 Hello, everyone, and welcome to New America's second webinar on housing and the COVID-19 pandemic. My name is Tim Robustelli, and I'm a program associate with the Future of Property Rights Program on New America. Our program aims to help solve today's property rights challenges at home and abroad, and through our work we strive to connect new constituencies and shed light on under reported issues in the property rights space. Today we'll be discussing the housing implications of the COVID-19 pandemic and local responses. I'm fortunate to be joined by a wonderful panel of experts. Amy Nelson, executive director of the Fair Housing Center of Central Indiana based in Indianapolis. Dan Cornelis, director of community and economic development for Forsyth County, North Carolina based in Winston-Salem. And Joanna Carr, research and policy coordinator for the Arizona Housing Coalition based in Phoenix. Welcome and thank you for making time to discuss this critical topic during these hectic days. To all our viewers, we'll start with about 45 minutes of panel discussion and save some time at the end for audience Q&A. Before we jump into the current crisis, can each of you tell our viewers in a few words what your organizations do? We'll start with Amy. Thanks. The Fair Housing Center of Central Indiana is a nonprofit advocacy based organization that works specifically to address fair housing issues or housing discrimination. But we're the only such organization in the entire state of Indiana. So as a result of that, we also work on broader public policy issues as it relates to housing as well. Dan. Forsyth County Department of Community and Economic Development provides services in housing rehabilitation. We enforce a minimum housing code. We do have multiple home ownership programs and down payment assistance. We also are active in economic development, everything from workforce development to incentive packages and other community development endeavors as they present themselves. Thanks. Joanna. So the Arizona Housing Coalition is a statewide member organization whose mission is to lead in the efforts to end homelessness and advocate for safe affordable housing for all Arizonans. We operate under three pillars which are advocacy, education and collaboration. Advocacy and collaboration is the forefront of the support to our members at the moment during the COVID-19 crisis with efforts particularly at the state level and support to our members serving on the front lines in shelters and housing services. Wonderful. And to provide a bit of context on each of your cities for all of our viewers, could three of you briefly share what housing related issues are present and how the current pandemic has exacerbated these issues. Well, probably our particular issues aren't unique to what a lot of cities have been grappling with across our country. Indianapolis, however, is one of the highest evicting cities in the country. It's number 14 for actual eviction filings and that's number two for actual court ordered evictions. In addition to that, we've also had a series of press stories and broader discussion about substandard housing because we've been dealing with uninhabitable housing that tenants are in, particularly without a state landlords where they can't get remediation for that. And in some ways are retaliated against it when they contact public health or contact legal services. And then of course we have housing discrimination as well, which has never gone away and we continue to battle and, you know, and fight on that. And then finally we have an affordability crisis. That certainly is not again not unique to our particular city, but that combination of things now adding COVID into it, and the risk of people losing our housing through no fault of their own is extremely problematic. Dan. Over the years Winston Salem has had a very affordable rental housing problem has not been much rental but we've seen some very exaggerated prices rises in the last year. Our downtown is really coming on strong and we're building a lot more high end apartment units but are losing some of our low end ones. There's a real fear of gentrification in some of our neighborhoods as our downtown spreads. Our home ownership prices have gone up quite a bit. We were averaging for years and years about $120,000 for a first time home buyer now it's cropped up to about 170,000. So that's not a big jump but it's a big jump within the last year or two. In Arizona. I mean homelessness has been on the rise in the city of Phoenix with a clear increase in our pit count over the last four years. So in 2020, 7,419 individuals were identified on the pit count, and we are in the midst of a serious affordable housing crisis in Arizona itself so 73% of extremely low income households are severely rent burdened and spending 50% of that income on housing costs. Within the city of Phoenix, the city of Phoenix recently did a housing data search and they found that 46% of households within the city actually fell into that extremely low income bracket and 65% were low to moderate or below. This shows the extent of the affordable crisis and the population that Phoenix are dealing with. So prior to COVID-19 organizations were striving forward and we're collaborating across municipal levels and with nonprofit organizations. So just prior to the extent of the breakout, so the outbreak had called for a joint regional approach and a homeless plan for the area with the support of the governor and the city of Phoenix for working on an affordable housing initiative. And now I mean I can say that the city municipality and the organizations have been really sidelined by the current crisis so we're all kind of grappling at the moment to find the solutions to meet the immediate need. And we're obviously facing with the high homeless population, a challenge in putting forward the adequate protections and also identifying solutions to keep people in their homes amidst the unemployment that's occurring. Great. Thank you all for setting the stage a bit for the rest of this discussion and I'm certain that all of these problems that you've touched on are not unique