 Hello, everybody. Good afternoon. Thank you so much for joining us today. My name is Yulia Panfill. I'm the director of the Future of Land and Housing Program at New America. And we'll be one of the two programs that you'll be hearing from today. 2020, as we all know, was a bit of a disaster, but we are tentatively rounding the corner of the COVID pandemic. Vaccines are rolling out, and there's hope that 2021 will be a year of recovery, both from the standpoint of health and also from the standpoint of beating back the virus. And from the standpoint of economic recovery and helping to stabilize the tens of millions of Americans who are currently struggling to pay their rent and pay their bills. But how do we make sure that the recovery reaches those who most need it? That question will be the focus of today's panel. We will look at the US economic recovery through two lenses today, rent relief and unemployment insurance. We're focusing on these measures for three different reasons. First, housing and unemployment are major pain points for our country. We know, according to the Census Bureau's weekly household poll survey, that at any given moment between a quarter and a third of America's renters and homeowners are saying that they're behind on their rent and mortgage payments and are worried that they'll be evicted and foreclosed upon. And we currently have 17 million Americans filing for unemployment claims. Second, there's hope on the way Congress passed a stimulus package in December that included a rent and unemployment relief and is poised to pass a second much larger relief package in the coming month or so. That relief package will contain another $25 billion in rent relief and also $400 per week in an unemployment benefit boost. And third, we saw that in 2020, neither rent nor unemployment assistance rollout went particularly well. In the last six months, New America's Future of Land and Housing Program and New America's New Practice Lab released reports examining the delivery challenges of getting rent and unemployment relief to the millions of Americans who need it most. You'll hear more about these reports in just a bit and then from a group of panelists who are seeing the implementation and delivery challenges up close and personal and are reflecting deeply on what we can change moving forward to get this much needed relief to the American people. To start off today's conversation, I'm thrilled to introduce our keynote speaker, Tara McGinnis. Tara is one of the founders of New America's New Practice Lab, a research and design lab focused on family economic security. She's the co-author of an upcoming book, Power to the Public, The Promise of Public Interest Technology. Her work lies at the intersection of policy creation, implementation, and citizen and community voices. Tara has recently returned to New America after six months of helping run domestic policy for the Biden-Harris transition, where she focused intently on strategies to support effective policy delivery. Thank you so much for being with us, Tara, and I'll turn it over to you. Thank you, Yulia, and thank you, our panelists, and all who are joining in today. My name is Tara McGinnis and I just could not be more grateful to join this remarkable group. As Yulia mentioned, I lead something called the New Practice Lab in America. You'll hear in a bit from Monet and others about the lab's work during a presentation on unemployment shortly. But just to explain that Practice Lab is really an experiment housed inside a big think tank aimed at pushing the fields of philanthropy, policymakers, and governments to think about the people at the center of policy, and to understand what their lives are like, what their needs are, and to build policy with not for the communities we aim to serve. We do this primarily through three core approaches, data, design, and delivery. What does that mean? We use user-centered design, or for those of you who are community organizers and advocates, this is an old science of really sitting with people, digging in with those who are impacted by a policy to understand their needs, challenges, and aspirations. We examine the delivery of policy by asking really simple questions. How does this tax policy, rental assistance, health insurance, stimulus check actually reach people? Once a law is passed, what happens? When does the money leave? Where does it go? Which partners deliver it? What does the form look like for this? Who does someone call if they make a mistake? And once they've applied for a benefit, how long does it take for aid to reach them? We often answer these questions through what we call sprints. These are time-fixed exploration with a team of experts, some of whom you'll hear from later today, who bring different skills, reporting, interviewing, design and delivery, policy expertise, asking and focusing on answering a single question, and really searching before a solution is invented to discover whether someone out there in another community already has a solution to a problem a different government or community is trying to solve. This past summer and spring, our team in collaboration with a number of organizations, including a few of yours, ran a series of these sprints on the implementation of the CARES Act. These were aimed at rapidly understanding how the policies were actually impacting people and seeking to find how we might fix them, either through better delivery guidance or changes in federal policy. We did this jointly. We also saw an opportunity to partner with our colleagues at the Future of Land and Housing Program to conduct data analysis and qualitative research to better understand the realities of housing displacement across the U.S. through the Sun Belt region. Our goal through the collaboration was to visualize where people were most vulnerable to housing loss and to help decision makers target CARES Act and future stimulus funds to those most vulnerable. And help local organizations who are trying to distribute those funds. Throughout the process, I think we learned just how broken the system is in many ways. We ran a similar effort and a few adjacent projects on unemployment insurance, interviewing dozens of people trying to apply for help. Our team dug into the lived experience of claimants waiting months for checks, attempting to handle issues with applications at a time when sites were crashing, call centers were overwhelmed, and when individuals weighing the cost of safety and health and work about whether to go and do an in-person application with long lines as we saw in places like Florida. We realized that there are aspects of the system that are broken by design, others that are broken by neglect. It's not built in particular to serve some of the most vulnerable, particularly low income communities and communities of color. Black and Latinx workers face a greater challenge in receiving unemployment benefits compared to their white counterparts. White workers make up 50% of the unemployed workers in the country, but 78% of the unemployment insurance recipients. While Black and Latino workers make up 40% of the unemployed workers, but less than 20% of the unemployment recipients. This core question was at the investigation that you'll hear about in a bit. Throughout the spring and summer, our aim was to rapidly learn what was working and what wasn't, and to focus on solutions that might improve these systems and benefit those who are using them. If we are successful in our work at the lab, we aren't working by ourselves, we're working in partnership with many of you. We really aim to make this rapid feedback loop between citizens and governments, normal business, not something extraordinary. I think all of us have been profoundly touched by the crisis. Well, it didn't hit equally. It has been something that binds us together. But we know, and many of your life work is focused on this, that there was a crisis before the crisis, one decades in the making. The top 5% holds 67% of the wealth in the United States. The largest share since the 1920s. More than one in five households have zero or negative wealth. For Black and Hispanic households, more than two times as likely as White households to be among such underwater households. Since the year I was born, the incomes of the top 1% of US households have increased seven times faster than the bottom 20% of household incomes. Research shows that there are simple fixes. $3,000 of income received before child 6th birthday could earn the child 17% more as a young adult. Yet we're