City Council · Regular Meeting · January 19, 2023

our next presentation will be affordable health housing deep dive presentation and we're going to call Anthony Scott our director for Durham Housing Authority so good uh was it afternoon yeah good afternoon everyone thank you for having me here today I'm going to first say to my folks over at JJ I Zaid and I were trying to connect so I will follow up with you guys in terms of what you shared today because the first stop hearing of that so I just want to let you guys know that so we'll follow up soon um so I want to talk a little bit about DHA and from the standpoint of who we are as an organization and what we're trying to do and what some of our challenges are

so first starting with who is DHA changes to presentation um many people think that DHA is a part of the city as a department and it is not we are chartered by the state of North Carolina and we operate under those guidelines overall we are locally formed and that you all the city council and the mayor appoints our board of directors and we are federally funded so we we touch all the basic areas but we're a little bit schizophrenic in that we're not a city Department 100 of our funding for our operations comes from the federal government our current budget is somewhere around 50 million dollars we have budgeted staff of 117. however I can tell you that we have struggled mightily with being able to fill all our positions over the last really four or five years has certainly

exacerbated over covet as it has with many uh businesses and one of the things that I always think is interesting to point out is that even though we're federally funded eighty percent of our budget actually goes right into the local dorm economy um our housing Choice voucher program is our largest program is approximately 27 million dollars and most of that funding as many of you know goes towards the uh goes goes for the participants of the program that funds the subsidy to the landlords for their housing and in terms of our breakdown of our Revenue that comes in 86 percent of our funding is from federal grants and 13 comes from tenant rents so the properties that we own are managed under a basic premise that residents pay 30 percent of their rent it's a failed model just doesn't work because we get subsidy from the federal

government it used to be when housing authorities are created the federal government committed to providing the funding necessary to properly operate these properties but that of course does not happen we are at the mercy of the federal government on a given annual basis we never know where our funding will be from year to year as you all are aware that they just passed the funding that included funding for HUD a few weeks ago and fortunately the funding for this year looks to be a little bit more than what was received last year uh which is saying something but even that funding is much below what the need is so we're always we're happy to get what we've got the year before but we find ourselves in a position that is still not enough so we continue to fall further behind um affordable housing is is subsidized in ways in which it includes our public housing programs we've done more now with the rad program which allows us to redevelop these properties so that we can get money in to fix them

up in a in a decent way and more critically it allows us to manage them better financially because we have more resources coming in because everything is not 100 federally supported and the public housing um I'm sorry under the the rad program that focuses on typically with tax credits 60 of the area median income now it's a little bit deceptive because more recently they created a program where you can do what's called income averaging so you can actually go up to 80 percent of the income but overall in a given property it averages out to be 60. so you can have lower incomes you can have higher up to 80 percent but it has to average at least 60 overall a voucher program or housing Choice voucher commonly called section 8. it's administered by us but the housing is actually provided by the private sector and again it's based on 30 in income that Resident who's paying that 30 pays it directly to the landlord we pay that

70 percent directly to the landlord there are several specialty voucher programs such as emergency housing vouchers we have something called Veterans vouchers or Vash there's a couple of others I can't recall them off the top of my head but there's a smaller programs that might be anywhere from 20 to 30 sometimes even in the teens of those voucher programs most of those are done in collaboration with the CLC with the city of Durham for overall DHA has about 17 sites and about 1700 units occupation occupancy rate right now is 99 percent and we have a waiting list of over 5 000 families and what you see in this graphic is that most of those families are looking for housing in one bedrooms or Studios but 90 plus percent of it is looking for three bedrooms or two bedrooms or less so that need is is very very high throughout and that's been part of our

strategy as we've looked to redevelop our housing is to focus on where we're seeing the most need and we derive that by looking at what's actually on our waiting list on the voucher side we have a little under 3 100 housing Choice vouchers so 2200 or so of those are tenant based which means that they are given directly to a individual for their family and they go wherever they choose to we have something called project-based vouchers and those are vouchers that stay with a particular building so a person comes and goes but the voucher subsidy remains at the building itself and then those specialty vouchers I mentioned we have a little less than 500 of those all in all in every given month we have 166 families currently that are out there but we've averaged around 200 families On Any Given month that have a voucher one of these uh two uh one either tenant base or specialty voucher that is currently looking for housing so

the need in terms of landlords to accept those vouchers remains very high tenant-based waiting list is currently at 338 families that seems like a low number but it's low because we issue those vouchers every so often we open the waiting list I should say every so often we keep it at a manageable level of about 1500 vouchers no more than that so that the list doesn't become very stale and at the end of that period we get down to usually a little less than 500 we'll begin to open up that list again so that people can apply last time we opened our list which was about four years ago we had over 5000 people apply we then narrowed it down the 1500 and so that's where we are currently at a 338 so we will be opening our tenant-based housing Choice voucher list at some point this year our project-based waiting list however is over 10 000 families so it again emphasizes the need of housing of particularly of this type

that exists here in Durham we have a budget of twenty seven and a half million dollars as I mentioned earlier we are remember I talked about we had 3200 vouchers roughly we currently have though less than that that are actually housed we're still at 100 percent of our budget Authority so even though we have more vouchers we have to manage to our budget so HUD tells all housing authorities yes you may have a higher allocation but you must manage to your actual budget and we currently are at about 100 of our budget utilization the average subsidy that we provide and know what's called the housing assistance payment is a little over 800 880 roughly for what we're providing in subsidy to our families overall so that's one bedrooms two bedroom Studios and larger talk a little bit about rad conversion so a few years ago HUD created this program called rental assistance demonstration I think it originally

started 10 years ago in 2012. it did not attract a lot of attention because it was a very cumbersome program to use they retooled it and upon retooling many housing authorities jumped in to take advantage what rad essentially does is it allows housing authorities to have more tools in the tool chest provide zero dollars but it just gives you opportunities to utilize financing methods that you can't do with regular public housing that allows us for example to use low-income housing tax credits we can get Bank financing we can also do project-based vouchers so it allows us a different way to go about utilizing our public housing inventory and one of the things that we focused on as you all quite aware of with our ddmp is that we've looked at the Redevelopment of our public housing communities so that we can increase the amount of affordable housing that we have overall including replacing the existing public housing units there are built-in protections there is a lot of concern about with this because it involves the private sector that

somehow rents were going to be raised and it was going to be turned into market rate housing it's built into the law key things one rents are still going to be based on 30 of your income there will be no re-screening for any existing resident that becomes a part of a rad program and the residents have a right to return for those who want to come back to any of the housing that's built on that site so those are built into the law even if DHA wanted to be a bad actor it couldn't change these basic issues that are in the law we intend to fully convert all of our public housing communities into the rad program over time some of that involves Redevelopment like you're seeing with the downtown area property some of it are straight conversions that involves rehabs such as what we've done with Maureen Road and Demar court so those are two different examples of the two spectrums that you have in utilizing the rad program so this is a chart that gives you a sense of who our DHA families are overall we're just under 9 000 residents

