 Hi, good evening everybody. I'm Councilwoman Jeanette Martinez and I'm proud to serve you here in District 11. As you all know, we are experiencing a housing crisis here in Fort Worth and that's why we put together this event to inform you on what the city's doing about it and to hear about some of the barriers that there are. Today we'll hear from community leaders and partners whose work directly influences our affordable housing projects. So that's pretty much all I have to say. I want to introduce you to our Assistant City Manager, Fernando Costa. He will be the moderator for today's panel discussion. Fernando, the floor is all yours. Thank you, Councilmember Martinez. We appreciate your leadership on the Fort Worth City Council and everything you do to advance community development in Fort Worth. And this evening we are celebrating the Community Development Block Grant and Home Programs. These are programs sponsored by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. And I've been asked to say a few words at the beginning about my involvement with these programs and I got to thinking about my background with them. I actually remember when the U.S. Congress passed and President Ford signed into law the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974. I was a graduate student at the time and so it occurs to me as we're getting ready to celebrate the 50th anniversary of CDBG. I've been involved with it throughout that time. And currently I had the privilege of overseeing the Neighborhood Services Department in the City of Fort Worth which is responsible for administering the CDBG and home programs in our city and the department does an excellent job in that regard. I'm thrilled to introduce four experts in affordable housing and community development and it's common to use the term experts casually but these are really four experts in the field. In fact, so much so that as I look at them I'm reminded of Mount Rushmore which represents the faces of four distinguished U.S. presidents. These are four distinguished leaders of Fort Worth and I'm happy to introduce them to you and then I would ask each of them in turn to share with us just a few words about their work on a daily basis and how they participate in the Community Development Block Grant and home programs. First, beginning on the left of the screen and the right of the table as I face them, we have Ms. Ebony Rose who chairs the Community Development Council of the city. This is the appointed board appointed by the Fort Worth City Council that oversees the allocation of federal funds for community development in affordable housing purposes and so the Community Development Council receives information and recommendations from the neighborhood services department staff, discusses that information, hears from interested residents and eventually makes recommendations to the Fort Worth City Council and most commonly the City Council has such high respect for the recommendations from the Community Development Council that the City Council will adopt those recommendations and so we're happy to have Ms. Rose with us in her day job but serves as a consultant and educator with expertise in community development and diversity, equity and inclusion has been recipient of awards for her work with TCU and other organizations and we're very happy to have Ms. Rose with us. Then we have Ms. Mary Margaret Lemons, President of Fort Worth Housing Solutions which is also known as a historically known as a Fort Worth Housing Authority, the Housing Authority of the City of Fort Worth. It is a public agency with a board that's appointed by the Mayor of Fort Worth but operates a semi-autonomous fashion with a great deal of entrepreneurship. Historically we have tended to think of housing authorities as local agencies that merely administer public housing funds. That model of public housing is a thing of the past and the Fort Worth Housing Authority, Fort Worth Housing Solutions, has been a leader in that change for many years and much of it has been precipitated by Mary Margaret Lemons who has turned that organization into a very agile agency that assesses the needs of the community and responds to them in a direct way and I have to say that agency is also an exceptional partner for the city. Whenever the city needs something from Fort Worth Housing Solutions, Mary Margaret is on the spot to respond so we're very happy that Mary Margaret's with us. Gage Yeager is next to Mary Margaret. He's the CEO, Chief Executive Officer for Trinity Habitat for Humanity. Gage has been around longer than anyone can remember including Gage himself. He's beginning to lose much of his vast memory but Gage has a fabulous spirit about him. He does what he does because he believes in what he does and it's evident in all of his actions. People love Gage because they respect his commitment to not just to the development of affordable housing but truly the empowerment of the families who reside within the homes that he and a legion of volunteers help to create. So Gage, thank you for being with us. Gage is well known not just in Fort Worth but around the country and truly around the world. He does mission work in other countries. In fact a few years ago I was, you may remember Gage, I happened to be in El Salvador and I thought I'm glad to be somewhere where no one will know who I am and so I meet this young lady who was involved in working with the poor in El Salvador and she asked me where I'm from and I said, well I'm from Texas. She said, where from Texas? I said, well I'm from Fort Worth. Well he was still Gage Jaeger and so I can't escape him so we're delighted that you're here at Gage and then certainly not least on the panel is Daniel Smith who is a managing director of the Hall of Partners and a magnificent leader in the real estate development industry. He's been a great friend of Fort Worth, always ready to tackle the hardest real estate development projects in our city and I don't say that lightly. I could give many examples of the work that he's done in all parts of Fort Worth but I'll mention just a couple that I think are notable. Daniel exceeded everybody's expectations with the redevelopment of a hotel near North Beach Street northeast of Fort Worth that had been affected by crime and all kinds of illicit activities. We had an opportunity after COVID struck to use some federal funds to create what we call permanent supportive housing, to house folks who otherwise would be homeless. Actually we're homeless and had been homeless for a year or more with one or more disabilities so it's a great need but the federal government said you have to expend these funds by the end of the year 2020. You have to spend the money or else you have to return it to us and most folks said well there's no way we can possibly develop over a hundred units of permanent supportive housing in four or five months. It's just not possible. Well the folks who were expressing that skepticism did not know Daniel Smith in a hall of because he got it done in league with Mary Margaret Lemons in Fort Worth Housing Solutions. It was amazing and it was such an accomplishment that cities all over the United States came to Fort Worth to learn how we had managed to develop so much permanent supportive housing of high quality in such a short period of time. And so when the time came to explore opportunities for housing on the south side of Fort Worth in the Hemphill Corridor the first person to whom we turned was Daniel Smith and he said he had an idea to redevelop a piece of obsolete industrial property in Worth Heights and again folks were skeptical and said can't be done. Can't be done. People will object to it for a host of reasons. There are too many interested groups. The property is too complex. It's got flooding problems. It's got pollution from a long time industrial use all kinds of problems but Mr. Smith was undaunted moved ahead in partnership with the city and many others and the project is now under construction to be completed by the end of this calendar year and Daniel we're going to find a way to address the railroad noise and issue a certificate of occupancy for you before the end of 2024 which is our deadline under the funding that we've received for the project so someone who does not know what it means to say it can't be done. Daniel Smith does not understand that expression so we've got four truly outstanding leaders with us tonight. You couldn't find better folks to talk with us