not properly supporting families' earnings. Even with states passing amazing work to raise the minimum wage, in 2025, 23 million American workers are expected to work for less than $15 an hour. That's 16% for all workers. Our responses through unemployment insurance through rental assistance and other ways that we aid families and individuals must meet the moment. But they also must help us reckon with the structural inequities that COVID has truly laid bare. Making sure we pass policies that are a sufficient size and scope is mission critical. I'm here to tell you, as a former White House policy implementer of the Affordable Care Act, that passing legislation that's transformational is only the first step. We must relentlessly focus on truly reaching people with policies, making them accessible in real time. Let me give you one of my favorite examples. The Earn Income Tax Credit is among the most efficient and effective poverty programs in U.S. history. But one in five people eligible don't use it. We can and must do better. This is not an impossible dream. Others have done it. At some point, like many of you at the peak, or what seemed like the peak in the early days of the spring, I opened the newspaper to read about a government program in Berlin that paid out $1.5 billion to 150,000 self-employed workers in just two weeks. I became obsessed with this. The newspaper suggested that people who use the program sounded stress-free. The designer tweeted three days waiting to be called up, then 10 minutes on a form. And after two days, the money was in my account. It seemed to me like sending a mission to the moon at the point when we were working with some of the folks in this video on delivering unemployment insurance and seeing people have to stand in lines. It is not a faraway land. It is another member of the OECD, Germany. It's possible. When I was pursuing what was at stake here, I interviewed the Deputy Finance Minister for Germany and asked him how they came to this. One, they acted very fast in getting their aid and had policy interventions that were sufficient in met the moment. But two, they learned from previous recessions and from the refugee crisis that it's not enough to have the policy. It needs to be accessible. I interviewed Deputy Minister Schmidt. He said, what were we going to do? Crash our economy because we couldn't trust people. They simplified the forms and went from 20 pages to two. And they allowed people to self attest if they didn't have evidence to back up that they were in need. I raised this to remind us that this is not rocket scientists. It is very hard. I think we already see that implementation is a focus for the Biden administration. President Biden, when he was vice president, saw up front in his role driving to make sure the Recovery Act dollars reached communities. So he saw the distance between when the law was passed and how long it took to get shovel ready projects in the ground. Out of the gate, the Biden-Harris administration has released an American Rescue Plan that places attention on sufficiently scaled investments to help rescue families. But it also places attention on the details about reaching people. In the very first week, the Biden administration released a number of executive orders that are focused on just what we talk about here, equitable delivery of benefits. One executive order called out that there were remaining 8 million Americans who had still not received financial assistance, which they're entitled, and charged the Treasury Department with considering the change into its delivery structures to make sure that these Americans get relief. The same executive order called for effective and equitable distribution of government assistance by establishing an interagency benefit coordination structure. Good policy is of course essential, but good policy that reaches people and makes a difference takes a different level of effort and intention. We have a role to play in that. The findings of the two reports you'll hear about in a moment demonstrate that there are key learnings that can be made and acted on now. For those of you who are community organizers, user-centered design is nothing new. This is about sitting with people and understanding them and lifting up what their lives are like. When people don't think about housing policy or workforce development, they are in a web of costs and survival. I want to turn it over to Tim and Sabia to present some high-level findings from their recent report, but I want to thank all of you for joining us and giving us the intention and level of effort that it will require to truly make a difference. Over to you, Tim. Thank you so much for those opening remarks, Tara. Narmada, if you wouldn't mind bringing our slide deck up on screen, please. Thank you. So, hi, everyone. My name is Tim Robustelli. I'm a policy analyst with the future of land and housing program. And today, my colleagues Bija and I will be providing a quick overview of our report on housing loss in the U.S. And I'm going to call this place in some both. Now, before we jump in, something to keep in mind as we present is that over the course of our research during the past year, we saw a confluence of three challenges that really made it harder on renters and homeowners under the pandemic. And that involves bad data, extreme inequities, and who is actually suffering from housing loss, and then the poor delivery of housing assistance as Tara and Yulia previously mentioned. When it comes to bad data, we know that one third of U.S. counties don't have easily accessible data on evictions or mortgage foreclosures, not to mention anything of more granular details when it comes to housing loss such as the amount of back rent owed by renters, or if tenants have legal representation in eviction court. When it comes to extreme inequities, we saw that housing loss rates vary drastically across our case study locations. And that sometimes differs from block to block one census track might have a housing loss rate of 1% and the neighboring census track might have a rate of 10%. We also have significant racial and economic disparities in who is losing their homes, but because the data isn't readily available. Often policymakers are savvy or privy to those insights and can't target the communities most that need most effectively. And finally, we saw poor delivery of housing aid. Often the nonprofits tasked with this person this aid were stretched and their capacity to do so. And we saw across many of the places where we conducted research that they were extensive documentation and means testing requirements which often made aid inaccessible to the most at risk households. Next slide please. We choose to focus on the US sun belts. Well, metro areas in the US sun belt are experiencing significant population growth and many cities are increasingly diverse when it comes to race and ethnicity, the age of residents socio economic strata and even the types of jobs that are added to local economies. And many of these cities to use and for example are often cited as indicative of what American cities as a whole will look like in the future socio economically. At the same time we've seen housing in prices increased steadily over the past 20 years, leading to higher rent and mortgage costs. And we know from our previous research that the US sun belt as a region experienced some of the highest rates of housing loss, the entire United States and that's driven by states such as Arizona, Nevada, and then the southeast Florida Georgia and South Carolina. Next slide please. So what did we do in our study we mapped and analyzed evictions for closures and combined housing loss across seven US counties for the years 2017 and 2019 so right before the outbreak of the pandemic. The case study locations included counties with large cities some of the largest in the US such as Phoenix and Maricopa County, Arizona and Houston and Harris County, Texas, as well as some smaller cities, such as Winston Salem and Forsyth County and Norfolk, Virginia. And while we pulled individual records we visualize and analyze at the census tract level across these case study locations and we paired this analysis with qualitative interviews to better understand the context behind these numbers with an emphasis on the racial inequities within housing and housing loss as well as the impact of COVID-19 on housing security. And we did this because we believe that understanding where displacements was most acute and who was impacted before the pandemic can help