ROUGHLY EDITED COPY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

A National Onsite Two-in-One Training Opportunity
CIL‑NET Training
Expanding Housing Options 
   for People with Disabilities  
Renaissance Chicago Downtown Hotel
One West Wacker Drive 
Chicago, Illinois
Friday, August 10, 2012
8:45 a.m. ‑ 2:45 p.m.

**** 
This text is being provided in a rough draft format.  Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.   
			 ****			

>> AMBER SMOCK:  So this session is 45 minutes long.  And in the program agenda, it's called taking housing advocacy from Star Trek to The Matrix, right?  So originally what we wanted to do was to have time to talk about like taking housing systems advocacy from kind of like a basic level to like talking about how when it gets really complicated.  But I think based on what we're seeing right now in terms of like how we're progressing and the training and all that stuff, what we would like to do is provide a quick overview of Olmstead and the State of Illinois, so just so like you guys know the context of Olmstead in relation to housing, all this stuff that we've been talking about and that might provide some context why we're doing things the way we do and so forth.  We will talk about that a little bit.  And then there were a number of questions that people put on their post it notes yesterday that Beto and Adam are going to go ahead and answer.  So we're going to go ahead and shoot for that and answer as many questions as we can, and then feel open for a general discussion if we have time to do that.  I hope that's okay for everybody because we want to make sure that the answers people have actually do get answered today.
So what I'm going to do is I'm moving over to the flip chart where I have written down some of a cheat sheet on the status of Illinois and Olmstead compliance.  So we had a question on the feedback form yesterday about, you know, fighting ‑‑ like how is Illinois fight for Olmstead and how do you fight for this thing in a state where you have a strong nursing home lobby, and so Illinois is one of those states.  We have a very powerful nursing home lobby.  And Adam and I were talking a little bit about the strongest lobbies in the state.  And the number one lobby in Illinois is the Catholic Church.  Number two is AFSCME.  Number three is probably SEIU.  And then number four is a bunch of them, but the nursing home lobby is up there with them.  So it is a very powerful lobby.  
Anyway, so Olmstead in Illinois.  Illinois does not have an official state Olmstead plan.  It does not have an official state Olmstead coordinator.  So I know there are some states with an official plan or official coordinator.  But we don't have that.  What we do have is a patch work of efforts towards rebalancing and complying with Olmstead.  I'm going to give a quick overview of those.  
So as we've said before, there are three lawsuits in the State of Illinois, and I'm just going to go over them really fast once again.  First there is Williams, the Williams case, it covers everybody who is living in an institute for mental disease and IMD, right, so I have to have a psychiatric disability for that and be on medicate.  The second is called Ligas, and it covers privately owned state funded intermediate care facilities for people with developmental disabilities.  And then the last one again is Colbert, which covers Cook County nursing facilities, and covers people with physical disabilities living in those nursing facilities.
All together, this is about maybe 30,000 people.  Right?  So clearly there are people that this doesn't cover, right?  So there are going to be people living in state operated developmental centers, institutes for people with developmental disabilities.  There are going to be people living in nursing homes.  It covers people in nursing homes living on medicate.  There are people in nursing homes in Illinois who have TANF, temporary for needy families, and that's their funding.  They're not covered by Colbert.  So the thing for Access Living is that when we say, oh, well, we want the State of Illinois to spend more money on community based services than on nursing facilities, we're talking about everybody.  So what's interesting is that our governor has come up with this thing called ‑‑ that he calls the rebalancing initiative.  And the governor's rebalancing initiative is very limited because his version of rebalancing is to say that he's in the process of shutting down four Illinois state ‑‑ Illinois state ‑‑ eight developmental disability institutions, which is a victory, right?  In that they're closing down these institutions and everything, and we're working down toward zero, but right now they're looking at four and they're also trying to close down two mental health centers, but that's a tricky issue because they're acute care centers not long term care.  For us, we're kind of like you need to keep the mental healthcare centers open but close the state institutions for people with developmental disabilities.  It's the long term care thing we're interested in.  So you can see that the idea of rebalancing being about moving Medicare long term care dollars toward community based services is a little funky.  We keep pushing and saying okay, Illinois, you have to spend more than 50% of your Medicaid long term dollars on home and community based services.  Right now Illinois spends only 34%, right?  