to your city as they can be found throughout the country. So last week, FPR spoke with Diane Yentl, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition about the congressional stimulus package and some of its implications for housing. So now I'd really like to focus on state, county and local level responses. Joanna, start with a question for you. Arizona lawmakers recently passed their own $50 million emergency bill. Why did the state supplement federal action and how does the bill target housing? Okay, so the bill was added as part of a deal between Republican and Democratic leadership in the Senate and they wanted to develop a bare-bones spending plan prior to recess. Leadership anticipated that there'd be a gap in federal funding to address the pandemic. And so knowing that we already have such a huge problem in the state with housing and homelessness, the Senate wanted an Arizona focused approach while we awaited details of the federal stimulus. And in terms of how it helps, the bill will be targeting three priorities relating to housing. Firstly, payments to prevent eviction that will be allocated through the Arizona Department of Housing. Number two is to fund shelters who provide services to individuals experiencing homelessness. And $5 million has been approved to be appropriated to DES to support the shelters in that effort. And within that effort, the focus is going to be on temporary isolation and quarantine housing, sanitation supplies and services and other resources as needed. And finally, the bill will be addressing food insecurity. So $1 million has been appropriated again to DES to provide immediate assistance to food banks through existing infrastructure and an additional $750,000 to support additional food insecurity programs. And then what we're also doing because that's around just over $6,000 million of the $50,000 that's been appropriated. The Arizona Housing Coalition is working on developing some policy recommendations for the remaining funds. And that will be including rental assistance paid directly to landlords and staffing and coordination within the temporary shelters along with transportation, which is a huge issue right now within Phoenix. And just in addition to the $50 million on March 30th, the Arizona Department of Housing. Joanna, I think you may have muted yourself by accident. So I was just saying that the Department of Housing opened $5 million from the existing housing trust fund and a eviction prevention program went into effect on March 30th. So that's kind of the state funding overview right now. Thank you. Certainly seems like a lot of action at the state level in Arizona. Amy, to you, activity has been a bit different in Indiana with Governor Eric Holcomb recently vetoing a housing related bill amid the pandemic. Can you tell us a bit more what that was all about? Yeah, unlike what our great colleagues in Arizona have been able to proactively do. Unfortunately, we were having quite the battle here in Indiana to not take things backward when it comes to housing, the different housing needs. So as I mentioned before, Indianapolis has had a number of different housing barriers and impediments related to habitability related to affordability and evictions. Starting last summer, the Indianapolis Mayor Hog said had started working on the potential for an ordinance to try to address some of these issues. And it wasn't until this year that the city council was able to pass that ordinance, which included things like a requirement that housing providers had to provide attached their lease information about tenants rights like their access to legal assistance services. They're right to contact public health items such as that. And then it also had fees for retaliation fines for retaliation. If a housing provider retaliated against the tenant for them simply contacting public health about a habitability issue or legal services within that, and it had those fines that were addressed in there and it had a number of other features within the ordinance as well. So that was passed at the city level and immediately, actually the day of the Indiana General Assembly amended a bill that was unrelated to this particular topic, but amended the bill to preempt cities from basically anything that involved them being able to have any authority over the landlord-tenant relationship. So it was literally that broad in that. And that was viewed as fairly controversial because it was at the end of session, added into an unrelated bill, and it was added in basically during conference committee so no public testimony essentially was able to be given as well. We were part of a broad effort over 300 groups that very quickly came together and really try to make clear how devastating that this would be. This was pre-COVID really showing its potential impact. And so this was about mid-March. Unfortunately, the Indiana General Assembly passed the bill, SEA 148, so then we moved to trying to get the mayor or the Governor Holcomb to veto the bill. And after some pressure, we were very pleased to see Governor Holcomb veto the bill and only his second veto of his administration. This is a good lesson and always make not only watching what your local city is doing, but also watching the General Assembly as well. And, you know, being able to pull groups together very quickly to try to address something because we figured this bill will be back in the next session. Thank you. And Amy, I just want to follow up on something you touched on a little bit. Indiana is not unique in the fact that Democratic or blue cities are often at odds with Republican or more red state leadership. How do you see this dynamic further impacting housing-related responses during the crisis? Well, for the crisis, our General Assembly now is not scheduled to meet. They do not are not there through the whole year. They have long and short sessions, typically from January to April or March within there. They'll be back basically in November. So the discussion is certainly being there. And in some ways, it's an opportunity for all of us to highlight just how important housing is. And that and that COVID is