Hey, we have a few minutes I want to give a shout out to doing screening at our public schools for COVID. You know, their volunteer medical corps been going out every morning between, excuse me, 8 and 830 at Southwest Elementary School. It's been such a fun thing to do, helping students get into schools, parents to drop people off and the kids off. And anyway, just a shout out. It's a real good, real good thing we got going on. Great. Thank you. Hey, Reginald, just a heads up that Tiffany and I have spoken a little bit about the questions that people submitted. And if you want to comment, we'll give you an opportunity at the beginning of the discussion. We're live on YouTube. Three minutes before the meeting start. One minute before the meeting start. Six o'clock. Okay. Thank you so much. Good evening, everyone. I want to welcome you to the May 6, 2021 meeting of the affordable housing implementation committee. I appreciate you all joining with us this evening. I officially call this meeting to order prior to roll call I wanted to mention that we have a new committee member. And I'm sure she'll has appointed Charlie Rick Councilman Charlie Reese to this committee and their work session is going late right now, and he will join us as soon as possible. So at this point I'll go to roll call Juliet. Okay. Diane Diane contrived it. Here. Tiffany elder. Here. Stella Adams. Here. The bond barns. Laura beaded. We see a constant Tina. Constantine. It's Nicole digs. Here. Tammy Farrell. Nicole fairness furnace. Courtney James. Here. Here. I would like to ask for an excuse for tonight. Miss Rita are McDaniel as for an excuse for tonight. John Parker. Here. Venus Sanders. Here. Timothy Stallman. Angela big Lewis. Here. Thank you. I would like to find out if there are any modifications to the minutes that were forwarded to the, to the committee. Any changes needed. If not, is there a motion to accept and approve the minutes as they are. We approve the minutes. I second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to take a few minutes just to review the agenda quickly and go over ground rules. I know most of you are familiar, but I really don't know how many other people are joining us this evening. So tonight on the agenda, we will hear again from Durham housing authority staff. On their downtown and neighborhood plan. And then we'll have a good amount of time for discussion and hopefully review of some of the questions that you all have or answers you have sent in. And then at the end, we'll talk a little bit about the upcoming meeting schedule. I don't know if anyone has any recommended changes to the agenda, or if not, we'll proceed as is. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm hearing none of go on with the ground rules. So these are actually the same as our April 15, 2021 meeting. And they are to show respect for others and opinions. To presume goodwill. To be fully present as much as you can on zoom. We'll have just one speaker at our time at a time for our virtual calls. We'll have just one speaker at a time for our virtual calls. We'll have just one speaker at a time for our virtual calls. We'll have just one speaker at a time for our virtual calls. And committee members, if you have the ability, and I see Stella is raising her hand, but I'm not sure if that's related to this or the I, but committee members can raise their hand to speak. And we're still not expecting public comment at initial meetings. The people that log on to the meeting that are not on the committee are able to make comments in the chat. And we will try to address any comments in the chat. And address them as feasible between meetings. We also ask people to use specific examples and to again enjoy the process. So thank you all. At this point, I would turn the meeting over to Anthony, I believe, from the housing authority. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for an opportunity to come before you again. I wanted to give you all an update of just things that have transpired since our last gathering or so. So this will be relatively short, but just giving you quick updates on the active projects that are actually moving forward. Next slide, please. Again, you guys are all familiar with the seven sites overall. Next, please. So the first up will be talking about the JJ Henderson site, which is both a renovation of the existing building as well as new construction on that same site. So the existing building in terms of where we are, we are currently moving residents to within the building, moving them so that they'll have a clear stack of units. That is actually that movement started this week. Renovation is scheduled to start this month, the actual physical construction. And the demolition of the community room, which is kind of the back of the building. It's sort of a one story auditorium like space. That demolition is scheduled to start next month. That's critical because that's part of where the new construction building will occur. And in terms of our shared prosperity components to this, thus far, because there is continuing bids coming in. Our WNB, total goals are at 22% of the overall contract work that's been let thus far. And of that 22%, it breaks down to 25%, being WBE 75%. It is MBE. Next, please. And with respect to the new construction component, which is now being called Morehead seniors, this is a working title that they will change once again. Construction is scheduled to start there in June. And with respect to our contracts, as of this date, 30% WNBE, which breaks down to about 50-50 between the WNB and WBE. Next slide. Now moving over to the Liberty and Main Street site. Did I go too far, Anthony? No, go ahead to the, you were doing fine. One more. Sorry about that. No, that's fine. So again, just to remind everyone of the overall site onto your top right is what it looks like now. The colored diagram in the middle shows you the five phases that are planned for that site. And one note I'll make is that you'll see here phase one, which is the Elizabeth Street apartments that initially had a, and this is the first site that actually has bond funding going towards it. The original amount that you saw last time around was a 1.1 million dollar contribution because of the increases in cost. And everyone is, I'm sure, heard about the tremendous increases that are going on in supplies and materials right now. That city support number has now gone up to 2.5%. And that's actually going before council, I believe soon. So Reginald can talk about that. Next slide, please. And again, reminders. So this will be a partial demolition of the existing buildings that are on that site. There are 18 buildings, excuse me, eight buildings that will be demolished that includes 36 units. Of those 36 units, 22 are occupied. And you can see the difference breakdown of where those different families are moving to. We're happy to report that the move-ins at Willis street have already begun into that. And plus movements to our local development, which was recently renovated.  Next, please. And this is a breakdown of the total 72 units in that site. Again, just to remind folks, 18 units are at the 30% and below range, 30 at 60% AMI and 24 at the 80% AMI number. And those AMI numbers are based on a four-person household. Next, please. This gives you, again, indication of the construction schedule. So demolition of the existing eight buildings is scheduled to happen next month. Construction will follow shortly thereafter. Our current WMBE goals are at 30%. 57% or WBE, 43% are at MBE. Next, please. We also had submitted a 90% preliminary application for phase two, which will require the demolition of another six buildings, which are 26 units. Next, please. That application was due on May 15th. However, well, actually next slide. So this is the breakdown of the, what's called the commerce street apartments. Again, a working title, 84 units. You can see the breakdown 21, 41 and 22 units for those different income bands. And next slide. And a rendering of the commerce street apartments. Next, please. We don't yet have any breakdown for the MBE, of course, because they're very early in this stage. I mentioned that we are initially applied for a 9% task application. However, in looking at this further developers have now requested to withdraw that 9% application. And so they're doing a 10% application and instead combining phases two and phase three. To now go forward with a 4% application. There's greater cost savings economies of scale by doing a larger project rather than, you know, the 80 or so units that typically 9% are usually funded for. So they're doing now they're proposing a. A 4% application. So I don't have more details on that. Other than what you've heard thus far. But next time we meet, I'll be able to give you more information. Pricing those sorts of things, timing, all of that. When we have our next meeting. And that's, I believe my last slide. So thank everyone. Thank you, Anthony. At this point, I think we can entertain a few people. Thank you, Anthony. At this point, I think we can entertain a few questions. If anyone has any. I have a quick question. Go ahead. Anthony, some of these folks that are moved out of the Liberty, are they going to be moved permanently? Are they going to be moving back after it's completed? They have a right to move back once it's completed, but most of the moves now, so for example, the people moving to Willard Street, that is what we call the transfer of assistance. So those are permanent DHA residents in the Willard Street development. So the folks that are moving there are not intending to come back. And probably the same for those that moved to Laurel Oaks. Because those are newly renovated departments. It's only 30 units over there. And so those folks are more than likely not coming back, but they do have that option to do so. The other families who are in other DHA sites, they are more than likely want to come back, but that'll be completely up to them. And that right is still there for them to come back to available units on the site. Is there any kind of survey or follow up going on with the folks that are moving that you're aware of? Oh, yes. They're still DHA residents. So we, it's not like they're moving, they're not getting vouchers and they're moving out of the public housing program. They're still part of our DHA public housing inventory. So we are in touch with them because they're still part of, part of our DHA family, if you will. I guess I'm like a general type of question is that when I say a survey, are they pleased with the services? Is it going smoothly? You know, the satisfaction with the process. As we go through this, there's going to be more and more emphasis on how people are responding to it. That's the story we really need to tell is the difference we're making in people's lives. Sure. Yeah. So I didn't mention this time around, but we have a relocation company that we've hired that is working with our