currently and about 4 000 families this is combining public housing the housing Choice voucher program and the affordable housing portfolio that we have the average income that you see across all boards is just you know eleven thousand three hundred and sixty three dollars 26 percent of our families have jobs and the average rent paid between all programs is 284 dollars and a little bit about how our families break down in more detail based on age what you'll see is about a little less than 50 percent of our families are actually 17 and under uh when I say families and family members overall to overall population and you'll see that roughly 14 of our families are seniors and in between is where you have the rest of the family members so when you

look across the programs you'll see a lot of variety in ages and and family sizes but overall you'll see the breakdown for that roughly 9 000 individuals breaks out to about a little less than half or actually 17 and under and about 14 percent are seniors one of the things I also like to point out is the number of folks that we have that are disabled so this is a subset of the previous slide I showed so when you look at throughout our population not just senior housing but even within our communities there are senior residents that are present as well so you can see the age range of that that folks that are excuse me not seniors but disabled the age range of that in terms of head of households between 18 and 54 12 of that households are in fact disabled between 55 and 61 9 and 62 and all they're 20 you would expect that to be a

slightly higher number so overall about 41 of those families are in fact have at least disabled folks as head of households so with that I want to talk about um the not so pleasant part of DHA and the challenges that we've been faced with and this is something called the recovery agreement so in 2018 due to the conditions of some of our buildings DHA fell into what's called a troubled agency status since 2018 we have not been reevaluated because of covid everything got put on hold but it doesn't matter we can tell you by looking at some of our conditions that our properties are still not where we want them to be so all housing authorities are rated on a system called Fast public housing assessment system it's a four component it has four components to it financial management physical inspection and capital and points associated with that on a 100 point scale we've done fine

with financial we've done uh fine with our Capital fund but when it comes to our physical inspection that's where we have had issues and it is no surprise to anybody at the DS because you know we've been struggling with how we how do we have the funding to take care of our properties as a result of us falling into this troubled agency status we Crea we had to go into what's called a recovery agreement with HUD and it outlined three primary goals that the Housing Authority has to achieve over the next two years one is that we had to increase our occupancy to at least 95 percent we're currently at 98 percent and let me put a caveat with that we're at 98 percent um however we are we are talking to HUD about the fact that they're accounting against us the Liberty Street apartments and 519 East Main Street vacancies there we're not leasing there obviously because we're in the process of redeveloping that but that's still counting against our

occupancy so on on the books at HUD which you'll see is an occupancy rate at I think it's 92 percent but in reality when you take those out we're at a 98 occupancy and you know HUD understands this we've told them this they just don't have a category to put units that are in the process of being Redevelopment so they're struggling with trying to figure out how to make it work the way HUD actually evaluates us improve our unit conditions meaning we have to have a passing score of at least 60. and then the third thing is remove McDougal tariffs from the public housing inventory and there's an interesting way that they've placed that it's stated that but basically they want to see medulla Terrace come out of the public housing inventory and put in some other kind of in some other kinds of category so that could mean either we literally get rid of McDougal tears so I could sell it we could redevelop McDougal Terrace or we can do some sort of conversion which is still the same thing all this must be accomplished in the

next two years we're now just shy of a year into this we have monthly reports that we have to do to HUD we work very closely with the Greensboro field office all along the way so I'm going to come back to this in a little bit but let me very clearly show you what our unit scores are so when you look at all of our properties and when you look at 2018 you see what our scores are and that's based on a 100 point scale you can see we were in 2018 in 2022 they just completed our inspections in the last few months you can see where our scores are we are pleased that McDougall Terrace had a 39 Point jump from 31 to a 70. but it makes sense when we spend 10 million dollars over the last several years to bring McDougal Terrace to the point it is now which again really underscores the point if we had the money to put into the properties we could get them in a better better place and you can see where we are with the

the ones in yellow are all those sites that are below that 60 Mark and you can see what those scores look like and then you can see where some of the others are part of our recovery agreement terms it speaks to us doing something called the physical needs assessment and that's what we have an independent inspector come in look at the units and make a determination of what the costs will be to bring the units up to par um this is a 20-year look out and there's a particular emphasis on what you need to do over the next five years the immediate five years we've we've done that for all of our properties and that number is somewhere in the neighborhood of a just just shy of 50 million dollars for all of our properties and the amount of capital fund that we'll have is approximately 15 million dollars so we're going to have to make hard choices and decisions around how we spend our 15 million dollars on those properties and what we're doing is

prioritizing health and safety first and foremost and then looking at other issues that impact our scores as a secondary component last piece in here is talking about the recovery agreement is a repositioning of McDougal Terrace so we started our initial planning work on McDougall Terrace and that would also include the Lincoln Apartments community as well and because we see those two together and we think that's a a great way to kind of address some of the challenges with McDougall and we'll talk about this so why we've had several meetings with our residents at McDougall surrounding residents and businesses Durham Public Schools nccu Durham Tech all of the folks that you would expect us to talk to including an interesting one with the North Carolina State agricultural foundation and I'll tell you about why that conversation came about so with well let me go back I guess I can have more on this so we're in the

planning stages of this and uh what we're looking at with all of this because you know we don't just look at things in terms of one little site but we look at the larger Community to see how what we're doing could have a larger impact and not just dealing with medieval Terrace so in general what we're looking at is we could do some replacement housing on the Lincoln Terrace the Lincoln Apartments site to start with so we have people do essentially one move that would involve having to tear down Lincoln rebuild a new housing Etc while we look at the planning around McDougal Terrace in the next month we're going to finalize our preliminary plan for McDougal Terrace and we'll be sharing that with you all soon what that calls for is we think we'll be able to replace the existing 360 medieval Terrace units by combining it with the Lincoln apartment site and some other partners that we're working with to probably in a neighborhood of about 500 units in that existing area and that includes working with the Durham Public Schools as well I

mentioned the North Carolina State University agriculture Foundation because you see at the bottom right they own a large chunk of land over there and we've been in discussions with them about how we can incorporate that in our overall development activities as well in terms of being able to provide some quality open space and things like that so it ties into the park system that we already have but again we'll have more details on that in in the weeks to come ddmp you guys have heard a lot about this so I don't think I need to start from the beginning on that but you know what's happening there it's the plan for the downtown site you know the properties that are involved with that it will turn to 447 units into about 2500 units on the sites that DHA owns and controls plus additional units on the sites that are include two City on-site South Side three and you already are working with the developer on the development of that and the Hunt Street

