Exploring the Opportunities: Affordable, Accessible, and Integrated Housing 101. Presenters: Jay Klein and Stephen Gold. October 30, 2003 SHARON: Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the Web cast and teleconference, exploring the opportunities, affordable, accessible and integrated housing 101, presented by Steve Gold and Jay Klein. I'm Sharon Finney with ILRU and I'll be your moderator today. Just a couple of technical things we need to get started with before we begin our presentation. Our presenters will pause for questions and the operator will give you the instructions on the queue. For those of you folks on the telephone today, the operator will give you those instructions. Please try to keep your questions relevant to the topic. If you plan to ask a question, please take yourself off of the speaker phone and use a hand set or a headset. It just reduces the echo effect. Also please speak as loudly and clearly as possible. For those of you participating via the web today, if you do have a question, you can E-mail those questions directly by clicking on the link at the bottom of your RealOne Player or you can send them directly to webcast@ilru.org. I'll take those questions and voice them to Jay and Steve. And if you should encounter any problems during the presentation today, you can call our technical support staff at 713-520-0232. Now I'm happy to introduce Darrell Jones, our program training coordinator with the Community Living Exchange Collaborative at ILRU. Good afternoon, Darrell. DARRELL: Hi, Sharon. Thanks so much. I'm very pleased to have the opportunity to introduce our speakers for today. They are two of the most well-known housing experts in the country and we're sure that you will learn information that will be useful to you. First, I'd like to introduce Stephen Gold who is an attorney specializing in civil rights and he only represents persons with disabilities, and besides representing individuals in lawsuits, he also represents ADAPT and Not Dead Yet two of the nation's most prominent disability rights organizations. Just one example of Steve's accomplishments is that he successfully argued the case Helen L. that a state discriminates against a person by requiring them to receive services in a segregated nursing home rather than providing them services in the community. If this sounds familiar, you're right, this lawsuit established the legal principle that persons with disabilities are entitled to receive services in the most integrated setting appropriate to their needs. And the failure to provide those services was discriminatory. The Supreme Court in the Olmstead decision followed the legal principle, and as you know, the most integrated setting is now the law of the land. His accomplishments are lengthy, so suffice it to say, he's one of the top legal eagles in the country on disability issues and we're delighted to have him be a part of this call today. Jay Klein is our other wizard presenter, another housing guru that many of you may know from other presentations and activities he's been involved in through ILRU. Jay is Director of the Center for Housing and New Community Economics, that's CHANCE for short and the National Home of Your Own Alliance at the Institute on Disability at the University of New Hampshire. He is an educator, community organizer, project director and author. One of his other hats is serving on the management team for the Community Living Exchange Collaborative at ILRU, where he provides technical assistance to states implementing systems change programs. To find out even more about Steve and Jay, can you find their full bios on the ILRU website. Welcome, gentlemen, and it's all yours. JAY: Thank you. STEPHEN: Great. Thank you very much. Hi Jay. JAY: Hi Steve. Let me just outline a little bit how we're going to do this and you go ahead and add, Steve, as we go. We're -- Steve and I had some time on the phone the other day and really decided that this call was going to be basic information about housing, opportunities, options about housing, and we were going to try to be, in general, in relation to housing. And we're going to try to hold each other to this, and one of our struggles was -- is how do we do this without us being in the same room. Both of us are used to seeing each other when we're presenting. So we decided we were going to kind of have a conversation today for about 45 minutes and then open it up for questions. It's going to be a focused conversation, but it's also going to be unfocused. We will answer questions at the very end for, as I said, about half an hour or 45 minutes, and as you're thinking about this, if this is the right call to be on, we're really glad you're here. And if for some reason you say, oh, I was thinking it was going to be specifically about something else, then we won't be insulted if you decide you don't want to be here. So what we're going to do is we're going to start with talking about some of the fundamental assumptions that Steve and I have in the work that we do around housing. STEPHEN: We think it's important for you to understand this because we believe that it's probably shared by all of you as well and by getting them out explicitly, it will just make it a little easier for everybody to understand how difficult this issue is. JAY: You want to start, Steve? STEPHEN: No, you can, Jay, because you wanted to start with the first -- the broad thing. JAY: the first thing that I want to talk about, and just be able to say is that Steve and I, when we think about housing, we think about affordable, accessible and integrated housing. And the reason we add the word integrated, is many times when we start to think about housing that's available, if we only use the words affordable and accessible in describing that, many times that describes institutional settings also and we want to distinguish between those. STEPHEN: and it also describes housing that may be limited to certain ages or disabled only. JAY: Right. And so what we want is we want to be affordable, accessible, and integrated. STEPHEN: the second assumption, Jay, is that this is -- that people are really frustrated by the -- and it's related to basically the complexity of the housing world. The disability community came into housing relatively recently, just ten or fifteen years at the most, and the housing world has been around since 1935 in terms of public housing and publicly funded housing and it's been built on top of each other every year as a new congressional program is enacted. And it's very frustrating to know how do you put it all together, and one assumption that I think people ought to understand is that their frustration is not unique to them. I guess when I think about many times in relation to that frustration is that part of what we need to do is we need to demystify this. STEVE: because it's like a puzzle. When I've done training for some of you, my first overhead is like a puzzle that little kids have where you're trying to put a circle and a triangle and a rectangle block in a -- you know, in an oblong opening, and they don't fit neatly and you keep pushing and pushing and pushing, and it is a puzzle and there are many, many overlaps of it. JAY: What happens is we then have to cut off a piece of the puzzle in order to get it into that space. STEPHEN: Right and when you cut them off, you sometimes lose part of the affordability and accessibility of the integration. JAY: Another assumption is that many people with disabilities do not believe they'll ever have their own home or many times they don't believe they'll have an accessible home, so they'll settle for much less. Meaning that they will settle for a home that's not accessible or they'll settle for a place that they don't necessarily want to live, but that's as much as they think that they're able to get. STEPHEN: Another assumption I think we make is that the disability community that we're working with, particularly, is low income, and you add low income with disability and it presents problems different than just low income per se. And related I guess to low income, Jay, is the SSI issue that we talked about the other day on the phone. And that is to say with such a large percentage of people who are disabled receiving SSI as their source of income, how do you make SSI go far enough to live and to rent and/or buy? JAY: and I don't think we're going to make SSI, so we're going to make SSI go as far as it's going to go, and we will continue to work on raising SSI and other public benefits, but we also have to look at other resources that we can supplement that SSI with. STEPHEN: Resources in the housing market. JAY: Yes, exactly. STEPHEN: and that's some of the stuff we're going to try the talk about today. JAY: and this lack of knowledge comes from many places and I think -- and we both think that with a little bit of information about our local communities and about how money flows from the Federal Government down to our local communities and from private sources to our local communities, we can better understand how we can access some of these funds. STEPHEN: and people should not feel embarrassed by either the lack of knowledge and overwhelmed by the frustration and the puzzle part of this housing. I mean, one of the things I told Jay, when I was doing straight legal services in the 1970's, where we were dealing with, quote-unquote, just poor people, housing has all these