 Good afternoon. Welcome everybody and thank you very, very much for joining us. Today we're really honored to be producing a wonderful series on addressing racism in real estate. This is our inaugural launch. For this we have been very, we're very grateful to the Office of Dennis Mitchell, the Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement for a grant that we received and then the wonderful people who worked on this is particularly Ed Potiet and I will introduce Ed. He is our host today and also Diane Brownch who is an alumna of our Mesred program and is helping us in this initiative. So if I may I'll introduce Ed because Ed has been with us almost 10 years as an adjunct professor absolutely at the heart beat of our program. He himself had studied urban planning, Yale Economics undergrad and then urban planning at Hunter College and has proceeded himself to do it. He's been out there developing affordable housing. He's developed over more than a thousand units, 300 million of real estate in the Metro New York City area. He has, this is his own development company and he focuses on affordable housing. At the same time he has helped us and shared his insight, understanding and experience with our students over these many years providing them with an education that not only tells them how to do the technical aspects of creating affordable housing but also introduces them to the notion of the community spirit, what this actually means for societies and how to be part of a positive contribution in that way. Ed himself has invited our guests today and he is going to introduce them. He's just been tremendous at getting very, very incisive people to talk to us and we're all here to learn and explore and thank you very, very much Ed for doing this. Patrice, thank you. Thank you so much for that introduction. My name is Ed Potate. As Patrice mentioned, I'm an agent professor here at Mesred. I'm delighted to be here today and I do want to talk about the topic systematic racism in real estate. I first want to discuss though why this topic is a little personal to me. I was born and bred in right by the university in Harlem. I grew up in the 80s and 90s during crack epidemic that happened in Harlem. But the funny story is no one ever told us that it was a crack epidemic. So it's just how we grew up. So it was much different than it is now, very rough, a lot of crime, a lot of drugs. But I also have the benefit of going to private school in the city, a school up in the Bronx called Horace Mann. And then afterwards I went to Yale, graduated from Yale. So I really saw two different sides and lived in two different worlds. And so my entire professional career has been devoted to issues and notions of social equity and equity and fairness. Because growing up, I didn't understand why Harlem was the way that it was. I didn't quite get it, but that I knew that it wasn't exactly correct. So I spent my entire professional career trying to answer some of those tough questions. Why is there difference in economic opportunities for poor black and brown people versus others? Why are housing opportunities different for different types of people? Why is our criminal justice system different for different types of people? Just really trying to figure out some of those issues and then really trying to understand how to make those issues more equitable. I've devoted my career towards housing and for the past 20 years have been doing housing development throughout DC. Just to give you one story though, talking about growing up way back when I did, I had friends that lived on the Upper East Side. I went to a private school, had friends who lived on Park Avenue on 91st, 92nd Street. I lived and grew up in East Harlem, which what's crazy to me and what was crazy to me is East Harlem and the Upper East Side, the Upper East Side, probably one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in all of New York City right next to East Harlem, which is one of the poorest neighborhoods in all of New York City separated by five or six blocks. So I would walk home from visiting my friends who lived on Park Avenue, walking out Park Avenue to 97, 98th Street, 110th Street and seeing that massive disparity really in a 10 block neighborhood, galvanized me to then really try to answer some of those questions specifically towards housing and equity there. But before we talk about systematic racism and real estate, let's talk about systematic racism in general. And I want to spend a moment talking about the Black Lives Matter movement. I am so proud and I'm a now middle-aged black black man. I'm so proud of those kids and how they spent the entire summer galvanizing our country to understand why racism is a problem and something that why our country has to deal with it, not tomorrow, not years from now, but right now. And the issue around George Floyd and how malevolent that was in terms of the randomness of his life being taken is something that most black people can empathize with that most black men have had to deal with. I was 16 years old still trying to figure out what college that I wanted to go to visiting various colleges and me and a friend of mine, a white friend of mine, we went to Georgetown just to see, okay, maybe we may come here after we graduated from high school. So we're there to 16-year-old kids checking out the campus. And at this point I had never dealt with racism before I think at that point. Visiting campus we saw two police officers on the corner. And so we go up to them, you know, good 16-year-old kids and said, you know, can we help you? Is there anything that we can help with? And the cops said, you know, well, no, there was a mugging here and we're trying to find the assailant that did that. And we said, you know what? It wasn't us. We're just visiting campus. And so we start walking off. As we