Happy holidays, everybody. I trust that everybody had a great Thanksgiving and are getting ready for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, everything that we celebrate in this time, especially in this time of COVID. I know it's a little different. Just wanted to welcome you guys. And we're going to jump into our agenda in a minute, prove the minutes in a minute. But I see Mary Ann with the, I mean, Mary Louise with us. We always have conflicts. So Mary Louise, I'm not sure you had an opportunity to introduce yourself to the rest of the Task Force members. So I want to give you that opportunity right now. Can you guys hear her? I can't hear. We can't hear her. Is your audio joined, Mary Louise? Have you joined with audio? Still not. I'm thinking, because I don't see a mute or a mic at all on there, so you might not be joined with your audio. That might be, Erica, you think that's what it is? I do. I'm going to put my phone number in the chat. If you want to call me, we can get you set up. And Ms. Devine, if you want to come back to the introduction, we'll get her up and running. I will do that. OK, so great. OK, so with that, you guys attached to the agenda. Erica submitted our minutes from our October 13, 2020 meeting. Hopefully everybody has had an opportunity to review that at this point. So if so, if there's no amendments or changes to that, I will now entertain a motion to approve the minutes from the October 13 meeting. Move for approval to accept minutes from previous meeting. OK, is there a second? OK, it's been moved. Move for approval from Lala Anna-Salls. And seconded, I think, both by Dr. Brian Grady and Jeff Lermore. Any questions or discussions? Seeing none, if all those in favor of approval of the minutes say aye or raise your hand if you're on mute. Aye. Anybody opposed? All right, great. Thank you, guys. So now I'm really excited. After our last meeting in October, Mr. Gunnell is a member of our task force. Hi, Dylan. Thank you for being here. Call me and reached out and just said, I have an idea of a presentation I'd love to make. And so he wanted to introduce us to Lauren Taylor, who is the CEO of the Haven Group, to make a brief presentation. And so at this point, I want to just go ahead and turn it over. Dylan, do you want to say anything and then introduce Lauren? And then she can get started. You're going to put me on the spot, Ms. Devine. No, I will let her dig right into it. I will just say that I was introduced to Lauren, I guess it's been over a year ago now. And if you don't know Lauren Taylor and what she's doing in our community, you need to know, Lauren, you need to know what the Haven is doing because they're doing some incredible things, not only from a private sector perspective of entrepreneurship and economic development, but also what they're doing to help people and try to partner with the public sector and the nonprofit sector. So Lauren is a powerhouse and she is really making strides to get things done. But what I love about her, and of course, Jen, who just so happens to be my aunt, but they are both incredible entrepreneurs. But again, they have a servant's heart and they believe in helping people along the way. I really think that the presentation that I've seen from them is a unique strategy to combat what we are hoping to combat as a task force. And so I hope that you enjoyed as much as I did. Great, thank you, Dylan. And Jen, thank you so much for being here as well. So Lauren and Jen, I will turn it over to you guys. I think you have worked with Erica. Erica, are they able to share their screen or do you have their presentation? Lauren can share her screen or I can put it up if she needs me to. I can share it. Thank you. It's getting me to change my system preferences. I can put it up for you. Just let me know when you're ready to switch screens. I think it's pulling out. Let's see if this does it. All right. Can we see? Yes, we can. Perfect. So before we get started, I'm gonna dive into the presentation. So we have plenty of time for questions, but to see the brief rundown of who we are and kind of what we're looking to do, we've been in the institutional single family rental space. And I have for pretty much my entire career. So about the last 13 years. So we would work with large funds, both big and small that were raising money in the private sector, mainly from high net worth individuals, family offices and the like. And then they were buying single family rental properties and turning them, kind of going through the process of leasing them and then reselling them on the backend. We've learned a lot of valuable lessons over the years. I think the industry when it first started was really exciting. It was the main reason why I was attracted to it. It was brand new. We had seen a large scale rental organizations in the multi-family sector, but not in the single family sector. And so this was something that really hadn't been done before. And initially I think it was very well-intentioned, but along the way we've seen all of these different changes that we'll kind of go through in the presentation that have put us in a position where we wanted to be a part of the solution and not a part of the problem. And it honestly started to feel like we were just kind of contributing to the overall issue of housing affordability. So we took a pretty big risk this year and repositioned ourselves towards really going after solving affordable housing. That has been also directly taken on the property management side. We can officially now that we got the contract with Columbia Housing Authority and we'll continue trying to get housing authority contracts to try to make a difference in that direction. So what we're calling this is real estate liquidity for affordable housing. And one of the issues that I found along the way is that there is a lack of liquidity overall in the marketplace. And we'll dive a little bit more into that. So to give you an idea of what we are going to be doing, we will purchase, renovate, and lease a single family or two to four unit housing to offer as rental properties for the underserved affordable housing market through our buyer platform MLS and Auction. So traditional biometrics, similar to how we operate for funds. In the past, the past two years or so, we've done almost 2,000 homes for individual funds or high enough with individuals. And we're kind of taking those skills to reposition them towards affordable housing. So as we know, it's a kind of epidemic level social need that we're seeing at this point. And we intend to provide investors on the for profit side with a return and build kind of a unicorn in the industry from an affordable housing perspective. The biggest reasons why we're different in the industry at large is there is a huge demand for single family affordable options. In the majority of cases, a lot of you guys are probably familiar with things like low income housing tax credit properties or things that are kind of down the avenue of affordable solutions that give investors tax incentives. We also run an opportunity zone fund. So we're seeing different options in those directions but in single family, for the most part, it's widely underserved and we'll get a little bit more into why that is. We're vertically integrated. We have been vertically integrated from day one of starting the company meaning that we can run the brokerage or acquisition aspect, the renovation aspect and the property management side. That gives us operating strength and allows us to scale really quickly. By staying on the single family side, we're kind of eliminating the risk associated with having to develop new properties. It'll also help us to reposition areas very strategically that are being greatly ignored by large steel investors because the numbers don't really make sense within their particular models. And of course, on the non-profit side, we get all of the non-profit benefits associated with being able to keep things in truly affordable ranges while also providing social services to the people that we're working with. The problem, all of you guys are pretty familiar with this being on the task force. So we're not gonna spend a ton of time here but when I started digging into this in great detail at the beginning of the year, I really was backaled by how large it's become and there's a lot of different contributing factors. So we're not doing any signs of improvement. The map kind of shows overall on a nationwide scale, housing affordability is a problem everywhere that people live. It's not just a problem anymore in California and Texas and New York and all these large markets where in the majority of cases, people were saying, of course, income has risen and so people are having a hard time there. This is down to small localized markets, tertiary markets, pretty much anywhere. The national low income housing coalition as we have a shortage of about seven million homes and that's just in low income, extremely low income market. So we're not even close to touching the issue that's now creeping into the middle class, which I think is the most shocking aspect of housing affordability is that now it's contributing to the overall working poor because we're seeing the middle class get pushed more and more which this has a lot to do with these particular items here. So we're seeing home values are growing four times as fast as wage growth and rents are growing twice as fast. And this is really tied to the financial markets for the most part. It has a part to do with financial markets and a part to do with government regulation. So you're seeing this giant increase of values that aren't tied to how well people are doing. They're really tied to the secondary market from a financial perspective. And for those that aren't familiar with the secondary market, the secondary market in rental properties has become more and more prevalent as the industry has grown. Initially you had people raise private equity. They would use that private equity to purchase homes and then they had to find creative financial solutions in order to kind of double, triple, quadruple their money. Now the majority of single family funds are levered anywhere from seven to 11 to one, meaning that should sound familiar to previous banking issues we had the housing crisis before, they are doubling down because financing is becoming increasingly easier. Fannie Mae decided to back the single family rental institutional market making financing even easier for them. The issue there is that if I'm going to purchase property that I want to offer for rent, then I not only have the obligation to my investor, so I'm gonna raise money from investors and tell them I can give them X return. So I need to make sure that I can give them that return. Then I also have a waterfall in the back end typically meaning that anything in excess of that return gets split between me as the fund owner and the investors themselves. But if I want to get debt on those properties which I really have to to make the model work and to scale and provide the returns that I'm promising that I can do, then those lenders are gonna require me to have a certain income ratio on the properties that I'm getting financing on. So when I approach them, they are wanting to see a certain makeup of the portfolio in order to give me a certain debt to income ratio to get the lending that I really