 Good evening, everybody, and welcome to our event this evening. I'm Sister Veronica Kagan, and I'm Sister of the Holy Spirit. And it is my privilege to welcome you here this evening. Shraik, socially responsible investment coalition, was founded in 1982. It is a coalition inspired by faith and police attraction. The members view the management of their investments as a powerful catalyst for social change. We endeavor to create a more just and sustainable world to carpet responsibility. Tonight, we have planned a wonderful educational program for all of you, our friends, our community members, and the many committed individuals who believe in our work. Shraik is able to do what he does because of the financial support we receive. Our gathering is even as made possible by major donations received, and I want to acknowledge the many donors. If you look at the front of the program, they're listed there. We have saw the happiness level, the defender level, and the advocate level. We can sponsor this event because of the many individuals, religious congregations, and organizations who have generously donated to us. This is a big round of applause to all of the people who want to say special thanks to Aubrey School of Theology for hosting our event this evening. Our program tonight is being filmed, and it will be posted on their website after the event. If you would like to donate through nowcastSA, you can help and serve organizations like ours. We are privileged to meet us this evening, Rabbi, who is Rabbi, whose mission is to bring together major faith leaders representing diverse religious traditions into a sacred working relationship by collaborating on various city projects that the leaders through conversation and consensus to meet will serve the common good of the people of San Antonio. The vision of this alliance includes the commitment to harness the power of both religious leaders and their congregations across major faith groups for the purpose of re-evigorating civil dialogue and making San Antonio a more just and vivid city. We share more about this alliance and you will lead us in the invocation. Thank you so much, Rabbi Stowe. Thank you so much, Sister. I greatly appreciate that introduction. And I want to introduce the Interfaith San Antonio Alliance tonight at this important event. I have greatly admired the work of the SRIC, working together to fashion and introduce you to the theme of housing justice at the moment. Please let me first describe the nature of the Interfaith San Antonio Alliance. I grew up as a native of Texas. I was called by a native of Texas in a naturalized New Yorker. He was raised in Dallas but has lived in New York for several years. He's been a great advocate for social justice cause. He's held many national significant positions, offered Jewish and general organizations working toward justice. And he called me because he wanted me to help launch a program, his leadership and public engagement project, which was going to be organized by New York University. And he wanted me to do this in San Antonio. He planted in us a civil system of a similar size and similar character. He asked me to bring three feeters together to embrace a humanitarian project with two goals. The first goal, as these sisters said, is to bring stronger bonds among the three feeters of our community. Last 20 or so years, I am disappointed to say that there's going to be climbing interests of interfaith work in our community. San Antonio has always celebrated its religious diversity and has different religious harmony in the last two or so decades. At one time, we had an active San Antonio community of churches. It no longer exists. An attempt was made to recreate it as a San Antonio community of congregations, and that attempt did not succeed. We also have, one time, a downtown ministerial association that no longer exists. Steven, I hope that we can turn that situation around. At our beginnings, I must say, have been progressive. So that's the first goal, to bring the clergy leaders together, the three feeters. The second is to benefit our city with a single humanitarian project, that our project will be chose after a generation San Antonio has suffered a severe housing crisis, as many of you know. This crisis has been over in homelessness, lack of affordable housing, homes of gentrification. So many of our city live in poverty and squalor, and we know that many tenants, the rest, have to move to the rest of their homes. 40 local faith leaders have met on several teams to discover ways to sensitize our congregations to this crisis. Some of the leading clergy in our city have been involved. And I'm going to mention here the names I know to include us to exclude. So if you're a clergy person, as I mentioned, please understand that I just had to make a selection, because these are the better known names in the community. We have on board Reverend Patrick Gagan, who's the C-director of Price and Discipline Church, Reverend Dr. Erzbog Fuller, the C-Departure at First Testament Church, Reverend Beth Moulton, the C-director of St. Martin Discipline Church, Reverend Dr. Gagan Ficknitsky of the Alba Heist Methodist Church, Reverend Dr. Abraham of the Budozine, and Reverend David Khamarovsky of Temple Pie, Dr. GPC of the C-Community, Omar Shakir and Manit Oguz, who represent two of the Muslim communities in San Antonio. And we also have with us Archbishop Gustavo and his figure general, Father Larry Christian. We're grateful that Mayor Muirberg has been impressionably committed to his only our massive sum of addresses that our many meetings have included, Lourdes Chester Ramirez, who's the head of the Mayor's Task Force on Housing, former city councilwoman Maria Gariazal, and the she's on the Mayor's Task Force as well, and Veronica Soto, who's the director of neighborhood and housing services. We hope that our 40-feet years will sensitize their congregations to the crisis in as a moral issue. And we've asked them to do three things. Number two, to organize, to address the housing issue, and three, to defer frequently to the city council and other senior officials about this issue. We've been led by an impressive board, Christian. Lisa Judy Blackwich, who's with us tonight. They've worked tirelessly for the success of this project. We also have engaged a very talented executive director from Wendy Holbrook, who's here. They asked Wendy to rise to be recognized. Wendy is part of the general Baptist Domination. And she's also the director of the American Academy of Precision, right? Is that right, correct me? I can't be a preacher. I can't be a preacher. No, America. Is that international? Oh, not yet, though. Not yet, okay. I'm moving toward it, okay. We're also grateful to Reverend McDinsky at the office of the search for providing office space to Wendy for your church. We held an impressive press conference that's headed for the National Cathedral last October, and Mary Nairnberg is one of the teaching speakers of that. The Prophet Jeremiah has enjoyed us to seek the welfare of the city in which we are built. And through the Interface San Antonio lives, we hope that we are fulfilling Jeremiah's mandate. Now that in mind, I ask all of you to rise as able for the invitation. The Supreme Holy Spirit, you're so grateful that we have a home, that we have a place in which to eat, babe, we cannot imagine the chaos that we have at home and whose heart has not healed the brothers and sisters made here in Idaho. From the streets, kids, for living this fresh life, we have laid and mocked them and ridiculed them. We do not know their names, but we call them homes. We do not know what has imparished them. In fact, we do not know them. We have only seen them sleeping in doorways, staring out at us with hollow eyes, the ceiling, and to combat this white homelessness. Do us with compassion, O God, so that we may use us, you may use us to benefit the lives of those who suffer licensing needs without any shelter. Stir us, O God, to assure our home for them, and make my comfort and rest in laborers' ill sleep, so that no one but every... Greetings, everyone. Good to see all of you here. 1999, I went into a little house on East Ashford Street, and I met a woman named Susan Mika, sister of Susan Mika, and I heard socially responsible investment corporation. She worked and seen people coming and going. Didn't exactly know what was really going on. I heard about different investments going to corporate meetings, and I was very amazed and impressed at the work you did. It's a full circle to be with you tonight. At the end of February, I retired from a set house in Texas, and I'm seeing that it allows me time to be involved in more things, and I love almost everyone in this room. It has a basis for what you do that is grounded, and that may have been expressed in different ways in your family when you grew up. You have a faith able to be propelled forward because of what you believe to make a change and to have the courage to stand up for it is what I think this room is all about with you for a long time. This is gonna be our first speaker tonight, the evening, and my wish for you is that you learn what it is you need to learn and want to learn, and when you go out to head to your homes, you'll be inspired by some of these stories to do even more community than what you do now, and maybe some new ideas will take place tonight. Thank you. I'm good to be back here again. Nice to come from my annual visit to San Antonio and certainly around the Shrink gathering. I've got a very simple job I think tonight that's sort of sometimes the case, and that is basically, I think this is a context for a conversation about housing, I want to applaud the rabbis that commented earlier about the need for more interfaith collaboration on all of these issues. We just had a wonderful event at the back and on religions and the sustainable love and goals, and there were 10 of the major world religions represented in the very same city hall that you saw the Holy Father at and the bishop that they had been for meeting, so that's the first time I saw that level of collaboration. And I think the message of the Hampton tradition is sure of what Francis and a number of Muslim countries that he has chosen to visit and give priority ought to be a word for all of us to remind us that we do need indeed to continue the hall that came to us from bad and too about working collaborative with other Christians, with other religions, these classes we are about constructing, God's thing, and we're just going to reiterate their time. The other one that I wanted to share was that I saw a play a couple of weeks ago in Washington and it was a one person play, it's called Silence, and it fits also with the comments of the rabbi. It was written from the main stage, main actor, is from the perspective of being a homeless person. So he spends the entire night with us, puffing into the audience, telling the story, telling the story of his family. He actually engages in a few different times with actual questions and answers about what your reaction is to this word, what your reaction to when you hear somebody is depressed, what your reaction when you hear somebody is homeless. Very powerful medium that picks up, I think, on what was said already, of the way that you do hear the homeless. And it's so much a part of