numbers, letters, and sub parts and the statute is so big, etcetera, that it's easy to get overwhelmed and what we're trying to do today is to say, hey, there are simple ways of approaching this to make this both understandable and workable. JAY: That's great. And so, Steve, do you want to talk maybe -- what we're going to try to do is maybe talk a little bit about how the money flows. STEPHEN: Great. STEPHEN: You can start with -- housing is two parts in this country, private and public. And I really think it's important -- do you remember the football movie, show me the money? Our motto is let's follow the money, because if you can find the money stream, you'll understand what programs are attached to it and, therefore, what duties are attached and what are the handles to manipulate the programs to get the housing for people with disabilities. Let me talk -- we're going to break down public and private because they are different. They overlap frequently, but they are conceptually a little different. Start with the public, what it may be called that or it may be called something else or it may be a separate department or it may be a part of another larger department, but there is a group in your state that short term anyhow, called the state housing finance agency. On the local level, you have obviously still only in the public realm, you have public housing authorities, and these guys and agencies deal with two types of housing. They deal with public housing, i.e., the bricks and mortars when you see a building, hey, that's public housing, but they also deal with housing vouchers. They administer the federally funded housing voucher program. Also on the local level there is -- most places in the country, particularly in the larger areas, there are housing -- departments of housing that administer something called the home and Community Development Block Grant program, a federal-funded program. Those are the big -- I'm sure I missed some, Jay. So help me and fill me in. I didn't talk about Fannie Maes and such, which you'll do. JAY: I will. Just one of the things I wanted to mention is that the housing finance agency, many of the housing finance agencies also administer vouchers. STEPHEN: Yes, a good point. And sometimes public housing and those locales which don't have their own either public housing agencies, that's primarily it. JAY: and why that's significant is that the money flows and if your housing finance agency also administers vouchers or public housing, then your local community may have its own public housing authority where you can get on a waiting list. And, on the state housing authority as well as the local housing authority. And so if there is not housing available on the local level, it may be administered by the state level. So we need to know that mix of how that's all put together. STEPHEN: but clearly in the public area, it's really -- as in the private -- but in the public one we're on right now, you have to know how the different levels of government, federal, state, and local, fit together in terms of funding and/or being responsible to administer programs because those are going to be the pressure points for you guys and your local political activity to pressure the responsible agencies to deliver the housing programs that we're going to talk about. JAY: Steve, I don't know, do you want to mention the funds? I know you mentioned the CDBG funds. On an allocation -- well, there are basically four funds that come to each state on an allocation basis. STEPHEN: Okay. JAY: Community block grant money. STEPHEN: Otherwise known as CDBG, Community Development Block Grant. Jay, explain to people what you mean by an allocation basis. JAY: There is an allocation formula, based on population, geography and I don't know the whole total mix of it. It is an allocation formula from the Federal Government, from HUD, that then allocates funds to communities based on that allocation formula. STEPHEN: and sometimes to the state for those areas that don't get the allocation formula because they're in the rural and smaller areas. JAY: That's right. STEPHEN: That's one. JAY: and the HOME program. STEPHEN: All in caps. JAY: and it's Home Investment Partnership Program. STEPHEN: and that's a federally funded program as the CDBG, and it's administered by JAY: It's administered by the housing -- the state housing agency as well as local communities. STEPHEN: Right. JAY: an allocation based on population. STEPHEN: Once we list the four, we'll come back and say some of the stuff that they do. Go ahead. JAY: and then there is an Emergency Sheltered Grant program, and that was created for states and local communities to meet the basic shelter and supportive needs of homeless people in that particular area. And then there is -- and then the fourth one is housing opportunities for people with AIDS or HOPWA. STEPHEN: We're going to deal primarily in terms of housing for people with disabilities, the first two, the CDBG and the HOME in terms of the allocation formula ones. There is also -- I did one of these web sites for ILRU on Section 8 a while back, Sharon will probably remember, and we're going to spend very little time -- since I spent two hours on Section 8 exclusively before, but I mean, Section 8 otherwise known as housing vouchers, of which there are many different names now that deal with housing vouchers. There are mainstream vouchers, there are -- what are some of the other terms? JAY: Fair Share. STEPHEN: Fair Share vouchers, a whole bunch of vouchers that are around that are administered by either the -- that come from the Feds and that are administered and funded through the state housing finance agency and that local housing authority. The reason before I mentioned the people about the IRS, very important, as a source one doesn't normally think of IRS in terms of housing, but they're the ones -- and it is on another program, Jay, on an allocation basis, the low-income housing tax credit. JAY: Right. STEPHEN: Based on the number of people in your state based on other kinds of formula, every state receives a certain dollar amount per year to allocate for low-income housing tax credits. My experience is that those are primarily exclusively administered by the state housing finance agency, administered meaning they're the ones that get the tax credit and they allocate it to either local and/or private or nonprofit entities on a local level. Other things on a more local level is when we think about public housing, there are two things, and only two things, it's the straight up public -- you know, the public housing program, and it's the section -- it's the housing voucher Section 8 program and that could either be -- either two kinds of vouchers, project-based and/or tenant-based and the difference is very important. We spend a good deal of time last time doing that -- discussing that. The tenant-based voucher is the individual gets it and can take that the voucher, which is basically a rent supplement. When we talk about SSI earlier, it's really hard to make it in many of the large urban areas on just SSI without a rent supplement. And the voucher is the rent supplement and the first kind is the tenant- based, namely, the individual gets the voucher and has to go in the private market and find a place that will accept the voucher and be approved by the housing authority, and the second way is project- based, namely, the voucher is attached to a specific unit and the individual tenant doesn't have a right to move with that voucher. The voucher stays with the unit. The two programs we talked a little bit about going back to CDBG, have lots of flexibility - Community Development Block Grant. There are certain statutory formulas as to the amount of money that must be spent on housing. My recollection, it's about 25 percent, Jay, do I have it close? JAY: Right. STEPHEN: But some locales can spend much more than that on housing and it's not just housing construction. They can use it for other things as well. Jay, you had some examples the other day on the phone on that. JAY: Well, many times it's used for accessibility, it's used for renovation. STEPHEN: Accessibility meaning home modification. JAY: Right. Exactly. STEPHEN: What was the second one? I didn't mean to interrupt you. JAY: I said renovations. It's used many times not only for home modifications, but community accessibility. So to put curb cuts, make buildings, public building's accessible. STEPHEN: How about rental supplements? Did you ever hear of any CDBG used for that? JAY: I haven't. I've heard of HOME dollars. STEPHEN: Okay, talk about HOME then. JAY: I can give an example. Right now the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs just put out $2 million as rental assistance. STEPHEN: How does that work using the HOME money? JAY: Well, HOME money is limited and my -- I think that it's limited to five years. So it's a short-term rental supplement, but it's done very much similar to how a housing choice voucher would be in that sense. STEPHEN: So the individual who applies has to be financially eligible and applies for it. JAY: What Texas did is really unique is they set aside $2 million specifically for people who would be affected by the Olmstead decision. And those dollars can be applied for by up to $500,000 by nonprofit, public housing authorities or other units of government to then allocate to people and they can be used for rental subsidies, security