start walking off the cops say, stop. And so at this point, we're curious as to why the cops are talking to us like that. And I think that my white friend kind of got what was happening more than I did at that point. I'm really in La La Land. So he steps up and says, we're visiting my sister who's here on campus. We're from New York City. And we're going to go back to my sister's house. So we start walking off. And then the cop comes to me and says, drop your backpack. So I drop my backpack. He opens it. I'm 16, right? So nothing but sneakers and books in there. So I go to pick my backpack up and he says, you fit the description. Now, every black man knows what that means, right? And so he proceeds to tell me that there was a mugging down the street near campus. And because you fit the description, we have to take you there and make sure that you weren't that person. So they put me in handcuffs. They put me in the back of the police car. And as my friend now comes to intervene, that they said, no, this is his problem. This isn't your problem. And shoot him off. So now they drive me off to some other part that's near campus. The woman who had gotten mugged was in an ice cream parlor. They turned off the lights in the ice cream parlor and put floodlights on the corner. So she could see out and I couldn't see in. Now, mind you, I'm in handcuffs and they give me out of the car, a face forward, a face sideways, a face sideways. Luckily that the woman did not identify me as the mother. And the cops are right that you're lucky. And I'm lost on campus now, but they took me out of handcuffs and I walk. So, you know, issues of police brutality. Again, it's something that's obviously personal, but personal, I would argue the most black men in this country, obviously not at the level of what happened to George Floyd. But I'm so proud that those and I'll call them kids decided to say the the America that is is not going to be what it will be for us and we're going to make this country stand up and make sure that things are different than it was. Whereas people in my generation unfortunately had gotten used to the way things were. But something else that the Black Lives Matters protest brought to the fore to the lexicon is this notion of white privilege. We've been talking about racism in this country for centuries, but we hadn't begun talking about white privilege, and you can't really discuss racism without talking about white privilege that they go hand in hand. So when you deny a certain group a thing when you give them less access to health care and housing, education, and capital creation, you also give more access to others. Right. So this notion of racism and white privilege literally go hand in hand. And the reason that it goes hand in hand is I think everyone on the zoom call would say in the abstract, you know, racism is a bad right. However, the reason why racism is so sticky. It's not that it's just a random bad thing, but it requires that certain others give up the benefits that's transferred to those that don't experience racism. Let me say that again. The reason why racism is so sticky is that others have to give up the benefits that are transferred to them, those that do not experience racism. And that's why this notion of racism and white privilege go hand in hand. I'm excited that you're here today because pretty soon you're going to be freshly mended, I really educated Columbia graduates. So even if you will never experience racism in your life, and I hope that you don't, pretty soon in six months, couple of years, maybe as soon as you graduate, you will be in positions of power, you will be able to make decisions for institutions, you will be willing to empower, and you will be able to make decisions for the greatest society and so that I hope that as you start to step into that place, that you're cognizant of systematic racism and white privilege and making decisions that are equitable, right. So that's why we're here today. But we're here at Columbia. You didn't come here to listen to an impassioned speech about the ills of racism. So I'm not going to give you one. You can get that somewhere else. This is Columbia. So my plan for the next 20 minutes is to quantify actually how this thing works, right. Not to talk about it from a qualitative point of view, but to actually look at the cost of systematic racism to black and brown people and the corresponding benefit to systematic racism and white privilege to others, all right. So let's dive in. In front of you that you should see a screen that, let me get somewhere, that talks about income and wealth disparity by race. You have on the left column, black, white, and on the headline columns, you have income and wealth, right. Blacks make roughly black, medium income in this country. Household income is $58,000 a year. Black household medium wealth is $17,000 a year. And blacks make up about 17% of the population. For whites, white, medium household income is $89,000. And white, medium household wealth is $171,000 a year. Whites make up about 72% of the population. Next slide, okay. So here's where it gets interesting, right. If everyone was equal, if there was no racial disparity, if we were all treated exactly the same, the weighted average income for blacks and whites is $74,000. And the weighted average wealth for blacks and whites, if they were one in group, would be $126,000 here, right. Here's where the next slide gets interesting. Now let's talk about the cost of systematic racism on black households. And let me go back to the first slide for a second, because some may say, well, wait a second, the numbers for whites may be skewed by, you know, guys like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk that are worth $5 trillion, right. These numbers take that out. Because we're dealing with medians, it actually takes out