want to get. And most of the funds are pulling back out anywhere from 70 to 100%. Our prior client was financing 100% of their cash invested back out of the properties. So they're recycling their capital over and over again. But in order to do that, they need to inflate rental values. So things must go up in value over time. Not only the value of the property or the air of the property, but also the rent income of the property. So they'll force inflation on those assets by doing things called like portfolio manipulation where they will, for example, a fund will tell us they wanna rent this particular asset or property management team will tell those individuals, well, that's a $1,200 a month property. They will say, we want it to rent for $1,350. So put it on the market for $1,350. They'll wait 60 days while it sits on the market. We don't get any traction. So then they'll say, well, let's offer some form of incentive. If you go on Zillow, you'll see this all over the place, a three months rent to sign on a property today. So realistically, then we're taking that 1,300 a month and we're stretching it across the 12 months with a month missing. So realistically, they're not getting 1,300 a month, but on paper, it looks like they are. And so they're forcing this inflation up and up over time and every time they move a tenant out, they up the rent again. Or they do rent increases on their existing tenant base, which is causing this steady inflation over time. The investor purchases are also playing a pretty major role. The majority of purchases since the housing crisis have been from institutional or private investors. And we're seeing a dying out of the mom and pop, kind of traditional real estate investor, localized investor over time. We also see a big shortage in not just section eight, but across all any type of half or other government incentive program. The amount of inventory available for those programs is going down significantly over time. Second eight last year was around $22 billion. And only about 50 to 60% of those units were actually placed with an individual. The issue with that is that more institutional or large scale investors do not believe in the model. There's a lot of stigma behind it. That's a pretty loaded bag, but they are consistently deciding not to entertain any form of voucher on any property that they manage. And now that they control the majority of the active inventory available, especially in the school family sector, they are not at all meeting the demand overall for individuals. So we hope to help kind of solve that problem. So our solution, this is a pretty extensive and a little complicated model pack. I've worked on both the fun side of the business and the operation side of business. So we internally have all of the resources available to run an operation for fun. So the last largest client that we had, we scaled them from, they started out with zero properties. We got them to about almost 1,900 properties in 18 months. And we did all of the acquiring of those properties, renovation of those properties and management of those properties. So our operations arms are strong and we feel they would be a good attribute to the nonprofit overall. So the nonprofit and the for-profit are separate from each other entirely. Legally, they have to be as everyone knows. The nonprofit will own all of the homes. So it is the one that maintains the ownership of the property and the overall decision-making of the property itself. And our for-profit arm will run the operations of those properties, excuse me. We'll run the operation of those properties and it will also create a lending arm or liquidity back to the nonprofit. What I found in the majority of cases is if we start out as a traditional nonprofit in the affordable housing space, we're greatly limited by our ability to get grants, donations and everything that a nonprofit typically has to run its operations. We do not have access to private equity liquidity in the same way that large-scale funds do. So you need to find a way to tap into that resource to really scale at the same rate that your large institutionals do. If we're going to combat the problem, then we have to figure out a way to acquire and to scale and grow as fast as the other activators in the space are. So our lending arm will lend money to the nonprofit. The nonprofit can service that debt easily. We are initially now trying to raise money into the for-profit, but what we're open to and what we're hoping to achieve in the short term is to get loans from individual banks. We'll still go after grants and donations, all the typical things that we would, but we're also approaching smaller banks and asking them if they would do debt to the nonprofit. It'll help us overall prove our model and how it can scale over time with the appropriate amount of liquidity. So the nonprofit is basically a captive client to the for-profit side and the debt venture will lend money to the nonprofit and collect fees and interest and potentially sell them in the secondary market. So we're trying to make all of the negative attributes that are causing this inflation and fast growth within the space to our advantage to help solve the problem in the opposite way. So we think that we can harness the power of the private market in order to further the overall mission. Our track record, I kind of went over this a little bit already, but as a quick rundown, we've done, you know, over 2,000 homes in 24 months. We've had an iBuyer platform that did about 40% of our purchases overall that was a very elementary iBuyer platform. We've leased 2,500 homes, maintained great collection rates, occupancy, and a good Google star rating. We are definitely, and Ms. Gumbels, who's my COO, she has been one of the biggest contributors to building a great culture here. We started internally with a good culture mindset that we wanted to have a positive environment for the people that were working with us and that were not only working for us, but also working with us on our overall resident base. We wanted to create a good experience for them. And one thing that was frustrating for us is that we have noticed in the affordable housing space, especially in the for-profit affordable housing space that the service is lacking. They don't get as much tension and they're kind of forced to be in properties that need increased maintenance or that are run down when that really shouldn't be the case. If operations are tight and you run it as a fund would be ran where you're watching every dollar and cent, then you can give all of that increase back to your residents. Renovations, we've done around 1,500 homes and we've scaled to about 14 different MSAs in about 16 months so we can duplicate our model very quickly. Our strategy is a little different. We'll start with homes first. Most people start in the multi-family sector because they feel they can acquire more units faster. We believe that if we stay focused in South Carolina, we'll start right here in Columbia first and get to a good scalable point and get us to a position where we have a lot of assets under management and then we'll start strategically moving up southeast just like we've done with fund clients in the past. There is large amounts of inventory in this space. None of your institutional investors are paying attention to things that they have very tight buy boxes so they want things that are free bedroom, at least one and a half bath, not built after like 1980 typically or before 1980. So we were kind of opening up this wide range of inventory in areas that greatly need improvement. So a lot of your houses that hit the market, let's take North Bay for example, we have a lot, there's a lot of inventory in that area that ranges some $50,000 that may need $40,000, $50,000 worth of work. It doesn't make sense for flippers to do those deals. It doesn't make sense for institutional investors to do those deals. So we're opening up a range of inventory that'll allow us to go into areas deeply high quality renovations on properties and also keep the rents like underneath the affordability range. iBuyer is not really anything here we need to touch on. It just allows us to get access to more inventory and allows us to help individual homeowners that may be in difficult positions. I think this is gonna be incredibly important going forward after we start to see some of the blowback from COVID. The majority of individuals who may be in a position that they're near in foreclosure or are in a short sale position, we want them to be able to sell their homes to the nonprofit and lease them back from the nonprofit and work themselves back to a position to purchase the property back. There's a lot of different things that we can do with the appropriate resources and spread to the community that will allow individuals different choices in a price point that's not typically attractive for iBuyers or large investors. As we said, the nonprofit mix is very important and there are two main reasons it's important. One is on a tax liability side. As you guys know, one of the biggest struggles that I had initially informing my career in institutions was that I was in South Carolina. Our tax burden on non-overoccupied properties is significant and even if I wanted to start a for-profit affordable housing fund in the private equity space, it would be near impossible in this market because of the tax liability. So having the tax, some form of tax break, being a nonprofit is extremely important and will help us use that additional revenue and money savings to go back into purchasing more assets and keeping things within the affordability range. We'll have access to other capital, not just liquidity that the for-profit will end up providing but we'll go after foundations, grants, all of the things that we would typically do in the nonprofit space. Public services, the two main things that we're focusing on, one is green renovations. Green renovations is a big passion of mine because of what we saw in the institutional sector. They would come in and do cosmetic renovations to properties, still leaving the properties in with bad windows, bad insulation. And so we would have someone that would have a $1,100 a month rent with a $700 a month utility bill. So making sure that the properties are optimized from a overall energy conservation standpoint is really important, not only to us as an organization but also to our residents who that greatly impacts their affordability overall. And then of course, financial coaching is one of the biggest aspects and one of my biggest passions in the sector is giving people access to information on how to improve their financial position over time. So if we can get them in something that will help them budget their money more effectively and then teach them how to budget their money and save and get into a position if they want to buy, that they can buy the property that they're in from the nonprofit or just an overall improving of their financial position over time is something that is really important to us. So we'll work through initially when they come to us, we'll take them through the process of applying for a property that'll include a budget worksheet and workshop that'll take them through the initial part of their tenancy that they can either come to hopefully after COVID we can have live classes, but we're gonna put together Zoom