 from home in Houston. So the struggle is so real. I know y'all know this. I know we're preaching to the choir. The choir, let's sing. Let me explain this to you. In the blue category is housing, we're going to talk about housing cost burden. In the blue category is someone who is housing cost burden. They spend 30% of their monthly income on rent or mortgage and utilities. In the red section, if you are severely housing cost burden, that means you spend more than 50% of your monthly income on rent or mortgage and utilities. So these are the extremely low, the poorest of the poor. And this is telling us that 67% of the poorest people are housing cost burden. In the second category, the very low income, the blue section, 30% of their monthly income goes towards housing, 26%. There's 50% of their monthly income goes towards housing. This is the majority of these income categories are housing cost burden. The majority of people are housing cost burden. In your low income, again, 30% are spending 30% of their monthly income, 70% are spending 50% of their monthly income on housing. All of these, most of these people are housing cost burden in these categories. So when you're housing cost burden, that means you're piling up, you're in overprouded situations, you're in some standard housing, or you're in a place with cheaper rents, but it won't meet the needs because it has poor schools, no access to jobs, and things like that. This is how real the struggle is. And I was one of them, I was spending on 50% of my income on rents. And that was really tight when you have to decide whether, okay, I have to pay rent, but I need to go to the doctor and my co-pay is $60, or my baby needs diapers, my baby needs milk. These are the situations that I had and thank God for family that helped out because I can have another way to pay for it. And I got a master's degree, so don't tell me to get another job. I did what y'all told me to do, and when I came out, it was no job. So you take the job that you can, but then you're underemployed. These are the situations that make the struggle so real for all of us. So the growth in Houston, I know y'all are like, oh, Houston's growing, Houston's moving, Houston's this, Houston's that, and all of that's true. And we did, just like it says here, in HUD's American Community Survey from the years 2000 to 2014, the city grew 11% in population and housing grew 16.8%. So what's the problem, right? It wasn't an issue about the supply. We couldn't find the type of houses at the right price, at the location for everybody. That was the issue. It did not help the force of the poor. So let me tell you what, yes, our population grew, as I said, but look where it grew. It grew with the lowest, the highest pro, the population grew with the poorest people that did not have housing. So if you wanted to bedroom, I know you're going to laugh, but please keep in mind that our minimum wage is still 7.25. It's not $10 like it is here. And I think New York is $9 an hour. So if you wanted to bedroom in Houston, the fair market rate is $976 a month. And you will have to make our housing wage is $18.77 an hour or $39,000 a year. But if you only earn that $7.25 an hour, you will have to work over 100 hours a week just to afford a two-bedroom apartment because a minimum wage worker can only afford $377 a month for rent. So somebody tell me where there's rent for $377. I might eat you there. You can't run faster than me. Not when it comes to that. So where do you live matters? It matters to our kids. So these graduation rates, one is Trinity Gardens. Trinity Gardens in Houston is important. Where the average home value is maybe $70,000. Very poor, these and every schools in Trinity Gardens. And so you can see the graduation rate is 61%. But in the museum part, very trendy, close to public transit, very nice and very lovely. Their average home value is over $280,000. And their graduation rate is 66%. And so it shows you that where you live matters because our children live in good neighborhoods and a nurtured success. When the older a child is, when their family moves from a low opportunity area to an area with high income ability, the less they gain from the earlier the kids move, the better they move. And so when things are, when properties are NIMBY, we're not only NIMBY low income residents. You're NIMBY police officers, firefighters, medical workers, their families suffer too. When affordable homes are opposed, it sends a message that it is okay for the low income to provide services that make our lives easier. Things like that happy feel that you pick up for your kids on your way home from work. Things like that morning coffee at Starbucks, someone providing you child care or housekeeping. You're saying, yes, I want these services. But as soon as you clock out, go back to your side of town. And that's not fair, because