us better predict and understand COVID related housing loss after eviction moratoria and other protections expire. Next slide please. I'll jump in a bit to our high level findings before I pass it to Sabiha. What you see on the left of this slide is a map of housing loss at the census tract level in Orange County, Florida, which includes the city of Orlando. This map is indicative of what you can see in the reports. They're all interactive online so I encourage you to explore that. Across all seven case study locations that we worked in, the average housing loss rate for 2017 and 2019 was 3.4%, meaning that around one in every 33 renters or homeowners with a mortgage were experiencing displacement during our study period. If we break that down a bit more to evictions and foreclosures, the eviction rate was just over 5% and the foreclosure rate was just under 1.5%. This indicates that renters are a bit more at risk of housing loss in comparison to homeowners with a mortgage. When it comes to a top line figure, roughly half a million out of the 17 million inhabitants in our case study locations lost their home each year. And the housing loss rates varied considerably across our locations, with it being 2.1% in Orange County, Florida, again home to Orlando, and as high as 8.8% in Norfolk City, Virginia. And before I pass it off to Sabiha, I'll just mention that in most case study locations of evictions accounted for the majority of instances of housing loss that we saw. Sabiha, over to you. Hi, my name is Sabiha Zaino Bai and I'm a senior policy analyst with the future of land and housing team at New America. You can go to the next slide please. Thanks. So in addition to understanding where housing losses occurring we wanted to understand who is losing their home. And so to better understand this we did a correlation analysis to test the strength of the relationship between housing loss and a host of demographic and housing variables. So we found that the demographic variables that are most commonly and positively associated with housing loss in the seven Sunbelt counties that we studied were those with a larger share of black households. Those were the larger share of households that lacked health insurance. Those are the larger share of households that relied on public transportation to go to work. Those were less common but still present in two counties where those with a larger share of single parent households. Go to the next slide. So the findings from the correlation analysis informed additional analyses that we did on race, kind of a deeper dive. So given that the share of black households in a census track was shown to be an important factor and being able to predict where housing loss might occur we wanted to map what it might look like. So this is one of the counties that we studied Harris County, Texas and we categorized census tracks such that they fell into one of four, one of four categories. So we categorize them as majority black or majority non black and above or below the median housing loss in the county, and then we mapped where we saw this occurring within a county. So in the map on the right hand side you can see that households that are majority black and have above median housing loss are concentrated, both to the northeast and to the south of downtown Houston, and those are all the tracks that are a deep purple color. And we can also see that in this map that nearly 95% of tracks that are majority black and have above median housing loss. Oh, sorry, I'm sorry, we can see that nearly 95% of tracks are majority black and have above median housing loss. You can see that there's very few tracks that are majority black and have below median housing loss those are the lighter purple color tracks. So something like this we hope would be useful, especially useful and related to our conversation conversation today about how to target rental assistance to communities that need it most. Next slide please. So I'm not going to dive too deeply into our qualitative findings but we did interviews with a host of housing experts and local stakeholders in each county to better understand some of the dynamics. So we're seeing and specifically to discuss coven 19 impact on housing. What we saw was stakeholders characterize the rollout of pandemic related housing aid as slow and even and often ineffective at reaching the communities that need it the most. Most counties relied on nonprofit organizations embedded in local communities to facilitate the distribution of funds, but there were significant variation in how those funds were distributed. And lastly, we heard that outreach to impacted or at risk communities about the existence of aid is equally as important as the actual distribution of aid as communities need to know that aid is available in order to apply for it. And next slide please. So we're, I think the panel discussion later is going to dive much more deeply into proposed policy policy solutions but a little bit of what we heard from stakeholders across the Sunbelt counties. In terms of proposed solutions to mitigate pandemic related housing loss, improving the disbursement of aid by simplifying the application processes and reducing barriers to access. To aid directly to tenants instead of landlords is something that was suggested would be helpful, strengthening tenant protections of course and slowing down the eviction process once the moratoriums lift. And then lastly increasing tenant education about the availability of aid through robust outreach to communities, or most at risk. So with that, I'm going to pass it over to Monet field white to discuss some of the findings from you America's unemployment insurance report. Good morning, everyone. Yes, my name is Monet fields white. I'm a former seat former fellow with the new practice lab at New America. And last year, we witnessed millions across the nation lose their jobs at the onset of the pandemic, sending unemployment rates to levels, not seen since the Great Depression. Still, the economic devastation has not been colorblind and neither have the financial support systems that are meant to bully workers. In short, COVID-19 has wreaked havoc havoc in black and Latin X communities at a disproportionate rate, both from a health and economic standpoint. So this summer our research team including myself our fearless leader Vivian Robert, Alberta Alvarez and Nikki Zeigner, set out to understand what black and brown workers experienced applying for unemployment insurance amid the health crisis. One note I would also want. I also want to acknowledge another contributor to our final report Cassandra Robertson, who is a current senior fellow at the new practice lab. In this research we began at the foundation of the UI system. Now UI was created as part of the new deal. In 1935 from its inception the system excluded agriculture and domestic workers. 65% of those workers were African American compared to 27% were white and the administrative details of implementing the UI were left to the states. Providing few controls for ensuring equity in the distribution and duration of these benefits when it when it was left to the states. To quote Colin Gordon, American history professor from the University of Iowa, he said in an essay, the American system of unemployment insurance is a remnant of Jim Crow. With that statement and the foundations of UI in mind, we as a team began pulling away the layers of this system to view it in a greater context to get to a series of compounding and equities that continue to impact workers of color and low wage workers today. Next slide please. So. What did we do. In June and July 2020, our team interviewed about 25 black and brown workers who were laid off furloughed or were self employed and lost income due to COVID-19. All interviewees had attempted had attempted to were in the process of or had already applied for unemployment benefits. We discussed with each one of their each one about their experiences going through the application process and how they were going to make ends meet when benefits didn't arrive. And all of the stories we were hearing in regards to just accessing websites, computer systems crashing, getting through but then not receiving their benefits for months, by the way. We also spoke with 15 experts who cover issues related to race, our labor force, and the overall economy that included organizations such as Working America and the National Employment Law Project, a.k.a. Nope, whom you will hear from later in our panel discussion. From our interviews