classes and also webinars for our overall resident base to learn and further financial health over time. Leadership team is, we have a large team here but these are our three main. Me, of course, Jennifer Gunnels that we talked about already, Dustin Drear who is on the renovation side so he runs all of the renovation and development stuff for our team. So I will, I'm gonna unfair my screen and then I can take any questions that anybody has. Thank you, Lauren. And I'm gonna see if anybody has any questions. I just had a couple. It looked like you're all the headquartered here, you're doing in lots of areas. Do you know offhand how many properties do you have here in the Columbia area? And have you set a goal about how many units, affordable units you wanna add to the market in the next few years? Yeah, so from what we've acquired here locally, it's been about 700 units. So those were not units that we own, those were units owned by our investors. So we led the acquisition and renovation and purchase or in management of those assets but they are not ours personally. Right now the nonprofit is approved in South Carolina. We're waiting on 501C3 status which we should have any day now. Our goal for the first year is 500 units in Columbia. So it's an aggressive goal but it is much lower than what we would do on the institutional side for institutional investors. So we're trying to find a middle ground. If I was coming in as a, if we would have gone the route of being a traditional private equity fund, then we would have wanted to be at 1000 units within our first 12 months, which is what our goals were with individual clients that we would bring into a market to start up. Thank you. Yeah. Guys have the questions and just jump in. Sam. I do have a question, Ms. Lauren. Are you also doing rental, like rent to own or is this just releasing and renting? Good question. So the initial model that I built a few years ago was going to be on the lease, like rent to own side. What I found from a regulation standpoint is that rent to own is typically not in the benefit of the individual. It's only in the benefit of the investor themselves. So what we want to do is allow people the ability to rent in our program. We help them get to a point that they can buy. They can buy the asset that they live in from the nonprofit. So there'll be an option to purchase the property at the cost that we have into the property back to the resident, but we're not going to do a traditional rent to own model because we find that in the majority of cases if the resident changes their mind at some point in the process, then they've actually lost more money than they've gained by being in that program. So we find the other way to be more advantageous to the actual resident themselves. Sam, did you get unmuted? And then Jeff and then Brian, did you have a question too? Let me say this, I kind of like what I'm hearing. It's kind of a new model to some extent, but I think one of the elements that's appealing to me and I think to certain parts of the city is that there's some interest in really renting and putting quality into the rental units. And also that is I think good for people who may have low income who would have to tackle the rent also tackle the utility bills. And so, but I also think that there's some people, I know, I think most of us know as we move around that may have been renting a unit maybe two for let's say three, four years, 20 years. And those are still on the market and they tend to have a challenge also in terms of dollars to help meet the codes and those kinds of things. So I'm looking forward to learning more about what you're doing in this particular model. And the national numbers when it comes to low income rental units, it's amazing. Also having to compete with middle income folks as well. Well, I appreciate that Councilman. And I think that the thing that we found is that because it is a different model hack, you get the ability to really invest on the properties on the front end. Funds will cut corners on renovations for, and these are for market rental properties at above market rents. They'll still cut corners because they need their numbers to be a certain way to get the outcome that they want on the end. And they're only going to hold the properties for seven to 10 years and they're going to sell them anyway. So they don't really care. The nonprofit will own the properties in perpetuity unless a resident buys it back from us. So for us, it's really important to renovate them to the highest quality standard at the beginning. So we want to make sure that they're insulated in a way that they should be, that the windows are high quality, that overall the construction is green so that they have good energy efficiency over time. But not only that, the plumbing is working appropriately. And we can invest that money on the front end because of how the structure is built. The upfront investment doesn't impact the growth of the nonprofit over time. So it gives us more flexibility to do everything that we need to on the front end, which will also go a long way to contribute to a business that need that type of investment into them. There's a lot of properties that'll run down or need a lot of work that traditional investors, and it's not to their fault in a lot of cases, they just don't make sense from an investment standpoint. They can't invest the amount of money that needs to be invested into them and make any money on the back end, which if you can't make money and that's your goal, then it's understandable. But there's a lot of areas that could use this type of investment and it could change the makeup of areas and bring more life to areas that really need that type of attention. Jeff and then Brian. Lauren, thank you for your presentation. When you make a concentrated focus on buying properties and your numbers, you're using 500 units, 1,000 units, what type of metric do you concentrate on to purchase kind of in a bulk perspective? Most kind of nonprofit organizations work with single family doors, like you said, one to four doors, but that's a significant number of properties in order to mass a number of 500 to 1,000 units. The difficulty arises if you try to build new units and the pushback that the communities tend to press upon the developer or redeveloper. What strategies do you use to buy purchases more than a door at a time so that you can accumulate that 500 units? I have a great question, Jeff. So it will probably be shocking to most, if you look at those 1,800 units that we did, those were one-off purchases. There was zero portfolios. They were individual purchases of single family properties direct to sellers. And we did that by one, if you have purchasing power, then you get property. That's the, from an institutional perspective, that's how they can come in and just run a market. And one of the reasons why we're seeing this big jump in home price appreciation is because the majority of individual consumers are competing with institutional capital. And they've got cash and they can close in 14 days. So it's hard to be attractive as an individual purchaser who's got a mortgage, who's gonna take 30 to 45, 60 days to close. We can really beat the majority of, now I'm putting on my institutional cap, right? We can really beat the majority of consumers on that side very rapidly by having the purchasing power and the ability to move as quickly as we do. So that's how we accumulated as much as we did. We have big internal processes and teams here. So we have an acquisition division that does the underwriting, the offer creation, the negotiation, the diligence, all of those pieces. We have a renovation division. When we were at full scale between 1099 and internal employees, we were employing well over a thousand people in South Carolina because we were, you have not only the internal functions, but you also have renovations and maintenance and all of the aspects of running the field. So for us, it will actually be incredibly easier than what we dealt with with institutional clients because the inventory that we're going after and that we're looking to purchase doesn't have any competition. And I say, I mean, there's some competition in everything, but for the most part, it's wide open. Your large investors aren't paying attention to it. No one's really focused on that particular avenue because there are highly distressed assets that need a lot of work that are in areas with low overall values.  So it's not attractive to any of your larger players. So we could actually come in and buy a lot of inventory much faster. Our only limitation is capital. If we can attract, and that's the reason for the hybrid mix, because if we can attract institutional type capital into a model that will give them a base return. So for capital investment, we're looking for venture debt, for example, from banks or from large investors. So we'll say we'll give them an 8% return on their money in exchange for the liquidity to keep running the system and purchasing more properties. The inventory won't run out unless we had an absorbent amount of capital. And then we'll just continue to expand and acquire as much as we can. But we'll go through options. Direct to banks is a great strategy we've used before. And especially direct to distressed homeowner is even better. This time we can just sleep better at night, knowing that we can do the right thing for the owner before we were just, we were stealing properties from people because we had the capital to do it, which is one of my biggest reasons for editing that space and trying to focus on this one. Yeah, first off, thank you. Thank you, Lauren, for the presentation. And thank you for being willing to accept housing choice vouchers. That's obviously something that's not particularly common and much appreciated. And I see ivory nodding as well. So as I was listening to your presentation, I was kind of thinking through, how does this resemble or not resemble various things that I'm familiar with in sort of the subsidized affordable housing space? One was actually tax credits because of the structure you were describing. And I think you walked through why you felt like your model had some additional positive features or at least had a different mission in the market. The other thing that came to mind was community land trusts, which seemed to have sort of a similar architecture to them. I didn't quite hear the same sort of thing from you to talk about that. So why do you think your model is superior from a community perspective to a community land trust or other shared equity approach? Yeah, great question. So I think the overall ideal of a community land trust is fantastic. I like that model. The issue is that it doesn't give you enough power. And that's a very straightforward way to put it, but it's true. If I'm looking at, so let's take one of our last big clients. They came out of the gate with 50 million. They quickly went to 100 million within four months. So they had 50 million in purchasing power. They went to 100 million within four months of that. They had 150 million. Within two years, they were at 250 million. So you have a lot of purchasing power. Without being able to max that purchasing power, there's just not enough equity within the community base in order to generate that type of money. And so you need more money to do more good. If I'm running up against