 Hello, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us for this conference session on Empowering Small Businesses. My name is Brittany Morgan. I'm the Economic Resilience Director at the Miami Foundation, and it is a great deep privilege to present you with to Maida Owens and Milika Burgos Flores. I'm gonna pass the mic now, and would love for each of you to introduce yourselves, tell us a little bit about your organization, your role, and anything else that would help the audience get to know you a bit better. Maida, would you like to start? Certainly, yeah. I'm Maida Owens. I'm with the Louisiana Division of the Arts. That's the state arts agency. And I have been managing their Folklife program for, well, over three decades now. And more recently, I've been in a project that is very different than all the other projects that I have done over the years that I've been focused on the connection, intersection between culture and the environment. You may not know, but Louisiana along with Florida are really on the forefront of sea level rise. And so what we're trying to do is get, participate in the climate adaptation conversation. And I can go into more detail about that. That's excellent. That sounds so exciting. Milika, please help the audience get to know you and your role a little bit better as well. Yes, thank you so much for the invite. My name is Milika Burgos Flores. I am the founder and chief executive officer at the Alapada Collaborative CDC, place-based organization here in Miami, Florida. We are the only main street community in the city of Miami. Focused on implementing anti-displacement strategies to keep our community strong. Our mission is to implement place-making techniques to foster the identity, support wealth building and advocate for the equitable, comprehensive and sustainable community development of our community. In Alapada, we are a minority community about 79, 80% of the community is Latino. So it's been a marginalized community of color for more than 40, 50 years. And we're very happy to be able to work with the community and really bring a new fresh air where we can build more wealth equity within the community. I think that everybody talks about racial equity and we talk about economic justice, but all of that happens one time. All of that happens, making sure that we can root businesses and communities in place while preventing that displacement. Excellent. Thank you for sharing. Both of your work sounds incredibly important and we know that it's a very timely moment to be focusing on all of these issues. We'd also love to hear from the audience. If you don't mind putting in the chat where you're joining us from, your location and or your organization, we'd love to see where folks are joining us from. So now before we segue to our discussion, we're gonna spend a couple of minutes viewing a video that will really help ground our understanding in the issues that are facing small businesses, families and households, not just in Miami or Louisiana, but throughout the country. The goal of this film, which was produced by Oolite Arts and the Community Justice Project, is to give a very human face and context to the data that we all know far too well about small businesses, displacement, Main Street transformation, et cetera. The film does focus on Alapada, Miami. Meleka, is there anything else you'd like to share before we play the clip? Yeah, like you mentioned, Brittany, the reason why we wanted to share this video and really produce this video with Oolite Arts and Community Justice Project by filmmaker Ron Baez is because we always talk about displacement in data. And many of the things that we do are data points and power points. And we really saw the need to showcase that human story. And that's what I hope that people can see in this video. This is something that we honestly started working on in about 2016, but we didn't even have the solutions. We knew the problem, but we didn't have the solutions. And it took us so long because until we didn't find the solutions, we didn't want to put the information out there in this manner. But most importantly, we want people to see the human story of displacement and how this really affects people at a very personal level. Excellent, thank you. And so with that, we're going to roll the clip and we hope that you enjoy this film for the first few minutes of our session today. Well, my name is Fidel Acquino. Here they tell me that I was born on August 1st, 1950, in the Dominican Republic, in the East. And I came here without a family. February 14th, 2006. Alone, with God. When you arrive, you introduce yourself to reality. The age of the front, the friends of the past that you saw. But when you come here and last a week, there are other things, your weight. You move forward because you have a country of opportunities. You have to move forward and work. I had two machines to cook. I saw a man who had a workshop. And as I knew how to dress, I went with him. Then he sold it to me. The space, you can see it, was where my wife was and where they were. From there to there. And that was where I lived. I had no other choice. I had to give up. When you have a service vocation and a desire to move forward, and you have a partner, your partner, that has been the support of God and her. She has always pushed me. My name is Quintina Tirado. I am here as assistant. Helping you in whatever is necessary. I did a lot of social services in my country. I also enjoy it here with all and every one of the people who come to this business. And I have it with kindness. She gives me, she gives me. For the future, for the future. When you have