Mod 4

TIM FUCHS: We're doing good on time.

So we're going to tackle some of these Post-Its now.

So thanks for putting these on the table.

I hope you'll continue to do so.

What's HQS?

Housing Quality -- thank you.

Somebody on green Post-it just said, looking up ADA compliance and see how it works into the housing quality standards.

Somebody thanked Darrel for the coverage of universal design and the ADA, and the rest.

And we'll get a little bit more into that tomorrow.

He's going to talk more in detail about the program they have.

Programs, really.

Somebody said they liked being a beginner, that they learned they can investigate more on their own.

They would like to hear more about laws.

So that's going to be peppered into this.

We're also going to talk on Friday morning right about working laws and policy into the advocacy work that you do.

And then by all means, ask more questions about relevant laws if you have them.

Somebody loved Julie's talk about social determinents of health, found it motivating, knowledgeable, that's great.

People like Ann.

I like Ann too.

 [Laughter.]

Advocacy, voice, Olmstead, real examples.

Sounds right to me!

Get accessibility into the MLS.

Right?  That's cool.

Darrel's going to talk more about that tomorrow as well.

Because that's something they've been successful in doing.

A little anecdote.

I was with Darrel, like, a year ago, learning about this program that they have, or maybe a year and a half ago, and on the way to the airport, my cab driver was telling me how he was getting his real estate license and he had literally just gone through a course where they talked about all the new accessibility information they had to track as real estate professionals in the Sun valley.

And I thought, isn't that cool, that I just heard about this and here's somebody who just got this training.

Somebody wanted to talk a little bit of clarification.

The disparate impact, three times the rent in income was set by HUD.

30% of income for rent.

How do you fight HUD with the HUD FHA.

Ann, do you want to tackle that.

ANN DENTON:  I will.

HUD set the standard, and I think Darrel had a slide on it too.

That affordability equals the person pays no more than 30% of their income towards their housing cost.

That's the HUD standard of affordability.

The problem is not with that standard.

The problem is with the application of that standard, which is local.

It's not federal.

So you have a real estate industry or a rental market that has a standard lease application, and on the standard lease application is the requirement that a household earns three times the rent.

That's a local -- that's local.

That's not federal.

For me, that's good news.

Because anything that's local is subject to local input and local feedback.

So I don't think HUD's the place to fight it.

That's the note I made on that.

I think the place to fight it is locally.

Yes, ma'am?

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Is it just laws --

Is it just laws, or city regulations, county regulations, or is it just because the owner can do it?

ANN DENTON:  I think the whole thing about a standard lease application is something that maybe a board of Realtors puts out or some sort of landlord association.

Somebody's gotten together and they've come up with a standardized application for rental property.

That has -- you know, there's nothing that's connecting that to a law.

That's just sort of industry practice in that community.

It's a common thing, that three times the rent in income is a very common barrier.

But I'm saying, let's fight it locally.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I'm not trying to comment against the experts here for sure, but one of the things that you're going to see, and we see it all the time in the field, is that management companies drive many, many of these larger projects.

And management companies are hired by companies, individuals that are doing the housing.

And in turn, their job is to maximize profit.

So they create these rules.

You may go down the street and another company doesn't have that rule.

And that's what's unfair to the ladies and gentlemen on limited incomes, is that they can't show that.

Especially with Money Follows the Person where ladies and gentlemen are coming out of an institutional setting of some type and don't have a history of income streams.

But they can pay their rent.

And we see it constantly.

The other one, which is a real gimmick that we're seeing in the field, is that management companies are having an affordable housing unit open up.

And what they will do is intentionally hold it vacant for 90 days and take applications.

Why?

Because you pay your $35 for your application fee, your $50, your whatever.

They take 100 applications, make all that money as profit, and then cherry-pick one.

It is -- it's sinful.

But that's what happens.

One of the things that we're seeing, we're working with Columbia, Missouri, right now.

We are looking at a process right now where the city will vet any person for a rental, do all the background checks, for $35.

Then you can take that golden ticket to any leaser in the community, and they can't keep charging you.

If you're someone with a $750 a month income, how many applications can you make to places?

That's where people go homeless.

ANN DENTON:  I wouldn't fight you on any of that.

Property management companies exist to maximize profit for their owners.

Doesn't mean they're not amenable to feedback.

And I think that part of the, it's the same thing as all the issues that are going to come up that are barriers.

One of the ways that you can address that is on a case by case basis, you make the case that people who, that this individual person is going to be able to pay their rent.

This is why their circumstances contribute to that idea.

It's a reasonable accommodation.

