ROUGHLY EDITED COPY
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A National Onsite Two‑in‑One Training Opportunity
CIL‑NET Training
Assisting Individuals to Find Affordable, 
Accessible, Integrated Housing
Renaissance Chicago Downtown Hotel
One West Wacker Drive 
Chicago, Illinois
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
8:50 a.m. ‑ 4:45 p.m.

 

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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.   
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>> PAT TUCKER:  I wanted to give you two ‑‑ if you take one thing from what I'm going to say for the rest of the day, is that, yes, the market is limited.  Yes, there's not enough affordable housing.  Yes, we don't have enough accessible housing.  But there are ways to increase what we have, and there are ways to deal with what we have.  And there's two things, two things that housing specialists and everybody in this room could take away and make it possible to do what you do, and do more of what you need to do.
You need knowledge.  You need to know everything that's available in your neighborhood or your community or your city.  You also need relationships.  Those are the two things that make your life a lot easier, make it when you're talking to people, you can talk about what the reality is as opposed to just saying a blanket statement, there's not enough.  Because everybody says that.  There's not enough.  Be specific.  If you know what there is, you can talk about what there is and what we need.  Yes. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I also use a lot of persistence, and advocacy not only for my consumers, but for the agency, because you catch more flies with honey.
>> PAT TUCKER:  Oh, absolutely.  And part of building those relationships is starting off with that, and sometimes you can build a relationship that may bloom into something different, and it's important to have those relationships, though.  This work is too tough to do by yourself.  So why try to do it by yourself?  And if you all have the same goals to get more housing, why aren't you working together?  And sometimes you have to be that person to initiate that.  It seems like, I mean, Oklahoma is doing that.  I know, I went to North Dakota, and they ‑‑ you know, I insisted that they have everybody at the table who was even thinking about housing.  That's where they started, and now they're going great guns.  There are lots of housing concepts.  There's the development strategies, and I know everybody wants to develop more housing, right?  Because that's ‑‑ if you need more housing, you develop more housing.  That's not always possible initially.  Again, that's a process.  
Access to existing housing.  We're going to talk about that.  What's out there?  You should all know what's out there.  Because we have computers, because we have Internet, there's no reason not to know what's in your community.  It takes time, though.  It's not something that you're going to be able to just walk out of here and know.  You're going to have to take a look at and do some research.  I know with our jobs, that's not always possible, but trying to build some of that into every day where you can do a little research would be a big help.
Accessibility, Fair Housing Act, we'll talk about that.  A lot of you know about that.  Yes. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I think it's important to note too in regards to the knowledge aspect that it's ever evolving, that what's available today is not necessarily what was available yesterday and what will be available tomorrow.
>> PAT TUCKER:  Absolutely.  And that's a great point to make.  It doesn't stay stagnant.  It moves.  The bull's eye moves and you got to figure out where it's moving to.  That means you got to be out there talking to people.  You got to also trust your resources.  You have to meet with your resources, because maybe one of your people that you know might find out something, and you want them to be able to tell you about it if you can't be at every meeting, which you probably can't be, unless that's solely your job.
And we're also going to talk about the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504.  Those are the things we're going to talk about.  If I'm going too fast, please say something.  If I'm going too slow and you're starting to lose it, just kind of stand up and kind of go ... speed it up a little bit.  And I can go either way.
I put this, and this is kind of the range.  And it goes from all the way from homeless to having a second home.  And if you see, there's a continuum of the severe housing need, greater subsidy needed.  The less you have, of course, the more subsidy you need.  The more you have, the less subsidy you need.  When you get to your homeownership, more likely you're not going to need as much help.  Some people do.  There are still subsidies that you may need to afford a home.  When you get to your second home, you should be good.
(Laughter.)
>> PAT TUCKER:  You know, you get to the second home, you should not be needing subsidy, and if you need subsidy, then maybe you need to get rid of the second home.
There's a lot of types of affordable housing out there.  I'm not going to go through this whole list, but what I want to bring up was, do you know what's in your community, city, or neighborhood?  If I asked you where was all of your senior housing, could you tell me?  If I asked you where was your entry level homeownership programs, could you tell me?  All of this stuff needs to be not just in your head.  I would suggest writing it down, having something on paper with all of the places that you know and what type of funding they get, what are the limitations of that type of funding, because that gives you something to share with your team.  It also gives your team the same amount of information, so you're all working from the same point.  We call it a housing resource map.  How many of you have ever done a housing resource map?
(Showing of hands.)
>> PAT TUCKER:  Oh, so there are a few people that have housing resource maps.  I think housing resource maps are very useful.  I have been in ‑‑ I'm from Chicago, born and raised.  I was amazed when I did a housing resource map, some of the places that were getting federal funding, some that was supposed to have housing set aside, some of it downtown, in some of the nicest places, did not know because it was not something that they publicized.  You would be amazed when you sit down and start looking at who gets money and what that money is for and who has set‑asides.  If you don't have a housing resource map, you should start working on one.
And we'll talk about some of the information that should be in your housing resource maps, and that's one of the things that if people want to see what one looks like, we could put one on ‑‑ what was it?  Wiki?  And that way we can see what the housing, what the type of ‑‑ what it looks like, because some people, what does this look like, how this should be written, we can put an example of one on there.
I have question.  Could anybody think of why else is it important to know what's in your community or neighborhood?  I mean, why would you want to know that?  Yes.  Microphone. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  You can ‑‑ thank you.  So that you can help your consumers be informed and so you yourself will know what's available for them.