the outliers such as the multi, multi, multi. So now let's go into the cost of systematic racism. The average black household income weighted average, I'm sorry, excuse me, the average black household income is $58,000. The weighted average income from the last slide is $75,000 for blacks and whites, if there was just one group of people. Therefore, the cost of racism to income to blacks is $17,000 a year to the average black household. And now it's worse when we talk about wealth. The average black household wealth in this country we saw in the last slide is $17,000. The weighted average household wealth is $126,000. That means that the cost of racism to the median black household from the wealth point of view is $109,000. Now for a different presentation, we can talk about, especially on the wealth front, whether we're talking about slavery or Jim Crow, why that is, but that's the cost of systematic racism. So when you hear that term, yeah, we all know that it's horrible, but it's actually tax for lack of a better word on black families. Again, though, that you can't talk about systematic racism without talking about white privilege that they go hand in hand. So let's look at the benefit of white privilege and what that cost benefit is. The average white household income from the last slide or last couple of slides is $89,000. Weighted average income, if blacks and whites were just one group of people and there was no difference at all, $75,000. That means that the benefit, the economic benefit of white privilege is $14,000 a year for white households. Average white household wealth is $171,000. Weighted average household wealth between blacks and whites is $126,000. That means the benefit of white privilege to the average white household is $45,000. That's the cost of systematic racism. That's the benefit of white privilege. The reason why systematic racism is so sticky is that no one ever wants to give up anything. No one does, black, brown, purple, blue. No one ever wants to give up anything. And so whether we are talking about the civil war that happened because there was a taking from the South, whether we're talking about Jim Crow that happened until 1960 or 60 years later until now, the reason why racism has been so sticky is because of these benefits that, again, no group wants to give up. And unfortunately, whites would have to give up in order for us to have, again, an equitable system. All right. So now let's talk about systematic racism as it relates to real estate. I'm going to talk about red lining and what that means. My dear friend William Allen, who I've dragged on this panel and who is a very prominent person in Harlem, has been very active many, many, for decades in Harlem, in Central Harlem, will then talk about environmental racism and give you a case study as to how environmental racism has impacted the Central and West Harlem community. So let's talk about red lining. This is a map from Atlanta about 90 years ago. FDR, when he created his new society, made a lot of great programs. He also created a housing program, H-O-L-C, and I believe it stands for, give me a second, trying to find it. The Homeowners Loan Corporation to help give credit to Americans so that they can buy homes. What this group did, though, was around metropolitan in the U.S. metropolitan areas, they created maps, areas where it was better to land and areas where it was worse to land, and they would put those areas in red, i.e. called red lining. So that's where this notion comes from. So this is a map from Atlanta, which was created in the 1930s, where they redlined parts of the city to let lenders know, yeah, don't land in those areas, but you can land in the other. And that's where this notion came from, comes from, and it's been, I'm going to stop here for a second, and it's been here ever since. Now, after the 60s and 70s, it was because of the civil rights movement, and throughout the 70s, institutions were forced to begin lending in black communities. You don't see specifically any more institutions saying we aren't going to lend in black neighborhoods. Getting back to that wealth creation gap, though, wealth has created over generations. So if you had a situation where for 40 years, 50 years, institutions weren't lending in black communities, you are going to see that gap happen where black households will have less wealth than white households. So we don't see it, though, so much now as obvious as it was back in the 70s and back in the 60s. What we do see, though, is there's a bunch of stories of black and white households with the same credit scores and incomes the black households having less access to credit. So that is still a form of red line, not as obvious as it was 40, 50 years ago, but still happening today. So let me give you another example of red money, and I'll go back to the share screen. All right. So who is Ernst Valerie? I don't know, average black guy who, like a lot of black guys shouldn't have access to credit and should have a hard time banking. No, Ernst Valerie is a graduate from MassFred in 2006. He's a lecturer, or I believe has been a lecturer at Columbia, working with students from previous years. And for us now, in capstone, yep. Yep, in capstone. Thank you, Patrice. Both more developer, Ernst Valerie files class action lawsuit against Wells Fargo alleging racial discrimination. Now, let me give you this story. And I like stories. Let me give you this story. Ernst is working on a deal. Ernst gets a check from, I think, the state of Maryland for $3 million. Ernst goes to deposit those funds into his bank account, his own bank account. And when he goes to do that at Wells Fargo, I believe the branch manager or a teller who then talked to the branch manager said, you know, we can't let you do that because we're not sure where those funds came from. All right. We have