we found there are internal and external factors that are at play impacting the design and implementation of UI. Meaning that even if we were to upgrade and fix all of the UI websites and increase staff to handle the massive volume of calls from those seeking support. There are still barriers in place and have been in place for years internally and externally that make benefits less accessible to black and brown workers. Next slide please. Again, we found that there are internal and external factors that are at play impacting the design and implementation of UI. What did we learn each section of our report dives further into those internal and external factors that influence UI in a difficulty to access the system among workers of color to highlight a few. I will start with just the design of the system itself in that our states and our federal governments have put a clear focus on searching for fraud over accessibility that gets to the punitive design of the system. Lawmakers also have bandied about inaccurate and harmful myths, such as claiming collecting UI leads people to not wanting to work. They had used these myths to further restrict or gut benefit programs over the years. We spoke to one of our interviewees that comes to mind who said that she'd rather be working than collecting unemployment because she has dreams and goals that she wants to achieve for her own family. Efforts to modernize systems also serves as a roadblock in basically moving strictly to online platforms. You can't do that without addressing our digital divide. Many black and brown households compared to white households lack Wi-Fi or even a computer within their home and they rely on their mobile phones, their smartphones to access the internet. Here's one note. Many state websites are not mobile friendly. Additional roadblocks and applying and access accessing benefits can also be as simple as where you live. The South, including Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, North Carolina, Tennessee and Florida have less generous benefits. And also within these states and a few other states, they have very strict work search requirements. Next slide, please. As a result, black and brown workers are less likely to be helped by these systems, making it harder to overcome periods of unemployment. And we must note black, brown and low wage workers are viewed through a narrow lens. They're trying to defraud the system that gives employers more power in deciding who receives benefits and who doesn't. So essentially quoting Helen, the system is not designed for us. Helen, who has worked for more than three decades as a hairstylist in Louisville, Kentucky. Excuse my Kentucky accent when pronouncing the city's name, it's within my blood, but getting back to Helen, she expressed that sentiment that the system wasn't designed for us, even though she, like many pay their taxes, which support these systems. She's part of the gig economy that's not covered under the UI system had not been covered under UI system prior to this pandemic. And based on our research black and brown workers make up a significant portion of that working population. Under the initial cares act and following legislation. They now could can receive pandemic unemployment assistance but the question becomes, should we look at providing that assistance at any time of unemployment, not just during a crisis. When we talked with Helen, she told us, quote, you pay your taxes, you do your thing contributing to this economy. Why not. And especially in this pandemic which has exposed the frailties and inequities within our system that should be impossible to ignore. And honestly, we can't afford to ignore anymore. The UI system didn't break amid this pandemic. It was already broken. While there have been, excuse me, and while the system has changed over time with some modifications and reforms, our research shows its foundation is inherently racist and classes, creating access barriers for workers of color and low wage workers. Fixing what's broken about UI means looking outside and within UI to first identify these various influencing and interrelated and then begin to take them apart. Our research left us asking, who are these benefits meant to serve. If UI was designed in response to the Great Depression. What will we design in response to this current crisis. What values will we center on. We have worked through the framework that has given us the unemployment insurance system we have today. It's just the beginning. But if we don't ask these questions or root out these inequities, we will continue to perpetuate racism in the name of progress. In conclusion, these are questions and factors our government, including the new administration and Congress need to consider and put in the forefront to truly root out systemic racism in our future policies and systems. And now to Malcolm Glenn for the discussion portion of our presentation. Great. And thank you so much, Monet. And it's great to be here with you all today for what I think is a really, really important discussion. You've heard so much great stuff about the two reports. And so if you haven't I really do encourage you to check out both are displaced in the Sun Belt report, as well as the unpacking inequities and unemployment insurance report. As folks have already stated today, the coming months are going to be among the most consequential we've ever seen in terms of getting assistance in the hands of people who need it. And I think both of the reports and I suspect that the conversation we're about to have will be really helpful in sort of guiding how we think about getting that right, particularly for people from underserved communities. So my name is Malcolm Glenn, and I am fortunate enough to be a fellow for New America's future of land and housing program. I'm also the director of public affairs at a company called better.com, which is one of the leading digital first home ownership startups in the United States. And it has become, I think a little bit tried at this point to talk about how esteemed a panel is but in this case, I think that is truly the case. I think you're about to hear from a really amazing group of folks. Thank you for a brief introduction to each of our panelists, but I want to spend most of the time hearing from them and then ultimately hearing from you and to that point. Please, please, please do submit your questions. We've gathered a couple of questions in the chat box. Please feel free to submit them to the Q&A box as it is our intention at the end of the discussion to get to as many of them as possible. So on to the panelists. As I mentioned, I'll give just a brief introduction of each of them, and then I will hand it over to each of them to talk a little bit about their work and some of the solutions and challenges they found in it. Maurice Jones is the CEO and president of the Local Initiative Support Corporation, which is one of the country's largest organizations supporting projects to revitalize communities and catalyze economic opportunity for residents. Rebecca Yeh is a senior research analyst at the National Low Income Housing Coalition, where she works to evaluate the implementation and effectiveness of state and local emergency rental assistance programs and other housing related responses to COVID-19. James Perry is the president and CEO of the Winston Salem Urban League, where he leads a team advocating for civil rights, employment opportunities, economic opportunities, affordable housing, health and wellness, voting rights, food security and more. And finally, Michelle Evermore is a senior policy analyst at the National Employment Law Project, where she works with states to improve their unemployment insurance systems and public sector pensions. Her work has helped implement key protections for unemployed workers during the pandemic. So with that, I want to start the conversation. You know, we've talked so much about a lot of the challenges and a lot of the pain points in the system. And I want to hear a little bit about the things that went wrong, but I also want to hear a little bit about the things that went right. So I would love to start with Maurice and have him tell us a little bit more about his work. And I'd love to hear how the work with different communities and programs has been impacted by COVID-19, and what you've seen when it comes to aid delivery over the last year. Well, thanks for having me with you, Malcolm and the other members of the panel. And I'm delighted to be with you all. I do have to apologize. I