget what we're doing. Out of being in a hurry. And so Maslow's hierarchy of needs shows us and tells us that physiological needs are the most important. And until we address that, we can't move up to higher levels of love and belonging and self-actualization and all of those things. We need housing to think, to be, to function. We need a safe place to lay our heads on a regular basis. So this conversation is profoundly important for someone to have the basic needs that they need to thrive. We want all neighborhoods to thrive. We'll hear today how some neighborhoods are not thriving and how we can get there through affordable housing. But I always want to remember why we're here and we are here to change the lived experience of real people. So thank you so much. I hope you'll engage with me in Q&A. No crickets. No crickets. I need help up here.  So thank you for helping me reach that goal later on in the Q&A. So Victor's going to introduce someone and then I'll come back. Thank Dr. English. She was true to form as a professor, talking about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I thought I was back in class somewhere. Before I bring the councilmember up, I want to recognize former councilmember Ann Zeta. She's Ronized and wanted me to point her out, but she's sitting right here in front of me. So I had to do that. Why don't you stand and let these folks see you. Thank her for being here. What do y'all think about that video? So it was produced by Neighborhood Services folks. Our very own Scott back here. Scott Daniels. Everything was good about except my part. I tried to tell him to cut it out, but you know, hey, you had to suffer through that. So you see on your program, councilmember Jerry Williams, unfortunately he is ill and not able to make it today. But he sent a veteran from the council. First elected in 2017, one of the longest serving councilmembers right now. Council district two. So I bring up councilmember Carlos Flores. He also serves on our neighborhood quality and revitalization committee, which is very instrumental in us bringing this plan forward. And so I let him talk a little bit about council perspective. Funding. I know y'all want to ask about how we're going to pay for all this stuff. So he's a guy to ask, not me. Anyway, councilman Flores. Thanks, Victor. Yeah, funding is a touchy subject, especially during budget hearings, but hey, you have to talk about it. But I want to extend a welcome, you know, on behalf of councilmember Williams, who couldn't be here. Don't worry. He's getting better. You know, he's a good spirits and mayor Parker and the rest of my council colleagues. I'm really stoked that we're having it here at Rockwood, right? In district two. I remember the discussions that we had on budget and we'll remember these two and our bond programs about how we can make improvements to our facilities and Rockwood was one of the recipients of that funding. And so it's to great effect. It serves as community meeting space, not just golf. You have the educational value of first tee right off to my left as well. So to Dr. English's point, you know, caffeine also opens pathways in the brain. Okay. That's what I'm running on right now. So that's very essential. Now, when you think about what neighborhood services does and what our committee does with neighborhood quality and revitalization, there are a few focus points that I want you to keep in mind. Neighborhood services obviously factors in, you know, as being one of the more prominent ones. You also have public safety and health. You also have back to facilities, libraries. You have parks, environment as well in environment. There are subcategories within that as well. And then you also have partnerships and education. I want to emphasize that a little bit. It's not merely a question of the city staying in its own lane. We are not education experts, we do rely on our partnerships with EISDs and other experts, you know, like Lawrence, you know, over in our Lawrence Thomas, always our neck of the woods of the city, to help us help them. That's what we're here for because that educational approach has to be in partnership. Now, historically or distressed neighborhoods, some of which are in district two, that's getting some good attention already. I'm proud to say that through the efforts, you know, of city council and neighborhood services, we've already brought to bear two neighborhood improvement plans, you know, to the north side. The latest one is the historic marine area, which is right next to the north main corridor between Panther Island and the stockyards. That's an important corridor to revitalize, but we're trying to do it also in, you know, in conjunction with the Main Street America program. I see Ivan in the audience. He's a project manager for that, and he's doing that in partnership with the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Combined, we can make more of an impact. And again, emphasizing these partnerships, the cooperation that I'm speaking of. So, when we look at areas that need help, it's not a question merely of throwing money at it. It's the allocation of those funds to see specifically where they are needed most. When an NIP is considered by neighborhood services, they communicate with that council person, and they speak to them and say, what would you like to see come of this, right? What areas do you see as being in the most need? And so it's catered and, you know, specific to those needs of the community, because as council members, we are charged with knowing our communities and knowing those community needs and how to best serve them. So, when we look at factors that weaken neighborhoods, we try to take a very strategic approach to that, and that's where the Neighborhood Conservation Plan comes into play. The NIP is just a component of that, and we started out with the NIP, but then we quickly realized we need a framework from which to work from to make this the most effective it can be. It's not haphazard. It's equity-based. We have very objective measures that we employ to make those determinations on where we need to go first, and our committee is part of that, you know, combined approach. So, when we take this very important step and implement this plan, I want those that are here today in the audience that that help us, help the city partner to, you know, address things like affordable housing, right? I see Perry Pillow there when we were talking about multifamily. That is part of that discussion. It's not just affordable housing in the tax credit sense of the word. It's not just affordable housing in the single-family home sense of that term, but you also have to include multifamily as well. It's a combined approach. Different people have different needs and different times during, you know, their stages in life. So we have to make sure that we address all this, you know, totally when we consider these things. So I just want to close by saying I appreciate the work that staff has done in making, you know, this neighborhood conservation plan a reality. I know that my fellow committee members were wanting, you know, good clarification on where we need to go. The consultants have provided very good actionable data, you know, to fill in that framework. And yesterday at our council work session, to those that may have tuned in and looked at it, that's a deep dive. There is some really good data, and I'm a data-driven kind of guy. So that helps me make better and more effective decisions. So I challenge you to read that plan because the more we know about that plan, the better and more direct decisions that we can make that will have the most bang for the buck as the phrase goes. So thank you all. I'm going to pass the mic to Dr. English, I guess. Thanks very much. Thank you so much, Council Member Flores. All right, so next up on the agenda, we'll hear from Scott Page, who's going to talk to us in a little bit more detail about the data that's informing this plan. He is the founder of Interface Studio, a planning firm that focuses on work in urban neighborhoods, community-driven design, and grassroots community engagement. Scott and Interface Studio have recently become the go-to consultant in Fort Worth and have developed the Las Vegas Trail revitalization plan, the downtown plan update, and just completed the Fort Worth neighborhood conservation plan and housing affordability strategy that we're talking about today. Scott is a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design and serves his local Philadelphia community serving on board, such as the Citizens Planning Institute. Can we give a warm welcome to Scott Page? Thank you so much. Good morning. I am not a morning person, so bear with me as I get warmed up a little bit. I want to provide a little more background on me because I think it will help you understand our role and value in this work and what we can and can't do. So as Dr. English mentioned, I'm from Philadelphia, so I will never know Fort Worth as well as all of you know Fort Worth. The benefit that we bring in the work that we do is primarily in neighborhood and community development. We do this in a lot of cities, particularly cities that have faced decades of disinvestment, places like Detroit and Rochester. These are cities that we've had our experience in. So part of what we are able to bring is some perspective on the challenges that other cities are facing and some of the solutions that they come up with and have developed some innovative solutions to address some of these challenges. So I think that's really our role here is to be the