them and they're creating more inventory than we can, then their cause is gonna get pushed above ours. And so in order to start to balance this out, there's always gonna be a market for institutional anything. There's gonna be high type A multi-family properties that charge $2,500 a month in rent. We don't have as a focus on the low income side, but we'll also focus on the middle income side. So we wanna make sure that we're providing affordable units across the board that do everything from vouchers to just actual affordable units that'll be based on like the average income in the area. But that was one of my biggest decisions around how to structure the model was what is gonna give me a plug into access to institutional scale money to make a difference faster. If we wanna duplicate and grow, my personal goal is that we'll be in 12 states in the next five to 10 years. So we wanna grow really quickly. And in order to do that and make significant impacts is one thing for us to come in and say, oh yeah, we're a nationwide company in 10 years, but we only have a hundred assets per market, then for us to really come in and be able to build scale and a market really quickly. So that 500 to 1,000 unit range is really your sweet spot to really start to see true community impact that will go back to the residents. So that was my approach or thought process on the community land stuff. Councilwoman Devine, can I add a comment? Earlier in the presentation, Lauren had mentioned partnership with the Housing Authority and I just wanna add a comment with that. A few months ago, we released a solicitation for to engage a property management services to do property management, particularly with our units that we currently have under our nonprofit arm. And we're very excited when Lauren and her team responded and just really loved the model. And so we recently awarded a contract with them to oversee about 400 of our units. And the developments are Baybury Mews, Capital Heights, which is a single family affordable rental model, Sylvia Saxon one and two, T.S. Martin, Bentley Quartz and Rosewood student housing. So we're excited about engaging in that relationship and partnership with Lauren and her team and really doing the work to put in the capital needed to transition those units. They have some significant deferred capital needs, but we have a very aggressive plan to address those properties and bring them up to new standards. So we're very excited about that. But I just wanted to add that comment. Thanks, we are very, very excited. I think it's what we're most excited about overall is that we've learned so much valuable information and valuable ways of operations from the private sector that we really feel we can use to reposition and help change how things are, things are being positioned or how properties are being ran. I think we can contribute a lot there. So we're really excited to be partnered with you guys and to help. So we're gonna go ahead and wrap this portion up and unless anybody else has a burning question for Lauren. Yes, Tameka, just one more thing. First of all, I'm better. That was gonna be part of my question. That's awesome that I'm hearing that they're partnering with housing. And once these partnerships start, a lot of the women, like even out here, they desire to be homeowners. They desire to actually have a home and to get out of the apartments. So my question is, will you all be also trying to pass on the education of the financial coaching to the same families in how they can pick themselves up and become homeowners eventually, even, you know, remove themselves out of the apartments and moving to actual home ownership type thing, you know, over time, will y'all be offering that financial coaching to y'all people under housing and the nonprofit sector? Yes, yes, yes, the housing authority do have a home ownership component. We have a certified housing counselor person on our staff who facilitates working with their families. And so we will be engaging in more of those conversations with our new property management team so that we can get that information to all of our families. Yeah, I think, and we're just, we're excited to be a resource. We want to be a resource to like this, this council and committee, for example, they're nonprofits that are in the sector. We just want to help. And I think if everybody kind of works together, then we can start to make a dent in the issues that we have. So any way that we can be a resource, anybody reach out to us, we're more than happy to brainstorm, help or contribute resources, any way that we can. Ms. Devina, you have one thing and I think it can be answered in 30 seconds. But I do think that oftentimes we get these presentations, they're really awesome. We don't always leave a tangible. So Lauren, if you could just give us as you move forward with this, what are you looking for from the community and for those of us that sit on the task force, what can we do? Yeah, biggest action items for us is we're looking to make connections. I've spent admittedly the majority of my career meeting people everywhere but here. So the majority was private equity, which is West Coast, Northeast. And so we're really trying to dive into community connections. Those will be really helpful to us from literally every angle. So we're making connections with local banks. So anyway, it has connections there. That's really useful. If there's other nonprofits that you feel like would be good for us to collaborate with, we would love to meet and talk to them. And we just want to gather and start to garner overall community support and actual knowledge of what we're doing. So helping talk about us and expose what we're trying to do as we move into raising money and starting to purchase assets will all be beneficial. Great. And as all of our meetings, this will be on the city's website and YouTube. People can see your presentation and then committee members. Erica will make sure that Lauren's presentation along with her contact information will be sent to you guys. So thank you, Lauren. Thank you, Jen. We appreciate it. Y'all are welcome to stay for the rest of the meeting. Make some likes. But if you have to drop off, we certainly understand. Mayor Louise, I think we've got your audio back. So I wanted to circle back with you and make sure that you had an opportunity to introduce yourself. And everyone know that you are part of our task force and we're so excited to have you. Can you all hear me now? Yes, we can. I'm Mary Louise Resch. I am the Director of Philanthropy for Central South Carolina Habitat for Humanity. I am so glad that we heard the question about affordable home ownership because that's an area where we focus. We also work on neighborhood revitalization. We do home repairs. We do aging in place. We also, we have a newer model that we're embracing a community one block at a time. And if anyone would like to see how that model works, I put my information in the chat box. We would love to give you a ride with Roy Kramer who is our Executive Director. We, I almost missed this meeting and I apologize for all of the misses but it seems like with COVID, something's always going wrong. But the good news is today we were able to actually dedicate another house in the city of Casey for a young mom and her family. So if people are interested in partnering with us on home ownership, we represent Richland, Lexington and Fairfield counties. This fall we're working in Casey. We'll be back over in Lexington in the spring. We will be in Richland next fall, back in like Richland next fall, actually in the city of Columbia, building and rehabbing some homes. So if anyone is interested in partnering with us, again, my contact information is in the chat box and we'd love to host you. So you can, it's one thing to tell you what we do. It's another thing to actually take you out on site and see the difference that we're making in neighborhoods. Good. Well, we're excited to have you part of our task force made of weeds. And we understand everybody on here has crazy busy schedules. So we certainly understand we're, when people can't sign on, but we want to make sure that you're getting information. And as even if you can't be here, if you want to send the information our way, please do that. So thank you so much for being here. Y'all want to make sure that we, we'd be a very good stewards of your time. So we may not get to all the committee reports, but I did an, Brenna emailed me and said, she wasn't going to be able to be here. But Jennifer, I think, do you have that information? Jennifer and Brenna, their committees met together and there was some information, I think very rightfully so wanted to bring back to the full committee to make sure that we were operating under the same definition of affordable housing and could hear back from them on some of the discussions. So Jen, Jennifer, I'm going to kick it over to you right now. And I'll be quick cause I know we want to have the opportunity for the other committees to report. So our partnership committee had a joint meeting with public awareness and education. We just felt like those two committees just fit so perfectly together, creating networks of groups and individuals that have an interest in affordable housing and then also providing that education efforts. So we met jointly, Brenna and I talked a couple of times and I think we do have a really strong interest in those committees working very closely together. But the one thing we wanted to bring to you is really the need to have messaging for this entire group to make sure that we are being consistent using consistent definitions of affordable housing, common messaging, talking about the benefits and who specifically can benefit from affordable housing, the need that we have for affordable housing versus the stock that's available. So we know that's plentiful information that's out there, but we think it would be important to get that condensed into bullet points for all of us to make sure that we're being consistent when we're out there in the public. So what we'd like to do, and again, I'm rushing through so we can get to other reports, but we would like to put probably a request into the city communications department. We've had an email conversation with this UC who directs that department to possibly get their help or other departments to help us craft that messaging. But the one request we had from this group is if anyone has a particular interest or expertise or could recommend someone, we want to make sure that we're including those voices. So I'll put my email in the chat if you don't have that. So again, if you have an interest or an expertise that you want to lend particularly to that messaging effort or again recommend somebody, if you'll let us know that so that we can start working on that or if folks have other thoughts on the messaging aspect, that would be a good thing to talk about now. Thank you, Jennifer. Does anybody have any questions for Jennifer regarding that report or anything that she said? No. Okay, seeing none. And yes, Jennifer and Brenner, we're gonna submit something to PR for communications support but we definitely want to make sure that we are doing messaging. And I think for that, I think also is key for us to be operating under the same definition of affordable housing. I know two presentations ago when we were, I think when