a different process. You can go through our merchant system where merchant associate system where we'll take out a few points for processing and verifying you for processing and verifying those funds. And then we'll let you deposit those funds into your own bank account. So systematic racism and real estate, real live example and not, again, some random guy that although it would still be bad if it happened to a random guy who we didn't know, but no, let's track Columbia because of the color of his skin, did nothing wrong except being black. And then to deposit funds into his own bank a account, well, so yeah, that we need to verify you and take a few points from the funds going in to then make that happen. So systematic racism and real estate is real that red lining still happens in terms of access to credit, access to banking still happens and happens even if you graduated from Columbia, it still happens. So with that being said, that I want to pivot now, William, and I hope that you're there. William, how you doing, sir? So we're going to talk about next environment of racism, another very serious issue that impacts poor communities of color that's related to real estate. William Allen, again, is a friend. He's worked for numerous community groups throughout New York City. He's been involved, very involved in housing development in Harlem, housing development in the Bronx, works for healthcare providers in the Bronx and Jersey. I believe William that your last notable position was you were a national director for Al Sharpton National Action Network, and he will be our next city council member here in Central Harlem. So with that being said, let me turn it over to you. Thank you. Thank you, Eddie, and thank you, Columbia University, and thank you, Patrice and Diane for having me. In preparation of joining today, I like being a good student too. And like Edward, who I call Eddie, because I saw him grow up here in Harlem with my siblings on one 10th Street in Babu, I wanted to at least do some research. So the things that I know, I wanted to be able to put into some kind of context, right? And so I just wanted to say, Eddie, I did my homework. Here's one of the greatest books you can read about Black life and the 19th century to the early 20th century in New York. This was written by James Weldon Johnson, who was a prominent head of the NAACP. Great book, well written, and it really gives you a whole sense of the economics and politics of Black folks in New York. Another one I looked at was this one by Adrian Brown and Valerie Smith. I want to strongly recommend that folks take a look at this. And to give me some sense, I said, when did Black folks arrive in Manhattan on Harlem? And I'm thinking they arrived, you know, during the mass migration in the 1930s and 40s. But I learned we were here in the revolutionary days and pretty much was in Harlem in the 19th century, right? In fact, we arrived in this part of Harlem where Columbia sits, because Columbia, I believe, was somewhere else. It wasn't really on the West Side, it was somewhere else before it landed there. And this kind of book kind of helped me out. And this was written by Jonathan Gill, who actually also taught at Columbia University. A very good historical perspective. It actually covers 400 years of Harlem. Could you imagine reading a book about Harlem coming 400 years? This is the book. And then finally I want to thank Kevin Magruder. Kevin Magruder was one of my colleagues. When I was at doing development work at Harlem Churches of Community Improvement, he was the head of development for Abyssinian Baptist Church at Abyssinian Development Corporation. And he wrote this great book called Race and Real Estate, Conflict, Incorporation, and Harlem from 1890 to 1920. Could you imagine? 1890 to 1920. So all these things you've got to be able to put in context of these conflicts. So Eddie and I was talking about the Riverbank State Park. And how does it fit into all these historical situations? And so now we find out so in 1985, Harlem gets a new park. And people were a little happy, but it was at a great cost. This park is called the Riverbank State Park. It's now named after Herman Dennis Farrell, who's an, who's African American former assemblyman, right? Who had chaired the Ways and Mean Committee in the state legislature in the lower house in the assembly. And he was very, very powerful. And they named the park after him, but they didn't name the park out of him because he was, he was dying and they were to celebrate his life. He was brilliant. They were going to put this wastewater treatment plant in Harlem against the will of Harlem people, even though we had asthma and all these other kinds of illnesses. And the fact that a predominantly white and upper middle class neighborhood had rejected the project. So they said, you know what, let's find a neighborhood where maybe people don't vote and they have no power. They have no money. Let's just throw that them. And so here you had, you know, the state government say, hey, you're going to take this project and the project, Riverbank stretches about, we see counting here about eight city blocks, the Hudson River from 137th Street to 145th Street. And so one of the major concerns of resident at that time, and particularly a civic leader named Peggy Shepherd, who created WEAC, and WEAC ended up getting funded through this project to get more African American people of color into environmental justice initiatives. They complained about the orders coming from the plant in the backyard, residents initiated court cases to prevent the building of the treatment plant. I mean, it was absolutely horrible. And it has a concession to the community through Denny Farrell's negotiation, the city promised a 28 acre state park to be built on top of the sewer plant. I mean, you can't get no better