we trust people to watch our kids. We trust people to cook our food. You have to trust someone to eat their food, but you don't trust them to live next door to you in a community that they're already there because they're already working. What sense does that make? Can somebody make sense of that? No one here. It's not for you to depart. So we're going to talk about the who. Who benefits from affordable homes? And these are the people who benefit from affordable homes. This campaign is all about putting a face to you, okay? To get a better understanding of the people who benefit. Here are their professions, their yearly earnings, and what they can afford to pay for housing, okay? So these people are not free loaders. They're working, right? Everybody up here has a job. Everybody up here has services that we need. We need to police officer. We need a firefighter teacher. We do need that Starbucks employee and we do need that nursing assistant, but they are not able to afford even an efficiency. This nursing assistant, she cannot even afford an efficiency because the efficiency in Houston is $700 a month, but she can only afford $635 a month for rent. That would be 30%. So she would be housing cost for a living and an efficiency, okay? And you can forget the police officer and the firefighter being able to buy a house. I already said the average sales price in Houston is $302,000. At their salaries, they cannot afford to purchase a home in Houston. So when we did this campaign, we had some PSAs that we did, and we used real people. We had a whole advisory committee. You should see it as beautiful. They said use real people to tell this story. So these are real cities for employees. This is a 911 dispatcher, and this is a firefighter. He's an inflow of firefighters. So our PSAs ask the question, can I be your neighbor? Because that's what they're asking. They're asking, can I be your neighbor when they want to move in? So put the facts with the question. And then we said, this is an emergency dispatcher. Her average annual wage is this. She can only afford to do this, and she can't afford it. And as a matter of fact, she can't afford it, because these are two emergency personnel. So it was really bad. And you said, I don't know if y'all heard. Let a hurricane come through. We might be watched out the face of the earth, okay? But when that happens, these two people are essentially employees. They have to do to work immediately. So they need to live where they serve. She could only live where she served in a one bedroom apartment. And she's a single mom. So it's her and her child in a one bedroom apartment, because they can't afford a two bedroom, where the office is where she works. And the firefighter, he works in a high opportunity area, very trendy area, where the rents are 25 to 3000 a month in rent, okay? So because I can't even live in Houston at all. And he has to get to work if something happens. So this is what real people are going through. So this is someone who actually did benefit from affordable homes. She was lucky enough to get a housing towards voucher through Houston Housing Authority. And so while she was on her voucher, she's a single mom on four kids. She was recently divorced. This is Chrissy Kirkendall. She was going to school full time and working two full time jobs and had four kids, okay? She did that thing. She was on her voucher. She went through the self-sufficiency program through the Housing Authority. She got on her feet. They gave her down payment assistance, and she bought that house. Now she's a college graduate. And on top of that, this sister girl is a board commissioner of the Housing Authority. This is why we do what we do. For people like this, we don't want to say, oh, it's nothing but freeloaders. She's not a freeloader. And the people that are very, very small, we do it for people like her. This is why we envy. So who want to play a game? Because I want to show you how Houston envies, okay? I want you to tell me which home is the important home. Which home was the one that was billed as public funds? So we're going to go. Is it the home on the left or the home on the right? Show of hands. Which one says the one that we invested in is affordable? Is it the one on the left? Show of hands, but the one on the right? It is the home on the left. These are affordable homes. These are a village of South Acres. There are two families, I think some of them are due flexors as well. We actually helped incentivize that. And this is a market rate home in a similar area. I think the market rate home is going for 165 to 245. Yes, I know it's cheap. I see the list on your head. Like, what is their problem? Their housing is cheap. We're over here suffering. We know we're suffering too. We're just suffering on another level. So I know we're cheap. Okay, so let's play another one. This is a multifamily property. Which one is important? The one on the left? Show of hands. The one on the right? Wrong. No, they're right. They're right. 