So some states are rebalanced.  You guys are doing awesome.  This is very cool.  We'd like to be there.  But we're not there we're at 34% and we want to head to 51%, how do we get there?  Part of it is the lawsuits and part it is focusing on housing, right?  So for the first time ever within the last six months, really the last seven months or so, the State of Illinois hired for the first time a statewide coordinator for housing for people with disabilities.  This is the first time they've had anything of the sort.
But this guy is mainly focusing on right now the rebalancing initiative and moving people out of the state operated developmental centers into the community, so he's trying to address the problem one chunk at a time starting with the governor's priority, and then also they have to comply with the Olmstead lawsuit, so that's also a priority.  Statewide housing opportunity for people with disabilities have to help all people with disabilities, right?  So that's the ultimate goal.
They also hired a guy to oversee disability housing opportunities for Cook County.  So this was especially because of the fact that the Colbert case is going to be an implementation and people coming out of nursing homes are going to need places to live and they're probably going to live in Cook County and how that is going to happen?
So you can see there's a patch work, there's not an overall general plan.  The good thing is that the administration and Illinois is very pro community based services.  I mean the governor that's committed to closing these state institutions, that's a big deal.  So we have a lot of other people who are helping to enforce that message through policy and action and so forth.  So in that context, housing becomes increasingly important and I want to say for Access Living, I don't think we said this before, but in Access Living strategic plan housing is the only issue that is named that we are supposed to work on.  It's the only issue.  You know, so we have our mission, which is to empower people with disabilities to live in the community, blah, blah, blah, but housing we have to work on which is why we have so many strong people working on a team to secure housing opportunities.  So it's important to put that out there in terms of we're not just kind of seeing people come in the door saying they need housing.  We have to deal with all this politics and the legal situation and everything, so when I say we're going from Star Trek to The Matrix, it's because, you know, the stuff that I have up on the flip chart makes me feel like we're operating in another dimension.  It just makes it a little more difficult.  But the good thing is it may be more difficult but it is pushing agencies and systems to change things in the direction that we need it changed.
So I hope that is helpful.  And what I would like to do is go ahead and transition over to Adam and Beto to address some of the questions that people had on their Post‑its.
>> BETO BARRERA:  Am I on?  Yes, I am.
Good morning still.  Buenos dias.
(Audience responds.)
>> BETO BARRERA:  Got it.  I'm glad we haven't lost a lot of people here yet.  I think we only lost a handful or so.  And I really admire, I think ‑‑ I admired a lot, and I was talking to someone about that.  You guys have been here for almost a week or a week or so.  I couldn't stay that long away from my puppy or sleeping in my own bed.  Okay.  Saying that, I want to just throw something out that in the year 2003, Access Living adopted a policy, an internal policy of ‑‑ to support the construction of new segregated housing, any type of segregated housing, we took that position.  To support the continuation of funding existing segregated housing, but we have to catch up in the integration field.  So we have done that.
Okay?  But like Amber said, we wanted to address some of the questions that you put on the yellow and red little stick‑on papers, and some of them dealt with the ‑‑ and the first one I saw senior designated housing.  And where people that are 60 years old or older could apply to senior housing.  
Okay.  Oh, okay.  I'm sorry.  She wanted to let me know the question I'm answering, one says please discuss the recent changes of the 811 and the 202 that will promote integration.
I want to leave the 811 because there were various questions on that for Adam to talk about it at the end to go along with HOME funds as well, because those are some issues that have sparked debate within our community, in our own community, okay?  So I'm going to leave him explain that.  But the question about in reference to 202s, which is senior housing, that congress allowed younger people with disabilities to live in those dwellings in accordance and compliance of Section 504 of the Rehab Act.