all of our communities, not just here in San Antonio, in the United States and elsewhere. So in short, I want to take a quick little trip. I was asked to say something about the rights to housing and I want to do that from two directions, really. I think the interesting thing about Catholic Church for teaching and much of that tradition is that it relies on the question of faith, which was just raised, but also on reason. And so the stools that we come from are faith and moral arguments and the legal and the reason of arguments. And that's been very much a part of the tradition. Don't need to, I think, go into talking about the many ways in which the Scripture talks about sheltering the homeless. We've also been familiar with the many works of charity of the religious congregation founders that this work of charity, of feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, was all very much a part of the inspiration of many of the congregations in this room. And the works of charity and armsgiving, we, the Scriptures are complete with reminding us of that being part of our response to Christ's call. On the reason side, I was interested in recently for any debilitants who are in the room, I was in Geneva about a year ago and they were honoring this sort of skewered 15th century debilitating. This was not a religious event at the United Nations. It was an event sponsored by the United Nations itself. And this considered to be the first great theorist of international law. And when you think about it, this gets into how we work together collaboratively across faiths and with those who have no faith. I would be enshrined in our legal system what we consider to be the rights of each one of us, but then with the rights that also the obligations that we have to one another. And so that's always been very much a part of the Church's tradition. The interdial between faith and reason. How are we motivated and informed and guided by our faith? But how does that push us into the larger conversation in the sector of communion? And in the UN system, obviously, we're very familiar with those human rights that are elaborated in the declaration, civil, political, social, cultural, and economic as we begin to, since 1948, to begin to elaborate and to pronounce different understandings of those rights. Housing structure as a human right is specifically articulated in the UN Declaration. And finally, I'll say a few words about what the Catholic tradition and teaching has said about housing. The UN Declaration says everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing, medical care, and necessary social services. And the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, and disability. So you think, oh, this is the UN Declaration of Human Rights, probably a document that's been translated into more languages than any other document. Last time I looked, I think it said 350 languages. This document has been translated into an agreement amongst the bodies who are members of the United Nations system where they elaborate clearly about their understanding of each of the rights that we have as human beings. The philosophy who are familiar with the writings of Pope John the 23rd, we know that we take this up very astutely in that encyclical, Pachel and Teres, in 1963. The language is almost the same, right? We must speak of man's rights, of human rights, has the right to live, the right to finally integrity, necessary for the proper development of life, particularly food, clothing, shelter, medical care, rest, planning, necessary social services. So the language is pretty much the same in terms of what's identified. And we know that as this whole theory of rights has evolved and developed, that we now speak for instance of a right to food or a right to horrible water. And we speak of the many other rights that have been articulated within the system as we deepen our understanding of who we are and the journey that we're on. From going forward from this, we look at the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference and this is the document that goes back to 1975, 85, and 86. So don't need to go through each of these, but what they consistently recognize is in 1975, the right to a decent home, a pastoral response. And that was reflected, I think, the value of a decent home and all the benefits that that brings was articulated again in the prayer of the invocation that we just heard the ceiling. So there's a consistent stream within the religious tradition and a consistent stream within the legal and tradition about the right to shelter and to a decent home and many other things that we see articulated, whether it's food, shelter, medical care, education, and particularly taking care of those who may not be able by the end of the year. Again, reflected in 1980, second by St. John Paul II, again where he talks about finding concrete and urgent solutions to the housing problem and to see that homeless receive the necessary attention and concern on the part of public affairs. So the interesting thing I wanted to bring out here is that this long extended discussion on the homeless and homelessness. And there's lots of analysis out there and lots of data and research that tells us what has brought people to being homeless and living on the street or arrested or taking refuge in shelters and don't need to go in necessarily to that. But one of the things that we aggressive with then is, well, whose responsibility is it to respond to? And I think what you see in the UN Declaration and in the religious traditions, they're trying to balance the responsibility that we see from the public sector, which would be government, and the private sector, which would be faith individuals and the living out of their commitments. And I think that's part of what I see reflected in the outline of this evening's conversation. And how many of you have been involved in any kind of affordable housing schemes over the years? I'm sure many, many of you have touched it in different ways. And we know of the numerous different efforts that have been tried, right? In the public sector, there's many programs created by HUD or the federal government, but at the state level as well, whether it's sometimes in the form of tax concessions that are offered. But then we've also had a blending of we're said housing that you just talked about, that individual communities, religious communities working with others, have put together loan funds, have put together various schemes by which they've helped first-time homebuyers to secure a home. So we know that there are many of those time schemes out there that have been tried, many of them very successfully. I think the question has always been at what scale and is it bigger and is the response completeer? Because we still seem to see an increasing wave of people who are homeless or being on the back on the end of just one mortgage payment out of losing their home or one salary out of falling behind on their payments. So we've had lots of different ways and lots of different experience in this room and in most places about how those issues have been a part of the discussion. I think going forward, this is the question that strikes me is that in terms of the rather beginning of this document from the concert of the council, churches, community groups, private sectors, state and local governments must all do more to meet our common responsibilities for housing. So in some ways that I think that articulates what your agenda is that the event to see is to say what are the roles, what are the responsibilities, what are the available responses coming from all those sectors. And I think certainly from my experience on the many issues that we are engaged in, in Washington or in the other projects that I work in, I think everybody now understands very clearly that there is no single solution to any of the issues that we wrestle. It is multifaceted, it is multi-stakeholder, that it's like as if you do have a pie and you say there are many different slices out of that pie and that it's together the whole pie and the efforts of the whole community that can each make a contribution to that. So we may, to relatively, want to fault the federal government, that's us in Washington, not me personally, but that's the place that gets a lot of heat for not being engaged along with particular policy that responds to the needs across the country. And I think we all know very easily that those needs are very gross, from cities to rural communities, to small towns, to fading rust out cities, to blossoming new communities. Somebody already mentioned the whole gentrification challenges face very much those realities in the city of Washington itself, as you know as well, if you've had a chance to visit our fair city in the last 10 years, the amount of building, of condominiums that are continuing to increase, many of them not occupied by owners, is a real problem. So going back simply to say that there is no quick solution to achieving the response to housing, about how we identify the different streams and the different friends is important. Last one I wanted to point out to is that even though we've spoken in the past a lot about the encyclical of Pope Francis's Love Out to Sea, housing has not forgotten in the encyclical, even though it's very much focused on integral ecology, if you read number 152, in that encyclical, a bit more expansive in the thinking, clearly identifying and seeking to sympathize with the challenges that people face who are without adequate housing and without shelter. But also I've been challenging in the questions of cities that maybe it's time for us to be much more creative and much more innovative and how we incubate some of those response. And I know if you do look at any of the city magazines and architectural magazines in particular and some of the different examples in different countries, you do find people thinking about ways, how do you actually house a population in different ways than the traditional house on the street, mother, father, children and sons of the next generation? Is there a more efficient way of doing that? Is there a more energy-effective way of doing that? Is there a more community-building way of doing that? And are we willing to maybe tease some of that out? I think that's mentioned also, I think in Love Out to Sea that says, look, we are seven million people on the way to town. The challenges that we face in terms of the resources that we need are huge. But we're not going to solve those by simply doing more of the same. We do need to come up with some new ideas and I think that's true also of housing. We need to come up with some new ways of imagining how we build a community, how they contribute to community and how that can be a part of the service and the work that we do together. That's the end of my little context setting and I hope that does it. I was asked to say a quick update on some of the other projects we've talked about. Good news, I think, are for the investors in the room. There's been lots of people coming to the table out there who want to encourage and really wonder about whether or not they've been responsive to the social, responsible investment mandate that they think we need. The leaders of significant asset managing funds of significant corporations simply saying we can't continue to