deposits and utilities. STEPHEN: The recipients of the Community Development Block Grant money have extraordinarily wide discretion in terms of how they allocate their funds. From the housing -- the 25 percent, it must be for housing to the other 75 percent in terms of where they're going to spend their money. And the reason I really want to emphasize that is that when we get to the next point in this discussion, in terms of accessing these funds, it's important for you to hear that. JAY: Oh let me give a couple of minutes on private funds. We said we would do that. If we look on a national level, there are many national organizations that put out private funds. Let me just mention a couple in relation to that. For example, foundations, so we have a number of national foundations, for example, the Fannie Mae Foundation or the Ford foundation that will put out money in relation to creating -- accessing and educating about affordable, accessible housing. In addition, there are sometimes national corporations or international corporations that will put out funds with a specific area in mind, especially if those corporations have facilities within a local community. So those are some things that we need to look toward to. STEPHEN: Relating to that in the private area, a lot of places, I know in Philadelphia we have a very large community reinvestment fund, which is basically a local -- locally developed loan programs around housing. JAY: and where that comes from, Steve, is a federal law that goes back to the '70's, which is called the Community Reinvestment Act, and so basically what the Community Reinvestment Act, without spending a whole bunch of time on it, says is that if a local bank wants to expand and have another branch, they have to show the Federal Government, and there are actually four agencies of the Federal Government that look at this, to be able to say that they've given back to the community. And so in response to that, a number of banks form coalitions to be able to create opportunities for affordable housing within their communities or giving back to their community in one way, but affordable housing is a big way to be able to do that. And the other -- the other kind of national group or federal group, which is interesting because it's called the federal home loan bank and it is monitored by the Federal Government, but there are no tax dollars that go into the federal home loan bank system. The federal home loan bank system, there are 8,000 member owners of the federal home loan bank system. So meaning that 8,000 banks in the country participate in the federal home loan bank system, which is 12 regional banks. Those banks then -- so when they form this coalition, and it's basically a coalition, when they form this coalition, they then have access to credit or creating affordable housing within communities and giving back to their communities. And there are a number of programs that are listed in their funding list, Steve, at the federal home loan banks put out and there are 12 regional banks and you can apply for those funds as local agencies through your local banks. STEPHEN: and how can listeners and local groups, Jay, basically access these funds? How can they -- not limiting to the funds you just talked about, but all the public funds we were talking private. JAY: Let's start with the private funds, for example, is that what I would suggest that -- where we were just talking about the federal home loan bank is that you check with who is your regional home loan bank. So for example, if you live in Oregon, your federal home loan bank is the Bank of Seattle. The federal home loan bank of Seattle and find out what their criteria are. It's easy enough to get on their website and they put out millions and millions of dollars for affordable housing, and they have what program -- what's the eligibility, how to apply, what kinds of things they do, and how you can apply for -- how you can apply for their funds. STEPHEN: What else in the private realm to access? JAY: I'm sorry, I didn't understand. STEPHEN: Besides that access is one form of private money, what about Fannie Mae? How do agencies are we talking about? Well, we're talking about on the federal level, the department of housing and urban development, HUD, we're also talking about on the federal level, the Internal Revenue Service, even though people think of housing as a local -- a local issue and a local problem, there are many state handles on the state level and every state has in dealing with housing in the public realm a state housing finance agency. People find out? JAY: the Fannie Mae foundation on a national level, it has a website. They have certain priorities that they set. I think it's twice a year that they accept letters of intent and applications. So you can write for a proposal to them, but in addition, there is a partnership, a Fannie Mae partnership offices in almost every region and state in the country. So you can contact them and they can help you access some of those kinds of funds, too. STEPHEN: Let's focus a little bit of accessing the public funds. There are two or three main sources that every locale basically has to -- what they have to do that listeners have to get to if they want to get in the housing world and game. And they've got to become knowledgeable. One is obviously something called the Annual Consolidated Plan. The second one is the Public Housing Plan, and the third one is the public Housing Administration Plan. JAY: Yes. STEPHEN: Shall we break those down a little bit? JAY: Why don't you start with The Consolidated Planning? STEPHEN: Every entity that gets some of these federal funds we're talking about has to basically put together a plan that they submit to HUD, annually. And it's called a consolidated plan. I think (Inaudible) year 27 or 28 or who knows. Every year they have to have two public hearings, and it is on the HUD web page. You can get a copy of the consolidated plan that has to be completed by your housing departments in your locales and the state because they have to do a state-consolidated plan. And the reason that this is important is that twice a year they have to have a public hearing. And experience that the advocates in Philadelphia showed me, anyhow, is by becoming players in this, and appearing over a period of several years, they can really have an impact on how the allocation of either CDBG money, of HOME money, etcetera, is actually spent and made part of the consolidated plan. Many, many people have lots of complaints about HUD, but one of the things that we sort of think in fact occurs is that if you were to appear -- and the consolidated plan has to identify housing barriers, has to identify people -- groups who have more critical housing needs and etcetera, etcetera, all stuff that we can get and become a part of to make sure they talk about people in terms of affordable, accessible, integrated housing for people with disabilities, which historically has not been part of the consolidated plans because we have not been at the table making the parties that put -- that submit these plans to HUD annually recognize that people with disabilities have housing needs that are in part like other low income people, but in part a little different. And they have to be met. So the consolidated plan is -- you know, depending on how -- it's a booklet that they follow the HUD guidelines, and the template is on the HUD web page for the consolidated plan, and even though -- if you were to appear and object to part of the consolidated plan, at least the following has to occur. At least the local entity that submits that plan has to state in it that you objected and what their response is to you in writing. In writing, i.e, to HUD. That's away of starting some kind of dialogue. It's away of exercising some political pressure that we're going to talk about in a little bit, but it's the consolidated plan is really critical because it looks at the housing needs of your locale, whether it be a city, a county or by the state and the state housing finance agencies that do it for those parts of the state that, you know, don't do consolidated plans for themselves. That's the consolidated plan. What about the Public Housing Plan? JAY: Well, the public housing plan then sets local policies for program administration. It follows HUD regulations, and it follows -- and it must look at the PHA policy where they have discretion for local -- where they have local discretion. So it's to state publicly how they're -- what they're doing with their discretion, basically their mission statement, their long-and short term plans, the majority of the plan relates to public housing. STEPHEN: Jay, let me interrupt you. In terms of consolidated -- your last sentence applies exactly the same to the consolidated plan in the sense that they have to tell HUD how they're going to use their CDBG money, their HOME money, etcetera. So that in the consolidated plan you can have much, much more than 25 percent going to housing if you have -- if you can convince the housing people to do it. I didn't mean to interrupt you. JAY: No, that's okay. And this one deals with the public housing -- the public housing plan. The majority of it is public housing, but it also discusses housing choice vouchers and it talks about the applicants, it talks about resources and it talks about the policies and rules that govern the program. STEPHEN: Including