families. So that's that's part of my question every week when I talk to my development team is, you know, have we got any complaints? How are we doing? Are we doing follow up with them? So yes, that does happen and continue to happen, especially now because literally folks are just moving. So that sort of feedback is, is pretty critical. The only thing I can share at this point, it turns out what I know personally is that we've, we've followed up with them. They were very pleased, of course, with the Willis Street Apartments, the Laurel Oakside Apartments. They've been very happy with as well. And I cannot say actually that I've heard feedback on those that have moved, you know, on site, because of course those, those are the same units that they're in. They just moved to a different unit for the moment. And, but that is a, an important part of this overall process. I have a question, Anthony. Thank you for the, updating on the, Miss Stella, somebody's talking. But I would like to know how much, how much money is the total spend and how much is the total spend with minority and women contractors. If that's something that you could add to a future presentation. Or no, right now. I don't know now other than just percentages, but I can tell you that I will be providing that for future presentations because that's something that will be tracking. A lot of this is still in the very early stages. We have been pushing to get this more detailed information, but they, as there is latest today, but they said they don't have all those numbers in yet because they're still very early in the contracting process. But that is exactly what we will be doing is providing you, not only the amounts, but also the disciplines. So that, you know, we're clear. It's not just, you know, cleaning up jobs, you know, things like that, but substantial work that's actually being given because the, you remember the goal of this is to make sure that we'll have a chance to grow our WNB businesses and not just sort of have them get a piece and that's it, but they literally have opportunities to grow those businesses. So I will be providing that as a part of our ongoing updates. And the other piece I did not mention was on section three hiring that also be part of our ongoing updates. We are concluding our, our sort of pilot project, if you will, with one of our residents who we understand will be hired by the company by the end of the month, but we're about to launch into our full pledge outreach for them. We've already started that now and making sure we develop a pipeline for residents and folks in the community to get hired for the work going forward. I also have a question for Mr. Scott. First of all, I appreciate the presentation as always. I just, I guess I want to know what your concerns are based on the rising supplies costs and how that's going to affect the projects going forward, where we have enough money based on, you know, you're going from 1.1 million to 2.2, I think you said 2.3 million. That's a big jump as far as like supplies, but going forward are you guys going to forecast that, estimate that in future, future costs at this point. And adjust how money is being spent? Or if we're going to need additional funding from Council of the County? So obviously, if I could predict kind of what the cost impact would be, I'd be in a different job altogether. We just don't know how this is going to impact us going forward, but we know at this point that costs are certainly starting to rise astronomically. We hope that settles down. A lot of it has to do with supply networks being shut down during the pandemic and things like that. But we also know what's looming for the triangle in terms of the demands on construction. And then globally, frankly, or at least nationally, given the proposed infrastructure bill and things like that, there is going to be a lot of demand on construction related costs. So we know that there is likely to be increases. The problem that we don't know is where and why and how much. We are clear about one thing though. There is a fixed amount of money that has been dedicated to these developments. And the one thing that we've made clear with all of our development partners, both current and future, is that it is their responsibility to come up with viable solutions to how to deal with future gaps in cost. So for example, the adjustment that we've already talked about where we went from a 9% to a 4% is actually an approach to kind of deal with how we can help fill some of those gaps. One of the difficulties in the way North Carolina administers its 9% tax credit program is that they have this sort of smaller size cap, right? It's not an official cap, but just in terms of you being competitive, it's around 80 or so units. When you get beyond that, it gets harder to compete. So then you look at if we did a larger site, i.e. phase two and three being combined, you have more units in one development. You have some costs that are being saved because of scale and things like that, not having the same number of transaction fees, all kinds of things. So they looked at that as a way to help kind of mitigate some of these rising costs that we see. But it's going to be the challenge going forward. No question. We're hoping that there'll be other kinds of relief and other things that come as a part of this. But it is really the true unknown right now. Thank you, Anthony. Does anyone else have any questions at this point? Okay. Hearing none, I want to take a minute to welcome Charlie Reese. Councilman Charlie Reese is joining us and give him a chance to make a few comments if he'd like. Charlie. Thank you. I really appreciate that. Thank you, everybody. I'm so sorry to have been late. Our city council work session just now ended up. Five hours and 20 minutes after it started. And I am here. Bright eye to bushy tail ready to dive into this work with you. The reason I ran for public office to begin with. Was so that we could find some way. To make Durham a place where everyone can afford to live. And so the work of this committee is critical, but it's also critical. It's also critical. To implement the affordable housing bomb, but also to make sure that we do it in a way that it's consistent with our city's values. And so the work that you do is really, really important. And I'm happy to be with you. While we're doing that work together. That's all I had to say. Thank you very much. And I look forward to the work. Great. Thanks again for joining us, Charlie. I'm looking forward to working with you. Okay. And let's see. Thank you. Thank you. And at this point, we're going to stick to our presentations and we will try to get to questions from non-committee members a little bit later in the meeting. So at this point, I'd like to turn it over to Tiffany to share presentation with us. Thank you. Give me one minute. You always disappeared for a reason. Some reason. So. Thank you for that. Thank you. I'm going to go through a presentation that I pulled together recently for a group that helps to explain some of what's happening in our market here. Affordability is an issue. That we. We'll need to, to give a lot of attention to you and it's affecting housing across several price points. And definitely putting a lot of pressure on our lower price points. We're all walking out of our homes and seeing a lot of new faces in our city. But hopefully this will help to quantify what those changes are that we're sort of perceiving are happening around us. So let's discuss housing a city we can all afford. Next slide. So there are a number of forces at play. We don't have enough time this evening to talk about all of them. We will just talk about these few. The first being low interest rates, increased construction costs, lack of inventory. And the second being low interest rates. And the third being low interest rates. And then flux of new residents and the fact that new residents coming to the area are bringing higher incomes. Next slide, please. So this slide is just very quickly showing you. That interest rates now are some of the lowest interest rates we've ever seen historically. If you look back through the list. We are down in the lower echelon. They started to rise a little bit. And then we're going to go back to the lower echelon. And then we're going to go back to the lower echelon. Around the 3% are there about range. That is pushing a lot of people. Into the housing market. And drawing quite a bit of interest to our area, because our area is viewed as being much more affordable than other areas across the U.S. So we're low interest rates plus our price points. And some of the other. And some of the, some of the challenges in some of the competition in our market. Next slide, please. So we were just talking about increased construction costs. And I. This slide illustrates an article that came out from an AHB, the National Association of Home Builders, which stated that record high lumber prices are adding $24,000 to the price of a new home. This article was from about four or five months ago. I just received an update to this article. to this article, that number has changed to 36,000, and it is continuing to climb. We do not know what will happen tomorrow, but if the future mirrors the past, lumber and other construction material prices are going to continue to climb. For us to see a 50% increase in less than a year is noteworthy, so I do want everyone to be aware that construction materials are putting a heavy burden on residential and commercial projects in our area. Next slide, please.  Now, FYI, this slide, we get our information sort of as a look back. This slide goes back to end of January. I just have updated info looking back to end of March. But a few important things on here. For Durham, you'll see the number in the center, 341. That is the number of homes that were on the resale market in the entire city of Durham, 341 homes. If you can imagine the number of people who are looking to buy a home, the fact also that Durham has just about 1,100 realtors, many of whom are working with multiple buyers. The larger triangle as a whole, if you take Wake County and Durham County has about 12,000 realtors, many of whom are looking for homes in Durham, their clients are looking for homes in Durham, and they only had 341 homes on the resale market to look at. This doesn't include new construction, which is going up, but much of the new construction that you see going up is already under contract and has been in some cases for several months. People have been waiting for their construction to start. So this is not a lot of inventory. 