ignore the environmental and social impact of the private sector in our world and the markets in some way do need to respond to the challenges that we're facing. I think that's true news. We just need a lot more of it. I think, secondly, at the Vatican, we've continued in a couple of projects that I've talked about here before, continue to work towards pushing forward some principles of socially responsible investing that might be helpful to members of the Catholic community in particular who are not active in that space. One of the few were to create an index fund that was a proposal I saw in Rome recently that only contains companies that were consistent with Catholic social teaching. I think my immediate response was it would be a very small list of companies. But, nevertheless, it was an idea that was offered across the table because we do know in the Muslim community we have a great desire by practitioners of the love of Muslim faith that you would like to show your compliance financial products that helps them to manage their money, invest their assets in a way that's consistent with teaching of the Quran. So, on that front, don't expect any breathtaking news soon. Things move rather slowly when it comes to these large institutions, but there are some good things happening, I think, on the front with the Vatican in trying to figure out ways to identify and to offer us some recommendations and some suggestions, but I think the other side is equally true and you've already heard about this, is that many of the models that they're looking for and many of the ideas that they're searching for and many of the tools that are gonna make this happen, they quite often come from the bottom up, not from the top down. They're recognizing that Shrik has been around since 1982 is a testament to your commitment and your dottedness in trying to find out answers to things that people sometimes said, well, you wouldn't understand that, so you better leave that for the professionals. I think the suggestion really needs to be that all of us need to wrestle with this question and try and identify and test some of those ideas and bring them forward for conversation. So thank you very much. For Kristin, Christine Glenn, is a professor at Trinity University. She doesn't just sit there in her ivory towel. She challenges her students and she mentors them. And it's not just theoretical because Christine gets involved in the community here. She specializes in understanding inner city neighborhoods and you'll soon see that she can explain why San Antonio is the way it is. Why wouldn't a particular railroad track on East Commerce Street, why did things change there? She has directed many of her students to Mercedez in Texas and other nonprofit organizations as interns. We've benefited from that. We've even hired some of your ex-students. And Christine also sits on the board of one of our peer nonprofit organizations, the Animal Community Group. And so it's not just theoretical for her and I hope you will enjoy what you're gonna learn about the city of women. So bear with me. And thank you and thank you for having me. This is gonna be a whirlwind. He's always asked the title that was given to me was the Historical Geographical History of Housing and Justice. So let's go. Historical Geographical, right? I think that they've ordered across time, through time and across space, the way that I understood my title. And I took that quite literally because I wanted to try to ground the words that we've heard so far in our place. But we do have to do it historically because I feel deeply that if we're gonna be effective in the work that we do, even if we do it together or if we do it separately and we have to know where we've been and how we got in the situation that we're in right now in order to be effective going forward. Because otherwise we'll continue to do the same and we won't make the impact that we want to make. So this is gonna be a historical geographical whirlwind tour and it is episodic, right? Like history is episodic, but we tend to understand a lot of these housing issues as in unique time periods, right? And I want to try to get away from that a little bit and put it into one narrative. From how we're not bridging how we can relate to our problems. And we tend to specialize in one little bit of it, right? And then not speak with others and learn from others. So this is my attempt. If you want to build a continuous narrative, historically we're very, very grounded in this place. So my job is here. So here we go. The creation of our landscape. This is a story about the development of the neighborhoods of San Antonio. And that can be seen as a story of periods in 20 minutes, so we'll watch. My first time was of separate what equal in the years that I'm thinking about that are about 1900 to about 1940s. That was, let's see if I have a picture, I do not. But that was, look, the red from there. That was the boundaries of the city. We know that, six by six mile square. So that's where we're going to talk. I want to talk about that in a place as we began to develop it. So this is a very old map of the six by six mile original Spanish land rep. That was the city of San Antonio for a very long time that we all, and we love that. And also, this comes from work that I've been doing over the years at the county burn house, looking up and under what conditions. And I want to show you a couple of those. I want to show you a couple of those squares. There's one. We can know, I love these old maps. I'm a geographer by training. And these were all hand done, another all digital but not so pretty. But, and sorry, it's, sorry, it's, I'm sorry, the north has to be at the top. You knew that, but it's just old maps, right? There's another one, more of this at the top. There we go. Where are we? Map, right in this area, right here, posted downtown. I love that this is kind of appreciating value tremendous right now. And there's the original deed to their house, right? So when they have houses built, creating houses built, it has a deed. It has a deed and tells where it is, right? Legal language about where this thing is and where all its vials exist in the courthouse. And then these are, these are some of the, some of the instructions, right? The legal instructions and what can be done in that house. So they include things like, you can't treat people with contagious diseases in this house. And that was an issue in the 1920s when that deal was written. Is that your TV and Colorado were relations. You can't sell wine if you're out of this house. You can't live in your car in the back of this house or any kind of temporary structure. And then additionally, this house could never, never express the underserved degree with any sale release of this said premise. Or any price thereof to any Mexican or person of legal blood, you'll immediately cause the title to revert to the grand tour. So not only can you not sell wine or treat somebody with a TV or a color or live in your car, you also can't sell this house to any Mexican American or African American or it will immediately be taken away from you. If I were to just go around the city, like some of these additional neighborhoods, now it's for a year. But if I just took a, to continue that my tour to the south side, I would find the same, right? It's the very same. It's almost like they used the same document in order to build all of our neighborhoods. The fight on the west side, right? Across that hill, one of our beautiful neighborhoods on the west side, same, the same language is in these days. Which causes me to think about if all of these neighborhoods that were being built up in between 1920s and 1940s, 1900s and 1940s were all dealership, right? Which allowed the annual population to go into these new developments, these new beautiful neighborhoods, but it restricted those for non-whites, right? So that entire population was really funneled into the inner city. Which causes us to think about this area. If this is restricted for whites, where is everybody else? Because this has always been a city of non-whites. So we're, we continue the digging, right? And we start to look at some of these inner city neighborhoods that really are within our outer inner city. And here we are today, right? Not no deep restrictions in these very inner city neighborhoods. And this is what they look like today. So I showed you and also you from some of the others, this is what those other neighborhoods look like that were never restricted. These were always for the non-white community. And I don't time travel, so this is today. This is the street, right? And I want you to notice and think about the rain, right? There's no drainage, there's no sidewalks. These lambs, these hose, these light poles were put in, you know, the grimples looks like recently. There's no infrastructure whatsoever in a lot of these neighborhoods. These are our inner city neighborhoods. Small, very, very different. When you look at the way that they were constructed and the way they were built. And we can even see, see so today in modern day, modern day masks, right? Streets, these aren't alleys. These are our west side streets. And these are our houses on the, and some of our neighborhoods on the west side. Because in this time period, as we built up some of our neighborhoods that today we're so proud of and that are gaining value in here for the non-white residents of our city. Right? Susan was talking about an American neighborhood that said no African-Americans could live in that neighborhood was to the north. To the south of the street, again, just to be on the west side, this is today. This is an area that was not de-constructed. And you can tell the difference just in the pieces of property, right? Just in the pieces of property, you can imagine what the houses would have looked like and to look like today on those pieces of property. Some are very regular, some are very large, right? To the north. But to the south of these unrestricted areas, it becomes much more irregular and a little bit chaotic. So the house is actually, it must be smaller. They're a lot more dense, right? And that's exactly the landscape that we get in the narrative. This is really declared unconstitutional in 1948, all of this kind of shenanigans. But by then, and this is what was happening in our original city limits, but by then we're into kind of another what I call a regime, right? A free investment. And this is really placed on the 1940s to the 1960s. And this is when the federal government starts to get involved in the creation of our neighborhoods. In their first diverse era, it was very global decision making. No, the feds aren't involved at all. But by the 1940s in the New Deal era, they are starting to get involved and starting to regulate the economy a little bit, but in a very risk-averse way. And this is also when our city starts to grow, right? So the original city slices not started here, but we're starting to annex the territory around it. And that's really our opinion only available to do that. But the question was, but what about the inner city, right? What do we do about the inner city? We can build new housing, and that's gonna be, that's so deep restricted that it's gonna be for whites only. But what about the inner city? How do banks understand the inner city? And so the federal