J Henderson the Joyce new construction should be opening sometime in March or April look for an opening of that coming up soon um Liberty Street and East Main you know we've done the demolition for that first portion we expect to break ground on that by the spring as well as phases two and three we will be doing the Demolition and breaking ground on that probably shortly thereafter or probably very close at the same time so we have significant momentum there the that that site of course is where we receive the 40 million dollar Choice neighborhoods Grant and so things are progressing pretty nicely there Forest Hill Heights we're in negotiations with our developer there we're hoping to have a master development agreement with that submitted to our board in February and

then for the Fayette Place site we expect to have a master development agreement with them as well in February that comes before our board so what does all of that look like uh JJ and the Joyce again you guys have seen this the renovation of JJ has taken place this is our fairly recent pictures of the Joyce I went out and got some of these uh last week and the other piece about the joist that's nice to mention is the Miracle League field which DHA owns the land we donated it to the Miracle League and one of the reasons why is that track that you see that goes around when talking to our JJ residents years ago they talked a lot about we don't have a place to get out and do anything and so this track that goes around the Miracle League field will be available for our DHA residents at JJ as well as at the Joyce but that site is coming along quite nicely and should be open in the next few months uh delivery Main Street site this is the site plan for that again phase one is

underway in terms of breaking ground that should be in the next couple of months phase two through five is where the 40 million dollar Choice neighborhoods Grant will be applied phase two and three should begin construction sometime this spring as well we've already done the first phase of demolition the second phase of demolition is what will be starting in the spring that includes this portion here which includes the resident services building phase one of course is Elizabeth Street and two and three is what we're calling Commerce Street Forest Hill Heights Fayette place and DHA office notice I didn't mention the DHA office we're prioritizing the Fayetteville the Fayette Place site in Forest Hill Heights and the DHA office will be put on the back burner until we get further along with those so this is Forest Hill Heights and I want to make a caveat right here right now all of what you're going to see is what was presented to us last year this is not the more recent iterations of

what's happening with this because we're still negotiating they're still doing some number crunching and trying to figure things out so what you see will be different not substantially so in terms of units the one thing that will be different if you recall there were only 55 units in the Forest Hill Heights development that we're going to be considered affordable that number will go up by at least another 62 units and maybe even more but we're still expecting about 700 units to be on that site but those numbers will change this is the Fayette Place site they presented a proposal of about 700 units there's been lots and lots of community meetings with that that number is coming down there's going to be a homeownership component in this as well that was part of the feedback that we've gotten in a little bit more commercial as well so we're trying to see if we can do more of there but we're kind of restricted by the site size but more on that to come in the coming weeks as well and overall I wanted to give you guys a

snapshot of what we proposed when we initially did the ddmp proposal to you all so the DHA component this is only reflected of that not the two City Sites we had about 2275 units that were initially planned and where we are today based on the proposals we've received is that we'll be at 2544 units the one thing that um and this was presented to you before the one thing that is disappointing but it's a reality of where we are given what's happened what cost as well as now the new the new black markets interest rates we are not able to do as many 80 percent Ami units will you see the on the last column you see a a reduction of about 318 units there and again this is not final but based on previous submittals that we received we will see a net increase of 269 units overall in particular we'll see an increase in the zero to thirty

percent range and an increase in the 50 range of about 96 units but nowhere near we want to be but at least we're getting some more affordability in there but that 80 percent number we just based on where we are we're seeing a significant reduction there and uh bringing up the rear here we're talking about some home ownership we've been working with Habitat for Humanity on 37 lots that were in the Edgemont area and uh over by Franklin Village so they have under construction all 37 units now they've completed I believe 33 and whoops and this picture in the middle is the last homeowner they did an opening I did a little event for for her I think back in either December or I think it was December for the last residents who's going to be getting a house there so we're excited about finally having built out those 37 units and by the way

for those of you who are around and remember the old hope six project that DHA had this is the last phase of the whole six development and this will conclude believe it or not that Grant is still considered open so this will finally conclude that component and we can wrap that one up but we will be looking at some other homeownership opportunities with habitat just because they are unique in being able to produce the affordable housing that in a way that most other developers cannot so I believe that concludes my presentation so I'll open up for any questions you have thank you Mr Scott for that detailed presentation and now I'm going to ask my car questions I want to count and a knowledge council member Freeman thank you um thank you Mr Scott for the presentation I appreciate all of the details and all of the nuances around how things have shifted and changed and how you're trying to keep to the initial promise

of keeping affordability in Durham I I do want to ask the first question starting at the last slide around the Habitat for Humanity is that the only non-profit organization you're working with are there other in terms of home ownership that's the only one at this point that was a an RFP process that was done several years ago and they were the only respondent that we had we actually put it out three times and they were the only responded that we had to that and can I ask I'm not sure I even know where to look for your rfps um if I could just get with some staff around making sure that that's shared out as broadly as possible I do know a lot other a lot of other affordable housing so I'll say just so it's on the record it's on our website and for those that are interested in signing up for future rfps of any type you can go on our website and you can sign up as a vendor and then you'll get notices of all rfps that get issued

thank you and uh just tracking back I appreciate the the response to our residents who mentioned what happened with um JJ Henderson and I I do want to make sure that I say to you I appreciate that that this is one of the projects that you've been like on the Forefront of and I know that you'll get to the bottom of what happened and figure out why there's no generator but I do want to make sure that that's a priority yeah I'm not well okay yes I'll stop there and I'm mindful that this this presentation is mainly going into our deep dive around housing and how the Housing Authority ties into all of the other housing partners and the way that we look at housing in the city and I know that I I've been very voiced about how It's never enough money and trying to figure out how to be supportive and making sure that there is a no with uh specifically with Fayetteville streets you mentioned um

that the commercial side you might need some support because I'm recognizing that they're I mean they're limited by Housing Authority but if there are ways that we as a city can be supportive in making sure that there is commercial on that property I do want to make sure that we're aware right and that and to be clear there is going to be commercial on that property I believe right now it's it's around 30 000 square feet is what's what's proposed on that and that'll be the portion that uh uh faces the Fayetteville Street itself but but as you go into the site there's that's pretty much all residential thank you and I am I'm mindful that this is an ongoing conversation I do want to hear more about Lincoln apartments and the NC State project as well but I'll dig into that later thank you thank you I'd like to acknowledge the councilman Javier thank you good to see you as well Happy New Year um I had a couple questions about the McDougall terrascope really appreciate

the presentation really appreciate the update look forward to hearing you know I know you mentioned some changes with McDougal tariffs is that going to be considered a rad conversion where there would be mixed market rate in there as well I just didn't hear that I'm sorry I did not say that it will be mixed income anything we're doing that's going to be torn down or rebuilt is always okay so that one included neglected to say that no thank you I was just a little bit thrown and then I have a question for staff more because it's a city project I just wanted to hear a little bit about I'm seeing the rendering on Rigsby um in our packet and just curious to hear more about where we are in in that process and it could just be a rendering that somebody put there but just was curious as part of my presentation or something separate it's the Hunt Street Station one and it's a city project so it's not a question for you I just was wondering where we are in our process around that the I'm going to ask Keith if he has any update on that at this time

