Mod 5





TIM FUCHS: Day one wrap-up.

That's a nice place to be, isn't it? 

Oh, look. Questions.

Here are some of the questions we didn't get to.

And I had some new ones.

I will start with the oldest ones.

I'm policing the mic and I'm not even using it.

One of the comments was thanks for using the mic.

And now I have it a foot and a half from my face.

Accommodations are not paid for by tenants.

Modifications can be required to be paid for by tenants.

Absolutely correct.

If we didn't say that correctly or we implied otherwise, we didn't mean to.

So that is right.

We agree.

Where is the data on the lack of affordable, accessible units?

We will cover this tomorrow.

ANN DENTON: And it's in the market study of your consolidated plan.

Karen just talked about the consolidated plan.

I have just looked up two of the consolidated plans for this -- you know, for Detroit.

I looked up Detroit.

See me after the meeting.

I looked up Memphis.

You can look up your consolidated plan and they have a housing market analyst in that plan.

You can use that against them. [Laughter.]

Did I say that out loud?

DARREL CHRISTENSON:  It's all on tape.

TIM FUCHS: What happened to funding for the California community transition program?

I don't know.

KAREN KARNEY-MICHALSKI:  Anybody know?

TIM FUCHS: Oh, I'm sorry.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: More than one thing, actually.

But the main thing is, it was Money Follows the Person, and the funding ended.

TIM FUCHS: That's a pretty short answer.

Okay.

Next up.

Will reasonable accommodations be addressed in a more comprehensive manner?

I think that would be good, how to present a request, document, file a complaint, et cetera.

Not really in our materials.

I don't know if --

ANN DENTON: It's not in our materials.

I think any of us, though, could sit down -- if you're particularly interested, you could sit down and we can talk to you about it.

I mean, part of what -- one of the things, you know, people always want a form.

The truth is, a reasonable accommodation request can be verbal.

There's no magic form.

But we can talk more about that either on breaks,

or any of us can do that.

TIM FUCHS: Okay.

Are there exceptions for older apartment complexes to have to comply with accessibility?

Or, rather, not have to comply with accessibilities?

Steps, no elevators et cetera, especially ones that are subsidized -- no.

DARRELL CHRISTENSON: There's no -- nobody's grandfathered in.

TIM FUCHS: There's no grandfather clause in the ADA so we should educate people about that.

But everybody's grandfathered in if you have to spend money.

 [Laughter.]

Don't we all know that.

If you have to spend money, you're grandfathered in.

Wrong

ANN DENTON: She's being sarcastic.

Wrong

KAREN KARNEY-MICHALSKI: I am.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I think it should be pointed out that the

Fair Housing Law mandates design and construction criteria

for multi family housing built after a certain date.

That is true.

1991.

So if it's pre- 1991, which a lot of the housing stock -- which a lot of the apartment housing stock is, they may not have even that basic accessibility that the fair housing amendment required.

ANN DENTON: Right.

But that would be then, my question is, if that's a significant deterrent or barrier to accessing the housing, the housing stock that you have, then what is your community or jurisdiction doing about affirmatively furthering fair housing?

What does that plan say?

How are they using their federal money?

Are they just sort of tolerating that, or -- it's an opportunity -- could be an opportunity for advocacy.

If it's a big enough thorn in your side, if you decide to go after it, there's probably ways to make the case and to push for renovations.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: That was actually my question.

I'm in southwestern Minnesota.

We have ten apartment buildings that have income-based units, subsidized units.

Nine out of those ten, you can't physically get into the building.

I mean, they're 1950s, '60s building.

It's a deterrent for anybody -- elderly people, that takes up most of our income-based housing is not accessible to even get in and get the application.

You have to have someone hold the door open for you.

It's a split level to even get to one of the floors.

That's nine out of ten.

Our family -- income-based family housing is like that.

And there's -- so there's a big deterrent there, and we don't know -- our con plan is a state plan out of the twin cities in Minnesota.

We don't -- rural Minnesota, we're not even taken into consideration.

So what do we do?

How do we bring them into compliance and make that housing available to the population that needs it?

ANN DENTON: I mean, I would start by doing exactly what you've done, which is have the data to hand that you can demonstrate why this is a barrier, and you have identified allies already, people who are concerned about households that are elderly, and other people who are going to need access to those units.

So you've got a constituency of people that you can pull together.