government told the city, they're told the banks, we understand we're in a great depression, we're trying to pull ourselves out of the great depression. We know you don't want to land any money. People only have senior jobs, but we need you to start writing mortgages again. We need you to land money in order to pull us out of this depression. And the banks said, no, it's too risky. And the federal government said, well, what if we do this? What if we go into every city in the country, and we look and we evaluate the housing, right? And we evaluate the demographics. And then we'll tell you, banks, we're a safe investment where it's not, and that's exactly what they did. So they come into faith, here's our old city, right? And they come into San Antonio, and they look at the housing, right? Federal government looks at the housing. But when they did this, they said, doctor, it was built well, and housed a homogeneously white population, we'll call it green, right? That was built well originally. Then he has a little bit of room for maybe some manfills to make it last, but it's still homogeneously angle or white. We'll call that blue. Then it's the signal to the bank, fine, you can lend money there. Buy and sell homes, you can get a mortgage, and we'll consider that, we'll tell them, we'll consider that to be risk-free. And these are some of our neighborhoods in our inner city that were holy, green, or blue in the 1930s and the 1940s, right? Some of the housing is still there, right? And it's retained, it's actually really come back in value, there's also some interest in housing. In other areas that these folks went into, they said, what if the housing stock is starting to deteriorate? And it's still very homogeneously angle or white, but there's a non-white presence in the area, and it kind of threatens the homogeneity, then he called it yellow. And there's a signal to the banks that this area was a little bit riskier, right? And this is the housing stock today there. And then finally, in an area of the housing you get deteriorated, and there was a non-white presence in there where we coded red, and this is a federal government telling the banks we coded it red, which means that it's a high risk area for investment, and we probably don't recommend lending those areas. And these are, we call it red line. And these are all the city center in those red line areas, right? And we know that this is the housing stock that's in these areas. And this again, no time travel, this is today. So what we've got is we've got layers now. We have deep restricted areas and non-deep restricted areas, and it's those non-deep restricted areas that now are coded yellow or red. So there was no money, there's no investment money that's gonna flow into those areas for very long time for a huge section of the 20th century president Johnson finally says no more then, no more then nonsense, when I'm gonna do this anymore. But by now we've got a landscape that's been in place for a long time. And it's also started to sort our population between the angle of you who live here and your houses are gonna look like this. And non-white, non-angled, you can live over here in a very different kind of geography and a different kind of neighborhood, the neighborhood setting. And your houses are gonna be more than this. And we know that this is our wealth. This is our yearly wealth. Now we build our families and we invest in our families. Episode of 1998 is what I call the institutionalization of that landscape when it finally really gets locked in, right? But this is also the area that we pride ourselves on. This is the area of equal rights, right? This is civil rights. And really, from the time then from the federal government down, we all got out of this manwain. And said, yes, no more of this. Now we're gonna treat everybody the same. Everyone has a dignity. And we did this, right? So again, our city starts to grow and continues to grow to the 1970s, 1980s through today. But equal rights, what do I mean by that in this system, right? Brown versus Board. And then all of these different more Texas-era or Texas-specific laws and regulations, including Rock and Wood Act, takes, podcasts, inspires, treat every child the same, give them all the same tasks, right? Give them all the same curriculum. And public investment is what we call our proportionality of every city council district gets the same amount of money. And again, in our representative's heart proceeds well. We attend equally populated city council districts. So our school districts, right? Our school districts form at that time. And Rock and Wood's put in place, every child should theoretically get the same amount of money. Our city council, by the 1970s, gets single member districts. And each of those is, of course, the same amount of money, right? And what's the result of all that inequality? Quality is really just the status quo, right? It really kind of cemented the status quo in place. So what we have was in these areas that are already been reclined, those neighborhoods or those houses are not appreciating value, right? In areas that have been yellowed by, they're not appreciating as much value. Also, in these areas that have been in green or blue, or have mortgage money coming or flowing into those areas, the housing in those areas is appreciating today and even what we would call gentrification, right? Because those areas have always had less than $100. These others, the values of those properties is actually falling. So today, really, really what we're all faced for is financialization of housing. And there's people before me that said, we're in an era now where housing is an investment. It's not even a shelter anymore. It's an investment. And that's exactly where we are today. We really accumulate wealth now through investment and housing is the number one. We used to make things in our economy. We made cars, we made washing machines, we made tables, now we invest in housing as the number one lay of paying money in our economy. And we see that, right? You can see that. So as our city has continued to grow, I'm gonna focus down here again in the inner city because that's where a lot of our problems are really materializing. So our inner city now is once in the identifying its value, we let it deteriorate, but now we've turned around and the way is interesting. The way is the banks, the way is investors, the way is insurance companies, and we've identified its value going down, right? So what does that look like? So we're back here again and it looks like this. It looks like older fourplexes that were affordable, right? This was our affordable housing, again, fourplexes that they torn down and replaced by some leads, right? Quarter billion, up to half a million dollars, homes. And actually these are not owner-optimized. These are investment companies for some reason. So we removed affordable housing. Our real necessity, we allowed this to happen in the last couple of years and it's happened repeatedly and we're building now our housing to be built is this kind of an investment property. We're investing in a lot of public spaces, right? Some are made by, we're also investing in public spaces which is a celebration. But we haven't realized that yet also he has an in-gap. He has a tremendous in-gap on the people that live around it. So we've invested in some kind of a creek and it's lovely, it's beautiful and we all appreciate it, right? But people live along it. And now the value of that property has gone up and a lot of people have been displaced and we have people here in the room that have worked really, really hard on some of these issues of displacement. And so older apartments like these that were affordable but there's a lot of our inner city labor force have now been purchased as investment properties and the rent's gone up and a lot of people have been displaced. But how is, it's a very local one so that with the intent of trying to understand where do we fit, where do we fit with the intent of where do we enter, right? Where do we, as people who are really concerned with these issues, how do we enter into this longer history so that what we do is effective and strategic, right? And we don't want to try to say we won't stop yet. And I really, really deeply believe that if we know the history of what's been done and how we ended up here, and maybe we can be strategic with our resources in our own time and working together in order to try to figure this one out. And where's that housing? And I'll continue with the word that I said that. This is one piece of the future. It's looking forward and thinking about affordable housing and with really an alternative vision to some of these, some of this action that we're building up. So thank you. Honestly, from one of the speakers of the house, it's responsible for our federal housing in Texas. It's very in existence. I think Mr. J. Mann may tell the story more fully, but basically, she observed in the community, it goes back to what I said in the very beginning, that you're motivated by your faith and your surroundings to feel like you need to make a difference. And she was very bold to challenge the sisters, to look at what the needs were in this community and work together, congregations, to address those needs together, to create a corporation together. And those religious congregations capitalize the organization in the beginning and we wouldn't exist without Maria. And just in a few days, she's Dr. Maria, very subtle. It goes over to their home. Her is here. I'm so happy because then it's meant to be that I tell this story before I start. When I, Father Bill Davis was a pastor of St. Mary's downtown and we had a terrible problem with young people roaming the streets at night, without a number two. So we started working on that. And the provincial was Father Bishop, indentured Bishop White. And one of the first meetings I had with Father Bill Davis he told me a story. And he said, there was this pastor in the middle of the rural area at this church and every Sunday the congregants would come and say, we found some people that died because there's a banner on the road that they follow and we bury them so they can't copy. So one day he said, I'm going to appoint a committee to figure out why people are falling into the lake and fix the problem. So the committee went out and they found that there was this man who owned the property where the van was and the man who wanted to find a seat with his private rights and this pastor said, well, we tried but the property owner wouldn't let us do anything. So the pastor said, well, we're just going to keep on burying the bodies every time we find them. So Bill Davis's, Father Bill Davis's story for me was you can do the work of the word in two ways. You can bury the bodies or you can change the solve the problem. And you and I were charged with changing the system. And that was one of the first pieces of advice that I got and it was from Father Bill Davis. He got a lot of help from the provincial and we were able to set up young people's drop-in center at St. Paris in the basement. He went to us and asked, yes, Misha. Straightened out that road and we're doing it at the housing and Reverend Seamus was at the boundaries you know, there at the tube. That's where it was that you had. And then to Christine, to thank her