got a hard stop at 1 o'clock PM my time, so I may miss the Q&A piece of this. But let me tell you what we have been seeing. We've spent the last year now, year and what, two months or about a year, really trying to focus on providing emergency assistance to particularly small businesses, not-for-profits and for-profits who have had an existential threat over the course of the last year. And we have seen incredible, incredible, encouraging signs of the public sector and the private sector coming to our partnership to do this. So last year for LISC was the largest year on record for us in providing this kind of recovery assistance, if you will. We put down a marker in March that we were going to raise $100 million for a COVID relief fund. Well, we ended up raising close to $300 million for it. And we put that money out in $5,000 and $10,000 and $20,000 and $25,000 small grants to not-for-profits that are doing this work in communities and small businesses that were at risk of closing their doors. The other piece of it that we have seen is the need for, we were providing, for example, workforce development services to residents and communities all across the country with the eye toward preparing folks for long-term, living wage job careers, where we had to pivot that to immediate financial assistance for rent, for utilities to help people with technical assistance to apply to pull down unemployment, insurance, compensation. And again, we saw our partners pivot very nicely into doing this work. What we're seeing now is more of this work to be done this year, particularly as it relates to rental arrears and utilities. And so we are still engaged in huge financial assistance programs, both in connection with, in partnership with the public sector and the private sector. And we're also seeing the need to do more to just make sure people have access to these programs, whether it's broadband or whether it's technical assistance, helping people get through application programs. I can't overstate this enough, which is making the programs available is 20% of the job to be done. 80% of the job to be done is helping people access the programs. And so that's where we are seeing our work demand grow, helping people access these opportunities to receive this relief. I'll stop and pause there. Thank you, Maurice. And Rebekah, I saw you nodding as Reese was talking about access. I would love to hear a little bit about what the last year has looked like from your approach to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, specifically what has worked well and what hasn't worked so well when it comes to some of these state and local emergency assistance programs. Thank you, Malcolm. So just to give a super brief background at the National Income Housing Coalition, we are tracking key characteristics of emergency rental assistance programs across the US, especially around program design and implementation for I guess it's nearly a year now. And I was nodding at Maurice's comments because it really is true, putting an application out there is really just one small part about making rental assistance accessible to people. And I think that that's so, so critical. And I think that, you know, this past year, what we've seen is extremely low income renters were already burdened before the pandemic and the pandemic exacerbated that preexisting housing crisis. Emergency rental assistance was not part of the CARES Act coronavirus relief package in March of last year, but despite that, a number of jurisdictions and states chose to devote at least $4.5 billion in funding to rental assistance, which is far from what was needed to meet the need to be better than nothing. And a number of programs used the CARES Act coronavirus relief funds, and the really unique thing about that specific funding was that it was extremely flexible. It's an extremely flexible funding source and I think that we got to see a lot of creative ways that local jurisdictions used to get tenants much needed assistance. And I think that programs adopted self attestation as a form of documentation. I believe that Tara mentioned that as being key to how Germany got their unemployment program to work smoothly and that has been really, really key. And we have also seen a couple of programs opt for direct to tenant rental assistance, which I think is really innovative. And kind of on the flip side, I think that a lot of jurisdictions did not take as much liberty with the openness of the guidelines of coronavirus relief funds. You know whether that's out of fear that those guidelines would change or because, because Treasury did not say explicitly that yes self attestation is okay. So I think that's something that we learned is that you know the the guidance that comes out really needs to proactively affirm that flexibility is allowed in in the program and not just allow it by not forbidding it. So I'll stop there. Thank you, Rebecca. James I want to turn to you you have a very interesting perch down in North Carolina, looking very much at the local context for all of these assistance programs would love to hear from you about how you think the last year has gone for the distribution of those assistance programs in the tribe region. James I think you're on mute. Thank you very much. And, you know, I would start by going to an important point that Rebecca made, which is that in the coronavirus relief package from 2020. There was a decent amount of money made available to jurisdictions, but there was unfortunately a population threshold cut off. And if you're under that that threshold, your community didn't get as much money. Unfortunately, Winston Salem Forsyth County is one of those communities. And so, when we think about this idea of deploying a one of the greatest challenges frankly was that that the city of Winston Salem and Forsyth County didn't have very much money to deploy. Right. So, and, and what exacerbates that problem at least when it comes to housing is, is that we were already in a housing crisis is one of the incredible things that the new America report finds and but obviously we already knew it because we were living in it. An enormously high eviction rate. And so we were already in crisis and then the coronavirus comes and exacerbates that crisis. So for organizations like mine. You know, the challenge was great because you know we're really hands on we're trying to help people navigate these crises, but there wasn't any money for housing, or there was a very limited amount of money for housing. And as mentioned in the employment report, anytime that that people called on their own or we tried to help them call to get unemployment insurance, the lines were clogged, the websites were down. And so our staff was all hands on deck trying to help folks, but they really wasn't very much to be done, because if you know we couldn't get through either. And so you end up in this very unique position where there's where there are these compiling disasters right you're already in a housing disaster, and then you have an employment disaster. And, and everything that's supposed to help back you up it's supposed to make sure that you can survive these is failing. And even the agencies like mine, who are designed to help. They're not very much that we can do, no matter how much we invest in trying to assist people. Yeah, I think your, your point around sort of compounding crises, crises, excuse me is is really apt and Michelle, you know you have been looking for a while now at unemployment insurance systems and a lot of these systems were set up to be ready to deal with, you know a crisis situation and be interested to hear from you about how you think they've done in the last year, how well have they done and actually doing what they were supposed to do or how they failed. So actually no system really was able to withstand this crisis, even the states that process benefits the most quickly, we're not meeting timeliness guidelines and that has a lot to do with the fact that we don't pay any attention to unemployment insurance when there's a recession and then when there is a recession it's too late to fix it. And so we've really got to be figuring out now and taking the energy, you know there's so many new people organizing around unemployment insurance right now we need to figure out how to harness that energy and bring it into the next year or you know whenever the crisis is over. So you know, everybody's blaming the computer systems and they're not entirely wrong. Right, some of these systems were absolutely