really exasperating the public health crisis when people do not have access to stable affordable housing. And so in some ways, that's going to, you know, be how we need to make clear uses an opportunity to educate decision makers about the need of housing and how legislation like 148 is completely detrimental to that effort. And making sure to that we work with housing providers. We certainly, you know, want to work with them to try to find things that we could possibly, you know, agree upon within that. And it's our hope that maybe that will happen. Great. Thank you. Dan to turn to you in relation to discussions around landlord tenant dynamics, the cohort COVID excuse me 19 pandemic has really brought issues around eviction to the forefront with widespread job loss, putting a lot of pressure on renters. Could you speak a bit about any eviction prevention measures and Winston Salem, who was behind these decisions, who was covered and how the policies are communicated. Even before COVID 19 was coming down on us, there was concern about the increased number of evictions in Forsyth County. We have a very caring community in and folks were worried about the number of evictions and how they were happening. There was a call as the virus hit us that the mayor of Winston Salem called for moratorium and he was joined by the sheriff and requesting moratorium on evictions. There was some questions about the legality of that. But then the Chief Justice of North Carolina stepped in and shut down all the courts. And they shut down almost everything. The court proceeds and including the eviction so they were shut down and so they're shut down till I think it was like 30 days and that would have been I think we're coming upon that here shortly maybe the 14th they think are a little bit later of April. So it'll be interesting to see how that plays out once the courts are back open again and evictions are open again. There was some question to have some evictions that had started before the courts talked about it and so they there's some folks that are saying that evictions are still occurring but they're very rare right now. And the people that were behind it were a lot of advocates here in the county that they we look at the continuum of care and a lot of folks were worried about those folks becoming homeless and adding to the already numerous homeless folks that we have. And so they what they're concerned about now is what happens after the moratorium is off and maybe how we deal with eviction and because these folks are going to have to pay most likely their past rent and then have rent do and who knows how much past rent you have and how much will be due so they're trying to look for solutions that may help that eviction process to to not have such a disastrous effect on our residents. I think there's been some talk about maybe getting some legal representation at the hearings when the eviction hearings and trying to talk with landlords about maybe selling for a little bit less money than they otherwise would and we're looking for some funds that may be coming in. I will tell you this Forsyth County was the same Forsyth County has developed a fund of a $3 million fund a little bit over $3 million and it's being run through our Winston-Salem foundation and they will be delivering funds out to nonprofits to give to folks that are eligible and hopefully that will help some of the folks with their rent once this moratorium is over. Great thanks and I do want to loop back in a bit to that important point you made about the end of the moratoriums and past due rent and how low income renters and other vulnerable people can deal with that. But before I do I'd like to bring Joanna and Amy back in and ask if there have been any similar measures surrounding eviction in Phoenix and Indianapolis. Amy. For us here in Indianapolis what we have had is the City of Indianapolis part of that proposal that I talked about earlier set aside about I think it was $250,000 for additional legal assistance for people confronting eviction. So that's been the first step certainly by the City of Indianapolis. We haven't seen that on a statewide basis but cities in Fort Wayne and South Bend are also evaluating similar provisions. This again was pre-COVID and we'll have to kind of see how those other cities move forward. We're at Arizona and very similar to Dan's community. On March 24 we had an executive order from the governor on eviction enforcement suspensions. So any tenant that's received any notification of legal hearings or court documentation can issue their landlord with a COVID-19 tenant notice to request a suspension of the eviction or the written restitution. So courts across the state are adopting various practices to deal with this change but again we are obviously concerned about the fallout with that because it's not a suspension on rent. It's just the control of the enforcement of eviction but I know we're going to go on to that in a moment. Great thanks and I just have to quickly follow up and ask about any policies related to mortgage payments and foreclosure because you know there's concern around tenants paying rents but a lot of times landlords and especially low volume landlords rely on that rents to pay their mortgages. Has there been any movement around mortgages in any three of your states or cities? Sorry as far as we're aware within Arizona there's no new policy or program regarding mortgage and foreclosure but we do have an existing foreclosure assistance program which the Department of Housing put under the forefront of their website and communicating that that is available to any homeowners that are at risk. Thanks and I saw a shake of the head from Amy Dan. Anything on your end? Yeah we are fortunate to have the Center for Homeownership in Winston-Salem and Forsyth County and they work with folks that are having struggles with their mortgage payments. We went through a lot of foreclosures back in the last crisis we had when we had the banking crisis and we were losing close to 110 homes a month of foreclosures. And so we have some counselors that are really good at working with folks that you know