for reminding us again the history of why we are where we are. What we are and why we are. And there's a reason, gentrification and displacement. But the Lord is always with us and Christine just did what I was going to do. Very briefly talk about what gentrification is. Essentially changing neighborhoods. And the people who were there before tend to be poor and of color, lead. And then other people come in and bring you up. And then the displacement that's occurring inside of Tony right now is to the tourist excess. We're investing, we're building new things. So the property values are going up and taxes are going out and people can't keep their properties. We're building beautiful structures in the middle of neighborhoods and that brings out the property values so the taxes go up, people lose their homes. And then we're doing things like what's done in Christian trails. Where somebody buys a mobile home park and 300 people are displaced. And we have no city policy to take care of it. So right after Maynard Nurmer, got elected a couple of years ago, he did what he had promised to do and that is to address the actual policy. So he named it a housing task force, Maynard's Housing Policy Task Force. We worked for a whole year and we came up with some recommendations. We also want to find, we got some data and came up with a list of what the problems are based on data. And I'm not gonna go through them, I don't have any time because I know the story but you can read what it is and I'm gonna tell you how we can get a hold of that report. So we know this intuitively that people can buy houses because they're too expensive, brands are growing up. People are paying more than 30% of their income in housing and that's not how it should be. People are losing their homes, people are being displaced, there's a problem. And then we came up with some recommendations. Only five, it's a framework. We did not say one, two, three, four, five is what we have to do. We have five very broad areas that we wanted the city council to look at and implement it. Yet the city to work together, get all the departments to work together, they don't right now. Increase the city's investment in housing and that depends so much on the federal government because that money is windowed. We're not gonna get as much money from the federal government that we haven't gotten in the past of the city is to spend more of our local money in housing. We have to increase production of our local housing which means for us, the need exists in housing. People, a household 60% AMI and less, that's $30,000 because that's where the greatest need is. Preservation, maintaining the housing that we have that's so good. We have a formal housing that's existing right now and we need to keep it. And then to invest in rehabilitation based on what needs fixing. Protect the remote neighborhoods. Number one, try to see something about the taxes that keep increasing. Number two, deal with the issue of displacement. And number three, reach into the community. Do outreach, you know, spend money. People going into the neighbor but then explaining why it's available for them and to identify what the needs are. And then the last one is to ensure accountability to the government. To make sure that we have an open and transparent system so that our community knows what we're doing and help us because that we need the participation of the community. And one of our recommendations was to redefine what used to be the old housing commission and the city council did it. We now have a housing commission that is responsible for oversight of the implementation of the mayor's housing policy task force that had never been done before. We have a Louvre discuss the readiness in the chair of that committee. She was the chair of our task force and we have one of the members here, Jessica Neville. We have nine members that were charged for doing that. And then at the end of the year, they're going to come up with a report of how we did. Now, what I would like to share with you, and after hearing Christine talk about and show pictures of the neighborhood, to me it's organic, it's visual because I did it in the neighborhood or until I was 13, the water would come to my knees and we thought it was great. It was raining, we got to go back there and get wet. But it was horrible to live in a house that you couldn't invest in because the rain wouldn't go into the house. And so to me, the usual housing is just like inside, it's in my style. And one of the things that I did when I got on the task force was to go back to 1990 and I reviewed 11 different plans, reports that have been done on housing. And what I found is that many of the recommendations are never implemented. Somebody takes and chooses what is implemented. Then I noticed that the things that are implemented are the things that are gonna make money for somebody. If it's something dealing with a homeless or a poor people or something that's gonna cost you, those things don't get done. So on the task force, another commission comes up, they make the same recommendation over and over. So one of the things we did was create that commission, hopefully, that would be done. But what I'm gonna tell you that at this point, I'm waiting, I'm waiting for some of our very first and important recommendations to be done, they have not been done. And this report was adopted in September of last year. One of the things we wanted the city to do when we're still waiting is to hire, create a position of top level housing person that knows what they're doing in housing because what's gonna happen to us, and we voted in total, we have crisis in the city and we don't know it. I don't think we know how bad it is. We, how many people know that San Antonio College offers students a parking lot for them to sleep at night. They're colleges that are offering their parking lots for them to sleep. That there have been what's called sweeps in districts three, six, eight, and 10 because they're encampments. People just create these encampments. So what does the city do? The city goes and does a sweep, which means take the people out of there and we don't know where they go. There's the displacement that's going on. I suggest that one of these days you go down Rason Street and Broadway, that neighborhood is totally disappearing. Or take a ride down Probat and Flores and see what's happening to the same building of Jesus Saint Henry's neighborhood. It's almost gone. Houses enable in, I think of neighborhoods as being churches. Christ the King, St. Agnes, Sacred Heart. Just look at some of those houses, they're little houses. They're not gonna be there. It's right now people are buying entire blocks because I think those are the next K-Mart and Walmart for the people who live downtown. And so we have a crisis. But I wanted to ask you what I want because this is a wonderful group of people who are doing so much at every level. You're locally, statewide, nationally, and internationally. You have connections all over the world. And every single one of you is people that do a lot already. And I want to, I make a list of the people who I brought over here today. Institutions like the Archdiocese of San Antonio, like the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, the COPS Metro, I think there were some representatives here. The San Antonio Religious Leadership and Civic Engagement Project has multi-faceted the several congregations of the sisters here. People from the center housing. My husband and I have a table of people in the Senate in the housing oversight coalition. One of my biggest homes because they're young people. And what would happen if we all made a priority? Like, I don't know what can be done, but there's got to be a lobby for housing. There is no lobby for housing. So this beautiful report that I'm so proud of can be just one more that sits there and there's my leader totally frustrated that I've been doing this for decades, for decades. And I'm not frustrated, I apologize for giving you this, but something has to be done and I don't know what it will take. There is the group like I said housing. The city needs to have more respect and more attention given to our nonprofits because they are not the city competes with them. Instead of helping them thrive and we need to change that, you know, how we do it. I don't know the answer. I don't know the answer. I just know that there have to be a lot more people with crowds, with resources, and particularly with the things that we have been charged with. And this is how we get the report. But I was reading this that I was very moved by academic 2018 when I read it the first time and I'm going to close with those words. I'm eating up my time. I'm sorry, but I have to read this one. And it says, it's about all things the church does, good things, and that the bishop say. Yet, we cannot pretend that soup kitchens and shelters represent a truly human and effective response to poverty and homelessness. Charitable efforts cannot substitute for public policies that offer real opportunities and dignity for the poor. Shelters cannot substitute for real housing for low income families and poor individuals. We owe our sisters and brothers more than a cot and a blanket for the night. We owe them a chance for a better life and opportunity to live a life of dignity and decent housing. And this is a tremendous charge for us. And I'll close with this, that I consider when we are saying that we represent the vulnerable or that we want to help the poor, the level of responsibility that's on us to deliver is great because they cannot defend themselves. So thank you. Two or three sounds to the sisters. The sisters created a committee in the city and they did determine that affordable service enriched housing was that most acute need. So for those years, the sisters concerned whether or not they should start something from scratch or whether they should align with an entity that already and we're seeing housing in endeavor covered in affordable housing. And they created a corporation. The sisters here locally became members of the board and some of you are in this room right now. And over the 24 years, we've had sister members of the board of directors, but they also happen to be the very same members of the SRI seat board of directors. So the two organizations have run down a parallel road together with some of the same leadership. Sister Jane Ann Slater has been involved with Reset Housing Texas from the very beginning. She is unwavering in her desire to make change in this community. And she has been an inspiration to me as a leader. She is also the chancellor of the Irish Diocese. I'm an honor to her and she's a dear friend. So when I got out of the venues, it said, and Sister Diedling, God rest her soul. And I met with Maria and she said, the new sisters have been in this community for over a hundred years. You have the university, you have our and you don't. She was like, so we, she said, you need to get involved in mixing changes. She said, we investigate, talk to Maria, talk to city officials of our board and came up with the conclusion that affordable housing with enriched service support would be the focus. Reset came into being 24 years ago, almost 25. And I was asked to be on the board, I was not in leadership anymore and asked to be on the board