your wife who helps you, she gives you encouragement. That is the best. I say that the only thing that appears in nature is the woman, her blessing of God. So rioting, vandalism, and burning forced public safety director Bobby Jones to establish curfews in two predominantly black sections of the county. A North Thade from Northwest 95th Street on the north, I-95 on the east, the Miami River on the south, and Northwest 37th Avenue on... And today we're talking with S-band member Maleka Burgos Flores, who is the founding executive director of the Allapada Collaborative CDC in Miami. Welcome Maleka, thanks for talking with us. In the, in 1980, May of 1980, we had an unfortunate event in our community. It was, it was riots. The death toll now stands at 11 with more than 120 persons injured in the riots, looting and fires of last night and today. This is a gentleman called Arthur McDuffie. Arthur McDuffie was a friend of mine at one time with my next door neighbor. That gentleman was a black gentleman in a motor school by white police officers. I'm a defendant, Michael Watts, as to count for all the information, activated battery, not guilty. And right after that, these riots destroyed a lot of our community. One merchant estimates that this 20 square black area that's mostly black, will be set back some 10 years. Bob Jackson, Channel 4 News and Allapada. And what happened after that is that no one would insure these business. Furniture dealer Fausto Fernandez is no longer insured against riot damage. Fernandez is now concerned that he will lose his business. I need government help also because this is a big job we're talking about. But I'm doing my own now. I owe money to the bank. I got to pay interest. And since that day, the children coming and fooling around don't pay me. The immigrant community that was coming in took upon the risk of opening up this door front and starting a new economy. Slowly but surely, since the early 80s until late 2000s, it became a microeconomy that sustained itself. Investors and even renters looking for affordable properties in Windwood can't find them. So they go west of 95 to Allapada and they have a crop of affordable housing. The biggest concern is that this rent has steadily been going up since past five to seven years. Rent always goes up and that's understandable, but it's the pace and the amount of the rent that's going up. The next 10 to 15 years, Allapada will be transformed and booming much like Windwood. Affordable properties in Windwood can't find them. Allapada will be transformed like Windwood. What do you hear these small business owners saying to you about this? What are their concerns? What are their needs? There's no reason to go up at the level they have. So it's more about speculation, the whole rising of the rent. It's really concerning for that reason because it's like a forced change. Maybe that service is geared towards a community or maybe not. Because sometimes the people from the community are not able to afford that level of rent. So it's people that come from elsewhere and now the demographic starts changing and the services that community actually are now available because of this whole situation. So it's challenging. And I don't care about that. What I care about is their number, their capital, their interest. That's what matters. Their interest. Let's go this way. But I don't care about the community, I don't care about the culture, I don't care about the culture of their money. That's what matters to them. If the capitalists were from our community, from one way or another, they would be more sensitive. I consider them to be. When communities push them to leave, you know that what's coming is new people, new people that you're not going to return there because you don't know who they are. So it's better for them to change for good, for the positive. It's not like we're going back. No, because everyone wants to move forward. But what we're here for is also part of that change. We need support from people who are more relevant, more strong, who have the authority to come in favor of the community so that the businesses that exist here can be maintained. And can they be? Don't worry. There's nothing you can do to your grandson. Hey, that was the leg. There. There, they had a business. And where did your grandfather have it? Look, it's not that hard to not even see it. But there's something you want to register. And he said, look, your grandfather had a business there. And who followed him? A grandson. Because he was his own. The solution is the owner. And don't get tired of fighting. The fight is long. But we have to be unified. Counting on you. And united. I'm sure we're going to have it. Be the owner. Period. Give him the money. I'm going to you. What an incredible, very, very moving film. Thank you so much for sharing with us, Milleca. So I'd love to ask our both of our panelists, what resonated for you in that? What was most similar or different from your experiences in your respective communities? And how are you feeling following doing that film? Milleca, you want to start? OK, sure. I thought it was so compelling, so wonderfully presented. And it really shows how important small businesses are in any community's sense of place. They often are gatherings of places and help create the downtown or the nexus of people that binds us together. But sense of place is so important. And the small businesses are a vital part of that. So without them, it will definitely affect a community. Yeah, aside from the obvious business story, I think of family. I think of the fact that it's a family business. It's run by the husband and the wife. And how