341 homes at the end of January equates to 0.7 months of inventory, that number you see at the bottom, which decreased quite a bit. 0.7 months is three weeks of inventory. A healthy, balanced market should have six months of inventory. What that means is if tomorrow no one else were to put their home on the market, there would be enough homes on the market already per the rate at which they're being absorbed by buyers to last for six months. We haven't had, at the end of January, enough homes to last for three weeks. To give you an update, end of March, that number is now down to 0.5, which is two weeks of inventory. That 341 homes that was on the market at the end of January, at the end of March, was down to 273 homes. The average and median prices want to say something really briefly about that. The median sales price, which is $294,500, which is a higher median than we have ever seen here in Durham, historically. The median is sort of if you were to line up all the sales prices in order and pluck the one out of the middle, that's that number. That differs from the average, which you see at the end of January, it was $337,000, which is just the average of those numbers. The fact that the average is so much higher than that median means that there are so many homes selling at such a high price point that it's pulling the numbers up. It's worth just noting that that alone is really driving an increase in our market. The increase numbers for average and median, in case you're curious, let's see, year over year, that $294,000, $325,000, that $337,000, $358,000. Our pricing is accelerating quite a bit in this market, and it's putting a lot of pressure on affordability for housing here in Durham. Days on market, 24 days, is now down to 15. The inventory that is on the market is getting absorbed quickly, and again, it's in some cases pushing individuals out. It's making homes not affordable. It's making it difficult for folks to compete for housing in our area. Next slide, please. Another factor that is very strongly influencing our market is the recent employment headlines, and the jobs that are coming to our market, some of them already filled, hopefully some of them coming available to individuals who live here. You see some of the headlines, biotech picks Durham for 878 jobs, $61 million expansion, average job, 96.5, Clorox, average salaries, $120,000. We have on here another job, average wage, $119,000. We have gotten two updates recently with Google, and another one with Apple who's coming over to the Eastern Raleigh side of RTP. All of that is going to affect us. Our median income is much lower than these incomes and these jobs, and these are the folks who are going to be competing for the housing that's in our area, and we have to take note that we're going to have to find ways for individuals who live here who want to remain here to be able to compete as well. Next slide, please. So the takeaways here are the Durham market is moving forward swiftly due to multiple factors. Individuals who own here need to understand the value of what they have and those who want to own need to consider putting things in order so that they can position themselves sooner than later. And also note that the rental market is very high demand as well. We didn't walk through those numbers on here, but the rental market is similarly facing a lack of inventory, similarly seeing very high competition anecdotally. I've gotten two calls from colleagues who had folks looking for somewhere to rent because upon renewing their rents, their client's rents were going to go up. One was $350 a month. The other was $400 a month. And some of the apartment complexes in the area have more applications than they have space available. So there is a crunch on the rental side as well and renters in our areas are feeling it and we're going to have to find ways for folks to find meaningful housing on the rental side as well. So hopefully these items help to put things sort of into context so that you can understand the numbers of what's happening behind the scenes with regard to the housing market here in Durham. Thank you. Thank you, Tiffany. Very sobering. Do we have some questions for Tiffany? Tiffany, I have a question real quick. Is there anything put in place where there's rental increased caps where you can't go over 10% as you're renewing? And that's why they can go up arbitrarily $400? We do not have rent control or anything like that here. There are protections for tenants as far as leases and the laws that control the leases, but as far as where rents are set and where renewals are set, there's nothing that limits that. Tiffany, thank you for your presentation. Do you have any information on the number of out-of-state buyers versus in-city movers? I have been looking for that, and I have not found anything related to that. The only information that I have for out-of-state versus in-state or income information, some of the demographic information, like, you know, I know we've all heard the statistic that the folks who are moving here to Durham, on average, make $10,000 more a month, more a year in income. But that's a broad average. The folks who are moving from New York tend to make $50,000 more than the median. The folks moving from California make $42,000 more on average. So that $10,000 is a very broad average. So I have some income info, but nothing as far as out-of-state buyers versus in-area buyers. I can speak anecdotally from conversations that I've had with colleagues about the definite increase in the number of out-of-state buyers who are paying attention and who are very active in our area. I'll add a voice to that course anecdotally as well, is that it's really difficult to have our own Durham residents not be able to buy properties when people that are coming from out-of-state are just blowing the prices out. Courtney, do you have anything to add to that? Yeah, I was going to say one of the things, and again, this is anecdotal because as Tiffany referenced, we do not have stats on this. I think it would be good data to collect, but we don't. In our office, that number is right now just from January through now, hovering at about 50% from out-of-state versus really within the triangle. The other thing that we've seen, which I think is really interesting, is we've seen before when we were working with investors, a lot of it was local investors. Buying it now, we're seeing out-of-state investors coming in. So not just out-of-state buyers coming in to live here, but out-of-state investors that are identifying this as a hotspot. Yeah, I was going to say something about that too, and we actually do track that on the neighborhood campus as well, and I've seen an increase in the total amount of value owned by out-of-state investors. Not people coming moving here from out-of-state, but people who live out-of-state and are continuing to own property. And in the multifamily sector, like in terms of apartment housing, there's been a pretty stark increase in out-of-state owners of large apartment complexes, and that's been pretty clearly associated with increased in rents and higher levels of evictions as those out-of-state owners come in and buy property. They're also a lot less likely to be accountable to any kind of local regulation, because they have bigger budgets than the city does for lawyers. So that's definitely a major factor that's shifting the market to. Well, thank you again, Tiffany, and thank you all for sharing your expertise and comments. There are several comments in the chat from people, and you might want to take a minute, but I do just want to note that Charlie noted that local governments in North Carolina do not have the legal authority to limit rent increases. And Timothy, thank you for that link to the compass. Juliet, maybe we can compile some of these and send them out later. Let's see. OK, at this point, we were going to move to the discussion unless anyone had other additional comments related to this. I was just going to, we have a lot of time, so that's a good thing. I wanted to kick this off by just noting for anybody that's listening that Juliet sent out to all the committee members four questions to try and gauge how we're doing so far in our based on our first two meetings. And so those questions, again, just to recap, our one was, what does the committee think of what's been presented so far? And in general, people have been fairly positive about what they've heard and the quality of the presentation. So I appreciate that. The second question was whether people had questions or concerns, and there were several, and I'll share those later. The third question was a request if anyone wanted additional information in any particular area. And there were lots of good suggestions there, and I think we'll have time to discuss all that. And the fourth question was, again, did you have any suggestions or desires on where we go from here? So not everyone responded. And so I certainly want to open it up if people want to add comments. But I know you haven't seen everyone else's comments, and we can move through those, or we could do a broader discussion on tonight's presentations. So we have lots of time to talk, and I hope this will be a lively discussion. So any feedback at this point? Or otherwise, I'll start sharing some of the information that people shared. I'd like to ask a follow-up question, perhaps, for the folks at the city. Tiffany referenced some employment headlines, and we've all seen the deal with Apple. I'm curious if, in negotiating any kind of incentive packages, the city or the state considers asking for contributions to affordable housing funds. Happy to take that one.  Or an original should probably take that. Well, Council Member, you probably know a little bit more than me, because from my standpoint, I'll talk about when folks come before the council. The council does encourage developers to make contributions to the affordable housing fund. But in terms of the negotiations on the businesses, we don't have anything to do with that. That's where the council member can elaborate, because I know he knows more than I do. Thank you, Reginald. The bottom line is with the Google and Apple announcements recently, on the Google side, Google has not asked for and will not receive any economic incentives. They are moving forward with an opening up of an engineering hub and are attempting to pursue almost exclusively local hiring for those jobs. Having said that, I think I have discussed the possibility of Google helping us with our local housing issues. And I think that'll be a conversation that continues going forward. Like I said, they aren't getting any public money for this move. Apple is obviously getting a ton of public money. And for better or worse, neither the city or county of Durham was involved in that process. The first I heard about it was what it was announced in the press. I don't know what Apple has agreed to do for housing in Wake County, which is where their new facility will be located. But I do know there that the incentive package that Apple accepted has lots of different parts to it, including some investments by Apple in a local university and a number of other things. I haven't parsed through the details to know whether or not they've to support affordable housing projects in Wake County, because