 I want to welcome all of you to the grand opening for Thomas Heights. My name is Greg Payne. I'm a development officer at Avesta Housing. As many of you know, there are far too many people in our city who are struggling in this housing environment right now. The gap, the housing gap, that exists between the cost of the housing that people need and the incomes that they have has grown so wide that a minimum wage earner needs to work 100 hours a week, 52 weeks a year to afford an apartment just like one of these on the private market today. And that housing gap is the single biggest reason why over 2100 different households are right now waiting on waiting lists for one of Avesta's apartments, including, by the way, 108 people who are already waiting for one of the 18 apartments here, which has already just opened up in January. In addition, we had over 3,300 different households call us last year seeking an affordable place to live because there are so few resources and such light turnover we were only able to help about 400. But that same housing gap and the profound, harmful effect that it has on the lives of so many people across the state is also what drives practitioners and advocates and policymakers to work so hard to create the affordable housing that every single one of us needs. So when we make forward progress and we have a day like today where we have 18 new, beautiful, highly energy efficient apartments that are affordable to some of the very people most left vulnerable in this housing market, that's something to recognize and hold up and celebrate. We have a few special guests with us today who are going to help us do just that. Senator Justin Alfond represents this district. He is a former board member of Avesta Housing and he was a strong supporter of the housing bond that made this project and so many others like it across the state financially feasible. Senator Alfond, please come on up. So good morning and I am Justin Alfond. I am proud to be the state senator for most of the city of Portland and it is terrific to see so many faces. I know mostly the reason they're here is not because of me or any of us but I think it's because of Utah. So I really do. So there are a lot of people here and my job is just to represent to talk about one other state representative here, Drew Gatine. Drew Gatine from Westbrook is here and does an incredible job leading the Health and Human Services Committee which all of you should really get to know Drew because he's doing incredible work. So representative Gatine. So great leadership matters and people say that a lot but I tell you what after serving on the board of Avesta for six years, Dana, his development directors, staff, the committed board, they do incredible work. I'm telling you for the small group of committed citizens that are involved in Avesta, they pull their weight in more and can I just have a huge applause for Avesta. So finding opportunities to build affordable housing matters wherever you live but especially in this city. We just heard some stats but we know that the cost of living is incredibly high and we also know the cost of developing is staggering right now. In fact, the story of housing is actually very complicated. I know there's a lot of developers out there including myself that doesn't developing and we all come to these events and we say wow, this is incredible, how'd this happen? Well it started with an idea and that idea hit a roadblock and then it started with finding a solution to that roadblock and then it hit another roadblock but people like Avesta and the committed folks here every time a roadblock happened, every time a cost overrun happened, every time that something got in the way they found a solution and that's why we took a property, a single family property and turned it into 19 affordable housing units. It's pretty incredible and it's something that we all should be proud of. So mission matters, Avesta since 1972. I wasn't even born in 1972. In 1972 Avesta launched and the launching of Avesta seemed to be pretty remarkable. I think someone should be a storyteller, not me, about that beginning but they said we need to do innovation and we need to do housing and we needed to make it affordable and they have continued to do that all over Maine and all over New Hampshire. We know that affordability right now is something we're all talking about and all struggling with and you know a recent national report found the gap between incomes and housing costs in Maine is among highest in the nation. That's kind of remarkable. We think of Maine as a small little place and we wouldn't think that we would have that ranking but we do. It's places like Portland and Southern York County. This gap is particularly bad. We need to do all we can to build better homes that people can afford and Thomas Heights is a great example of what we can do together. So we know that affordable housing can't be solved by one part of government and we know that government can't do it all alone either but when we start looking at what happened with this project it took local government, state government and the federal government all coming together with committed private folks and a Vesta to make this happen and that's collaboration and in a day where a lot of people are thinking about doing it themselves and creating this myth about pulling off our bootstraps by ourselves I need them to take a look at Thomas Heights. I need them to look at what happens when you have this collaboration because this wouldn't have happened alone. It wouldn't have happened with a lot of interested parties saying we can do better. The state of Maine had a big critical role in this. In 2009, if people can remember back then the green affordable housing bond was approved by the 2009 legislature. It was a single largest source of funding for this project. It shows what an important tool state bonding can be for critical infrastructure problems like housing. So this housing bond not only did