about affordable housing and community development. We heard already from Councilor Martinez we do have a housing crisis in Fort Worth. It's an issue across the country but it's acute here in Fort Worth where the average family can no longer afford the average home in Fort Worth. It used to be just 15 or 20 years ago we could say that Fort Worth was the most affordable big city in Texas but housing prices and apartment rents have risen dramatically so that if you're a young individual or a couple trying to buy your first home for most folks it's it's a stretch if it's even possible and so we're working to make housing more affordable in Fort Worth on a variety of fronts and the community development block grant program and the home program are valuable resources toward that end so let's begin and I'd like to ask first Miss Rose, Ebony Rose to describe for us your role as it pertains to these grant programs, how you're involved in implementing them and what impact do you think that your work has had on affordable housing and community development in Fort Worth. Great thank you happy to get us started. Hi everyone. I serve currently this keeps going in and out but maybe it's okay. I serve currently as the Chair of the Community Development Council. I'm on my third term on that Council and in my second term as Chair of that of that body and I'm the Mayor's appointee. I served first under Mayor Price and have also now been appointed by Mayor Parker so really a lovely space for me to get to be in. I came to this body as a relatively new resident to the city of Fort Worth once I realized I was going to be here for a little while as most folks who move to a new city you're not quite sure and then you realize you want to put down some roots and so I came into the city and immediately found connection here because of the work that I think is important around community building and creating spaces where we all get to thrive. However that needs to look for us and this body has been really important in helping me understand the needs of our citizens in the city and also helping me to know where to point people when they're in need which I think is such a critical element. One of the hard things about being on the CDC is recognizing that there are so many city services that our citizens don't know exist and we spend a lot of time in that body trying to figure out how to make sure we're getting the word out and working with our neighborhood services staff who do a fantastic job day in day out and supporting the citizens of our city but on that body it is important for us to make sure that when we talk about federal funding folks understand what that means what it means to receive grant funding how to utilize that well what happens when your deadlines are up and how important it is to stay on on time in building projects and other community initiatives and I think that's a big part of our work and as we go through the year we help by receiving all of the different interested parties who want to apply for those grants so those nonprofit agencies community partners submit their applications through neighborhood services our body reviews that in partnership with neighborhood services and then make those recommendations to the city so it is a heavy lift to think about how the city is going to wisely use millions of dollars and I think the members on our board understand the importance of what we do and it's fun to get to work with our members in that way to think about that we represent the entire city so we've got members from each district who are appointed thereby one of their council persons and year over year we get to see those changes occur and that's always really great to see what we saw in paper and then a few years there's buildings and families thriving community centers that have been renovated community spaces that have been updated community programs that are happening to see those things go from an application to reality and how it impacts our community is one of the greatest joys of getting to be on that body. Thank you Ms. Rose so we appreciate your leadership in making that happen. Mary Margaret. Well usually I get to be the recipient of these funds and so I am really excited when we have a project that qualifies and that matches up timing wise for these funds to be available. For years we were pretty self-sufficient and didn't require some of the money that the city has and we were able to develop pretty independently and then things have gotten harder construction cost have gone up land cost have gone up and so we have gaps on projects now and especially on some of our more difficult to develop projects going into the urban core and trying to redevelop in neighborhoods that need a lot of infrastructure work and aren't the pretty flat land out in the suburbs to develop on and so this money really comes in handy to close those gaps and when we're structuring these deals they can have up to 13 different funding sources and that last two million dollars is a make it or break it point for us and so we get to put them in projects like stop six that are happening right now both CDBG and home have been used in multiple phases of that project and so that's where I think the partnership really comes in because not only is the city a co-lead applicant on that grant application to hide but we have aligned our strategic plans the city just put out their affordable housing plan our strategic plan takes that into account and we make sure that we're moving together as we're working and that everything aligns because we always want to be supportive of the city's initiatives and we want the city to sign off on what we do we think it's important that we collaborate so we don't compete or get in each other's way but are able to do more together because honestly there's not enough funding to go around I think at this point we need about 30,000 affordable housing units in the city of Fort Worth and there's no way we can build our way out of that and so we have to work at it from a couple of different angles and making sure that we're talking about housing wages is important right now anytime I'm in front of people I always say in 2024 you need to make 21 dollars and 17 cents an hour to afford an efficiency apartment in Tarrant County and so right now if you're making a decision on somebody's wages and you don't know that or you're not paying that much you're adding to my affordable housing problem and I say my because I take it very personally I grew up here and I think Fort Worth is a great place but we're quickly turning into a place that's making it very hard to raise a family and to exist so CDBG and home funding is very important to what I do every day the housing authority like Fernando said we don't just administer public housing or housing choice vouchers we actually own and operate over 55 properties throughout the city and so we have properties in every city council district all the way up I call it Oklahoma but they tell me it's Fort Worth way up there close to Haslet down south close to Everman all the way past loop 820 on the west side and almost to the airport we're right there at the new American Airlines headquarters over on Trinity and 360 so we try to have affordable housing in every pocket of Fort Worth where people would want to live so people get a choice right we don't believe in warehousing people in need in large locations like was done back in the 30s and 40s and so we don't have any traditional public housing left in in Fort Worth today everything is mixed income and and spread out and if you drove by it you wouldn't know that it's affordable it looks like class a property and that's our goal we want anybody to feel comfortable living there but Mary market let me let me underscore one of your points about paying a suitable wage by which folks can afford to live in Fort Worth if I'm not mistaken you have actually made a decision to pay all of your employees at least the amount that they need to afford housing in Fort Worth $21 an hour yes we're actually a little higher than that because we have a four-day work week and so we have to do some calculations to translate it but yes we don't pay anybody underneath the housing wage because I think it would be wrong to pay someone a wage that they could not afford to live in the city that they're working in do you think that by providing that example we can get other major employers to follow suit that's the reason I say it so often is because I think