Keith Chadwell City manager's office good afternoon everyone uh council member I'm afraid I don't have an update on it right now noting that you have the question provided in as quickly as we possibly can for you thank you I appreciate that um other those were my questions I really appreciate the update um that grant that we got was incredible I know you all have worked very hard in building trust with the community and I can say that from you know right before the pandemic with McDougall Terrace and seeing the tremendous amount of work that y'all have done I know there's always more to do but I just really want to appreciate the work of you and your staff I'm sorry madam manager so I didn't know if Keith had a more detailed uh update on Hunt station but what I can say you know it is sort of grayed out because it is looked at to be future development and obviously you aware that the you know funding that we

kind of apply to our own projects has already been um applied to projects so it will come in the future with additional resources thank you I'm in a house in Army our mayor thank you so much Mr Scott for for this presentation this afternoon as always I learned a lot whenever you present I think you presented at the Durham crime cabinet every time you presented I learned something new but I do want to ask a couple of questions about the voucher program I get a fair number of folk calling and saying we need a voucher you know the waiting list is is you know we can't seem to get off the waiting list can you explain well first what should our response be because I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one up here that are getting those calls and then I think you when you explained it it's

tied not only to though the amount of vouchers that you have but to your budget allocation right right did I hear that if you would just kind of going a little bit more detail as to you know when a person applies and how that all ends up with them having one and what that process looks like in terms of timeline right so with the tenant-based vouchers which is the most popular program has the most vouchers to it again we open that list every three to four years sometimes it depends on how how quickly folks leave the program right and so when that list gets open last two times we did this we have about 5 000 applicants we call it down to a 1500 by doing a random sort of ranking and then we call people in once there is a voucher available and what we try not to do is just put a bunch of vouchers out on the street

there are only so many units out there so it doesn't make sense to have four or 500 people all looking stumbling over the same landlord so we've we've tried not to go beyond 200 people looking at any one time so when people get a voucher they then start to look try to find a landlord who is willing to accept a voucher and if they're successful at that we inspect that unit make sure that that unit adheres to the standards established by Hud and then we move them in it used to be that that whole process of once they found the unit and once the inspection would take weeks we've narrowed that down now and improved on that so it's usually about a week's time that it takes to go through that entire process but the key is is that we only have X amount number of vouchers just like we only have X number of housing units so vouchers become available when people leave the program so as long as we are housing people whether it's a voucher or one of our other bricks and sticks properties units only be we can only offer housing when a unit leaves sometimes we get complaints of people says I've been on

the list for years and and you know no one ever has reached out to us because there just isn't the housing available one of the reasons why we had such a focus on looking at increasing our density where it made sense particularly downtown is that we would be building more units and having more availability because you know a few of us are doing other than the Housing Authority you have a couple other nonprofits the HIC and Casa who are building affordable housing but we're we're sort of the only games in town and so and the point is that we needed to increase the number of units is why we've taken the approach that we have in terms of your landlords your private landlords now how I how does that relationship work out with the with the citizens who are seeking are they able to find I've Heard lots of folks say we are not able to find private landlord speak to that a little bit because Durham Durham needs to hear that right this is a part that you need

to hear because this is out of the control of the city or the Housing Authority that is correct and and one of the things to make clear is that we as a Housing Authority we are prohibited from uh directing someone to a landlord so people who get a voucher they have to find that housing on their own we can't do it because it'll be considered steering but the bigger issue is as you point out we don't have enough landlords that are accepting housing Choice vouchers now we are given caps as to how much we can accept as an acceptable rent and I don't have it with me but the the so each bedroom size determines how much of the rent how much of a rent we can actually say this is okay to do so it's like maybe twelve hundred dollars for a two bedroom unit is the max and in Durham you can charge more than that for an apartment so a lot of landlords would rather not deal with some of the restrictions that we have with income uh and they'll say we'd

rather not lease to a voucher holder some people are just straight biased and they don't want to lease to someone who has a voucher and in some cases you have landlords that have no interest in affordable housing whatsoever they they do what's called income discrimination because you're not working or because you don't work at a job making enough money even though we're providing 70 percent of that rent you have landlords that choose not to rent to those who have their income come directly from the Housing Authority the landlords do you think you all work with I think we have about 2 000 or so landlords but please do not hold me to that I could find out and let you all know how many landlords we have and many of our landlords are not large excuse me many of our landlords are smaller you know they might have one or two units three or four units they don't have a ton of units and so it's it's really a large number of landlords who

sometimes have smaller sites that they have under their portfolio and they rent one or two to a voucher holder but there are certainly a greater need for landlords to accept vouchers some years ago when the CEF Community investment fund had a whole effort around educating landlords recruiting landlords to be accepting of vouchers I think it's time to to reinvigorate that effort that we have some conversations with our landlords so we can talk to them about why they are not accepting voucher holders and that will help at least in getting that list of 166 as of this month that are out there get them housed I'd love to be able to be a part of that I'd like to be able to be a part of that we're going to need you to lead that actually oh yeah I can do that not a problem so what I'm hearing you say is what folk are saying is actually true you have a number of uh landlords of sort of large properties

J Henderson is now a project-based community so people have applied for moving into that building and so you have this big very big waiting list and that's really what that reflects some of those waiting lists we want to call down it doesn't

make sense to have a waiting list of 10 000 even combined waiting list of 10 000 people because it will take you forever to get through that list it's better to cap that list over a few you know pick a number that makes sense and then once it gets down to a certain level then you open it up again so you don't have a list that gets stale some people you know choose find out the housing you're no longer interested you know people sometimes pass away all kinds of things it just creates a larger administrative burden by having a long large list so that's why we keep our tenant-based voucher list to a relatively small number and we're going to do the same with those other Project based lists as well but you're saying and you're you said you have what 1700 actual units correct total and how many families did you say you're in Combined between vouchers and public housing we have um about 4 000 families so you have four thousand that we can actually kind of house and maybe ten thousand that need

it is that what we're saying that's correct okay I just want to make sure so and those are just folk who are applying directly to the Housing Authority um either the Housing Authority or properties that we have in partnership with other developers but yes it's it's within our portfolio of properties it has nothing to do outside of DHA so um I wanted to touch on the federal funding part I think you mentioned that when you when you all had those scores that those properties that came below a certain score you would then given the mandate to bring those up to a score and to an acceptable score but you were also given what 15 million to do that right so that's our Capital you know we are funded in a couple of buckets three really so one is a voucher program it gets a separate pot of money the operations of our public housing gets a pot of money and then the Capital

Improvements gets a separate pot of money and I mentioned them as pots because you can't use one source for another so a capital fund is the one that's used for our large-scale repairs we get about three million dollars or so each year you said three three million okay and but how much do you need I guess it would be well what we need based on that assessment that was done is about 50 million over the next five years and what we currently have when you look at what we'll collect over the next five years excuse me is about 15 million okay thank you thank you I'll turn it back over too and if I could just make one more Point around that issue HUD itself has talked about this issue where they said that the number of the total amount that they have underfunded housing authorities is about 76 billion dollars so that's how much 76

billion dollars wouldn't that be as in B's and boy or across the country and that number is in that issue is reflective of our Capital fund and why we're so far underfunded and you think about it it's a it's a cumulative thing so if you can't make those Capital repairs in in one year then they become more costly than next year the next year or the next year and that's kind of what we've been grappling with I'm sorry councilman thank you I'm going to acknowledge council member Williams did you have something you wanted to say Yes um thank you councilmember I thank you for this in-depth presentation Mr Scott um I just had a few questions So based on the uh let's see I want to be I'm going to ask you a few questions based on some of our Behavior as Council and how we can better assist because this this is becoming more and

more perplexed to me so the first question is are you um I know you're working with private landlords but have you uh consider or are you working with private land owners to potentially purchase land or is that something that you can do Under the jurisdiction of Hud we can as a Housing Authority we certainly can purchase private land of course the real question is you have the land now what are you going to do with it what do you get the money right et cetera right because if you're talking about affordable housing the only way is successful is that you have to have a subsidy of some sort you can do that subsidy up front by you know having having like the thing I always say is if somebody gave us a unit free and clear we still have to pay to operate that unit we've got to pay the due to maintenance and electric the all of the utilities Etc so that's that's the issue with affordability with HUD they provide the subsidy for housing authorities to match

that 284 dollars we get in rent on a public housing side they provide a additional subsidy that allows those units to in theory to operate of course they're not providing the capital that's needed to keep those units where they need to be so we end up spending a lot of Maintenance money that should have been handled as part of the capital money so I'm sorry I might have gone a little bit too far to your question you helped me understand some of the other areas uh I I'm just not a fan of Hud right now uh may be inappropriate for me to say that but you know we America tends to put up money easily in some areas but here we are having families on the streets um do you know and this may be a question that we need to figure out on the city Side do you know the amount of privately owned apartment complexes in Durham or properties that are turning down voucher programs they're turning down special assistance