6,000 a month. And the one on the right is our village of home center. We're very happy about this. This has 200 affordable units and 22 market rate units because we like to mix the in-homes. Right. Okay, so this one has a fitness center. They have apartments and townhomes. It includes retail on the first floor. This is the type of stuff that we build. And there are more cleaning properties too. Okay, so since y'all guessed them all right, I will just show you some pictures of things that we have done. This is another multifamily apartment complex that we help invest in. These are some of our single-family homes that we built in our neighborhood stabilization program where we got abandoned homes or foreclosed homes and we either renovated them or we demolished and we built them up. And so we have a popular builder and he's been called Mayberry. And these are some Mayberry homes that he built. And these homes were sold for no more than 140,000. And there are three bedroom and four bedroom homes, two baths. So these are some more of the Mayberry homes that we've done. These are some duplexes that we've had as well. And this, you will never believe, this is a single-room occupancy facility where it's just one room for one person to help make someone who is homeless transition back into permanent supporter housing. That's 2424 Sacramento State. And that's an award-winning building. We won architectural awards. It's LEED certified building. This is what we do here in Houston. So it's just some more of our Mayberry homes. So another way we do, we do help homeowners as well because homeowners can experience problems with their home when they fall into ill repair and they're older and on a fixed income and they can't repair their home. So we do minor home repair. We replace roofs, windows, plumbing, electricity. We do all those minor home repairs. And we also do home replacement. We will demolish a home if it costs too much to repair the home as it is. We'll demolish it like this home. You can tell that has some foundation issues. Well, we blew it up, knocked it over, built them a new one. And our disaster recovery, I told you we flooded. So we had a lot of disaster recovery money came in and we were able to build about almost 300 homes for some homeowners. Yeah, this is how we envy. So you can help with homeless prevention and wrapping healthy. This is another single room occupancy facility called Temenos that we built. We're very proud of this project. We're always proud to get someone off the streets and into a suitable place to live. So to conclude, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having us here. We're glad to be here in California. And we do do these educational presentations. Maybe we've come to visit some of y'all. If you ask me, I will come. I like that. Thank you for allowing me to preach to the choir. We also are planning an affordable homes tour because we feel like the only way to try and reduce the stigma of affordable housing is to invite nannies. Put them on a bus and bring them to an apartment and say, this is what this looks like. No, it's not filled with trash. No, there are not a lot of terminals here. No one does not bring down the property value. This is where affordable homes work. So we want to do that with nannies and nannies. This don't remember and we're going to do activities with the residents so that they can meet people and say this person could be a family member. This person could be a friend of mine and they're just normal like everyone else trying to take care of their families, trying to work hard and trying to do and be better for society. So that's what we have coming up in November. We also have a website that you can visit us at. We have our PSAs. We have five of them that we have online. We encourage you to look at them and print them out and post them everywhere. And also we have a say yes survey. We'd love for you to take the survey. If you could go to our website, I'm sure that you have the address. Does anyone have any questions that I may be kidding answer? I saw him for a question. In terms of where housing is going to be built, is it going to be outside of the interstate or where is it happening? Housing is being built everywhere. It's just not getting built at the prices that everyone can afford. It seems like the builders are just building at $200,000 and up and really $330,000 in the forwards. There's nothing under $200,000 and what is under $200,000 are condos and town homes and it doesn't shake everyone's needs to live there. And there are few in far between and very repetitive and they go really fast. So we're building everywhere. We're just not building at the right price for every income level. Questions? I