honestly, it's not in Durham. And so I haven't really bothered to look. So those are the two things that I can answer there. But generally speaking, when we get these types of proposals, the public incentives from Durham are typically very small. And the larger incentive is from the state agency that does this kind of economic incentive packages. But the thing that I think we focus most on in economic incentive packages are whether or not our local residents will be eligible to get the jobs that they're moving into our city. But I think as the market begins to do what it's doing, looking at those types of the possibility of participating in our state, for example, our dedicated affordable housing fund is something we should definitely look at. The problem is, as I said, the Durham investment in those deals is typically very small. And so we're not really an indispensable party in that way. So I hope that helps. Thank you, Charlie. Reginald, did you want to share any overarching comments about the feedback we got? Or otherwise, I can start through it, however you like to proceed. You're muted, Reginald. I'm on mute. Famous last words, you're on mute. No, I would think we can just go through them. I appreciate the questions. They're great questions. And to reflect the questions, I think, that are out in the community. So I mean, I would just think that we can just kind of walk through them and those that we can answer now, we can. And if we can't, we'll get an answer and bring it back. Sounds good. Tiffany, did you want to say anything at this point? I'll just start. Yeah, let's dive into the questions. OK, great. So I know that there are questions in the chat and Q&A, and we will definitely try to get to those. If you're a committee member and you have already written something in there that you want to highlight, if you could wave your hand, I can now see the screen. And that's a better way to do it than trying to monitor the chat. So feel free to interrupt at any point. But as I go to mute, again, the feedback on what's been done so far was generally positive. It's also caused for alarm and concern, as reflected by much of what Tiffany just said and others have shared. So I just wanted to note that there is concern. Everybody's information is combined, so it's tricky to look at all of it. But OK, we did have some specific concerns for the Housing Authority. So if you don't mind, we could share those with Anthony and see if he wants to respond now or later. But one of the concerns shared by a committee member is when the public, especially DHA residents, will be informed about RAD and all the projects, which will be occurring within the next five years. Anthony, is that something you want to address now or later? Sure. Our residents have been informed of RAD since the beginning. It's actually a part of the process that you have to have community meetings. We spent well over a year in meeting with the residents that are directly impacted by the downtown sites, meeting at our communities on several occasions. So we met at JJ. We met at Liberty Street, actually more than 519 because they have a better space. So that was a part of the required process. But we've also attended as many resident council meetings as have been held. And all throughout the process, we continue to inform residents about what's happening with the RAD process. Because that is actually, at a minimum, that's required that you have a certain number of meetings with the community. But we continue to do those as often as we can. I appreciate that. I will say that. And I think we'll try to share the written feedback with everyone shortly so you can see it later. And we can track it. But they did note that many people in Liberty are not aware of what's happening in their communities. So again, we can always use more outreach. So thank you again for that. In terms of other concerns, there was questions and concerns about or requests for more insight and information on how small and minority businesses will be included. And we've touched on that a little bit. But we certainly look for more information in that area moving forward. That's a, I'm back to for everybody unless I find a specific thing for DHA. Sorry. Co-chair, I would just add to that because that is a frequent question that we receive. And if you remember the comments I made at the last meeting, that the city will be, and it's under selection process for consulting firms to help us with MWBE, Section 3 Job Opportunities, and Section 3 Business Opportunities as well. And so we hope to have that selection done by the early, by the end of summer. And that firm will come before you just as the marketing firm did. Great. Thank you. That's helpful. This is Nicole. Yes, hi. Hi. That was actually my question. And I just wanted to add some additional information. While it is helpful to have minority and women businesses participate in the construction aspect of the projects, a more inclusive way to include small businesses and minority and women owned businesses, I think is important. So whatever the consultant group is that handles that, I think that's an essential component. It's not just check the box for the minority contracting aspect of the project. It really is a training and capacity building component to that for our community. Agreed. Thank you. Thank you, Nicole. Appreciate it. There was also a comment and question about not having heard much about Hoover Road or Laurel Oaks. Of course, you mentioned Laurel Oaks this evening. Anthony, I don't know if you want to share anything about Hoover Road. Well, Hoover Road is not a part of the bond component. But all of our properties are, well, let me start with Laurel Oaks. I did talk about them, I think, with my first presentation. We did do about a $1.6 million renovation of Laurel Oaks, 30 units. And that has now been completed. And as I mentioned earlier, some of the relocation from Liberty Street Apartments is to the Laurel Oaks community. So that has wrapped up all of its renovation work. And as far as Hoover and all the other properties that we have outside of the DDMP and outside of those that have already begun rad, we will be looking at doing additional renovation work. One of the challenges, of course, is the necessary funding. So we're putting other strategies around renovation on some of the sites that we are not intending to do a full redevelopment of, such as Hoover Scattered Sites Club Boulevard. Those three, in particular, are on our list to do next. And we'll probably end up doing something like a 4% tax credit for those to do a full renovation on those sites. And in the interim, of course, we have to continue to step up with our renovation work. We did close on Monday. We closed on solicitation for additional contractors to provide us for help. So we're going through the qualification process for that. So we hope by next week to have some additional help so that we can get the necessary repairs that are out there completed. Thank you, Anthony. That's helpful. I wonder if you might be willing to do a slide just on those properties and maybe note whether they are or not in the plan, just for context for others. And then we can track it going forward. That would be helpful. Sure. OK. And I'm still moving through question number two, which was questions and concerns. And let's see. There were actually a lot in this one. I'm not identifying the people that submitted them, but these are really good questions and helpful. And I hope we can have some discussion about it. But these questions were, how exactly are we as a committee going to fulfill our role of advising the Community Development Department? Is that solely through our comments at committee meetings? How will we decide on the content of our briefings to council? And would it make sense to form subcommittees to dig deeper into either various areas of the plan or specific areas of concern? And there's actually more. And we should probably take these one at a time. But certainly that's something I've wondered about as well. So I would welcome feedback from this committee. And of course, I don't know if anybody wants to say anything about these right now. I will say, in terms of deciding on the content of our briefings to council, we'll be presenting to council in the fall, sometime after our October meeting so we could certainly dedicate some time in September or October to talking more specifically about that. I feel like we're still very much trying to get our legs underneath us. This is our third meeting. And there's a lot of information. So if someone wants to do something differently, please feel free to share that. In terms of forming subcommittees, I think we certainly could as we identify areas that we want to do deeper dives in or perhaps some subgroup wants to monitor some aspect. Maybe it's the communications plan or the information that's being posted on the web. I'm just making these things up. But I think we certainly can consider that in the future. Any other comments? I'm just scanning the screen. There was another question about whether we as a committee want to develop our own set of metrics or priorities with which to evaluate how DHA and the Community Development Department are performing in the plan. Do we think that the goals and metrics they're setting are the correct ones? I think that's a really good question. I think that we should be very vocal about whether we want to see any additional metrics or other measures and whether we would ask the communications firm to measure those and add those to the dashboard as opposed to us monitoring things separately. But so those are some comments there. Any other thoughts or feedback? I don't mean to be rushing through here. It's hard to move and zoom. Let's see. Does anybody have any suggestions on that? Okay, I'll keep going. Another question was how do we build in ways to get information outside the administrative hierarchies of Community Development and DHA so that we can effectively function as third-party advisors and evaluators and guarantee transparency and accountability? So again, I think these are excellent questions and as we move forward, things might become clearer and I think again, we should be vocal about how we want to proceed. Tiffany, have any thoughts? You're muted. And I apologize. I was going through some of the questions, comments in the chat. Oh, great. And we're going back and forth within the spreadsheet but I did catch the piece about our determining and being more vocal about speaking on how things are going and our opinions on that. So I do agree that we need to have more conversation about that and make sure that everyone within the committee is sort of on the same page. Is there anything in the chat that we need to address directly related to this or keep moving? Not related to this. I had just gotten a Charlie's message and was scrolling down but it wasn't related to that question. Okay. Is everybody comfortable? Maybe you