 for joining us for this this month's affordable housing task force meeting so that we can go ahead and jump into our agenda and be mindful of everybody's time instead of going through and marking everybody and I might miss somebody I want to go ahead and get started and I'll I'll call the roll um John Ando has taken left the comment and he's taken a position somewhere else so he no longer will be serving on our committee our task force he has indicated that he would appoint or ask um uh pambina read to serve I don't see Pam um it's Pam on here Erica let's make sure that we include Pam I'm not sure if we have her listed separately I think he's been gone a week and a half now so um I know he was initially on the emails but let's make sure we add pambina read so we will have a new uh person representing the comment with us Jeff Armstrong yeah julian so julian coming on I think I did here I was just on mute there you go okay julian reggie bonner sue I saw Brenna yep hey good morning Brenna Brian I saw Brian Dylan I saw Dylan um Tanya is probably not here is Tanya here okay uh just to let everyone know Tanya Isaac who is one of our uh uh resident appointees who serves with us lost her mother and I do believe the service is either yesterday or today so let's please keep her in our prayer um as um she is um dealing with that bereavement and and we will make sure she gets the minutes from today um jeb larmore he said he would be out today okay uh ivory matthew is a son ivory jennifer is going to be out today uh mary louise shayla i believe mary louise is on mr huh mary louise is on oh mary louise is on i'm sorry miss mary louise okay ashayla on nope okay lala anna dr lala anna solz um is on congratulations dr solz gregory sprouts i think that's how gregory it greg is there and council woman to ratio i saw her regina williams is regina on lester young okay didn't see mr young jim ziki i saw jim yep good morning jim um and chris simmer i saw chris good morning chris good morning all righty i think that is everybody did i miss anybody who is a task force member okay all righty well thank you guys and and let's kind of jump in here we we don't have a long agenda but i'm really excited because as uh su berkowitz mentioned to us last month she wanted us to hear um from the director of 180 place legal services and trawson about the trawson housing court and really excited about that because we do know we have lots of needs and i think that will be something we would be interested here in in the midlands but before we jump into that presentation uh wanted to bring back for you guys um for consideration um so as indicated i did make a presentation to city council last week regarding the work uh currently of the affordable housing task force there's a lot of excitement around where we are and then the work and a lot of support um on where we are there was uh just one comment from the mayor and he asked that we we bring it back for consideration and just it relates to the definition that we have endorsed um and the language on that definition uh his concern was in the definition that we we have um we have come up with and endorse is regarding affordable housing is a continuum of equitable inclusive and quality rental and home ownership opportunities for people at every income level which is critical to creating safe completing complete and thriving communities and he was very concerned about the the term at every income level um i did tell him we had some conversation about that and one of the one of the things that we uh thought about was the fact that um you know if no matter what you're making if you're if the housing in the area that you live in is not attainable for that income then it's not affordable and and so that was kind of our conversation around that um he did understand that and he thought that that um certainly is a concern but from his standpoint he felt like if we were really going to move forward on this um being able to at least um put an income level range in there of what we were targeting um might be more helpful and useful as we are um going out and and talking about uh affordable housing and also applying for uh federal dollars so you know certainly on this task force we have a lot people who are a lot more versed on this than i am and you guys work on this every day so i did tell him that i'd bring that back for consideration and if you know if we kept this definition we would we would um certainly have talked about his concerns and i'd bring back to him um what our response is so um dr solz and i were on the phone right before this and she had some great points on this as well um so i know she might have some comments um but i i just want to throw that out there now on anybody's thought on whether or not we need to uh replace at every income level to arrange uh or do we want to keep this because it it speaks more of what we were wanting to do so i'm going to open up the floor right now for a conversation on that so um and i'll i'll throw in the numbers um and i was so and is dr grady on yeah i didn't okay and dr grady you can back me on these numbers so just to give everybody kind of a baseline so 50 of am i in richland county is about 25 000 for one person and 29 000 for a two person household 80 jumps to 40 000 for one person and 46 000 for two now when you're dealing with with much of these federal um funding sources they take into account your income that helps you decide your rent so follow me for a minute one person 25 000 at 50 percent your zero to four bedrooms are capped at 636 to a thousand so that's 50 percent 80 40 000 to 46 000 you're capped at 1 000 to 1600 efficiency to four bedroom so that when we talk about that am i it's not just in regards to what the family or the single person is making it also then kind of i call it domino effects the rents so and they have this for every percentage i just real quick pulled 50 and 80 um what most people like is the i call it mixed use so you may have a 30 percent am i family who is living next to an 80 percent am i family that's your ideal setup so it i'll offer this i i hear what he's saying but i don't want to pigeonhole us with only those at 50 percent or only those at 80 percent um it maybe we look for a maximum and say up to x percent um if if if they're looking for a hard and fast number um and that kind of gives you that wiggle room i i think as we talk about this bad rap affordable housing gets that's where it gets it from because we only talk about 30 percent or we only talk about 40 percent and the fact of the matter is at 80 percent you're making 46 000 in a two person