at least in Miami, about 79% of businesses in Miami are family owned. And how this is so meaningful to every single family. And the support they receive and how we may see a business. But behind that business, there's so many families attached. Their livelihood and the future of that family is so attached to how that business does. That's right. Those are such incredibly important points to consider. And make sure that we keep front and center when thinking about these issues. We'd also love for the audience to weigh in. Please feel free to share a few words in the chat. Let us know what was most resonant for you in that film or how it strikes a chord with anything you might be experiencing in your local community as well. So now that we're grounded in these issues, and like Meleka said, the lived experience of the families who are truly behind some of these challenges, let's discuss potential solutions and the path forward. So to start, how do you feel it is most possible to empower and truly involve community members so that they feel that they are engaged in these processes of rebuilding and anti-displacement versus feeling like it's happening to them? And we'd love for you all to share with the audience some specific examples of how you're accomplishing this. So Meleka, would you like to begin? Okay, well, again, I'm working at a state level, so not in a specific community. And what we decided was that we really needed to participate in what's called community resilience conversation and to get culture added to that and historic preservation. And when I say the word culture, I mean as the broadest definition and not a narrow one at all. But what we really have to do is influence policy. And so what we did is started gathering. We simply started the conversation and we had, we've been having Zoom gatherings once a month for the last year and identifying people who felt the same way. And so we have been working with environmentalists who thought the human dimension needed to be highlighted more. And then we started attracting state agency people and they've been watching us and actually FEMA and we have all kinds of people who drop in on us to see how we're articulating this. And they've said that they're looking for different ways to engage people. But it really boils down to changing the policies, getting community members involved in all stages of planning at all levels. That that's the only way it's gonna be. It can't continue to simply be plans that are practically finished and then get some community input. So that's been our focus in Louisiana. And we call this the Bayou Culture Collaborative. The Louisiana Folklore Society is the hub of this activity. And I participate, my state program participates in that. Yeah, that's incredibly important. Miliko, how about you? What does this process look like? Yeah, my dimension's something so vital and that is done as a practice from the top down. And it's creating a plan and asking the community about it after. Not including the community from the get-go. And I think that it just doesn't make any sense if you really go back to the core and say, if these are the people that are gonna be using the service, the streets, this ecosystem, this community, they should be the one, their culture, their needs, the way that they interact with each other should be the one that informs how the urban planning happens, how those funds are being dispersed. I think that the community should be center stage. We do pride ourselves in making sure that our community is center stage to everything that we do. That's why we use the Main Street approach. Main Street has been an amazing partner in teaching us how to use the four pillars of Main Street to make sure that we keep the community engaged, that we have the economic vitality, that the streetscape and the design of the area, the historic preservation works for us, but also that we are able to promote the area and the businesses. So the Main Street approach, like having that framework to work from is one of the ways. The other way is to make sure that they understand why they are engaged. They're why it's really important because they're why is not the storefront. They're why is that they wanna put their kids through college. They're why is that American dream. They're why is because they want to make sure that they reach a specific business goal or family goal. So every single time they start a business it's because they have a goal. I mean, aside from putting food on the table, there's more behind that. So there's an economic freedom that they may be searching. There's a lot of different reasons and mistake that we try not to make is assume that every business wants to grow to be a multinational corporation or have number of different branches. Not every business wants that. We start there also. We meet the businesses where they are and we ask them, why do you start the business and where do you wanna go? So making sure that we have that at the core is important. The other thing that we do is that we educate them about the problem. It's not what it's one thing is to live experience. And the other thing is the data, is the information, is the programs, is how did we arrive at this location? Alapada was redlined. If you look at pictures of Alapada in the 1950s and the 1940s, there were many places where you can get a loan where you have access to capital in a way. But then after it became a community of color, all of that went away. So there's a history to these things. We can never forget a racial past. We can never move forward without addressing it. And I always bring that up because we really wanna move forward