preferences? JAY: Yes. Not the preferences -- it just talks about the policies and rules that govern the program. So the preferences come into the housing choice voucher administrative plan. That's where it's specified. This is with the critical piece for many of the people on the phone, but it has to be developed in consultation with program participants, whether that be public housing people who live in public housing, or people who are using Section 8 or housing choice vouchers. So it has to be developed within consultation and it has to be submitted to HUD annually prior to the start of the fiscal year. So based on what you just said a few minutes ago about making your needs known, that also needs to be looked at, is who is being consulted in relation to the development of the plan. It requires public hearings, and how is that process going in the sense of have we had input in relation to this plan? STEPHEN: and I want listeners to know that where you look at these plans, both the consolidated and the public housing plan as a point of entry into the decision-making process. You can have some real success. I mean, we have seen all over the country, policies change because the disabled community, the independent living centers, etcetera, have pressured the politicos that make these plans or sign off on these plans, um, listen to the fact that there is a disability housing crisis out there. JAY: and that's so true and that's why reading these particular three plans, just even knowing it, it gives us knowledge and information. So the Housing Choice Voucher Administrative Plan describes of course the PHAs, discretion and relation to housing choice vouchers and it talks about all the regulations in relation to that. Again, where the PHA has local discretion, whenever there is a policy change, a new plan needs to be developed or a new -- or that plan has to be amended, and it must include assistance to families with disabilities or families that include a person with a disability. And so those plans can be monitored and you can look at that and say, okay, this includes it or it mentions it, but not -- we feel like there needs to be more done in this area. It also includes what Steve mentioned a little while ago, a whole number of things, but also the waiting list criteria and how to select people off the waiting list and the eligibility criteria. STEPHEN: And one of the things you can do by looking through and becoming familiar with these plans is you can point out to the public officios the contradictions. For example, in Philadelphia they talked about -- they have to do basically a type of a census of identifying people of need. So when you identify that there is a disability community of X thousands of people, and they are low income, and then your consolidated plan doesn't deal at all with providing specific housing for this X number of people, it's a little embarrassing for them to be asked publicly, if you understand why this problem exist, why are you doing nothing about it? JAY: a really good point. Well, so I guess part of what we're saying about all of this is that you have to understand it a little bit and not -- demystifing it is reading the plans. Many of the plans are written in very simple language that we can all understand and if not there is somebody who can. STEPHEN: and also, Jay, this experience that we've had is that when you first get into it, it really does look scary. I mean, maybe one of the assumptions should not be just frustration but fear because they're talking about millions and millions and hundreds of millions of dollars for these programs -- billions as well, and you know, we're just like a little dot on this radar screen. And when you get one of their consolidated plans or the public housing plans, and you look at it, and you say, my God, I mean, it's so complicated. And the first time it may be complicated, and the second time it's going to be a little less complicated. And by the third and fourth time you get on it, you're going to realize that there is a lot of BS involved and you're going to be able to read through and pick out what is real and what's BS just like the pros do. JAY: Yeah. And see, you know, Steve and I were introduced. We were both introduced as experts, and I don't know if we're experts. STEPHEN: This means we have a lot of gray in the beard. JAY: and I don't know how much of an expert we are. What we've done is we've read a lot and we've looked at some of these issues, but we're continuing to learn, and we're learning a lot of things. In our conversation the other day -- but let me just say that local housing, in looking at this information, we need to know what that housing agency's priorities are, how are they setting their priorities, what -- how are decisions made within those local agencies. So for example, the consolidated plan in many places, even though we would be hard pressed to get very many people to admit it, they are developed before the public hearing, and so what we -- so the public hearings for one year may give -- give that Board ideas for the following year, but because of time lines, they already have discussed what their priorities for that year are going to be. STEPHEN: and that raises the point that these plans are frequently developed by the administrative bureaucrats who are paid full-time people, but they have to go before and the consolidated plan, you know, it's publicly elected officials and the public housing is probably a public housing board, and the state, it's the state housing finance board and so what you want to do is in terms very how do you manipulate, what do you do as an advocate now with these plans? Well, you've got to make them-- think about them as a political strategy in the sense of knowing who is involved from elected officials, from administrative officials and from purely a political point of view, how can we get to them? Who knows who and can talk to them about the housing, so that next year the plan will better represent what we want. JAY: and what's important to those people. And I think that's very important. STEPHEN: Jay, you said something the other day on the phone which I think is -- for me, was really, really critical. Going up to your local city council person or mayor or even housing Czar, you've got to tell them specifically what you want. You can't be general with these guys. We had in Philadelphia this past year that was the result of several years worth of a consolidated plan political pressure. We want X. millions of dollars for affordable housing. And that's what we specifically asked for. I mean that we put a number on the table. That's what we wanted our elected officials to come up with, and not just give us housing, we told them how much we wanted, what kind we wanted, etcetera. And then we also told them we needed much more money for home modifications for people with disabilities and how much we needed and how many people were on the waiting list for them. So we did our homework and so that when we went to the politicos, we were able to deal with them very specifically. JAY: That's great. And it's so important -- you know, we can't underestimate the power of this because for example, Board members, when a board approves this public -- this public housing administrative plan that we've been talking about, the Board approves it. It can be implemented immediately. It has to be sent to HUD. HUD then gets a chance to look at it and say if there are any discrepancies and come back and say there need to be changes. But as soon as the Board approves it, it's an official document and can be implemented. So the powers of some of these relationships on the local level are very important. STEPHEN: You know we're going to now pretty much wind up and open it up for questions, but in terms of making affordable, accessible integrated housing for people with disabilities, a real issue, think of this as a political -- at every level -- a political strategy. I told Jay, you know, the other day, I got in the mail this past weekend -- we're having elections Tuesday. Well, our affordable housing coalition in Philadelphia asked both candidates a whole series of questions that they wanted answers to, and put them out in a newspaper -- the candidate's positions on affordable housing. And the question was, will your administration -- and it says very specifically, A, increase the affordable housing stock by 1,000 units per year? B, increase funds -- and it goes all down the lists, use political capital to make changes in the housing authority, create a 20, 25 million trust fund and they got yes, nos and question marks as a response from both candidates in writing. Obviously you can't go to the bank with that but its part of the political process of pressuring them and holding them accountable. JAY: I can't agree enough. You know what I'd like to do before we open for questions Steve is if we could give examples of some of the things that people have done or can do that would be very easy and then we can open it up for questions. STEPHEN: Go ahead. Take it away. JAY: for example, when you're asking a public housing agency to do something, you have to have a plan. You have to be able to sell that as we've talked about. STEPHEN: Such as? JAY: for example, one of the things we discussed the other day, Steve, project-based vouchers, Section 8 vouchers. Those vouchers -- sometimes people shy away from them because they think that