they had some buyouts at the end of the state of North Carolina came through and helped out. And I did notice that Fannie and Freddie Mac at the federal level are forgiving or deferring payments for the next two months and I think they're just tacking a mile to the backside of the mortgage but I think that will be real helpful in this crisis too. So we're looking at all kinds of solutions that we may be able to use with some of the federal money coming forth. Great thanks. And to circle back to a point Dan made and it's something that I saw in Arizona as well with Governor Doug Ducey. It's that he's placed the moratorium on evictions for 120 days but again it's my understanding that once this measure is lifted tenants will owe any past due rents. So Joanne I'd like to ask have you seen any solutions put in place or any solutions proposed to ease this burden when it comes. Sure so um yeah that's been a concern of our communities and what happens after the 120 days when the rent is still due and the landlords can move forward with the risk of restitution. I mentioned earlier that the Department of Housing had brought forward an eviction prevention program using existing funds from the Housing Trust Fund. So the hope is that tenants will use that fund to mitigate the risk of eviction down the line and the fund is actually very flexible in that it's available to all Arizona residents as long as they are at or below 100% of their income and they don't need a court order or notice and so tenants can use it if that income has been impacted by COVID-19. There are a few requirements that they have to pay 30% of their income towards the rent and also any stimulus funds that owed some such as the unemployment bolster or the individual payments will be paid towards that. So yeah I'd say the Department of Housing have been proactive in getting that fund together and we also really want to work on some tenant education to make sure that tenants are fully aware that the rent is still due and they are aware of all of the resources and financial resources that are available to help them to pay the rent and also to communicate the importance of landlord tenant communication during this time. I think it's really an opportunity for landlord and tenant education around this issue and how the executive order works along with all the funding. So I should jump in and say that our governor like many others has put an eviction moratorium on and there is actually a press conference going on right now. Our moratorium is supposed to expire in April 6 and I believe it's getting extended. It's going to potentially get brought up in the press conference here today but I agree with Joanna is an opportunity that we really need to be educating tenants and most of them know that this rent is going to be coming due. What can be done to try to ensure that people don't lose housing because they simply don't have income right now and when that rent comes due after the moratorium ends whenever that might be is just going to be critical. I just want to add to that also a really important piece that I know is happening in our community with the PHAs and the housing program operators throughout the month of March. They were most certainly working proactively to engage with their tenants and to ask if there's been any income loss to make the adjustments to their contribution. So I think that's been really key hopefully to not see so much of a fallout from tenants and rapid rate rehousing programs and other subsidy programs. Thanks both Dan any any thoughts on your end. Well I just say this I think if you're going to have a real exodus of folks being evicted at some point in time somebody's got to fill up those affordable units and somebody is going to. I think landlords know that they're going to have a hard time finding folks that may have blemishes on their credit they may have issues that keep them from moving. And so I think some of them will think well maybe I've burdened a hand is better than than losing it all. So hopefully that there will be some landlords out there that say yeah I'd like to keep my person in there maybe we'll attack on a little bit of money every month to get caught up somehow. But I don't think that's anything that's going to be government mandate is going to have to be you know some some education with our tenants in our landlords. Great thanks. Now education and tenant education is something all three of you mentioned and I just want to get your thoughts on maybe how that can go about during the crisis you know libraries are closed community centers are closed church services aren't being held anymore schools are closed these communities where people can engage in dialogue and discuss about these issues are shut down and people are huddled in their homes. Any thoughts on how you can get the word out about some of these policies. Yeah I think that's a really good point. And I think this is where we have the opportunity to use social media platforms. And also hopefully to to try to get the word out with, as I say the coalition working on some form of communication for a tenant education landlord education that we will send out to our members. And we'll use our social media streams. So I think that information gets shared. I think also having good partnerships with local media is important. We have good partnership with the media team news, the news teams here in Arizona I think it's important to keep that line of communication to see if there's anything they can do to help to spread the word. And also, I know community legal services here in Arizona are working on tenant educations and the AMA working on landlord education so yeah I think as long as we're, you know, collectively understanding that the message is clear that we need education and communication. I think it's really important that we just as a community try to get the word out in whatever way is possible. Great thanks Joanna. Amy Dan anything to add on on that point. When it comes to education I think something looking down the road for all of us is coming out of the foreclosure crisis we saw significant funding that was needed for foreclosure