outsider, to ask the questions, continue to ask the questions that all of you have been asking for many years, and to be able to put a spotlight on the work that you all are doing. So for those of you that may be seeing this plan for the first time, a little more context. It is intended to be comprehensive, but also action oriented. It is by no means a fix. It is a way of addressing the series of challenges that we have, and it is extremely important work to continue to push given the kind of dynamic growth that this city is experiencing. So I think those are really important. I also apologize in advance for those that are really involved in specific aspects of this report. It is not going to get into the same kind of detail for those that are involved in different kinds of activities, whether that's affordable housing or homelessness. This is really an opportunity to put a spotlight on the good work that's being done in the city, but also the things that could be done and have been discussed for many, many years as a way of having one comprehensive framework to move forward with. Hopefully that provides a little experience on where we're coming from, and then I can kind of walk you through what it is that we were asked to do and what did we end up with. I'm only showing the schedule. Victor already mentioned that this is about a year long process. I'm only showing the schedule because the first thing that we did before we got to any of what I'm about to talk about today was to look at the neighborhood improvement program. So for those of you that might not be as familiar with it, this program by the city of Fort Worth, it targets resources in a neighborhood or a portion of a neighborhood that is desperately in need of investment. So whether that's in fixing the streets, improving park space, putting in street lights, that becomes a community-driven set of activities, and that money gets focused in the neighborhood, and that's actually a really great model. It's based on some other cities but when you focus resources in a location, you learn so much more about what those neighborhoods need and what those neighborhoods need even after the NIP program. So we worked at the beginning of this process to say, how can we make the NIP program better? I'm happy to say it has more money. It is now looking at more neighborhoods than it did before where it was just one at a time. So you can imagine if it's just one at a time, a whole bunch of neighborhoods are saying what about us? This begins to expand those resources and really provides more of a benefit. So we spent all of this time looking at the NIP neighborhoods and then we jumped into this work which as directed by the neighborhood quality and revitalization committee by the city to say look, we need to look at neighborhoods but obviously a central piece of what makes neighborhoods tick and successful is housing. So it has to be both. We have to look at housing and housing affordability and we have to look at the neighborhoods themselves. As mentioned, the data is really critical to this. We spent a lot of time crunching data so that we would have a good measure to move forward with. So I'm going to share a few things with all of you that will likely not surprise anyone but I want to just kind of set this as the tone for where some of the work comes from. Obviously Fort Worth is growing. You are the fastest growing big city in the country. That growth provides a lot of opportunities but it also provides a lot of challenges. You are also growing faster in jobs than in housing. So what that means, right, you have a lot more people coming here for work. They're looking for housing that's more people looking for housing. Housing is not growing as quickly. The prices start to rise. That becomes one of the recent challenges that we have. In the past 10 years, the price of housing has jumped significantly. You saw in the video that Victor said the median price sorry, the median income household in the city cannot afford a medium priced home in Fort Worth. The chart on the left really speaks to that where we have 80% of homes are now out of reach for the median income household. That is in part due to that growth and the fact that we haven't been keeping up in terms of housing development and construction. Where that puts real pressure doesn't really talk about concerns around displacement. So we did a number of maps that showed where in the city is displacement already happening or at risk of happening. You start to see incomes jump in those neighborhoods. The median house prices jump those types of indicators. That map gives you a good indication of where some of that is already in progress. Southeast south, portions around downtown and of course no surprise to anybody here that the majority of those neighborhoods where you are seeing these price jumps are in neighborhoods that are predominantly Hispanic or black. So we're talking about not just housing affordability, we're talking about displacement and we're talking about how we manage growth in the city of Fort Worth. And then as it comes to homelessness homelessness is also jumped. So we're seeing more eviction filings, higher numbers of homelessness unhoused on the street. This is not just a Fort Worth problem. I say this all the time because every city we are working in right now there is a struggle to manage these challenges. And I think too often challenges around homelessness gets put into one box that's far too broad and it doesn't really look at the specific audiences and populations that are experiencing those housing issues. So that is something that we wanted to bring to light in this work which is to say homelessness is not a broad brush topic. It's actually a number of different folks that face very different challenges and we need solutions to address those different challenges. So homelessness is also a concern and you can imagine that being a concern as housing prices go up there's more pressure in neighborhoods that are lower income in which case there is a greater chance that those that are lower income may be unhoused if they have a crisis. If they miss a car payment whatever the case may be that becomes something that we should be concerned about. So we have to right size the problem. If you just look at the data for Fort Worth it says about 109,000 households pay more than 30% of their income for housing. We're obviously not addressing the problem for 109,000 households in part because some of those households might be students who aren't reporting income but are actually perfectly fine. I mean college students it also includes some folks that are higher income but just bought a house that was more expensive than they should have. There's a lot of things that go into these numbers. So we really wanted to break this up into different kinds of issues. There's the homeowner households that are below 80% of area median income that are homeowners. We want to make sure that they are able to stay in their homes regardless of what kind of neighborhood they're in. We want to make sure that those homes remain affordable for those folks who already live in their homes and that they're not at risk of losing those homes. There's about 21,000 subsidized housing units already in the city. We want to make sure that we don't lose any of them. So investing and reinvesting in our low income housing tax credits and other programs that the city and the Housing Finance Corporation already use here in Fort Worth. There are some renters that are about 60 to 80% of median income, some of which might be able to afford a home or be a homeowner with a little help. Are there opportunities to help those renters? And then of course there's renters that are really lower income. They need stable housing and that's where our primary goals for this work come from. So by breaking the problem of 109,000 households down into smaller buckets we have a few very clear goals. One is to protect the homeowners that are lower income, as I just mentioned. Another is to protect those low income housing units we already have in Fort Worth. Another is to create some additional opportunities for home ownership for some of the cost burden households that are renting but maybe could own. And then lastly is more stable housing options for those 19,000 households that are very low income. Now with that there are also three goals related to homelessness and this is just a way for us to really be able to focus some of the discussion here. So there's concerns for us about homelessness particularly for families with children. There are 17% of Fort Worth independent school district kids that move too often and when you move too often your school performance goes down. So anyone concerned about education and child the growth of children across the city and making sure that they have a safe place to learn that is a real concern. And so housing instability relates to educational issues. So we should make sure that those that we're addressing the 17% of those students and families that have housing instability and are at times homeless. There's also homelessness that falls into two other aspects here. Now this is where I say that most people talk about homelessness they just kind of say oh I know what that is. Not really. So about three quarters of homelessness and I think that's true here. I know it's true in just about every other place we work. I know the numbers close are what we would call intermittent homelessness. So I had a crisis I couldn't go to work I lost my job I now lost my house and now I'm temporarily unhoused. So I think that we can