>> PAT TUCKER:  Uh‑huh.  Absolutely.  Also, have you ever talked with somebody and they say, we don't have enough, we don't have enough affordable housing?  And then people say well, we have this, we have this, we have this.  What else do you need?  And you're sitting there going, I didn't know we had that.  You're making an informed decision.  You're giving people ‑‑ you're telling people, here, I know what's out there.  And we need more of this.  And it's very specific, as opposed to just, we need more.
Fair Housing.  We have a ‑‑ I'm sure we have people in here who know Fair Housing.  So if I go off stray, please help me.  But there are some protected classes.  There's race, color, religion, national origin, and sex are protected.  In 1988, they added familial status and handicap status.  Does everybody know what familial status is? 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  (Inaudible.) 
>> PAT TUCKER:  I was going to say microphone. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Whether you have kids or not, whether you're married or not, who lives with you, that sort of thing.
>> PAT TUCKER:  Yeah, and if you're pregnant or about to have kids or about to adopt kids, anything to deal with your family size.
Those are protected classes.  Those are the only protected classes.  Now, there's federal Fair Housing, and then there's your state Fair Housing.  Right?  You should know both.  So federal I'm giving you.  State I'm not giving you because there are too many states, and that would have been a longer discussion, but some states have different classes that are protected.  And it's important to know what those are.  Yes. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I'm saying there's also local.
>> PAT TUCKER:  There's also local.  And so as a housing specialist, you should know what those protected classes are.
>> ANN DENTON:  (Inaudible.) 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I was just talking with Ann, and I was saying right now that there's a bill in Albany on the floor of the New York State legislature that is attempting to pass both source of income as well as transgender equality as a protected ‑‑ both as protected classes, and we were discussing that I think that the transgender part of that bill is going to pass.  The source of income got tacked on, and I'm really not anticipating that that's going to pass, but I'm sure hopeful.
>> PAT TUCKER:  That would be great.  And so it's important ‑‑ I mean, because if you know what ‑‑ again, this is knowledge.  And as a housing specialist, I mean, I've had housing specialists who have been housing specialists for a long time who couldn't tell me what the protected classes were. 
So ‑‑ pardon?  Probably not in this room.  But did everybody know what the protected classes were?  Everybody?  I mean, because we have some newbies.  The newbies might not know.  I mean, which is okay.  You're a newbie.  We have a two‑week‑old.  I bet she didn't know.  Yes. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Some of the things I found with regard to protected classes is that you can almost feel when someone is denied for that reason.  It's very hard to prove, and sometimes adversarial for the consumer to make that attempt.
>> PAT TUCKER:  That's absolutely true, but there are recourse.  There's recourse that you can do.  You can ‑‑ if you feel like it, and you can take it to another department and have them do some research to see if it's indeed what your feelings were.  And they can send people out that are, you know ‑‑ and it goes into a whole host of things, though.  There are certain properties that are not under Fair Housing.  And that was the four units, owner occupied units, like if you ‑‑ if you live in your building, and it's four units or less, you don't have to abide by Fair Housing.  Yes, sir. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I don't get to do this too often, so I have two things that I want to talk about.
>> PAT TUCKER:  Is your mike on? 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Oh, sorry.  I don't get to do this too often, so I am going to talk more than twice.  And that is number one we do have source of income in our state Fair Housing law.
(Applause.) 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  And then number two is the ‑‑ we actually have ‑‑ in conjunction with our state Fair Housing agency, we actually have a discrimination testing through HUD.
>> PAT TUCKER:  Excellent. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  So that for states that are interested and concerned about discrimination based on protected classes, resources are out there to be able to do something about it.
>> PAT TUCKER:  Uh‑huh.  There are many resources out there.  And, again, looking on the Internet when you feel like there's been discrimination, there are lots of resources in your community and in your city that deal with those type of issues and will go out and investigate whether or not there was some type of discrimination.  Yes.
What do you do in situation ‑‑ maybe you can do a role play thing with Ann on this.  You have an entity, you know, that's a nonprofit organization in my county that builds low income housing for seniors as well as people with disabilities, and this person who is the executive director of this agency goes to these town board meetings, and they get a lot of people from the community that are ganging up and shooting the whole thing down, so they don't want anything built next to them.  So maybe you can go through a little scenario on how to deal with that nonsense.
>> PAT TUCKER:  You know, that is so hard.  I actually in Chicago did a lot of housing.  And we did a lot of supportive housing at one agency that I worked at, and we were going into some of the poorest neighbors saying we wanted to put housing.  And people were standing up left and right and saying, not in our neighborhood.  You're going to ruin our neighborhood.  Well, I had to dodge the bullets to get in here, so how else can I ruin the neighborhood?
And people were adamant about not in their neighborhood.  And one ‑‑ in one neighborhood, and this didn't work across the board, but one neighborhood I started saying, well, we house those people like your son, who you can't get to move out of your housing, but he's technically homeless because he doesn't have a lease in his name, that's who will be moving into our housing.  When I said that, a lot of people were like, oh, that ‑‑ I want him out, so, yes, move in.  
But it really is ‑‑ one of the other things we did was we had people come out to some of our other sites to see what our housing looked like and to visit our housing.  And we did free tours for people who wanted to see ‑‑ and we also talked about what types of systems we had in our buildings, because people think, you put this in and you're going to have the wrong type of people, blah, blah, blah.  It's important to give them a reality check.  This is who we serve, this is who lives in our building.  But I don't ‑‑ I mean, we could do role plays until we were blue in the face, but some people are not going to be convinced.  Yes. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  One of the things that really bothers me is the wrong type of people.  Depending on how you're dressed, where you came from, whether or not you've been institutionalized, any of us could be the wrong type of people.