it shocks people a lot of the people that are making hiring decisions or budget decisions haven't lived in an apartment in a really long time maybe they never did maybe they were you know part of a generation that was able to buy a house very quickly and so if you have no context right and you're not educated you sometimes are missing something and so in a lot of rooms whenever there's a microphone or if I can get the attention I say that and it there's a report that comes out every summer and so we always are adjusting because it's constantly moving up but right now it's $21 and 17 cents an hour so tell people and that's one of the things anybody can be an advocate for this I also say we don't say section eight anymore right housing choice voucher is is the way that we describe a voucher that pays for somebody's rent because there aren't section eight properties like if you my husband he's the worst he drives by and says that must be a section eight property I'm like that wouldn't pass my inspection that's just a really bad landlord and it's not me and so just getting rid of some of those stereotypes are things that you guys can help us with because the wages is a serious thing 30 000 units don't appear overnight we're lucky if we can add a thousand units a year and so we're never going to catch up at this rate thank you very market gay jigger yes sir um right so how do I how do we work with the grants I'm the CEO of the Trinity Habitat Humanity we serve Johnson Tarrant Parker and Wise County most of what we do is in Fort Worth it's wonderful partnership with the city and and the legions of volunteers and donors that uh Fernando mentioned we wouldn't get it done without that because what we do doesn't make sense and so Mary Margaret mentioned it it's about gaps and it's about plugging gaps and how do you where do you find the money to plug the gap right we find donors we have restores where people donate things we turn around and sell it hopefully you guys know about the restores a great place to find stuff that you couldn't maybe otherwise afford and go to the landfill somebody gets a tax write off everybody wins it's a great resource uh primarily the way we've worked with cdbg money is so we have two building products right we do new homes which is where most of our effort is we also do rehabs uh and most of the rehab like 99 98 of our rehabs our cdbg funded we work with the city uh closely with cow town brush up where we go out and we paint 80 or 90 homes every year uh and then we have some more intense projects that have different layers of funding that come in to you know go up to 25 000 to do different things uh so it's it's for us it's added a whole new bucket and what i i like about it is a it's helping people they own their home it's about aging in place uh how many people want to move into a nursing home that'd be zero people right nobody's gonna raise their hand for that what do we want to do we want to i want to stay home i'm not unique or special i want to stay home and if we can spend a little bit of money with those seniors to make it look better from the streetscape because what the house looks like is important to the neighborhood and the neighbors right uh and and make it function better for them then that's a win and that's we have core values at our agency we talk about our core values and that's the agent that's the core value of respect right there we're standing on the shoulders of greatness which are the people that came before us to do the great things to get us where we are today uh and those are the people those are our senior citizens that that most of that rehab money goes into work with so we wouldn't have that uh i mean we do 120 130 140 houses a year in the rehab space it's all owner occupied we don't obviously touch rental to help the landlord out but we're going to help the person that owns their home if they qualify for income and the other compliance needs for for the grant and we're going to jump in and we're going to make it happen and we're going to do it with excellence and we're going to act like it's our home and work with that family and and and get it done so it's it's it's about plugging gaps it's about for us it's this new and not new we've been doing it for a while but it is the rehab process and and this i step back and look at it strategically and from a financial standpoint like i'm i'm layering everything in how much money is the restore going to make how much money can we get from cdbg how much of that cdb how much of that cdbg money easy for me to say is admin will the admin cover the expense of the staff overseeing that program so the admin percentage and it doesn't need to be huge but it's it's darn important because if it's not there then i crank up a program we're doing good stuff but now i've created a net negative and i have to plug that hole somewhere with something to make up for the deficit right it's like yay i added units who now i'm losing an extra hundred grand a year because i'm doing you know a million worth of dollars worth of projects but i'm losing more money and so when when the money can come in with enough admin support then that makes the the math simple and and work well but it's a it's a wonderful program we're blessed to have it we're we're moving from we forever we've we bought lots we just framed our thousandth house the other day i shouldn't answer my wife's call should i probably not i guess you don't know where i am um we just raised we just raised the walls on our thousandth home and we've bought infill lots just vacant lots here in worth heights all throughout fort worth and a lot of terrant county uh but those that's that price points up 700 percent forever and i've been with habitat 27 years so forever we're paying five to ten thousand dollars a lot and we cannot find enough lots at 60 thousand dollars and that you know five to ten thousand a lot this is 2017 2018 number so that's not that long ago and that's a huge increase so what that's done to us is we're leaving the now we'll still buy infill lots if we can find them and afford them but we're going into the raw land development business and that's a whole new ball of whatever twine that's difficult to work with a lot of risk a lot of complexity and so i'm hoping and wanting to keep the rehab thing going but find some dollars from the cdbg world to help take care of the larger land development issues that we have going thank you gage before you pass the mic i've heard a story the other day about a lady in the historic south side whom you're helping to to build a house who is that individual and why are you doing it if i can think of her name what what is that young lady's name maybe it's opal lee doctor opal lee maybe a person or two have heard heard of that dynamo in our city may we all be blessed with her energy and longevity not to mention her obvious character uh so yeah opal's a wonderful friend she was on our founding board of directors and you know god moves in mysterious ways i don't understand those ways and i never will my brain's way too small but she was on our board you know the terrible thing that happened to her on 940 east hany where they moved in 80 plus years ago the racist mob showed up because they didn't like the color of their skin and they chased them out of the house and they fled and then a few days later they burned the mob burned the house down right and so opal's a little girl uh at that time and she said her parents never really talked about she opal didn't tell me the story until we happened to buy the lot and so i didn't know we bought a lot because that's what we do right buy a lot build a home uh and so we bought the lot to build a home and she calls me up one day and i see opal on my phone i say hi opal how you doing she's like gauge you guys own my lot at 940 east hany i was like we do i was like and i didn't know he was yours and so anyway she then told me that terrible story right and i was like well opal hold on let me figure out because she wanted to buy it and she had called about it every now and then she looked up on the terran appraisal district rolls and saw that trinity habitat for you mandy owned it and so i was like well let me check let me make sure we hadn't sold it to somebody or promised it to another family i was like dear lord please don't let it be committed someplace and it wasn't it wasn't and so then we didn't sell it to her of course we gave it to her and now the history maker came in and just