reduce the amount of time that they're unhoused the better. So that's one kind of challenge. Then there's the other kind of challenge which are the chronic homelessness folks that may have medical challenge other kinds of issues that just prevents them from being able to be in a normal house without some services. I figure there's about 300 in particular that we could look at when it comes to things like permanent supportive housing housing services that would help them be more independent and better on their feet. So different kinds of challenges that relate to different kinds of goals. What I was glad to hear yesterday during the presentation to council is that there was an ask to make sure that as the upcoming budget committee hearings take place in the city that they would be looked at in the context of these goals. All seven of them. So how is the budget aligning with some of these goals that we're looking at? That's great progress. So let's talk about the housing affordability strategy first. This is what Fort Worth currently does today with the resources that are available. A lot of the resources are federal. So Fort Worth and Tarrant County are limited by how many or how much money they receive from the federal government each year. I know for a lot of you this like yeah you know all about it and it's frustrating. There's a number of dollars declines every few years. So we're working with resources that are hard to work with. They get fewer and fewer and they're certainly not standing up to the need that we have in the city. So you see that this is what Fort Worth is able to do today with the resources at the table. It's about a thousand units. I just spent the last few minutes talking about thousands of thousands of units of different kinds of challenges. So this is a resource problem and it's something that we very much emphasize in this work. So if it's a resource problem we have to think about the costs. What is it that we're trying to address and this is where we get to the there's certainly thinking about this through an actionable lens. We have to attack the cost of building and preserving housing. How do we make building new housing and preserving housing a little cheaper so that we can stretch the dollars further. I'm going to talk about the folks whether their owners or renters stay in their homes and then I just talked about the housing crisis for those that are either intermittent or chronically facing homelessness as a real issue. So I'm going to talk about the preserving and building housing first. When you think about what makes housing expensive there's a lot of factors that go into it. There's the cost of land. There's the cost of the development capital is it cheap to borrow and then also whatever profit is needed to incentivize folks to build developers to build. So some of these we can address and some of these we can't. As an example if the price of steel or wood goes up in some other country and that's where we're getting a lot of those materials that's something we have no control over. But we can be more proactive in thinking about how we manage things like land and I know that things like a land bank have been talked about for a long time in different circles within this city that is something that we are very much emphasizing. Because without land and I say this to my students Dr. English mentioned that I teach I teach site planning. So how to develop land what I tell my students is that without site control you are out of luck. You need site control. The easiest way to have site control is to do this proactively and to have tools like a land bank that says we are going to save this land to meet our specific goals as a community whether that's affordable housing or park space whatever that may be different cities run land banks in different ways and there are land banks in Texas so that is something that is also relatively recent relatively compared to other states that have had land banks enabled for a long long time. So I think the state is catching up this is the opportunity for Fort Worth to jump in and really start to think about what a land bank would look like here. There are some things we talk about in this document related to zoning. Zoning is frankly not a big cost but it can be a big cost saver so whether it is about allowing accessory dwelling units to create more units across the city or where it says neighborhood pattern book what some cities have done is they have created a pattern book that is embedded within their zoning code that says if you want to build affordable housing for instance no one can say no if it follows these parameters that's in the book. In other words they are pre-approved designs that enables affordable housing to be built quicker easier and in more locations across the city. An idea. Construction things like investing in infrastructure so that as a developer whether it's a for-profit or a non-profit developer comes in if they are spending less on certain things like sidewalks stormwater other issues that is a cost savings for them and that also makes that more effective in terms of the investment they're doing and the number of units that we can produce. Under the cost of capital what we're talking about here where it says city investment capital we need flexible local dollars to spend in the city that's more than the federal dollars that come with all sorts of strings attached. What we're talking about here is 100 million dollar investment whether that's through direct investment abatements bond whatever that may be that's leadership to decide. But that gives us a very strategic goal to say we need this amount of resources to begin to address these issues. For reference about 15 years ago Austin did a housing bond for 55 million if you adjust that for inflation that's about 100 million so it's a recognition that resources are needed to address these sets of challenges and invest in places that haven't been invested in for some time. And then there's a question around profit so there's profit that you make as a for-profit developer but one of the things that cities across the country have done really effectively is support more community development corporations who have a different profit structure they're not looking to make nearly as much money on their property they're nonprofits so they can also bring in dollars from places that a city can't or a for-profit developer typically can't it is a way to bring more investment to communities but that's not just something where we say create more CDC's it's a real process to do so it's about building capacity in the neighborhood leaders that have stepped up and said I really need and want to be a part of this. It's about finding them resources to operate the hardest things to find for any community development corporation is operating dollars. How do I pay staff? You need two, three, four people they do important things whether it's talk with neighbors or try to acquire land for housing they need money for that so that becomes a real process and something that's really really important to this work. There's also a number of strategies in here about occupying a home whether that relates to property tax assistance which I heard the state is already doing something or done something this past week there's expanding city rehabilitation programs this is really important if you own your home or if you're a renter and the home needs some work and it's beyond the cost of what you can afford rehabilitation programs are one of the best tools to protect that home's affordability and keep people in the home and that is something I know the city is already looking to expand and it's really really critical in addition to a land bank we are also talking about a land trust so these are really two different things the land bank says the city is going to put aside some put aside some land so that we can use it strategically the land trust says there is a non-profit that will operate a number of properties in perpetuity to protect affordable housing so it is a different structure and there are some great land trust models across the country and again I suspect this is something that you all portions of this room have talked about extensively in the past we are just bringing this up again to the forefront because it is really important to consider how we protect affordable housing in perpetuity we've also looked at things like code enforcement code enforcement is also not one size fits all some neighborhoods need code enforcement it's very different than other neighborhoods and I don't mean more it actually is very different when we worked in LVT we needed code enforcement to really target the multifamily properties that neighbors said were a real issue in other neighborhoods residents said we don't really need code enforcement to police the guy next to me whose house isn't in the best shape we need to look at the issues of illegal dumping and other concerns we have in our neighborhood so really beginning to tailor that becomes important to this overall strategy and then lastly when it comes to homelessness we certainly think that some of the resources when we talked about direct city investment the 100 million some of those should go to some of the programs that already exist whether that's emergency repair expanding the eviction diversion program these are really effective programs my home city of Philadelphia jump started an eviction diversion program through the pandemic they are trying to keep it funded because it has been so effective to reduce that intermittent homelessness that we see across many