they're connected to a project and they don't think they have access to that. We can work with public housing agencies to identify within our communities, the units that are in our community that are accessible units. We can actually take those project-based vouchers, even if there is only one or two within a complex, accessible units, attach those project-based vouchers to that particular unit, and then we have -- we have a sure -- we have a sure apartment or place where people can live that's accessible that then receives supplement also. STEPHEN: Another specific example is the one I was talking two minutes ago about our consolidated plan this year for the first time allocated $5 million for home modification money for people with disabilities under the CDBG. And not because they love the disability community, you know, it's because it's taken several years of the independent living center has been in their face, two times a year, and in between. JAY: We've seen -- we've seen housing registries within communities being developed by state housing agencies, local housing agencies. STEPHEN: What do you mean housing registry? JAY: a registry where there is a listing of available places to live, but what the part of it that of course we're concerned about is that there is a listing of affordable, accessible, and integrated availability of apartments and an inventory of what's available within the community. So the housing registry can be an inventory of what's available and then when -- I mean of what is available and then what's vacant also. And we can ask -- this is something we can ask our housing authorities to do, which is to work with us around putting together these registries so we know what's out there. STEPHEN: One of the things we did in terms of something similar, we didn't call it a registry, is that we wanted to know when houses were -- had money or private entities had money allocated to them, public funds; right away, so that we could start talking to them about making sure that the 5 percent accessibility was in fact complied with and that people were ready to move into those accessible units once they were finished and you've got to monitor that. JAY: and, you know, in some communities, one of the things that people have done that's been creative is they've used these Section 8housing choice vouchers can be used for home ownership now. So in some communities, they've made housing more affordable by actually purchasing homes because what they've done is they've used the Section 8 voucher, the housing choice voucher in addition to loan money through a housing finance agency, which many times comes in at a lower interest rate STEPHEN: and tax credit. JAY: Along with renovation money, along with other discounts like down payment discount, closing costs discount, so it's another option that people then can look for. And it's all of these kinds of things. I mean, the fair share vouchers, you mentioned those before. I don't know if you want to say something about how people have done have used that. STEPHEN: No, we did that the last website. I think we should open it up. JAY: Okay, sounds great. STEPHEN: Sharon. SHARON: Great information, Steve and Jay. We have lots of questions. I know everyone is waiting to get their question in on the phone lines. Before we do that, I do have a couple of questions I'd like to ask before we open up the phone lines. You can gear up for that. It's regarding public hearings. What's the easiest way to be informed of the public hearings for the consolidated and public plan? I often find out about the hearings on short notice and not always easy to organize folks on short notice. STEPHEN: Okay, very simple. Get to any of your public elected officials whom you know and just find out from them -- they know for the year in advance when are these hearings taking place. The housing agencies tell they're elected officials. This is public information. You shouldn't find out about it at the last minute. And if you can't find out because you don't know an elected official and the housing departments are giving you baloney on this, call the regional HUD office. JAY: There are specific guidelines around this. STEPHEN: Absolutely. This is not stuff they keep up their sleeves. SHARON: Thanks. This is regarding Section 8 vouchers. I understand that 10 percent of the total number of Section 8 vouchers in the country and their related funding are routinely returned each year, and this money is reallocated in the federal budget areas. How do we address this issue effectively? STEPHEN: I don't know about effectively. Effectively is the hard part. The technical term is lease up, am I right, Jay? JAY: The vouchers that are not leased up. STEPHEN: Not leased up. That is to say, HUD has on its web page -- you can find out about your local housing authorities and the state what is their lease -- for the last year or two years, what percentage of vouchers have they actually used. JAY: Their utilization rate. STEPHEN: It's really critical. It's outrageous for them to be giving back to the HUD unused Section 8 vouchers when we have people with disabilities that desperately want them and with good advocates, we can use them. JAY: I mean, this is a large issue, and it's something that we discussed on a call a couple of weeks ago, an example of a group in Connecticut or the state in Connecticut or the local independent living association that formed kind of a coalition together around housing where they were able to say -- their utilization rate may have been low, but they had issued a number of vouchers and they knew vouchers were coming back. It was an opportunity for that agency to bring up the utilization rate by actually dedicating and allocating vouchers toward people with disabilities. STEPHEN: Every housing authority gets points from HUD or loses points from HUD based on the utilization rate and how many of their vouchers are used and/or leased up, whatever the term is. So they should have an incentive with regards to HUD to make sure that they have 100 percent utilization rate. JAY: I mean the other issue, Steve, and this is really important, is that even with a high utilization rate -- so an organization can have a utilization rate of 99 percent and still may have some vouchers that will be available because vouchers are returned. So if you have an agency that has like 4,000 vouchers, vouchers are returned, people move, people - their income changes, whatever it might be, and those vouchers then come back and many times rather than open up the waiting list to say they have a priority or a preference that is for the group that we happen to be concerned about, so for example, in the Connecticut example, they have allocated 50 vouchers a year on behalf of people who are leaving nursing homes. And so when those vouchers then become available, it's without a new allocation. And those vouchers then become available because they're returned or they're unused, they can then go by the preference on their waiting list to people who are wanting to leave nursing homes. STEPHEN: but the bottom line politically, is that as advocates, we should make sure that the housing authorities and the state agencies use all of their vouchers all the time and that the people with disabilities get at the front of the queue on that one. JAY: and we should be helping them. This is an important thing. We can help them bring up their utilization rate. We can help them meet their goals of their administrative plan. SHARON: Thanks guys. I wanted to go ahead and open up the telephone lines. David, if you could give the folks on the line today the instructions. OPERATOR: Certainly ma'am. At this time we'll open the floor for questions. If you'd like to ask a question, please press the star key followed by the one key on your touch tone phone now. Questions will be taken in the order in which they are received. If at any time you'd like to remove yourself from the questioning queue, please press star followed by two. Once again, if you'd like to ask a question, press the star key followed by the 1 key on your touch tone phone. Our first question comes from Tina. SHARON: Hi, Tina. CALLER: Yeah, thank you. SHARON: Welcome. CALLER: My question is what if you are not on SSI or SSDI and you still cannot afford an apartment, accessible or not? My agency is in Suffolk County, Long Island. We have no affordability, no accessibility nor availability. Thank you. STEPHEN: Well, I mean, the exact same things we're talking about apply to people who are not on SSI or SSDI. And a lot of the housing for example, in the low income housing tax credits, Hope 6, a program we didn't talk about today, deals with people whose income are above the SSI and above -- sometimes above the SSDI levels. The strategies and stuff we were talking about today apply to people who are above those as well. And you guys do have affordable housing out there. Quote-unquote affordable housing. Obviously in the housing markets that you are referring to, I'm a little familiar with. You know, the housing is expensive, but there is -- there are Section 8 vouchers there and, if necessary, the housing authorities better be applying to HUD to get the reimbursement rates well above what they would normally be spending. SHARON: Thanks, Steve. David. OPERATOR: Our next question comes from Maria. SHARON: Hi, Maria. CALLER: Hi, how are you? Hi Steve. I have a question regarding getting the state