 Hello everyone, welcome. I'm James Milan. I am in a one-on-one conversation with candidate Joanne Preston. Joanne is a candidate for housing authority here in Arlington this year. Joanne, thanks for joining us. We wanna get right into the conversation because we know time will go quickly. One of the things that has come up that we've heard from some folks is the fact that you are running for the housing authority and you don't live in one of the properties that the housing authority, in fact, runs. Wondering whether you think of that as an advantage, a disadvantage, no difference, what are your thoughts? Well, that's true. I don't now live in, I'm not a tenant, but I spent 28 years being a tenant and a leader of a large tenants group. So I'm very familiar with the issues of tenants, but more specifically, and I'm also the town meeting member for precinct nine, which is compasses three of the five housing authority buildings. But I would like to say there's no official tenant representative on the board, but if the governor signs the bill next year, there will be an addition of a tenant representative and we'll be, as I understand it, we'll be elected by the tenants as opposed to the voters of Arlington. If I could just continue. Of course. Most people say what is the housing authority, which is one of my main concerns is that we wanna integrate the people who live in the housing authority with the community at large and vice versa. And I think I could help do that. But first of all, what is the housing authority? It's say, it has five building clusters, four seniors, and one is for families, all of them have to be income qualified, low income. It is interesting in that it's federally state funded and regulated, but it's locally managed with the idea that people who live in the community would have a better idea of the needs and the place of the housing authority within the community. Let's see, four of them are elected and one, did I just say that, is appointed by the governor because there's a state, there are a lot of state regulations. So one of the things I'm emphasizing is just this part of the housing authority being part of the community. And I had some ideas how to, well, at first, it occurred to me this is a problem as a volunteer for the council on aging for Thanksgiving programs, holiday gift programs. And now I'm organizing face masks to go to the family's and monotony manner is that isolation from the community does not benefit the people in the housing authority. That they need to be part of us and we need to be part of them. And I have some ideas. One of them is just this is a time for, at the town election, everybody, it's June 6th. Very few people have heard about the town, the housing authority, but in general, people don't know about the candidates much less when it is. And one of my thoughts was to have meet the candidates night in the housing authority common rooms. You wouldn't want a whole precinct meeting there because the common room is their living room. I wouldn't want them all in my living room. But if candidates came, they could listen to the concerns of the people in the housing authority and vice versa. So you wanna hear my other idea? Well, yeah, I mean, another thing I wanted to ask you about were the very specific things that you think need improvement or that changes that could be made new ideas to be introduced and how you go about doing it. So yeah, carry on. Okay, because I've had a lot of questions. So I've had a lot of time to think about this and I really wanna do it. Another thing is that we have a poet laureate in town. He would be willing to come. Some of the housing authority buildings have poetry groups, some do not, but he would be glad to come and talk about poetry writing, listen to what they have written, give them ideas, talk about poetry in general. So that would be another way they would be part of the community because the poet laureate wants to serve the community. And that goes for other kinds of programs too. There's no reason why they couldn't be expanded. Also to be part of the community is the people we brought Thanksgiving dinners to may be a subset of the people there, but they were clearly, and they told me they didn't want us to leave. They were more interested in us than the dinner. They were particularly interested in my teenage daughter and I just saw their faces light up. And it seems we could expand the visiting senior program so that those, I mean, one thing I know from my research and my teaching in social gerontology is as people get older, they lose people. They lose their own parents. They lose friends and it becomes, you have to make a real effort for that not to happen. And it's harder to do that if you're in a building that's not part of the larger community. So I thought that having the friendly visiting program would help. And even in this time of isolation, they can get telephone calls back and forth from families. And no one has to have one who doesn't want one. But my sense is that there are quite a few people who would like them. Another way to be part of the community is to have joint projects. Someone actually mentioned in a Meet the Candidates Zoom thing, how about a garden outside the building? And I don't know, I was raised by my grandparents which is one reason I have an interest in this field. And they were consummate gardeners. They'd love to get out there and even weed, but water, see things grow. And there's certainly patches of land around these housing complexes that could be used for that. So these are