household you just can't afford rent over x amount so i'm just going to throw those numbers out and i can send erica the pdf so you can kind of see the charts for those two um i would just rather see up to percentage as opposed to steadfast i'll shut up you lila anna i i agree i i think that it's um folks i'll often focus on well i know this one person who's making bazillion dollars and why would we help that person instead of recognizing that the majority or more the majority you know 99 or 98 percent of folks are living paycheck to paycheck and um and it would be helpful to have that data and maybe we can put something together to make that very very clear but i don't think that we should be um i think we have to be recognizing that um the world is very different than how many people viewed it 30 40 50 years ago as to what middle class means and what it takes to be able to support one's self or family i is and i think that's the point you're trying to make with all of this yeah um and and counsel counsel and divine would it be okay if we took this information and we didn't rush to craft it and and and had a little time to throw suggestions out to the group versus trying to fix it right now yes that that is fine what i really thought i wanted to throw that out there and and um i know we were trying to do some scheduling i don't know where councilwoman's ratio is with her committee and we can probably hold off about a month um on that um till we meet next time um so that we have something that can can uh be explained to both bodies and moving forward i don't think that that will change anything that brenna and her committee has um has elevated as well but allison um do you have any thoughts on the timeline um if we're kind of pausing on where we are as far as the definition and the report to your body yeah so i'm i was hoping to get it in this past um meeting so that we could basically have it come out on the same day uh that didn't really work this time um but we did get circulated in our packets um the report to all the council members so i'm i'm glad of that at least people know that it's on the horizon um and we're talking to staff about who on staff is kind of you know picking picking up the the staff work part and running with it because um ashley pal has moved on to another position and she was kind of a point running point on this so um yeah um you know i'm happy if we want to workshop the definition a little bit um i think that my hesitation is a little bit around um you know if this is a definition we're kind of putting out for public consumption um saying something like 80 of am i is like most people don't even really know what that means does that make sense like i think that if we were going to define something we could give it like um you know just off the top completely off the top of my head diverse um you know diverse incomes or a range or you know something like that again this is not my area of study or anything but if we give um you know if we give something like a number like that i just think most people don't even really know what it means even when i was getting affordable housing uh i had i had to have somebody tell me multiple times what am i what 80 percent of am i met or whatever and council woman to ratio i 100 percent agree with you i think that's the the trap um a lot of people will fall in because you know and and what we what we have always done is we will use um trying to think of to control the narrative for lack of a better term um you know that's a teacher that's a police officer that's uh so you know how do you how do you it it's not the working poor it's what sue said it's paycheck paycheck um so to your point it's very much the not sticking to a number but giving an example something lay people understand not us as wilson did you want to say something yeah i didn't want to cut off lila anna so if she's finished but and i've only been able to jump in and out of the um task force meeting sometimes when you've already discussed something so i don't want to um rehash anything it sounds like what you all are describing and you're the experts in the field along with our team who's on the call this divine knows that you know i have an interest in understanding more what the framework or the definition of attainable housing is it almost sounds like you're talking about that but we're still we're still referring to it as affordable housing which brings on these connotations that for years people have associated with affordable housing you know what you're describing is it doesn't really matter um you know everything's relative to to what you make and what you do and what you can afford and all of the things go into um you know people living from paycheck to paycheck that doesn't mean that they you don't have to necessarily be living in what i guess many people would define as poverty so to speak but at the same time they are um you know trying to do what all of us are trying to do and take care of their families and their households relative to to what their income is and so i think to mr ratio's point about the a and my levels and you know all of you on this call probably understand it better than most people but perhaps the i'm not sure where the task force is and the committees are on which terminology we're even wanting to start from and i assume you already had this conversation so again i don't want to rehash it because you all did come out with the definition that you originally suggested but i just didn't know if that was maybe worth putting back on the table if we're going to you know continue to discuss the definition and it seems like just with some of my counterparts across the country some cities are moving away from affordable housing as the terminology and more towards attainable housing yeah i know there are several cities like in florida florida and um texas that i've seen their their city websites are actually embracing the term attainable okay and i don't want to rehash it too long because we definitely have a great um presentation did anybody um i'm sorry guys um he might have something else to say on this before we um let's sue introduce our guests i'd like to happen for one thing real quick and say maybe instead of looking at income level we focus on rent level so we could change it and say for people spending over 30 percent of their growth income and that way we're not really capping it at an am i percentage but instead looking at it as a rent or housing payment problem can we have um a few of you guys just get together and maybe for our next meeting kind of pull some of these bullet