Right so you go that route.

The other route, which is equally valid, is to work around getting those rules changed.

And there are all kinds of things that have happened in communities that property management 
companies and landlords have discriminated against people with disabilities or people with extremely low incomes by denying households that have voucher income as part of their ability to pay their rent.

So that's been an issue.

And so there are cities, and part of the advocacy for that, there are communities that have looked at ordinances that prohibit landlords from discriminating based on source of income.

So that's one of the ways that -- that's one of the problems.

It's not exactly what you identified, but it's a problem that's related to this whole housing application thing and being a qualified tenant.

That's the language.

And that's one of the remedies, to say you may not discriminate based on source of income.

And we have another question.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  So in Florida, and I don't know about anywhere else, but with the low-income tax credit housing, there is a maximum amount of money that somebody can make.

ANN DENTON:  Right.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  But there's also a minimum amount of money.

So if you make under that minimum, you're not eligible to get into that housing, which seems to defeat the whole purpose of it.

ANN DENTON:  I would want to look at the -- I would want to look at what they're doing.

As far as I know, Darrel, there's no -- there are income limits.

They're called HUD income limits, for different -- you're exactly right.

And the market, the housing market itself, the developers and all of that, use that as guidelines.

Right?

I've never heard of there being a minimum requirement that is federally determined.

DARREL CHRISTENSON:  I think one of the keys is consistency of implementation.

So if a property owner says you need to make this much in order to qualify, that they do it across the board, with or without a disability.

One thing that last year when Ann came to visit and taught me a great tool, is on that three and a half times the income, use the reasonable accommodation argument.

Say, "Look. Okay.  My client, my consumer, you know, is on Social Security, whatever.  And they don't have, obviously, the three and a half times."

But we can use that argument of reasonable accommodation to qualify them.

And we've actually used 
that several times.

And that, I learned from this woman.

TIM FUCHS: To so –

ANN DENTON:  One of the things that we've been doing is throwing around some basic terms.

And I know there are a few beginners in here.

But -- so who ... well, how many people feel like they already understand the differences between low-income, very low income, extremely low income, and why that has nothing to do with poverty?

Y'all understand that?  Yes.

So -- yes?

How many yeses.

Let me see it.

Okay.

TIM FUCHS: 10 people, maybe.

ANN DENTON:  I mean, I'm going to do 60,000 words or less now.

[Laughter.]

People on SSI are always, almost always 99% of the time in the extremely low income category.

Which is zero to 30% of the area median family income.

And the problem is that affordable housing is built for people at 80% of median.

Someone on SSI will be at, let's say, 12% of median.

And when that housing is built, when the developer does their pro forma, right, their plan for how that property is going to cash flow, they project rental income based at the highest level that they can charge.

And so what's affordable is never going to be affordable for -- that's at 80% of the median.

That's the definition of affordable.

Those households -- and I have -- there's a handout in there about it.

In your packet about it,  which we'll get into later.

But there's no way affordable housing -- you made this point earlier -- affordable housing has nothing to do with poverty.

And for people on SSI, affordable is way up here.

I'm holding my hands up above my head.

And extremely low income is way down here, which is -- I'm holding my hand below the level of the table.

So this is not poverty anyway.

And it's not really -- it's not really affordable to households on SSI.

I think I made a speech.

And I know, one of our complaints is we keep saying we're going to get to it.

I'm going to get to that in more detail.

But that's the beginning.

That's the -- that's the argument.

That's the argument and the opportunity for advocacy, is that these plans that we're going to be talking about this afternoon are often just linked to affordability, which is 80% of median.

Well, that's nonsense!

Our people will never be served by that.

An opportunity for advocacy is to go in and get those plans to set aside or target resources to the extremely low income population.

That's the short version.

TIM: I hope this has been helpful.

I think it's been good to kind of break out and answer some of these questions.

We've got a few more, but in the interest of time, I want to be sure we leave time for the slides that you all put together.

We will tackle these before the end of the day.

And I will pick that one that Ann just alluded to.

Someone said, let's get to the meat of this. 

And first, careful what you wish for, because it's coming.

Secondly, I just want to ask everybody to remember that we've got a whole range of experience level in the room.

And I think we're conscious of that.

We designed this as an intermediate-level training. 

We have heard that most of  you feel that you are at that intermediate level, but when we put something out to the whole field, people see housing and if they're working on housing, they want this training.

We don't have 19 or 20 on locations that people can pick from that are IL specific, so we want to respect that.

And some of the build-up is to try to orient people as they get into this.

Thanks for your patience and understanding, and trust me, we will get into the weeds for the next two and a half days.