Partnerships, the advocacy then is the -- that they're using public dollars in a way that is not addressing the need.

So in the -- in the con plans that I just looked up, the Detroit consolidated plan, they do this really nice market study that shows all of the things that are wrong with the market, that cost burden is the #1 problem.

Okay?

Their priorities are economic development, public services, public improvements, public facilities, homelessness prevention.

#6 is rental assistance.

So don't even address what they identify as their top priority until #6 on their list.

There's your disconnect right there.

So I would look for things like that in the -- you're governed by the state plan so it's little more of an uphill battle.

But, you know, and part of what you have to do is do an assessment.

Like I just said to this lady.

If it's a big enough thorn in your side, a significant barrier, go all out and fight it.

If it's -- if it's not, then maybe put that on the burner for next year.

Right?

So you have to -- and only you guys can make those decisions for yourselves.

There's lots of things out there that you could spend time addressing.

I would look for feasibility -- I would borrow from these two play books.

It's not low-hanging fruit because none of this is easy.

But the 212 new mainstream vouchers, that didn't just happen.

You know?

That was determined, multi-year determined advocacy that made that happen.

DARREL CHRISTENSON: I would also add, because your Center for Independent Living Association, use the association of your eight centers in Minnesota.

And have that body, that collaboration to work with the legislature -- not the legislature, but the folks that are doing the con plan and get together.

Because Marshall is a small dot in the state, but it's a part of a bigger picture with bigger issue, and so by -- I would say in joining with the other seven centers, you will have strength in numbers when you go to advocate for changes in that con plan.

Does that make sense, Terry?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes, perfect.

TIM FUCHS: Okay. Great.

Somebody pointed out the Olmstead date, we said February, it's June 22, I'm sorry about that, 1999.

And somebody else said thanks for using the mics.

This is an access issue.

I appreciate you guys cooperating with that.

I know it's frustrating when you're ready to talk and you got to wait for me to run across the room, but thanks.

And along the same lines, you guys have been a great audience.

We do these a lot, and how engaged you all have been right from the beginning has been exciting and I trust that will continue the next few days.

That's been cool to see.

A fresh question.

How are mainstream vouchers different from other vouchers?

DARREL CHRISTENSON: As I tried to mention, there's four qualifiers.

One is, are they homeless?

Is there a threat to homelessness?

Are they in a nursing home?

Or a threat to go into a nursing home?

And being someone with a disability.

So those were the four with the mainstreams.

It's the same type of programming.

It's just a different pot of money.

ANN DENTON: I would say, one of the things that -- one of my failures this year on a personal advocacy level or on a local community advocacy level, tried to get our housing author authority to apply for those mainstream vouchers and they refused to do it.

And I'm on their board.

So it was not fun.

But what you're asking -- and this may be not your question.

But I'm going to answer it anyway.

Which is, when we talked about housing choice vouchers at the public housing authority administers, right, the Section 8, that's one way to do rental assistance.

There are also other rental assistance that housing authorities can apply for.

One of those is mainstream vouchers, and those came up last year, and they're coming up again.

They have made a huge allocation to mainstream vouchers at the federal level.

Enormous.

They haven't even come close to spending it.

It's going to come up again.

If you want vouchers targeted for households with disabilities, mainstream vouchers are the way to go.

Another example of the kind of vouchers that housing authorities can do is the VASH Veterans Administration -- veterans, specialty, supportive housing vouchers.

There's lots of them.

And so part of, again, if you have a housing authority that is the least bit friendly or if you're in an area like Darrel is, where he's got multiple housing authorities, and I know him.

He's played one against the other.

I know he has. [Laughter.]

"Who, me?"

If housing authorities are something that you want to attack and that you can consider to be a feasible target, there are many, many, many things that housing authorities can do that they may not want to do.

Like run multiple waiting lists, like apply for these discretionary vouchers which then they will have to turn around and administer, and they say they don't have enough money or capacity and blah-blah-blah.

Right?

Make it happen.

DARREL CHRISTENSON: With that too, with the mainstream vouchers,

I know that -- I'm cochair of the NCIL housing subcommittee.

We've heard time and again where centers said that they were written into successful applications for mainstream vouchers.

But when it came time for implementation, they were snuffed out and left in the cold.

Not a part of the equation.

Then he would just say -- then I would just say, [clears throat] friendly little reminder over here, we helped you get those vouchers.