can nod or keep going. Okay. So number three was, do you want any additional information in any particular area? And I've shared some of that as if they were pertemerge ones. Let me see some others. Well, one suggestion was, perhaps it would be helpful for us to better understand the current state of housing and how much these efforts will alleviate the problem. And I know that Tiffany and Reginald and staff and I have had that conversation which led us to Tiffany sharing her excellent presentation this evening. But I do think context would be helpful. So that was a good suggestion. Again, another comment. Basically, can we discuss the size, extent of the problem with which we're faced? We can better understand how our efforts will have an impact. Another request for information was that it would be useful to know which of the organizations doing affordable housing work in Durham have any type of formal relationship with the city? And so Reginald, perhaps we can compile that if you're, I assume that's all public record in terms of contracts. Yes, it is. We'll be glad to provide that. We actually share that information with the Citizens Advisory Committee. More so on a regular basis. Actually, you have the Chair of the Citizens Advisory Committee, Mr. LeVon Lawrence, who's a member of this panel. But we actually, they actually go and meet with the members of the organizations from time to time. So yes, we can provide that. Great, thank you. I appreciate that. Let's see. Sorry, again, all right. This one was about concerns, again, about relocation. That would be DHA specific. And they said it would be great to invite more public housing residents to testify about their experiences, especially folks who have had to relocate because of renovations. Another question was what, if any, sustainability and green building goals for new construction are part of the bond and also a request for more detailed information on how performance relative to diversity hiring goals are going, particularly around hiring neighborhood residents. Okay. And lastly, on question number three, was they'd like to hear from the Community Development Department and the DHA in terms of what are the decision points at which they feel that input from the committee would be helpful and impactful. So again, those are all good issues that we'll try to keep addressing. Let's see if there's anything else I missed. Nicole, please go ahead. This is something that we touched on when Charlie was on and what Tiffany alluded to. I think it will be helpful to share with the public kind of what the city and county controls and what the state controls. I think there's a lot of confusion about the limitations that our local agencies have. And so I think that that would really help the communication with the community about how to get changes certain areas at a state level versus what we can do in the community here. I assume you're referring to more than just planning and zoning, but just general overall. I like the rent control aspect. Like there are some things in other states that are a much more kind of liberal and tenant friendly that we don't have the option for here. And I would agree with Nicole on that as far as just educating our fellow citizens here because there are a lot of assumptions and sometimes a lot of information within the assumptions about what city or county's capabilities in general are. So I definitely am in the green. So making sure that we can educate, especially folks who gonna be directly affected by this about what's reality and what's fantasy right now and what we can do to help foster some change from the state to allow local municipalities the ability and the power to set a role, right? But I definitely agree with Nicole. Sounds good. I appreciate that feedback. There was one other point and let's see where did it go. There's actually a few. So this is question number four. Not all of them were broken out, as I mentioned before. And it was additional suggestions regarding discussion on how we include small businesses, support for independent property owners currently providing naturally occurring affordable housing. And it would also be nice to visit a DHA property. So if people are interested in that, I'm sure we can arrange that. Okay, and one other point is the request is that we should be made aware of any upcoming RFPs that the city or DHA will be putting on the street and any details on problems meeting MWBE goals on projects underway, if there are any problems. So I hope that I highlighted some of the key questions that people shared. At this point, I'd like to see if there are any other comments at this point. And... I do have one comment, if I could. And I neglected to talk about this, but we are in process of issuing RFP for development partners for the other three sites. That is the DHA office space, Forest Hill Heights and Fayette Place. So that is coming up and would be issued probably in the next week or two at the most. Thank you. Any other burning issues? Anyone want to comment? Otherwise, I think we could go to comments in the chat and Q&A and Tiffany, I don't know if you have scanned those enough that you can sort through that or I'm happy to do whatever you want and you're muted. Okay, thank you. And Lucia had a comment as well. Yeah, I think this might be outside of the purview of the committee, but I'm curious with the funding from the federal government coming through for rental assistance and homeowner assistance. I'd love to hear a little bit more about how the city is... Be quiet. And when emergency rental assistance will be announced. And if that's outside of the purview, I understand that too. Well, I would say, again, Reginald Johnson Community Development, not necessary, it's outside of the funding plan that with no funding we have of the 160 million. And so as we mentioned in a couple of sessions, meetings ago, it did not include COVID funding, but we can tell you about the COVID funding. So for example, and I may turn it over to Karen Lotto to talk a little bit, but the count we received funding for the emergency rental assistance, part of the legislation that was signed by the former president, and the city received $8.4 million, the county received 1.2. The county is going to be the administers of that funding through the Department of Social Services for emergency rental assistance. And that program is getting ready to be released and it opened any day now. And so that we actually transferred our funding to the county for them to be able to administer because they have the infrastructure to do that. Karen, I don't know if you want to add any more to that on that point. No, I think that's the basic of the point. We're happy to talk about what the program covers if that would be helpful. And just to flag, this is the first of what we expect will be multiple rounds of emergency rental assistance. So this is a direct allocation, as Mr. Johnson said, from a December piece of legislation and the prior administration that came directly to the city and the county. We expect that we will also get additional funding from the state, from their share. And then there was additional emergency rental assistance funding included in the American Rescue Plan that was approved in January. We don't, it's going to follow pretty much the same rules, but we don't yet have allocations. To further, you had mentioned as well, home buyer assistance. There was foreclosure prevention funding included in the American Rescue Plan. Details have not been released, but the way that the legislation is written suggests that that funding is all going to go to the state and possibly be run as a statewide program, which is what was done in 2008 during the housing crisis that the foreclosure funds came out and typically were run as statewide programs, often with nonprofit partners, but managed at a state level. And one of the things that I would add, thank you Ms. Lotto for the, just be honest and direct that it's not going to be enough money to help all of those who need rental assistance. And I don't know if y'all got the email that I did where the federal judge put a stay on the moratorium for evictions. That was not a good way to wake up this morning, but that's a reality, knowing that we already, don't have enough money, but that's kind of where we are. And now what I want to do, going back to the original question, Madam co-chairs, to make sure that we don't get discouraged, but we do understand and appreciate the enormity of the challenge. And if I could just comment from a DHA perspective, we are going to be working with our residents. We have almost 700 residents that are currently behind in their rent. And we are going to be working with those families directly in applications for the funds that DSS has, that Reginald spoke about and Karen. And so we are gearing up with a small team of people that'll be going through your accounts, reaching out to those residents directly and applying for the eligible funds that we can. It won't cover all funds that are owed, but it will certainly cover a large chunk of the money that has accumulated during this past year plus. Can I ask a question to follow up to that? Not to get too much on the rental assistance, but I know property owners that have rental buildings that they self-manage, are they able to apply for rental assistance? The burden to put it on the person who already can't pay or is in a dire situation seems low counterintuitive, but the previous round property owners were not able to apply for the assistance to get direct payments. It was on the burden of the tenants. So to answer your question, yes, under this program, under the emergency rental assistance program, the legislation allows for landlords to apply on behalf of tenants. However, they do need to have the permission of tenants to apply. And they need to supply the same information that you would need to supply if you were an individual applying. So in the program that we expect to roll out very shortly, there will be really three windows through which you can apply. You can apply as an individual renter household. You can apply as a landlord and under the landlord, you have to fill out applications for each individual tenant, but you can kind of keep track of all of your applications. And you can apply as a community organization on behalf of a tenant. Again, you must have that tenant's written permission. And the city of Durham has contracted with five nonprofit organizations to provide application support to tenants who may face barriers in applying either language or technology or discomfort level. So we have five nonprofit partners who will be working with tenants. And we've heard from a number of other organizations their willingness to kind of step up and do that on behalf of their clients as well. No, I think that's helpful because I think it will alleviate some eviction, like a big wave of eviction if owners, property owners know that they will have access and