I do not and and part of the reason we don't know is is again we're not involved with that recipient when they're doing their search so they may go 20 places to find housing but the one they find is when they come back to us and say Here's is what we have or they don't find any and after a period of time then the voucher essentially expires yeah I I uh just through uh some Communications I started hearing more and more that they were privately owned apartment properties that were no longer accepting vouchers and um now you know looking at the status of things you have to meet three times the amount of money to you know it's either two or three times the amount to uh to pay that rent yeah and and that's just insult the injury um you may have mentioned this in your your latter comments I can't remember but did we say anything about incentivizing the landlord incentivization program

that you've mentioned that I did not is that something that well I'll ask that question to the city later as well maybe that could be something that we could the incident landlords that are working with you or could or would work with you know you uh maybe we could incentivize or spark some interest there as a as a response to currently what's happening in in other areas that are stopping to work with us um if it costs that's restricting us from going higher in in building I was looking at some of the examples and just being able to build taller uh on the current properties I guess have more units on it you see the majority the majority of housing that's built um is usually five stories that's because you have to go to a different construction method which is more costly and if you want to go higher it is it is something that we've we've talked to at least one of our developers about particularly given the location of the

site can we go higher and we'll have to see because now with the cost increases that you've seen in the in the construction field it's it's very difficult yeah so but that is something that we have on the table and that's why I've also said I don't have new numbers for you all in terms of what what the ultimate numbers will look like for the sites that I presented uh because we we haven't gotten finalization in that yet but it is something that's on the table for us yeah I um and and I am forcing myself to make sure I'm being you know I'm trying to discipline myself not to put two into two different parts together what I mean by that is you know when housing becomes exclusive it becomes more expensive and we tend to have issue with that sometimes and that's something we're going to have to figure out but then you have this situation which is a whole nother monster on you know just the amount of families

that are in need versus the amount of availability that that is I I don't even know where to start um but it does lead me to the question of could you tell me some of the wraparound services that you have that are provided for current uh tenants and what types of services are in place to help them maybe not have to rely on this and I know for a fact we're always going to need affordable housing because just the metric and how we determine affordability Ami there's always going to be that bottom tier and it sucks but what types of services in regards to wrap around a whole list of resources are provided with your Properties or your tenants and are there any type of um uh economic wraparound services that help them maybe reverse the need for this this this this resource and just the caveat to that the reason why I'm asking is because Durham has about 27 000 job openings but those jobs are they require

a specific skill set or a specific education and you can say the number but the types of jobs matter and and so it's just not as easy said it's not as easily done as said right so um Services I would not say their wrap around but services that we have um housing authorities don't get money for services right so we do have a resident services office and it tries to basically work with a whole Myriad of Partners across the city and county and so it's everything from from you know Duke's nursing school nccu's nursing Etc we we do have a couple of programs that do uh specifically work with our residents one is family self-sufficiency and the other one is Ross which is similar to family self-sufficiency with the FSS program residents who are working they can escrow the additional rent that they would have to pay if they they have

a series of goals that they have and then they can use the money that they accumulate to do anything that they've set around their goals so it could be anything from buying a house to buying a car things of that nature so we do have that program that's a grant funded program through HUD we have the Ross program which is sort of similar in nature with the McDougall Terrace Community we were successful in winning something called the jobs plus grant it is only for me Google Terrace and it is because of the way the program is designed it's the only community that would qualify so that's a three-year four-year grant program geared directly to encouraging residents at medulla Terrace to go to work as I talked about our housing is based on your income so if you go to work you make more money your your rent goes up based on that 30 percent with the Jobs Plus program there is a freeze in that increase in rent so it's it's a great incentive program we are not quite a year in yet February

marks our first year I don't recall the numbers offhand but I think we have about 100 plus participants in the program we have about 50 or 60 that are actually working uh so so that's something that we're excited about we still have more work to do and it's only his first year and then with the CNA cni Grant we received we receive funding for six years to work with the families on that particular site so that really will be wrap around Services because we'll have case management we have other partners that really would be working with that family much more holistically than what DHA is able to do now based on the available funding that we have our resident service staff might even very small so staff of about five people thank you uh and this is my last question um are you in need of employer partners we are in need of employer partners for sure

and one of the things that I think though is is as equally important is kind of the the working with those residents to get them employment ready so we do have a program that we're doing with the workforce board we've gotten some funding from the Community Development Department and we're going to be working on how do we work with our our residents to get them Workforce ready and not just kind of okay now your Workforce ready and you step away but actually be there and provide some support around them so that as things get bumpy you can keep them on track we had a pilot program where we were trying to get particularly with a target for women who were interested in the construction field started out with six we ended up with one person who went through the program got employed was doing very well that actually got hired by that that contractor but eventually ended up having to step away from the position because Child Care was not

consistent and readily available so when you look at these job assistance programs you still revolve around some of the key basic issues Transportation child care reliable dependable Child Care remains one of the biggest barriers that you see the other barrier is this this thing has been termed the benefits cliff so when you get a job making just enough that it ends up causing you to lose some of your benefits but not enough to Make Up For What the benefits were doing those are I think probably the three bigger barriers you know getting them ready dealing with those Child Care Transportation issues and then that loss of benefits that you receive when you make just enough to cause a loss but not enough to Make Up For What the benefits of what you were getting yep that that is that is the reality and I'm glad you stated that um I if you are in need uh this is me directly offering this if you're in need of employment partners to uh you know

once individuals are ready uh I have resources for that and I and I think that that's part of us helping me complete this full circle of the ecosystem also I know that there are some Child Care Facilities that are being built I know the county has invested in some as well in Durham Tech uh case corner just opened up there are some downtown uh and I hope that we'll be able to utilize those as resources as well I'm really excited to hear about the Jobs Plus program for McDougall Terrace I'd like to see what we could do for other properties I know I've been talking about I think it's a bridge benefits Gap fund or something where basically uh right now and this is me personally speaking I do believe that you know this Federal Pro the federal government I guess um incentivizes poverty uh they we've created these you know uh properties to put folks in and it's a trap you know we provided them assistance it was really attractive because of their needs at the time and we haven't really given them a way out