was going to ask where does the city of Houston get the funding to do so much creation as well as the assistance for repairs or the redevelopment? We get federal funds. We get first spending CDBG, community development block grants for spending home funds. We have local dollars that we use. This is we're using federal dollars for the most part. We really don't have very much local funds since we get a lot of grants from we've been $22 million in CDBG alone I think and I think about $910 million in the home each year. Any more questions? Sir? So we put up the slide about the affordable one and I noticed like when it was the house everybody kind of didn't know what to get into. It was the larger building. It was a lot of people guessed it correctly and actually like I guess the one on the right and I wanted to mention why that was and ask if you're like this has anything to do with well I'll say one of those things. The problem I've often had with the CDCs and non-profits that built affordable housing in Boston has been that for various reasons related to their funding and the fact that they often they are a little bit wary of gaining stigma of building market rate housing. They often will build shorter buildings than the density actually the zoning actually allows or then probably they could get away with in the neighborhood given what the planning board tends to approve and I wanted to know if that's a problem. We don't have zoning so you mentioned that you're taking the slideshow on the road to like home work associations and civic groups and like personal clubs and that kind of thing. How's that been going? What have you talked to so far? What's the reaction? We've just started being presented to the city council to give their buy-in first and now our next educational presentation we're going to be moving into the neighborhood this month so I'm nervous. Yeah that I'll probably get some rotten tomatoes or some rotten heads of lettuce thrown my way but I can duck and dodge and bob and use my weight. Yeah the question. And it seems like there's been a lot of struggle in San Francisco and I don't know if this is true in other places to establish trust between pro-housing activists who want to come out and really do really want to celebrate affordable housing and the affordable housing developers who are wary of intentions I guess and you know and we're working on building that by showing up and saying you know we don't need a gold star we're just going to keep showing up over and over and over again but I'm wondering what your experience has been with that and what is your experience or getting more people to come out and support you and your projects in general? We're going to find out because we're the ones that's not trusted because we're the government that has done some of these things and caused the situations so that's been my problem is people don't trust me so if y'all can help me figure out people to trust us more that would help. That's what we're facing right now is we're trying to get in and people are like no they don't even some yippies and when I was calling Ken was very nice to speak to me but there were some that were hesitant like why are you calling but we wanted to be the government and say hey we get it we understand let's do this together instead of people coming yelling at us we want to say no join us and let's find ways to make housing more affordable for Houston. No Zoni why do you care what the neighbors say? Because we have to care. Because city council cares. We are the municipal government so we have to be not biased we have to be neutral we can't choose a side as much as I would love to because I have a gimme part that burns Sophie but I have to be neutral and say we care and I do care what everyone thinks. It's not fair to exclude their opinions too even though we feel like we're being excluded. We just all need to come to the table together. Question. Yeah President, in the PSA was there any backlash around politicizing emergency services? I've been hearing any. I've been hearing any. I'm from Vancouver, Canada and I know that I think that if there was anything up there about our police that he was doing it. The city kind of said that is not my experience. I haven't heard anything that people had anything to say about our municipal employees participating in the campaign. I think that's one thing that people really liked was that we're showing our own people. I mean if we could pay them more we could but we can but let's make housing affordable for them because I don't think people really think that they're a part of this equation. I think people are thinking of people that make much lower incomes. I don't think people really get that what the income levels are and that includes a lot more people that aren't that they're not thinking about. Questions? Well thank you for your time. I