counseling programs, housing counseling programs. And I certainly expect that we may, you know, have that need certainly again, as it relates to mortgages. There are, we saw in the post foreclosure crisis that unless there was, you know, federal policies, there would be inconsistencies between the banks and how they did the loan modifications. And even those that were required under law, you sometimes need that qualified counselor to help you in navigating it with banks that were resistant to follow what they were supposed to do. So we certainly see a push and we would support that to get funds going again to those type of housing counseling programs because that is certainly dwindle law here in recent years, and it's going to become critical again, let alone the need for funding for legal services groups to help people in navigating maybe payment plans with their housing providers outside of potentially any direct payment that might be done at the federal level that we could certainly advocate on in trying to reach landlords for direct reimbursement as well. And can I just make an addition also just something that has just come to mind. And so the Arizona Housing Coalition we're going to be advocating for housing counseling in the next stimulus federal stimulus package. So that those homeowners have the necessary support and resources available to them. Dan. Well, I think it's going to have to be some education and some outreach on behalf of folks that are tenants that are getting moved out where they can get help how they can get help. And then also we need to really speak to the landlords at the same time and let them know that this is the situation I think it's going to become a supply and demand equation at some point in time but I'm not sure when that will be. And I do know when we had the crisis with home ownership and the mortgage that the banks were in trouble. You know, in lending for home ownership, there was they were having a hard time lending they had more houses and they knew what to do with it so eventually it settled out with supply and demand and it makes for great opportunities for some folks to buy buying maybe neighborhoods they couldn't afford before. I don't know if that will be the case here but I do hope that we can get some that some of the federal assistance to the home program community development block grant so forth can be used to kind of shore up some of those issues. Great thanks and not to broaden the conversation a little Dan I'd like to turn to something we talked briefly about over the phone earlier this week and that's the issue of homelessness. Can I ask what's being done in Winston Salem to help the homeless homeless, excuse me population population during this crisis. So we have a continuum of care folks that kind of grew out of the 10 year plan in homelessness. It's led by the United Way but they get with the agencies periodically, but lately they've been meeting daily and talking about the situation how many beds are open how many are folks are sick or if there is anybody sick directly into the hospital so they're they're staying in constant communication throughout this whole or deal. I will tell you that the county, the health department are social services director and some of our staff are looking at possible places for the homeless to go if they they fall victim to the virus. And so we're trying to look at maybe possible old hotels that are somewhat vacant or vacant we're looking at old schools we're looking at buildings. One of the things we're trying to do is is find a place where each person can be contained in one unit with a bathroom. And so we're trying to figure out what what is out there that we might be able to acquire or not acquire but make use of. And so we're getting closer and closer on that we've looked at a few and so we're moving in hopefully we'll be able to find something in the next two or three days. Joanna I'd actually like to ask the same question of you as I know Phoenix America County has a large homeless population as well. There's been a lot of activity and shelters at the moment, waiting direction from the governor's office to confirm how they may spend the $5 million allocation from the emergency state fund. In the meantime, the governor has asked all shelters to provide a list of the supplies that are going to be required through December and the state will be making a bulk order. So that's been going on. There's been so much collaboration and activity and conversation as to how shelters and outreach teams could continue. I mean obviously shelters unfortunately have had to reduce their bed capacity to ensure the adequate space for social distancing as best as they possibly can. And as a result, Maricopa County has been working really hard to try to secure buildings for large scale quarantine. I know that they were looking at the Coliseum. And unfortunately that's not available. So looking at creative ideas such as sports stadiums which you know are the states around the nation and with large homes populations are looking at. But we've also had an influx of hotels wanting to help because the hotel industry is obviously very weak at the moment. And so I know Maricopa County are reaching out and we're also trying to negotiate deals with hotels to pass along to our rapid rehousing providers that can provide a big, sorry, emergency housing assistance so they can procure some of those hotels. Otherwise, lots of other things going on, hand washing stations, opening up the day centres so that residents can, some residents unfortunately street homes, individuals can go in and at least wash their hands in the use of facilities. So looking at temporary showering availability and another human services campus which is the major coordinated entry site in Phoenix for the single side has managed to open up a 50 bed temporary shelter which didn't exist before. And they're looking at also opening up a campsite, a structured campsite on on their grounds are just waiting for permitting from the city of Phoenix. Outreach services are still operating with precaution. So for example, rather than have outreach meetings in