just very specific things about political engagement and social engagement that I think would make a difference. And we have members of the board who are quite experienced in some of them who are worked for banks. So they know about funding of things, about contracts. I would bring something else, I think, which is my background. I have a PhD with a specialty in social gerontology. My tenants union had a lot of senior citizens who were the hardest to help because they had, like all seniors, they have a limited income. They can't go out and get a high wage job usually at their age. So I would like, I also have a lot of experience in grant writing in my professional career. And as I've said another time, I went to the Community Preservation Act meeting about funding and there were no, this year there were no grants from the housing authority that they have some previous years for roofs and windows and so forth. So I thought I could easily write grants for what the residents would like to expand programming, expand facilities. I also, in terms of community, I would like to have the board meetings more generally advertised that right now they're just on a bulletin board somewhere in the town hall. I'd like to have them on the regular community calendar so that people, because it serves more than just the residents, so mostly the residents, people come in to apply for section eight to look into various possibilities for themselves. And I think that the board meetings, though they are public, the public has to know about them and that would be more interaction. And also in terms of the community, I see that it would be important to expand the tenant handbook, which I've read online, and update it and put in the latest state regulations that give residents quite a lot of rights in terms of if they have something that doesn't work or who did they go to? If that doesn't work, where else did they go to? So I guess I've taken up a lot of time. Well, that's fine, we've got, yeah, you're right, we're a little under five minutes left, but that's fine, this is what we wanted to hear. I'm wondering whether, I mean, because you mentioned a lot of different things from having candidates nights or meet the candidates events there, gardens, all kinds of other changes to the physical plant perhaps and to the experience to bring, as you said, the housing authority buildings more into the community and the community more into the buildings. Are all the things that you've mentioned, are those all solidly as you understand it within the auspices of what the housing authority board does already, or will you be seeking to make changes of a sort that kind of expand what the housing authority generally does? Well, I understand it's within what they can do. I didn't notice in the minutes lately, the last couple of years, I've read through the minutes that they are doing it, but their expertise is maybe not the same as mine. So I think this is something that I could add to the board and I really plan to work with the board on these projects. You have to work as a board together and I'm willing to do the work, I have the time and the expertise and I can't, I mean, I can't, they may not, I would think they would wanna support me to bring certainly more financial resources into the housing authority. With the three minutes that we have left, I want to make sure that we can address one thing and that is by his own choice, your opponent has been publicly silent throughout this campaign. And so as far as you understand it, how would you draw a distinction for voters between yourself and your opponent? Because of course, people are very interested in knowing how to judge and assess the different candidates. Well, the first one is obvious. I believe that people running for public office ought to be available to the voters and to inform them what their qualifications are, what their interests are and what their plans are. And I'm very disappointed he hasn't done that. I don't think it's fair to the voters or the residents of the housing authority. But secondly, the little that he has put up is that, or other people, he does things for tenants. And I think I see advocacy somewhat differently. I think that what you want to do is put the conditions to help residents, for instance, if their sink doesn't work or they want to say more about a renovation, you want to put in place a whole set of steps that they can take, put it in the tenant handbook, to help them actually be advocates for themselves. That means you certainly help people who can't do it, but mostly you want to enable people. That's my view and that's not what he wrote in some piece or someone wrote for him, actually, in some piece. But other than that, I don't know, it's very strange to be in a competitive race where the competitor is completely invisible. So I hope he's talking to someone. It's an unusual situation. We have just a minute left. I want to make sure that if there is anything we've left on the table or unsaid that you have a chance to give voice to it. Well, three things, vote, vote, vote. It's your community. Town elections have very low turnouts. Now you're going to get a mail-in, a request for a mail-in ballot. Please send it in and please vote. And of course, I think that I'm the better qualified and I hope you vote for me. All right, thank you very much for taking the time. Thank you for doing this. I've been speaking to Joanne Preston, who is candidate for housing authority here in Arlington. I'm James Milan. Thank you for joining us and we'll see you next time.