But also congress allowed an outing for Public Housing Authorities to also make a special designation of that housing for seniors only.  And I mentioned before yesterday that that plan should include, first of all, they should not get rid of the people younger than 62 currently in that development but also to come up with a plan on how they're going to house the people that want to live ‑‑ that want to get out.  And Chicago Housing Authority adopted two things.  One is to provide vouchers.  This is how we created our modification fund.  Here we have an individual living in an accessible unit, going into a community with a voucher, where we know that our communities in particular urban cities are not accessible.  So we created a modification fund so we make those units accessible.  The CHA also was supposed to provide the transportation for these individuals, provide reasonable accommodations, and if the voucher is only paying for one unit, you pay for two because they have a service animal or they have equipment.  And also very important for advocates to know that HUD also allows housing authorities to pay 20% above what the voucher is paying.  If the voucher is paying a thousand dollars, and the recent is higher because this building is in another area where it's a newer building and it's accessible, then the authority has the authority to pay 20% more of the rent of the voucher.
Now, the CHA could go 40% above what the voucher pays, but they have to get the approval from headquarters, from HUD, okay?  So any more questions about 202s, yes? 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  In the experience ‑‑ in my experience in my community, I just wanted to ask this.  It seems like the exceptions to the 202 are disability specific in that it is only for folks who have mobility impairment.  Can you speak to that?  I'm saying the exception to the age rule for the 202s are only for folks who have mobility impairments. 
>> ADAM BALLARD:  The exceptions to 202 ...?
>> BETO BARRERA:  That's a good question, and that is not limited to just for people with mobility.  But many Public Housing Authorities and their management companies can set occupancy policies.  So it's very important for you to have input on the Public Housing Authorities' occupancy policies.  What's your policy?  In the policy, it has to say that a person in the lease, if they become disabled, they're going to be moved to an accessible unit.  It's going to say that they allow reasonable accommodations, all right?  It never says specifically ‑‑ well they could also say certain type of disabilities, but you can challenge that, whether you're going to win it or not, and that's how hard you're going to advocate on that.
So that's a good question.
Other questions I want to address here would be the CDBG money ‑‑ how do you find out about CDBG public hearings and all of that?  The Community Development Block Grants come to a city government, they come to the city.  It could be your budget department that has applied for these millions of dollars that are going to be allocated in different departments of the city.  
Okay.  The best way ‑‑ and there are many cities that other departments, that different departments administers that money or sends that money out for you can go to apply for that money.  So the best way that I've been recommending for advocates to find out is just to call the Mayor's Office.  Okay?  Who in your department ‑‑ who in the city's department is administrating the CDBG grants.  And then you should meet with those individuals.  When is your next hearing?  They're supposed to have public hearings.  And they're supposed to announce it in the major newspapers.  I've never been able to find an announcement in the Chicago Tribune.  I don't know where it's hidden.  All right?
But now since we are in the loop, we do get announcement direct to our center, letters, notices, we're going to have this or that.  So that the best way, all city government, call the main man, the mayor, or the main person, the mayor.
Next question:  Project based ‑‑ okay.  Public ‑‑ different funding categories in housing ‑‑ project based voucher ‑‑ okay, here, project based vouchers can cross the fine line promoting segregation.  What is your take?  And I put, yes, no.  Okay.  Yes and no.
Project based housing, the Public Housing Authority before they went into mixed funding, mixed housing, they had only like project based housing, a hundred percent.  And they were segregated on income levels, okay?  They were segregated poor folks.  We created this, the ghettos that crime and all kinds of stuff happened.  And it's a big history of racism from our government and segregation from our government.  And they're still planted deep inside many bureaucrats and many politicians in our city and thus a constant fight.  Okay?  But, yes, when the building is exclusively a Section 8 building and that of course is segregated based on income.
And who are the people that are the poorest of the poor?  Okay.  We are.  So they are segregated by race by that form, by class, by income class, and then by race on that form because people of color of course, we are the poorest of the poor.