it make this project feasible to ensure 18 local people have access to affordable homes they need but it also sparked the development of nearly 900 affordable housing units statewide for seniors, families and those with disabilities. $47 million in green affordable bond housing funds leveraged another $100 million in private and public dollars to create a total of $150 million in new development around the state. So investments in affordable housing means jobs for Maine workers. We know that. I mean in this project alone it looks like 165 construction jobs happen to make this happen. So those are jobs that people are going home with a great paycheck every single week and we need more of those paychecks going home. It also means that we're doing other objectives like with Thomas Heights like focusing on energy efficiency, smart growth principles and it's something that we all should lift up and really celebrate. So I want to wish the residents of Thomas Heights all the success, happiness that you can find in these beautiful new units and I also just want to shout out to Tom that your leadership not only in the city of Portland but in the state of Maine matters and not only are you coming up with your strong voice around so many important issues but you're giving other people the confidence to come up with you and to engage in politics and show off their political muscles just like you. Thank you Tom. Thanks Justin. Portland Mayor Ethan Strimling has made housing affordability one of his highest priorities. He's also been very deeply involved in these issues for quite some time. We really appreciate his presence with us here today. Please join me in welcoming Portland's Mayor Ethan Strimling. Thank you very much. One of the first acts I took as the mayor was to create a task force, a housing task force because as we all know certainly in this room and as I think most people in Portland understand we have a real crisis around housing in this community and with that committee put five counselors on that committee which means it's a majority of the council gave it great power to be able to take action and that committee has been meeting now for the past five or six months but the second thing I did other than creating that committee is to appoint the person who I thought was perfect to be able to make this work both intentional and impactful over time and that person is Councillor Jill Dusan who's right in the back here. Just want to make sure that we acknowledge her work. I can't, I really can't emphasize strongly enough her work. She has been incredibly methodical about this making sure that every step of the way we are doing the due diligence we have to do to get this right and I know that I think even in this month is when they might actually start moving some pieces off the table to start bringing forward to the council so pay attention to the committee but I can assure you they're going to come forward with some very strong proposals to help deal with the crisis and if you don't understand the crisis just think about that number of 110. 110 people right now would like to live in this building who cannot. 110, that means we could have built six more of these and they'd be full right now. That tells you what we are confronting in the City of Portland. Rents have gone up 40% in the last five years, vacancy near zero. What is a vacancy rate when you have 110 people on a waiting list? It's negative. That's the kind of crisis we're confronting right now and why I'm so proud to be here with Avesta, with the state, with the local community. City of Portland was able to put about half a million dollars into this. As Justin said the state put in 1.2, Avesta did the hard work. That's the kind of public-private government relationship we want to be able to build the kind of housing that we need in this city to make our city more affordable. So I want to thank Avesta from the bottom of my heart for doing this. I want to thank, I want to appreciate all the tenants who have found a place to live. I know that Avesta understands this work and they look in the eyes of those tenants every day and they know what it means to them, what you have done. So thank you, Avesta, and in particular thank you, Dana. You don't get enough credit for all the work you do in this city. Thank you. And last but not least, I do want to thank Thomas. Thomas really has done remarkable work. He and I got to chat at the Solstice Visual last week and I got to learn a little bit about his background and what he's done for the city. And Dana was telling me a little bit about it as well a couple of weeks ago. And people like you make our city great. People like you are turning this city into the kind of place that we all wanted to become. Thank you for your commitment. And I think, as Senator Alfon said, thank you for inspiring people to come with you because that's the best part of this work. So thank you, Thomas. And thank you all for being here today. Thanks, Ethan. You know, I do want to say too, it does make things a lot easier because the elected officials are as supportive as they are at the local, state, and federal level. We do have representatives here from Senator Collins, Senator King, and Representative Pingry's office too. And I just want to acknowledge the fact that we work closely with them all the time and appreciate their work on these issues. I want to take a minute here to acknowledge the hard work of the team at Avesta that put this project together and continues to make it work. Shreya Shah and Todd Rothstein spent many, many months working on the development and construction of this project. And when they were done, they handed the keys over to Charlotte Simpson who is our day-to-day property manager here and to Shannon McMahon who oversees the maintenance here to Jessica Goudel who does resident service coordination for the 18 people who live here. I do also, as Ethan just did, want to recognize the extraordinary leadership of Dana Totman and the