started building the home like we did a groundbreaking on opal's birthday in october and a couple of weeks ago we did the wall raising raise the first wall and hopefully if everything processes along then we will move her in on june 14th we wanted we wanted something called june 10th just for grins but believe it or not opal has commitments to places she's a little bit in demand and she had a prior commitment in dallas that she couldn't get out so we'll do it on june 14th if everything goes well so anyway she's a sweetheart we're blessed to have her in our community blessed to have this full circle serendipitous thing happen where something was wrongfully taken from their family and now it gets restored eight decades too late it should never have to happen right so it's it's a bitter sweet thing and so it's uh lucky to have her in our in our life thank you gauge daniel smith good evening everyone my name is daniel smith i work at ohala partners thank you all for coming out and being present in your communities this evening it says a lot about all of you um ohala partners is a texas-based real estate investment and development firm and we focus on lots of different things commercial real estate you know housing single family and multi-family for the last eight years all i work on is creating housing in texas and so within the context of creating housing and cdbg and home funds we work on everything from urban infill conventional luxury market rate high rises to the lowest end of the spectrum the the need is greatest the lower you know price units supportive housing for folks that were formerly homeless um we work on kind of the next step up which i'll call workforce housing which is typically financed using low income housing tax credits which which might target folks that make 30 to 50 thousand dollars a year and then also mixed income housing where you have some folks paying a big rent and then some folks paying a little bit less right and so within the context of all this i think it's important to understand that the cdbg and the home funds that that we're speaking about today they're typically put in projects in workforce housing and supportive housing where the need is greatest right these are typically not going in your high end luxury you know developments this is going in and you know into the developments that are housing the working class folks of the community that make up our country and so i think you know when we talk about gaps again just for context when you go and develop an apartment complex or a single family home or you convert a hotel um there's typically a lot of capital that's required and so what when we say a gap what we mean is is the gap is is you know we have to raise private money that might be our own we might have to borrow some from our lender and then at the end of the day it's not enough to get it done and so those gaps are um can be filled by cdbg funds and they're so vital because there's so many projects out there that can get to the five four three two one guard line but there's just not enough adequate resources to plug those gaps and so um for us typically most things that we work on that have cdb funds um they're not the most profitable things that we work on but they make by far the biggest impact to the communities and the neighborhoods that we live and we invest in so um you know it's a challenging resource to use sometimes of the funds but you know these are the types of capital that really help our communities provide really nice housing that folks can rent at a little bit lower rate um you know so maybe in some cases you could make 15 bucks an hour not 20 if you can find a new development that had some cdbg funds thank you daniel i've always wondered why it is that someone who is so successful in the development of market rate housing takes it upon himself to tackle projects that are much more difficult much more challenging much more complex uh with a more narrow profit margin if it even has a profit margin at all why do you do it i don't know who you're referring to as a successful person but one thing that i've learned um working in this space over the last five or six years is that um it's a lot easier to make money than help people um and what i mean by that is is a lot of these developments because they're not as profitable there's not as many like sophisticated real estate investment development acquisition redevelopment firms that want to take these things on and so for us i think the reason why we work on them um there's several reasons one of the reasons is is we want to be impactful in the communities that we live and invest in another reason is is we want to be really good partners um to our public partners that have been good to us for example fort worth housing solutions the city of fort worth right um you know a lot of times you know we go to them and ask for certain types of things and they have always been there for us and and helped us when things are challenging and so i think it's the road kind of goes both ways right and so um whenever there is opportunities to use community development block grants to help different folks on the lower income um end of the bracket we jump at those opportunities because we want to be good partners to those who have been good partners to us thank you thank you daniel well all four of the speakers have spoken at least briefly about uh the topic of affordable housing uh and the challenges associated with uh many of those challenges i think uh have to do with uh misperceptions uh in the public mind about affordable housing and the folks who reside uh within that housing uh and as a result we often uh see uh opposition uh from community groups to affordable housing projects even projects that are well designed uh and uh highly beneficial to the folks uh who would live in them uh nevertheless there is this uh uh perception or stigma about affordable housing uh that uh represents a major impediment and i'd like to begin by asking uh miss uh miss rose but the others as well uh to give us uh whatever insight you can uh into this uh uh challenge how do we educate your professional educator how do we educate the community about the value of affordable housing why we need it uh in fort worth the uh and and why a neighborhood uh should welcome it uh in the right form thank you i i think you you've really touched on what it is it's the language and the point you made earlier about um using voucher instead of section eight there are connotations in the language we use to tell the stories of our community and for so long these stories around affordable housing people think of of poor people and whatever they've established that to be in their head the story that they've created around what it means to be poor in america and that's what they've connected to housing opportunities that we would consider affordable which is so unfortunate because regardless of your socioeconomic status you deserve a place to live you deserve access to community services you deserve access to um the neighborhood being a place where you can thrive as an individual or as a family and that language is important and i think when we talk about housing using the right language talking about affordable housing reminding folks that in 2024 as we talk about wage discrepancies and the challenges around that that to be someone eligible for some of these programs you really are someone who could still be making what we would have considered just a few years ago a living wage a reasonable wage right so as the cost of living goes up as the cost of housing goes up working class families middle class families are now eligible for these programs so we have to rethink and reframe the way we talk about affordable housing because we should all have access to a place that is affordable whatever our threshold of income is and that message has been lost um i was just talking with mayor parker just a couple weeks ago around some of the issues we see from folks um the not in my backyard folks we don't want folks here near me however again yes those people we've got to stop othering folks when we talk about housing um there these people should be in my backyard because they're my neighbors they're my community and i think that's a big part of the work we can all do and especially when we talk about the role i play which is a volunteer role on this body with the cdc but i take it so personally and and try to be really respectful and responsible about the way that we