you know and time they make a penny more they lose everything so I hope that we could find at least here locally because in the Bull City we've given to him and I hope that we can find a way to support these families that want to get out of those properties and get on to become more independent and I'm for all hands on deck and I'll bring every resource I have and every partner I have to help you out with that so Reach Out personally and we can we can connect those resources thank you so one thing I'll I'll just say you know the mayor mentioned earlier and Steve in La were talking about the perk program and the Bloomberg so perk which is Partnerships for Equitable and resilient communities that's part of what we're looking at because even though there might be a focus around our adjustable Injustice involved Community the issue is broader and bigger than that it's not just about housing but how do we get them a job and how do we make sure that they are job ready and all of these other components and I mentioned that just to say that what you talk about is exactly how we're

thinking about these efforts so that it's not just about a house or a job but how all of this stuff interconnects that's how Jess is reborn make sure y'all connect oh we we are we are very good oh this is all right here for that thank you thank you councilmember Williams I'm going to acknowledge council member Javier and then councilmember Johnson the question I know you can't necessarily answer this but I was just thinking about okay so we're with the folks with vouchers um they're basically left to their own devices to try and go and find housing and then what and you may not be able to answer this but are what supports are there I mean I'm imagining folks with you know Transportation issues potentially language barriers uh cultural gaps right and so we're kind of just leaving folks out to just kind of fend for themselves and that that is that is oh God that's accurate okay I

just want to make sure that so that and I think that is a a great point in terms of thinking about how there could be some relationships with some other organizations around helping our families find housing and you know being prepared for a landlord experience that that is something I think is a gap that definitely could use filling thank you and I can imagine relationships with our Public Schools anything about families because often those are the first touch points for our families is they're going to their guidance counselors they're going to supports in that school building because that's where they have a relationship thank you so much thank you council member Johnson thank you councilmember Hyman um thank you for being here and doing this presentation this was um really great I feel like I don't have any questions for you because I hear this all the time as your board liaison but it's good to it's good to get a review and to have all the folks here learn about the work that you're doing so I just have one comment I have a couple comments um I

was struck by the when you said that public housing was a failed model um and I think I just want to add to that it's a failed model because the federal government intentionally set it up to fail it's not there are perfectly you know functional amazing public housing programs in countries all over the world that support people that are not a kind of place that where everyone is trying to escape this was an intentional decision by our federal government to defund public housing in favor of more public-private partnership I will say pro-corporate models um and that's just where we're at we are dealing you know the facts on the ground are what they are and we're responding to that but um yeah it's not there's nothing it didn't fail because of the model inherently it failed because the federal government decided they weren't going to give us any money um and the other thing I wanted to say is that you know the city of Durham is we have built and put a lot of energy into our

affordable housing infrastructure our programs supporting the DHA we passed the largest housing bond in you know in the history of the state of North Carolina and we still have 10 000 families on the waiting list for vouchers um so you know the we we cannot solve this problem on our own um but I also think we're going to have to do more I think we're you know if if we want to continue to do the work to do affordable housing work at the level that we've been able to do for the last few years we're looking at another housing Bond we're looking at increasing you know our the tax levy for our affordable um for our dedicated housing fund like we have to put more money into this if we want to see the kind of results that our community really needs and we desperately need help from the state and from the federal government um because even if we put every penny of our money into housing we would not be able to solve the problem it it is beyond the scope of what the city government can actually do

um but you know things that I want us to continue thinking about and talking about on the council or how we you know how we can continue to invest um how we can continue to invest and invest more pretty much all the money from our you know from our 2019 bond is is allocated it's committed you know there there are no new projects can be funded with what we already have um and we we see from the numbers that you showed us and just from you know walking around the community and talking to people that we know that the need is still um is still extremely extremely dire and we need to do more thank you um okay because I was I want to say go ahead who's going next mayonio and then we got some member Freeman I'm waiting in line I didn't have anything I'm going to be last because I'm sitting here I didn't have anything there I'm sorry oh okay I just had one question around funding um how undefunded are you

and I know that that is a Bugaboo but I just want to get an idea you know because you when you think about 10 000 people that are just that are coming to you alone is out there we know that's not everybody we know that okay and then you have your housing currently two thousand about two thousand so that's about a three times five more and we actually are housing now and they haven't put money I'm with Jillian with the federal government this is one of the things I wish I had known before I gave that little pop-up so I could add this piece I didn't even think about that so they've been I'm fun uh underfunding for decades now for decades so I just want to get an idea of what you think from where you said because you work with the Housing Authority for decades you have one of the hardest jobs I think in the city because it's always a no-win for for you in your position it's you know as you're trying to transition and manage this

there's always like never enough never so you it's it's you you're kind of managing correct so so what does that number look like if you were funded in your and I know you probably thought about it over well I mean it depends on how you want to look at it right so if you if you look at the numbers that I mentioned earlier um based on the HUD standard which is not what we aspire to do it's 50 million dollars over the next five years to get our properties to a standard that is acceptable so that's the floor when you think about one way I talked about it was when I looked at when we doing we were doing the renovation work on Maureen and Damar it was about a hundred thousand dollars a unit to do the renovation work on those properties so that's another way to think about it is just you know if you gutted a property

what would it take to to get it to an ex really what we'd expect as a standard that any one of us would want to go and live in that unit and that means you know redoing everything from the studs all the way out so that if you look at renovation of a unit that's at least a hundred thousand dollars right so that's another way of thinking about it and then the other way is if you're going to tear down or rebuild what is the cost per unit today to replace a unit and so you know 250 300 000 somewhere in that neighborhood that's simplistic ways to think about it thank you and thank you councilman we're going to I'm going to acknowledge councilman Friedman thank you councilman I I appreciate the conversation and I just had a few more questions um and they're specifically tied to the way in which I feel like I don't want to I want to kind of lift up what councilmember Williams is saying

and juxtaposed to what councilmember Johnson is saying and realizing like there's this peace of how public housing has been put forward as if it could solve The World's problem for housing and that's not the case but there is definitely the need to always have available housing that is for the public um especially acknowledging that there are folks who have reached a certain age and will not go back to work and there are people who have developmental or mental disabilities that are not going to be able to work seven dollars and 25 cents an hour to ever cover the cost of housing and then on the other side it's creating the kind of system so that folks who are in public housing do have stair steps kind of latch kind of getting their way out and so I really wanted to um I just wanted to lift that up because it's really like two different sides of this coin and making sure that public

housing is always available is important and so whether it's the federal government that we need to take this up with or HUD specifically or just our private you know you know private you know housing partners or even just private business like this is something that we have not we've not delved into in a level that I feel like we do need to and I'm and I'm mindful because I'm having conversations with folks who are trying to raise you know Investments of 75 million dollars to do you know this Innovative idea but we have people who don't have housing and so I yeah I just want to say that and then on the operation side I can't help but just want to say that there's there's a piece of me that's concerned because as we're moving to more of this Vash you know mixed mixed income private um rad property managers who are in

place who's going to be responsible for the oversight of those property managers because as we saw with CCI it's a concern but somebody's got to be responsible for that if you're already short in your budget on operations now what does it look like when you have 12 different versions of CCI or TCB or any other organization in place so the DHA is responsible for that oversight number one the other piece is what we want to be able to do is build up our property management so that we can take over to management of those properties in the future we've just had such a struggle operationally primarily because we don't have the Staffing otherwise we'd be in a position to manage those properties ourselves so built into each one of our relationships we have a p we have a clause that says that you know after a period of years DHA would be able to take over management but DHA has to get its management