We were written in as a partner.

So don't forget us.

But I know that that's been kind of a problem that we've heard, that people were just kind of left out of the cold.

Even though they were helping getting those –

ANN DENTON: I would say sweetly, "Gosh, you wouldn't want HUD to find out about that, would you?"

TIM FUCHS: So we've got time.

What other questions do you all have before we break today?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I just wanted to let you know that Indiana does have a state housing authority.

It's the Indiana housing and community development authority.

So just to clear that up.

DARREL CHRISTENSON:  Thank you for that.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  We aren't that far out.

DARREL CHRISTENSON:  Thank you for the update.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: This is going to be hard to get specific with this question, but I'm curious.

I would imagine folks here work with folks that have the invisible disability, that, you know, say, the mental health disabilities, panic disorders, you know.

Sometimes those come later in life and sometimes people have them inherently.

Advocacy, just to kind of a case example, and I have a feeling I'm going to start seeing more of these in my community.

Individual, just because his disability made him annoying to, say, an apartment, you know, leasing -- the leasing office manager or something, you know, this is a case where the individual is actually thrown out.

The housing authority actually didn't advocate for him to stay.

It was a bunch of, you know, legal mumbo-jumbo.

He didn't understand.

He signed the paper, even if he had read the paper he wouldn't have understood it.

He was forced to move out of there.

He had four months.

It was an extension, the lawyer advocated on -- and I don't know how much you know the housing authority had to do with that.

But ...

DARREL CHRISTENSON: I think ...

People think that ...

The community thinks that folks with hidden disabilities are not valid.

Or, you know, they're not legitimate disabilities, whatever.

Because it's not, like, someone having a wheelchair or whatever.

But there again, it comes back to education.

And annoying behavior is okay.

But if it's disruptive behavior, that may be something else.

And a lot of times property owners have been advised by legal and others that if you're consistent in your enforcement of your rules and regs, then you're erring on the right side of the equation.

So I think that's, you know, one thing to take a look at, that annoying behavior of -- whatever -- is it really, you know, out of the ordinary, where there's a direct threat to self or others in the complex.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah, so that's -- yeah, I was thinking, it's not an instance where he's running around naked in the community or --

DARREL CHRISTENSON: That's just annoying if you have a bad body.

 [Laughter.]

AUDIENCE MEMBER: That's right.

You know, calling the office with concerns of asbestos.

Just leaving voice mails, essentially.

ANN DENTON: That's nonsense.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: That's what I thought.

ANN DENTON: Back to the question about reasonable accommodation.

Part of what goes on with the reasonable accommodation is that one of the reasons that a landlord can evict is direct threat like you guys were just talking about.

Just because the landlord perceives something as a threat doesn't actually make it a threat.

And then even if someone is disruptive, as Darrel said, running around naked or whatever, knocking on people's doors and requesting money, that kind of thing, even – you can request the reasonable accommodation to the rules for that behavior, and then the person can't be evicted until the accommodation is granted and it fails.

You see what I'm saying?

The person has -- the person needs to have support to change that behavior.

They can't stay and be disruptive forever.

But even for that sort of an extreme case there's a way to use the reasonable accommodation to buy the person some time to bring services and supports in and do some wrap-around and do some self-advocacy training and planning and, you know, if that fails, then it fails.

But there are things to do.

DARREL CHRISTENSON: And I think a lot of times -- we've all seen where there's that threat of retaliation.

You know?

So if ...

If a resident is doing some crazy stuff, then there's retaliation by management, and you really need to be mindful.

And what I do is listen to both sides of the story.

And if you're a fair housing center or other advocates are involved with you, check both sides of the story.

But we've seen a lot of times where people have been afraid and cower to landlords because they're afraid of retaliation.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Can you be more specific about how one goes about requesting these different types of vouchers that you refer to?

You were talking about mainstream vouchers, veterans vouchers.

I don't know what the process is for doing that.

DARREL CHRISTENSON: Go ahead.

ANN DENTON: You first.

DARRELCHRISTENSON: The mainstream vouchers have to be applied for from the housing authority.

They are the entity that provides the application for the mainstream vouchers.

If they're smart and want to strengthen their application, they will ask for community partners to be in on their app, so they can strengthen that.

And our center had been asked by five of the 11 to go in on those applications -- that -- that application as a partner.