talk about these funds and the partners that we choose because the messaging has to be clear across the board we've got to use the same kind of language and we're talking about creating opportunities for individuals and families and that's really what these funds and these programs allow us to do so as much as you can contribute to reframing the language to thinking about what it means to have um deriving communities at all income levels at all access levels folks who can age and place generational living multi-generational living those are the messages that we can send and i think that's really important to help us reframe what it means to support these programs and to use these funds mindfully and carefully across the city and into other areas as we spread across dfw that's great thank you thank you miss rose uh any of the other panelists want to respond one thing i do when people say we don't want those people to live next to us i often break down what they did that day and so i say what did your day look like and they usually start by i got up got my kids ready for school maybe dropped him off at daycare ran through got some coffee in the drive through right went to work dropped off dry cleaning all of these things that make their life work every day and that they trust their kids with these people and just about every single person that they touch that day qualifies for my housing and so for me when you're saying you don't want those people living close to you you're not really thinking it through because don't you want the employees of the places that you frequent living close enough that they're a reliable employee that's going to show up every morning to take care of your change your child and change their diapers i mean it's those type of people that qualify for housing we only have about if i could if i could fund every voucher hud gives me that would be 6500 vouchers 6500 i got a stat the other day were over 900 000 people living in fort worth today and i have less than 10 000 vouchers i can only really fund about 4900 with the budget they give me so that let's just call it 5000 people that i can help with the voucher so if you're saying no to affordable housing there's not another option for these people and so if you don't like seeing homeless people on the streets saying yes to affordable housing is really the only way that we can change this conversation and change what our city looks like and so it's really just understanding the resources that we have and the the solutions that we have and affordable housing using these funding sources is one of the only ways i know unless we can get everybody to pay 21 dollars and 17 cents an hour at least that we're going to be able to make a difference thank you mary margaret gauge and yeah i piggyback on that just just a bit um covid gave us new language the essential worker that's that's who we're talking about it's who make our life that's what you're eluding to right who make our life possible to do all the things uh that we don't think about it just i think it's unconscious and when we just don't think about it we and what you were saying earlier too about we we have some stereotypes or misconceptions about the people um did some a quick look up for the last three years 70 percent of our family partners and this is ranked in order of where they're employed from top to the top seven medical logistics production and delivery places like cargill core mark land the lakes amazon education construction banking and finance airport or airline and city employees and my daughter just graduated from the university of texas in austin last year stem degree is wanting maybe go to medical school but she's working at st david's hospital for a year right now to figure out what her next step will be so she's a patient care technician so you think doctor you think nurse and then you think patient care technician they're doing all the gross stuff that nobody else wants to do she's putting in catheters and she's wiping rear ends in recovery all day long she makes 1750 an hour right i mean that that's a big deal and so people care about that but then somehow they go through some weird incorrect calculus and say yeah but i don't want you living next to me you can put my catheter in or drive my kid in the bus or book after my kid but by god don't live next to me right then there's a there's a huge disconnect there huge disconnect and that's i think we need to keep personalize it think about that individual that may be somebody that says something silly because we've all had people say silly stuff to us well what do you think about joe or susan or tom or you know that they just interact with i bet that person that just fixed your transmission but he doesn't make brunch money but he seems like a pretty good guy let's invite them to live next to us invite him to live next to us thank you cage i want i want to ask i know dan it doesn't want to say too much but i'd like for you to share with us a story about nimbyism not in my backyard as it relates to your tobias place project tell us so what opposition you encountered if you don't mind uh i know you're a very positive person how many community meetings you held what was your strategy to get support and how did you work it out so that by the time you organize a groundbreaking ceremony you had the community enthusiastically coming out to support you uh on a project that ordinarily a lot of folks uh would have opposed uh as a knee jerk reaction to the term affordable housing so within the specific context of tobias place and within the worth heights community it's a similar story that we've seen play out um over the last 10 years and the story is largely unaffordable housing a multifamily developer wants to come into a community and develop something people in the community hear about it they haven't been approached they're cautious they may not want it they don't have any information and so um in that specific case it was a little bit more challenging because there's four neighborhood associations all at this intersection as well as another movement that wanted to stop all different types of development and um i would just say that it it ties into the original question too about like the negative stigmas associated with affordable housing i think most of the time the active folks within the community like you hear today um you just want to know more and understand what exactly is being proposed and um in that context i don't know the number of meetings that we had to have but i do know this it's that everyone is always skeptical the answer is always no in the first meeting and trust is not um something that you just get in one meeting it's something that is built over time that you have to earn and so within worth heights i would i would just say that um everyone within that community in the first meeting nobody wanted a workforce housing development on hymphill there were several different kind of coalitions that didn't want to see any of that stuff they felt like it would spur gentrification they thought it would increase their taxes they thought there was going to be concerns with crime and traffic and lighting and all these different things they wanted to know who was going to be operating this how would they operate it what's going to happen to their schools their kids their sidewalks and i think they have a right to ask all those questions and so anyways within worth heights it it you know is one of many affordable housing success stories that have happened around the city of port worth but i would just say that um largely if i would have had a meeting like that 10 years ago it probably wouldn't have gone as well or meetings like that i think that rents are so high just like a bird the cost of a cheeseburger and the cost to go buy groceries on sunday is so high that i actually think that the walls are coming down and we're all i don't care if you're rich poor white black brown green red at the end of the day like the housing costs are too high and for those willing to sit down with the communities and explain and provide legitimate responses and stand behind their business plan that there is a lot of receptive communities like worth heights that are willing to understand that these are the types of developments that we need well as always mr. smith is being overly modest i understand he held over a hundred community meetings in connection with the device place project and demonstrated the patients beyond anything