Board of Directors represented here today by Chumba Columba, Carol Billington, Glenn Blackall, Rebecca Greenfield, and Peter Bass. Thank you all so much for your ongoing work every day and your leadership. Before we move on to kind of the last part of this program and I think we can get into how we came to name this Thomas Heitz. I know many of you are interested in that. I do also want to recognize some of our key partners who worked with us over the course of years to make this a reality. David Lloyd and Dave Mealy from Archetype Architects did a fantastic job. Simon Hebert from Hebert Construction Bob Metcalf and Sashi Misner from Mitchell & Associates are landscape architects. Cito Selinger, our counsel and minister. The great team at Boston Capital represented here today by Jennifer Howard. Corbin Finlands, an ongoing part of the work we do and I don't think he usually gets much credit for his work day to day. Same with Sonya Charest, the construction services person from Maine Housing who worked on this project from the get-go. Finally, there's two people I was realizing when I was thinking about all this we're always in the background. Never get the recognition they really deserve and I want to call them out here. Rick Churchill is the loan officer from Maine Housing who worked on this project and Mary Davis is the city staff who we worked with so closely. You know, I think that many of you haven't had the distinct pleasure of trying to get one of these projects to a construction loan closing that is permanent loan closing. It is not for the faint of heart. There are about a gazillion documents that a gazillion people need to be happy with. There's rules and regulations that never end. There's all sorts of opportunities to make obstacles or to create new ones and that happens sometimes, too much. But what is so nice is that Rick and Mary are solution-oriented people who knock down, help us get past obstacles and don't create them and I just want to give them a special shout out because they're such good partners and such consistent allies in our work. Thank you both. All right, so when this project reached its construction phase we really started putting a lot of time and effort into thinking about what we wanted its permanent name to be. We knew we wanted to make special outreach to the veteran community and it's clear you don't have to be a veteran to live here. We don't have a preference for veterans in the formal sense of the word preference. But we knew from our work with our partners that there's a whole lot of veterans in this community who sacrifice so much and don't have the basic necessity of a place to call home. And so we wanted to do all we could with these apartments to help serve them. So as we were thinking about that we realized what a great opportunity we had to recognize a local veteran who's inspired us and so many others with his efforts to address the causes and conditions of homelessness. Thomas Potosik is a community organizer at Preble Street. He's also a strong and passionate advocate, a leader amongst his peers and simply a kind, kind person who cares deeply about ending homelessness in our state. To help us with Tom's introduction, I'd like to ask our good friend Mark Swan, the executive director of Preble Street, to please come on out. So, good morning everyone. What we first noticed about Tom Potosik was that he was a voracious reader when he was struggling with his own homelessness. Some days he would sit in the Preble Street day shelter and a little bit set off from the more hectic parts of the room and he would sit there reading a book and often his friend and ours, Marsha, would be sitting with him at that table they'd be swapping stories and getting to know each other and they became close friends. Marsha Frank, who passed away last year, was like Tom a veteran of the U.S. Navy. Like Tom, she also experienced unemployment that led to homelessness and like Tom, she became an advocate with homeless voices for justice. Tom and Marsha together became fierce forces for change. They fought for veterans who served their country demanding that their country have their backs when times were tough. Tom, I hope you know how very proud Marsha would be of you today and all that Thomas Heights is about. So, we learned that Tom is a reader and a learner and is really smart and creates relationships that are meaningful and he is passionate about doing the right thing and saying the right thing. When Tom became housed, he joined Homeless Voices for Justice and he soon became an important voice that people started listening to. His own life experience of being a veteran who became homeless and his unique power to use language to describe that experience, not only describing the experience but also conveying the emotions that accompanied that experience. That was very unique, very powerful and he moved people. He moved city counselors and state legislators. His words moved the National Commission on Hunger and our US Congress people. Those words moved journalists and reporters, police cadets from all over the state of Maine, United Way and other non-profit social service leaders and he's also moved as others have said, perhaps most importantly, other people who are struggling with homelessness. Tom has inspired them to get involved in the social justice movement and to find their own voice. I have to tell you when we hired Tom as an organizer at Preble Street, we knew how lucky we were. It was a no-brainer for us. When Tom speaks we really, really listen to him because of that. We're a better agency for it. Because of his words, we become better social workers, better advocates and better people. All of us at Preble Street, Tom are so proud of you and proud to be your colleague. So congratulations, congratulations to Avesta for this wonderful project and this great day and I'm now going to introduce the person who actually hired Tom at Preble Street, the former advocacy coordinator at Preble Street, Amy