points out and see if we can work on something that maybe rena lala anna and sue jump in brian maybe yeah i'm happy i'm happy to help okay done great okay awesome thank you guys okay sue i'm gonna let you um uh introduce our guests and the concept i will just preface it by saying you know and i shared actually had a conversation last night with with mr gunnell's um about affordable housing and and some of the things and ideas that i have and one of the things that i shared with him and and the folks i was talking to is you know far too long we talk about issues in a vacuum and they're all related i mean we want to talk about affordable housing then we have to talk about living wage when we talk about um you know living wage or living paycheck the paycheck we've got to talk about eviction and so i think this is very timely in our overall conversation as we talk about having a safe quality housing that people can attain in the midlands we also have to understand how to keep people in that housing once they get there so i'm really excited about this presentation and so i'm going to let sue introduce our guests and and get started with the presentation thank you um i'm really excited to introduce my friend jeff youngman who is one of my personal heroes uh i met jeff when he started his second career um after working with the homeless population as a as a social worker for for decades while he was um still in law school and he has been a real force for change down in charleston he has uh he started a legal clinic with 180 places who was his current employer at the time and has taken that and grown it in in charleston and was the force behind um getting housing court uh moved forward in the city of charleston and for those of you who don't don't know about housing court jeff's going to tell you all about it but i really thought it was really important for him to do this presentation while he did do it with with partners down there it takes a lot of work a lot of admin help and a lot of perseverance and it has made a real difference in um evictions and the number of evictions in in the city of charleston and the judges are so excited i think they went from one house in court now you've got three right jeff we have four of them four four yeah i can't even keep up with them so i think that it would be an amazing opportunity for the city of columbia because not only does it help protect tenants and keep them in in their play in their home but it it helps prevent evictions ultimately as well and even the filing and um i'm i'll hand it over to to my friend jeff well thank you and thank you for having me i i'm not nearly as good as you purports me to be but um this i i thought i would talk a little bit about how this probably how we came up with the housing court and then uh how we're currently operating the housing court and then hopefully i should i can do this quick enough so if you have some questions at the end i'd be happy to answer them but this really came about as a result of the 2017 eviction lab that princeton did um i think most of all have heard about that north charleston was ranked number one in the country for highest rate of evictions and i believe columbia came in eighth on that same list um i don't think i have to tell you all about how traumatizing an eviction can be for people you can lose your job you can lose your support in the neighborhood you can lose your children's schooling can change um there's also some psychological problems you can get when they're trauma when you get when you when you're addicted so there's a lot that can happen to a person not just the loss of their home there's a lot that goes on with eviction and when the lab report came out i thought well something need to be done about this we can't continue this way so i contacted my friends at the aba commission on homelessness and poverty i had been a commission member and then i'm currently a liaison i was sent some information about housing courts around the country one study estimated that 70 percent of households facing eviction received no legal representation yet those same studies showed that tenants with counsel were more likely to appear in court and significantly less likely to be evicted than unrepresented counterparts irrespective of the merits of their case so if you had an attorney there you were less likely to be evicted no matter what i reviewed a number of different programs around the country probably a dozen or so uh because this is not something new uh massachusetts has had a housing court program for about 30 years now it's not something we're not ahead of the ball here by any stretch uh one of the ones i looked at was in my gunry cunt my gunry county pennsylvania that really seemed to fit exactly what i want to do in charleston or i hope to do in charleston and about the same population numbers too so just so happened as i was doing all this i was presenting a tenant eviction hearing in front of judge steinberg and magistrate court and after the hearing i walked up to her and i said can i talk to about some stuff and she said sure um and so i told her about this idea of the housing court and what i would like to do and what i think we could do in charleston and she said yeah let's do it um so we had we decided we'd have some meetings we'd call people in the community we thought would be interested in being part of this and i asked her to uh no uh contact everybody and it asked them to come to the meeting i figured if a judge asked they'd be more likely to come then whether i asked them and judge steinberg went ahead and asked and we had our first meeting in september september 7th 2018 where um we invited people from south canola legal services charleston legal access charleston pro bono legal services oh other magistrate court judges that somebody from two woman line the city of charleston charleston law school nor rogers from nelson mullins in colombia who's always been a great help with us uh state representative marvin pindarvis showed up and some private attorneys showed up uh interesting this as a side note the one person people one representative didn't show up were from the city of north charleston or charleston county which were of course where all this was happening so um we went ahead and started things without their initial support we might monthly heard about almost a year to hash out what we wanted our housing court process to be we created a housing court manual that is currently online at south carolina bars the south carolina bar website with our manuals on there as well as some training video uh we created all these forms