i've ever seen to listen to every reasonable and unreasonable concern being expressed and responding to those concerns in constructive ways it was a remarkable effort and we appreciate everything you've done to bring that challenging project to fruition that there are groups that are known as nimby not a my backyard i think mr. smith faced some folks who uh might be classified as uh banana people uh banana is an acronym that stands for build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything uh and uh and those folks are prevalent in fort worth uh and other cities as well so thank you thank you for your valiant efforts uh and so uh let me uh pose one more question and then if we have time uh i'd like to open the floor for for questions uh from from the audience uh besides funding from cdbg or home or other sources uh what are the challenges that each of you are encountering uh in uh the development of affordable housing and uh livable neighborhoods and uh how do you recommend that the city and the community more broadly address those challenges are you okay with me starting first yes sir the mic right here please i would say the largest challenge is definitely land use or zoning and i think that the way that that challenges overcome is through meetings like this and then just being present within the communities and being willing to be patient and answer people's questions and be pro being proactive and so gone are the days of hiring the zoning consultant in the black suit and hoping that he can get it done and in with the days with sitting in front of folks of the people that live in these actually communities where you want to invest and build and be in yeah the other than funding uh i alluded to it earlier affordability our you know real estate price is up 700 percent our construction cost is up 100 percent in the last few years so affordability is the top most on my mind um we're all in development where we're moving because those infill lots are so expensive is exceedingly difficult we work well with the city but the process within any municipality is honoris at best getting it zoned and then just through the entitlement phase of plating and and engineering just takes incredible amounts of time and that's expensive and difficult to deal with what to do i think the only way we're going to come close mary margaret mentioned how many units we need right affordable units in general uh mary margaret's not going to solve the problem gauge is not going to solve the problem you're not going to right i mean no one of us are going to do that even the three of us all of us up here aren't going to solve the problem so it takes something larger is my point to solve the problem and what we really need to do and i've been thinking about this a lot is create incentives to incent the for-profit men and women to include an affordable component we can't tax and spend our way there because other states would have done it by now if they could have figured out how to do that and i'm saying that's bad that's part of it right we're getting cdb gmail cdb g money and we need it and it's a good piece of the puzzle but creative and creating incentives that work for the developer spreadsheet that short cycle the time that waives some fees it has to work for the city too right i mean the city has a budget and every single person in here needs the city budget to work so it's not like because they're a government entity they have endless pockets they have constraints and everything too so within the context of that it's working to create those incentives that when and i don't know finando how many homes we plait we city of foot worth ten thousand five thousand a year new lot something like that i mean holy cow what if ten percent of them yeah what if five percent of those were affordable that'd be five hundred units guess what i wouldn't be in the land development business anymore i'd have for-profit developers knocking on my door saying hey gauge we need to build 82 homes in here to heat out can you do that i was like you betcha that that's that would be the home run and we just it needs to it can't be they have so much money they can just afford to do it or the city has just so much money they can afford to do it because neither of those statements are true it has to work for their spreadsheet that little propeller head sitting in excel jamming the spreadsheet i have this makes sense and then it then it will work then we can get beyond just a few players trying to trying to make it happen and and and sent the the market the larger market to deliver units that we all need that's a that's an excellent point gauge and i can think of no city better than fort worth situated to do just as you have suggested we are the fastest growing big city in the country we're growing rapidly not just in a population but in households employment we have many opportunities to draw upon private investment to achieve public purposes and so providing incentives for private developers to incorporate affordable housing to their projects makes good economic sense and we had many opportunities not only on the periphery of fort worth but even the central city with projects like panther island on the near north side of fort worth we've begun discussions about the desirability of promoting what we call equitable development on panther island development that needs the needs of the community and of all segments of the community how can we make that happen i think incentivizing the private sector is an important strategy by which to achieve that goal so thank you gauge for suggesting it mary margaret i mean i echo what both of the gentlemen have mentioned zoning and and some incentives are definitely needed one of the things that really is challenging when you're working with this type of funding is the regulations that come along with it and so with regulations it makes it more difficult and so it's really hard for us to find pools of vendors that are willing to work under those conditions in some cases there's a lot of compliance that's required a lot of reporting that's required and so sometimes our our pools of contractor shrink and then the subs shrink because of that and the prices go up and so that becomes a challenge and really having a prepared workforce that's ready for the work when it comes is a big deal and so making sure that we have trades that are involved and know when work is coming because a lot of times we're fighting houston or other large cities where there's a lot of construction going on to keep people on the job and keep them moving because it's all about timing right timing of the funding flowing timing of construction because everything that we do comes with completion dates that we promise either the federal government the municipality or the state government that we're going to hit and so if you have a gc that gave you a great budget and a great schedule and then you know as soon as we close and we break ground with that pretty shiny shovel you know you get a change order that says 90 day extension like they they already have a big issue it really can throw these projects off and so i'm actually headed to dc next week to talk about streamlining building a affordable housing like what can we get rid of that would make building affordable housing quicker and easier um and be able to compete with market rate housing because if you have two projects that are sitting there a market rate project is much easier to go out and build and be be a part of and so we need to make it attractive to be building affordable housing thank you very much i'm sorry i should just rose uh yeah i i will say as i'm listening to um whatever one else has already shared shared uh the message for me really is how are we being proactive in this space uh as a city that is growing so quickly uh and a world where things are changing so fast a lot of our policies have been reactive we've had to react to the situations post-covid in particular on processes and operational costs um we have been in a reactive state for a very long time proactive planning which i know that members of our city council are working on and certainly mayor parker to be proactive in this space requires us to do a lot more community education a lot more um important and mindful messaging a lot more awareness building uh training and development for the workforce that we need to help us with these projects and that takes a lot of investment in people power as well as in the the