and do great, but let's look at the past and let's clean it up. Let's clean it up. So right now we are a big desert. We barely have it in our community. So that is something that is that is systematic. And we wanna make sure that our community understands how those systems work. So we educate them about the problem, but we also educate them about the solutions. We're not victimizing people here. They're not victims. They are in a great opportunity to be part of the transformation of their community. So that's what we wanna make sure that we do. And last but not least is that we look always for the community unity. Like something that was really striking during, when we started doing a lot of these programs, especially during the pandemic, is that there's people that were two blocks away that would never, they had never spoken to each other. They have seen each other. They could say hi, but they never had a meaningful conversation. So making sure that we kind of host and have that platform for them to be in community, in real community, and be able to share with one another and have a compromise and a goal for themselves that fits into the goal for the community. And that's, I always say to them, you're either at the table or you're on the menu. So if you're not showing up, you're on the menu. And if you're on the menu, you're on the menu, or you could be at the table making the decisions. So it's making sure that they don't only have the access, but they also know what to do with that access. Yeah, that's great. That's great. I love the themes that both of you touched on in terms of inclusion, right? And participatory and whether it's the Zoom groups that your organization has facilitated, made us statewide, or Malika that's even bringing one business owner to befriend another down the street. I think that type of connection is so invaluable. You know, our next question that we'd love for you two to explore is kind of driving the connection between the preservation of buildings, of businesses, versus the preservation of families, business owners, and the people who underlie those buildings. You started to touch on that, Malika, when you talked about the main street approach, you know, at times we can be so concerned to preserve places. How do we also make sure that we're preserving people and their livelihoods? And so I will take this first question to Mayda again. And what is your approach? How do you think about these intertwined issues? Oh, well to me, it's all, it is all intertwined. You know, scientists call the climate changes that are happening a super wicked problem. And most of the attention is on the science of it and not, you know, what they call the human dimension. And I think it's real important for everybody that's involved in these issues to become more familiar with the climate adaptation world and understand their jargon and so that you can participate. And it is quite a learning curve. I started diving into this about four years ago and it took some work to figure out sometimes what they were talking about because they were often using the words that you know but they have a very different meaning for them. And a good example of that is what they refer to as the community resilience conversation. And to me, when I hear community resilience, I think of the individuals, the businesses, the strength of the connections, that vital sense of place in a community that is so tied to a place, all the relationships. That's not what they're talking about at all. They're in Louisiana, they're probably talking about planting mangroves to slow down a storm surge. And I have a feeling that there are very few people in this room that would have immediately thought of mangrove planting when you say community resilience. So part of what I have been doing is giving workshops, introducing people to this and that's something I'll be more than happy to dive into more, but it's a vast topic. I think it's really critical though because if you're at the table, you have to be prepared to talk. That's right. And so you really need to get us, since you're the one that wants to get to the table, you've got to learn their conversation too. And you can't just expect them to come in without you helping interpret some of the things that you're talking and you want to talk about. It's tricky. And part of the problem is it's so many of the agencies don't have anybody on staff that really understands what they call the human dimension. And that's a real important concept that everybody needs to become more familiar with if you're not already. Because that's all the cultural issues that we've been talking about the small business, but it's also mental health. Land use is considered the human dimension. And that's huge in what y'all are talking about, what's happening here. Because what's really needed is that the land use policies be changed. And that is something the local people have a certain amount of power over. The municipalities and further the state are the ones that are gonna influence what can and cannot be done. That they just have the power to say no to a multinational corporation. So important, so important. I love this interplay between the built environment and the people who inhabit it. They're not mutually exclusive. They definitely interplay with one another. Mika, what would you add to this conversation? The question reminded me of what Quintina, the wife of Fidel said in the video. She said, when displacement, when people leave, they don't come back because the people that they knew are not there anymore. And it's basically the lack of connection, the lack of connectivity that displacement