 I'd like to thank everyone for coming. This conference is being presented by Lamont-Penise Incorporated, a statewide tenant organization based here in Brooklyn, and Chin New Community Action. And we've had a number of different organizations from around the state who have participated in putting this together with us, as well as contributing financially to getting this off the ground. And I think it's a great first start to bring together so many people who are concerned about housing and working on it from a lot of different levels. And with that, I would just like to introduce the mayor of Brooklyn to speak with you briefly. Thank you. Good to be here and to welcome friends from out of town as well as local girls. If I seem a little bit depressed, I am because I just came back from Washington. And actually Ronald Reagan is the president of the United States. You've been reading this thing in the newspaper and I have now confirmed it. It really is. And there are people in Washington who actually believe that what he proposes is right. This is astounding. Both of the pre-press had to lie to us for months about this. But it is true. In point of fact, I'm delighted to tell you what we have done in the area of housing in Brooklyn. And I think given the enormous constraints working against us, our Office of Community and Economic Development and other people associated in housing have come up with some very imaginative and dynamic programs. Making some significant successes. But on the other hand, I would not be telling you the truth if I thought that Burlington or any other community in the state of Vermont or the state itself was beginning to touch upon the problem. Burlington is not the only community in the state of Vermont that has a severe housing crisis. In point of fact, my guess would be that we need tens of thousands of units of low and moderate income housing being built in the state. We have construction workers ready to go to build it. We have farms ready to provide the wood. We have the technology to do it. The major thing that we lack is the capital to build that kind of housing. I mean, there are certain legitimate questions as to how you go about doing it. So I'm quite confident that the people of Vermont can solve that problem. What we cannot solve at the moment, or we can talk about how we can do that, is to find the financing available to do what we all know has to be done. I do not, I believe, have to tell the people this rule what the President of the United States is doing with regard to federal aid to housing and federal aid to the large numbers of other programs as well. Right now, in Washington, they are debating the President's budget proposals, which I have here. In case you haven't heard, let me tell you what they're comfortable with. Reagan wants to destroy revenue sharing. Now, what revenue sharing will mean for the City of Burlington is the loss of a million dollars, which will mean that we will have to raise property taxes and not be able to provide funding to many low-income groups and organizations and service organizations that desperately need it. He's talking about destroying community development block ranks. Those are the money that enable our CEDA office to function. That is the money that is going into the housing rehabilitation program in the City of Burlington, which is rehabilitating dozens and dozens and dozens of units of housing. If you walk into Burlington's Old North End today, you will find that that community is in far better shape than it was four years ago. And the reason for that is that we have done a reasonably good job in pumping money into that community to rehab old housing. Much of the housing in Burlington is old, and it is our view rather that, carrying it down, we intend to rehab it. And we have done a pretty good job. The President proposes that we not have any more money to do that. In addition to that, you'll notice that all over America, and I'm sure you'll be discussing this issue today, there is very little new low-income housing being built. And the reason for that is they are stopping federal aid for low-income housing. They are stopping federal aid for Section 8. So the bottom line is that in terms of future housing programs, the situation regarding Washington is totally dismal. But it's not just dismal for housing. Don't feel that he's being prejudiced against you. He is destroying every program necessary for low-income people, for working people for the elderly. You come back from Washington, and I was just there, and you get the feeling that not only is he going to war against the people of Nicaragua, he is very clearly going to war against the people of America, especially the poor people and the working people. It is war. It is class warfare in a way that I have never seen in my four years in May. It is unbelievable. And the assumption is that the poor people, the people who need the housing, they're not going to vote anyhow. They're not going to be following what's going on. And anyhow, two weeks before an election, politicians could put in their 30-second television ads and get millions of dollars from their rich corporate sponsors and get the votes that they need. The bottom line is that you're in a political struggle, and it's not just housing, it's every other issue. It's whether people are going to sleep out on the streets, whether people are going to have their foodie, whether social security is going to be cut or stabilized. It's all of those issues. Here in Burlington, I'm proud of what we've done. We have, for example, put in five new members of the Burlington Housing Authority, all of whom are tenant advocates, and we're confident that they're going to do the right thing. We have recently passed a law prohibiting... I mean, I'm embarrassed to say it, that this is not all that terribly progressive, but we are probably leading the rest of the state in that in the city of Burlington now, now there will not be ads and news pages saying, telling mothers that they cannot apply for certain housing because landlords don't want children in the housing. That has been done away. We have not yet succeeded, and we'll try again to do away with what... to limit what landlords can get for security purposes. We are moving in terms of tenant legislation. What we have done also is, before we were in office, there was virtually unenforceable housing health codes of the city. Landlords were not making the improvements that they needed. We have now gotten a very vigorous inspection system going. We are now negotiating with developers very, very controversially. Many of these developers have gotten tremendous breaks from the President of the