cities we think there's also of course an opportunity to expand permanent supportive housing one of the ways that other places have done this is they have worked with Medicare Medicaid plan providers to invest in that housing because it is of financial benefit to them as well as the city and other partners so there are different funding models that we can look at that's one of the things we wanted to focus on as a part of this work if we do all of this, if there's 100 million investment over the next five years I think you're going to get two to three times that amount in outside investment we'll certainly build and protect a number of homes now the 3,000 is not the 19,000 or the other thousands I was talking about but we need to get started and we need to put these processes in place once a land bank gets going there's far more impact a positive impact down the road than it will in the first few years as you're trying to figure out how does it work what land are we trying to put into it there's lots of questions that can slow down that kind of a process initially but take hold much in a greater fashion down the road it would provide flexible dollars this kind of an investment as I mentioned better leverage the federal dollars I think if we have other partners philanthropy, private businesses Tarrant County if we're all looking at the same playbook which is what this is intended to be can we bring additional outside dollars to the table where we can really make the most of this kind of an investment reduce on street homelessness improve school performance improve the look and feel of neighborhoods all things I've been talking about so that's the potential benefit of this kind of initial investment to begin to address these challenges which we can't wait any longer to do so and the city has been doing really good work on the NIP on a number of other programs this is a way of expanding the resources to do more really enlist and empower different communities to work with the city to do more I should also mention there was an economic development plan recently called Full Strength Fort Worth this was adopted by city council a lot of what's in that document dovetails with what we're saying here so in other words investment in something the city has already adopted is a direct investment in this work so there's a lot of alignment in city around these kinds of challenges and the importance of addressing these kinds of challenges alright so that's all housing let's get to some of the data on the neighborhood stuff because the housing is such a critical piece of how neighborhoods look and feel so that's why I started with that but let's talk about the neighborhood conservation plan which is intended to be a broader framework looking at neighborhoods across the city so that is of course easier said than done because neighborhoods have a whole range of conditions far more than just these two pictures we're showing and so one thing that we try to do is measure neighborhoods now this isn't an attempt to say these neighborhoods deserve funding these neighborhoods do not all neighborhoods deserve investment across the city of Fort Worth they need different kinds of investment so one of the ways that we do this is we created this measure something that is simple easy to replicate that the city can redo every year and say how are we doing are we seeing progress or something the opposite in certain places and we grouped the neighborhoods into these six buckets everything from distressed which have really weak markets more physical and social issues all the way to stable which are stronger markets and limited issues on the physical side you can picture all of these places so this again is intended to help us just understand and align the data but also maybe the types of actions and investments that are needed in different types of places so I can go through this I'm actually going to go through this pretty quickly we have lots of data attached to every single one of these buckets so data that looks at median sales price the change in sales price the violent crime rate the residential property condition all of those things and much more is embedded into this measure so those become again statistics we can begin to track so this is just the measurements for distressed and challenged neighborhoods you see that like the change in median sales price ranges a lot in these neighborhoods and that's because this measure while it's a really good measure can't account for all of the on the ground dynamics some census tracts are facing more investment and they've had a jump in sales prices that's reflected in some of the other mapping we did about neighborhoods that are at risk of displacement so that's where you see that kind of range even across this measure so these are the distressed and challenged neighborhoods these are the steady and influx neighborhoods which are really more akin to city medians and averages in terms of data and then your stable and thriving neighborhoods which generally exceed those city averages and data points so that's some background into the measure there's also additional data attached to it around demographics health all of the things that have come up in conversations with some of you and many others about the importance of understanding not just the neighborhood through the lens of how much does the housing cost but how healthy is the community and what are the kinds of resources do we need to spend so there's two components to the conservation plan there's something that we're calling a checklist which I'll go through in a second and then there's conservation strategies which I will go through pretty quickly because I've actually talked about quite a few of them because they really again overlap with the housing strategy but I do want to just mention this framework quickly when we think about neighborhood improvement we're thinking about three interlocking things so there's the investment what are we investing in are we investing in housing are we investing in trees parks streets whatever that may be the investments I think the thing that a lot of people automatically picture if they're not that familiar with community development what do we spend money on but we also emphasize the need to not think about not just about the investment but the maintenance so if you plan a bunch of trees who's going to maintain those trees that is a question that comes up in every city we work in and often the maintenance side just gets kind of pushed aside and it falls to community members or somebody else to pick up to pick up this slack I think in this case we want to talk about it up front what are we investing in how is it being maintained who are community partners and are they resource to help and then lastly capacity which gets to that question of community partners so I think right now and I mentioned the importance of community development organizations before or community development corporations right so the community organizations that are out there say building housing I think there is only two in Fort Worth maybe more some of you can correct me some of them are operate I think there's maybe one or two that operate in Fort Worth but also operate across the Metroplex one of the things that we are looking for are community development organizations that are based in Fort Worth and focused on a specific neighborhood so my hometown of Philadelphia has 45 of them which is insane it's probably 5 more than they need but they have 45 of them it took years to build that capacity and years of intentional action to build that capacity but now we have neighborhoods across Philadelphia that have a very very active and well resourced community organization that can go out and build housing or augment what the city is spending in parks or help in the maintenance whatever is necessary that the members of the community say we need this so big issue here as well so let's start with the checklist the checklist I think of as maybe more useful for city departments however you all can tell me if that's the wrong assumption but that's kind of how this was created right so what the checklist does we measured all of these neighborhoods you may have let's say six different neighborhoods that are challenged obviously those six different neighborhoods that are challenged according to the data have very different personalities different histories different investments the checklist is intended to say well what hasn't has not been invested in this community when you start to check things off you realize well maybe that's less of a concern for the community let's talk about safety if the police district is focusing some of their efforts to help reduce crime in a community we know that they're already active maybe we should be looking at some of the other additional strategies and types of actions to augment that so the checklist is there to say where do we start how do we go into a community just had a new community center built and say you need a community center that's silly you already have one how do we make that community center better or more effective or connected to providing services to residents that's a different question but those are two different investments and that's what the checklist is supposed to help folks do is they're looking at different neighborhoods and saying what is it we need so the checklist talks about things around stabilization we talked about community center are there high quality civic assets such as parks libraries and community centers and walking distance if that's not checked then I would say