I'll let you guys take it away on the slides.

ANN DENTON:  This is, you know, after lunch I never want to be the one talking because people fall asleep and my feelings get hurt.

This is a group discussion.

Okay?

And Darrel and I said we're not going to spend a lot of time on barriers, but what we would like to do is, have a discussion of barriers sort of that are more common in urban areas, barriers more common in rural areas.

As we do that, let's think about, what partnerships or collaborations could help us address that barrier.

Might be a natural ally.

What opportunities for advocacies are there.

And where are the resources?

Let's think and ask those questions as we go through the barriers.

I think we both said a couple of times that we don't have enough housing.

Right?

We don't have enough affordable housing.

And as I just said, the affordable housing that we do have is built for tenants or owners that are much more -- have much higher income than someone on an SSI income or even someone on SSDI income, or even someone working a full-time minimum-wage job.

So market rate housing in most communities is too high.

And then the number of accessible units in communities is appallingly low.

I mean, as Darrel has tried to teach us, we need to start with the idea that 100% of all housing development needs to be -- meet accessibility standards.

Needs to be universal design, visitability, all of that.

100%.

What we've got is the bare minimum.

And some of that probably isn't up to snuff.

Right?

And also, as I said earlier, some of what is accessible is not affordable.

So those tax credit developers are developing accessible units, but they're saying they can't rent them, and the reason is because they're trying to rent them to households on very limited incomes who can't afford the rent.

It's a circular -- it's a catch-22.

Another sort of cluster of problems is that we have a hard time getting people into the housing we have.

Because you're all at the intermediate level, although we're going to discuss this -- I forget -- tomorrow morning, one morning -- housing resources, we have funded in our communities all kinds of housing that is theoretically, certainly was built for low-income.

And some of it may actually be affordable.

It may be subsidized housing.

So part of what the task is to beat the bushes, shake the tree as hard as you can to make sure that what we do have is serving our community.

The other thing about accessing existing housing is, like the tax credit properties and some other regular, ordinary market-rate housing, we can't get people into it without rental assistance.

And the competition for rental assistance is fierce.

How many people have a housing authority with an open waiting list for Section 8?

Anybody?  A few.

Yeah.

Yeah how many people have a public housing authority with a waiting list that's more than a year?

Much more common.

Right?

Or that is closed.

Right?

We have a waiting list that's not taking applications.

So the financial assistance that people need, which that housing choice voucher is a beautiful way to fill the gap between what people can pay and what the fair market rent is.

The housing authority resources are highly competitive and in many communities, tapped out.

However, that's not the only source of rental assistance.

It's really not.

One of the things that we're going to talk about this afternoon, and when Karen gets here, is the local consolidated plan.

Your local consolidated plan has funding that they can use for rental assistance.

It does.

All they have to do is make the decision to do that.

So you can take rental assistance that's funded by the consolidated plan, called tenant-based rental assistance under the home program, and that can be used, really, to bridge people to more permanent rental assistance.

It's 24 months of rental assistance.

So just because your housing authority has a very long waiting list, one of the ways to do that is to go to -- get around that is to find other sources of rental assistance.

The other way to get around that is to have your public housing authority -- look at your public housing authority plan.

What does that plan say?

What does your market look like in terms of the number of people with disabilities and the number of households that have -- that have units with accessible features in them?

I mean, as our speaker said this morning, those numbers don't -- they don't connect.

They don't compute.

That gives you an opportunity to take that information back to the planning process and say, "We need your help in fixing this."

Okay.

So urban areas.

How many urban areas do we have?

Okay.

So what's the problem in urban areas?

I mean, we made a list up there.

But ...

What are the problems in urban areas?

There's Karen!

Yes!

There's Karen!

[Applause.]

Yay!

TIM FUCHS: Ann, when we poll the room can we give an audible?

ANN DENTON:  How many people are from urban?

Let's do that again.

So I would say a third.

Maybe a third.

Okay.

So urban areas, what's probably -- why is that hard?

What's the barrier in urban areas?

Come on.

ANN DENTON:  Huh?  Yeah.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Hi.

For the consumers at the Disability Network in Detroit, it's our #1 barrier is housing.

And what we find the disabled community, possibly, is on SSI.

So they may only have an income 771.

And where are you going to find reasonable accommodations in the city of Detroit for that type of money?

Where you want to live, that's safe.

ANN DENTON:  People like to live in a safe neighborhood.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  And they want a roof over their heads.

ANN DENTON:  They like running water and electricity.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I know.

I know.

It's -- it's a challenge.