>> PAT TUCKER:  Most times I am the wrong type of person.  I don't know.  Has anybody else had to deal with this type of situation?  Yes. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  When we were developing our scattered site, we got into a lot it with the neighborhoods, and the way we approached that was obviously lots of meetings with the people that were concerned about what we were doing, but we invited them to join the board and help us with the development of it.
>> PAT TUCKER:  That's a good idea. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  And some of our long time board members are the people from the neighborhoods that we built our facilities in, and they're now our biggest supporters.
>> PAT TUCKER:  That's a great idea.  Any others?  Yes. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I think historically the opposition has been against group home providers that want to install group homes in certain communities, and most group home providers have the amendments to reasonable accommodation to install those group homes in certain communities, and it's been a struggle around municipalities, the state, and the federal government to deal with some of these issues, and they ‑‑ when there's community opposition, sometimes they reject those, it's not a reasonable accommodation, but a business provider.  As an advocate I wouldn't want to have a group home next to my house either, not because I don't want a person with disability next to me, but because I want people with disabilities to live independently in the community and not in oppressive situations like group homes.  But the opposition has been against group homes historically, and like I said, have they continued using the Fair Housing accommodations, it's up to the courts.  There have been mixed findings.
>> PAT TUCKER:  It is a very difficult thing.  I mean, like I said, I've been in some neighborhoods, and not just in Chicago, I did some work in Cincinnati where I hadn't had housing, and we were trying to put in housing, and a couple of pieces of advice is to really hear what people are saying, what their concerns are.  A lot of people had concerns about their property values.  A lot of people had concerns about the type of people.  Trying to hear those concerns and trying to address those concerns. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  What would you do?  Like invite them to take a look at some of the facilities and some of the people? 
>> PAT TUCKER:  Absolutely.
>> ANN DENTON:  I don't know about that.
>> PAT TUCKER:  Not necessarily the people, but come into your facilities and see what your facilities look like, how they're operated.  One of the things that we talked about in our ‑‑ we have huge buildings.  I mean, our smallest building was 66 units.  And we talked ‑‑ what we talked to the community about was we were bringing money into the community.  We were bringing in ‑‑ we also would open the jobs up to everybody in that community.  We were going to do housing preference, so we would set aside some units for preference for that community.  Really hearing what the people are concerned about, and if it's about how you run your business, inviting them to come see your other places.
>> ANN DENTON:  Before we leave this topic, I just wanted to say that ‑‑ I'm making a list of things to send to Tim to put up on Wiki, but corporation for supportive housing has a document for the effect of supportive housing on property values, which is very positive.  When you build supportive housing, it tends to increase property values, or at least be neutral.
And so we'll put that up, but the bottom line is giving people information that's factually based rather than prejudice based, is helpful.  And this is a particularly good tool. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Is there enough of it that's factually based?
>> ANN DENTON:  We're going to give you whatever we've got.  We've got one tool from the corporation for supportive housing.  One of the other tools this is more relevant to the homeless population is when you provide housing, the community benefits because people are no longer using emergency services in the same way.
>> PAT TUCKER:  And we can ‑‑ we can talk about that some more.  I mean, we can have ‑‑ and I can tell you some of the things we did. 
But there's no one size fits all in this.  It's really hearing what the concerns about that community is and then trying to address those concerns.
>> ANN DENTON:  Another thing is if you can find an in‑state example of a program where the neighbors didn't want people to move in and then five years later they're like the best neighbors they've ever had and they're willing to say so.  There's nothing like that.  There's nothing more powerful than that.  There's lots of examples of that across the country.  If you can find one that's local or at least within your state, that would be helpful.
>> PAT TUCKER:  Right, bringing in someone from another community and having them testify to how well ‑‑ what good neighbors you are. 
Section 504.  I'm sure everybody in this room knows about Section 504.  Am I wrong, right?  No?  I see no's, that's great.  Section 504 prohibits discrimination on the basis of a disability in any program or activity that they may receive federal funds.  So anybody who gets federal funds is prohibited from discriminating.  So it's important to know where people ‑‑ and there are a lot of places that get federal funds.  A lot.  Yes. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Okay.  With the very ‑‑ you said, we need to know where these places are, how I do find ‑‑ I mean, what's the very basic way I find out who's got the funds?
>> PAT TUCKER:  Internet.  And we're going to talk about some of those.  We're going to talk about some of the places that you can start looking. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Okay.
>> PAT TUCKER:  And some of those places might lead to other places, but we'll get you started.  But it's really looking at who's getting money out there and what type of money they're getting.
We put up here a few places that, you know, places that get federal money, public housing, a lot of cities and towns get CDBG.  There's Section 8 and other PHA programs.  There's private HUD programs.  There's student housing, military housing.  This list could go on and on.  Yes. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Would you talk some about those Community Development Block Grants and how they are administered?  Could you talk some about that?
>> PAT TUCKER:  Wow.  No, I'm just trying to think ‑‑ I'm trying to remember if we're going to get into that.
Can we talk about the Community Development Block Grants?
>> ANN DENTON:  We're probably not going to talk about them directly, Community Development Block Grants.  The only thing we're going to talk about directly is that there's permissive language that allows CDBG money to be used that allows them to support community development.  But it's going to be very brief.
>> PAT TUCKER:  Yeah, so if I were you, what I would do is look it up.  Look online.  Look at your state, who gets CDBG money.
>> ANN DENTON:  There's ‑‑ here right there.
>> PAT TUCKER:  Oh, there you go.  Remember those relationships?  You should be sitting and talking to her. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Okay.  I mean, that's one of the reasons why we had everybody introduce themselves and go through that process, because we got a lot of resources in this room.  And hopefully you'll be talking to each other and calling up each other afterwards and not just, you know, came to a good conference and saw Chicago. 