ability to pursue payments. Yeah. I did have a question for Mr. Scott in regarding tenants right now, are there the majority of the tenants multiple months behind or just a single month behind as far as paying rent or, you know, because I'm just thinking about the number of tenants who may be in need of this help, but they may not be able to get all of what they need and what the plan is for that. Yes, there are multiple months behind in most cases. Of the 700 or so we have, I believe the number is around 160 or so that owe less than $200, but a good bulk of the others own significantly more than that. So the funds that are available now via the city county are only covering going back 12 months and going forward up to six. So we're gonna be working with all those residents to make sure we can cover everything possible that may be owed and then we will work out something with them in terms of some kind of repayment agreement going forward. The thing is that HUD has made it clear that housing authorities cannot give any forgiveness to residents who owe. So we don't have the ability to say, oh, we're gonna just forgive rent that's owed. We don't have the authorization to do that. And HUD has made that clear over and over again. In fact, when the first round of funding came out under the CARES Act, that was one of the first things that we as housing authorities asked, well, can we use this to help give our residents relief for rent? They said, no, we cannot. So that's part of the challenge for us as housing authorities is that we have to deal with sort of HUD related regulations and restrictions on what we can and cannot do, but we certainly can work out repayment agreements and things like that. We are also seeking additional grant funds in hopes of being able to give everyone what we're calling a fresh start. So there'll be a little bit more about that in the coming week or so about how we're looking to do that. And Madam Co-Chairs, if I may just clarify one point on what the emergency rental assistance program can provide. Mr. Scott mentioned 12 months going back and six going forward. Just want to be clear. The program allows households to receive 12 months of assistance. That can be a combination of arrears and go forward or it could be all go forward or it could be all arrears. You cannot receive assistance for any arrears that were occurred prior to the emergency announcement of the COVID pandemic, which is I think March 19th, 2020, something there. And on a go forward basis, we can only provide assistance three months at a time. Every three months, you have to be recertified. But someone who comes in, for example, and doesn't need arrears but does need go forward could get 12 months of assistance on a go forward so long as our money lasts for that long. And in order to be eligible, just to be clear, there's an income requirement. You must be able to demonstrate financial hardship due to COVID. You can come, you have to be a runner, you have to live in Durham and you have to be sort of... Hi, I just have a few comments. And the first one, I want to ask the question to Reginald Johnson. Try that, I want to qualify for. Mr. Johnson, whom delegates that the money is that social services have to be in charge of paying these people back rent. So that's a good question. So we received an allocation because we are a city of entitlement jurisdiction. We don't have the ability, we the city don't have the infrastructure to distribute the money. We don't have a mechanism to do that. So we needed to engage in with somebody who entity that does. So that's the way. Now the part that we're responsible for, and this is important, is we're responsible on the back end for the accountability, the auditing, the reporting, all those sorts of things. That after all the money is gone, this is what I share with people. We're community development are still there holding the bag after everybody's been, okay, we have to provide all the documentation. Well, it is better for us to have one entity versus 10 to do that, because that's, even though it doesn't matter the size, it's 10 times more work that we don't have the capacity to do. So one of the things that we did is that we looked at, well, where and during who already has the mechanisms to be able to distribute means place where people can either go or has an infrastructure to have people, those sorts of things. And earlier in this year, well, I always tell people I lost a year with COVID. But last year, during the summer, we actually used some initial money we have from the federal government for emergency rental assistance before the money we just spoke about. And we actually, the Department of Social Service to distribute those funds. So it's a combination of having the infrastructure and infrastructure, they're gonna have to get a new compute software system. It's really automated. They already have the people who already work with families, those sorts of things. So I hope that answers a little bit. If not, just ask and let me know and I'll come at it another way. It does. The reason why I inquired is because I live in Oxford Manor and I know that there are a lot of people who are behind on their rent. And I sat in the car with someone who told me I used to work for the Department of Social Services for seven years. And one question I asked, I listened to a resident and the questions that they asked the resident over the phone they were not in person. And one thing they asked was, how did the COVID impact you? And she said, well, I had to take my money and buy other things like tissue and stuff for my family. So I got behind. And so she said, well, that's not a reason for me to pay your rent. So my question is, what, I guess, what is a reason? Because everybody is in some way, somehow was impacted by COVID-19. And I guess I'm asking, what are the qualifications? Are they so stringent that the people are not going to be able to get their rent paid through anyone, not just through DHA, but why are the rules so strict where they can not get their rent paid when they really have that need? That's a good question. I'm glad you asked that question. So what I'm going to approach it in this way. So three different buckets of funding. Remember I told you about the auditing on the back end and community development keeps up with the strings on it. So what you're talking about is the money that we issued in the summer to start with. And that money was community development block grant funding that was COVID funding. There has to be a COVID tie that's documented. Now I'll let Ms. Lotto elaborate because she works a little bit closer to the extent to that, but that means it has to be a COVID tie that's documented. That was part of the funding. Then there was the HOPE program, which is another set of funding that came that the county administers, we didn't have anything to do with that. Then you're talking about emergency rental assistance. Not emergency rental assistance and Ms. Lotto can talk about that does not, you don't have the COVID tie is this different from the other funding. So Karen, if you would mind kind of elaborating in that framework. Yes, sir. So speaking just to the new program, the Durham emergency rental assistance program, that program has three criteria that people must meet according to the legislation in order to qualify. They must meet the income threshold for the program, which is 80% of air median income with a priority on 50% of air median income. And that's based on your income now. They must have a COVID related financial hardship and I'll speak to that because that's your question.  That second one that you're asking about of that financial hardship, you don't have to provide, it's basically in this program, a self declaration. I declare that I have experienced a financial hardship. You don't actually have to provide documentation for it. Treasury has given us permission not to have documentation for this one to go with self. So with all of these, we have to go with whatever the rules are that the federal government gives us. So for income, we have to have documentation. For financial hardship, we can go with self certification. And then for housing instability, it's a pretty big bucket. Everybody who's struggling with rent in one way or another is gonna qualify for that. And that was a little different from the COVID funding last year. And so one of the things we're restricted by is what the rules say when the legislation of the particular funding, that's what's governed the uses to be quite, we don't just sit up and decide the rules, the rules are given to us. And that's where I think Nicole and I are trying to chime in on the education piece because to go back to the original committee member's question of what are the qualifications, I'm positive that most of them, most folks who are in the most desperate need don't understand or know what those qualifications are for each of those things and how that communication gets put out there. Like they may not know, they may not have kept records from a financial standpoint, but they may be able to get records or something like that. Is that information that we can give out to especially to whether it be DHA residents or folks who are in need primarily so they can understand the breakdown of the money, the breakdown of, okay, here are the qualifications for each of these things. This is what you have to meet. And so you need to get your ducks in a row now so when that money drops, it's ready to go. So I can just speak from a DHA perspective. And for us, we're going to be working directly with each individual household. So we'll be able to provide them with the background, the information they're gonna need, all of that is gonna happen with our staff. So I can tell you that that will happen with the DHA residents will work because one of the things that you heard is that you have to do individual applications. And it has to be a joint effort between you the landlord and the resident that you have. So for us, we're gonna be working with them directly, make sure that the accounts are straight, any questions around that, all of that will be handled prior to, and then we submit the application in conjunction with that resident. And just adding on, when the program launches, there will be a package of materials that we will be sending out to everybody and their brother, essentially. We have a very long list of people and we can certainly share that with this committee too. So that folks can push that information out to their networks, because our goal is to reach, have the information reach everybody who needs help because we are actually going to have a significant amount of money coming into our community over the coming month. So even if we spend down this first round, there is going to be more money. I wanted to say one more thing. And I know this is my second time being up here. And I just, when the questions were put out for us to answer, I was one of the people