All right.  The next question, what is capital funding?  Capital funding, I think we have used that a lot.  As a matter of fact when Amber and I were reviewing her PowerPoint, I crossed out capital and I put construction on it.  Because most people don't know what capital is.  But it's construction.  It's for the construction of affordable housing.  That's all it is. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Question.
>> BETO BARRERA:  Yes. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  When you said construction, is it rehabilitation or new construction? 
>> BETO BARRERA:  Construction is new construction.  Okay.  New construction.  Capital funding for new construction.  Okay.  The other type is rehab construction, allowed by certain funding.
Okay.  What have we got here?
The mortgage vouchers, there's no such a thing as mortgage vouchers.  What happens is that your voucher could be used to assist you in paying your mortgage.  Many housing authorities throughout the country now are being allowed by HUD to create homeownership plans, which in my opinion is the most affordable homeownership plan for very low income individuals, the only one.  Most other ‑‑ Access Living has adopted not to do a homeownership plan, which is needed and it should be existed.  Consumer base, 99.9% are people on SSDI and SSI.  And the limited resources that we have to advance housing opportunities for our people, we don't want to kind of use those for homeownership program.  I mean, there could be internal debates on that that we have.  But there are existing in great homeownership programs that are being run by other not for profits.  It's a matter of meeting with them so that they are accessible, programmatic and architecturally accessible.  But the voucher will pay also for your mortgage.  The individuals only pay 30%, the participating individual with a voucher, a 50 year mortgage, but for people with disabilities, it's 30 years.  And now that you can use your vouchers, and for those people that have vouchers can get modifications, it also will count for free modifications.
Anyone has anything ‑‑ there's something here, why would a Public Housing Authority be willing to absorb a person on a state voucher?  I think I assume that person means that since vouchers are portable, why would another state want to ‑‑ was that the question?  Or I wasn't very clear on that question.
>> ADAM BALLARD:  Is the person that asked that question in here so you could clarify a little bit, or if you will feel it's answered, I don't know. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: It was a question ‑‑ it was a question that I had on something that Texas was doing from a couple days ago.  And the answer turns out to be administrative costs. 
>> ADAM BALLARD:  Okay.  So you have had that question answered then.  Okay.  Cool.
>> BETO BARRERA:  Okay.  There's another question that one person asked a question.  That's why you're here to ask those questions.  But talked more about effectively working with the Public Housing Authorities to prioritize or set aside some vouchers.  Most Public Housing Authorities have the authority to make references.  When we first came on board over 20 years ago, there were federal preferences for vouchers.  But every group was knocking on HUD doors, oh, we're going to leave it up to the local authorities to set up references.
So, yes, they can do it.  They can tell you, and they will lie to you, because they don't know maybe, I don't know, that they're not allowed to do preferences, and, yes, they can.
We were told by our own Public Housing Authorities, and I heard someone ask that question, and they asked Jessica too, on preferences, how can we have preferences that over‑‑ that doesn't see the wait list of the vouchers?  And HUD will go yeah, the housing authority being the willing to work agency could and did designate vouchers for special populations.  Yes. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  How did you ‑‑
>> Microphone. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  So if you get to ‑‑ if you're in a situation where the Public Housing Authority tells you that they can't have preferences, what steps do you take?
>> BETO BARRERA:  Yesterday when Lisa Danna was here from HUD, and Lisa Danna made the chart over there and said ‑‑ after she spoke, before she left, she said, our regional HUD are powerless.  They cannot change the system for you.  But they can ‑‑ they act as if they're making a referral, our regional HUD people.  You would have to contact the person in your region or the HUD in your region and ask those questions, and then they will refer you, or they will start fixing that.  That's with a we did.  We first went to a HUD region and said the housing authority is saying this, and we've been reading the regulations, and we don't agree.  What do you think?  So they took it to headquarters.  The question was taken to headquarters, and it was clarified.