The reasonable accommodations.  Landlords have to provide reasonable accommodations, if you ask for a reasonable accommodation.  And it's a reasonable accommodation that is going to ‑‑ you know, it's something that you need, not something that you really would like to have. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Is this under FHA or 504? 
>> PAT TUCKER:  It's under all. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Okay.
>> PAT TUCKER:  It's under everything.  Pretty much, if you ask any landlord for a reasonable accommodation, and it's something that is needed, the landlord has to provide the ‑‑ and that doesn't mean paying for it.  That means just provide you to do your reasonable accommodation. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  (Inaudible.) 
>> PAT TUCKER:  Well, they can ‑‑ well, yeah, when you leave, they can also require you to take it out.  Because they don't ‑‑ you know, some landlords don't want to change their property forever.  And so if you want a ramp, you can have a ramp, but when you leave, landlords can say, can you take out the ramp?  Yes. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Does that count for people who are going to be moving into someplace?  Because we have a landlord recently that's been fighting us on a ramp project.  And the tenant who wanted to move in says:  I need a ramp.  Will you put one in?  He said no.  He said, may I put one in?  He said no.  That's a ‑‑
>> PAT TUCKER:  That's a violation. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Okay. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I thought so.
>> PAT TUCKER:  Sometimes you have to ‑‑ sometimes you have to educate landlords.  All landlords don't know what the rules are.  We had a question here, and then I'll come over here. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  That reasonable accommodation, can it be requested after the onset of the person ‑‑ of the disability, after that person has moved into the complex?
>> PAT TUCKER:  Absolutely. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Or the home?
>> PAT TUCKER:  Absolutely, it can be requested after the fact.  Yes. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Just to ‑‑ you want to keep in mind that Fair Housing only ‑‑ the reasonable accommodation only applies to complexes that have four or more units.  And also when you request a reasonable accommodation, it's a negotiated process.  So just because you request a ramp, the landlord doesn't ‑‑ that landlord doesn't necessarily have to put in the ramp if it is going to be costly or there is a more practical way for them to accommodate you.
>> PAT TUCKER:  Yeah, I mean, if there's ‑‑ it is a negotiated process.  You could have the ramp in the back of the building.  I mean, it's not necessarily that it has to be in the front of the building.  I mean, it really does ‑‑ but if it's something that you're going to pay for and you are willing to sit down and talk with the landlord and figure out ways ‑‑ and figure out where the landlord is coming from, if the landlord is saying no, why are they saying no?  Is it because they're worried about the cost?  Are they worried about what it's going to look like, where it's going to be, what the other tenants are going to be talking about or thinking, then having that conversation, well, it can be in the back of the building, we don't need to have it in the front building. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Is there an alternate entrance? 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Because we have accessibility grants, we were going to be putting in a ramp for him in one of the buildings, it's a multibuilding complex.  And I guess I wasn't in on all of this, but there was an issue that he was wanting to control everything, and he wasn't abiding by the rules that we had to follow for the state, and he wanted to control absolutely, absolutely every aspect.  You're going to use my contractors and you're going to do this and do that, so that ended in a big riff for us, and now we're dealing with a completely different issue with another client who wants to move in and we told him he can't have a ramp, there's already a riff in the relationship.
>> PAT TUCKER:  I understand what the landlords are concerned about because you don't want to have work that's going to damage your property.  You want to make sure that it's legitimate contractors and maybe having the ‑‑ your contractors meet with his contractors or talking about that or asking them both to put in a bid and then saying to the landlord, we'll take the most competitive bid.  Also, with ramps you can put in those ramps that are removable.  I mean, that you can ‑‑ that are not going to affect the housing ‑‑ the actual structure of the housing. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Pat.
>> PAT TUCKER:  Yes. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Interestingly enough, during the break, I answered a call from the USDA in Vermont.  They own a property where one of the current tenants wants to add a ramp to her unit.  However, what they were asking me is, is it reasonable seeing that adding the ramp will interfere with other tenants?  And the ramp itself will be extremely long and high.  And the other ‑‑ they have another tenant that has a fear of heights, and they don't want to have to use the ramp, and it will be the only means of egress, so ‑‑ from that particular area of the building.
>> PAT TUCKER:  Wow. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  The ramp is actually going to have to negotiate a significant hill.  In Vermont we've got them.  So what I advised her was to try and negotiate with the tenant, because from what she was telling me about the tenant, they had recently acquired a scooter, and their real desire was to shelter the scooter.  So I advised her to look at a shed maybe in the parking area.
But I think that's a legitimate concern when providing an accommodation for one will interfere with others.  And in this particular case, the tenant is already on the waiting list for the accessible units, not only in that building, but in the area itself.  So I think the key is negotiation in this particular case.  But we do have landlords that simply say no, in which case we push.  And we push until the accommodation is made.  And the key word is reasonable.
>> PAT TUCKER:  Right.  Absolutely.  And I'm just shocked that there's only one way of egress, because I thought the law was you had to have two ‑‑ at least two ways of egress. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  It's a fully sprinkled building, and the second means of egress is out the window.  It's ground floor.
>> PAT TUCKER:  Okay. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  They do have the second means, but I wouldn't really call it a plausible egress. 
>> PAT TUCKER:  Yes. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I just wanted to make sure we made an important distinction between properties that are 504 federally subsidized and properties that are not.  So properties that are subsidized, the ‑‑ this is a general, being a little bit oversimplified, but the owner should, or the landlord should incur the cost of the modification or the accommodation.  So accommodation is generally considered a change in policy.  Modification is ramps and things that can change the structure.  And then in a private setting, the accommodation should be the cost of that should be incurred by the landlord and then the ‑‑ no, modification for the tenant.  And the other thing that I wanted to say was that was a really big oversimplification, there's a lot of nuances and it seems like you guys have so many other things to worry about as housing specialists.  I would encourage you, if you're in the process of pushing, or if you have a landlord especially a federally subsidized landlord they should know, you shouldn't be in the position to educate them.  If they don't know that's why Fair Housing centers exist, that's why my office exists, there are resources, and there should be someone that has those nuances in their brain that can help you figure all that out. 