Brian gave his presentation and also when we heard the presentation from National League of Cities, we talked a lot about kind of what the standard definition is nationally and then what the 80% median income and then the other parts of what it means for Columbia but I do think as far as messaging, we need to be very concise and consistent on the messaging that we give. Right now we know that people use affordable housing, workforce housing, sometimes people confuse public housing which is a form of affordable housing but we need to make sure that we are consistent on our messaging. So I do want to dedicate a little bit more time at our next meeting as that as a conversation item. So that we can kind of come up with some ideas and maybe by then we'll have some messaging examples to give you guys, but I would like y'all to think about that as we move down the next month because I think that if we can start 2021 off with a very clear and concise message as far as what we're communicating and what we're doing, I think it'll help as we bring these other partners to the table. So thank you, Jennifer, I appreciate that. Julianne also was not able, she says she's gonna try and jump on and I told her, please don't try and stress. I don't think I see her, so I don't think she did. So I don't have a report from the accessibility committee. Reggie also was not able to join us. He's doing a site visit, so he did email me and so we'll make sure next month. I think he does have some ideas as far as financing so we wanna hear from them next month. Lala Anna, do you and Sue have anything that you want to report out regarding legal and zoning? I know you reported last month, I wasn't sure if there's anything additional this month. Oops, I think she's gone. Okay, Lala Anna had to jump off too, so we don't have anything and then Jennifer, you already spoken. So with that said, that is the committee report outs. Now I just wanna kind of move to announcements to see where we are, number one, if there's anything that any of your organizations are working on as an organization or any information you individually want to share as far as announcements. So I'm actually for just kind of keep consistent, I'm gonna start with my screen and where I am and go from there. So I'm gonna go to Tanya, do you wanna make any announcements? Is there anything from the resident's perspective or anything you guys got going over there that you wanna report out? Nothing big going on right now. I would like some information to hand out to residents. I have been having a lot of questions about any programs that they could possibly get into. A lot of young ladies are getting jobs and looking to get some financial coaching as well as trying to, like with Mary Louisa, always give out the habitat information. They've been so great in helping communities, but other organizations that they could possibly join and also like I said, get some financial coaching and any information I can get to give them to help them move forward in trying to move out of the community. We would love for the community to get fixed up, but until then a lot of families are living in desired needs, a lot of things are not fixed and a lot of things are going on. So a lot of families really looking to move out. So just any information I could give them will be greatly appreciated and that's from anyone in the group. Okay. Gloria, can you and I circle back around maybe towards the end of this week? And then if anybody has any resources that your organizations have that you want to combine, Gloria, let's just pull together something, not just for the families in North Point and Colony, but that's probably something that we need to have ready and available to give out to a lot of different areas. Yes, ma'am, just let me know when. Thanks. All right, Ms. Ivory Matthews. I know y'all had a big, or I think y'all are working on some things, but do you have any announcements that you want to make? Certainly. Recently, we released a solicitation for development partners and we are super excited about the responses that we've received from various affordable housing development partners across the country and our board, we met with our board last week and they approved for us to proceed with discussions with various development partners. And so what that means for the Housing Authority is that we are looking at pretty much touching every single unit that we own and doing some comprehensive renovation of those units and also developing new affordable units on properties on our vacant property. So we're very excited about that. We'll be announcing more as soon as we finalize the details of each of those agreements with our various development partners and we will certainly be making that information available to the community. And at some point, we'll be looking for feedback from the public on what we plan in each of our development opportunities. And if I know some of you receive e-blast or communications from our agency and for those of you who currently have not received any e-blast, we do a lot of communications to that e-blast portal from our website announcing any updates that are coming from the Housing Authority. And so what I'll do, if you're not added, I'll go through our list and add you on there or you can visit our website and sign up for news and events and you'll receive that information as it's made available to the public. Thank you. You appreciate that. Jim, do you have anything from more justice or from you individually that you wanna share? There we go. I can report back on the Charleston referendum. Unfortunately, it failed by a slight margin. Our group worked hard with the council to get that to the point where it was at a referendum. We're stepping back to look at what we can do. We think part of the problem was just education. People didn't know what the referendum was for, but it did fail by a small margin. We're continuing to work with the powers in Columbia who put our trust fund on a referendum in the future. But it was a disappointment in Charleston, especially for our group. Well, Jim, and if you recall the referendum for the transportation failed the first time in Charleston and then passed, the first time here and passed. Sometimes for the referendum, it takes a point or two, but getting it out is huge. It was and we think the timing with the COVID, with the unemployment rate, I don't think that went in our favor. So we're excited. We're still, we're gonna work on both areas and hopefully we can put something together in the near future. Great. Jeff, anything to report from Family Promise? Yes, I'll be brief. While we've really seen an uptick in families experiencing homelessness and without our shelters being able to host, without our congregations being able to host them, we've really had to find creative solutions for them. So we're working on building partnerships for various rentals and different welcome homes that our churches may have to shelter our families also while keeping the families that have graduated from our program stable and really focusing on the child and youth development during this time to make sure that the trauma of homelessness and the current times spill over on time and really doing a lot of work to build more affordable housing and Clayton Homes actually donated a house to us. So we're really excited about that and excited to bolster that relationship in the future. Thank you. Hey Shayla, you've had some great successes in your development, but is there anything you wanna report out or announce what you have? Just excited that the last three houses for D8 Swinton Point closed this week. So everybody will be in before the holidays and we're so excited for them. I think it's really important to highlight that they're all eight families from all different walks of life. I think they're a great representation of what affordable housing is, especially since you've got millennials who just recently graduated from college. I know we closed one at your office and she's 23 years old and just got her degree and now she can afford a home for purchase. That's her first thing that she wanted to do. She said she didn't wanna rent because she lived her life renting. So her goal was to own a house. So that was a really great victory story coming out of D8 Swinton Point. And I'm just super excited that I hope there's more. I've been talking to the developers about where the next ones are gonna go in partnership with Mungo. So hopefully I'll get some news in 2021 about if we can put more homes down. But you guys gotta see these houses, they're beautiful, they've got granite. Nothing what you think affordable housing looks like, which is also a great point to that point. So I can also share pictures if anybody wants to see because it's really good to change what people think affordable housing looks like as well. But everybody there is really happy. So you'll see a little bit more life on Reed Street. I'm excited about it. Great, great, congratulations. Dr. Grady, any announcements that you have? Sure. So a lot of my attention recently has been focused on evictions. As I'm sure you're aware there is a partial CDC moratorium that is set to expire at the end of the month. And you may have seen me on television lately. I've been interviewed by Channel 19 yesterday, Channel 57 last week, speaking about the numbers of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of renters in South Carolina facing eviction, if that moratorium is not extended, if there's not some action at the federal level. The one thing I do want to highlight, and I can't talk in too much detail because I don't have the details, but SC Housing is working with a number of partners tried to come up with more resources for a renter and homeowner assistance fund of some sort. Hopefully we're gonna be able to announce that in the near future, but the plan is it will be sort of like, if any of you remember the SC Health Program that we did a number of years ago, where we're gonna be relying on nonprofits of local governments, other community actors to sort of find people who need help and do paperwork. So we're hopefully gonna have an RFP out in the near future about that. So just wanna kind of put the seat out there that we know there's gonna be a problem next month and we are doing a lot of work to try and get something in place in the near future. So aside from that, just sort of, we've put out some reports recently, our agency's annual report and so forth. And there should be some additional volumes of the housing needs assessment coming out in the near future. So that's what I'm up to and that's what SC Housing is doing. Great, great, all right. And I think that is, oh, Dylan, do you have anything you wanna add? Yes, ma'am, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Okay, sorry, I had to hop in the car and you guys keep cutting in and out, but I did just wanna say, as far as mutual aid goes, we are seeing another uptick in calls regarding utilities and rent and certainly most of what we do is connecting them to resources and helping them navigate the process of connecting to those resources. So we spend a lot of time on 2-1-1 working with SC Drive and all of you as different organizations that provide those resources. So my reason for saying that number one is just saying that we on the ground, if you will, are certainly seeing another uptick as we get into the season of people who are in need. But in doing that, we have also created kind of a resource roadmap. And so it's kind of like, if you're experiencing at risk of eviction or if you are struggling to pay utilities, here are the organizations, here's the step, here's the step. And so as you all were talking, it might benefit if I could share that with you, Ms. Devine, and maybe connect with you guys as you're having these meetings to put more resources on there, but it could also be another resource that certainly we don't wanna hoard it. We wanna share it with the community as well. So we might wanna talk about that. Great, yeah. And definitely I would love to, I get a lot of calls and so to have something like that for me to send out, I would like that. Okay, great.  