So everything that Lisa said is great because it serves for you to get information, a referral from, but if you really want to make some systems change, you got to go where the buck stops, up in headquarters.  No answer but, because that's where you're going to end up anyway, so you're going to have to eliminate those little small steps.  Go to the man.  But don't ever, ever go alone.  Take Adam with you.
Okay.  Okay.  I think that's it.  That covers me here.  And ‑‑ any other questions?  No?  Yeah. 
>> ADAM BALLARD:  Okay.  So I'll go ahead.  We have about 15 minutes left.  I'll talk about what I was going to talk about.  It shouldn't take the whole time.  So hopefully we will have five or ten minutes left at the end for open questions that we haven't addressed yet.  There will be an opportunity for wrap‑up at the end this afternoon.  Don't feel like we need to get everything in before lunch.  Unless, of course, you're leaving.  Then, of course, ask your question before lunch.  I know a couple people at least are leaving around lunch.  So I actually, I do want to frame this in terms of a question we received.  It's not ‑‑ it's not a question that we marked to answer right now.  But I'm going to go ahead and answer it now or attempt to answer it now, and then we need to come back to it later we will.  It's fine for the page.
The question is ‑‑ okay.  It's not phrased as a question, but I'm assuming you are asking, what are real strategies for creating accessible, affordable, available housing in a wait listed environment?  Which is a great question.  It is.  I mean it's basically the question that's been driving the last two days.
So I'm going to try to answer this question without being ‑‑ without sounding like a jerk, because I don't mean to.  But there's a reason why it's hard to find available housing.  And the answer to that question is in the question itself.  There's not available housing because we're in a wait list environment, right?  I mean, honestly that's the truth.  For every open voucher or every open unit of affordable housing, there are literally thousands of people, thousands that's not an exaggeration at all, there are literally thousands of people for every open voucher, every open unit.  So let's not get too hung up on available.  Yeah, it's sucks that there's not more available housing.  The way we get more available housing is by creating it honestly.  So I'm going to talk about ‑‑ well, I'm going to touch on things that we've already spoken on, but talk about implications of a couple of programs that we've mentioned for creating more accessible, affordable, integrated housing so that hopefully the availability question becomes easier to answer over time.
So there's two things.  I'm going to start with talking about HOME funds again.  And specifically HOME funds being used for rental assistance.
It's happening already in 12 or 13 states that we know of.  And we're still not quite sure why it's not happening in the other 37 or 38.  But that's a huge resource.  HOME funds ‑‑ even with the 40%‑ish cut they received in last year's HUD budget, HOME funds are still a huge source of funding for affordable housing, and the missing piece for a lot of affordable housing is the subsidies.  It's important to understand that we can build all the affordable housing we want, but if there aren't subsidies, how are we going to get our people in there?  And the answer is we're not.  If there's not subsidies, if there's not rental assistance, we're not going to be able to get that done.  So, again, just to review, this is largely review, I want to make sure that people understand why we're trying to work on this issue, and based on the political reality, it kind of comes and goes as far as how we push for it.  Right now we're not pushing for it very much because of the budget cuts, because of the political situation, that doesn't mean we drop an issue.  Just because an issue is not hot right now doesn't mean you drop it, right?  This is on our back burner right now but we have to be ready to bring it back to the front burner as long as the austerity spell passes or whatever, we have to be ready to move forward.  If we can get ‑‑ and we think the best way to do this is to work on a state by state level probably.  If we can get state legislatures, like Texas has already done, it's a legislative mandate in Texas that 5% of HOME funds are used for MFP.  Every jurisdiction in Texas that receives home funds has to set aside 5% for TBA for MFP consumers.  That's the way to get state legislatures to act.  Here in Illinois we're trying to do that but because of the political situation, it's going to take a while.  Set aside, start at 150% and if you have to negotiate your way down, you do.  But always, any kind of advocacy, ask you start big.  So start big.  Say we want 10% of our state's HOME fund allocation to go towards rental assistance targeted towards people who are at 15% of AMI.  Between 15 and 30% of AMI.  Yeah.  Question. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Is there a way to see Texas's legislation ‑‑ you know, their actual law or the policy that was written or the bill or whatever?  Can we put that on the Wiki so we can all read it?  You don't have to do that.  Can someone do that?