>> ANN DENTON:  There's also two HUD publications that I will send to Tim and put them on Wiki.  They're both DOJ HUD publications.  One is on reasonable modifications, the other one is on reasonable accommodations.  They're detailed and a little bit dense, but they also be something for housing specialists to have in their back pockets or in their files. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I think the other thing we as advocates need to look at is the piece of education.  In 25 years I've only seen two cases where somebody had to put a building back to its original state.  And because I think too often landlords and property management feel that this is a niche population, and so if you're looking at accessible units, they can only rent to a niche population of those folks with mobility impairments or disabilities.  But what we try to do in our work is to educate folks that rather than working on less than 100% capacity, now by having accessible features to the unit, whether it's a ramp or what other pieces that they're adding here, that is now you can actually market to 100% of the population, and so you're enhancing marketability, because let's face it, folks.  Their bottom line is the money.  Can they rent that unit?  And so rather than saying it's for a niche population, or we have to revert it back, so it's just not for those people, but I mean we've heard that.
>> PAT TUCKER:  Uh‑huh. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  And so let's look at it from their standpoint.  Now we can market to 100%.  One of the two cases in the 25 years where someone actually reverted it back to its original state was when someone with multiple chemical sensitivities had issues with carpeting.  They pulled the carpeting up, put it into storage.  After she moved out, they required the person who put the carpeting back into the unit.  And so I mean that was just ridiculous, but that was only one of two in 25 years.  So education.
>> PAT TUCKER:  Well, education, marketing.  I mean, you didn't just talk about education.  There's the whole marketing piece.  This is going to give you access to everybody as opposed to just ‑‑ 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  It's speaking their language, and their language is greed.
>> PAT TUCKER:  Property managers have two priorities:  Cash and don't cause me problems. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Right.
>> PAT TUCKER:  That's all I care about as a property manager.  Really, I don't want problems.  I want everybody to live together and obey all the rules and their leases, and pay mow my rent on time.  That's it.  I'm not complex.  And that's what most landlords want. 
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 basically protects the rights of people with disabilities in employment, access to city and state programs, services, public accommodations, and communication.  There are some basic principles.  As a landlord I was always told, and I was trained, don't deny participation or service.  Don't segregate, and don't retaliate or coerce.  And it keeps it simple.  You know, you can't ‑‑ if somebody comes at you and says ‑‑ I mean, a lot of landlords get into this.  You come at me, you say, you have to do this.  I don't want to do it, but then you take me to court, and I have to do it, I can't ‑‑ I can't be after you now looking at every little thing you do to try to get you out of my building, because landlords we ‑‑ you know, we don't want people who cause us problems, even if the problem started with us.  It's just one of those things.
But these are some of the basic principles that landlords and anybody who is doing any work with ‑‑ you know, in the civil rights, in the government, anybody has to abide by this.
Ah, okay.  So we're moving to the next session, housing ‑‑ about the housing resources and building a community resource map.
When we did affordable housing, or when I used to do it, there was never one building that had just one type of funding source.  It was one of those things where every ‑‑ the building had layers and layers on layers of layers of funding sources.  It's important to know what all of those funding sources are that buildings have, because those funding sources dictate how you can operate your building and what you can and cannot do.
You can look on the HUD Web site as to, you know ‑‑ this information is out there.  I was actually ‑‑ I got here early this morning, and I was just wanting to make sure that I wasn't going to be telling you something because it's been a while since I've actually done the looking up stuff, and I started looking up on my iPad.  It's not that hard to get to, I mean you can start the research.  I put in HUD and a thousand things popped up.  And I started going into, you know, looking into the HUD Web site and going into all of their different documents.  It's out there.
Looking at Department of Agriculture, especially for rural housing.  Looking at what monies they gave off for housing, and it's out there.
Looking at Treasury Department, tax credits.  Everybody knows or has heard about tax credits, don't necessarily know about them.  That could be a longer training.  But tax credits a lot of properties get tax credit money.  So knowing who got the tax credit money.
All of this stuff should go in your resource map.
So when you ‑‑ you could actually do a basic search for your community or your city by putting in HUD, going into HUD, looking for your city or your state, what monies that they get, and then it depends on if you are just in one area of your state, you might want to focus on that area.  If you're ‑‑ if you have multiple counties, then you of course want to look at all of those different counties.  It's going to be different.  They're not going to all have the same resources.
Going, looking at tax credits on your computer, looking at tax credits, who got tax credit money in your city, in your community.
There were a few people who have read their ConPlan, right?  So some people know about their ConPlan.  Were there surprises in your ConPlans when you read them?  Was it like, oh, yeah, yeah? 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  No, there were some surprises. 
>> PAT TUCKER:  There's very little disability stuff in a lot of them.  But it's still important to know what's in your ConPlan.  Anybody sit at the table when they were doing their ConPlans in their area?  Yes?  How was it? 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Well ‑‑
>> PAT TUCKER:  Could you talk about the process so people could hear it? 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Well, I was going to say, we would hold hearings.  In Portland we have a housing commission that includes the City of Portland and the main county that Portland sits in, and so we would have hearings.  And the real important thing was that the community activists, we would get e‑mails and information out so that people could come and testify, and then we would follow up.  So I was involved sort of at a different level, because as a volunteer commissioner as part of that housing group, but I think it was really important to always have lots of people at those meetings and talking about their needs for affordable housing and such. 