designed to fail. And, you know, but when you think about it, you know, only 18 states have fully modernized computer systems right so. That's, I always put modernized and scare quotes because you know, Florida was a modernized system and it was this lowest state to pay out benefits. And it's not just the computer although the computer can be the problem. We know that there's these algorithms that disproportionately flag people of color for fraud that that leave people of color out of the system. They're ableist. It's hard for people with limited English proficiency to access them. So we need to be thinking about all of those things and then, you know, really thinking about a floor, because you know, North Carolina, since since it's, you know, well represented here actually is the state with the lowest number of weeks. In the last quarter session, all of last year only 12 weeks of regular you I were available, as opposed to 26 weeks in most states, and they had recently cut benefits by basing benefits not on the highest quarter of wages, but on the last two quarters. And as you all know, it's usually the last two quarters that you're working at a failing business or that you're not, you're not thriving at your job. Those are maybe the two least high paid, the least highly paid quarters. So, yeah, I think I know system did well but some systems truly truly catastrophically failed workers. And so everything needs a boost but we also need a floor. And I, you know, when you say that that there were so many failures, it just reminds me of the quote that Monet left us with at the end of her presentation that these systems are not designed for us. And I think the us can mean different things depending on who's speaking but I know one of the ways in which that manifested self is through the lens of race, and would be interested to hear about what the costs of not centering racial equity are in delivery design and then if there are because I do want to hopefully find some positive things that we can highlight. What are some examples of ways that that localities have targeted aid to those who actually do need it based on some of these demographics. So, Maurice, how about we start with you. You know, just sort of quickly on the cost of not centering the cost of not centering as you leave people out. You and you have a system that what happens is you leave people out, you realize that you leave people out either because they come forward in and make the case or by some other means you you figure out you leave them out and then what you try to do is, make adjustments to the system to include folks in communities that should have been included at the very beginning. And it's a recipe for imperfection is the kindest way of putting it and so what what people need to do is to be much more inclusive on the front end and who is in the room. When you know when this is all happening when the systems are being designed so you've got more voices so you have a chance of being more inclusive because fixing it after the fact means that people will get left out early and may get left out permanently. But what you see more often than not as people getting left out early and then going back and trying to repair and that repair is always imperfect. We saw that in the PPP program. We're seeing it in some of the rental assistance programs. And so the real key is having a inclusive design upfront outreach to designing the programs at the beginning take the time at the beginning to put the people in the groups and the voices around the table. So you can target and the cost are tremendous in efficiency. You know people actually suffering irreparable harm, a program that is flawed in many ways and so the benefit of the targeting from the beginning with multiple voices at the table. It's hard to overstate that. And let me just be real clear that you know what happens is people will design a system and then they'll think about black and brown and low wealth communities after the fact. And you know I don't know how many times because if they had thought about the black and brown and the low wealth communities at the very beginning, their conception of what the system is would be much broader their conception of who's delivering to those communities who you need at the table to build that system would be much broader. And that's what we're seeing repeated over and over again. I took much longer in answering that query than I had intended so I apologize. No no worries Maurice and I think it's such a great point there's a phrase that is prominent in the disability community and I think it applies more broadly which is nothing about us without us. I think that's what you're getting at inclusive design from the very beginning in the design of these systems. James from North Carolina's perspective. Are there any good examples of ways that that folks there targeted aid specifically focused on racial equity to the people who needed it. Well yeah, but I think the frustrating part is that they weren't part of government systems right so you know there's a local group housing justice now who has done an amazing job raising funding and then making available to directly to people who need it. But I'd also pause for a second and I think that's that's what you find all around the country is that the systems that were able to move most quickly and to really help people were community based. And it was there were systems where people saw problem in their community and then decided to react, which is frustrating when you consider that we pay so much money into systems through our tax dollars that are designed to protect us and they weren't there. But then also to that earlier question about about the role of race here, you know, I'm reminded of Lonnie Gwinear's book The Miner's Canary. And it is this idea that we're all inextricably linked that if you create a system that harms black folks and brown folks, eventually that system is going to harm everyone. There's no division in the way the system will work so that so that only these these groups of people who are historically maligned will be affected and harmed. One of the most interesting things I think in the New America report is when you look at those areas that a majority black areas that also have a high rate of housing loss that as much as there may be no or very few in most communities. High, high, you know, communities that are both African American, and then have low rates of housing loss in all those communities they're still white communities are that have a high rate of housing loss right so it's not restricted just to African Americans Eventually, the harm will infect and affect everyone. Absolutely and Michelle would love to just get your thoughts here as well about the cost of not centering these delivery mechanisms around racial equity and if there are examples where that's been done well, whether it's in the community or in government. But you destroy communities really, you know unemployment insurance is the best investment during a recession. In terms of being for the buck for every dollar spent that's a dollar 61 cents in the local economic activity right. Now you look at a state, for example, Michigan was the first state. After the last recession to cut the number of weeks available of unemployment insurance, and they cut from 26 to 20 weeks. That year, the duration of unemployment for black and Asian workers was 27 weeks, but for white workers it was 19 weeks closer to 20 weeks really. So that has a direct racial impact. And after that, the state modernized its computer system without any input from the community without any user testing, and it installed this black box algorithm that flagged at least 60,000 people for fraud. That's right after the penalty for fraud was increased to four times the amount paid plus 12% interest. And you wonder why Flint and Detroit, never recovered from the last recession. That is a huge part of the reason why you know and like, you can turn these things around. During this past year, the UI system was actually run by a former UI who ran a UI access clinic, and they were able to turn it around and it became the one of the fastest states at paying benefits. But I absolutely agree with the comments about making sure people are at the table because you know every in every instance so far of modernization that I've looked at with the IT systems. I keep thinking about the back end and making it easier for the state agency, and there were never focused groups. They never, they never brought disability advocates to