operations up to par to be in a position to take that over and because we've been struggling with staffing issues we haven't even begun to make any inroads towards that preparation thank you and I felt like that was necessary for you to say and on another note I just want to just hearken back to the conversation about income-based discrimination and see if you've heard anything from our from your counterpart in Charlotte with the way that things have gone with that ban on you know income income-based discrimination yeah but I mean it was just recently done there are other states though when I was in Maryland there was a big push to have a state law that would ban income-based discrimination and I think they made some progress they were they were every year they get a little closer a little closer but there were some cities that already had implemented that so it does exist in other places where they say basically you can't discriminate against

someone because of what their income source is which is essentially saying you can't you know deny someone who has a voucher um you know it for me it's it's a little perplexing because you're basically saying 70 percent of your rent is going to be guaranteed right how often is that the case and it shows up in your bank account the first of every month automatically um so I I think um like I mentioned if we can kind of revisit this notion of a landlord Roundtable and begin to get into some of those discussions to understand why they aren't accepting vouchers is it because the vouchers Don't Give Them Enough income or is it because they're just discriminating against people who happen to have a voucher thank you I appreciate that and one last point I'll make is that one of the other challenges is around security deposits so when we were doing this work before a group of landlords said you know look it's not really about the security deposit we just want it when it's when we need it so we want to know that if someone abuses a unit that there's going to be money available and so we were

talking about putting together a security deposit pool and that way if you're a voucher holder you might have 50 or 100 you can do for security deposit but if you're part of that pool then that landlord knows they can get say up to 2 000 if they needed it so it's a way to kind of um put the funds together it's almost like an insurance policy for for security deposit that would give landlords a lot of comfort as well that's a great idea I think um it would be nice to get those landlord roundtables going up again and I'm not sure if the mayor has bandwidth board but I would say that I'd be willing to offer support in that because I think it's important I will acknowledge that I know a lot of folks who have vouchers and I've heard so much feedback that I'm always calling and reaching out to figure out what is going on with the Housing Authority so I received those calls I will say that I think it would be good and I'm not sure who we need to talk to on staff to figure that out but

I would be willing to support that okay thank you thank you council members and so I've been sitting here burning um to to just say again years years years ago um I was a director for the Housing Voucher Program in New York and one of the things that we faced was that the landlords first of all discriminated because they didn't want they felt that the the people who were looking for the housing vouchers were going to bring a certain level of crime a certain level of drugs a certain level right so definitely that's already preconceived discrimination but also we had the problem of them not getting their money in time right now you just said it comes in their account monthly on time all the time which is one of what was what was which was one of my jobs which is kind of kind of rallied those landlords together to hear their concerns and try to come up with strategic plans to be able to help them to want to uh you know ask want to give more housing to our clients so I also would be willing to join in with the mayor and Freeman to try to see what we can do to make this

more attractive for um our landlords to be able to offer housing I do know that they probably are going to be able to get more money um because of this the market of where we're at with housing right now with actually having other people um get these apartments but I think that if we can like I think my council member William said if we can come up with some type of incentives to be able to help them to kind of you know house our our clients my clients excuse me our residents who I'm thinking about my social work at years ago our residents who really are in need but also we educate them that you know everybody needs help and everybody needs a chance to try to get you know a place to live the other thing is um when you talk about those so let me just say this too from from a little girl who grew up on public housing and I'm going to speak to uh councilmember Johnson's uh point that public housing wasn't built for failure it was built for temporary help right but what happened was the lack of funding the lack of jobs and the lack of being able

to move people from one level of function to another level of function then it became an issue where you have all this crime and all these things going on I am a product of the fact that I grew up in public housing my whole family right but also I was able to get educated I was able to get a job and I was able to move out of that environment but that's because there were services that were wrapped around my family to be able to do that it cannot happen if that doesn't happen because I wouldn't be sitting here I would still be at 831 Noble Avenue where my mother is now okay but all of us were able to get and she always said like I don't want you to be a victim of your environment but you you know you have to have those services to be able to get you out of that so I'm saying education jobs to be able to move you to another level of function and the other question I have because this is also from my history a lot of times with us going up in public housing so I would live in that apartment and then you're growing up there right and then maybe your mother or father dies off God forbid and then you state that they're able to stay in that apartment is that happening because again that's eliminating the amount of people that the amount of people that we can

get to get off that list to go into their house and you know that's what I'm saying so you might still have that 10 000 people waiting but if I've been living in public housing for 30 years because I've seen it I know it right my parents die off then because I've been a person living in that apartment then I get first dip on that apartment which then means that that apartment is not going to come available for anybody else to get in can you speak to that because I know that's what happened in New York that's that's part of federal policy so there there are basically if that happens then that that family can still continue to live there as long as there's an adult in the household but but I'd also say they wouldn't be living there if they didn't qualify for the housing right and and and and for a lot of people don't know the the the maximum income is eighty percent of Ami to go into public housing so it can be a pretty high number we don't have any most of our folks are nowhere close to that like overwhelming no one is even close to that so it's kind of to the point that both councilman Williams made in councilman councilmember Friedman is

when you think about public housing correct it is not what it was intended to be um but if you think about this if I have a job let's say I'm making ten dollars an hour can I go out in a private sector and get a house that doesn't cost me 70 80 of my income so you're you're better off in public housing because you're only paying 30 percent of net income and you can do more to serve your family and if I'm making twenty dollars an hour but I have a larger family et cetera et cetera to the point that council member Freeman made we have and that's why I always show the disability number we have a lot of folks that have disability so that limits their ability to earn but where did they go for housing if you don't if you can't get income-based housing right so it's a little bit of flipping the the notion of getting out of public housing and I think we need to think about we changed the public housing environment so they're mixed that's why I'm a fan of mixed income communities so you create communities in which are welcoming in

Social socioeconomically they are communities that anyone who want to be a part of so that it does lead to like in your case you talked about being you know essentially a second generation public housing resident but you've been able to get out because your family was able to have the resources to get you there so you you create environments that are that are well-structured well-run comfortable and that you have a mix of incomes and a mix of folks there that encourages folks to go out and do the things that we'd all aspire to do and I think that's how we have to look at public housing as a model so it's a part of the community not some independent island of the community of Durham yeah and then my last month and you're absolutely right and so that's why I'm a fan of mixed housing too because when you have a certain level of people living in one area like for example you know when you're living and I'm not saying that this has happened here but as a person who grew up in the projects you know we were dealing with rats and roaches and

this and that and the crime right and it you just feel like you're in this fixated situation and you can't get out of it right right and it's not like you feel like you have no hope and again without education and without jobs I wouldn't be sitting here but the other thing is to um and I think I had to see a moment lost my my point because I just I'm very passionate about this because again people don't want to live in those type of environments they want to live in good environments and I think the bottom line is that we need more money as as councilman Johnson said we need to kind of advocate on a state in the federal level and it's a shame and really ridiculous that we have to even sit here and talk about the fact of like the man asks how much money are you lacking this is ridiculous because it should be a common right for everybody to be able to live in housing that should be a common right we shouldn't be fighting for this we should but again this is what it is but again thank you so much for you know I can go on because I'm just passionate about it and so are my students they're doing all kind of projects about housing because you know I teach social work but thank