that is a very high priority because that is something that is missing from that particular community not the case in every community I know that feels probably a little like this is how we get started but we wanted to do this really to help align city departments and other outside partners and thinking about what the right mix of strategies might be if you are working in a neighborhood that doesn't have a neighborhood plan that already spells those things out for you LVT has a neighborhood plan that spells all those things out large portions of the southeast do not so that means you really need to start somewhere and some of that can also be in creating a document that helps to detail those actions then when it comes to the strategies I mentioned we did this neighborhood measure to help us understand the kind of range of things that could be happening in different types of neighborhoods so if you are looking at stable and thriving neighborhoods you obviously want to make sure they are continuing to be stable and thriving there is probably not a lot of need for new investment they are largely built out I would say a lot of their public spaces are in fairly good shape doesn't mean they don't have concerns it doesn't mean those neighbors don't have issues that they want to bring to the city but maybe what they are looking at in terms of investment is more ongoing coordination hey city I need you to come out and address this one thing it broke whatever the case may be in places that are steady and I would say largely in flux are places that might be great opportunities for that targeted investment so if we are going to build new tax credit housing mixed income housing really invest and help to transition land that is unused into something that is active and benefits the community those neighborhoods might be the best locations to do so in part because we are trying to get ahead of some of the displacement in some cases again I have already showed a map we are not ahead of it but we do need to focus some of that investment because if we spread investment across the city then we never really see the benefit of it so it is important to target specific areas that are of importance and I heard somebody mention stop 6 earlier that is certainly one of those places that has received a lot of investment and you see the impact in the data that we have collected and then for places like distressed and challenged neighborhoods there is probably a need in some of those neighborhoods for a focus and stabilization issues around trash and illegal dumping maybe concerns around crime although that is not the case in all of them greening do they have quality park in the neighborhood those become real central questions because those residents have lived there for a long time and have lived there without some of these really important assets so when it comes to investment here are a few things that we have talked about I just mentioned the need to focus so much as the neighborhood improvement program focuses a few million dollars on a neighborhood to say we are going to fix streets and do street lights whatever the case may be when we are investing in housing or we are investing in other types of activities we should be strategic about where we invest so that the investment has the kind of impact that it should some of that is identifying some specific neighborhoods or corridors or areas that are really critical some of that has already been done but more can be done for sure and what's what's pulled out the southeast in particular southeast Fort Worth is the stretch of the city that has the highest number of neighborhoods that were in those challenged and distressed categories there is not a comprehensive plan at a neighborhood level in that area that says you know the residents have been involved the residents really need XYZ and we need to invest in these things now that is something I think that can be put together we are suggesting that the city and partners invest in that kind of an activity so much in the same yeah yeah yeah and I have unfortunately seen that far too often and if it's on the shelf this is why I'm not aware of it the important part whenever we do a neighborhood plan and hopefully this answers your question the first thing we do is say what planning has been done before important question what hasn't happened it sounds to me like nothing in this case has happened it's been put on a shelf why hasn't it happened was that just decision at the time was there something else that was a problem and how much of that original plan is still relevant right given how things have changed some of it may be entirely relevant and some of it may be well I don't know when the plan was done Johnny so I apologize but maybe some of that plan was done so long ago that okay the idea is right but really we need to think of it a little differently but that would be the intent of doing a plan for the southeast that's up to date that involves the residents that are there and that looks at ways of really investing in the southeast that is in line with what the residents want to see and helps the city focus as well the dollars that they have available to spend so that's that's the idea I should also note that with a lot of these ideas we've put them out there as ideas there's a lot of fine tuning to do when I talked about zoning where I talked about the city of investment of a hundred million dollars all of those are details to work out okay let me keep going there's just a few other things I want to mention I mentioned specialized code enforcement before we also talked about focused crime interventions this is something the police department is already doing I know they've been focusing lately on the ultimacy mccart area because of some concerns that have come up there I don't know the entire the entirety of the history there but I know that the police department is using data to try to focus their efforts as well we think it's important to maintain a list of key vacant properties I don't mean every vacant property although you should have a list of every vacant property but there are some in particular that cause broader problems than others and are a greater issue to neighbors than others so I think having that kind of data is really critical because as we think about a land bank of those vacant properties which are the most important ones that the city might want to consider putting into the properties that just need to be addressed or sold for some other reason and then there's questions around street cleaning bulk trash strategies there's some really good models other cities have used to address illegal dumping and to help address some of the concerns around cleanliness that have been raised by some again not every neighborhood but some neighborhoods I mentioned community development corporations I do want to talk about the opportunities here to really build on that community capacity so one of the things we learned in looking at the neighborhood improvement program is that the city goes and spends a few million dollars in a neighborhood they work with community leaders to identify how that money is spent that's a great opportunity to also invest in those community leaders and say how do we take what is either a formal or informal community organization and make it even stronger what are the ways that we can invest so that they can do more of the work that they want to do because sometimes as you all know community leaders is a labor of love you get burnt out quickly it's a lot of work and it can be really frustrating so how do we invest in those community leaders and make sure that we're reinforcing the kind of investment the city wants to make in those neighborhoods some of this may also be to train some resident leaders and create resource guides when Dr. English mentioned I was on the board of something called the citizens planning institute which is a unique organization in Philly that trains community leaders across the city in these kinds of issues they have started to create resource guides to answer some of the common questions the city gets all the time how do I address all of the illegal that's happening at the end of my street how do I make sure that a clogged sewer we can get the city out to come fix it there are a number of very typical kinds of comments that are embedded in these resource guides that just help folks across the city know exactly who to call the steps they need to go through and the most effective way to get some of that accomplished and then lastly annual report cards is of course critical data is worthless unless you like maintain it so every single year the measure should be updated anything the city and partners invest in hasn't moved any of the numbers at all if there's neighborhoods that we're focusing in to do say some level of affordable housing or whatever the case may be is that had a positive impact for local residents so working also with the outreach department here at the city and others to make sure that we are having the kind of impact that we are looking to have so I've just said a lot of words through all of this I wanted to make sure I got through all of it as effectively as I can I think the document is pretty easy to get through we're very graphically oriented so that's always a focus for us but I really do thank you for your attention hopefully this is resonated and certainly reinforced some of the things that you all have been thinking about or acting on for many many years this resource guide this plan is here to help you in your work and advance it further so thank you so