from the beginning and foundations that put up some funds or loans and to get this started. And as we went through the process, mercy housing was a good investment at the beginning or a good collaboration because they had the infrastructure, they had the legal means and the financial means and bookkeeping means and so on to get this off and running. What they didn't understand was Texas politics. They were in Denver and we were here and they needed to have, they need to move along as they had been directing them in other areas. They had a funding source, they had a rehab source and everything was multifamily. Susan, who was the first president in percent, was a, Susan is a networker. She is a relational person. She develops relationships, trust relationships and so it has to be written this about four years and the pipeline that mercy housing talked about wasn't being developed. We had one little property in Somerset which was very small and it just, they were not happy. The folks in Denver were not happy with what we said it was doing and they were, how it happened to be at the time the chair of the board, a sister of Carol Ann Jokers had begun as the first chair and she alluded to corpus and I think I was here in San Antonio. So we had, I need to talk to the, well actually I want to bring in Rufus Whitley, Father Rufus Whitley came to one of our meetings and he said, you know what you need to do is incorporate separately from mercy housing. Now, a sister of mine in Providence, the name of our organization was said it wasn't mercy. So when we looked at separating it was an easier separation because we had a name that was different from mercy housing but we used their structure, their means, we used what they had begun with and it served us well, it served us quite well but we did separately incorporate and in preparing to do that and call the superiors of all the congregations, we had no money. We had no money but what I kept saying was I wanted, we wanted permission to separately incorporate and I said, we're poised. Susan has done the groundwork, the development of relationships, we're poised to move forward. We have trust in the community and we're ready and they, God bless all of them, said, okay, go for it. So we did separately incorporate as mercy housing in Texas. While we were without this, we had the assistance of some other attorneys and what we have to do in mercy housing is came into being and we were able to get funding through all kinds of sources because we collaborated, Susan has set us up to collaborate with so many organizations and the rest is history. So currently, that's in a nutshell, the history and today we have 1,750 apartment units around in Texas, in South Texas and in around the state, other places. We have repaired over 630 homes. Homes that are over-occupied and have severe challenges either the water tanks falling through the floor or the bathroom doesn't, it barely holds up people up. The roof is leaking, there's a hole in the porch. Whatever it is, these homes have not been brought up to code, but the failed flaw has been repaired so that the people can continue living there in safety and quality of life. We have renovated over, we have renovated 22 homes that were either abandoned or in a neighborhood that were crack houses or dope houses that were ringing the neighborhood down. Those homes have been, have been totally rebuilt and Versailles has assisted the persons to purchase those homes, which has not only helped the people who purchased the homes, but the people in the neighborhood have fixed up their homes as well. So the neighborhoods have improved on this. We have provided resident services support for 2,670 families in our resident services program in the multifamily housing units. The six original congregations that are the founding congregations are the Sisters of Cherry, the Chariot Bird, the Sisters of Divine Providence, the Missionary Cactus of Divine Providence, the Sisters of the Order of St. Benedict, the Daughters of Cherry, and the Sisters of the Holy Spirit. And we are, we agree at that time that there would be the availability of people to Sisters to serve on the board and to make sure that the spirit and bounty mission of Merced was certainly maintained. And I think we have, we're celebrating, we're celebrating 25 years soon. We have so much energy for Susan for being the leader that she is. And she, not only did she lead us well, but she made sure that the transition from her leading Merced would be passed over to Kristen, Naomi Love, who is, it's been a seamless transition. So Merced is alive and well, and we're so happy that you're here and that we're so happy to tell you about it. So thank you. Catch from Mercy Housing League to local needs. Their work was solely multifamily housing. And they used a certain financing vehicle of low-income housing tax credits. One of the things that made me very happy was that we then could really respond. You've seen pictures tonight of some dilapidated homes. And we started maybe like 2010 or so. And it started and I never had parked in front of her house and she had a plane going up to her porch. And she was standing in the doorway. She waved to me and she said, hi, should I walk up on the plane? And she said, yes, I was gonna help her search some snacks. And I went in the bathroom and I realized that she didn't have hot water. And then I went in the kitchen and I realized that she had boxes on her stove so her stove wasn't being used to cook. So that was what we get to help us. And I asked a friend who was a manager of one of our multifamily properties. And she said, I'll send my man over. So we replaced her water heater and we helped with some electrical repairs. And that was house number one. And yes, we fixed her porch. And Robert Como is here tonight to tell you about another house. Never has so much time and so much money gathering happened for one house. But this isn't just the story of a house. It's a story of every view we've been talking about. Thank you very much for this. Four years ago on a Friday evening, some of you may have met Mary Lou because when she was in her mid 90s, she got involved with social response from the best of the coalition. Mary Lou said, you know, he's got a problem and I need you to fix it. I said, hello Mary. Miguel also says from Mary Lou transporting her fixing things in her apartment running errands. We later learned that he had done asking nothing in return. He is a good man, a simple man, a loving man, but he was dealt a bad hand. And when Mary Lou called, it was just a few weeks before the 2014 election. So I told her I'd be glad to help. She said, no, we will meet with him at 10 o'clock and I don't like that. You know, Mary Lou, you know, that's what she said. At 10 o'clock in the morning, another wife, Rob Louping, has been hospitalized and while Miguel was with her, she wanted to buy the house, a six-year-old Queen Anne home that Miguel and Rob Louping had lived in for 50 years. We're told that the house wasn't for sale. The man said, don't you know that they had to come and bulldoze your house and sit in the building? That afternoon, the man was seen taking pictures over the back fence and that was the beginning of Miguel's problems. Five days prior to my meeting with Miguel, the city of San Antonio, a ten-in-a-letter statement, they were bulldozed his home within 30 days. Miguel, with a fourth grade education, working since he was eight and soul support with his family since he was 14, was spending every penny taking care of Rob Louping, who was praying for a liberal and kiddie transplant that she'd never received. Miguel, himself, had a bill-maker heart attack one years earlier. Every one of their spirits came to the medical expenses. You can see this picture up there. After arranging this image here on a piece of drywall, the rain had come to the licky roof. And Miguel had great devotion to Rob Louping, his wife, as well as Louping. But Miguel also had looked about a year into our work. And very early in the dying age of 102. And sadly, early in the years, Miguel also had only a dollar. Councilmember Diego Bernal advised us how to slow down the process of them bulldozing the house. And Rob Loup would turn it, which was to occur on the center of the 15th, if we lost the bulldozers who had come and demolished the home. So we had to act fast to secure his final possession. Architect David Loup raised the Rob Loup structure in New York at X-FARTS to inspect and they determined the home could and should be safe. In the meantime, Diego was now to go out to state representative. There were 12 others seeking the appointment to city council. On December 10th, instead of using my three ministers, told them I made a purchase. What I did was I talked to the city and I thought they should be cleaning, helping Miguel to the world, not having bulldozers around. I invited them to a work party to pack up the household belongings and secure them in case the bulldozers came. The next day, the council chose for virtual convenience. And the following day, I worked out the council would be doing to find me about that block tonight on Friday night. He returned my call. I convinced him to join us the next morning for our work party that began at X-FARTS. The new councilman asked if he could come at 8.30 to personally inspect the house, since as an architect, he could see for himself if the home could be safe. On that Saturday, December 13th, his second day in office, a council member came to inspect the house. The solid was filled with lights, but he thoroughly expected that the technology they could be safe and needed a lot of work. And that was an ownership, it really needed a lot. When we walked out the front door, he and I were both surprised to see over 50 neighbors who had come to help us secure their house and to help the calisthenics. In moving to the storage facility, one box fell off the trailer, a box full of their best dishes. But it was so well packed, I bought them to your neighbors, that nothing broke. This show of support from neighbors, I believe, convinced the judge on Monday to give Miguel some of the state of execution. With grants from Brazil, Housing, Texas, and the San Antonio Commodation Society, with help from the New York Green Family Foundation, the USAA Foundation, from the Calisthenics Chair of the Foundation, the amazing, hateful for hope volunteers and investors, a help from the San Antonio Center of Housing Corporation and its successful Federation, we were able to satisfy the city of San Antonio, which has then released us from the demolition part. We had the steering committee of three, Patrick Tom Heeter, President of the Ministry, myself, and my heroine, and a friend of 37 years, Maria Garrianova, who lives right on the corner from Miguel. So me, Bruce Tom, and I had our first set house in Texas in the fall of 2015. Bruce Tom offered to do an end-of-the-year fundraiser from Miguel's home. This suggested that they should take over the supervision of the renovations of most managers. Believe me, that managers would not donate for the project being done by managers. They wanted to ensure quality and permanence. It was a sad moment that I knew that there was a guy and then Bruce had a house and were acting as managers. So thank you very much, Susan, for your participation since that