>> ADAM BALLARD:  Yeah, I would imagine that between all of us who have been involved in this can find it.  I actually haven't looked at the statute myself.  I just know that because I talked personally to the people who run MFP in Texas, and they told me it's a 5% mandate. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Yeah, but it's nice to have the language.
>> ADAM BALLARD:  I absolutely agree.  I'm saying that I haven't seen it yet, but we will get it up there. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I wanted to add that in New York we had Steve Gold do a webinar for our state on how to make the argument to your state that setting aside TBRA in HOME funds for people with disabilities, transitioning out of institutions would save the state Medicaid dollars.  He did a significant amount of calculations for us to go on the HUD Web site and make the argument of how much money the state could save.  Unfortunately, right after we had this wonderful presentation by Steve Gold the cuts came from the federal level as you mentioned.  So it's making the argument a little bit harder, but I would encourage people who either reach out to Steve Gold, because my understanding was that he was really hot on this issue and willing to assist states in doing it, and of course we can always provide the webinar slides from New York as a model of what other states can do.  It really walks you through having to make the argument.
>> ADAM BALLARD:  That would be great.  And Steve absolutely is a huge ally on this.  Yeah, back in the corner. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  how are you addressing in your lobbying efforts that the HOME TBRA vouchers are limited to a period of 24 months?  
>> ADAM BALLARD:  Do you want to take that (inaudible discussion)?
>> BETO BARRERA:  It's going to take an act of Congress to change that, because when Congress passed authorized HOME funds for capital funding, for construction, and also approved tenant based rental assistance with it, they limited two years.  In order to change that, it's going to be a legislative campaign to do it. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Correct.  But when you're addressing these ‑‑ the funders, trying to get this set aside for HOME funds, I would imagine that they would come back and say, well, that's all well and good, but what are you going to do with that person after their 24 months as run out?
>> BETO BARRERA:  They have to renew it over two years, they would renew it.  The housing authority renews vouchers every year. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Not the TBRA voucher.  That from HOME is limited to 24 months of assistance per person.
>> BETO BARRERA:  Right, a voucher has to be renewed.  A home choice voucher that is issued from HUD to the Public Housing Authorities is issued for one year.  And then they continue renewing.  The same thing with HOME funds.
>> ADAM BALLARD:  I will jump in here.  When I talked to Texas, they said most of the vouchers get renewed every two years.  That's how you do it.  I mean we can cut down the fine technicality of whether these the intended use or No. but so what?  Let's renew them every two years until we get that act of Congress to extend the cycle or whatever we need to do to make it work better.  Yeah the two‑year cycle is a stumbling block, it's a hurdle.  But in the meantime, let's work with what we've got.  It's a tool that's there.  Why aren't we using it?
>> BETO BARRERA:  I want to add is the biggest opposition is not the two years replacement or reapplying, it comes from developers.  Members of Housing Action Illinois, members of other networks.  Those developers that apply for HOME funds to create affordable housing, and that's where the opposition is because everybody constructs less affordable housing.  If they give us less of those HOME funds for tenant based assistance.  But I know they're going to be upset, but I'm really upset already because we're not able to access their affordable housing and nobody gives a damn if I'm upset or not.  So ...
>> ADAM BALLARD:  Okay.  I'm going to move on because I want to make sure we have an open Q and A at ‑‑ oh.  Oh, yeah. 