ANN DENTON: So then -- I will just add, the advocacy is not going to HUD and trying to get more of that.

Although that's always helpful.

But to go into your housing authority and talk them into applying.

Like Darrel did.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: What --

KAREN KARNEY-MICHALSKI:  What you want to look for is what's called a NOFA.

A notice of funding availability that's put out by HUD.

And then HUD, when they put out this N.O.F.A.,

they will describe what that funding is to be used for.

Whether it's VASH or mainstream or whether it's whatever, whatever, of the many programs they offer.

So you can -- you have nothing better that you like to do with your time, sign up for getting notices when those N.O.F.A.s are released.

And when you get a N.O.F.A. and you find out, oh, this is a N.O.F.A. that my housing authority can apply for, I would be knocking on the housing authority's door going, "Oh, look we saw that HUD has this funding.

And we need these vouchers.

And we're here to help you apply for these.

"So sign up for the most wonderful reading you will ever have in your lifetime – [Laughter.]-- you will be inundated with information from HUD, but sometimes it can be helpful.

ANN DENTON: Just -- the other thing is, you may already have somebody in your community, there might be a low-income affordable housing coalition is already tracking some of that.

So make friends with them.

You don't have to do it all yourself.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: This is a follow-up to that.

And these vouchers are funded from a national pool of money.

Right?

Is there just money sitting on the table that nobody's applying for?

Or are you -- when you respond to a N.O.F.A. in your community, are you just competing with another community for a dwindling pool of resources that it's harder to get your hands on?

DARREL CHRISTENSON: National pool of money you're applying for.

ANN DENTON: Yes.

You're competing.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Is money lying on the table or is it being used somewhere?

ANN DENTON: Nothing's lying on the table.

But the federal government being an allocation of what I heard, now Darrel may know better than me because he's on the NCIL housing subcommittee.

But it was $100 million of money that was going into mainstream vouchers.

They only released a fraction of that in this first round.

There's going to be other rounds.

This is what HUD would call discretionary.

They put it out when they feel the urge to put it out.

Okay?

So when they -- whatever, it doesn't matter.

The other money that Karen was talking about, when we're talking about the consolidated plan, those are annual allocations.

Those are formula allocations.

So they come no matter what.

And then your public housing authority gets an annual -- they have to submit an application for it, but it's really not competitive, unless they have murdered a puppy and, you know, in broad daylight and it got to the paper.

They're pretty much going to get what they apply for.

And if they run housing units or have a Section 8 program, unless there's a national cut, they're going to get what they got before.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: So, Darrell, when you say your center got 212 vouchers, are those these discretionary vouchers?

ANN DENTON: Mainstream.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: So you are saying that we advocate for them.

We can't apply for them.

How did you end up getting those for your center?

DARREL CHRISTENSON:  So we, Ability 360 did not get all 212.

Between the five housing authorities that applied, we have been allocated some of the 212.

For example, Maricopa County, which is the county with Phoenix, they designated out of their total allotment, which I think 45, I want to say, ten of those were allocated to us.

Out of their 45, I'll say.

And the city of Tempe, I think they might have gotten 55.

Of the 55 that the Tempe housing authority received, they're allocating 18 of them to our center.

So they're the ones that administer it, but they use us as a partner to help with the applications and help fill those units quicker.

Because -- I mean, they flat-out told us, Tempe, they didn't need any community partner to identify 55 people.

They could have plucked those off their waiting list in a snap of a finger.

That would have been the easy way.

But to strengthen their app, they got partners in.

And with that, we are helping them fill out the apps, get the people for 18 of their 55.

Does that clarify?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I'm thinking it might work the same way as it did when our housing authority applied for vouchers, specifically for us.

After the vouchers were awarded, the only referrals that they would take for those vouchers were referrals that came from our CIL.

And so we had 25 vouchers basically sitting there, specifically for people with disabilities.

People would come to us.

We would refer them to the housing authority, letting the housing authority know this referral is coming from the Blue Ridge Independent Living Center.

And as long as that individual met the eligibility requirements, they got a section 8 voucher.

That's the way it worked.

DARREL CHRISTENSON: And the other thing, I know that we're

going to run into some tough times with, is once a voucher

is actually awarded to a consumer, I believe it's 90 days that -- huh?

120.

Thank you.

120 days to find a unit to take that voucher to.