>> PAT TUCKER:  Yeah, it ‑‑ when you know about the ConPlan and what's in yours, it becomes a tool that you can start the process of going to the meetings for the next one to be a part of it, to have your voice heard.  The more times you say it, the more people that are saying it.  You know, my agency, one of the agencies I worked for was really good about pulling people together.  We would take all of our tenants who were interested, all of our people who we worked with who were interested with us so that it wasn't just our voice; it was the people who it was going to be influenced by this.
And it was important to have that voice at the table.  And you really want to have a voice at the table.  But before you have a voice the table, you need to know about it.  You need to be a part of it.  You need to understand what yours has in it.  You need to read it.  Not hard to find.  Go online.  Do a Google ‑‑ you can do a Google search, you can do any type of search and put in ConPlan and your area or your city, and you can pull it up and look eight.  Don't read it at nighttime, unless you need something to put you to sleep because some of them are a little long and long‑winded and it takes a while to get through them.
But it basically has all of the ‑‑ it has ‑‑ they put together a lot of the programs under the ConPlan.  So if you have the CDBG money in there, you have the emergency shelter grant money, the HOME money, the other ones.  There's a lot of different pots of money that have been thrown together.  What are they working on?  What's happening in your area?
Looking at the Continuum of Care, the planning process that governs the homeless assistance funds from HUD, looking at that.  Looking at your Continuum of Care.  Looking at when you can ‑‑ yes. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Just before I forget, I was going to mention that the ‑‑ the state has a Consolidated Plan that they have to do as well, and that's often where you will find the analysis of impediments, which somebody mentioned earlier that is especially important to (inaudible) how they're talking about disability and what they say they're going to do to address that impediment to fair housing.
>> PAT TUCKER:  Thank you.  See, we have so many experts.  This is so cool, because I can just look at somebody, and go, talk about that.  So you don't just have to hear my voice.
And so we put down what the definition of low income is, below the poverty oh level, looking at, you know, 30% or less of the median family income for your community.  It's important to know where these documents are, putting together your resource map.
Some places, I mean, you know it ‑‑ I think putting together a resource map and sharing it with your whole group or your whole agency or if you start to do those relationships, it's something you can share with everybody and sit there and talk about strategy about how you want to approach this, because sometimes when you're talking, you're speaking different languages, you're coming from different sections, but when you have all of the information in front of you, talk about what's your plan of action?  How do you want to approach this?  How do you want to try to get more housing?  How do you want to try to get more accessible housing?  What ‑‑ how many units are you looking for?  I mean, do you need thousands of units, and how are you going to work to get toward that goal?
The ConPlan basically controls federal funds and how they're going to be used to increase affordable housing.  Who's going to benefit from those funds out there?  It links the programs together. 
And again, it's available.  So look it up if you haven't looked at yours.
>> ANN DENTON:  I wanted to say before we leave that and I'm going to ask our ConPlan person to comment.  But the two questions that I always look for on a Consolidated Plan is:  Are you income targeting below 80% of median family income, is one of the questions.  And another question is, is there set aside (inaudible) or are you using home funds for tenant based rental assistance?  There are several different advocacy questions you can ask.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I guess that's me. 
>> ANN DENTON:  Sorry. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  In our community, since the inception of our CDBG program, we're very fortunate in that my boss was the one that helped to develop the program, and the staff that is there is all very long tenured.  And we tout ourselves and Pat ourselves on the back that 100% of our CDBG funds have gone below the median income for the entire length of our income all 37 years.  We're pretty proud of that.  On the downside is that we have not ‑‑ because we are a very long tenured staff, we have ‑‑ we haven't been as innovative as we could have been.  We've kind of stuck to it with the diminishing allocations we're being forced to rethink our game plan and hope to be able to take our funds and be able to leverage with some other funds to get a little bit more bang for the buck.
As far as our home programs, we dabbled in tenant based rental assistance the last couple of years.  Like many of you our public housing authority, the waiting list is closed.  It's a rather long wait if you were fortunate enough to get on it.  The need that we were seeing was working with our homeless service providers, primarily the transitional housing providers, in that they were doing great things with the clients they were working with, but without that housing choice voucher to transition them out into public housing, into permanent housing, they were getting stuck.  And so we developed a TBRA program working with the housing authority that we would pay up to 18 months of the gap while they were waiting for their voucher to come up.  Very difficult to administer, with a very difficult population to work with.
We had limited success, a lot of failure, for many reasons.  We have looked at rethinking what we're doing, the funds that we had, and we were only doing this for households with families.  And so we're looking at the funding that we had not expended yet and partnering with some other agencies to actually develop some affordable housing, and we feel that that's more of a viable long term solution for our funds. 
>> PAT TUCKER:  Thank you. 
Ah, public housing.  How many people in here have a good relationship with their public housing?
(Showing of hands.)
>> PAT TUCKER:  And what do you think that relationship has meant for your agency or for you or for your people that you're working with, just out of curiosity, anybody?  Yeah. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  We were very lucky when our new executive director of the Yonkers housing authority came in.  We talked about the potential, that they didn't have any preferences for people with disabilities or for people getting out of nursing homes.  And we talked to him about the issue of people being in nursing homes and really not even having access to the waiting list because they open it for like five days or ten days and then they close it for four years, so if you're dependent on the social worker, it's just not going to happen.  And that argument actually above all else swayed him to set aside 5% of their vouchers for people leaving nursing homes in Yonkers.  That's made a big difference for us in our community.  I think that's because he was new.  He was ready to think outside the box.  It's made a big difference being able to have that relationship.  That being said we serve the whole county and other cities not so much luck, so ...