than that. And in seven years after the sewer plant opened, the $129 million facility, officially known as Riverbank State Park, which today is called the Herman Farrell Riverbank State Park. It was the first of its kind in United States to be built on top of a sewer plant, as well as the first state park to be built in Manhattan, the fifth for New York City. And so Eddie wanted to talk about this as a planning study and as an issue of race, real estate, politics, economics, who had the power, who did not have the power. And here was a situation where a community was really forced to take this treatment plant and look like they couldn't get out of it because of Emmett Dillmaid and the power of the state. And they had a whole bunch of court cases and it seemed like those court cases were going nowhere. And so at the 11th hour, Denny said, okay, then you're going to have to give the community something. And so therefore we got this park, Eddie. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So great story, right? Isn't it an interesting story? It's a scary story because when you think about the health outcomes of folk that live in West Harlem and for those of you that don't know where Riverbank State Park is, it's actually right up the street from the university. So Columbia, let's say, is from 116th to 125th. Riverbank State Park is right on 145th, right by the water. So if you walk up 20 blocks, you'll run right into it. But when you look at the much higher asthma rates that are in West Harlem, or you look at my old neighborhood East Harlem, that's three bus depots, that services all of Manhattan and other neighborhoods don't have one. And East Harlem has the highest asthma rates in all of Manhattan and some highest asthma rates in all of New York City. It's not by accident. It's because these facilities that are dangerous to any community are forcibly put in communities of color, because other communities obviously would litigate for centuries to make sure that that doesn't happen. And so what does the city say? Let's go the easy route. We have to place these things somewhere. So we're going to place them in communities of color that are powerless to stop us from making that happen. So again, just to wrap up, if you look at redlining or environmental racism, these notions are not airy fairy notions. These are very real things that are happening right now to guys like Ernst Valerie, let's track Columbia. That's happening right at the street from Columbia Riverbank State Park. That's still to this day, William, is still emitting toxic fumes. What's happening right in East Harlem, again, that has some of the highest asthma rates in all of New York City. So I want to thank Columbia. I want to thank you, Patrice, for giving us the window to express these things because I think they are important. Diane Branch is not on this seminar, has been pivotal with me to organize these seminars. We plan to make these seminars monthly. Diane's going to be working on the next couple of seminars that will talk about other aspects of systematic racism in real estate. And my hope as we wrap up is, again, as I said earlier, you may never be impacted by racism. And I hope that you're not. But you will be because of where you are and where you're going to graduate from, be in a position of power relatively soon, making decisions for yourselves and others relatively soon. And when you do that, I hope that you think about these issues so that you're making the most equitable decisions and choices that you can for yourself and others. With that being said, Patrice, thank you. Thank you very much. Edward, thank you very, very much. And what tremendous insight from William. William, thank you for sharing that narrative, that historical perspective to show that these things are long rooted in our society. And now, even though we're talking about a sort of a broader city view, rather than just real estate development itself, real estate works within this context of this urban inequality. So very, very insightful for our students to see that this is what they go out and work amongst. And this coincides with Edward's class this semester. That's right. Absolutely. Edward's great class. So we're on a roll here, folks. And thank you very, very much for doing this and for launching it. And with such an impressive person such as William Allen. Thank you very, very much. Patrice, so there's a few questions if you don't mind. That's right. So there's going to be some questions. Now, would you like, would you like to respond directly to them or we'll, we'll, firstly, there's one, there's we can enter them in the chat room or folks can raise hands. Well, why don't they enter them in? Because I don't think, I mean, maybe you can see them, but I can't. So if they can't see the questions. How about I can go ahead and read the questions Patrice, unless you'd like to. That would be great. Thank you. So let's start with this one. I think it's a great way to start the conversation from Esteban. How can young designers combat these issues of systemic racism in their own cities? How can young designers now, because I can't talk to Esteban, I guess that the question is if you're an architect developer, how then would you then make that happen? First is what's done in New York City, which is a benefit to the city is we have the largest affordable housing program in the country by far. And what New York City does is that the design aspects of affordable housing is very strong. So for example, you can go buy in a affordable housing building in New York City, and you might think that it's a condo, because they are very strenuous on how these buildings are designed, so that although it may be affordable housing, a low income housing, it doesn't feel like it. So I would say one way, if you're not going to be here in New York, we're going