the table or people with limited English proficiency or people on the other side of the digital divide. And I absolutely agree that going forward, nothing should change without affected claimants at the table. So if you're looking at the effectiveness of some of these programs at the state and local level. Have you seen any of these programs do a really good job of targeting folks based on on race or other demographics or are you seeing some of the same challenges the other panelists have talked about. There are absolutely similar challenges there have also been some good examples of a couple of key programs that I think are prioritizing racial equity in their in their rental assistance design. So in the state of Washington, for example, they required in their in their statewide program that all local jurisdictions must partner with organizations by and for communities of color and I think that that is one way to ensure that there is that there are folks who can understand what applicants are going through and how to help them access this the assistance. I think a couple of other ways that I've seen programs. Aid to those who need it most is using some sort of prior to station system, or having a referral service for specifically people who are, say, facing eviction for renters who are black, etc. So there are a couple of different ways. But I think that over all the. Well, sorry, I didn't mean to I'm not a negative thing but I think overall the one of the biggest things is making sure that the application is not burdensome overly burdensome. And when an applicant looks at it they can understand it, and I, and I think that providing assistance to help folks get through that is really, really key. There clearly been a lot of issues and problems with delivery in the context of a crisis but I think one point that Monet made that was really apt was this notion that the real reforms come kind of in response to the crisis and so maybe the big change that we need. Unfortunately, isn't happening now but maybe it will happen in response to the crisis that we're in today so I would just be curious to hear from you all kind of your vision for what could happen in the aftermath of the crisis how can we take the lessons that we've learned from COVID and all of its extended results to make delivery systems more equitable and human centered. Maybe Michelle we can start with you. I think that there's no time like the present I think, if not now it's never going to happen but I really think that we have seen the cracks in the system we have seen the people standing in line for unemployment. You know, 44 million people were able to access a benefit a life changing benefit. But what but one of the things that we noticed during this recession right is that about half of people who got a benefit got it through the pandemic unemployment assistance, which is not you have to not qualify for unemployment insurance in order to get that benefit. So we're clearly only reaching half the people that we should really reach. And so I think, you know, we will, we will enter the next decade with people with fresh experience with this system in their minds and I've seen people organizing around this like you wouldn't believe it's crazy how people just come together become experts in unemployment insurance overnight, and have figured out how to advocate together. And that's exactly what what we need. Unemployment insurance isn't going to get fixed because I have these ideas about how it should should go or some expert has some idea about how it should go. Things get fixed when people come together and lift lift up their problems right. So my vision is that those people come together, tell us what they need, and that policymakers listen and build a system that's responsive to what they want. I think, you know, some some degree of federalization of unemployment insurance is necessary if you look at the two, the two main indicators of whether an unemployment insurance system is good it's how many people get benefits and how much those benefits are. You know, the states with the lowest recipients see and the lowest replacement rate with population density of black workers Latinx workers indigenous workers. Those are the states that have the worst benefits. And so I think we really do need to think about a much more robust federal floor so that states can't get away with paying so few people so little money. What about you what what do you see as a potential opportunity about how reforms could take place in the aftermath of the crisis. Well, you know, I think the answer is somewhat inherent in your original question and I think that Michelle really answered it well when she talked about the idea that it would be something that's community driven. Right. And unfortunately, people who make policy oftentimes send to be people who've never faced any eviction, who have never had to use unemployment insurance, who have never had to wonder about what they might have to do if they ended up homeless. So, you know, this this idea that the solutions should come from the community is in many ways inherent in what a democracy is in the way that a democracy is designed to function. And so, the larger question for me is about the disconnect that prevents that from happening. And whether or not there's room to be optimistic optimistic in a way that can hope that that it can happen that distance that this pandemic could be a turning point that would allow community driven decisions around around people's fundamental right and opportunity to housing and around unemployment insurance. So I'm hearing a lot from from both of you about the notion of sort of community first community centric efforts. Rebecca would be curious to hear if you have thoughts beyond community driven efforts about what could be an opportunity that comes about as a result of the crisis. I think that this is what I'm thinking is that the way that assistance and support programs work more broadly. I think that this whole thing is just showing that it all needs to change drastically to really actually help households. And so I hope that that we can use this opportunity to change the way programs are asking folks for things are asking for documentation. Because it's, I think that like the one issue we run into with emergency rental assistance is this idea that, you know, well, we need to make sure that people actually need help, and it's just so antiquated and, you know, I really hope that we can change that concept and myth. Moving forward. Yeah, I think we're all pretty hopeful about that. Well, there are a bunch of questions that are coming in from from folks in the audience, which I'm so appreciative of so I'm going to transition over and toss a couple of those out to each of you. So we'll use out to the group and whoever's interested in answering and can dive in but the first is, and this has been touched on earlier in the conversation the digital divide and it's from Frank Wells. And Frank says the digital divide in accessing rental assistance programs has been a huge barrier for low income renters, especially in communities of color. So ideas and best practices for equity and accessing these resources and I think the same thing applies to unemployment insurance so I'd open it up to all of you. You know, certainly for our organization, the digital divide was the most wasn't it remains the most difficult issue, you know, before the pandemic. We had computer labs. And, you know, you could come to a computer lab at any one of our locations, and do anything you need it and so, you know, it doesn't completely bridge the digital divide but it helps. But so what happens in a pandemic when all of a sudden, you can't let people into your building that then, and, and when everything becomes digital right when you each, each thing that a person will want to have access to requires a computer. And I don't think, certainly in this community that we've effectively overcome that that issue, but, but when speaking to my colleagues who advocate around issues related to the digital divide, I think, you know, the pushes to make sure that that broadband is more widely available to folks at a more affordable rate. And then also to make sure that you, I think, to make sure that computers are more available and and again at a more affordable rate but but I haven't seen a widespread solution as a matter of fact I've seen the digital divide exacerbated. But also, you know, with unemployment insurance, specifically. I think there are a couple things going on number one