>> PAT TUCKER:  Okay.  Yes. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  We have one great thing.  I hope nobody remembers, particularly the person from HUD, what state I'm from, but we have one great thing where a guy who was living in a facility and was awarded a voucher and was having trouble finding an accessible place had extended, and now she just sort of turns the other way when the computer tells her that the voucher should be done now.  So that's been one huge thing on our relationship.  The other has been somebody that transitioned out of the facility lived in the community and ended up back in the facility, and she's been in contact with me about what you are doing to push on this voucher, this waiver, getting back up and running so we can get out.  We've got her place.  That doesn't happen from a public housing authority unless you have that kind of relationship.  That's somebody else's job.
>> PAT TUCKER:  Exactly. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  It's been huge for us.
>> PAT TUCKER:  Uh‑huh.  Yes. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  We've been able to ‑‑ because we offer a wide variety of services within our program, to prevent some folks from becoming homeless, because the public housing staff would go in and see issues within the apartment, and they ‑‑ whoever the resident was would need the support from the clubhouse to go in and clean or whatever had to be done, and so we were really happy to be able to do that because otherwise they would have been evicted. 
>> PAT TUCKER:  Yes.  And I'll come back over here. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  We've been fortunate in part of our area in the fact that public housing agencies as well as some of the local landlords because we provide advocacy and try to build in supports for our people, not only does it raise a red flag, a good red flag when they get the application, but some of the private landlords and even the housing authorities will call for assistance for the individuals or call us directly when they have an opening because our consumers have been good tenants. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  In Virginia our Statewide Independent Living Council funds a program with the 15 Centers for Independent Living to work with all of our PHAs, also to comment to work with their Consolidated Plan, their comprehensive planning, and they've been successful in getting more not only vouchers but also to make sure that the needs of people with disabilities are more equally ‑‑ better represented throughout Virginia.  So it's been a good effort there.
>> PAT TUCKER:  Yes. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  We have been able to get extension on vouchers for people coming out of the nursing home.  And we have also been able to get the orientation period that they have pushed up, so that it will accommodate the people.  And we have also been able to get the local housing authority to go out to the person and do some type of accommodation for the person.
>> PAT TUCKER:  Uh‑huh.  Yes.  I knew you had to say something. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Coming from the state of Oklahoma, the key thing is that with the growth of a lot of our independent living waivers, such as pace and my choice, living choice, the public housing assistance and housing authority they're working with us because they see that citizens have choice, they have rights, so it's a great working relationship in the way where ‑‑ she's not here, but we have an agreement now where we have a total of 50 housing vouchers, 25 for the City of Oklahoma and 25 for Tulsa, specifically for people with disabilities.
>> PAT TUCKER:  Okay.  So ‑‑ oh, yes. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I have a question, and this isn't something I have directly experienced but I have been wondering recently.  In independent living centers or advocates having close relationships with those that provide housing, has anyone experienced conflicts where your relationship as an advocate is actually almost integrated ha housing and services ‑‑ does that make sense, where having those close relationships is putting services very ‑‑ it's closely tying them to ‑‑ because I could see scenarios where someone having a really close relationship or an agency that has a relationship with a housing complex, where they do provide services when people need them.  Is there a conflict of interest with that?  Does that make sense?
>> PAT TUCKER:  I think so.  I ‑‑ so your question is ‑‑
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I'll give an example.
>> PAT TUCKER:  Okay. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Our agency was approached by a housing complex.  And they would like us to be available to clients who are looking for supports, and looking for some basic supports to help people be good tenants and help people have the resources to be able to live successfully.
And one of my concerns is that our services, by having a relationship with the housing complex, doesn't become a conflict of interest for those clients because there is that relationship with the agencies.  Does that make sense?
>> PAT TUCKER:  I got you now.  I'm going to let you respond.  And I have a response.  She's reading what you said. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Sorry. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I am because there were two parts it to.  As an ILC we provide more than one support, so that's not a conflict for us, even if I wasn't the ILC that assisted someone with regard to the supports but was helping with the housing.  And when handled properly, these agencies even if we're not able to successfully resolve see the efforts we make, and they continue to call us because they know that when the people have that potential, we provide the proper supports, they can stay, be maintained there and be consistently good tenants.
>> PAT TUCKER:  And I'll add two things.  What I will say to the question is that as long as you're remembering to give the person choice, and you're not promising anything that you can't deliver, so if you're promising the landlord that you can fix everything, then that's a problem.  But if you're not respecting the client choice, that's a problem.  So as long as you do those two things, I don't see where the conflict is. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Okay.  Because even there what I just heard was if they're having an issue and they choose to receive services, they're able to stay.  So ‑‑ does that make sense?
>> PAT TUCKER:  That made sense, and I'm not sure that's what I said.  But ... 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  They're able to stay only if they follow through properly and have success with the recommendation.  Our folks get subsidized housing like from HUD and can be in public housing facilities at the same time.  Our local HUD office will call us when they have had a long‑standing tenant who they love but is beginning to fail because they don't want to see them move or lose their subsidy knowing how tragic that can be. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Thank you.
>> PAT TUCKER:  I don't think that answers it.  But, yeah, it's not about making promises.  It's also respecting the person and that you can only ‑‑ if they're willing to accept the help, if it's help that they want and need, as long as you're doing those things, I think you're fine.  I don't see where the conflict is. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Thank you. 
>> PAT TUCKER:  Yes.  I heard my name. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I want to just emphasize about the importance of the relationship between your advocacy organization and public housing authorities, very, very important.  Including those affordable housing community organizations, but in reference to housing authorities it is critical that you be able to put relationship as you know our community is the poorest of the poor.  And public housing is the main source of housing for our community, or the majority of our community.