that we needed including instruction sheet for tenants that was going to be attached to the application for ejectment that they received that we instruct them that they would they were right to have an attorney and this could get an attorney uh other things like limited representation agreement screening form closing form even a script for 211 to to use when they felt built when they fielded calls from tenants who were being evicted um at some point i presented the idea of a housing court pilot project to the south carolina access to justice commission remarkably i got complete support from the commission uh justice few is the head of that commission and he was definitely a favor of it um everybody else was a favor of it so i went ahead and filed a petition to have a have a housing court in charleston uh chief justice may be signed out on it and we were able to start planning to have actually a housing court we had two introductory sessions for attorneys in february and august and then to judge how many attorneys may be interested in participating in the housing court and then we had a three-hour training including a mock trial which is part of the video that's on the south carolina bar website and we also presentations to charleston school law students to get them involved what we came up with was two ways that uh tenants could get an attorney one was when they received the application for ejectment they could call the 211 hotline the 211 hotline would uh ask them something about their income because there had to be certain income requirements met for the different service agencies that were going to provide legal service for them um and then they would be assigned an attorney or they'd be signed that agency like they would call south carolina legal services and get an attorney that way uh and then that attorney would represent them in court the other way we decided to do it was to have people be notified that they could have an attorney but come to the their hearing on the date that they need to come to it and they would be there would be an attorney there to represent them we were hoping that mosin would take the first step and call the 211 and get an attorney but probably 85 90 percent of the folks just come to court knowing that there would be an attorney there representing them we started out having an attorney a pro bon attorney an attorney from one of those legal services and two law students at the court that was what we were going to have um but there also was our thought and I think it's an important thought that this was going to be a holistic approach that we cannot just deal with their legal issue without dealing other issues as well especially one about financial needs so we worked with trident urban league and they got a grant through the bar south carolina bar foundation to provide some funding for folks so that um if we found the tenant that needed just to get some this was way before covid started the funds right there that they are there now if we had a tenant that just needed some money to catch up on their rent uh trident urban league was a resource private urban league would also provide some financial counseling for folks so they did not fall in the same trap again getting behind in their rent not in being threatened with eviction we also used two and one who provided updates and other financial assistance that we was available as well housing that was available to community that was affordable or in this case as you want to say attainable um the first housing court was held on october 2nd 2019 at north area one magistrate court we then started the north area three magistrate court in december 2019 in west ashley in 2020 in june and north area three in september this uh 2020 each court holds a housing court back at one day a week and again the same uh members the pro bono attorney legal service attorney and law students attend all those hearings meet with the clients at that hearing and then represent the client um in their hearing we don't do a lot of litigation what we do most of is negotiation uh the when we find out what's going on with the tenant then we meet with the landlord and discuss what we can do to keep that person housed or at the minimum to keep that person from being evicted sometimes we negotiate a payment plan for for a tenant so that they can stay in their house or their apartment and come up with a way to pay their landlord off over time sometimes all we're able to do is come up with an agreement that a person if they moved out by x date they would not be evicted that eviction would not be on their record so that then they could find housing would be easier for them to find housing because it would be no eviction on their record we also do we also have done certainly a lot of education both with tenants on what their legal rights are as well as landlords on what their rights are and what they're required to do to make to have an eviction and make an eviction it's not faulty because of no notice or no ability given the tenant ability to cure so there's we have not had a lot of pushback from landlords in fact i think i should have said this right at the beginning clearly all the other places in the country do these housing courts it is not an anti landlord program it's a pro legal access program or legal justice program that people get their chance tenants get their chance to have themselves hurt in court which was not the case before most tenants either when they got the application of ejection panic didn't show up in court because they were afraid of what would happen or went there unprepared and didn't know what to say to the court so this sort of this has leveled the playing field with between tenants and landlords and like i say it's given educated to landlords and what they're required to do if they want to make somebody properly i do have some numbers for our first year in the year 2020 they're not really typical because of the virus and the number of times we've there's been a moratoriums or we stopped hearings but i can tell you that all that aside we had we held 282 eviction hearings in those four housing courts over the course of 2020 and of those cases 208 were either dismissed or settled so that means only 70 i mean 74 percent of the people that came to housing court were not evicted that number could actually be higher because some of the cases where we settled then the tenant did not follow through and a different point in time we're evicted from their department of their house we've realized that this is a shortcoming so now in the future we will do a little more case try to make sure