who was alarmed to view, to see how Durham is really gonna look in the future. And one thing that I thought was that you're really pushing out the people who've been here forever. And even though all these elaborate presentations that everyone is presenting to us about the incomes, about what's going on. And that's all well and done. But I guess my concern is people of color will not really be able, with all the disparities that we're facing already in Durham, we got mental health, drugs, lack of jobs, you got inmates, people not being able to get jobs. How do they expect people of color to afford these homes? Is this what affordable housing is for? For them, did you just stay in apartments and condos for the rest of their lives? Or, and I know about the elder program with the houses. So I guess to me, I'm trying to, like I said, this is my second time, but I'm really baffled on trying to see how are we gonna be able to afford some of these $294,000 homes or 300. Because it's gonna, like you said, with everything going up with the materials and supplies increasing all the time. How are we gonna be able to afford a lot of these homes that they're throwing away? And I did a project on a class I was just doing. And it was just really baffled me that no one, and all of us lived in Durham, knew about nothing about Liberty Street. They knew nothing about what was going on downtown. All the thing they knew was there was reconstruction being happening, but not what's going on. And we can say, well, you need to go on the internet, but for me and definitely out here in our communities in public housing, people are not aware of what's going on. When they go downtown, they see a difference. And what they're seeing is something that they feel pushed out of and they don't feel a part of. And that's really not fair. So everybody should feel a part of that. And even though some of us, I do, I have a master's degree and a lot of people have degrees, but some people are not gonna be able to get those jobs making that $100,000, $110,000 to afford these homes. So does that mean that we just live in condos and affordable housing and in apartments and stuff for the rest of our lives if we're gonna live in Durham? So, Madam co-chair, may I take a... Please. Thank you. I would just say and respond in this way. I mean, that's the challenge in why we're here. The reality is what you see downtown, indeed, what's going on around the city is related to the free market. It's not the government that's doing that. It's the free market, meaning because prior to COVID, we had 20 people a day moving in here. And those people coming in with jobs, as Ms. Elder said in her presentation, and that affects the economics and puts pressure on the little housing that we have here. So that's one piece. Another piece is that we, the city, our goal, among other things, is to help people to stay in the houses that they have and produce more affordable housing. That's what we can do. We only have limited money to be able to do that. Though the much more money is needed and we've passed the largest bond referendum in the state. Another piece, that's the major piece, going to the balance between home ownership and rental. And you raise a good question that we've had much, much community discussion about. Is what is the balance between the focus on home ownership and rental? And as you recall from my presentation earlier, there is money for second mortgages to help people purchase homes. But I was also to share with you going back maybe 10 years or so, definitely before we did a report from Enterprise. The community development did focus more so on home ownership than we did rental, though we did rental, particularly from 60% to 80% of the area median income. And then the below 60% was basically the space of the housing authority. Well, after we did some analysis and had a report and the city council decided they wanted to focus on those with the most need in terms of that well over housing burden. And that was our rental population, particularly those between 30 and 50% AMI. And then the housing authority itself controls 40, about 40% of the subsidized units. And so that's where we shift we made a conscious policy decision because we have limited resources to focus on the areas where it was most needed. That's not to say there's a lot that is needed. But that's one of the reasons that we made that shift because a lot of persons who are in jobs that qualify for affordable housing, there's a limited opportunity for rent. And then also with that level, there's naturally occurring affordable housing that we're losing. And so it's a big challenge, but there are a lot of forces as Miss Elder's presentation showed. I just don't want anybody to get discouraged because we're not at the community development department, but it is enormous. And especially, I'll just be honest with you, Apple has come into town, part of me is happy and part of me is not. Well, thank you all for those important points and thank you for the feedback. And at this point, Tiffany's gonna talk about the tentative meeting schedule moving forward. Unfortunately, we're out of time. We didn't get to many of the questions in the chat and the Q&A, we'll be looking at them again and trying to incorporate as much as we possibly can in the next meeting. Thank you. Tiffany. All right. What is your conversation? Regarding our meeting schedule, thus far the decision was made to have some back-to-back meetings that were more frequent because there is a lot of information that needs to get pushed out to everyone to take into account what's happened thus far and to get everyone for what's going to be happening moving forward. So we had the initial two meetings on April 1st, April 15th and this is our third on May 6th. We are going to review and adopt and give a vote on the upcoming meetings for the remainder of the year. The next of which is June 3rd and following that, we're skipping July and August and having a quarterly session on September 2nd, Thursday and another following that the next month on October 7th and that October 7th meeting will be the last for the year and probably in September, we will decide on the schedule for the following year. So any questions or comments on the upcoming meetings of June 3rd, September 2nd and October 7th? Yes, hello. Yes. June 3rd, Hillside is having their graduation. So it may be some that, well, I know I won't because my grandson's graduating. So I know I won't be able to attend it. And I don't know how many other parents well, but Jordan as well. Yeah, it's not going to be virtual. It's going to be at Central. So is there a way to have another date? I don't know how many parents are on this, but yeah, I was saying Jordan high school also is on the 3rd. So, and I've got a graduating senior. So I will not be at that one if it stays on the 3rd. I'm an educator and we got graduated on the 2nd. And I got other education responsibilities on the 3rd as well. So yeah, the 3rd, if we can, if we are able to shift the 3rd, I don't know how the committee feels maybe to the next Thursday after that, that might be better. And Diane, do you have any thoughts on that date? I can do that. Can others do that? June 10th works for me. It works for me as well. Works for me. Are there any conflicts with anyone for the 10th? I won't be available June 3rd. This is Nicole Furnace. June 10th, don't work for me. Oh, I mean the 10th, sorry. I won't be available June 10th. So thoughts on June meeting everyone. How can we get the schedule so that we can have any full participation but not move anyone unnecessarily? Would the committee be willing to meet on another day that following week, that's not a Thursday that hopefully will not conflict with anything else? Is there something in that June meeting that is pertinent for us to have that we are not going to already know or be following up from this particular meeting? I am not certain. I remember it being talked about in one of our earlier sessions with Moss and Ross and French was gone that I believe May was when they were going to go live on the website and recording. And we were going to follow up after they went live to make sure everyone sort of understood what was out there and were able to follow it. I am not sure, but if that was gonna be on that June meeting, Reginald, would you happen to know? Yes, that was planning on to be on the June meeting, but that's not, we can have alternative ways to get you that information. So that's, we don't necessarily meet for that purpose. The more important purpose is to the extent that you have discussion, want to have discussion, but if you don't just know that you will not meet in June, July and August, and not the decision that you can make. Adam chairs, would you entertain a motion to cancel the June meeting unless there was something that was pertinent that we would need to have a meeting and just move the next meeting to being in September, which would also give us more than enough time for the website to have been running. Money should be distributed. We should have a lot more information in September than we would, I think next month. I personally would be hesitant to cancel a meeting. It's always unfortunate when not everyone can attend, but I mean, you do have a certain number of excused absences so that, you know, no one's penalized for not coming. I prefer to continue the discussion rather than wait all the way till September, but that's me. I'm open to moving off from June 3rd to June 10th or any other day I do with a group this size. We will always have absences. And meanwhile, congratulations to all of you with graduating seniors. That's such a big deal. So I'm not trying to favor anyone over another. And Timothy just wrote, could we move to July? The city traditionally is on break in July and I think our staff and council members need that break. And so I'd prefer to stick with June. We can look at a different day. We can maybe do a doodle, but I don't know that we'll ever come up with something where three or four people won't be able to attend. So that's just my reaction. So other thoughts? It sounded like the 10th worked for more people and the third also doesn't work for me. And I heard, I think four or five folks that didn't work for us. I don't know if we could do a straw poll or something if there's only one person who's out on the 10th and it works for everyone else. Do we want to do roll call to ask? It's some that aren't on the call as well. So how would they know about the information? We'll wait and see if they'll vote. Right. And I would just say from a staff perspective, our position, we'll work to accommodate the decision that you make, but we probably would need a decision for our scheduling purposes, whatever the day would be. So you have it or not, or if you're going to have it, what day you're going to have it? You'll mute it, Diane. Yeah, I was counting how many people were present. Sorry, I wasn't trying to talk. It looks like the 10th is a better date. We could always throw out another date at the 17th and see if there are any conflicts or move forward with the straw poll and vote on the 10th. I would just like to move on the 10th if that's not an issue. I would just like to go ahead and make a motion to move our next meeting to June the 10th. And we could vote it up or down and go from there. Sounds good. I second. Okay. Those in favor for the 10th, June 10th for our next meeting. Aye. Aye. Aye. May I oppose? Sounds like the 10th it is. And again, since we're voting on all of these, we may as well run through on the remaining schedule. We have June 10th, September 2nd and October 7th. So would anyone like to raise a motion to accept all three of those dates for future meetings? So moved. I second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? We have our schedule for the remainder of 2021. Yeah. Thank you all. Yeah, thank you everyone for being flexible on that item. And I believe we have reached the end of our conversation for this evening, just to wrap up Mark calendars for June 10th, but reminders will be sent out. Are there any other last minute items we need to discuss before closing out? Okay. Well, thank you for attending. Thank you everyone for your questions and for your input and for your presentations. And I hope you have a wonderful evening. See you tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Good night everyone. Good night.