ANN DENTON:  Yes.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  We fight daily to try to find apartment complexes, landlords, you know, homeowners.

The gentrification now in Detroit within two or three years, rents have gone up double.

ANN DENTON:  Right.

And I -- and I would say that make -- that -- in the advocacy, when we get to talking about advocacy in your action plan, I would say -- let me get back where I can be in the camera range.

Otherwise I will get yell at.

[Laughter.]

Opportunity for advocacy is, #1, making that case.

Right?

Doing that with data.

Putting that out there with data.

Which I'm sure you've already done.

And then seeking to influence these planning processes.

I haven't looked up the Detroit consolidated plan yet, but I'm totally capable of it, you know what I'm saying?

And look and see, and does that plan address that need?

I don't know.

I haven't looked it up.

But if it doesn't, then there's an opportunity for advocacy when you go and you look at your plan underneath that advocacy goal, you look at, if you don't know the consolidated plan, look it up.

See if what they're planning to do with those dollars has any relationship to what they identify themselves as the need, #1.

And #2, what you identify as the need.

You've got a ton of money coming into Detroit every single year for -- under the consolidated plan.

What are they going to do with that money?

I'll be happy to talk to you about it on the break.

But that's -- that's ... a golden opportunity for advocacy.

Okay.

Five minutes.

Oh, good Lord.

Okay.

What else is going on?

How many people are working with the homelessness Continuum of Care?

You guys in urban or even rural areas.

Yes.

Has that been fun?  [Laughs.]

No.

Right?

It's really no fun for them either.

I mean, it's really not.

But one of the things that happens in urban areas is people have set up a system whereby it's a funnel.

It's a pipeline to these dollars, and you have to participate in that to get people into the pipeline.

So that -- I have it on the barrier list.

It's also, I think, an important effort to make a scatter shot community effort into our system.

Is it working?

It varies by community.

But it also constitutes a barrier.

The other thing that's going on in urban areas is, if you wanted to be totally active and pay attention to everything that had even the slightest impact on housing, you could spend 40 hours a week in meetings.

Right?

In different committee meetings in different, you know, advocacy committees, blah-blah-blah.

Who wants to do that?

You have to pick your battles.

You have to identify part of the plan, planning that we were hoping that you will do here, is look at sort of strategic targets.

Where is your community vulnerable to input?

Right?

So you're not beating your head against the wall.

You're picking things that have some possibility of actually working. 

Okay.

And then special problems in rural areas.

How many rural?

Right?

Okay.

Again, about a third.

I don't know where the rest of you are.

 [Laughter.]

Sleeping!

Taking your after-lunch nap.

Huh?

Thank you for answering that.

Some of the organizations in the room are state-wide.

So rural areas, relatively few available resources.

Am I right about that?

Okay.

Relatively lacking in social services infrastructure.

Affordable housing infrastructure.

Yes?  So far so good?

Fewer providers.

Fewer housing providers, fewer service providers.

Yes?

And then the whole small-town thing.

Everybody knows everybody.

Right?

I was talking to somebody in Texas, where I'm from, a lawyer who was not happy about the treatment that a person was getting from the -- from her service provider.

And she was -- she went to high school with the woman who was the director of the public housing authority, so called her up and said, "I've got somebody I need to get in."

And got her in.

You know?

Not saying that that works in 100% of the cases, but those are the kinds of things that happen in my experience less often and in more concentrated urban areas.

It's more of a small-town thing.

Okay.

So what did we leave off this list?

What barriers have we not talked about?

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  One of the things we're dealing with in Denver, and I think it came into play around 2012, is there's this urban camping ban.

Where for someone experiencing homelessness, all they can use to protect themselves from the weather is the clothes they're wearing.

And there's this thing attached to it called the right to rest.

And basically, people experiencing homelessness, they're constantly being forced to move on to somewhere else.

And we run into it a lot even because of that, trying to maintain contact with consumers long enough to go through the process of all of the things associated with trying to get housing.

ANN DENTON:  Yes.

If you can't find me, the fact that I filled out an application two days ago means nothing.

Because I've disappeared.

A lot of communities have that around homelessness.

It's a common problem.

I will tell you with great pride that my city of Austin, where I live, just passed an ordinance that repealed those provisions in our local municipality, and proactively said that people have basically a right to shelter.

Yeah?

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Hi.

From Raleigh, North Carolina.

And we have a TCLI settlement in the state.

And it's a settlement between the DOJ and the state where they have to transition individuals that were -- that had mental health illness back into the community from institutions, back into the community.