time. And by the way, it may not be my place to vote, but I'm going to do it anyway. Under Canada today, the city of San Antonio, the right thing to manage you and establish a Susan Sheeran Greater Builder Award. Is that correct? So congratulations, Bill. We've had several home federations. We've seen plenty of program of assistance to save Miguel's home. Upon completion of one interior wall, and I think the commentator could level that, then we have union electricians and union plumbers volunteers who will rewire and re-plumb the house. About four of them will be electrical supplies. Union sheet metal workers will be doing the finials that will race through. And union communication workers will wirefoot, perform the internet. I'll be a nun to all of you, but CVS will totally weatherize the home. And let me repeat my phrase, we're hanging from hope ambassadors who have done this greatly, the sanding, the painting, that will take and float the drywall. As one participant said, we are rebuilding this house as we rebuild our lives. They're terrific workers inspiring to work with. They're women and men who are in rehab for growing alcohol addiction. And they're just phenomenal individuals. We have some six months forward many volunteers for professional services. We've been very prudent with our resources, but we still need to help in their shed house in Texas. We have about 60,000 models of work fixtures, appliances, babies, and air condition. A sincerity that Miguel and Juan will destroy plus the main route of future involvement help our attention to the gentrification that is running people out of their homes. I hope that never again happens in San Antonio. I believe in what Maria wrote. The responsibility belongs to all of us. We need to see housing as a human right and a matter of justice. We help people with their housing needs because it is the right thing to do. Wouldn't it have been wonderful to get a building that's loaned where they could have corrected problems when they started before they got out of hand? You could have asked for quality of life probably extended your lives. The loan could be repaid so the feathers you're paying should make no longer need the home. Thanks to Councilman Trevino who has built his standards for what has been reconstituted and compassion is now a component. Miguel's home is now a landmark home. This home will last another couple of years. We've come a long way. I think we've come a pain in the leg with the long-term solution that the Mayor's Housing Policy Task Force recommends. But as Maria said, we must remain visual and make sure that the recommendations are followed. So, Maria, we flew to work to develop a task force and your fidelity to decision. When we complete this challenge of saving Miguel's home I am perfectly willing to leave or rehabbing homes to your set with this history of double-do-do. 630 order options have become more habitable. We have been very happy to leave this work to the incredible professionals who have ever seen people like Jesse Florence over here and his staff who have done this job. And if I just think about that, soon the other one who is behind the stage is here for her assistance in putting this together. But thanks very much for your attention. Inspiration. Your tenacity is amazing. Thank you. Telling you about the time when we detached from Mercy Housing and we were having what we call a work session at our office a ten-year father workers of the Mercy Housing, Texas. You know, in my life and I think this is provided in your life just when you needed the help or just when you needed the insight that person is there. So we were sitting around the table in our office and we went in our articles and they said please the soul and word of your corporation to exit and we are right. Oh my goodness, that's a fabulous idea. Mercy saw it as a way up for now and we saw it as a way for us to continue our life. For that Father Rufus I'm always very thankful to you and we've been hearing some local stories here about investment of time and talent and dollars and Father Rufus is going to talk to us about what investments he's been involved in. Three documents that just sort of pass them around and it gives you an idea of one of the things I'm going to say in the end but it's about accountability in terms of impact investing and the type of reports that people are beginning to do. I should have made more copies than I've probably done and we don't need this. I would probably go through this very quickly but that's someone who's always told me I should do an outline. I can't tell you if it makes sense when we're finished. Like you had an outline, you can tell by teacher from our land and lake university and construction class that I learned one thing and it's hard to sort of generally a context. One of the things that I was asked to do was to try to situate what is called impact investing within the tradition of theology Catholic social teaching. It's almost impossible to do but I decided to start at least within the US context with what was written in 1986 it was a pivotal step by the Catholic patients with their pastoral economic justice for all. The first one they wrote was the famous peace pastoral. This one was the second one and if you take what they said this is as applicable today as it was in 1986 but they started off the very first paragraph that said there are three questions when you look at the economy putting your own mind instead of buying in some investment or whatever does the economy what does investing do for people what does it do to people and how do people participate in it and if you want a good example if you just think back on what you have heard today that question frees and realizes it could do that in any way and it's certainly the last question how do people participate you've heard the story of how so many people can participate you've heard a wonderful story of people who came out to help save the yellow sacks how do people participate to make a special response to the individual if you move on they try to specify what those three questions might mean in terms of what they identified as safe principles in the top when you look at finances when you look at anything within a social economy you've got the reference again you'll notice many of the things that James referred to and Correa referred to in terms of the question of the goals of what people should look at one of the most pivotal statements in that document was in section 354 which was the first time explicitly the church in the United States said we are an economic actor and we are responsible for our economic decisions we threw it again it was a pivotal time to save and it grows out really badly to the understanding of all the status of the church in the modern world subsequent to the past the Catholic Bishops Conference set up a committee that wrote or called the investment for the United States Catholic Conference which would by essentially be the church interestingly we had that last beyond 2000 institutionally in regards to writing but this is still now certainly needs some work but basically what they said when we're looking at how we invest our financial resources our pension funds we need to keep three things in mind in our investments we should do no need do no harm we should be active participants with the investments we made and thirdly we should develop positive strategies to use our finances for the common good they practice some of the things you've heard positive strategies to promote the common good housing is common good do no harm avoid investments that lead to gentrification to destroy communities participation if you have investments in housing companies in the public sector engage them try to encourage them thanks if you think participating is explicit or implicit red light might touch on the topic in terms of the broader invested perspective in terms of investments in the public markets that's what most people are equated with your 401ks are generally invested in the public markets companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange or foreign exchange or government debt corporate debt anything that's immediately valuable in terms of how the church and people and institutions responding was first to develop strategies which would be to say we will not invest in these things and they pass them on to their investment managers so means they weren't excluded and really constituent the next step was to move to advocacy that is active participation moving from do no evil to active participation and the examples of that are the seriously low process they have active engagement with the people in whom you invest to share over the resolution and that was the period of time where you saw the creation of the catholic coalitions the responsible investment one of which was tax inscribed which became stripped and everybody told a story into the lead of my suspense I was young barely were they and we had what became the first meeting of what became tax inscribed with the religious leadership that Mike provided to Christian Renewal Center in Houston, Texas and we brought around two people to give presentations to one is Mike Crossley who recently passed away from another prophetic capture and then a layman who was head of the ICCR at the time and they gave a presentation and then we invited the religious community to see if we could get to doing something and here is the story and I mean this respectfully I looked over the room congregations and women religious were having these heated dialogues Mike had already made a decision which was fine for me but I looked at one group of women religious the Karnichord sisters in Houston and at the superior general who was sort of sitting in the park and weren't discussing well I found out that she ruled with an iron fist they had already made their decision too so if anything is wrong about it maybe you can take a respect something about iron fist or order sometimes makes things more official this also led to the creation and the active involvement of groups in the more academic groups the ICCR which has now grown to include many civil order organizations but to begin to see a movement from the treaty to active advocacy and then there's the third step which I think is just becoming very fruitful and it's beginning to say proactive investment let's use our money to do some good and there are sort of two ways to tell the value one of the more historical ways is what's called ESG environment social and governmental characteristics and basically what we say is an investment manager or investors choose companies or products to invest in of companies that have very positive ESG criteria whether it be across the board or in terms of the key ESG criteria for it that's sort of the proactive investment in the public market what is really can become quite quite an effort is the evolution of proactive investment in the private markets the private markets are the investments that you put money in and it's in for a long term it's private equity in terms of buyouts venture, life science technology, infrastructure would be some examples I always hesitate examples of names names that you would recognize probably aren't very good in this but when you see David Rubin sign get it all David Rubin signs Blackstone which is one of the largest private equity firms