Gellon. Good morning. It is truly my honor to be here this morning to celebrate this beautiful building, this extraordinary man and the community many of us calls home. I, like many of you, have attended a number of these celebrations over the years. We come together as we should to recognize the accomplishment of a new home. This month at another opening in South Berwick, Dana reminded us that although Avesta and others are building hundreds of units every year, this is not nearly enough. We need to be doing more. We need to build 10 times more, 100 times more. Together, we must work to build and modify and weatherize homes for veterans and for seniors and for families and for so-called able-bodied adults without dependence and for people who are on the edge of poverty because they are working for jobs with wages too low to pay rent that is too high. I know we will achieve this goal. It may take years. It may take decades. We will reach our collective goal of safe, decent, accessible, truly affordable housing for all mayors in need because of ceaseless and tireless advocacy by Thomas Potasic and many others. I love the name of this building. Thomas Heights. Well done. Heights make me think inspirational, aspirational, climbing, struggle, challenge, achievement, success. All of these describe Thomas' journey. As mayors, many of us know what it is to climb the height of a mountain. Thomas has taught me what it is to climb the mountain of poverty. Thomas has taught me that the mountain of poverty has false summits of hope and the sheer height makes one feel invisible, unseen and unheard. Too few reach the summit and not by one's bootstraps but by real opportunity and support and the community of each one of you who came here today. I tried and failed to choose a single story about Thomas to share with you today. To Thomas, I will simply say squirrels and to the rest of you the single best decision I've made in my career is hiring you, Tom. In closing, I would be remiss if I did not speak to our beloved, departed Marsha Frank. Marsha is the reason Thomas and I met all those years ago. Marsha's proudest day was the day she finished boot camp and finally, finally joined the Navy. She described with vivid detail her pride as she wore her dress blues for the very first time, the crease of her pants, the snug fit of those buttons all the way up to her neck, the sound of the military band, the sight of the flag blowing in the breeze. That may have been Marsha's proudest day but today this day would have been a very close second. To Avesta Housing thank you congratulations and well done to the men and women who call Thomas Heights home today and in the years to come welcome home my neighbors to Advocate Organizer Veteran and my dear friend Thomas Patacic there are no words and to all of you with joy and love and pride I introduce Thomas Patacic So I attempted a lot over the last week to prepare something for this and it did not go well at all far far far too much to say so I just simply trusted that these wonderful people would inspire me in a specific direction and they have so the first thing I feel obliged to say is congratulations to all of you for knowing me I'm apparently quite a person I also want to say that in trying to prepare something I learned very quickly that I am not going to thank a single person by name because that just opened up a flood gate that would have me up here for far far too long but obviously I want to thank Avesta for this incredible honor that could not be before seen for sure I was talking to a friend earlier who mentioned if we'd thought about this or mentioned the possibility of this six years ago there she is, hi it would have seemed so improbable and I replied by if you'd mentioned the possibility of this the day before Avesta told me it would have seemed improbable so thank you so much for really including me in the incredible work that you do which as some of you who may not knew coming in now realize is really tough work and really really needed by so many people and then obviously I would like to thank Preble Street for helping me to not only return to a life of normalcy that included work and housing but a life of fulfillment I've mentioned to many people that my time as a psychiatric technician when I was in the Navy and working on an inpatient psychiatric ward was the last time that I had done really truly fulfilling work and I had forgotten how much that makes me happy and fills me with pride and joy and just a real desire to live life and being able to reconnect with fulfilling work work for in response to crisis and work for others to try and create a system that allows them to make the best of their lives and that is what housing does before I forget though I am really really glad that two people mentioned bootstraps because I want to make sure everyone understands that the whole pull yourself up by your bootstraps is kind of an American take on something from the man from La Mancha if everyone's familiar with that story where he pulls himself out of a swamp by his own ponytail and so that phrase is meant to represent something that is impossible something that is ridiculous okay and so the idea that you pull yourself up by your own bootstraps is ridiculous it takes you know it really does take so much from so many people and I was asked this morning on a radio show that Amy and I did in that year of homelessness what I had learned about myself and I replied that I'm not sure I really learned a whole lot about myself but I learned a lot about other people and it goes so quick I wasn't really able to expand on that so I will hear there are so many people doing such good work and working so hard and often against what seem like insurmountable odds and it is just speaking as someone who was in that position for a year it is so beneficial to us I can't explain how much having a home to go to played a part in my being able to get back to a normal and fulfilling life I don't have the severe addiction