you can't fall through on their settlement so they are not evicted those numbers could be 85 percent or higher if we were able to stop some of the folks that did not fall through on their settlement the one thing that just make it clear to all of you since you're considering this our major problem has been getting pro bono attorneys to assist us we had those trainings over 100 attorneys signed up for those trainings with the indication that they were interested in getting three cles in so that they would then be able to provide services at the housing court we've only had 17 pro bono attorneys provide legal services to folks three of those have done a yeoman share of the work and hopefully we'll get noted as pro bono attorneys of the year because i'm not going to afford because i deserve it so that's an issue the other issue was that over the course of time i was the coordinator of the housing court in addition to my regular job here at 180 place well but i was able to do that with one housing court i was still able to do it two still able to do it three but by the time we got to four i was doing way more housing court and not a whole lot of what i was supposed to be doing here at the homeless shelter which as long as nobody else knew about it was fine but at some point i had to do something so in march of this year um charles and pro bono legal services applied for a grant and got a grant to provide a full-time housing coordinator so he now coordinates the housing court i moved out as of march first still provide uh still represent clients at hearings but i don't coordinate the program anymore he corners that program himself um other than him and the funding that uh needed to hire that person we have there was no cost to this housing court the only cost really was for some supplies for you know legal pads and folders and everything that we that we housed it at each one of the courts we had a mobility a mobile box that we would carry around to the court initially and then we had one each court that had all the forms in it and everything in a manual and everything you needed um there was only the cost for that and actually i paid for that just because i didn't want to ask anybody i thought i was doing this up but um like like c said the program um has been greatly received by the judges involved i you want to talk to any of the magistrate court judges they would tell you it's made a great difference in their program in their eviction hearings and how we've been able to work with tenants and landlords to to to stop evictions um i don't know i don't want to take too much time you know because i think i had 20 minutes but uh i could talk for longer than this but do you have any questions or anything i can clarify about the housing court jeff i was just going to just say i mean i i really think what um y'all have done down in charleston just been absolutely remarkable and um i guess your thoughts are make sure you've got the judges on board or the magistrates on board and um because that's going to be critical to get everybody in the room to start making things move forward that's that's true the we couldn't have done it without judge steinberg and judge michael and judge sumi and judge singleton brown um especially judge steinberg since she's the one that uh got with me to actually start this program um if you get buy-in from the magistrate court judges then the rest should be smooth sailing as long as they're i don't want to be involved and understand that this program works and that it helps tenants and it helps landlords and and the grant that charleston pro bono got i'm sorry you guys didn't yet you know i'm glad they stepped up because i know it helped you out a lot um but can you tell me and um is that something that is going to be sustainable i believe so and you know i work at the homeless shelter and we're not really a legal service agency so our administration wasn't interested in me doing that full time but that's why charleston pro bono thought they would do it um yeah my understanding from elissa is that it's it's uh something to be sustainable over time and we are talking as a group about you know we have 10 magistrate courts in charleston only four have the housing court um some of them like the one in hollywood and ravinell and maybe the flamable don't have enough are so far away and don't have enough cases that would make sense for those folks to be part of the housing court but certainly the city of charleston james island uh would be the next two we would look at to start housing courts there and i don't want a monopolist had one last question how would the landlords and or the property owners how have they responded do they see the benefit of getting things worked out and the continuity um some we had a meeting with some property managers uh mary vossberg the attorney here and i initially and that didn't go too well they weren't very receptive to the idea um but they were people running those were property managers running in the rent was you know 1800 2024 our dollar hundred dollars a month those weren't going to people we were going to see in housing court anyways so um there are still a few landlords that have come and say well how come the tenant has a landlord has an attorney and the landlord doesn't he said you can afford an attorney this person can't but in general um i think the landlords like the idea that somebody is there to negotiate and open communication between them and the tenant which a lot of times the tenant does not communicate because they don't know what to say or afraid they're just going to be evicted so this opens that dialogue that was lacking before which i think is help people out of people house that wouldn't have in the past jeff i had a couple questions so i was um and kind of a follow-up to sue asking about having the mattress on board um i know from like my experience of homeless court that we have in the city of columbia and and our domestic violence court when we first started um it was helpful to kind of have one or two judges who were really trained in that to kind of understand and i don't you know i don't really do a whole lot in magistrates court anymore but i remember back in the day um sometimes it's hit or miss having a magistrate who kind of really understands uh the law and and the things i was just wondering from uh do you guys have a few judges that do the homeless court or it's it's all the magistrates and do you see any um benefits of maybe having a dedicated judge or two um to help with these cases um well yeah the the four judges that there's only one judge in each of those