financing of that and so finding ways that we can think about how we create our our own workforce to educate them well that we're doing that for our community members that they understand when these projects come up we don't need to have a hundred meetings which takes a year and a half we can say get a yes from a community immediately because they already know what it means when we talk about these programs and these projects so when we can do that and again that's why i'm so thankful that so many of you are here as as advocates and ambassadors in your community being able to share that out is really what we need that education will allow us to be a lot more proactive in providing the type of resources and spaces that our community really needs thank you very much miss rose well we have just a few minutes left but enough time to to field a couple of questions from the audience yes sir please and if you could speak into the mic oh i think they all right they should be able to hear me can we hear you we're good thank i was just thinking you know i uh you you were saying about 2100 uh $21 now the the people then like in my church we have people who are making like 10 or $15 an hour the sunshine church we we currently built two houses last year and then four years ago we built two houses on end room at a cost of about 130 we already those houses through the housing authority for $800 because they didn't qualify for three days from now uh the taxes is $6,500 insurance uh 1500 so we're spending about uh eight thousand dollars and we're making nine thousand you know and so hopefully the taxes won't go up much more because it's going to push us out of of of uh of helping them uh i was wondering how much uh are you paying for a vacant lot well for a vacant lot there if i can find one for a fifth thank you if i can find one for 50 000 we're lucky and i really can't i don't know if i've bought one for that much or that little in the last couple of years but they're 60 to 70 000 for vacant lots which is why we're now looking at at raw land development instead or when i have bought a few vacant lots like i bought nine vacant lots in komo they're all contiguous i think we paid 60 000 a lot which is more than i wanted but we're building but we're building 20 townhomes on it because it no longer made sense to do single family just get nine units so that we're putting 20 on on top of it instead how how is that project going gage the the 20 unit project in komo well that's a good collaboration with the city um so the street carver that it's on is it runs into a dead end they're needing to vacate merrick because it's just a goat trail right there there's no real street left and there's no water and sewer in the street uh and i don't have the most up to date but i think maybe that water and sewer installation that the city is going to do with us in behalf in partnership but i think it might have gotten pushed to the next cycle but uh i'm not sure if that's still a hundred percent correct i don't keep my finger on that post all the time so anyway it may have gotten delayed a little bit from the water sewer okay another example of the challenge is associated with infill development yeah and partnerships i mean what did uh Winston church he'll say the only thing worse than fighting a war by yourself is fighting or no the only thing worse than fighting a war with partners is fighting a war by yourself right i mean it takes partners to collaborate and get things done all right other questions yes sir you mentioned about helping people to rent houses how about do y'all have a program to help them to buy a house yes it's like i planted you there and i didn't i didn't even meet you before this um so the housing authority operates a home ownership program and so many people don't know that you can use a housing choice voucher to pay for a mortgage and insurance for 20 years and so our goal is that people don't stay on housing forever right about half of who we serve on a voucher program are elderly or disabled and i would say 95 percent of those that are able to work are working um we don't have that many people that are that are not working on our program that aren't elderly or disabled but the home ownership program is something that has established to allow people to use their voucher to actually buy a home and then earn that equity and so we just had one of my favorite stories um of the year so far we've closed on about 16 houses using vouchers so far this year we have 250 people in the pipeline but one of our residents um was a former cabel place resident so she lived in public housing with her two sons and when we um were going to demolish cabel she received a housing choice voucher and relocated to an apartment and then she worked with us on her um credit building her financial literacy budgeting started saving and um she just bought her first home in stop six um and it happens to be a lot that we sold to an affordable housing single family developer and so she moved in about a month ago we got to cut the ribbon and she is happy as a clam and that's the way it should work and so she'll now get to enjoy all that equity and um usually what happens is when you're buying a home you're you're making a pretty good income at that point and so she'll go off the program when she's over income and then that voucher will then turn go to the next person in line on the waiting list because we typically have um we open our our um wait list about every four years or so and we get about 20,000 applicants and um we do a lottery for 5,000 spots so it takes it's like getting a golden ticket or winning the lottery um to be able to get a housing choice voucher so we're excited that she's moving in the right direction to give it back to the next person. Great questions so other questions from the audience yes ma'am in the back. I wanted to know when you're talking about the development or you were saying that not like anything knowledge is not knowing and not in my backyard but have you gone to other communities in the sense to show them what you I'm sure you have to show them what you got but sometimes people need to see it you can tell people all you want but sometimes I need to touch it or I need to see it or I'm not saying to go toward people's houses I'm just stating something that make them aware. You're absolutely right so we had one of those public meetings in like a gymnasium with a bunch of people in a microphone and it turned into kind of like a mob right everybody was against it no no no and as a follow-up to that I thought these people need to just be able to ask questions right and understand so we actually held a community coffee in the clubhouse of one of our properties and invited the homeowners from that area and just said come meet us for some coffee and chicken minis and we're going to tell you who needs affordable housing where it is why what it is you know and we just started with the very basics and then had one-on-one conversations and they saw hey this is an apartment that I would live in this isn't those apartments and they're not any place that are scary or you know there's not crime and so we did that all around the city and and we we give tours I feel like I'm a tour guide a lot because part of it is just opening it up and letting people see it and then their minds change really quickly so you're exactly right that's one of our strategies well people do tend to carry around the misperceptions about the affordable housing and yet when you take the time to educate them and to show them actual examples of what you're proposing to do they tend to change their minds and so education about affordable housing is a big part of our responsibility in city government and and among others who are involved in affordable housing development by educating the public we can gather support for the projects that we're trying to implement so thank you for that question yes ma'am so the the messages out there that affordable housing is just a free ticket and it's an encouragement not to work and all these negative things so how do you explain to people how about your works and the necessity for people to pay 30% of their income or at least a minimum amount so that they understand I like to tell people like do you as a homeowner do you spend 30% of your income just on your mortgage and most people don't because they're in that situation right they've had that lesson so how do you explain to people that it's it's more of a burden for