vehicles that conducting them outside of vehicles, there is an issue with transportation that's trying to be worked around. And then outreach teams and shelters are partnering with health providers and health organisations to provide a triage system for COVID-19 assessment and treatment. So, yeah, I'd say, really, I see I saw great work straight away from the really dedicated shelter to teams and outreach teams in collaborating and coming up with with resources and I think there's great things going on and we're just anticipating what additional supports can be provided through this state from the federal school so. Great. Thank you. Amy, anything to add on your end about the homeless situation in Indianapolis. We have some great homeless groups, along with the continuum of care. They're doing some phenomenal work right now working with shelters. Obviously, this is a. This is a very vulnerable population and trying to navigate that. We've also had some extended stay hotels where shelters are different actually groups are moving their people into as well. I think Joanna had mentioned the access through hotels, but one of the barriers that we have seen there is some evictions that have been occurring within the hotels and whether or not that violates the governor's order on eviction moratoriums because it was a hotel that was essentially doing it. So that's something that advocates and individuals who work for the homeless groups have been trying to get some additional clearance on. But like Joanna said, a number of homeless groups here in Indianapolis are just doing some phenomenal work right now under some pretty tough conditions. Great. Thanks. And Amy, I'd like to stay with you just for another question. Habitability issues and substandard housing, as you previously mentioned, in Indianapolis rental units, you know, inadequate heating, faulty electrical wiring, broken water pipes. That's been widely reported in the Indie Star and elsewhere over the past year or so. How do you see these issues affecting tenants following the statewide stay at home order? Well, we're hearing about that right now. Both our organization as well as legal services groups are hearing reports where emergency maintenance is not being done and excuses COVID. Yet, these are typically the same bad actors who typically, you know, don't do that type of maintenance traditionally as well. So that's in some ways given some of the bad actors and excuse when it comes to that. And when it comes to just general maintenance, certainly that's being navigated between housing providers as well as tenants so that both parties, you know, end up being safe within that. But my worry is, again, like so much COVID is just going to exasperate, you know, a problem that was already at a breaking point coming out of this. And what is going to happen when it comes to, you know, sales businesses, including housing providers and landlords, you know, are struggling, you know, as well. And is this going to be an opportunity for again, out of state investors to come in and scoop up property. And we don't necessarily need anymore. We really want to have, you know, local in state ownership as much as we can, or some sort of local in state property contact, because that certainly helps when it comes to trying to navigate those who do not fulfill the requirements as relates to substandard housing, code violations, and it list goes on. Great. Thanks. And you're certainly not the only housing advocate in Indiana talking about out of state property owners these days. Dan, to turn to you for the last question I have for you. So studies show that Winston Salem and Forsyth County experienced some of the worst socio economic inequality in the country, unfortunately. And so in the long term, how do you see the pandemic affecting homeownership and renting, especially marginalized communities. I think it will have a great effect on on the citizens and the marginal communities. We have a housing stock that's pretty old in some some situations and needs a lot of repair. We have a lot of down payment assistance programs through the county in the city that can that help out some folks. And our housing, I should say this, our housing prices again for home ownership were pretty low compared to other cities. One of the problems that we've had in Winston Center Forsyth County is that our incomes, it's not really affordability issue. It's more an issue of our residents not making enough money. We need we need to have more jobs that pay larger salaries so that folks can afford these homes. If you look at a trend over the years, the housing prices have not gone up that much except maybe just the last six, seven months or maybe a last year, but they've gone up quite a bit now. But before that we were pretty much four or 5% along the way, and but our incomes had gone down quite significantly. And so one of the problems we have is we need to find better jobs for our citizens so that they can buy affordable housing. So I think long term we're going to have some things to straighten out and hopefully we can attract some businesses that do pay higher wages and can also build more affordable housing at the same time. There is a real gap in affordable housing here in Winston Center. I think some studies says there's like 14,000 units need to be built within the next five, six years and that's going to be a tough, a tough road to do. I do think that we need to figure out how we can build more affordable housing and how we can make more land available for affordable housing and that we have more water and sewer that can go to those folks so that we can build at higher densities. Great, thanks. And now before we transition to a bit of audience Q&A I'll end by asking all three of you what more needs to be done. I think that for us here in Indiana we need to look, here in Indiana we do have a fairly healthy state reserve. If this isn't a crisis I don't know what else is and for us to potentially look at what that might be and whether that is some sort of direct assistance for rent payments or whatever else that might be but this is a crisis we've got to be looking at that. At the