four magistrate courts um so judge michael and north area one always does the evictions judge steinberg and west ashley does it judge sumi and north area three judge singleton brown there are two judges in north north area two but judge singleton brown handles all the eviction hearings um so it is just four judges and um i'm sure that especially judge michael and judge um steinberg would be happy to speak to any of the magistrate court judges in in columbia about how they handle the program and what what they've seen as the results of that program they've been judge michael and judge steinberg been two of the biggest supporters of the the whole housing court idea um and then two more quick questions so from um you you mentioned about the follow through um do you guys have like a fund or something that might help uh tenants that are having particular issues kind of like we have right now with covert relief the is there a fund that they have access to as they're going through this court or is it just the kind of a payment plan and and what they can afford to try and pay to catch up no we the funds that tried tried an urban league receive from the bar foundation are expressly for housing court clients they're the only the only people that have went through our housing court can access those funds um so um we make once we if we have a hearing where we think that where we see that the tenant needs some rental assistance and we refer that person to the um trying to urban league first we send the referral to them and then the next day the tenants to call trying to urban league and work out a plan uh what we have to be careful with uh with urban league and with I guess anybody receives legal assistance um and we do have to do some education with the tenants about whether they can actually afford to be where they're living uh if people if somebody is behind in their rent and their I don't know let's say earning a thousand dollars a month in income and their rent is twelve hundred dollars a month then that's not probably where they should be and we can't or urban league won't keep providing them legal financial assistance if next month's the same thing it's the same thing so we do do some counseling I guess you could say with them the tenants as to whether where they're living is someplace that they continue to afford to live or how many times I keep coming back to the eviction here and before they finally be evicted so that that is something we have to deal with as well is to make people realize that sometimes you just you know with your income you can't afford to be where you're staying okay that was my third question I was going to ask about if there's any piece that like either financial counseling or something to help the tenants understand um budgeting or even yet can they afford so is that a requirement for them to go through the court or is that just something that's offered that they can voluntarily take advantage of if if they get funding through the uh try to urban league then uh one of the things they have to do with urban league is least meet one time with financial counselor doesn't uh to sort of talk to them about their budget and whether this is something they continue to can afford to continue to do or not yeah others don't have to and we'll talk to anybody as Steve mentioned I was a social worker in my past life and I still have that a lot in me so I'll counsel with people on what not just that and then we you know we'll do other things that I got a marriage license for a tenant a couple weeks ago that needed it um well anything we can do um get people what they need so they can stay housed and our pro bono attorneys ones that have been regulars have also embraced that idea that it's a more holistic approach and it just don't represent them that the hearing will do other things as well to help them stay at home. Thank you and that's it for me anybody else have any more questions? Well like I said the the um our website has the manual and the video the training if let's see you can just pull it up under it I think it's the SC South Carolina bar pro bono well then that section should bring it up I believe or I could send a website if I need to. Jeff I had I had one one question um I mean clearly there needs to be um somebody coordinating all of this as the sustaining project as the sustaining project and you'll have um in Charleston there's Charleston legal access 180 place Charleston pro bono and South Carolina legal services which is pretty unique for legal representation and programs that are providing that assistance and for one-on-one legal help in in an area um without having four organizations that were able to come together with that would you're and I'm maybe asking you a leading question but would your recommendation be that to find that kind of resource to make sure you have a coordinator because it is an awful lot for someone to do um on top of you know to try to keep all of that moving together I mean I know that a lot of the work's been done by you guys as far as the manual and the forms and all that but the actual coordination how important is that to have someone who can keep up with all of that piece um yeah it's it's real important um you know I spent the portion of my time just making sure that there were the right people or there were attorneys at the hearing there were there are law students at the hearing so that every hearing there was people involved that could represent the tenants there was no good having the housing court if people weren't going to be there to do the representation um so yeah there has to be somebody um you know driving this forward that it would fall I think our programs certainly would have fallen by the wayside if we just left out their buddy to just hopefully show up for the hearings and uh and keeping the stats too if we're going to have a program that uh you want to be able to show that it works you can't show it works unless you can the stats to show that okay and I know that the fingers crossed after seeing the announcement from the from the administration the federal administration but it looks like that the housing pilot program money may actually legal pilot program money might actually be released at some point soon that uh congressman cliber and staff got put in place so you know it it might be this might be a good project to to to try to put it might be timely for for the city of colombia to start thinking about something like this and we've also I think I haven't heard yet but in order to in a way to entice attorneys to be do their pro bono work that's the Supreme Court is now