I can move around like a game show host that's right thank you Scott and don't go too far because we may have questions for you and so I'll come to you soon so thank you for your attention and so just to get us started a little bit in our reaction to this information there's some different community groups across different types of organizations in the room and neighborhood services wanted to hear from you first regarding your overall impression of the data and the information you received today so I'm putting some people in the hot seat but you're usually people who are ready for that anyway so we'll have first just again you're giving me your overall impressions in response to this information where's Margaret Lemons with Fort Worth Housing Solutions Margaret Mary Margaret good morning and so we'll just take a cup like a minute or so to just give your overall impression I mean I think it's accurate very true with what we're seeing in the affordable housing space we do know that when we consolidate our efforts into one area we can make big improvement so stop six is one of those areas where everybody in the city has gathered and said yes to making a change because of that we're able to bring almost half a billion dollars of investment to a two mile area that will change that neighborhood for generations and hopefully be sustainable so we agree with the findings and we're excited to get started and be a part of the solution thank you Mary Margaret and then we'll have Lauren King from the Taren County Homeless Coalition I would agree with Mary Margaret it's accurate I do hope that we can figure out how to run concurrently I don't think it's a we have to address neighborhood conservation and then address affordable housing like it's got to run concurrently I have a few questions and homelessness specifically I mean I'm pleased to see homelessness in there although I do want I guess partners to know that we do feel like any gains made in the affordable housing spectrum ultimately will help everyone throughout right and so I do want partners to know that so yeah I mean I also I think it's accurate and looking forward asking some questions very good I'm coming back to Lauren with some questions in a little bit okay and then we also want to hear from Perry Pillow with the apartment association of Taren County these are my friends now I agree with Lauren and Mary Margaret I mean the data is accurate because we've been dealing with this for 25 years and I think the challenges become we all know there's a problem and we're great at being problem identifiers the challenges can we be problem solvers and this need for affordable housing and housing affordability gets into all kind of things it's obviously a social issue it's an economic development issue I put on my NPA hat on that road so one of the things that we've discovered is that sometimes it becomes a zoning and land use issue I'll give you a personal example of that and one of my other hats I was chairing the board of Justins Place and we went to develop 24 units over at Sycamore school road in Himpill and that land it was a rough piece of land but it was zone neighborhood commercial nobody wants another dollar general but the neighborhoods fought it the neighborhoods fought us rezoning that to provide affordable housing God love Kelly Allen Gray she was here I'd give her a giant hug councilwoman kind of helped us get with the neighborhoods we got it through zoning we got it through council so it's a challenge it's a challenge I think we face particularly in Fort Worth on land use and those kind of things but anyway I thought I was going to get away with that I'm not speaking okay I'm very excited about the plan obviously the data speaks for itself and we've been dealing with this issue for quite a while we're affordable housing developer I think one of the things one of the key things that I unfortunately didn't really see addressed is public education like Perry talked about we deal with NIMBY a lot so I think in addition to all the people in the room here we really need to have a concentrated effort on educating the public ways that will help increase neighborhood preservation affordable housing and those types of things thank you so much Donna and then James McClinton with Taren County well I like the plan someone mentioned a previous plan I think as fast as we are growing in this region you almost have to update this every two years because things change and it'll just get put on a shelf that keeps it from being put on a shelf so I think the plan is great I think it's aggressive I think we just need to keep updating it okay thank you so much and then lastly we would love to hear from Dr. Whitney Boyd who is with Braver and also one of my TCU colleagues so thank you so much Dr. English I think one of the things that continue to stand out to me in the plan is the highest concentration of displacement is in black and brown communities so I'm really curious on what the city's commitment is to address those things and upholding things like Mr. Lewis said plans that have been put in place that were community driven that maybe they saw being realized and certain communities that are not listed as displaced they're actually thriving or steady communities who wanted their communities to be thriving and they put the work in but they didn't have the dollars to support that so how we turn the tide on that and actually support it thank you so much okay so those were some initial that was some initial feedback and now we're just going to open it up for questions that you could ask Scott about the plan we also have members of neighborhood services or different city departments in here who might also be able to weigh in or answer questions that you have here's your chance, here's your time so please feel free remember we said no crickets I heard a lot of things and I look at this thing here and I look at the fact that if a city goes back and pulls the stuff off the shelf and I go in my garage almost got this word for it the other thing is the elephant in the room is race everything in my neighborhood and in stop 6 it happens past 35 okay and if you think I'm lying let's go look at where the shelters are let's go look at where development has stops and so I want to know what are we going to do is this going to be another thing when the federal money runs out in two years it goes on the shelf so we're trying to see about sustainability how this actually gets done and how do we address the racial issue takers I'm just here to moderate thank you she was looking at me and y'all see what color I am so obviously race is important to me everybody in this room you mentioned about the plan being on the shelf I used to play football and you know there's a thing called team and the common phrase is high-end team so this is our team in this room the starting lineup and we got several other people on the sidelines that are going to get off the sideline so our intent is to engage each and everyone in this room continue to do that because we can't do it just the city alone you know that it was mentioned in the plan about $100 million investment over five years we've started to chip away at that a little bit budget neighborhood services alone as Scott mentioned we went from in years past it was like two and a half million, three million three and a half with the neighborhood improvement program to eight million so now we have eight million our home on a rehab program which primarily is in black and brown communities we only were using federal money at two million now we have four million the city is putting another two million in general fund dollars this hasn't been released yet we're going to be having those budget hearings public meetings around the city so it'll be an opportunity for y'all to weigh in even more so we're starting to do some things already that directly address the problems and issues in those areas that are distressed and challenged which mostly reflect folks that look like me so I have a vested interest in it and our staff does so I think you'll see the city become a little bit more proactive in trying to address those things thank you Victor and this is for we're in a conversation so if you have ways that you know you can contribute toward what we've seen today and you want to share that with the room that's great in terms of collaboration or if you have questions or just your overall feedback to the plan so any of those things are possible right now and if you can just be sure to say your name so we can know who's speaking I'm Debbie Kratke and this is Marvel Johnson probably more of you know Marvel than me but we're from Workforce Solutions and we're late to the game but we're here to play we feel like that if we we have for a very long time concentrated on bricks and mortar centers so we're a lot of people in one work force center and people come there what we want to do starting now is to really start working in neighborhoods so we have our business services people out looking for employers in neighborhoods and then so that because we feel like if we're going to address those plans one of the best things we can do is get people better paying jobs then they can afford to take care of their own place or to move up and maybe help us work toward getting those distressed neighborhoods back in play thank you for the humility in the comment right to say we're late and sometimes just saying that can help us all make more progress to get more involved yes okay you tell me Miss Jerry says we need to make sure that if we're working in communities we need to make sure