United States. What they would like to do is come in and build condos and expensive houses. Now, what we are saying to them, well, let's sit down at the table, and before you start building, let's talk about what you can do for low and moderate income people. What kind of impact you're going to have on that community? We would like you to build some housing for moderate income people or perhaps for low income people. Let's talk about an entire package. You may not just come in and build housing for wealthy people. That's called inclusionary zoning. And this will be a subject of a lot of debate and discussion. So to conclude, I think we are doing, and I'm sure we're delighted to hear any ideas that other people might have, we have started a land trust concept, which I think is a new concept for a city at least in the United States to get involved in. We were trying to at least keep a certain number of houses, often the real estate speculative market, which will keep housing low, enable people to buy housing rather than have to rent it. We're making progress and I'm sure that's an issue that Tim McKenzie and others will be discussing. So I think that a wide variety of fronts, we in Burlington are doing a good job, but we have to admit that we are not doing enough, that the county is not doing enough. It is not acceptable that there are towns in Chittenden County and in the state of Vermont who will not build low or moderate income housing. That is not acceptable. It is not acceptable that the state of Vermont is not pumping in more money into the whole housing program. But once again, ultimately what we're dealing with is a political issue. And I think what all of our jobs are is to raise the demands as loudly as we can about what we want and put as much political pressure as we can on the people in Montpelier and on the people of Washington. I hope, by the way, that you will all be watching and we will do our job to publicize how Vermont's three congressional delegates vote on Reagan's proposed cuts. Don't let them off the hook at all. Okay, now I think my job is to introduce Andrea Hill and I'm delighted to do that and I want to thank those people who have helped put together this conference. We need a lot of ideas. We need to bring people together to start turning the political trend to America. I welcome the growing of Vermont. Some things that doesn't hurt to hear gain. And I will try to add inside to who voted why and how the National Low Income Housing called a lobbying organization which lobbies Congress for one for housing that exists for about 12 years now. And we're a membership organization and it's part of what you heard me say that we've brought lots of material that's open to take as well as membership life. A very concise summary of justice with the housing picture is in terms of the budget cuts that have been very significant. As I said the coalition is largely a lobbying outfit and in addition to the coalition we have a sister organization called the Low Income Housing Information Service which publishes lots of material which you see over there. And the responsibility of the information service is to get information as possible around. The House and the coalition itself is not a tax executive organization so that we can do the lobbying. But the liest for the Low Income Housing Information Service is tax executive so therefore kind of where to add something. So they give us the information that we can do the lobbying. Of course given some of the new rules that's coming out of OMB now where even if you have a tax exempl organization another tax exemplary organization on the same roof and sometimes the same person is working for one that's working for the other and you literally may have to move your office to the next door so that you can prove that you're not in any way that you're not with the other. That's all part of the kinds of things that are happening now that I'm doing what we've worked so hard to get. The housing as far as the coalition is concerned is a basic right I put it. And housing is the basic life line where you live decides where you work, where you go to school. So therefore we see that as a basic determinant of everything else in special life. So if your housing is impacted adversely then everything else is a ripple effect. Everything else results from that. The low income housing picture the last four years has to say the least been devastating. But I think it's important to understand the degree of that devastation I mean granted you understand it but to understand the total picture housing was something that for many years was not a partisan issue. Republicans and Democrats both saw that as a responsibility to make sure that people were housed. But since the 1980s there's been kind of a changing of that that has at this point got the people to the point where they're beginning to understand that that change is becoming conscious and deliberate. And we're talking about housing money going from 27 billion in 1988 to about 9 billion and we've had to fight in order to try to get them to stay at 9 billion and think of that as a measure. And I think what we have to understand is that it's not by accident that these kinds of things happen. And therefore any kind of effort that we undertake to try to turn that around needs to be an effort that takes that kind of thing into account. I'm not talking about being paranoid to the point that you can't act but I am talking about being realistic and understanding that there are no you have no enemies you have permanent interests and you have very few friends in this kind of situation. And you have to begin to assess and assess very quickly in some instances and very intelligently about which direction you want to move on. What I want to talk about at this point is the housing budget and just what that situation is and what impact that's going to have on it. As you know President introduced housing budget federal work. I mean his federal budget federal work. And not only is, as you've heard he's been attacked on his housing but what's more important is not to undo all of the programs that have benefitted people who have at least the least part of the situation of least and that from food stamps to student aid to housing nothing has been left untouched and I think a lot of times because many of us are in coalitions on housing and somebody else is in coalitions on food stamps and somebody else is in coalitions on student aid and that's really interrelated. And so what the coalition is trying to do and what I think moral groups across the country are beginning to do is to understand that we keep our single firms coalitions strong but we got