I'm just gonna open it up to Gloria, Christa, Lee, do you, Missy, do y'all have, any of y'all want anything that the city's doing that you wanna make sure everybody's aware of or any announcements that you guys have? Yeah, me, I'm not here. Thank you. Ms. Devine, I'll just tell you, this is Missy. Gloria and Christa and I have been communicating. We'll work with Leisha's office to pull definitions out of our consolidated plan and comprehensive plan to give us a draft to start with. Excellent, excellent. Thank you. Okay, so then I guess I will end with my, I guess one announcement and I guess one action item to talk about, to think about between now and in January. Announcement is the first session for the color of law will be this Thursday at six. If you guys have not had an opportunity to register, still not too late. As of last Thursday, the report I got is that we have 300 folks registered to participate in that first session like I'm really excited about. And I've since then been personally reaching out to folks because I do wanna make sure we have a diverse group of people out there but we've got an amazing panel that will be moderated by Warren Bolton from the state, formerly from the state paper but we have a reporter, Rebecca Lipsom from the state paper, Stuart Andrews who's an attorney who worked a lot with Urban Renewal lawsuits back in the day. And then we've got two residents, Franshott Brown who lived in Waverly when it went through its gentrification and Reverend Darby who lived in Willow Hill. So it'll be a very good engaging conversation. We will have questions in the answer period at the end and I'm really excited. So wanna make sure that you guys were aware of that. If you are registered and then you also know others that wanna register please make sure you share it with your networks because out of this, this will be a great conversation but it won't do what it needs to do in our community if community folks don't participate in the conversation. Those of us who kind of live in our passion about these issues, of course, will have an interest. Most people might think, oh, that sounds too intellectual or oh really, I don't wanna have that conversation but in order for us to have the results that we want as far as equity in our community we need everybody part of the conversation. So that is my announcement. And then my thing that I just want to say we talked about this at I think our very first meeting but now that we're kind of six months in and Brian I'm gonna ask, I'll circle back with you. Maybe you and I can start this conversation and have it for discussion for our next meeting but in addition to discussing a definition for affordable housing out of that I would like for us to come up with a goal that we would like to recommend to city council to make for adding affordable housing units in our market over the next five years or 10 years or whatever we think is reasonable. A lot of cities that have made really strides they have that goal and that goal and that metrics that they're using as a metrics to make sure that they are hitting the problem. And I think that council will be open to that and Sam can echo. And then council will be open to that but we'll need a recommendation and I think that should be the first recommendation that we as a task force make. And if we can make that in January, that'd be great because it could possibly make it into the mayor state of the city address which would be something that will be shared with the entire city in the region. So that is my last thing. Sam, do you have anything any closing remarks or announcements you wanna make? You're on mute. I think this one I enjoyed because we always scattered but everything's what I've always expected. And I think giving city council policy makers some goals for the future is you can't get no better than that. And you're right, most major cities that have made progress, that's what they do. It's important that they know that we're looking to you for answers and guidance and we take your recommendations seriously. And where you go? All right. Well, with all hearts and minds clear guys, thank you so much. Y'all happy holidays everybody. We pray that you all have a very safe and happy holiday. Continue to wear your mask. We know this is gonna be a difficult season for many reasons for folks. And we just wanna keep everybody in our prayers that they have a safe and as happy of the holiday seasons as they can have.  I know this is the team that can do it. So with that said, bye guys. Thank you so much. All right. Bye everybody.


People every single day are attempting something new in their lives. They want to try a different food or watch a different TV show or wear a different piece of clothing. And when people that are closer than find out, they get all kinds of apparently loving feedback that you shouldn't do that. And people often don't survive that. So what I'm saying to people about a thousand fain rules is you have to also be willing to have some version of a fain rule. And I might start with a boundary setting with people that aren't celebrating changes you are wanting to make. And it may be something clumsy and clunky that you're doing. You may not have thought it through. You don't know what to say to people about it, but you just feel good wearing that or you felt good speaking your mind or you feel good getting a tattoo. That's all you know. And if you can't push past the resistance from people you love, you're gonna stop there. And to me, the road back to you begins with those things that you're thinking about doing today, that you're getting a lot of cynical edgy feedback about. And most people don't make it beyond there.


Okay, so I'm going to go to everyone, and we're going to leave that down. Thank you for coming to this pre-event Al-Qa. Does everyone know why they're here? Tcha? Demid Khabib? Well, inshallah he comes. Let's make dua. But, even if he doesn't come, which let's hope that he does, we are inshallah going to use this time to learn a little bit from him, even though it's not directly. But were you all able to see, like, on the event page for this event, there was an article that was posted. Did anyone get a chance to look at that article? Okay, that's fine. So everything will be new. No one's going to know the answers, because there will be a quiz at the end. We're not in school anymore. These are my students right here. Can I take my notes? Yeah, they're going to be picked on extra for notes. Okay, so hopefully you guys, who wants to go ahead and just mention Khabib's name, full name, who wants to give it a try? Yes, come up here to my name. Do it. You're in your name first. You got to do it. You got to say full name. Like, you're announcing it as if he's walking into the U.S. arena. You got it? You ready for it? Let's do it. Okay.  All right, there we go. Now let's want to do it with some hype. As if he's about to enter into it. Okay, let's go. Come up, come up here. Introducing Khabib! I'm more excited. You guys got it. All right, awesome. Does anyone know what his name means? Any idea? That's okay. We'll get to it. Just think about it, okay? Oh, you got it, yeah. Good, okay. So we got a part of it, right? So just try to figure it out, right? Think about his name. You probably can figure out parts of it. Sorry? Oh, no, sorry. Yeah, we'll get there. He was the closest so far. But yeah, Inshallah, we'll get to his name also. So basically what this article does is it's looking through lessons that we can learn from Khabib's win. So who knows Khabib's record? Yes. 30 and 0. Not 30 and 0. 29 and 0. And what about his MMA record? So his professional record, right? 29 and 0. His MMA record is 13 and 0. So he's undefeated all around no matter what, right? Never been taken down, undisputed, champion in his division. Awesome. So what are the things that stand out about Khabib? So after he wins his last fight, who was his last fight against? Yes, good. Justin Gagey. And how did he win that round? Yes. What type of submission? Triangle. There we go, right? He got in the nut, triangle choke. And he put actually Justin to sleep. Ref didn't see him tap. Justin went out. Nap time. Right? After he wins, what was the thing that Khabib did the first? Who remembers? You know all the answers. You know all the answers too. And you. Okay. Who else wants to give it a shot? What's the first thing Khabib does after he wins? Yes. Huh? Sujood. And what is he doing in Sujood? Thank you. He's crying. He's crying. Right? As soon as he wins, 29-0, the ref calls the victory. The first thing he does is he goes down into Satsvah and he begins to cry. Who knows why is he crying? Is this that bad? What about it? Yeah. Yeah, so his father passed away before his final fight. But his fight was coming up. And so in the preparation for his fight, he was basically blocking out this major aspect that was going on in his personal life. And he had to focus on training. He had to discipline his mind so that he could focus on making sure that he was able to perform. And as soon as that moment ended, all of those emotions flooded into him and in front of millions of people. He breaks down into Satsvah and begins to cry. Now just imagine this scene for a moment. This man who is the manliest of men in our times, completely undefeated, has never been taken down. Pure strength. When his victory is secured, he has these two responses that show what type of man he is. One, he is a man that is dedicated first and foremost to his faith. He falls after every single one of his fights, after every single one of his victories, straight into Satsvah.  There is no one that has power. No one possesses an ounce of power. Except for Allah. And he is able to show that to Muslims and non-Muslims across the world. So you guys are familiar with this concept. That none have power except Allah. What's the saying that you say for that in Arabic? What is the saying for that in Arabic? Try again, yeah? There we go. La hawla wa la quwwata illa billah. That none has power and none has might except Allah. And so Khabib is able to demonstrate this type of strength and give all of his credit away to where it belongs to Allah.  