do appreciate your time. I'll see you maybe take a walk around and stop and familiarize yourself with some of your favorite sessions that you want to try to get to tomorrow and we will go ahead and head over to Lost and Found at 7 and so you know go ahead and look for us. We'll be a big Exodus going out that way. They get familiar with the building and where you want to go. Questions? I was just going to have a suggestion there aren't that many people in this room. It might be nice this is my first time just that everybody just stood up with their name and where they're from. I don't like that idea. I'm going to hold a comment. Real quick, if you decide to do a public comment, is anyone not okay with that being live streamed? Are there any objections to people on the internet seeing public comment? I'll just turn it off for you if you can feel us. Awesome, all right let's go ahead and start over here and we've got a wireless mic so we're going to use that. My name is Andrea. I'm a party of the four person delegation from New Massachusetts. I'm not part of a livable move. And she's running for city council. I'm here with East Bay Forward and I just moved to San Francisco so I'm looking forward to meeting some people who are over there. Hey, I'm Ian Monroe with East Bay Forward. I'm up here and open. Hi, I'm Michael. And Seattle for everyone. Hi, I'm Andrea LaRue from the Massachusetts Mark Road, the last and we are brought up delegation of folks here. Hi, I'm Kelly Clark. I'm from Watertown, Massachusetts. Hi, I'm Pamela Thilo from a better Cambridge in Massachusetts. Hi, I'm Jesse Kansen, I'm the founder and chairman of Better Cambridge. We are the largest and most active UV group in the Boston area. Madeline Kovacs, I'm the coordinator of Portland for Everyone Portland UV Group. Hello, I'm Eric Panzer and I'm with Livable Berkeley. I'm Ben Gula from Berkeley and I'm with East Bay Forward. Joyce Mandel from Worcester, Massachusetts and I'm part of the Massachusetts delegation. Hi, I'm Laura Lowe. I'm from Seattle, Washington and I tweet about yes in our backyards. Hi, I'm Lesley Mutatica. I'm with SFMV. I'm Daniel Camp. I'm also with SFMV. I'm Ken Ohtard, co-chair of Better Boulder in Colorado. I'm Declan DeMichel Austin, Better Boulder. I'm Timothy Brandt in Texas, the great nation of Texas, Austin. I'm Anton Schieffer from Minneapolis. I am the founder of SFMV and I'm loosely affiliated with WedgeLive. My name is Aaron Brown. I'm based in Portland, Oregon. I'm a community organizer at Political Hack. Hi, I'm Mark Feinada. I'm a superintendent of housing LA in LA plus. I'm Yoppa and I came all the way from San Francisco. I'm Yonis. I am from Portland and I'm with the Community Alliance Attempts. I'm Lois Levin from Newton, Massachusetts. I'm involved with these lovely ladies who are involved, very actively involved with housing. And I'm more recently involved with housing but I've basically been involved with transportation issues. I started a group called Bike Newton, making Newton a bicycle safe city 10 years ago and it now has 1,400 people to go by. Hi, I'm Greg McGothna with East Bay Ford. I'm one of the organizers of this year's conference along with Victoria, Kieran, and Libby in the back and we've had help from a bunch of other people. I attended the first conference last year and I'm really, really happy that we're hosting this year's conference. I just wanted to welcome everyone and I'll be acknowledging all of you from all your cities tomorrow morning as well. Hi, I'm Marius from the City of Houston in the Housing and Community Development Department. What's Sasha? Hi, I'm Brandon. I'm with Sasha. I'm Ben Typen. I'm a real estate investor, evidently something of a masochist because I want to build a lot more housing to give us some competition and that's why I helped found more New York. Hi, this, I'm from Manhattan. I'm also part of more New York. That was why I asked before. Hi, I'm Alexa. I'm with Coalition for Responsible Community Development in South Central LA and we build permanent supportive affordable housing. Hi, Daniel Coronado. I'm from also from LA and I'm a future master's student at USC for urban planning. Hi, I'm Stephanie Reyes from here in the Bay Area and I'm with Grounded Solutions Network for a national organization focused on building inclusive communities. I'm Alan Durning. I'm the founder and director of Sight Line Institute. It's an opportunity with you guys. Hi, I'm Halel Belady and I am with Summer Gillian Bee. Hello, I'm Tony Tordon and I founded a group called Portlanders for Parking Reform. I'm Mike King-Sullif from Portland, Oregon and with Oregon Locust Partis Mark with America. Hi, I'm Rob Keeling. I'm an editor and writer with Curved and I live in San Francisco. Hi, I'm Danielle Olavito. I live in San Francisco, work in transportation issues and by extension care about