in the world and I'm sorry David Rubin signs Carlyle but their big firms like that are also much smaller and they tended would have been good my son said taking a step back ESG principles in the private markets would include concern about supply change issues environmental issues labor issues community issues it begins to broaden an investment plan in the private market to think about what is the output that is produced an example in one of the ones I passed around is 8 miles which is an African focused fund which is very specific on their ESG goals and for the court you'll see they go through labor issues, health issues the impact they're having on the community and they have a plan for each year that they apply in a sense it morphes into impact because it affects the community but when they first went into it it was more in terms of ESG one of the important issues in all of this is the difference between what is called output and output as long as the firm is in control of what's happening you can control the result but when they ask which means they sell it to somebody else it becomes an issue about how do you guarantee what you've done in the short term and take these into the long term but moving beyond the ESG is the development into impact investing and a lot of it has to do with the sustainable development roles of the United Nations in other words it's become sort of the end of the impact on the community and by that I mean if you're going to call yourself a fund that's doing impact investing you have to almost measure yourself against these 17 goals not necessarily reach each one of them but that has to be the focus and target of your investments projects investments that will advance the elimination of poverty from the elimination of hunger and you probably see the goals more like that that's sort of the big matrix of the sustainable development goals and when you look at some of the reports I've passed around you'll see that the specific investments they'll have the actual sustainable development goals that picture decided which is the target of the outcome when you talk about impact investing to attain those goals within the private market most people make a distinction between concessional environment where you return concessional investment means you expect a return it's not the latter but you're willing to accept less of a return financially in terms of what you would expect for a similar investment in the sense that saying impact goal is important enough that I'm willing to sacrifice for religious groups the money that's being invested in this way is generally used in terms of the returns to advance a social goal so you're balancing a lot of things or endowments for education or whatever so it is somewhat of a balance category two it's where you go into it and the project is going to achieve sustainable development goals but it's also going to give you what's considered a market-ready return and that's where a lot of emphasis is today the trade-off generally very honestly is there's a high risk profile in more traditional investments so a lot of things sort of switch between the two nobody moves out and really loudly says I'm a concessional investment but anyway you need to think about it in terms of that I was asked to give some examples in Sadie's Carefully but I also want to say very fatically which is one of the disclosures I'm not recommending I'm not giving you any investment advice anyway what is shared interest which is definitely concessional investment the organizers down in Texas I think I'm right this is not a change which basically focuses on women's empowerment through economic development projects in sub-Saharan Africa spent around for a long time was one of the ways of responding to the elimination of change in South Africa Michael West is a based in Silver Spring, Maryland and is a fund that basically funds microfinance institutions throughout the world their footprint is just amazing they also were listed in IA 50 which is sort of the go-to list of impact investment groups that have been successful and have a good track record and maybe both concessional impact investments but if you go and look at that list and the website is there if a group is there it has a good track record interesting the Pontifical Mission Society through one of their subsidiaries Missy on Invest is launching a concessional investment project that would see in the specialty of Africa church profitable in terms of crop production both for the local communities but also that the income that is generated from the local church in Africa if it's successful it will be quite a set in terms of market rate of returns some examples so that means you give the money to an investment manager who is qualified by the SEC and is regulated and all the other stuff and they pool the money together of a lot of groups and turn around and invest it for you decision asset management which is based in St. Louis grossed out with the dollars of charity has completed two impact funds each one of about $50 million in his recent money for the third Morgan Stanley just started applying an impact solutions fund which was we were talking about advocacy it's the outgrowth of the work of the Dominican sisters in their interest in climate solutions they worked three or four years and finally Morgan Stanley came up with something and it obviously responds to the NOC and is the same development goal about her set New River Urban which is one of the largest investment firms in the world has just developed the first impact fund which focuses on all the SDGs and interestingly the ones above I know something about I just want to one copy but I'm interested in KKR if you've read Barbarian and Gates that's the foundation of KKR later decided to do a global impact fund which for me was just basically I don't know anything about it but it got a lot of good press but it shows you the idea of impact investing is beginning to move into the larger first there are also direct funds which means they do one thing you're in and one of them I passed around Silverlake Institute which is a venture fund in Sub-Saharan Africa their book like this this stick their impact investment report each year LLR which is also mentioned in the IA 50 is a venture fund that focuses on microfinance and education in India, black America interestingly in Mexico institutions that work with people to be able to make the down payments on a affordable housing and inspired by lotions African resource efficiency fund and W.R.B.Sara is a clean energy fund focused on charity in black America so to say it's just to give you an idea of what's out there something's out there it doesn't mean anything it's not anything real it's just to give you an idea of the place finishing up very very quickly on the theoretical issues in terms of the public markets and moving to the proactive type of investments and even the private markets I think it's important to begin to merge two things you've got to still continue to do no need to apply the scraper so you eliminate certain things from the investment universe and then ask yourself what you're the best in terms of proactive investment secondly to be aware of very much the issue between output and outcomes and to look at especially in the private markets when people exit how do they guarantee or set in place structures that the good output they've accomplished will be continued by the successors and you can think of impact investment three states philanthropic grants are very important to get along many times firms that do impact investment start out of a philanthropic grant it gives them the initial C capital and manage the money they did many times to move to concessional products to then finally true market rate return one of the things I think we've got to begin to think about is what I call crossing impact investments to begin to dialogue with people that are in the private markets to look at what they're doing and see if they can expand the impact focus so it may be a blend type of thing where I think that is some of the infrastructure funds road building, access certainly rural areas to markets is important and I do some of that and also some of it will be more traditional life science funds investment in products that will address diseases in the developing world where there is not much of a profit open with other investments I think we're going to see more in that anyway quick caveat he gets you thinking is it possible to be careful with just screening use of the CC Crack Fury which came out in November of 2003 one of my hangers so to be honest if you look at it it's dating back 2003 there's a lot that's happening in the world since 2003 one of them climate change between November 2003 U.S. CC guidelines you won't see a lot of climate change so it's just a way of saying as a church people in leadership probably need to suggest that this is time to look at that again with the right people is it possible for a product to be ESD sensitive and not careful I don't think the two are co-existent third question are all impact efforts necessary to be careful it's trying to say that we have some specific and I'd say for the faith community in general we have some specific concerns that may not just be covered by ESG principles for impact and just to say for those of you who have been involved in private market investments many times you'll run into people that say well you take it or leave it that's not true it's very possible through the use of sign letters to get yourself excluded from investment that you would find unacceptable I use the U.S. context in U.S. letters but if you look at any of the broader statements of the recent post and even many of the many of the statements of many of the groups most of them will end up saying something like the purpose of the economy or the market or finances is to serve the economy with human advancement and I think one of the newest things that's being seen and Maria mentioned that degenification is certainly an example of it is the generational issue what are we leaving I can't say for my kids I can't say for some of you for your kids it sort of gets down to it's not the purpose of humanity to serve maximization not in the short term but rather the purpose of the economy of the market is to serve humanity and you see that playing out in a lot of ways before exorcism in 1980 one which defined the role of the economy in terms of human dignity and work so human being self esteem comes up with respect for the work which is very better than today but you've gotten a whole series practically anytime a whole price about anything you end up getting the common thing there and basically what they're developing is to say there's not anything that's particularly perfect or not there's a set about it and you have to compete any economic system against those set about it and you see the critique of socialism is that it basically does away with respect for the individual and the critique of capitalism it runs the race of non-respecting kind of you can see some of that housing issues that we've talked about today I think that's it those are the disclosures I have to give thank you and I hope I can stay fairly close to it I didn't mention your name we still thank you for anything you may have done to make this event happen Sister Veronica with that