somewhere else to make sure if you're designing projects to put as much effort and energy in that project as you would if it was a marketary project. And that way you make it equitable. Okay, so continuing on sort of a different line, we have a couple of questions here that are both about the numbers that you shared. So we have one question about the sources of the data and then also how are the numbers presented as the financial benefits of systemic racism annual number? So maybe if you could just talk a little bit about your process for gathering that data, that would be great. So the numbers come from the Brookings Institute that analyzed average and median in income and on wealth. I learned the difference recently, all of that I knew it, but I learned it again, the difference between median and average, because the medium actually takes out the outliers, which is important, because the average number is actually much higher for white households, but because there's the super wealthy that kind of skew those numbers. So that's where the numbers came from. Someone else asked a question about how do you define black and white? The current census, and I think that they get it right, is they leave out Latino as a race, which I think is correct. So you have black, white, Asians and Native Americans as the four major categories. Latinos can be black and white, so they're listed separately. Those people regardless of the color that I identify as Latino. So that's where the numbers came from. Great. So an additional question here, which I'm going to paraphrase a little bit, is about the sort of conversation around environmental racism and if leader Allen wants to join us back for this part of the question. Essentially what we're saying is that, or what we're asking here is, obviously there's this riverbank state park, and it has its environmental impact. We're asking if there are any follow-up studies to that. And then also, I think there is like a little bit of a conflation here maybe from about asthma rates or bus depots, different various components of environmental racism. Could you maybe talk a little bit more about how those things are studied and how those impacts are come to on the neighborhood level? I'm especially interested in this area and how that impacts actually your work as a real estate developer and how we might think through those issues in our own profession. Sure, that's a good question. I'll talk about the bus depots in East Harlem, and William could then talk about riverbank state parks. So two separate issues, started for confusing those issues. In East Harlem, there's three bus depots that are cited there. Those bus depots service all of Manhattan. Those bus depots could be anywhere. You could put them on the Upper East Side, you could put them on the Upper West Side, but they're all in East Harlem. Correspondingly, East Harlem has the highest asthma rates in Manhattan, and some of the highest asthma rates in New York City. I don't have on the tip of my fingers if there's been direct studies as to the number of emissions from the bus depots and how that's changed the asthma rates, but it's somewhat obvious that if you cite three bus depots in one neighborhood, and that neighborhood has the highest asthma rates in the city, that that's coming from the fact that those three bus depots happen to be there. William, are you still there or did we lose you? Because I know one's a busy person. I guess that we lost them, but with Riverbank State Park, I haven't looked at the health disparity specifically in West Harlem. What I do know is that in the 80s, when I was a baby, they were trying to figure out where to cite the sewage treatment plan that they needed an extra one in Manhattan. They were first going to cite it on the Upper West Side. The Upper West Side said, not over my dead body, there's no way that you'll put that for me. What they did is that they cited it not on the Upper West Side, but they cited it in West Harlem because they could. That's the story of the state park. Although it's a good thing that we have a state park, it's horrible that there's a sewage treatment plan next to a residential community. It's even worse that it happens to be in a poor community of color. Thank you for that. An additional question I think is super important is, how do developers build responsibly in Harlem with the neighborhood's history and the risk of gentrification with this conversation in mind? I have a question. Why is the anonymous A10D anonymous? Sorry. Okay, so anonymous. I think it's a little to do with our transmission issues. Okay, no problem. Sorry. They're coming through. Yeah, yeah. No problem. So I've spent a lot of time studying gentrification. It's had positive and negative impacts on home. The question is, how can you build responsibly given gentrification and given the impacts of gentrification? I actually gave a TEDx talk a few years ago specifically about this one issue. And it's really understanding that gentrification is a force, that it's a tool. It's not a good or bad tool. It's a question of how you use that tool, right? So for example, we have guns, right? And guns are bad in the hands of wrong people. But we need guns at times to fight wars that we care to fight. That's how I feel gentrification, which is it's a tool that can improve a community as fast as any other program. The question is, how can you do that and yet improve the outcomes for the local people living there, right? So things like rent stabilization, things like education on economic opportunities that are coming, and things like really proactively helping small businesses, local small businesses to be better ready when gentrification comes. Those are things that you can do to help gentrification as it happens. That I gave a speech to a bunch of planners and not way upstate, but in the Newburgh