But right now we do a target unit program referral, which is a subsidy program much like housing, much like the housing authority.

It's set up pretty much the same way.

But with a TCLI settlement, anybody affiliated with TCLI gets first priority on the list.

So anyone else with a disability, they actually prioritize TCLI, Money Follows the Person.

And then homeless.

And then anyone else with a disability.

So now, a lot of the individuals we serve are way back on the list.

ANN DENTON:  Right.

The way that you -- that housing authorities or other housing providers manage those -- those priorities is the devil's in the details.

What you're describing is that the people who are not in some special class of, you know, extra-special extra-needy, right, that they come to the first -- they get the line first -- they're at the head of the line, and then they eat up all the resources, and people in lower -- right.

And so a different -- part of that is an administrative thing.

Housing authorities have a real aversion to running more than one waiting list.

So they're typically going to look for the easiest way to implement whatever it is they have to implement.

And that's the kind of thing that they can do without making a second waiting list, is to stack the priorities like that.

And in some cases, that works fine.

But in some cases you get the outcome which you've got.

I remember in my community, we made a decision to -- the city of Houston -- where's our Houston person?

She was over there -- the city of Houston made a decision to prioritize all of the incoming federal dollars to the consolidated plan for specific population.

In Houston it was chronically homeless.

For us, it was veterans.

Okay?  Homeless veterans.

That's great, but that better be time-limited, because otherwise everybody else loses.

The way to do that, if you're really talking about different pots of vouchers, is to run separate lists.

Housing -- they won't want to do that, and it may be that your city needs to pony up some money to help them cover the additional administrative costs.

Because there are additional administrative costs, it's much more complicated to run multiple lists.

Anybody in here ever worked for a housing authority?

I mean, it's genuinely more of a problem.

Okay?

Well, then let's pay them to do that.

Because we need it to be fair.

We need the resources that we have to be apportioned fairly.

Other comments?

I know we're out of time.

Yes, ma'am.

Oh, one more, and then we'll come to you.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Transportation is a barrier.

Because we have -- we're very rural.

So we have units that will become open in little towns, but there are no services in that town.

And the transportation is an on-demand, during the week only.

Like 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.

So if you've got anything that -- if you're going shopping, it's a huge undertaking to get anywhere if you move to that little town.

So we'll have units that will stay open in these affordable housing units forever because nobody wants to move there.

ANN DENTON:  Right.

Because they can't go to their doctor.

They can't go to the store.

They can't -- yeah.

Transportation.

And you know there's -- I mean ...

That's not what this training is, but there have been creative solutions -- there's no magic bullet.

But I've heard of service providers who start a van service, get funding and start a van service.

Or there are some communities where the city or the county or even the medical, the hospital community will put money into, again, probably a van service that will take -- it's only for taking people to medical appointments, but there's all kinds of, you know -- and in urban areas, you have in your, you know, if you have a bus service, you have -- they have a requirement to provide special transit or whatever you call it in your community.

Okay, well, if that's not working properly, and that's the issue, let's figure out what would make it work, and attack that issue until they change it.

Huh?

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  In northern California we have what may be some unconventional barriers, but they may be barriers coming to your town soon.

You may not -- we're in the emerald triangle, and that has its own problems.

We depend on the private sector for most of our housing, if not practically all of it.

And a lot of that is what are called second – secondary units or what used to be called mother-in-law units.

So it's individual homeowners who are deciding to add something to bring in a little extra income, and those tend to be the units that are more affordable.

Two things that have gotten in the way of that that have put a damper on investors continuing to invest in residential real estate, and causing them to flip over to commercial real estate investment is: Residential housing being used for grow houses.

ANN DENTON:  What?

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Grow houses.

Indoor illegal marijuana growing operations which completely destroys the interior of the home.

And that's a disincentive for private investors to invest in residential property.

The other thing is companion animals, where that is being abused, and potential renters are showing up with rottweilers, pit bulls as their companion animal, and investors are saying, I don't want to deal with it, so I will do commercial and not residential anymore.

ANN DENTON:  What you're talking about, there are peculiarities on everybody's housing market where, you know, developers are going to follow the money.

And as Darrel said earlier, he does not blame them for that.

Let's harness that energy for good.

Let's make it more lucrative for them to do what we want them to do.

And in that case, I mean, there may be things that the community can do, maybe law enforcement can do around the grow houses, you know.

If there's a market there for either affordable home ownership or affordable rentals, if there's a market there, that means somebody can make money providing it.

So the big question that I would have for you, is there really a market for it?

If there is, then the rest is details.

You can figure out how to -- how to approach it.