Alhamdulillah. Right, and what does Alhamdulillah mean? Okay, good. So what was the word that you used? Think, right? To thank Allah. Anyone else want to try? We have that on the board. What else could Alhamdulillah mean? Not that it's great. Not that it's willing. Okay, gratitude. So thankfulness, gratitude, yeah? Thankfulness, okay. So we have this idea of thankfulness. So this is where we're going to do a little bit of learning today also, okay? Alhamdulillah has two aspects, okay? Two aspects that no other word consists, can mix these two words. So when you say Alhamdulillah, you are acknowledging two things. One of them is that the aspect of sugar, gratitude, thankfulness and why would you thank someone? Because they did something for you, right? So if someone gives me something, I respond and I say, thank you. So Alhamdulillah has this aspect of thanking Allah because of all of the blessings that he gives to us. But it has another aspect as well, which is to praise Sana'a. That we're praising Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala. We're glorifying him. We're saying all goodness belongs to him. So we're elevating Allah above everything else. So, alhamdulillah has these two aspects then, of sugar and Salat, gratitude and praise. So think about that the next time you're saying Surah Fatiha, right? The next time you're saying Surah Fatiha and you thank Allah Alhamdulillah, we're not just thanking Allah for the blessings that he has given us, but we're praising him even if he didn't give us anything. So it's praise and thanks. Is that clear? Okay, awesome. What else? So what lesson can we kind of take from Khabib being able to stand there and say Alhamdulillah in front of millions of people? Any ideas? What do you think? Sorry? Can you speak louder? Don't be afraid of being Muslim. Good. So what's one way that we can not be afraid of being Muslim? One way that is teaching us to not show fear for being Muslim is to have a type of Muslim vernacular, have a type of Muslim slang, a Muslim way of talking. Right? How many times do you hear in English, right? Ways to speak that are inherently Muslim. So for example, you'll see sometimes people, they'll have like their entire sleeve, their entire arm filled with tattoos.  And then in the middle of all that, they'll throw in something like, Oh, with hardship comes ease. Right? With hardship comes ease. Where's that from? The Qur'an. Right? Indeed with hardship comes ease. Or someone they're talking and they say God willing. They'll say what is God willing? Insha'Allah. So there's this thing that needs to be introduced that you all have the power to do. That you all can make the next trend on Tiktok, the next hashtag on Twitter, the next whatever it may be. Of using Muslim vernacular. Using Muslim lingo that becomes widespread and popular and so when people say, oh what's that mean? Where's that from? Oh, it's those Muslims like Khabib who talk like this. So introducing a type of Muslim language into our culture. Does that make sense? Us. Okay, so that's the first idea. Khabib also gives some other advices and suggestions to people. So there's this famous hadith of the Prophet ﷺ in which he says that the strong believer al-wukmin al-qawwi khayyum min the weak believer is better than the weak believer. That the strong believer is weak is better than the weak believer but in both of them there are good. al-wukmin al-qawwi khayyum min right is better than the believer that is weak. So what does this mean? What does it mean to be a strong believer versus a weak believer? So they have more actions. Okay, good. A strong believer has more actions. What else? What else is a strong believer? Embrace their religion more. They don't have fear for being Muslim. What's the easiest answer here? Yes, good. Practice in Muslim. More actions, more understanding. What's the even more obvious answer? A strong believer is better than a weak believer. Khayyum min, good. Easier answer. Belief, good. Easier answer. He's strong. That he is strong. That the believer is physically... What? Strong. Right? Let's listen to the words again. A strong believer is better than a weak believer but in both there are good. So what does that teach us then? That yes, we're supposed to have high faith. Of course, we're supposed to exert our efforts in memorizing and believing and praying and all of these things. But what else does that mean? Very good. Focus on the things in this life as well. Focus on building up your strength in this life. Focus on learning how to be strong physically and mentally and spiritually in this life. What's the first one of those? Physically as well. Right? To be strong physically. That's also a part of our religion. We don't just give up on physical strength. We learn how to protect ourselves, how to protect our families, how to defend ourselves, how to defend our honor. How are we going to defend our honor if we're weak physically? If we're weak physically, if you look at the descriptions of the Prophet ﷺ, he was stronger than 40 men. If you look at the descriptions of Umar ﷺ, Khalid bin Walid, Ali ﷺ, all of these great Sahaba, the names that you know, all of them had physical strength. They were strong physically as well as spiritually. That they would be able to carry swords in one hand that it would take the average person two hands to carry. Their horses with swords and bow and arrows when other people would only be able to carry one weapon. They were strong physically as well. Both the men and the women, they had this physical strength to themselves. So that's something we should also take seriously. So what is it going to be known for? What type of fighting style? You guys should know this. What type of wrestling? Grappling. Good. What is grappling? It's based around submission. It's good. So grappling is a non-striking type of martial arts. Meaning you know there aren't strikes to the body with your arms and with your legs. It's about movements and controlling your body with the other person's body to manipulate their body and forcing them into a submission. Does that make sense? Okay, who wants a demonstration? Alright, hands up. Alright, just very simply. We're not going to hurt anyone. But imagine striking. When you strike, so boxing for example. Boxing is all about punching. So as you get into a boxing stance you're jabbing, you're hooking, you're uppercutting, right? So these are strikes to both the face and to the body. And he's doing the same back to me. But with what? With grappling, you don't strike the opponent.  So we're just going to act this out very slowly and be super dramatized so that you guys can talk real obviously. But just watch. So Hamza is coming at me with a punch for example. So it goes slow motion punch. What I learn is to redirect his motion and for example get behind him. This is a very simple, it's just called an arm drag. It's called an arm drag. It exposes their arm. You can step behind them. Now see how I got his bicep here? All I'm going to do is I'm going to keep sliding my arm into and around his neck. Then I lock it and bring it back here. Now I have him in a choke. So here, did I ever strike him? No, I never hurt him. He's not ever going to bleed. But I have him under my control. Then if he tries to get out of here, are you okay? You're breathing? If he tries to wiggle out of it, I just position him down so now he doesn't have balance either. And then if I want to start squeezing, I can start squeezing until he chokes and he'll tap out. So it's very simple. But that's one example. So if you guys saw the Conor McGregor fight with Habib, Conor was on his knees and his hands. Habib had his back and this is the choke that he performed to submit him and then Conor tapped. And grappling also, thank you Hamza. Round of applause for Hamza. Graffling also what? Majority of it takes place on the ground.  They're going to fall. And if they fall and they're unconscious, they're at risk of what? Hurting themselves. They'll hit their head, they'll make their head, they'll hit the ground, they can begin to bleed, so on and so forth. But if the people are already on the ground and that person gets injured, they're not going to get hurt more. So the type of fighting style as well that Habib is known for, this Dagestani type of grappling exemplifies the very important part of our religion. That we do it in the most merciful way as possible to our opponents. The most merciful way possible to our opponent. So there's a Hadith that the Prophet's of Allah, Allah has written over everything to have excellence and beauty in it. So when you are fighting someone, to fight them with excellence and to fight them with mercy, and when you are even sacrificing an animal for the purposes of slaughter to even treat that animal with beauty and excellence and mercy. So with any type of interactions and engagements that we have, even to the point the best way to engage in these types of actions is with beauty and mercy. And you can see that demonstrated by Habib. So one of the comments that Justin Gaichi said at the end of the fight, in the last fight after Habib submitted there, he said, have the quote, let me actually find the quote exactly. He says, okay here, I don't know what this comment is. Okay, yes. He noted that he was much happier to be choked out in submission as all he would get is a pleasant nap as opposed to striking, which could have long-term health consequences. Did that make sense? So if you get choked out, if you're put into a submission and you pass out, what's going to happen? You're just going to fall asleep. And then you'll wake up again. But if you get knocked out with a strike to the face, to the chin, to the head, this could cause long-term permanent damage. So even the fighting style that Habib demonstrates is filled with what? Yes, son. Beauty, excellence, and mercy. Making sense? Any questions so far? Okay, let's just do a quick recap. We learned about Alhamdulillah and it has two meanings, right? Sanaa, praise, and shukr, gratitude. We also learned about... What next? Why are you staring at me? You guys just said you were taking notes. I never said that. Hamza said that. Hamza, what's next? I'm starting now. It's empty. It's empty. It's empty. Right? We also learned about trying to incorporate Muslim language into our daily lives. So to not be shy to say Assalamualaikum To not be shy to say insha'Allah Masha'Allah Alhamdulillah To not be shy to say these types of words because the more that we use these words the easier it's going to be for other Muslims to also use them. So we don't have to be shy about these words. And then we learned about becoming strong, not just spiritually, not just intellectually and mentally but also to become strong physically. And then of course about the mercy even in the type of fighting style that Habib has. So these all demonstrate this first aspect of Habib. What type of fighter is Habib? He's strong. He's proud to be a Muslim. He embraces that aspect of his identity and he proclaims it to everyone. And no one ever questions him about his Islam. And if someone says something against his Islam then he is ready to say something and fight back. So that's his first aspect. All of this is taken from that first Sajda that he makes. He is first fighting for the sake of Allah. What is the second aspect that was said in that? Was the reason why he was crying. The reason why he was crying when he had that victory. And what was that reason? His father passed. His father passed away and so all of these emotions rushed into his heart and he began to cry. So this demonstrates then the relationship that he had both with his father and his mother. So his father was his number one supporter and his father is the one who wanted to see him as champion. And so whenever Habib would fight he would do it for the sake of his father. And so he dedicated his life to serving his father in this way. And then after his father passed after his mom passed away and his mom tells him now stop fighting. No more. So what does Habib say? After this fight I promise you my mother I will never fight again. After Habib wins 29-0 he says because my mother asks me to I am giving up fighting. What does it mean to give up fighting for Habib? He retires. What else does that mean? Any type of material game that he dedicated his life to up until this point all for one request from his mother needs to go and get away. Championship title for the MMA the world championship this is not Habib but your club basketball or football championship. This is the world championship. The best fighter in this division he sacrifices it for his mother's request. In one fight these fighters make millions of dollars millions and he's saying I'm not going to fight even for millions of dollars because if you put my record of 30-0 if you put my championship title if you put all of these things on one side and on the other side it's my mom asking me to do something I'm always going to take the side of my mom.  