creates into a community and not just its residents but the people that come to that location. For example, in Alapara, that's what's known in Miami as Little Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic. That's where the community gathers and where we have all the bodegas and so on. So once they're not there anymore, Dominican from all over Miami may not come to the area because that store is gone. We have an example of one of those stores that has been displaced three or four times. And it's other business owners that kind of catch them and say, you need to remain in the community. And they have really moved because of displacement because where they were the first time, got demolished and then they moved to another location and that location got demolished and they moved to another location and then they moved literally, they moved like four or five times. But it was the community that understood that the importance of that cultural asset that we have that we couldn't let it go. So at the end of the day, place is at that container where everything happens. And that's what they important because they're that container. What really makes us stick is that culture. The culture is that thread, that fabric, that unites us all in that whole day identity of that community together. So that's why culture is so important. And I'm glad that people are now seeing in the preservation conversation, they're not just talking about preserving buildings. They're really talking about cultural preservation because that's when you talk about customs and traditions and heritage and things that are passed down from one family to the next. And that is really beautiful. And that's what makes places unique. And we have that opportunity to continue to keep that. The alternative is to have places that look the same all over. So that's something that I wanna make sure that people really pay attention when we have this preservation conversation. Do we really need to have a landscape that looks just like anywhere USA? Excellent. That's an excellent note to end on, Meleka, especially when we think about urban planning and land use. So excellent. We already have some really fantastic questions coming in the chat. I wanna make sure we have an opportunity to answer those. So I'll leave you all with our third and final panel question before we open it up for discussion. And this is on the topic of crafting really effective interventions for systems change. We know that there's a role for public policy. There's also a role for programmatic interventions. What do you see in terms of the respective roles of policy versus programs and any specific examples you'd like to share with us when it comes to systems change using these two different lovers? Meada? Well, again, that's what we've been focused on. I've already addressed some of this, but I wanna point out that respecting the agencies of every individual to decide whether to stay or go. And then helping those who do want to go move together in some connected way. And that's what my priority, my personal priority within the Bayou Culture Collaborative is to figure out ways to help communities move together because the moving your business four or five times is not at all uncommon. And we'll be increasing because the migration that's gonna be accelerating even more in this next decade, but trying to figure out how to sustain the community, the connections. It's one thing to try to do this online, that a lot of diaspora groups have very strong connections with online platforms, but what if they could move together? What if they knew where people were going? But I wanna emphasize that I'm not advocating that people need to move because moving is not necessarily the right decision for everyone or right now because so much of this depends on when. The people who decide to stay also need to be supported and enabled to do this. And instead of just letting a multinational corporation raise your neighborhood. Totally agree with you, Myla, but I would actually tell you that what's happening at least here in Miami, and I know it's happening across the country, is a push for displacement where people don't really have a choice to remain in the community where they go to church, where they have their children in school, where they maybe have grown up, where they know and they trust and they have their neighbors and they feel comfortable leaving their children outside because the neighbors across the street or next door are able to watch them as they play. So not having that opportunity to remain in a community because a large development was built and now rent rolls $3,400 overnight is the issue that we are focusing on at least here in Miami. And bottom line for us is that we need to create policies that protect the renters. That needs to happen because the reason why we have this massive displacement happening across America is because renters are not protected. Some states are more prepared than others. Here in Florida, we don't have that luxury just yet. We need to have more capital at the ground level for these businesses. The same way that we have home ownership programs, we could have commercial ownership program for businesses that have been in place for more than 10, 20 years because these are legacy businesses. They are part of the fabric of that community already. And then programs like the ones that we have that are preparing these businesses to be owners and preparing these businesses to really kind of streamline their operation so they can actually have the cash flow and the sustainability to remain in the community even through employee-owned co-ops. So making sure that