There is a list of issues that we have worked together with our Chicago housing authority.  You can find it on the net here.  ILRU on this, if you go to the Web site, which lists some accomplishments and our partnership, which are there to say that our public housing authority leads the country in assisting people with disability housing.
>> PAT TUCKER:  One of the ‑‑ I'm sorry.  I thought you were done.  Go ahead. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Go ahead.
>> PAT TUCKER:  One of the things I wanted to point out was that you made my point when I asked you the question.  PHAs are public housing that have a lot more flexibility than sometimes we think they do.  And the other part of that was that the relationships are integral.  If you don't have a relationship with your public housing, you need to start trying to work on developing that relationship.
And the relationship is not going to start off well, if you're walking in saying I need five units right now.  Yes. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Yeah, I agree with the gentleman as well, in that it is critical that you have the nexus, if you will, in public housing authorities.  Our center has from time to time butted heads, you know, from time to time.  It's inevitable that that may happen.  But I don't know that it has to be adversarial in the sense that if you have that respect for each other, quite often you will find that you will need each other, and, you know, I think that the IL movement, of course, was built on the understanding or objects, he came from the philosophy that when ‑‑ when the movement becomes bigger than the individual, then you lost sight on what you're supposed to be doing anyway, and so ‑‑ but there's a way then to hopefully come together and resolve conflict, and whenever we've had these issues with our public housing authority, we understand how important it is to resolve the issues simply because, you're right, most of our clientele who requires housing, you know, public housing is one of the biggest, you know, resources for that.
>> PAT TUCKER:  And, again, I skipped this slide because we basically just went through this with everybody telling us how they have worked with their public housing.  There is so many ways that you can work with public housing.  It's a matter of having a relationship, learning what they do and what they can do, and you know, discussing how they can do more and if that's even possible, but having that discussion and sitting down at the table and really understanding what they do and teaching them about what you do.
Continuum of Care.  There's a lot of programs that includes the supportive housing, the Shelter Plus Care, the single room occupancy. 
I'm sure that ‑‑ most of you know what these are, right?
So ‑‑ yes. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Just because I don't know, if you could just quickly go through Shelter Plus Care.
>> PAT TUCKER:  Quickly.  Can you do it quickly?  Go quickly.
>> ANN DENTON:  Shelter Plus Care is a program that HUD operates for people who are homeless with disabilities, and the program provides rental assistance, and that's all it provides, but it has to be matched with an equal dollar amount of support services, and it's really a very flexible program, and there are no HUD rules built into the program that talk about what people capital be before they can get access it to.  In other words, some jurisdictions have set it up like if you want a Shelter Plus Care voucher you have to be already capable of independent living without assistance.  And that's not in the HUD rules.  What's in the HUD rules is that the target population is people who are literally homeless and have a documentable disability. 
>> PAT TUCKER:  That was really good.  That was actually quicker than I could have done it. 
Low income housing tax credits.  Did somebody have a hand up.  Yes. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Is there an Internet resource to pursue that further?  Because I have a million questions related to how does the dollar amount match, how do you go about that, you know, how is it determined?  How do you know?  Is it based on the dollar amount coming out of the pocket of the consumer, et cetera.
>> ANN DENTON:  I'll tell you what, I'll sit at your table at lunch.  Let's talk about it.
>> PAT TUCKER:  She said a million questions.  You might get through a hundred.
>> ANN DENTON:  Lunch and dinner.
>> PAT TUCKER:  Tax credits.  It took me a long time to understand tax credits.  Oh, I forgot the microphone.  He's like doing this.  I'm like, no, I don't need a drink.
Tax credits.  It took me a while in understand tax credits.  Tax credits are basically the dollar amount that investors can invest in the property by buying the tax credits and buying them for so much on the dollar and then that benefits the property because basically that's going to ‑‑ that money is going to go into the building.  Is that ‑‑ kind of?  Uh‑oh?  Tell me. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Well, the way I understand ‑‑ my light is on too.  I guess I think the way that I understand just from a lay perspective, I guess, the tax credits to work is that the tax credit money is used to offset the gap between the market rate of the rent.  So let's say like fair market value for a one bedroom is $600 a month, but 30% of somebody's income is $200 a month, it's used to make up that $400 gap in what the landlord receives in rent versus what they would receive if it were market value.
>> PAT TUCKER:  That's not what I ‑‑ that's not what I understood. 
>> ANN DENTON:  That's how a voucher works.
>> PAT TUCKER:  Yeah, that's a voucher.
>> ANN DENTON:  That's the definition of a voucher.
>> PAT TUCKER:  Yeah, it was more going toward the development of affordable housing, is what I understood tax credit money to do.  So it didn't apply towards the gap in the rent and the subsidy.
>> ANN DENTON:  It's not that specific.  It subsidizes units.
>> PAT TUCKER:  Right.
>> ANN DENTON:  It's not as literal at that.  One of the cool things ‑‑ the thing to know about tax credits is that ‑‑ there are two things.  One is that the tax credit program is governed by the qualified allocation plan in your state and if you're interested in advocacy, I'm sure Access Living is going to talk about this tomorrow, but knowing what's in the QAPE and advocating for a certain number of units to be developed for people at 30% or less of median family income or people with disabilities, but to tinker with the rules so that a development stream starts kicking out affordable units.  That's one thing.  
The second thing is, you know, you look at these tax credit properties are targeted at house holds at 50 to 60% of median family income.  That's still too high for somebody who just got SSI but you should know where they are.  When we talk about choice we'll talk about that again.  You should have a list of all the tax credited assistive communities in your resource map.  Then the amount of help from family, for example, is less, so you've got a unit that's partially subsidized and a person needs less help, less additional help to make the rent.