hopefully deciding to allow six hours of CLE credit for anybody that provides pro bono work for housing courts so that that would be two hours of training and at least two sessions of a housing court so that um that would get you know hopefully get the numbers of pro bono entries up oh that's it that's incredible that and for folks who um don't this will is findings uh can c le is continuing legal education and were required to have 14 hours um as well as ethics and to get to to be able to utilize that time in housing court to get credit will save a lot of lawyers a lot of money and would be real that well you're going to have them you're going to that's that's amazing so will that be for any any jurisdiction that has a housing court yeah um I you know I spoke with Hannah she and I were the one that brought it to the commission and judge she was certainly or justice she was certainly behind it um they were supposed to meet the end of last week and I haven't heard back from Hannah whether they approve but yeah it would be for any housing court program excellent which would help with the pro bono piece a lot we should get in the bottom yeah we should get on the start of that excellent thank you Jeff for all you do oh you're welcome my pleasure awesome thank you so much Jeff that was great information and we will you know look forward to um looking watching y'all's progress and and we'll be talking about what you know what that might look like here in the midlands yeah and feel free to you know if we get to that point and you want me to talk to folks about how to do it I'd be happy to we know how to find you Jeff we got on that thanks so much you're welcome thanks um one thing I will say soon we can talk about this actually uh your uh you and Lala and the subcommittee says it's legal and stuff can talk about you know whether or not that's something we would like to pursue here I would add and honestly I was like I said we're in budget so I like my mind have so much of my mind I was up at three o'clock this morning and actually it occurred to me at three o'clock this morning that I should have actually invited um Judge Kobal um you know he was instrumental in setting up our homeless court when he was a municipal court judge um or not municipal court judge when he was with solicitor's office um and now he is one of our magistrates and I think that he certainly would uh look at something like this and be interested so um you know certainly if your committee wants to pursue something like that maybe a conversation with him would be useful we we already met Nora Rogers and I had already gone to meet with him pre-covid um and started to have the conversation and he was going to bring Judge Edmund in who's the chief magistrate and then COVID kind of blew everything up for trying to move any of this forward so I'll I'll definitely reach back out to Judge Kobal and see if we can make get them in be a part of the the subcommittee to start having those conversations all right thank you so much for letting us present this today awesome awesome all right guys with a little bit of time that we have left I just wanted to go to Brenna I know uh Brenna was not able to come to last month's meeting we did do overall conversations but you know because you and Jennifer have been doing such great work on the public education and awareness committee and once we finalize this definition and make the presentations to both city and county you know we certainly want to get moving on that piece of it so I want to give you an opportunity to to report out and see if there's any next steps that you want us to be aware of or that you need support on definitely thank you and I will keep this short one of the things that we are looking at is we have a finalized draft of the talking points that I think was shared last week I wasn't on that two-page talking point if anyone needs a copy please email me that we're going to be using when we go start working with community groups neighborhood associations and some churches part of what we're also looking at is kind of who we need to target once we're ready to start going out into the community so I know Jennifer's committee with partnership they're looking more towards the business side chamber and those areas and public education awareness we were looking at more community councils church groups things like that part of what I wanted to make sure we were talking about are the different that different definitions of housing insecurity so looking at the difficulty paying rent difficulty paying utilities definitely evictions but also looking at the paying over 35 percent of your income and how that relates to housing insecurity and certainly with affordable housing and then we have some talking points which if anyone would like to send me any ideas to have I'd be more than welcome to add this in but some of the talking points that I've been using and talking to people are just asking especially in light of COVID to what extent are you and your family experiencing changes in housing costs and affordability and what percentage of your income goes to housing costs and what kind of impact that has on your life and I've been asking people just to think about those things and not necessarily share them with me but to get them thinking about affordable housing and how things are changing for them and then what I'm really interested in finding out is what you would like to see happen in the community to start addressing this so as we start going out seeing what people in the community feel kind of how we can help them what they have ideas for so I think as we head on as soon as we come up with that definition next month we do have a list put together of places we can start doing that outreach and how we can get started so we're kind of getting there and getting ready to get the ball rolling. Thank you, Brenna. Does anybody have any questions for Brenna on that piece? So pretty much from us other than that feedback that you just mentioned on the talking points and everything else and of course we need to solidify kind of the definition we're going to be working with other than that are there any additional needs that you have for us while you're waiting to get get the ball rolling on that? Not at this time we are I have an email going out to my committee with what we can how we can start moving forward and I know that we need to get back with PR about putting out some different information but I'll wait till we have the definition for that. Okay does anybody have anything else on that? Oh sorry thank you Erica. Erica let me know that as I was