they're able to do that. And again, being the access to that capital for them to own. And I think that Brittany can talk a little bit more about that later, but I wanna make sure that that's one of the things. The other thing when it comes to protecting is understanding the problem and the game. It is not that people that live, like we both live in states that are almost cities that are very climate prone with the storm surge and so on. And we see a lot of people moving from the coastal sides into the inland. And many people wanna say, well, people are moving from, let's say Miami Beach into Alapada. That's possible, but the real game is not that people from the coast are moving inland. The game is that multinational corporations are acquiring massive plots of land. They're holding it for real estate speculation. So a building that was probably $300,000 in 2012, 10 years later is $2 million. That growth is ridiculous. That level of growth is ridiculous. And that is what's driving that. The other thing that's driving that is poor zoning loss. The fact that we have zoning that was just plotted in our community without any type of community information or input. That's another thing because now the potential for that plot of land is way beyond what a historic building can bear. We should have different zoning for historic properties because if we wanna protect that, preserve the history of that location, it shouldn't be zone for a 25 story building, right? So those are specific things that we can do locally at the state level and in that, whichever level is possible to truly, truly protect not only the communities, but also the renters. Last but not least is opportunity zones. Everybody's going crazy with opportunity zones. But what that has created is a lot of people coming into our neighborhoods and not investing in the businesses. They're just grabbing land and letting us sit. So how effective is that truly being in our community? So it's things that have a good intention, but they are falling short of their aim. Excellent. No, thank you for walking through all of those dimensions. And some of the questions that we've received in the chat are actually very specific and tactable as they relate to these ownership and acquisition strategies. So I'm gonna start to run a couple of those by our esteemed panelists and get your thoughts on some of these issues. And so one of the first questions that we received, it looks like a big strategy is to purchase buildings and to keep them for local small businesses. Can you tell us more about the strategy, how it might be funded and how it works? Yes, I think that something that has been mentioned in the chat, Brittany, is that they couldn't fully read what the text was saying. I'm gonna read it for you. Just so you guys all understand what the text was saying is said, between 2020 and 2021, the Alapara Collaborative CDC assisted dozens of businesses securing over 3.2 million in access to capital for small businesses in Alapara. Alapara CDC has since launched the Thriving Place Fund to root these legacy businesses in the community as a solution to displacement. The funds is seeking partners to achieve this goal in the Alapara Main Street Computer known as Little Santo Domingo. As of July 2022, Aquino and his wife can still be found working under storefront in Alapara's commercial corridor. They both continue to believe in only one solution to the threat of displacement, ownership. So I just wanted to share that very quickly. And again, what was your question, Brittany? Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's incredibly powerful. And I think that the movie helped elicit some questions from our audience around ownership and around the practicalities of that. So I'll combine that last question. You know, they wanna understand how this ownership strategy is funded, how it works. Another question would like to know the examples of legacy business owners acquiring property. Do you have any examples or ways that you've seen not just in our community, but throughout the country? What are some effective ownership models that are feasible? Yes, I think that there's a lot of great examples in California. There's an amazing organization called Meda Mission Economic Development Agency that has done an amazing, amazing job at ownership in their community. So what we are doing in Miami, the way that we see it is that, yes, ownership is the goal because we wanna make sure that we can root these businesses in place. The way that we are working on achieving that is number one, preparing the business owners for ownership. But the way that we also wanna do that is through shared equity models. We are not kind of helping a business to be a sole owner of a property. What we are really focusing on is on shared ownership where, for example, a community land trust where we can hold the land because now buildings are millions of dollars. So it's impossible for one person to truly buy a whole, like a property on their own. But if we're able to own the land and be able to lease or sell the improvements, like a condo, if you just think about a condo, maybe that's a good way to illustrate and kind of simplify the way that we wanna do this. Where they become the owners of their storefront and we collectively work to upkeep the building and keep everything together. Who is funding it? We are doing that. The businesses themselves are doing collaborative. So they're collaborating and saving those as one of the factors. We have different programs that are helping us and maybe Brittany can talk about that a little. And then we also are going to different foundations that are