Kingston region recently. And they were dealing with this issue because they're going through their own way of gentrification. And one of the things that I implore them to do is you have to understand what you want for your community, right? Developers are just interested in building a project, making the money that they can and then getting out. Some of them want to do well by doing good, but they have so many pressures that they're really focused on getting that building built. It's up to planners, it's up to municipalities to really say, how do we plan for gentrification, right? Where do we want these new builders to go? How do we look after the local residents that are there? How many local residents do we have that are low income and are we providing enough affordable housing for those residents? So when I was talking to the planners in Kingston that I said, as this comes, you have to plan better. You have to understand how many low income households that you have and do you have enough low income housing for those households? If you don't, then again, use gentrification as it comes when that's fine to then also raise revenue to build housing for the low income households that you have in your community. And or if there are local businesses that are cultural icons for your community, realize that they may be under pressure from landlords in four to five years as the rents start to go up. So figure out what local businesses are meaningful to you and begin to figure out ways to protect those local businesses so that they can benefit from gentrification and not be overrun by gentrification. So those are a few recommendations that I would have as to how you can correctly use gentrification to help your community and not be overrun. Thank you so much. I think that these there's a couple of interesting questions we'll take maybe two more to end at two o'clock. So a few different issues being brought up. What do you think that the our policy changes that can empower developers to work against racial discrimination in housing and home ownership, particularly in urban areas? Policies that would stop developers from being bad characters or policies that would help developers be good partners. I'm not I'm not sure of the intent of the question. The intent policies that would help that would basically like how can we change the restrictions and regulations that we're working with in real estate to incite more equity in our community? Yeah, yeah, it's really interesting. I said earlier that I'm really proud of the Black Lives Matter movement because it really shook things up. And this notion of equity even when it comes down to our little community is being talked about a lot now. And there's a lot of cool things that are happening to then make that happen. And so for developers of color, we historically have had lack of access to capital. And it gets back to the earlier notion of that wealth gap, right? Many developers start by working with friends and families, raising capital. You know, our former president, Donald Trump started off by raising money from his daddy, right? So if your dad or granddad or uncle don't have wealth to then transfer to you, it makes it harder to get in the to then get get in the business. So a lot of financial institutions now literally like in real time right now are looking at ways that they can bring capital to communities of color, B of A, Chase, Citibank have all come up with multi-billion dollar initiatives on bringing capital to Black and Brown communities. So that the story is going to be told probably later on this year that there were things happening in real time now that are helping to bridge that. So it's very exciting now, all coming from what those kids did, as I'm calling kids, back last summer. And Edward, I'd like to just add that Ernst Ballery has launched his Equio Fund, which is specifically focused on helping funding for Black and Brown developers, young people in certain postcode areas, zip code areas and so on. And we're looking at assisting Ernst with that by providing the training in doing the development analysis and the financial analysis. So Ernst has launched that. It's great. Equio Fund will, I'll try and put it up on the on the chat, but private people are going to do it as well. And leading directly from that, I think this is a great place to end the conversation is the question is, are there specific approaches, specific developments, or specific companies that you think are doing really interesting and good work on this? Who are you seeing that is kind of moving us forward? Sure, sure, sure. So sorry for your shameless plug, but our firm has a very cool product that we're working on now on 124th Street in the in the heart of Central Harlem called Marcus Garvey Village, that we're building 330 units and two buildings. One's going to be all market rate, one's going to be all affordable. It's a $290 project, but what's cool is that we're using the proceeds from and the profits from the market rate project to be able to fund the affordable portion of what we're doing. And so there was a question early about policy and governments are getting there. New York is getting there, Seattle is getting there too, I think other governments will start to follow where they say, if you want to develop anything, you must have an affordable component to it. And once that policy is set, it'll force the hands of all developers to then begin to build more affordable housing in their projects of all types. Great, thank you so much. Thank you for this work and also we're really looking forward to the rest of the seminar in the series. So thanks everyone for joining us today, thank you Patrice for introducing and thanks again to William Allen, our new district leader. Thank you, thank you Wadewood, Professor Poetkin, well done, fabulous. Thank you so much.