federal level, same thing, checks aren't going to be coming fast enough for most people who have bills to pay. They've been out of job loss. People still got to go buy groceries even if they can hold off on paying rent. They've still got to pay for other expenses and one check is unlikely to be enough to get people through this crisis. So advocating for that and understanding that and making sure those landlords are supported as well as part of this process with potentially said do we need to consider some form of direct payment that would assist those that may have tenants, again, through no fault of their own, who can't pay rent anymore. Thank you Dan. I think it's going to be interesting we'll have to see as this plays out how many people did lose their homes how many people are going to be left in the street and how that all plays out. Also how much the federal money can make a difference but also locally I know, like I said I think earlier before that our communities come up with $3 million to assist families that are being affected by this and we do have a strong community that really helps each other out so I think that's one of the things we have to look within ourselves as we go on. But again, we are going to need that continued federal assistance to get folks housed in affordable housing and how we do that will determine our future. And for Arizona, I think really importantly is that we need to ensure that we coordinate efforts between the federal and the state entities to ensure that we are using the state funds that are coming into some supplement and not supplant the federal funds. And we also need ongoing transparency and clarity on how the funds can be deployed and use on the ground. I think short term most definitely protection for our most vulnerable. We need to make sure our shelters and frontline staff have all of the supplies that they need and that those that are street living have adequate space and hygiene items through this crisis. And I think also looking at the long term, I think it's really important that we ensure that once the dust settles that we continue our advocacy efforts around affordable housing because I mean like Dan said we're not really going to know exactly how this has been going to look once this is over, whenever that may be. But certainly we had a serious crisis before and we need to make sure that our state representatives don't kind of lose the wheel on that and we make sure that that still remains a clear priority. Thank you all and we'll turn to a few of the questions that the viewers have been submitting over this conversation. The first one is for Dan. The question is about the projected shortfall of affordable housing units in Winston Salem. It's as high as 16,000 units projected according to the mayor and the just the viewer wants to ask how this can be mitigated in the short term amid the crisis and then in the long term. Dan I think you muted yourself by accident. I think in short term it's going to be difficult, you know, we're going to have some situations that come up that we're going to have to figure out how to handle. I think in the long run we have to build more affordable units and I think we have to build at a higher density and we need more mixed income neighborhoods. Some people have been talking about going vertical with housing, not just going out and spread out but more in a vertical situation so that you might have three or four story units. We have been successful in Forsyth County and getting some tax credit projects that have been very helpful. The North Carolina Housing Finance Agency has played a big role in that we have a good housing finance agency that provides money for home ownership and for rental to and are very active in our community. So I think we have to look at all our resources, you know, I know some communities end up having bonds just for housing set aside and I think the city Winston Salem did that some years ago and and that may be something that is looked at by local governments here. So I think that's kind of, there's going to be a lot of issues. The private sector is going to have to step up to and figure out how they can build more affordable housing but do it in a mixed income kind of way, whether that's higher density or going vertical is things that we need to figure out. Great. Thanks. And the second question is addressed to all the panelists, but Amy, I'll direct it at you first. So we're hearing questions from small landlords smaller operators who would require rental assistance to keep home safe or maintained in the face of a moratorium and they'd like to ask, there's any advice on how to engage these good actors and the provider management space to advocate for assistance while protecting tenants. Yeah, I think it's very so often we hear only about the bad actors. Those are the stories that certainly make the news or that we hear about and there's we don't hear about the good actors those wonderful opportunities we know there are landlords in our community who are working with their tenants and understand what this crisis is. And those are landlords we need to support as I mentioned for some way to make sure that they're able to also pay their bills needs to be looked as part of that. Finding that is certainly you know part of our struggle though. Finding them locating them as part of that. There are here in Indiana we have a couple efforts in different cities of creating tenant unions and very often those are able to find those landlords because you know working with them and identify them you know as part of that. And it's our hope that something like that will also be able to take off. And the other thing that I wanted to point out as well is this is also a tremendous opportunity for those who are using vouchers to get rented to. We have a huge voucher denial rate here in Indiana in Indianapolis in particular. And here is a form of guaranteed rent coming in that's being paid directly from the government. And it's an opportunity to make sure that our voucher households that have struggled so often the past have an opportunity to get house in that housing provider has that guaranteed