truly focusing on preventing displacement and the economic justice and the economic equity and so on. And I'm glad that I arrived at this point about economic justice and equity because after the pandemic or during the pandemic, after the George Floyd incident, everyone is promising all these dollars for social justice and equity. And you cannot do equity without access to capital. You cannot do equity without access to assets. If we want the BIPOC community to move forward, let's build assets with them. Not for them, with them. They need to be at the table building their assets for themselves and for their families. They have to have a little bit of skin on the game at the point that they're able, but the resources need to be available for them to truly own their storefront, their homes, for them to have bank accounts, for them to be bankable, for them to be able to have better credits. We have a system that has kept them kind of hostage and behind. We need to catch them up. That's excellent. Thank you for walking through those different dimensions, Meenika. I can contribute a little bit, at least from the funder and the foundation side about those types of investments in commercial real estate. But I'd love Meida to hear if there's anything that you would like to respond to with regard to our audience questions. I would like to add that most planning is colorblind. And if you take a colorblind approach, you simply replicate the injustices of the past. And so this is a challenge within the whole planning field is getting to the point where they can let go of that colorblind approach and address equity. That's excellent. That's an excellent ad Meida. And we've seen kind of the perverse outcomes of race, neutral and colorblind policies. I will share just briefly one of the things that we're exploring at the Miami foundation through our open for business fund to support historically underserved small businesses is commercial real estate acquisition through shared equity models. Meenika spoke briefly about a community land trust model. We're in a nonprofit agency or a government agency stores the land as a nonprofit landlord instead of a profit motivated for a profit developer, for example, some of those stalls or sub components of the property can be subdivided into shares much like a co-op would. What we're finding is that small businesses are already paying in a monthly lease what they could afford in a mortgage. They just need that upfront capital. So we as the foundation from our fund are providing that down payment assistance upfront to collaborators who can go through the purchase process. But we're also seeing a lot more frequently is program related investments coming out of foundation. So those are not necessarily grants. Those are investments that will return some sort of financial gain in the future. But a lot of foundations increasingly are broadening their impact investing portfolio. The returns from investments in real estate are actually increasing their overall endowment and finding that PRIs are a much more win-win way to invest in organizations versus grants. And so there's a whole body of work out there. The Ford Foundation actually released a retrospective on their first five or 10 years of impact investing and their PRIs in housing had a bigger return than their conventional investment portfolio that they're using to grow their endowment. And so just another way that foundations and funders can really use their financial assets to further ownership and specifically shared ownership models. And so thank you both. I did want to remain a panelist for most of this engagement, but I would be remiss to not speak about our commercial real estate ownership efforts that we're trying to foster across by mid-aid. And so I'm looking at the chat. There are a couple more questions around the specifics of land ownership. One person has asked, what would it be called? What would be called a business opportunity in real estate when the business owns the storefront and someone else owns the land? Milgo? Yeah, Milgo. A commercial community land trust. And it's been done. It's been done in, I think, California, Arkansas. There's a few states that have done that. And I can definitely share more information. Absolutely. I also, I attended a community land trust training from Grounded Solutions Network. They offer community land trust trainings for anyone who wants to operationalize that in your community. We're seeing it often in the housing space, but I do think there's more room for preservation of small businesses. You know, we didn't talk too much about the climate. We started to dive into kind of the climate dimension of this work, but how do both of you think that the climate crisis will either accelerate or hinder some of these preservation tactics? How can we make sure that those issues are intertwined and that we keep both the preservation of our environment and the resilience of our community members at the forefront? Milgo, would you like to take that? Oh, sure. I'm not quite sure what, I'm not that involved in historic preservation, so I'm not quite sure I'm the one to answer that. But I do think that all the climate issues are simply gonna amplify what's going on. It'll be more and more pushing on priorities. I think one of the hardest things is gonna be determining what can be saved and what can't be. Right now we're talking about commercial structures and they have access to resources and such that some of the others public historic sites don't. But figuring out what should and can be saved versus not evading that issue, I guess is a good way to say it, is because there will be, there