people from those communities are being involved in the process from beginning to end and we also need to make sure that we're educating them on what the process is so that they can stay engaged and involved in their voices can be represented in the spaces that are in the places where people are making decisions on their behalf so we always want to keep the relevant stakeholders involved did I see a hand yes just like the compliment of Richard Rcetti on Hemphill I would just like to compliment you because that's absolutely critical that was absolutely critical is you bringing in the neighborhoods building capacity with the neighborhood leaders but also is the city has to involve the neighborhood communities and getting the information out in many different formats so race is a challenge too but also is language is when you come in to south side you're looking at 50% Hispanic Latino is communicating on a very very local level in English and in Spanish it's absolutely critical and to get those opinions in early because what happens is you can come up with the best plan but if you don't get that information out early and in a very descriptive fashion misinformation will take over in lieu of good information excellent excellent coming over here then I'll come here hello I'm Keith Pomekaw we're in my TCU tie I'm actually from Dallas so I grew up here in Fort Worth I just wanted to say I'm here representing Pletium USA and we have five developments now in Fort Worth affordable housing developments and the way we did it we're successful is that we did work with neighborhoods and that's very important another thing that I think could help in all cities is education education on what affordable housing is I can't tell you how many times I've been before a city council meeting and people say those words we don't want those people in our neighborhood and those people are usually referring to everybody in this room you know people that you know are making 80% AMI or 60% and there really are neighbors and our families and so the education part I think is very important and also the second thing we hear in front of city councils from neighbors is that we don't want crime and that's for some reason all over America they equate apartments with crime and that's not the case it might be in the few bad actors that are in this different neighborhoods but that's incumbent on us to get with our city council people and to get involved and if there are some bad actors in apartments make sure they're held to code enforcement and help clean them up so that they don't give other people in the good players a bad name thank you so much for adding that I'm trying not to be lengthy my name is Demetria I'm one in 76104 my grandmother passed away in 76104 my mother still lives in 76104 and so I've watched this neighborhood to me was like this I'm also a graduate of Pascal High School in Texas Westland and I'm a builder in 76104 so I've watched this neighborhood all my life come from here to here and I haven't seen any changes with my eyes even though we have stuff like this and have hair stuff like this I haven't seen any change in the community and so I'm looking forward to see with my eyes and not on a sheet of paper and in a book we're talking I'm a builder this is my first meeting and thanks to Harrison for giving me the information that I'm here I moved back to the area to help my neighborhood do better and contribute to building nice houses in the neighborhood I would like to build affordable housing in the area and participate in the growth and the betterment of the community because I'm in the community and I was born and raised in this community and I should hope that we can really see this in our eyes and not on the book okay so I've heard a few things that are very similar that I just have to call attention to number one the need for education around this plan I am in the department of strategic communication at TCU I teach courses in public relations and advertising but I do research in public sector communication our communities need to know what we're doing they're not in these meetings they don't see the charts they just see their lived experiences and so a part of this effort I think this is what I'm hearing for neighborhood services or for the city of Fort Worth to make sure there is some public education going alongside each of these steps and strategies otherwise people don't know what's going on and they can't which means they may be limited to seeing it if you know you want to buy a red car all of a sudden you start seeing red cars everywhere and so if you know that the city is taking effort and putting intentionality into this space and you know how that is maybe you'll see it you'll interpret what you see differently there's an opportunity to know what's coming secondly hearing a lot from this table and not just this table but communities like what's represented at the table we have to be so sensitive to the distressed communities that have been have received under investment and may have been neglected because their first usually response is I've heard this before and my research on the city of Fort Worth other communities across the country dealing with officer involved shootings we researched city of Fort Worth after the death of a Tatiana Jefferson and the first thing was we already told you there were problems nobody did anything so we want to make sure as we're launching this project which is excellent all the stakeholders the feedback was great right that this is consistent with what we're seeing we have to make sure that we're talking to the community and understanding that we're talking sometimes through a lens that we have not been invested in and if so that's okay talk about how we're investing now but don't neglect that part of the conversation because that's in the hearts of the people who are sitting and listening okay other questions Lauren I think you have one and then I'll come here my question is how will we pay for this this cannot be a plan where essentially we turn into state legislature who puts a bunch of laws in place and says great go and do this but there's no money behind it so how will we pay for this any takers Carlos Florez left the building so that's the big question there were some recommendations in there city manager's office council is contemplating that how are you going to do it so I think with the support and from you all I think you need to talk to your council members about it and really really it's different coming from staff versus coming from y'all so you've seen what's in it you know it's cost a lot of money to do those things so I would encourage you to reach out to your council members and express how important that is to you to get this done and I see Ann Zeta here former council member wouldn't you agree absolutely before we turn over I meant to get some comments from Habitat they're in the room and so come on they're one of our chief critics so we're going to get them to talk I am not a chief critic we are very thankful actually we have had a great partnership with the city working for the last several years we've been part of the NIP programs doing some neighborhood repair work and we are grateful for that and we also have a partnership with the city with the ARPA program where we're about to build in the hospital district we're about to build 36 town home units so we're very excited about that I'm so sorry pardon me I apologize thank you for letting me know it couldn't be seen I do have questions like Lauren I saw that there were a lot of recommendations in the plan I have family that lives in Austin I know the changes that that program has made in Austin I do plan on talking with city council members city manager you tell us who we need to talk to outside of that and you know that we will as will Lauren as will Donna as with Mary Margaret as will Toby those of us who need to get out there and have the communication we will but isn't it going to council in two weeks or next week I mean I'm not trying to be and I was just joking I'm just joking about you being chief critic I take that back anyway yes the adoption of the plan is going to council next week but as you know the city is on a four year bond schedule so now is the time to be talking to them about that and maybe perhaps including that in the next bond issuance so next week really is just for the adoption we still have time to talk to our representatives about different types of financing tools whether it's a bond or something else maybe it's through the HFC our housing finance corporation so we'll let those leaders figure out how to get us there but we just need you all support the plan I just told you okay we'll have maybe one or two more questions before our time wraps up today okay I was going to ask also the city investment dollars or the hundred million how is that to be used and do they know exactly what communities is going to be used in and how much in that particular community okay so I'm not sure Scott if you have some ideas about how that money will be allocated across these various priorities yes however the simple answer is yes we're trying to get to the page number so you never find it right when you need it it is page okay okay it's coming thank you the page I'm looking for has a as a sample division if there are a hundred million dollar investment whether that's by bond or bond in a whole bunch of other things how would you spend it here it is page 81 thank you someone's much faster than I am so that gives you a sample what it doesn't talk about is where right so what it's talking about