And that's going to be a challenge.

I told my staff, getting the voucher, filling out the application, getting it awarded, that's the easy part.

And they say, "Pssh, that was easy."

No.

Now that they have the voucher, you have 120 days to help them find a place.

That is when the real work begins.

Question over here.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: What would cause a public housing authority to be hesitant to apply for these vouchers?

DARREL CHRISTENSON: It's extra work.

ANN DENTON: It's extra work.

And I mean, I would say that a friendly housing authority is worth its weight in gold.

But they can only be pushed so far. 

The truth is, that the housing choice voucher program from the housing authority perspective loses money every year.

They're not making that up.

That's the truth.

And so they're reluctant to take on more vouchers because they're not making any money on it.

They're not even breaking even on it.

And the administration of those vouchers is genuinely a burden.

That's part of it.

But you know, you can advocate with city or county, or whoever, to help the housing authority be a better player by helping to fund some of the administrative costs related to applying for these different voucher programs.

You can ask.

You know, if that's really the barrier -- again it comes down to an analysis.

If that's really the only barrier, let's figure out how to get around that one.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Lisa, over here.

I want to give a shout-out to NCIL, because they sent an advisory out, that that NOFA was coming out.

an advisory out, that that NOFA was coming out.

And because of that, I wasn't in that select circle.

I hadn't been tracking that.

I picked up the phone and I called our housing authority.

It's not a sweet story, because they weren't interested.

But it started a conversation.

And they did not want to apply, because they said they didn't have time.

So that kind of answers your question.

But it did start a conversation in our office, and we did get a small grant from our SILC to kind of study the situation, and actually they're paying for us to be here.

I kind of wished that we would have this training at the beginning of the grant instead of at the end but it is what it is.

It's exciting to here that there's more, because I feel if we do the research that you all are suggesting, I could go back to the housing authority again and show that we're a little bit more knowledgeable and could be a better partner.

Thank you very much for all the NCIL folks that worked so hard is and all of you that are teaching us.

DARREL CHRISTENSON: Thanks, Lisa.

TIM FUCHS: Other questions?

How are folks feeling?

Is this working?

Yeah? Okay.

So I mean, you know we're going to get even more specific over the next a couple of days.

Like I said, we're going to spend a lot of time on funding and partnership.

We will drill down on some of these things that we've introduced today.

I know that can be hard when we're still sort of at the top here,

or at the bottom, whatever the analogy is.

But again --

DARREL CHRISTENSON: Let me just say.

I just want to, from my part again, just to say, this is hard work.

This is intense day.

This is going to be a very intense week.

And that's because housing is not an easy solution.

If it was easy -- if there was an easy fix, we all would be home right now.

So I really hope and really ask you all, stay with it.

Stay engaged.

Because you need to be the solution to your community.

It's not easy, but do the work.

It'll pay off.

TIM FUCHS: Thanks, Darrel.

I want to mention, too, we've talked about -- we talked about the project Darrel talked about this morning about the partnership that is IL-NET.

These four different organizations and entities running this very large project, putting together all these different resources on training and technical assistance.

And one of the things that I try to plug at our trainings is, just how much information we have.

So especially for those of you all that are new, and those of you all that are wondering about these more peripheral things to housing work, we probably have a training on it.

Or a booklet.

Or an online course or a mentoring program or a webinar.

And everything we do, like the camera in the back, everything we do is recorded and saved and put on our website.

Like I said, Paula is the TA coordinator for IL-NET.

But I hope as we go through the work, like the reasonable accommodation, if there are things peripheral to this work that you're struggling with, let us know.

Because if we cannot point you to a specific resource, we will find an answer for you.

If we don't know it ourselves.

I want you all to hear that and to know that we intend for that to kind of complement the more specific stuff we're talking about this week.

I talked about some of the resources on housing as part of the series, and Ann is at lunch talking about an online course coming up, what, in September?

ANN DENTON: In September.

TIM FUCHS: I didn't even think about that.

Especially for some of you all at the beginner level, that's a perfect place for you all to start.

You're not starting, you're here.

But to get more information.

ANN DENTON: -- or staff.

Maybe staff that are doing the direct contact.

TIM FUCHS: Yeah.

So I just want you all to know, that's available too.

That's a big part of what we do.

We want to help you out with that stuff.

Look.

Again, thanks for being so engaged today