right coming in as well. Joanna. Yeah that's a great point Amy. I think it's certainly an opportunity to engage our landlords. I think we're in a time where landlords are severely impacted by this and it's very uncertain times for them also. And I think we've got to take into consideration that landlords in a lot of cases are going to want to hold on to their tenants. So I think I like your idea Amy about sort of engaging landlords to fill that gap that we've been trying to fill to holders. But also I think that there's room here for the conversation around landlord tenant education and opening the lines of communication. I think we can engage those landlords and provide them with really useful objective information about the resources and protections that are available to them alongside the resources and protections that may be available to their tenants and hopefully together with both of those angles we can protect or work to protect both the landlord and the tenant to make sure that we are keeping existing affordable housing stock or just housing stock in general. Dan anything to add on your end. We used to have for home ownership. I'm more involved with home ownership than rental housing. The county doesn't do rental that we have a housing authority in the city has some programs for rental housing. The ones we have been dealt with have been in tax credit deals. But I know some years ago we had a group that was a group that would buy land that was set up to just go out and buy land and hold that land develop it and then turn around and sell it the lots off to developers or builders. And so that it was a savings that was passed on on the supply side of it. So I think one of those things is we need to start looking at more nonprofit housing. Our, our, our habitat for housing has done a really good job here in Winston Salem built tremendous neighborhoods and so forth but we need more efforts in from our community development corporations. It'd be great to have folks that were nonprofit that actually had builder, you know, contractor builders that were working for nonprofits that could actually build houses for less expensive amounts. So I think there's going to be a lot of different strategies that are going to have to be done and it's not something new. We've always talked about affordable housing in the United States and it's something that's just not going to stop now but it's going to be exasperated. So great thanks and I think we have time for one more question. So this one touches upon landlord tenant relationships and really the power dynamic between landlords and tenants which many find has only gotten worse in this crisis and this question is just about what what's the messaging that you go to landlords with during this crisis to get them to get them help with renter protection and sort of easing back on evictions and things like that during this crisis any start with you. There's probably going to have to be a combination of things on that one is there may have to be some sort of incentive or a continuation of some sort of order that's issued potentially by you know the courts or maybe through an executive order of maybe possibly mandating that when we come out of the eviction moratorium or the foreclosure moratorium which we also have here in Indiana that there's some requirement that if the non rental period clearly happened due to covid that there's a requirement that there be some sort of mediation or arbitration you know as part of that instead of going directly to eviction court and going down you know that particular process to try to you know navigate that or make that easier for our legal services groups were also trying to navigate that for the tenants as well. I think on top of those ideas I think most definitely clarity in mentioned before the resources available both to the landlord and the tenant. I think that there's a lot of confusion sort of on both ends and a lot of confusion around the federal stimulus until we receive clear guidance and I think you know landlords are panicking tenants are panicking and I think that we need most definitely transparency in the support that is available to the landlords and I guess a message of unity. I mean I guess we need to value our landlords in this time. We need to make sure that we do everything that we can to maintain the housing stock that they're providing to our tenants alongside obviously protecting the tenants and making sure that they keep their home and so I guess a message of unity is important in this time. Dan anything to add in our last minute. Yeah I would speak to the second Joanne's conversation I would say that we can't afford to to lose our landlords you know we saw when we had the other crisis when we had people losing their homes people would walk away landlords walk away. There was folks that were working on houses stopped in the middle of and walked away their hammer still in the house. We need landlords and landlords have there have been good ones and there's been lots of them here in Winston Salem but I think maybe what we could also talk about is maybe set up a mediation board that would meet and talk about the landlord and the tenant and see if they can work out some agreements that the landlord could be made not completely whole but whole enough that they can continue to rent out and hopefully if they've had a good renter I would if I was a renter or a tenant I would want to have that that renter back in there because they know they've made payments over the years and through no fault of their own they've lost their job they can't go to work as a landlord. I know I got to get some money so I would try to work out a deal where I could get some of my money back and start fresh from there on out so I think there's room for mediation and conversations between the two. Great, thank you. Now, unfortunately, we're out of time. I would like to thank all of our viewers and extend a special thanks to our three panelists for their time and insights. Amy, Dan and Joanna, thanks so much for joining me today for this conversation. I hope everyone watching continues to stay safe and healthy. So bye for now.