is if you were to have a hundred million dollars how might you split it and this is one sample way of thinking about how that split would happen so about 30 percent towards home ownership programs page 81 sorry about 50 percent rental programs that's one way of thinking about it but this is just and we're very careful about this a sample right because if there is a decision to do this via bond or some other method that's going to have to be a question to start with this and say well this isn't quite right we need to adjust some of these percentages and then that helps us understand okay X percent is going to go towards home ownership then there's the question of okay well where do we focus that's another set of questions that hopefully that the data that's embedded within the neighborhood conservation plan can help to address right if we're looking at programs around anti displacement there's some neighborhoods where that's going to be a lot more necessary than others and so that would be a way of helping to then focus some of the dollars so since there were I'm coming to you and in the checker shirt since there were questions about implementation just for those in the room who owns the monitoring of this plan is it neighborhood services like who's responsible for keeping the five years on track and reporting back out I did not intend to talk this much today but she keep bringing me this microphone yes the city owns the plan neighborhood services was the one that hired interface and kind of facilitated this process but city owns the plan we're probably the lead department and making sure a lot of these things go forward so I guess that's the answer in short okay city owns the plan neighborhood services is running point guard all right very very good your quarterbacking this yes this football season is just about my name is David mother all and I was the founder of the near south side neighborhood association 40 years ago one thing I learned about working with the city is that you have to have really strong leadership in your neighborhood and the city works for you not the other way around and when you've got a plan and when you've got direction from your neighborhood you have a council member and you have a mayor and somebody has to go down to the city hall and explain to them that you've got a plan and they ask you to get a plan and now it's time to work the plan okay if you don't have that strong leadership you're not going to get success the cities of bureaucracy it works like a bureaucracy and you have to raise your voice and you have to go higher if you hear no you just keep going higher and our former council member will tell you that we did a really good job of going higher often in the near south side to where it is now I want to say one more thing real quickly for 40 years I've never stopped working for the near south side we have a major problem in Fort Worth right now and nobody really knows what's going on but the city of Fort Worth medical district has taken on the responsibility for critical care for all the people who live between Fort Worth and El Paso and these people when they're in critical issues they fly them in it's been it's been told to me that we need 50,000 more employees in the medical district in less than 10 years now we have a real serious problem where are we going to put these people who are they going to be what kind of jobs are they going to have okay and this area that we're talking about today about housing is the very most critical thing that we have to solve okay the jobs they're going to be there no matter what okay because we're responsible are ready today for those people and then they come from the west and so we have to find the 50,000 jobs and we have to house those 50,000 people and we have to do it in less than 10 years so we have a deadline our people are going to die okay so if you don't have responsible leadership in your neighborhood you've got to get it and if they are not strong enough then you need to find somebody else that's going to be stronger and who's going to go higher in the city organization to get things done because we don't have much time oh I'm so sorry and speaking of time we're out of time now but I just want to thank you for your comments for your questions thank you Scott for your presentation and thank you Victor for convening this time and opportunity for us to gather I hope you felt like this was a good use of your time this morning I hope we all feel even more responsible to move forward and solve some of the problems connected to housing that we've either learned about today or reiterated today and I hope that we'll all help keep the city supported and accountable and they're quarterbacking but they need a receiver they need somebody to throw the ball to so we want to work in this together and I thank you for allowing me to be the moderator today and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and feel free to stand by and network and talk to people think about collaborations as Victor comes to give us some closing comments so Dr. English we want to thank you so much for being part of your schedule and you're funny and you kept us engaged so just a small token we don't have much money in neighborhood services so we didn't give you a bouquet of roses that's the best we could do thank you so you heard the comment about quarterback and receiver so about 50 pounds ago I was a college quarterback and so quarterback and receiver are on part of it you got to have some offensive linemen tight ends defense so all that makes up a football team even though the quarterback gets a lot of the attention but it's a team as I mentioned earlier there's no I in team and we're a team so I want to say that on the signing sheet make sure that you had your email address phone number something like that that we can get in touch with you we will be following up very shortly we plan to do a survey to get more of your you all's input those of you that are a little shy people tend to express themselves more sometimes when they're not in a crowd so we want to give you that opportunity share with your friends and colleagues any other comments from the floor yeah so I know we have an email address for HFC we probably can set up something questions for this so we'll get that set up or you all have well I tell you what you all know my email address I just give you mine those of you that don't have it victor.turner at Fort Worth Texas.gov so victor.turner at Fort Worth Texas.gov if you forget it just go on our website and it's on there but yeah just go ahead and email them to me but anyway we want to thank you so much for your time those of you that are new to this we want you to continue to be engaged and we'll be in touch soon have a blessed day


Well, hi there! I'm Sandy Olnok, and today is an exciting day, so I have a short video all about Book Release Day. I feel like I have given birth. Well, okay, I don't really know what giving birth is like, but that's what it feels like. I've been waiting so long to see my finished books, but they are finally here. Today is release day, and I'm doing a quick flip through here on this channel. There's a longer flip through over on my Bible Journaling channel, but I wanted to give you a peek at what is in the books. This one has lots of information basically from the get-go, from I Don't Know What Bible Journaling is, and how do you pray through the scriptures all the way through tutorials that are simple and then more advanced ones, and then you knew there had to be a chapter on water because it's me. And there's a whole chapter at the end with just advanced samples. So people who are at any end of the spectrum can get lots of inspiration from this book. The second book I'm really excited about as well, this one is a workbook, and it's printed on Bible paper. That means that you can practice in here before you go to your actual journaling Bible. So if you want to test something out and see if it works, you can go to this. You can also do tons of journaling. There's lots of lines in here, prompts throughout that you can really work through telling your story to yourself in writing so that you can actually do some journaling about it. There's pages and pages on testing mediums. So you can just use all these little beautiful graphics and fill in little sections with different kinds of paint and different colors and test and see what goes through and what doesn't. Test all your brands out in this book, beat it up and do whatever to it because it's your workbook. There's a color wheel in here. I'm going to be doing a watercolor lesson on that color wheel over on my Bible journaling channel very soon and all about the color ways and that sort of thing. And in the book itself, there's one that's colored in pencil and a whole lesson on that, but I'm going to do one in on YouTube in watercolor. But again, over on my Bible journaling channel, but look at all there's lots of pictures to color. If you don't want to draw your own and there's tons of blank spaces, lots for everybody to be able to use in this book. So on the website, BibleJourneyMadeSimple.com, there's a list of all the places that I know of where you can actually get the book, big bookstores and craft stores and things that are carrying it right now. I'll be adding to that as I find out more. Let me know if you find the book for sale, take a picture of it and send it to me. And I'm so excited. So if you want to see the full flip through video, click on the one up here in the screen and I will see you guys very, very soon if I could get back down to earth.