budget heavy this morning on my mind I skipped the first thing in the promo minute so we go back to number one and can I get a motion to approve our minutes from the April 13th meeting? So moved. Okay moved by Jim. Second is there a second? I said yeah. All right if that's Irene Sue second all those in favor either put your hand up or unmute and say aye. All right. Bye. Awesome thank you. So we have our minutes to prove from that. So now before we get started I just want to I mean she's started before we finish up and we're right at right two minutes to 12 just wanted to see does anybody have any announcements any projects that their groups are working on or specifically or addition any of your committees have any needs? I know we did the committee reports last month and I know Reggie we we had your report so we and we had that in here but I didn't know if you guys have any needs as far as support I think Gloria is going to be working with you guys but on research or anything else so I'm just going to throw it out there to anybody but specifically if you have any needs on your committee if your organizations are doing any things or announcements or you have anything you want to add before we close. I do I have an announcement I know most of you may or may not be aware but the housing authority is is at the cusp of a complete redevelopment plan to address our affordable housing portfolio and so we've had several meetings over the last couple of years over the last 12 months and update in the community but what I'd like to do is just take a personal thank you to thank Councilwoman Divine for getting us on the May 18th City Council agenda to update the community on our affordable housing strategy and so I invite all of you to attend if you're available as you know City Council meeting begins at two o'clock and I don't think the agenda has been posted yet but I certainly would like for you all to attend that meeting as well thank you. And I apologize Ms. Matthews you may need to go back and check my email we needed to move you to June 1st at 2 o'clock p.m. Oh man he's ready. Thank you Erica well I'll be inviting you guys again then. So mark your calendars June 1st at 2 p.m. and Ms. Matthews if you I'll forward you that email again. Okay I got I have it so thank you. Thank you. Well it will make sure we set a reminder out and one thing I'll say about this and you guys know this at working in the in the field one of the things that Ms. Matthews and I kind of talked about and I think it's very important and we're still virtual so we're not doing a lot of presentations but I do think that this issue is so very important and like I mentioned earlier so interconnected with so many things in our community we who are interested and we kind of live it we know certain things we can't take for granted that other people know what's happening in our community and what the what the what really is going on and what successes we are having and so I just want to encourage you guys if there are things that are happening with your organizations and you need that word to to get out please let us know and if if schedule permits and I I've deferred to Ms. Hammond but if schedules permit like she did with with Ms. Matthews we can always a lot for a small about a time three minutes for you to make a presentation at council but you know one thing that I find in Ms. Matthews and I were talking about this there were a lot of conversations about oh well you know Charleston's doing this and so-and-so is doing this and you know we're like well we're doing that here in Colombia so we need to make sure that people know what we're doing here in Colombia I know Ms. Avan is doing amazing things with Mercy and particularly right now with you she and I have I think we've been on the phone almost daily for the last two weeks about different things but they're doing some awesome things and I we need people to be aware of what's going on I know in talking to you know some bankers you know there's a lot of funds out there Chris that you know developers know about but you know maybe some of the smaller developers don't realize how they can access to be part of you know being in the being part of the solution to this so what I want this committee to be is we come up with solutions for our community but I also want us to be able to also get information out into our community because one of our biggest obstacles is people understanding the work that is being done and then the challenges that we have in doing more of the good work that you all are doing so if we can help with that I want to do that. Does anybody else have any announcements or anything that they're working on? I do we held our Nehemiah action on the 26th and I I don't know if Councilwoman Teresha is still on the call but I want to personally thank her for her support of our push to have a affordable housing trust fund in the county her along with three of their council people supported our action and we feel that we've moved the ball a step closer to having an affordable housing trust fund forward to the county so thank you Councilwoman Teresha. Thank you Mr. Zicky for the work that you guys are doing and hopefully as as our committee Brenna and them get out into the community that will help with more folks advocating for these different funding sources and and things to have us to help us get to solutions. Anybody else have anything that they want to add? We're a couple minutes over but want to make sure that you have this opportunity to announce if you have anything going what going twice okay well if there is nothing further then we will are the ad hoc subcommittee that we just appointed that your four members will get together talk about the definition we'll do that next month there are a couple things I don't know exactly but there are a couple things that I'm working on regarding some of the federal resources that I hope that will be in a position to have that conversation next month but you will your agenda from Erica before that so if we do not see you everyone have a wonderful safe Memorial Day weekend at the end of this month and June is and correct me what is June is it home ownership month because we just had fair housing month what is June home ownership month for everything yeah okay so June is home ownership month and so you know as we talk about uh different options affordable housing uh home ownership is one so hopefully we will have some some great conversations next month as well so with that said uh we are adjourned thank you all have a great afternoon happy safe Memorial Day and we'll see you next month