housing. Hi, I'm Sarah Guidi. I'm coming from Washington, D.C. and I'm the managing director with Greater Greater Washington, parentheses D.C. Hi, I'm Nira Babalola. I'm from Austin, Texas. I'm a member of ORA and just generally try to convince people that it's expensive on purpose. Austin. I'm Dan Keshet. I am a cat gift blogger at Austin On Your Feet. Hi, I'm Galen. I'm from Bellingham, Washington and I'm a member of that Bellingham Tenzing. Hi, I'm Aaron Robinson. I'm from Vancouver, D.C. I'm not really affiliated with any IMB group at the moment, but I do provide Twitter support and Facebook support for a lot of them. I also work for a regional government in Vancouver, Metro Vancouver, kind of like a county. I'm Evan Soroky from the Santa Cruz area. Hi, I'm Amanda Smash Hyde and I'm the founder of the West Hollywood Renters Alliance and so I'm obviously in West Hollywood, California. Hi, my name is Austin Sear. I'm with Abundant Housing LA and I work with local communities to educate neighbors to come and combat their neighbors in support of different controversial housing projects. Hi, I'm John Myers, the very jet lags co-founder of London IMB in the UK. I refer this the way to maybe almost closest to Jeremy Madsen. I live in the city of Alameda which is right over there and I work for Greenbelt Alliance which is a very wide land-use advocacy organization making sure the right kind of development happens in the right places. Hi, I'm Mallory Lynn Hill and I'm from Oakland and I work in policy analysis and I just can't get enough so I do it also by free time. Hi, I'm Chris Kittner. I'm with East Bay Forward. Hi, my name is Priscilla Papias. I'm with the Massachusetts delegation but I'm originally from LA so I'm really excited to be here. Hello, I'm Watson Ladd. I live in Berkeley. I'm with East Bay Forward. Hi, I'm Paul Hansel. I live in Alameda and I'm also with East Bay Forward. Hi, I'm Malik. I'm from the West Side of San Francisco, the very exclusionary sensitive street. Hi, I'm Skylar Taylor. I work for YMB Action which is in San Francisco. Hi, I'm Tim McCormick. I run YMB Wicking. I'm Milo Trouse. Sony's my big sister and I work in the SFB. Hey, I'm Sonya Trouse. I founded SF Bay Area Renters Federation like three years ago and now we have the YMB party and I'm running for office. I'm running for office here or already a commissioner or already serving as anything. I know you guys already said, is there anybody else? I was just wondering, just wondering because it's surprisingly accessible. Lauren Clark. I started Grow San Francisco which has become YMB Action which is where the membership of the San Francisco YMB party and we offer membership to everybody to help people organize and if you need help incorporating a club, a YMB group anywhere across the country, we want to help you do that. So we will help launch you. Laura Clark. I'm Luke Eisman. I'm with East Bay Forward and separately I build shipping container houses. I'm Sam Loss. I'm the executive director at Mission Housing Development Corporation. We build permanent low income housing and I'm also a board member at YMB Action. I'm Annabel Randon from the Massachusetts Department of Alliance based in Boston, Massachusetts and I'm also part of a mass delegation. Hi, I'm Chad Brownmore with San Francisco YMB but I grew up in the northwest and it's great to see so many people here from the northwest. Hi, I'm Andrew Van Y. I'm with East Bay Forward and I'm from Rinda, California which is one hill east of here. Hi, I'm Jesse and if you haven't met you yet you should come over and meet me. Hi, my name is Libby Lee and I'm with East Bay Forward. I'm helping organize this conference and I probably replied to your email if you emailed us. So check in at Lost and Found. See you there. Bye. I'm Victoria Fierce. I shitpost on Twitter exclusively. I'm with East Bay Forward. I'm Kieran Darkwater. I'm with East Bay Forward and I'm the mayor of this conference. Land Use Policy at the Mercatus Center and at Market Urbanism. My name is Alex Ochre and I'm with SFBMU. Hi, I'm Oliver. I'm from San Jose. Hey, I'm Roland Lee with the San Francisco Business Times and I'm from New York. I lived in Oakland and got involved with East Bay Forward through Living Here and I recently moved home to literally farm country in Virginia and it's just making me miss cities and realize you know how wonderful they are and I still want them to grow. I still want to be able to come back and I hope to come back to the city and there'll be more housing by the time I'm ready to. So it was a wonderful meeting everybody and I think we're just about ready to head over to Lost and Found. We'll be going kind of as a group but feel free to you know put your own pace or if you need to grab dinner first. They do have food there that you can purchase. So yeah, I'll speak to you guys at Lost and Found.