is never gonna be enough money to save everything. And so at some point people are gonna have to say, and communities are gonna have to say, okay, this will be abandoned to the water and this will not, and what does that mean? It's so sad, but it is what our future is gonna be, is identifying our priorities. And that can only be done by the community. That's a community process, and anyone? Yeah, I really agree with you with the word evasion. We need to make, there's three words that I'm thinking about as you asked that question, Brittany. One is the word that might have mentioned is evading, right? The other word is intention, and the other word is data. So I'm gonna start with data. We need to know the data. We need to know the data when it comes to historic preservation and the meaning of places and locations in our community, understand what needs to be saved and really do the work to preserve those locations. That needs to happen, whether it's location, cultures, communities, that preservation work needs to be done. When it comes to evasion, especially in a state like Florida, we have a big insurance issue. And we like to evade, we like to evade the preservation because of the opportunity of development. In the moment that you turn something into a historic preserved location, that's another site that you cannot redevelop. And we evade the conversation. And we also evade the conversation of climate mitigation, climate adaptation, because it affects our economy. It really affects our economy. If people know that Miami is gonna be in this situation by 2060, why would I invest here, there or whatever, right? So that's something that we keep evading rather than facing, you know? So I think that we're evasion, it's important because we need to stop doing that. And we need to start confronting our realities. So we can have proper insurances. So we can have proper adaptation and proper mitigation of the things that need to be adapted and mitigated. And last but not least is the word intention. We need to be intentional. We need to be intentional about what we want in our communities, and we need to include the community in that master plan. It is unacceptable for a city, for a state, for any type of municipality or group or community to have a master plan that the community is not involved in. Any type of urban planning, any type of mitigation effort that the community is not educated about and involved in. So I think that that intention of making sure that you serve the people who are there needs to be at the forefront. Excellent. Yes, I have to add to the issue of intention. We strong, the bio-culture collaborative focuses on intention quite a bit. And the idea is that, well, we try to help people start thinking like future ancestors. This is an indigenous concept that's found around the world. Indigenous people generally have a very different relationship with the environment and see themselves as stewards. So in our workshops, we frequently ask people, what will your great-great-grandchildren wish you had done? And is that about, it doesn't matter if you're staying, you're leaving, or somewhere in between, you're moving five times a block away. But what would your great-grandchildren wish you had done? Great question. I love that. And also it connects the human dimension that we've spoken about, the underlying land itself, as well as being intentional for the future. And so with about three minutes left, we have one final question from the audience. What are the best ways to get people involved in that master plan? We paid, we hit the pavement. We just canvassed, we canvassed and we do outreach. I mean, a lot of people use social media, but I'm in a more traditional neighborhood where access to technology is not a highlight. So we just hit the pavement and we do the flyers and unfortunately kill some trees, but we make sure that people know that this is happening. We make it public, we make it at the library, at the public park and we collaborate with universities. We collaborate with local government, we collaborate on profits. As her name says, Alapada Collaborative, our main goal is to collaborate and not reinvent the wheel. So if someone has already done it in the past, we don't wanna do it again. We just wanna work with them so we can do it in a better fashion and something that's adaptive to our community. So the best way to include the community is to let them know that this is happening and let them know why they should, why it matters to them. I would encourage everyone to simply start the conversation. Yes. When I started doing online, it was during the pandemic so we shifted from in-person gatherings to online. And we didn't know now. I didn't, for sure, what we know now. We didn't know then what we know now, but don't let that stop you. Is simply put it out there, start the conversation, find your allies. And I was amazed at how many of the environmentalists and policy people sought us out because we had simply started the conversation. That's excellent. And I think that that's something that we can all continue to do now that long beyond this session, we've started a lot of great ideas. You both have shared some very, very practical tactics and if I guess there's one thing we all can continue to do now is just to start the conversation and keep it going. And so I thank you both for representing your organizations, the Bayou Cultural Collaborative, the Alapada Collaborative CDC. We've put a lot of links and resources in the chat and we appreciate all of your time, both to our panelists and to the audience for being with us today. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.