those who are earning less especially those that are on a fixed income if you think about our seniors and those that are on disability and the check that they get every month which is typically less than a thousand dollars where can they go find housing for 300 a month is that someplace you want your grandmother or you want your family member that probably has higher needs you know and so when you really break it down and put it in those terms people do understand the numbers but everybody on a housing choice voucher or an affordable housing typically pays 30% of their adjusted income and so that looks different for different people um Daniel builds a really nice product and if you can find a 30% unit set aside for those that are making 30% of the AMI you can live in a class A property um or somebody that needs an opportunity can live in that class A property and they should because in order to do better they have to see better right in order to dream they have to know it's possible and if you grew up um in a community like Butler Place right that was completely shut off from the rest of the world by highways right and you went up the hill to I am Tarrell to elementary school and then you walk back home and it took you an hour on a bus to get to the closest grocery store I mean those are the real stories that these families faced growing up in these communities and so the the people that are on our program they don't want to be in the position they're in they came in in crisis they had no other place to turn most people are really proud no one ever walks around and says I'm on housing right that's not something somebody starts a conversation with um but but education I mean today I think everybody's here to get an education and I've gotten so much from the audience you guys have been great but just educating our neighbors is important so thank you Leah the 30% doing the math right the math math and and it says something um thank you for that question and that uh important point about uh these efforts are intended to uh support and empower our residents not to give them a free ticket any other questions uh yes ma'am I have a question and I've worked in emergency room almost since I'm not there anymore because it's closed down but um I still have clients that call me seniors then and they are my heart seniors on my heart but when I have a senior that's called me because his check is around $800 a month he's been basically priced out of the any any decent besides a dump somewhere or it's horrible and I keep up with him because I hope that we fill out forms I've I've had him on a waiting list now for two years today I got a call because I'm his contact now because I'm trying to get him in a senior apartment he's up three three people are ahead of him and he is like struggling okay and um I talked to the expenses as well does he have any no nothing on his background does he have an addiction yes because he couldn't afford an $850 rent he got sick he had a stroke and basically he got evicted and the judge said you have to remember 21st to pay a thousand seventy five dollars to get the eviction well the eviction doesn't come off it just goes to zero balance because we're in Texas this is something I learned working with e-wrap how can or what can you have 30% when you see a senior that comes in with that kind of thing he's going to get turned out he is he I've had one there's nothing I can do and it hurts me because he's a good man and I have other seniors like that and it just kills me that I was on the phone today trying to find out calling the county please and praying please lord don't let that eviction be on him because he's to read three names away from getting into a decent semi-decent senior living and they're probably going to turn him out and he's going to be on land I'd be happy to get your information and learn where he's applying so I can understand you know who manages it a lot of it has to do with the type of funding if it's a tax credit property unfortunately a lot of the management companies have very strict rental criteria and if we don't follow that then it turns into a fair housing problem that we do have other properties that have more flexible standards and so Daniel and I are shaking our heads because we have other programs and properties that were able to house people that don't have to follow those you know guidelines and so I'd be happy to to help you navigate that system and find some place because the last thing we want to do is add to our homelessness population especially with our seniors yeah I would mimic what Mary Margaret said but also add again we will try to help and we probably can but the truth is is that you're right it's a problem it's very real there's so much demand for these lower income 30 40 50 percent AMI units and so what happens is is if you're a property management company and you have a hundred people applying for one unit again it's a business right and there's people going through different you know criminal background credit I mean you know there's a lady a man someone has a job to go through this and you have two applications on your desk and you have one I mean you're not gonna like the response it's the truth you have one tenant who had an eviction and one tenant who didn't right it's a risk-based decision and so it's more of like a I don't know a societal problem it's the same thing with credit right with people who go to jail and had one credit card and they were in you know they couldn't pay their credit card for four years and so their credit got completely destroyed and then they came out and then they can't rent an apartment anywhere because they have no credit it's a it's a similar scenario and so anyways I'm sure that we can help out in some capacity but this is just like one very small example of a of a much larger problem whereas like Mary Margaret and I can't you know help find seniors all over the whole you know United States of America so I think we can help but largely I think it's more of like a federal or state legislative issue that that needs to be addressed he is not a criminal he's a senior $700 a month and if you got an eviction he is not a criminal but even criminals have to order and something needs to change because if I see is if I saw a senior coming across if I had the power of anything if I saw a senior coming across and I see I have a 30 year old couple with kids and yes they're they're into that 30% but I have a senior that has an eviction because they're about to be homeless I'm sorry I want a senior because you're third and figure it out I'll help you figure it out I'll help you credit I'll help you you know I'll be the mom to you because I have a mom on many of my clients you know but I need something that y'all have before you say look when there's just an eviction and it's a senior and you understand the reason there is this eviction please don't let that be the stopping point they're not criminals I I think we can probably help especially now that we have a really good cosigner here so I think the larger the larger question he said societal and I think that's essentially right I read a fascinating article in the Atlantic that talked about homelessness and it said the obvious answer to homelessness is the price of a home and so what happens is as housing goes up whether it's rental or home ownership it puts pressure and put people end up using units that that person could have been in that when the price is so expensive they make more money but they're still down in this level and they're they're consuming the space right and so I mean it's a good example of California house a price of a house cost of a house versus West Virginia which is nothing close to California and the poverty rates aren't the same but California has half the homeless rate in the country and West Virginia has a higher poverty rate but not very many homeless because their homes don't cost as much so well thank you very much thank you for the question I thank all of you in the audience for your attention your participation in our discussion this evening special thanks to our four panelists again miss ebony rose mary margaret levins gay jager and daniel smith this has been a wonderful educational experience for me as I hope it's been for everyone in the audience tonight we have a big challenge in fort worth and I'm more motivated than ever before to do my part toward tackling it so thank you all very much for your participation have a good evening