to begin to work together and coalitions was one and up because clearly if we don't all hang together we're going to hang separately for sure. So therefore we need to begin to build these kinds of alliances. We're going to talk more about that again and I think that's the kind of thing we need to think about as it goes in the workshops this afternoon is about the kinds of alliances that we might want to start to build. Now specifically what the President's budget proposed for housing and how it looks like that's going to happen or not have good news, bad news. Basically what he proposed was a two year moratorium on the reasoning behind that was that there was just so much in the pipeline already and therefore these things would keep coming out of it so there really wasn't a great need and of course after this two year moratorium is over, it's over we're going to come back and do this. I mean not the fact that we've got a situation where the people that haven't really fully been trained for the new HODAC program the rental building program what they're going to do in two years just be ready to come back in after this moratorium is over. In addition to the moratorium on housing that was introduced trying to take Farmer's Home Administration and putting that on the HUD and then there would be a matter of trying to divide up the limited resources and skills and there are HUD people in the audience I don't mean any in the industry dividing up what limited things HUD has been able to do God doesn't care, get attention dividing that up with the Farmer's Home Administration so many of us began to see that getting the federal government in addition to which the rental housing rehabilitation program grants there was no effort to authorize any additional money to that and with the HODAC program there was no effort to orchestrate any additional money for that. These are programs that were administration programs and then they tied their wonderful vouchers and there was no effort in the President's budget to you know, to increase that. So what we're talking about is administrative programs that the administration fought for and then they aren't even interested in trying to get money to make sure those programs were on. So you can imagine what they want to do with programs that you have in mind. Then in regard to public housing there's a move to have drastic reductions with public housing modernization and we know the situation in public housing and if you don't try to do something to fix up the the units that are there now you know that after two years you go back they're going to be in worse shape than they are. It's just not going to cost effective either in public housing or any other program. Not to do the kinds of things that these two have done. Okay, where are we now that we understand that's the kind of thing the President proposed? It went to the Senate and in the Senate we've heard some of you in your rooms from one workshop today and heard some of the kinds of things that the Senate voted on. I want to give you a little bit of background about that Senate vote that was about to happen. Clearly this Senate just like everybody else in Washington, Paranoia, Congress, everything is you know cut the deficit, cut the deficit. So the President from New Mexico was the chairman of the Senate introduced a proposal which was just about the same as the President's I think he may have a percent or so reduction in defense to make it look nice. This is the country that spent $600 on a toilet seat to go to the moon. Okay, they talked about that the rule people that saw in the background there was some move to try to undo and undercut a rule program. So they were lobbying very heavy. We were lobbying very heavy for this to happen. And the point in which they took the vote we were pretty, it wasn't positive but it looked like you would at least be able to get up the whole time to 85 levels to assist the House. The rule people had to vote that they needed. That was like the one on Wednesday night. Thursday morning we get the call that they voted to zero out for housing all together. I mean this is like totally out of left field. You know they've been accounting everything and the votes were there. The vote was 10 to 9. Two people didn't come. The one person who cast the society vote got confused. He thought he was voting 4 and he found that he was voting 4 in general. And since his public knowledge I was taking the photograph confused with Senator Mahan. Quite frankly I thought of him in many ways but I've never thought of him as confused. At that point there were all kinds of calls from the upstate rule housing people to people all across the country in fact the upstate rule housing people were so angry they called Mahan's office to make it very clear that every time a person was killed in upstate New York because of this kind of cuts they would send him to a bridge work. Well they tried to come up with some kind of way to advise some kind of technical amendment to come back in and bring it up to reconsideration but Peter Domenici was not about to do that so therefore even though Mahan tried very hard and so did Messeban who made the initial proposal to have it zeroed out because he was trying to cut a deal with Armstrong in relation to small business they weren't recognized as a need so therefore he continued to be zeroed out because two people didn't show and one person didn't at this point there is an effort to try to get it onto the floor of the Senate and this don't have said very clearly that he is not going interested in introducing any programs that don't have a chance to fly as far as the concern rule housing does not have a chance to fly we are encouraging people to contact members of the Senate contact their senators even though there is no committee to try to help them understand what he said but you know to get them to do what they need to do I think what is more important than go by below account is that when you get down to the bottom line people are hurting they are hurting because two people didn't come and one person got confused now I know that when these meetings they happen into the we-are a little more in and this and that kind of stuff sometimes it's very difficult for you to accept when you've been cut all along that you just at this crucial moment all of a sudden got confused so I think that's why it's important for us to understand the kinds of things that go on at the federal level that means that's why you don't get any money because somebody got confused about the issue who didn't show up I hope you would ask me that I said I just bring the volunteer Senator Hart and Senator Johnson from I don't know