We are wondering what is happening to the world. Everything is changing. The very idea of human being some sort of natural concept is really going to change. Our bodies will be so high-tech we won't be able to really distinguish between what's natural and what's artificial. Inside our own heads is the most complex arrangement of matter in the known universe. You might ask yourself, can we get to be superhumans? The original industrial revolution was driven by the discovery that you could use team engines to do all kinds of interesting things. That was followed by additional revolutions for electricity and computers and communications technology. We're now in the early stages of the fourth industrial revolution which is bringing together digital, physical and biological systems. One of the features of this fourth industrial revolution is that it doesn't change what we are doing but it changes us. With the ability to visualize brain activity, for example, through a simple consumer-based EEG device, it gives us access to ourselves in ways that we've never before thought possible. It unlocks the black box that is the brain and enables us to really, truly be able to realize an identity that is aspirational. There's now a scientific foundation for the effects of mindfulness on the brain, on the genome, on biological aging. When the human mind does know itself, then you get the potential for a new renaissance that restructures itself in terms of our relationship to life, our relationship to the planet, our relationship to work. We need a different economic model. By that I don't mean capitalism versus communism. What I'm talking about is a shift in the system along the lines of the two big changes that happened in the 20th century. Keynesianism was a much greater focus on health and education and the role of government working with business and then a reaction against that in late century to neoliberalism where the focus was on free markets, freedom of the individual and getting governments out of the way. We need a shift to a new system that will allow us to meet the basic needs of every human on the planet that will live within the planetary means, that will be fairer and that will be focused as its key goal, not on growth per se, but on maximizing human well-being. And history tells us that a value shift is triggered by creation of a new story about how we want to live. I see the circular economy as something which fits very closely with mankind's goal to be innovative and creative and to always progress. We can use asset tracking, we can use IT, we can use 3D printing to enable this different economic model to recover materials, feed them back into the economy and really to decouple growth from the resource constraints we have. The reason we live in cities is not different today than it was 10,000 years ago. Even if we have got networks connecting us, we still want to have places where we meet in person. This means the place where we work and the place where we live are much closer to each other, a city where we don't need to have big supply chains in order to produce things, where many things can be sourced locally thanks to 3D printing and robotics. So if we are able to do something to transform cities, to make them more efficient, then the impact can be huge. Think about the prospect of getting rid of plastics. We must not only be inspired or informed by nature but actually use natural organisms with which to design products and building parts. Only instead of varying material properties, we are varying biological functionality. Design is critical today because it is the first signal of human intention. So the question of adding quality to quantity, it isn't a matter of simply circulating things that are potentially toxic. It is circulating things that are safe and healthy for all generations. So the goal is no longer, I want to be less bad, less monotonous, less unsafe, less unjust. It is really about a diverse, safe, healthy and just world with clean air, clean water, clean soil, clean energy. Together we are fighting to preserve our fragile climate from irreversible damage and devastation among thinkable proportions. If we think about the original industrial revolution, it was an energy revolution. I like to think of it as a kind of book ending of a period in human history during which we used fossil fuels and it worked very well for us for a long time. But now we have to bring that to an end. We have energy technologies that can power our civilization, solar, wind, biomass. So then the question is how do we get grid integration? Maybe the wind is blowing in Denmark, the sun is shining in Germany and now you can move that electricity through an integrated grid. You can supply energy to everyone who needs it and you can supply energy at all times. You do see different stuff. As far as the body marriage line, they use a lot of things that help them lift up and move things to the car. We just sit there and, you know, program something and it has its own set mind to go ahead and do everything. And then as humans, we just come in and take the extra steps to help the technology. It's not the cure-all for everything. There's definitely a lot of things where people perform the operation better. But certainly for the right applications, robotics are a huge improvement for the process. The projection of five million jobs lost by 2020 to technology is serious, but it's not the main question. Construction, manufacturing, services, public health and education, these industries will still exist. The main question is what will be the future of work? How will we define work? How will we share the wealth? From the viewpoint of the labor of our jobs, now we really need new education or new training. We're working with a world in motion in First Robotics, trying to encourage students from third grade all the way up through the end of high school. We had students make sailboats and then we had them race them so they could see how quickly they could move. And they immediately went back and started to say, oh, I saw what happened. I'm going to go change this or that. And that was third graders. I've just given a prize to a kid, a rating is all that has discovered something really very, very unique. He came up with how to get better productivity and better yields for seeds of corn. And so he basically came up with the idea that if you would perforate these seeds, you would get more food. And you think about it and say, but he didn't go to university. So how does he get all that knowledge? And he told me, I mean, I've been watching YouTube since the age of 12. And I'm so interested that I've seen everything about it. I've read everything about it. The world is really open to learning. The thing is, how do you give the incentive to your kids to do that? It's this ability of digital technology to change outcomes, to truly empower people all over the world that can create a more equitable growth because I think the world needs that. Fourth industrial revolution has the potential to make inequalities visible and to make them less acceptable in the future and hopefully to gather and garner political support to take the necessary decision to reduce the gap. Humans have always been using tools, but because of the recent advances in technology, we're beginning to have machines that can augment us in all sorts of interesting ways. I was the first person in the world to be able to voluntarily move my legs while stepping in a robot by exciting the nervous system using electrical stimulators directly onto the spine. We believe that a cure will be possible if enough of the right people have the will to fast-track a cure for paralysis. We take two things from the patient. First, we take a three-dimensional x-ray and we extract the three-dimensional data out of that so we can make a perfectly shaped puzzle piece. And then we also take a sample of fat tissue from the patient so that we can extract the stem cells out of those. And we use those stem cells with this three-dimensional scaffold that we fabricate and after three weeks we have a piece of living bone that's ready for implantation. Being able to use genome editing to understand the genetic changes that lead to cancer and technologies like drug delivery, getting molecules into particular types of cells, there's a lot of excitement about being able to move much more quickly on this disease. One of the things that I think is so essential to free and open societies is freedom of thought. And up until now the conversation we've been having is around freedom of speech. Once we can access people's thoughts and access people's emotions, we have to create a space that enables people to think freely, to think divergent thoughts, to think creative thoughts. And in a society where people fear having those thoughts, the likelihood of being able to enjoy progress is significantly diminished. We need to take responsibility at every level of society from the individual and the personal to the institutional to the global to adapt to these technological challenges and changes which are redefining what it means to be human, what it means to work, what it means to be completely embedded in this world. People always ask me if I'm an optimist or pessimist. The technology exists, but how do we get it and implement it at the scale we need at a price that people around the world can afford? Even though we have everyday problems, we have to solve, we have to find a way to lay the foundations for the innovations of tomorrow.