attorney generals involved as far as the enforcement of the state financing agencies that happens to be happening in New York and it seems to be going in the right direction. Has that ever been done before in the other states or maybe it's something that should be considered. STEPHEN: I think it should be considered. I'm not aware of it being done in other states, but that doesn't mean it's not. Jay, do you have any experience or knowledge about that? JAY: and what would be the purpose? STEPHEN: To have the state attorney generals be a watchdog basically over the housing finance agencies and make sure they're really spending -- allocating the tax credits and spending the money the way they should be. JAY: I don't know of any situations where the state attorney generals are involved but there are many federal agencies that monitor each one of the funds. Like the tax credits, the IRS monitors that. STEPHEN: I'm a little familiar with Maria's experience up in New York, and the attorney general of New York is involved because there has been a lot of local pressure on him to look into how that money is being spent. I mean it's just another variant of the political process. SHARON: Thank you guys. David. OPERATOR: Our next question comes from Carla. SHARON: Hi Carla. CALLER: Yes, Hi. I was -- my boss is unable to be in here today a part of this, and wanted me to ask if you all know of any evaluations of people for post institutional life or know if anyone is doing any kind of evaluative or empirical study of what policy issues exist and how effective they are in housing, of course? STEPHEN: Jay. JAY: Yeah, I think there are plenty of those studies and examples of people who have left institutions and now are in the community. Feel free to write me and then I can certainly give you some of those resources. And you can give me maybe more specifics. I mean, are you looking at people who have left and bought their homes? People who have left and rented or all of the above? STEPHEN: They should write you and tell you what their specifics. JAY: Right, and there are studies and we have been involved in studies looking at quality of life after leaving institutions and CMS has a number of those studies up on their best practice's website. SHARON: Thank you. I have an E-mail question regarding people with disabilities who are homeless, particularly in rural areas. How can we best serve people with disabilities who are homeless, particularly in rural areas, because the Emergency Shelter Grants do not have enough funds to assist us in rural areas, whereas it seems like the urban areas get a greater share of the pie. STEPHEN: I've got to tell you honestly, I don't have experience in this area. Jay -- and I don't -- I don't have any answers. I don't, Jay, do you have any experience? JAY: the only thing I can say is that everything we've been talking about is that the things -- the thing that rural communities have that maybe urban communities don't have is that they may be -- and it's not always -- but they may be more community oriented, and so we then start to look at things like faith-based organizations within local communities. The issue becomes how do people within communities create opportunities for affordability, accessibility and integration, and it has to be a community issue. STEPHEN: Jay, one of the things that we were talking about other programs, and I don't know whether it's analogous, but we didn't talk about the emergency shelter part of the federal allocation, but does the state fill in - in rural areas in shelters the same way they do? JAY: I think the question is that it's inadequate, and that the person is giving us this question is saying that they get some of those funds, but they are inadequate. Is that correct, Sharon? SHARON: Yes. They're just not getting enough funds. JAY: I mean, I would look at neighborhood revitalization efforts. I would look at things like land trusts. I would look at local banks that are in local communities, the federal home loan bank I know is very interested in affordable housing and affordable housing in rural communities is a big issue where they may respond to a proposal around doing something. STEPHEN: and a number -- I don't know about the homeless part, but a number of the housing programs we talked about today have specific sub-parts that deal with rural and smaller communities, like the HOME program, etcetera. You know, and you really -- if you're from that area of the state and/or country, you want to really look into to see whether the states are applying for those funds. SHARON: Thank you both. I have someone regarding Section 8 home ownership vouchers. STEPHEN: Well, that person who was on the phone SHARON: They want you to talk about the potential of Section 8 home ownership vouchers to open up home ownership to persons with disabilities who have unique advantages under the program. They are giving strong focus in Montana to seeing that the Section 8 home ownership voucher program be implemented particularly in flexible ways that will direct benefits to persons -- that will directly benefit persons or people with disabilities. Do you feel this is a good, effective approach and what strategies have been applied to using low income housing credits to reach the needs of very low income persons with disabilities in obtaining affordable, accessible and integrated housing? STEPHEN: Jay, I want to add to that question. And why hasn't it been used more? JAY: I'll get to this person's question to why it hasn't been used more. But there are a couple of questions in there. Let me address the home ownership vouchers. When the home ownership voucher -- when the vouchers were first allowed to be used for home ownership, the criteria for being able to be eligible was not geared toward people who are very low income, and the way that it wasn't is that it was based on having minimum wage a year so that you had to have -- your eligibility -- the income criteria was minimum wage. It was figured based on minimum wage. So it came out to be, oh, a little over $10,000 of income a year even to use the Section 8 voucher for home ownership. They've since changed that and I think it was about a year ago, so that now the eligibility criteria for people with disabilities is the SSI amount. So the availability of using the Section 8 Voucher for home ownership is now -- we can now use that amount and it comes out to be a little over $6,000 a year of income as the criteria for getting in. So it's making it a lot more affordable to be able to use. Why has it become more affordable? Well if you're very low income, HUD -- I mean without getting into all of the exemptions and the income exemptions, HUD will pay 70 percent of your housing costs and 30 percent is what you end up putting in. And then you also then have a number of other funding sources that may be able to buy down the cost of that mortgage payment. And again, we're not pushing that by any means, but in some communities, and maybe in Montana in some communities, that may be something that may be more affordable than rentals because you have all of these other subsidies. The other thing is that there are many more subsidies available for renovation of -- and rehabilitation of a home when it's owned as opposed to when it's rented. So then you have those opportunities to access some of those funds. The other thing is that there are many properties that are on the markets that are foreclosed properties. Again, we don't want to look at someone else's bad situation, but if the properties have been foreclosed already, and they can be accessed for a much lower amount of money, you combine that with having a low price with some of the other subsidies, along with the HUD section housing choice voucher and it becomes a lot more affordable. The other thing is that for people with disabilities, the housing choice vouchers are a 30-year supplement. So if you continue to be low income, you can get a 30-year fixed mortgage as long as it's connected to the mortgage in that sense. So all of those things. Now, Steve, I'm forgetting what STEPHEN: You answered. JAY: Why hasn't it been used more often is -- is that this is a PHA choice, whether or not -- the currently the way its set up, they can choose as they can with housing choice vouchers, they can choose whether or not they administer a home ownership program. So just because a public housing authority administers housing choice vouchers for rentals and tenant-based vouchers, doesn't mean that they have a home ownership program. And so, again, we have to work with them to be able to do that. Now the one caveat that I will say because people have asked about this, if this is an issue of reasonable accommodation, they have to allow that voucher to be used for home ownership. SHARON: All right guys, I did get some feedback from our audience. They suggested to our questioner, looking at U.S. DA rural housing services for money for the rural housing issues. STEPHEN: Very good suggestion. SHARON: Thank you. Helen. OPERATOR: At this time I think we want to open up the phone lines David. Our next question comes from Todd. SHARON: Good afternoon, Todd. CALLER: Hi, folks, Pat is actually going to ask the question. Here she is. PAT: Hey, Jay. I actually -- I actually was asked by the Executive Director of our state HUD and finance authority what they could do to implement -- to create more accessible housing? Of course she