that they might not have had other crises because they felt it was important not to be fair about that okay the coalition in a response to not just that particular situation but these overall budget things is engaged in something we called an active sign-on active sign-on process we're trying to get as many grassroots organizations as possible to sign-on to a letter that says very clearly that we will not we do not think that it's fair for housing who's been cut all along to continue to have to receive the kinds of housing that they've got and we've encouraged groups who are trying to start the first coalition to use that kind of sign-on though as an organization tool to bring people together to talk about the issue of housing and we've tried to do some of that I have I think two signatures from the state of Vermont I have my list with me and I don't recall who they are but I would encourage anyone who is here in an organization and has the authority to be able to just sign-on the letter if you give me your name you can just fill out the coupon we're trying to get 2,000 signatures by the end of by the end of March we haven't got quite a thousand at this point but the budget process itself is not over there's plenty of time to still get signatures and what we want to do is two years ago we were able to get approximately 7 or 8,000 signatures and we were able to present those and that assisted us in being able to get some of the kinds of things we've been able to get in the housing field we helped us in some way with the 1983 housing bill that was given the direction of passing and so we think at this point at least if people begin to understand the broad range of interests we're going to take copies of that letter and give it to other interest groups that may not necessarily just be housing because there are other groups that are going to be impacted on these cuts and even though I'll sign on that to be specific to housing I think it is something that can be in the interest of other groups as well so I would encourage you to take a copy of that with you the next steps as far as where this budget is going of course next it goes to the house but I have some copies with me of people and the house budget committee and there isn't anyone on there from Vermont but again I would encourage you to still send telegrams and letters to people on that committee and encourage your congresspeople even though they're on a committee to know how can I be helpful to work with you to get this thing through one thing I haven't discussed and I don't think any discussion of housing would be complete by talking about this on this I don't know what would be I sort of say that you have a problem one thing that's interesting there is no new money has been authorized for housing we've got 70 million dollars but that runs out at the end of this fiscal year and there is no more new money for it I do know that a lot of the states are taking the steps for getting some New York state is doing a lot of things because of the situation and as I said I don't know what the situation is here but I think one thing that we find and that is because because of the fact that it takes housing so long to get it from point A to point B that there's a housing in the pipeline but what's happening is that a lot of that housing has been in the pipeline two administrations back and so people will see if something go up and say I just saw a housing development go up and down because there hasn't been a they don't understand that from a few administrations that has nothing to do with these administrations of course no one in this administration can volunteer so what we've got is we've got homelessness in the pipeline because at some point what is in it's going to run out and if there's no new construction in the pipeline at this point there is not and so that's why the homeless situation and all the other kinds of things have got to be dealt with in order for us to so good I mean we talk about we're supposed to be this great country that has the capacity to do all kinds of things with missiles and whatever and people I was in New York it was a holiday went by what I called one of the most obscene buildings I've ever seen the Trump Tower and you walk around the corner and you're bagged people I mean clearly I'm literally your ear on one street and then you walk two blocks over and it's just like a whole other world and people of course come out of the fancy buildings and walk by those people and we've accepted that I mean it looks like something out of a Charles Dickens novel so we've gotten so used to seeing it and nobody gets upset I mean it's like when Vietnam was on television at 6 o'clock news who were so used to seeing just members living and all that kind of stuff and nobody got excited about it and then all of a sudden you realize we need to look at what we're doing so I mean the homeless situation and the housing situation definitely has the same potential I would hope that we try to try to do something so we don't have to go through the same kind of agony because of the kinds of things that we need to know I'm going to I'm going to close down now before I do I just want to make one statement and that is that I think one reason why I'm talking about selfish reasons is that the courts actually get involved in what's going on with low income housing not only because it's just low income housing but some of the other programs the country is going to be evaluated the way you live the character of the country gets evaluated the people that were around when they could have made some changes and done the right things is also going to be evaluated and I'm going to be able to in the next generation help that process a lot where are you and all the people out on the street what are you doing trying to make the contribution and I think that I want to leave you with these words by someone black I think is a great American how far do you go in life depends on your being tender with enough compassionate with the aging and sympathetic with the striving tolerant of both the weak and strong because someday in life for all we use that to make the second set of workshops a little longer in order to have some time to be really short so we have another set of three workshops one here back in the library and one here in the gallery room and they're scheduled on one table if you don't have more we have here for the full session which will be a closing session deciding where we're going to go from here that will be followed by the potluck and then the evening public forum I just want to thank Andrea for being here and why don't we continue in about five minutes the workshops