So what does this tell us about Habib then? Yeah. Yeah, of course. Does his brother fight? I don't think he brother fights. I know it's cousin fights. I know it's cousin fights and it has a protege in Islam who he coaches. But I don't think his brother fights but we can check that. But I'm pretty sure, yeah. Habib's brother? What's his name? It's his cousin, right? Yeah, I know his cousin's a fighter and then he has Islam on the chat being coached. But I don't think it's his brother. So the point then is that based off of just the request for his mother what is the example that he is to all of us that we need to have these strong relationships with both our mothers and our fathers that that's what it means to be a world champion. It doesn't mean to be a world champion that it can beat anyone that comes into the ring with you. It doesn't mean to be a world champion that you're undefeated. It doesn't mean to be a world champion to do any of these things. The most important thing for Habib was that I'll do it all for my father That's the type of example that Habib is sending for us. That's, if we want to be like Habib that's the type of example that we need to incorporate into our lives. How can I be so dedicated to my parents that I can do everything for them and give up everything for them? I asked you a question at the beginning What was the question? What does his name mean? Why is that question important? It does. It does. There's a very important aspect of it that represents who he is. His name is very important to him. Did he choose his name? No. Who knows another very famous individual even one of Habib's role models? One of the greatest writers in history who chose his name Muhammad Ali Muhammad Ali's name before Muhammad Ali Cassius Clay And then why did he change his name? When he converted Right? So Cassius Clay is this individual boxer fighter, converts to Islam and changes his name to Muhammad Ali So he obviously takes a lot of pride in his name His name needs a lot to him So what happens with Muhammad Ali when his name is in question? Do you know the story? So it was against Erni Tarell Good. So in his pre-fights with Erni Tarell that continues to call Muhammad Ali Cassius Clay to the point that Muhammad Ali gets more and more upset such that they've never seen him so upset before and he keeps telling Erni My name is Muhammad Ali And he says what? Cassius Clay He says my name is Muhammad Ali He says, Cassius Clay He says my name is Muhammad Ali and you're going to call me back and I'm going to beat it out of you I'm going to beat my name out of you So when they go up and they fight there while they're in the middle of the boxing ring Muhammad Ali is giving him a beat down that he's never seen before the speed of Ali and the strength of Ali over and over and over again screaming what's my name until he beats Erni Tarell because he didn't call him his name properly Muhammad Ali took that seriously because he knew that his name meant something he knew that Muhammad Ali meant something but now what happens oh my name is too hard to pronounce for the teacher or for the other people at school so I'm going to shorten my know-how it's too hard for people to say my name the way that it's supposed to be pronounced so I'm going to change the pronunciation of my name my name is too long to spell so I'm going to just put my initial so quick to give up our names why is it so easy for us to just say I'll shorten my name so that other people are more comfortable around me when people like Muhammad Ali fought so that people would call him the right name he just cried in his name he had honor in his name and the same thing is with Khabib so what does Khabib's name mean? Khabib Khabib can you guys see it in your minds? so just get re-educated what does it spell? Khabib, what does Khabib mean? the beloved the beloved what is the beloved, who is the beloved of Allah to the Prophet ﷺ his name is the title of Muhammad ﷺ so his name is sacred now his name is the title of the best of mankind Muhammad ﷺ so when people are out there chanting Khabib Khabib what are they chanting? they're chanting the title of Muhammad ﷺ that because of the victory that Khabib has millions upon millions of Muslims and non-Muslims are chanting Muhammad ﷺ and what does his last name mean? you, who had part of it? what was the part that you had? good so you know that the second half of his name means Muhammad what does the first half mean? this spell it out yeah newer, good I like the word Muhammad ﷺ in what was the the word Muhammad ﷺ that he means to make every single day Allah will make me in the heart of a qurah in the arms of a qurah in the arms of a qurah and in the arms of a qurah and we have the qurah and in the hills of a qurah Allah will make me a qurah Every single day the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam recites dua The dua of light The whole of Allah places it in my heart Light Place in my hearing Light Place in my eyes Light Place on the right of me Light And on the left of me Light Place above me Light And below me Light O Allah Making me light This is one of the dua As the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam The dua of lights So what is Khabib's name then?  Everyone doing okay? Right, let's look at this other idea So now we have a few ideas about what Khabib is Right About what he stood for So who was the follow A few of Khabib's friends Are you guys going to look like the Conor McGregor fight? Yeah Okay, so what was different about the Conor McGregor fight Versus all of the other opponents that Khabib faced Like I said I'm not going to be surprised by what he's saying It's like a tactic It's a snap It's a family Good Anyone else want to add anything? You have a technique for a while? Yeah Good, right? He's attacked both Khabib and he's attacked his religion So all of the other opponents that Khabib had What are you guys going to add some stuff to? Good family I've been on the most strikes in my life Oh wow, okay, I didn't know that Good So this was an opponent that Yeah, you can add some stuff The whole bus thing The whole bus thing Like the chair and the window breaking Yes, so again Coming after family Yeah, I tried to like force him to do it Right Because of this entire company and all that stuff Good So good So why was Khabib then Why was his response so aggressive? Because Conor did these three major things He attacked Khabib's religion He attacked Khabib's family And he made fun of Basically everything that Khabib stood for So yes, of course he attacked him personally But other people also attacked him personally But as soon as Someone began to make fun And mock The religion that Khabib followed And his family members People who he doesn't have Control over That's when Khabib said Enough is enough So this shows us a different lesson This shows us When it is wise To be aggressive and to stand your ground Versus when it's okay to be lenient And let the other person be Whatever way that they're being So Allah SWT says Quran, that this is a quality of the believers This is a quality of the believers That with other believers With other people who they get along with They are caring and kind and merciful But with their enemies They have Isa They have dignity They have respect They have courage Against their enemies So when someone attacks You personally If you have an enemy that's thinking on you If you have an enemy that's thinking in front of you If you have someone at school that's attacking you And you are able to bear that burden Then you continue to bear that burden If it's not affecting you And the thing, the part of you that wants to respond Is your ego Then you wait You ignore what they're saying You hear what they say and you shrug it off It doesn't mean anything to me You can make fun of me all in one But the moment They dishonor your religion The moment they disrespect your friends The moment they disrespect your family When they come after people who you are meant to protect Then you put your foot down You don't talk to my friend this way You don't talk to my sibling this way You don't talk about my parents this way You don't talk about my religion this way You don't talk about my prophet this way You don't talk about my Allah this way And then you stand out to them So how do you know When to stand your ground And when to be lenient This is how we learn If they're coming after you, you let it go If they come after something That you are supposed to protect You stand up and fight for that thing Connor came after his religion He came after his family He came after his father So Kameem went after him That's a quality of a believer To defend the people who you are meant to protect But anyone else When they go and attack Kameem He lets it go He's cordial with them He's nice with them He's easy with them So there's a famous story Of Ali al-Ali al-Baghwar Ali al-Ali al-Baghwar You mentioned his name already In one of the battles Before the battles would begin So you have a large group on one side And a large group on the other side Before these battles would begin You would have individuals That would meet Before the battle To have a duel A one on one fight And so during that duel That one on one fight Ali al-Ali al-Baghwar Defeated his opponent And as he's going To defeat his opponent And deliver the final blow The opponent spins And Ali al-Ali al-Baghwar So then Ali As he wipes off the spin And he's going to strike again He stops himself And he returns back to the army So then they ask him Ali you are about to deliver The final blow Then you spat on your face Then you were going to do it again But you stopped What changed? He says the first time I did it Was because I was doing it For the sake of Allah The second time that I did it It's because I was doing it for myself So the second time I stopped Does that make sense? So to honor yourself To have dignity and respect But when do you defend it When it's for your family members And when it's for your religion And the people that you're meant to protect? Does anyone have any questions? You guys are hopefully a little bit about For me some lessons that I can take From his practices, from his life From the way that he fights All of these things Does anyone have any questions?