asked me when I was doing something else and caught me totally off guard and all I could think of was make a higher percentage of your units accessible. STEPHEN: Right. CALLER: but I would like some more specific ideas that I can give her. STEPHEN: Okay. The first thing you said is a great one. When they administer their low income housing tax credit program, they should have as a mandate 15 percent of their units are accessible, whatever -- some percent you guys locally can figure out what you want, but a percent that makes some sense above 5 percent. Second, they can make sure that some of their CDBG money is in a pot for home modification, so that if it's a home ownership program, the disabled person can get some of that money for home modification money. Third, they can piggy-back a home rental program specifically directed for people with disabilities to put a package together that if they're going to give a Section 8 tax credit to a property, there is going to be HOME money that a person will be able to use and access it as well as the state CDBG for home modification. The question also -- the questioner -- the experience we've been having is that many of the state housing agencies have never, ever been approached politically from the disability community. And all of a sudden you start approaching them and they say, yeah, we can do some of this stuff. And what you really want to do is try the sugar and honey first and see whether you can get them to put together a whole package of programs. We've been very successful in Pennsylvania on that level. JAY: and this particular question, Steve, is that the Executive Director of the state finance agency is coming STEPHEN: Yeah, I think you shouldn't have to respond like pulling a six gun out of your holster. You can tell them let's set up a meeting and bring people together throughout the state because the rural area may be different than the urban area and look at what can be done and work out some kind of a partnership to have, you know, as they said in Casa Blanca, a beautiful long term relationship. JAY: Pat, one more thing, and I know Steve has talked to this a number of times, is that just the whole idea -- and Pat I know I've talked to you a little bit about this, just knowing in the state for example the state of New Hampshire where you live, what units are accessible can create accessible housing. Even if they're being filled by somebody who doesn't need the apartment for accessibility. STEPHEN: but that's another thing -- JAY: We need to know that they're there. STEPHEN: One of the other things when you sit down and start thinking about what the state could be doing, not only should they be making the recipients of the low income housing tax credits have a certain percentage accessible, but should be making sure that they are advertising and looking for and affirmatively looking to find people who need those accessible features to move into them. JAY: Right. STEPHEN: and monitoring them on an ongoing basis. A lot of things they can do, Pat. You want to sit down with your executive -- not just you, you want to pull together a bunch of people from throughout the state, have several meetings to talk about housing in your state and then call the Executive Director and say, now we're ready to sit down and talk about what she or he could do. SHARON: Okay, guys. Are there any other callers, David? OPERATOR: Yes, our next question comes from John. SHARON: Hi John. CALLER: Hey, gang. John in Austin, Texas, here. JAY: Hi John. CALLER: I think I might have something to contribute to the last question. I can't remember the details of it at this moment, but we have on tax credit properties, where they have a level of accessibility in the plans they submit. So there is a built in accessibility code in order to get tax credits from the state. I think that might be helpful to the other caller. I wish I could tell you more bit. STEPHEN: You got it right on the head. I'm familiar with it and that's an accurate description. CALLER: a credit to Gene and a few others. The question becomes are you guys ready to take on HUD? Do you have some plan for overhauling that monster and making it more responsive to what we need? STEPHEN: Jay, where are you? JAY: I'm being facetious STEPHEN: We put it on mute. Some of you may remember that a few years ago I lost pints and pints and quarts of blood in a lawsuit trying to make HUD more responsive. And we loss that lawsuit. We don't normally talk about the lawsuits we lose, but we did lose that one. HUD -- it really depends on who the secretary is and how much power we have over the secretary and the deputy secretaries. And when Cisneros was around, we had much more access and things were moving. When the next person or whoever else came in secretary, it really goes up and down and we have not been organized enough to really exert the kind of pressure to make housing on a national basis for people with disabilities a real priority. It's norther. SHARON: All right folks, we are winding down. We've got a few minutes left. Wanted to go ahead and see if there were any other callers on the line. I have a stack of questions that are coming through the E-mail that I'm sure people would like to address today. David, are there any other callers on the line? SHARON: Hi Michael. Michael, are you there? OPERATOR: Yes, ma'am, there are. Our next question is going to come from Michael. SHARON: Hi, Michael. Michael, are you there? CALLER: Yes, ma'am. SHARON: and your question today? CALLER: the question is strategies, a follow-up on these questions about low income tax credits, strategies to utilize those -- part of what I feel is the solution to integrated settings smaller scope and scale of projects and because there is large money that can be made on larger projects, there seems to be a tendency to do large-scale projects versus smaller ones. Have you seen effective use of doing scattered site housing? STEPHEN: with tax credits? CALLER: Yes. STEPHEN: Absolutely. CALLER: Would you cite some good examples? STEPHEN: the only one I'm really familiar with is Philadelphia -- I mean Pennsylvania. Our housing agency has allocated --Philadelphia is a lot of row homes and developments that are just not -- that are not high rises by along shot and not multi-families at all but single- family houses that are part of the recipients for low income housing tax credits. They are around. There are a lot of them and Pennsylvania is not unique on that. You can get on HUD's web page, it's a funny kind of address, it's not WWW -- it's lihtc something.org, no www. And you can get on your state and your city the recipients. I don't have it up in front of me and find by size of units, and number of bedrooms and you can see how many units are in each of the dwellings. I think you can get that level of specificity. There are a lot of them around. These are not just the big ones. SHARON: Steve, in relation to his question, I have an E-mail question regarding Texas has -- and their working on scattered site housing developments in Austin, were planning on applying for Section 8 11 funds through HUD to develop 10scattered site rental units for very low income people with disabilities, the units will most likely be duplexes under condominiums. Can you mention Section 811 programs? It wasn't in the handout. STEPHEN: Well, the problem I have --Jay, you want to respond? JAY: Go ahead. STEPHEN: I mean, we were talking about accessible, affordable, integrated. The 811programs are not integrated. And that's the reason we basically don't talk -- I don't focus in on them. Jay, do you? JAY: and, you know what we know is that even though STEPHEN: They're segregated. JAY: There are scattered sites allowed within 811 and for people that make it work, we applaud their efforts. Many people have struggled to make that funding source work for scattered sites. And it plays out in the numbers. Most of the 811 money that's been used has not been scattered sites. STEPHEN: Most of it has been congregant and large projects. You're right, maybe the scattered site would be a little better. SHARON: Okay, guys. David, are there other callers on the phone today? OPERATOR: Yes, ma'am. STEPHEN: Sharon wants to get to the E-mails. OPERATOR: Our next question comes from Jean. CALLER: Hi, this is good timing as a follow-up to the E-mail, Steve and Jay, we are looking at scattered sites as being integrated. I mean STEPHEN: No, I think the scattered site would be better on that regard. CALLER: No, absolutely. We don't support the segregated units at all, but our interest was having you all, if you were aware of any, or could talk about some that you might know of and share that. STEPHEN: I'm not. That's why I think I responded the way I did initially. JAY: We are aware of some and I can certainly share some of that with you, Jean. CALLER: Okay, great. We will be in contact. JAY: You know, 811 has been used for scattered site, it's just the majority of it hasn't been. And so we can give you the year. We can give you the amount, and who said they were going to use it for scattered site and all that are available from HUD, again, on their website the give all of that. SHARON: Okay, I wanted to go ahead and just give out the general HUD address for those people who have been on today, it's www.hud.gov.And now that Steve mentioned all these E-mail questions -- STEPHEN: And one more address, Sharon. HUD clips, hudclips.org. SHARON: And do they need the www? STEPHEN: I think they do. SHARON: Thank you very much. This question is regarding visitability. It's very important to advocate for local visitability ordinances. On October 1, 2003, Chicago's city council unanimously passed the incorporation into chapter 11 of Chicago's municipal code, this also includes town home and single-family homes in the private sector, this was a two-year advocacy effort. Advocates should not be discouraged to give up the fight because in the end we will win. STEPHEN: Hooray for Chicago. SHARON: Thank you, guys. Another question regarding H. R. 2353. We urged the disability community and advocates to actively support H. R. 2353 The inclusive Home Design Act. This will mandate visitability features in federally assisted housing not covered by other accessibility laws. This was introduced by Illinois' federal rep representative and written with extensive technical assistance from the assistive living and the disability rights and coalitions for housing. And Darrell price is the lead person to contact for information on that bill. STEPHEN: It's an excellent bill and we applaud every one's efforts on carrying that. SHARON: All right, one question which is not real clear, but I think it should be addressed, are CDBG funds given to state and it says P. J, and I'm assuming that's not pa jam as. Are you familiar with that question? STEPHEN: I know the question until you got to P. J. SHARON: Maybe that's a typo. STEPHEN: Yeah, CDBG funds -- Jay talked about, they're allocated by formula so that depending on the size of the city, et cetera, the cities and counties get a certain amount of money for their CDBG. Now, for the small rural areas, the rural areas and the smaller towns, the state gets CDBG money to allocate to those areas. To that extent, yes, the state gets CDBG money. SHARON: Okay. JAY: and on the funding list that we have up on the web, there is a website that is a HUD website, but it gets you directly to the community block grants and what they're all about and you can also look and see what the allocation per state is. SHARON: Also I wanted to mention the previous Webcast that Steve did for us earlier this year, he mentioned earlier about finding a website where you could put in the number of units and so on. If you go to that archive, which is in the ILRU archive, he states where that link is so the text transcript and the audio broadcast is available for those people who want that particular information. STEPHEN: I can give it. It's lihtc.huduser.org. SHARON: Thank you. STEPHEN: No www. SHARON: That's important to mention. I have like one or two last questions and what about housing programs from the U.S. rural development agency for home ownership and home modifications or even veterans, can you speak to these on the federal level as a possible resource? STEPHEN: Jay? JAY: Yes, certainly we can. I mean, I think that the best way, seeing that we're limited in relation to time. There is two ways, one, look at our funding list because the website for the Rural Developmental Agency is -- the rural funds are on that funding list. I can give the website real quick, it's www.rurdev.usda.gov and they will have a complete description of that. The rural housing -- there are direct loans which are very low interest loans. There are repair and rehabilitation loans. There are self-help loans. What I would encourage you to do is look at your regional office because the regional offices, even though it's a federal program, they have different kinds of funding. STEPHEN: Regional offices of what, Jay? JAY: Regional offices of housing. You can go to this website and you can find out where your -- your regional office is, and then go to them to find out what in particular they have and what the eligibility criteria is and how you can use those funds. They're wonderful. And if you're in a rural area, as Helen told us, this is something that we should all look at. SHARON: All right, guys. Again, thank you both. I wanted to just go one last time to the phones to see if there is still anyone hanging on for dear life. David, are there any callers? OPERATOR: Yes, ma'am. Our next question comes from Michael Cooper. SHARON: Hello, Michael. CALLER: Hi, this is Doris. We have two questions. The first one is are you in favor of a mandatory requirement for notice -- advanced notice of the availability of accessible units CALLER: In the registry. CALLER: -- in registries, and if so, are you in favor of it by statute as they do in Massachusetts or are there other mechanisms forgetting that done, such as the consolidated plans or public housing plans? And then the second question is how can we go about getting emergency priority status for persons with disabilities, particularly those who want to transition from nursing homes or those who are in inaccessible housing and want to move to available, accessible units with vouchers, people who are homeless or people who are -- have mental health disabilities and are homeless, at least in our state have priorities on such vouchers and get moved up on waiting lists on that priority. How can we get that priority? STEPHEN: at least for me, Doris - yes, I am in favor of that, and I would not go by statute. I would go to the housing finance agencies and make them make it part of the condition of receiving low income housing tax credit. I would go to your housing -- state housing agencies and make them on the CDBG and on your local areas to make the CDBG funds have this mandate that the recipients of those tax credits and those funds must give X. notice X. days ahead of time that either such units are on line and will become available and/or when they've already been built and occupied once, been they become vacant, they have to keep it open for X. amount of time and get people to put it up immediately on their web page that such a unit is accessible. The experience that we've had, frequently, is that the turn around becomes so fast that unless we get some advance notice, sometimes it's really difficult to find a person who wants to live in that neighborhood and needs that size unit, etcetera. So the more time we get the better. In terms very -- in terms of the preferences, when we were talking about access to the consolidated plan and the public housing plans, et cetera, that's where you want to get those preferences so that the plan explicitly states that someone living in an inaccessible house is the equivalent of being homeless and therefore will be given emergency priority. But someone living in a nursing home is not in their own home and is the same as being homeless and therefore will be given priority JAY: and the only thing I'd say about that, Steve, and I totally agree with what you're saying, is within that plan and within the housing choice voucher administrative plan, you can also -- as long as you can document the need and you can convince the PHA Board that this is a critical need, they can actually allocate vouchers to that particular group of people. STEPHEN: I would not do it through any legislative thing on the state level. SHARON: Okay, guys. I think we're exceeding our time. We have just a stack of E-mail questions. I'm sure we have just as many callers in the queue. So it looks like we could do a 201 housing, if we could find availability of you two, again. JAY: or at least part 1 -- I mean 101 part two. STEPHEN: Like the second semester Sharon. Goodbye guys SHARON: and in answer to P. J, that is someone was so kind to let me know that P. J. means participating jurisdiction. The other thing I did want to say is great information, Jay and Steve. Wonderful presentation. I think there are tons of information that is still coming in regarding questions. So we will be looking at doing a part two. Today's presentation will be archived for those of you who were on the presentation and want to share this information. It will be up on the website next week, the audio and the text. Also we'd like your feedback, so please give us your feedback with the evaluation form on the website as well. Also, we need to thank our funders today. The ILRU Olmstead Training Project, disability advocacy in an Olmstead environment. This is through the office of rehabilitative services and the rehabilitative services administration. Funding from the centers for Medicare and Medicaid services, the IL Net, ILRU NCIL, national training and technical project, this project is funded through the U.S. Department of Education office of special ed indication and rehabilitative services and rehabilitation service administration, the will Disability Law Resource Project, DLRP, a project of ILRU. DLRP is one of the ten technical assistance centers funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, NIDRR. NIDRR is part of the U.S. Department of Education, and ILRU is a program of TIRR, the Institute for Rehabilitation and Research, a nationally recognized medical rehabilitation facility for persons with disabilities. The opinions and views expressed are those of the presenters and no enforcement of any of the funding agencies should be inferred. Finally, this Webcast would not be possible without the effort of our fabulous ILRU in-house staff, Marj Gordon, Dawn Heinsohn, thank you very much, and Rachel Kosoy. Our technical expert, Rob, thank you, thank you, thank you, and our realtime captioner, Marie Bryant. Everyone, thank you for joining us and have a good afternoon.