So then the last thing is the 811 reform, which Tara talked about in the last session explaining how the new 811 NOFA works, how because of the Melville act there's now an integration mandate in 811, where developments using 811 funds can't have more than 25% of their units set aside for people with disabilities.  Which is great, it's what we wanted, it's an integration mandate.  It's what we wanted.  What we need to be sure of going forward is that 811 continues to be used as a resource for people coming out of institutions and people who are not in institutions.  People with disabilities who are on the street, doubled up, shelters, wherever.  And the way we do that is not to fight over the pot we already have.  We don't want to do that.  The current NOFA says states need to use this for Olmstead implementation.  We signed on in support of that.  But in the future, we need to make sure that Olmstead implementation is not the only use for 811 funds because that wasn't the point of integrating 811 funds.  The point was to create housing for all.  Again another advocacy item agenda is to increase funding for 811 so that not all of it goes for Olmstead but there's money for other people as well.  And that's what I wanted to say about those two things so I will hand it over to Amber wrap up and then we'll have some Q and A maybe hopefully.
>> AMBER SMOCK:  This is Amber.  We have just a couple of minutes left.  I wanted to throw in a couple of things that I forgot to include when I was talking about Illinois Olmstead.
One is that I'd like to remind people that last year's NICL big conference was on Olmstead implementation in the 50 states and that there's a Wiki for that conference.  All the information, all of the videos, all the handouts are already up online.  And I can't remember what the URL Web address is.  I see Tim moving.  Hopefully he will let us know.  Okay. 
>> TIM FUCHS:  It's Wiki.ILRU.net.  So just like for this training, you go to resources for Centers for Independent Living, and then as you look through the list, you will see the Olmstead training in there. 
>> AMBER SMOCK:  Tim, I'm just writing this down.  So Wiki ‑‑ whoops.  ILRU.net.  Right?  I'm not sure this is absolutely connected to the Internet.
So hold on.  Let me just make it a little bigger.  So hopefully people with read that it.  Wiki.ILRU.net.  If you have questions about Olmstead and questions about how Illinois did the Olmstead cases.  It's captioned whatever you need to see.  So that was important.
I also wanted to mention that the issue of managed care also impacted housing.  So if you're a state where you have managed care or managed care is being introduced and Illinois is a state where managed care is being introduced and expanded right now, then the question becomes, you know, does your state expect the managed care companies to manage the long term care supports for people in their programs?
Do those managed care companies know how to do that?  Do they know how to transition people from nursing homes into the community if that's what they want?  So that's a really big challenge.  And right now I know for sure in Illinois we're saying yeah, we don't think the companies that we see coming in know how to do that at all.  So working with their state to deal with what are the requirements for the managed care companies, who do they contract with and so forth, I mean that's really on the forecasting agenda if it's not already.  That's a really huge issue.
And then the last thing I wanted to mention is an attendee pointed out I think this is a really good point, that this conference has been full of acronyms, lots of acronyms.  Right?  So you know we have the CHA, we have HCVs, we have this alphabet soup of acronyms.  And the request was whether there could be a list made of all the acronyms that have been used in this conference, put in one document as a sort of cheat sheet to check which acronyms mean which thing and did we want to do that and post that on the Wiki for this conference as well.  So you will have that as a resource if you're not really sure what the acronyms are again.  That was a really good suggestion.  Thank you for mentioning that.  We're going to have lunch but I'm really, really excited about the presenters that we're going to have at 1:00, because the City of Chicago Mayor's Office Commissioner on people with disabilities will be here along with the CHA staffer Amanda Motyka.  Included in their presentation will be ADA and 504 compliance.  They administer a home modification program.  Those of you doing home mods, whoo.  And those of you who may be interested in city building codes, I know they'll be able to talk about city building codes and stuff like that.  So I'm really excited about that presentation this afternoon.  So anyway, so why don't we go ahead and kick off and have some food, some lunch.  
It's about 11:45 right now, 11:49, and be back at your tables at 1:00, and network.
>> BETO BARRERA:  I want to promote this magazine for to you subscribe it.  I usually never do that.  This is a great progressive housing magazine and gives you a lot of updates on existing policy and struggles from different housing communities to gain housing justice.  It's called the Shelter Force.  Shelter Force.