issues that so many people have and I don't have the severe mental health issues that so many people have and it still took me a year to get out of the shelter a little over a year to get from getting out of the shelter to connecting with HVJ and starting on that path back and three years with HVJ before I felt comfortable moving forward and there was a position there for me that I felt comfortable moving into so if it's possible for it to take that long for me we can't expect overnight change from so many of the people that we are working so hard to help them improve their lives obviously HVJ and all the organizers that I think I was with HVJ for three years with three different community organizers and all the advocates that I worked with and you know what, I'm going to go against what I said and I am going to mention some people by name and those are the other HVJ advocates that I had the pleasure to work with those three years that are advocates now and Jim Divine I worked with for several years Steve Houston who is no longer with us was a big inspiration to me Marcia Frank who a couple of people have mentioned obviously is the reason I even was able to connect with HVJ there are Suzanne and Mike are two advocates with HVJ now that I will have the pleasure working with moving forward are there any other advocates that didn't come down to the front that are I heard T she's back in the back there is no is Mary Jo here Mary Jo Mary Jo, awesome Mary Jo was with HVJ the entire time I was there and as was was D and I think I was mentioning just the other day how important D was to me because we've heard that I'm passionate and kind and understanding and I certainly am capable of those things they have not always been my default position but D was instrumental in helping me to make compassion and kindness and understanding my default position rather than something that I am merely capable of so thank you so much for that D and so briefly to kind of end just to talk about what housing means and there's a story I like to tell that does not involve squirrels about my time when I was homeless and I was about six months into that year and I was in Monument Square kind of sitting on a bench really nice spring day waiting for the library to open and the library was one corner on what Ashley the last community organizer for HVJ and I believe Donna loved to talk about my triangle of safety which was Oxford Street shelter Preble Street library within that little triangle is where I felt safe where I felt comfortable where I felt I wouldn't be judged there was too much real life outside of that triangle and it reminded me of where I had fallen and how much farther I had to go and I felt ashamed outside of that triangle I felt like there was just not maybe not a possibility that I would get back to where I wanted to and that day sitting on the bench waiting for the library to open I was just watching everyone walk around and everyone do their work errands and their daily errands and as I said I'm sitting there waiting for the library to open and I had this feeling just kind of out of the blue that was like wow they're all part of a life that I am no longer part of I am not part of that world that is not my world that is that is theirs and that was the first time that I really felt that loss prior to that okay I was homeless I was staying in the shelter and it was really horrible and not that the shelter is horrible because the shelter is great but that was the first time that I really felt like I had lost something and in that moment I was not sure that it was something I was going to be able to get back and I knew as I'm watching them run their work in daily errands I had lived many years on my own running those same work and personal errands I knew it was quite a mundane thing but I would have given anything to have that mundane existence back and I wasn't sure that I was going to be able to get it back but it's through housing and through mental health services and just health services employment services through all these services that we collectively provide that give people that opportunity to get that back and it can seem very overwhelming I always talk about how when I was sitting there in Preble Street with Marcia and that whole voracious reader thing I'm sure was a surprise to my family but when you take a TV away from me it turns out I read um but I remember thinking that it seems like there are 31st steps to getting from where I'm at back to where I want to be and there's no physical way to take 31st steps and so that's what we do collectively is help people to make sense out of those 31st steps and in what order to take them and if we're really lucky we're able to give them housing from which to do that. So we already know that we need six more was it six more just to take care of this waiting list so we'll look at the entire waiting list and we'll see exactly how many more we need and we will get on those and we appreciate everyone's work and thank you all so much I'm looking around I'm seeing so many people that have inspired me along the way and really have helped me to again you know feel good about myself I when I was younger I felt really really good about myself probably wasn't much of a reason to I did and now there is a reason to and there is something to strive for and I give you my word that I will spend the rest of my life here trying to earn this incredible honor so thank you very much. Thank you Tom for all you do to make Portland a better place we look forward to working with you for many years to come we do have a small token of our appreciation of a picture of Thomas Heights here for you to take back we've come to the end of our program in closing I guess I want to give a special thanks to our residents the residents who might be here with us today for allowing this intrusion and I thank all of you for being with us and celebrating with us today we appreciate your support and your partnership thank you so much