you for your Deep dive again we're going to continue to have oh let me ask again mayonia and city manager Paige has one and I have one too but I'm gonna let see the manager page go first can you imagine page thank you um I know you referenced this in your presentation Anthony but I wanted to bring it you know to some some very specifics in terms of um just looking Googling looking at average two-bedroom household in Durham in October is fifteen hundred ninety four dollars a month that may not be perfect but that's what came up on my phone here but when I look at fair market rents is 13 15. so there's you know there's a fairly large difference and I was wondering if you could highlight what that means as it relates to folks with vouchers looking for apartments and the other side of that the the folks who are renting apartments right so I mean clearly that tells you the gap between what the fmrs are fair market rents and

what the average is and keeping in mind it's an average right so there's there's a lot of folks that are apartments that are less than that and there are plenty that are higher um we're we're looking at that issue from a couple of perspectives one we have the ability to raise our fair market rent to 110 percent and there's been a lot of discussion at HUD to allowing us to do 120 they did allow us to go up to 120 during the pandemic and we are actually crunching the numbers now to figure out if we can do that now so that we can be much more competitive with what's out in the marketplace because ultimately what that number also says is that on the higher end you're going to see higher rents the lower end meaning the lower quality units are going to be less and so we we want to make sure that when people are finding units they're finding them in you know decent neighborhoods and they're decent quality housing too so the flip side of that though is that our bucket our budget bucket is only this big so if we're raising the fmrs we're

reducing the number of vouchers that are available and that's the challenge there not to mention the fact that once we raise those fmrs and we got to pay for that out of that same bucket and so we've got to be careful how we are doing this and rolling it out so we don't find ourselves in a deficit situation just just one one last thing and and this problem is going to be um can be answered that I know I've heard um councilwoman Johnson and councilwoman uh copiera talk about this when I went to be a part of the initiative with blown Bloomberg where you have about 40 Mayors from all across the world housing was not one of their issues housing was not one of the issues and I've heard and I just want to raise up that point for some of our season Council women to talk into that space to the general public about what they know

in that area and I always hear them talk about housing being a commodity and that it has is it looks very different in the United States versus other countries who have done it well so can you all spend just a moment just trying to lift that up so that people will understand when you say that what that means and that the greatest country in the world the world doesn't act like it in housing because I clearly heard a lot of those uh Mayors from other countries saying we don't have this issue that is not an issue for us oh I'm always happy to talk about this please speak today um yeah I mean I think this country just has a very particular history around um the commodification of human needs and housing in the United States is treated entirely almost entirely as something that is housing and land

bought and sold on a market and it just presents really striking problems um when something that everyone needs to survive is only allocated based on whether and how much you can pay and I will disagree with one of my colleagues I forget um who said that you know public housing isn't the solution I believe actually the public housing is 100 the solution that government provided um housing is the only way to guarantee that housing is provided to every resident of this country as a human right there has to be a government funded or subsidized option for housing for every single person because otherwise if you can't afford housing you're on the street or you're staying with family or you're living in a basement or a car right because if you if you make housing entirely under the control of a capitalist Market it you know we get the problems that we have here we're billions of dollars of foreign Capital

comes into the City and all of a sudden nobody can afford to live downtown and it's something that is entirely um unregulated our housing market is much less regulated than housing markets in other countries government have very in North Carolina especially we have very little ability to um intervene in the housing market in order to make the changes that would need to be made for people to be able to afford housing things like inclusionary zoning which is banned rent control which is banned that in other states that you know that still have warehousing is still a commodity that is bought and sold there are levers that governments can use to make that Marketplace a little bit less toxic and more accessible for folks we don't even have those options the countries that are most successful with housing their entire populations are the ones who tax they're rich and invest that money into providing housing for people and we

choose not to do that here and that's why we're in this situation um and we so we are left to mitigate around the margins as much as we can um and I think Durham honestly does a much better job of doing that than most other cities in this country we have an incredible partnership between the city and the Housing Authority we invest you know millions and millions of dollars of tax funding every year we had 70 percent plus support for our housing Bond like our residents get it our leadership got it and we're doing as much as we can but the structure of the system is against us and you don't fix structural problems with individual actions you fix them with structural change and that's what we're lacking and unfortunately even though we are the government we are the smallest and weakest branch of the government and do not have the capacity to make the kind of structural change that we would that we would really need um so you know so we need the government the federal government to invest in housing the way

they do in Western Europe that's the only way we get out of this mess we can help but we can't fix it thank you madam mayor council member do you want to say you can just say ditto and I do want to say I mean this is not a I mean FDR's second Bill of Rights included you know housing is a right and we have not in my opinion honored that it's not that this is this is not a new problem in this country and we know that the legacy of who carried that burden in this country is very different um I can say that we brought when folks are like oh no government intervention there's a whole group and class of people what you would call White ethnics after World War II who absolutely benefited from massive government intervention and it brought a whole generation of people into the middle class and it was probably one of the times we were the most stable and most affluent so it's not that we don't even we do have some of that in this country we just choose we chose and I will not get too deeply

into politics but you can look at an election in 1980. to make some real clear distinctions on the decisions that we made and where we were moving with economic policy in this country and Sheila has a horrible history around that because they are the birthplace of neoliberal politics if you know anything about economics and the Chicago boys thank you so I'm gonna wrap it up but I just want to I think I I remember my senior moment and question well statement that um speaking to council member I'm Javier when she talked about some of the barriers that some of our residents might have when they're trying to look for housing and from a social work standpoint like a lot of our our residents again like she said language barriers but also sometimes landlords can be intimidating and sometimes they don't know how to navigate or negotiate or talk you know to the landlord so that's why we need more case management and I know we have some programs out there with some more Case Management Services to be able to help them navigate and because you know as as a social worker many years ago I

would go out with clients and they would I mean you know my clients as a social worker and they would be intimidated and sometimes the landlords wouldn't treat them nice you know so they need somebody there to advocate for them so yeah I like that yeah I'm going to turn it back to our mayor I just wanted to end on there are resources regarding employers ready to partner just let me know so we can bring those to you to help get people hired we'll do thank you all thank you thank you Mr Scott and thank you councilwoman Jose Harmon for leading a very very informative and sort of sad discussion uh for me I just have to State on the record that for African-Americans enslaved people living in America we have never been housing secure never

never ever um and and and that's our reality so when you uh and then if you put that in with the young people who have had some justice involved background uh they have never ever had an opportunity to have a chance at the American dream and so hopefully with the Justice movement with Mr Scott and all the other Community Partners that we have that we're going to make the difference that we can but as you know it's going to take more than us we really need people to think about the commitments that folk who they let are going to if they are really want to help their neighbors we got to make some different kinds of commitments to our neighbors in terms of housing that should be a right I'm gonna see a flat out you should have a right to have some place to lay your head as a human being this is ridiculous the greatest

country in the world ought to act like it in terms of housing