as as states do upgrade. They need to make sure everything is optimized for mobile that there's mobile document upload but also that people are available by phone. Particularly with an eye to access for people with limited English proficiency. They tend to want to call in a little bit more often than others. And so, you know, having having multiple means of access is really important. The other thing is. So one of the one of the big ways that people get flagged for fraud is by applying from the same IP address, making sure that's not the local library is pretty important. I'm sure that when somebody when people are coming from when there are multiple applications coming from and I the same IP address that it's actually truly not a public computer kind of IP. Yeah, I mean, I would second Michelle on making sure things are mobile but also, and I think that one of the reports that was discussed today put it really well. I think that internet is just like a tool. It's not the solution. It's, there should be multiple ways for people to access rental assistance programs and applications so phone is huge. The mail is still huge for some more rural communities. And I've heard of creative things like having like a drive by where like a drive through window where you have people tell tell you what their rental assistance stuff is bring the documents, take pictures on mobile phones. And then kind of get things sorted out that way. So, I don't know I the digital divide is still a huge issue and keeping a number of formats for which applicants through which applicants can apply is still extremely important. Yeah, and I think the digital divide is is relevant to, but not entirely encompassing of the challenge for some people with disabilities. And we have a question from Karen Bannon that says, has there been any consideration at all about how disabled people fit into the equation. Michelle, I know you've mentioned some of the challenges that people with disabilities face before maybe we'll start with you and then can save James and Rebecca have anything to add. Yeah, so you know with unemployment insurance one of the core tenants is that people must be able and available to work so you've got that word able in there right away and we have one thing that we see is for example, if somebody quits for a medical cause that automatically flags them. And so, you know, we participated in amicus they are this year or last year about a woman who had a seizure disorder, she couldn't drive a school bus anymore of course. But she, there are many many other opportunities for somebody with a seizure disorder, and the system said no, you're not able and available because you quit for this. Because you have developed a disability. So we need to make sure first of all that the core system isn't as ableist as it is. We just as we develop tech as we have people apply. We need to make sure that every single online system is meeting core, guiding core requirements for people with disabilities. And, and we have to bring people in as these systems both the system is getting designed and as the computer system is getting designed. Okay, next question is from Katie Coleman. And he says this question is for James or anyone I suppose I am a housing advocate Winston Salem and from my perspective it seems as though the biggest problem is local government dragging its feet in the distribution of funds. They've been sitting on millions of earmarked for for assistance for months while people are struggling. What do you guys think is the reason for this my cynical view is that they don't truly understand the depth of the crisis and they'd rather give cover to themselves then give any quote undeserving people money. Yeah. Thank you, Katie, I'm also tracking that issue I think it's $1.25 million that the city has in rumor funds that are designed of course to assist people they are behind on their mortgage or they are, they need rental assistance and the, and I don't think it's able to be cynical about about this and I'll tell you why in a moment but I, but, but having looked into it some because of my own concerns about it. I think that the delays aren't completely unreasonable. They put out an RFP initially for that funding, and apparently they didn't get enough, or at least it is my understanding that they didn't get enough responses to use the entire fund and so they. It took them a while to realize that and then they put out a second RFP, which, and I think they've begun to make award commitments based on that second RFP. You know, I think one of the challenges so what so obviously one challenge was that we didn't have enough people or nonprofit organizations to apply for the funding. And I think the second issue is that there is constantly this, you know, this difficult burden of having to navigate federal guidelines and I think that the city has not found it easy to navigate and to manage those those guidelines. And then I think he's just, and I'm sorry to go a little long on this point, but folks here are cynical about issues around housing. There's an incredible report that came out about a year ago by a local public radio that found that probably as many as 40 or 50% of evictions that happened in 2019 were at the hands of the housing authority. Our public housing authority the entity that is tasked with helping people who are on the precipice of homelessness was in fact the entity that was causing people to be homeless. So when you look at the new America report and you see these incredibly high rates of eviction. You dig in a little bit deeper to see who's doing the evicting the organization that engaged in the most evictions was the housing authority right and so it does cause a fundamental distrust for for government when it comes to their role in keeping people safe and housing. In this case, however, I don't think that that's that's what's happened yet. I think what's happened is that that this process is a government process and it is unfortunately been slow. A question from an anonymous attendee about fraud and I know fraud has come up a couple of times in the conversation. And the question is, have you any of you all heard any murmurings about identity theft, where people are getting benefits and others names. I know fraud is not super prevalent and we don't want to lean into that narrative, but there were a couple people at this person's agency that had it happen to them so they thought they would ask. And they were replied and one isn't even in the state and then I'll just say someone else responded and said actually fraud was a huge problem in Nevada and California police arrested individuals with dozens of benefit checks in their possession clogged systems etc etc. So it would just be interesting to hear from all of you about how prevalent it if at all has fraud been in what you've seen, and if it is an issue, what can be done about it. So it's really a very small piece, small portion of payments in unemployment systems and we focus on it way too much. But this year there was a giant massive massive international fraud ring, and other fraud rings that were systemically attacking state systems. So this year fraud actually is a problem and I kind of do worry a little bit about the prevalence of fraud, creating a negative tone about the system in general. So, you know, there probably do need to be things done to prevent this, what I'm really worried about as people who've been impersonated, but didn't know will get a 1099 g form or a government tax form that says that they owe money on these benefits that they never got and that's going to make them mad and make them not like unemployment insurance. So I do think something needs to be done about the imposters. But, you know, in general, over the course of the last 10 years, we have to be really careful because the over focus on fraud really did prevent innocent people from getting benefits like there was this, there was this strike team that did a report on California fraud system and they found that all of the flags that they had to flag people for fraud actually didn't catch a single fraudster, they just, you know, held up innocent people making rookie mistakes. So we've just got to be a lot, a lot more careful about this. I'm going to be from someone and maybe we'll start with Rebecca and then other folks want to chime in. December report predicted that the number of affordable housing units exposed to flooding will triple over the next 30 years. So in addition to addressing housing needs now I'm wondering if states and localities are thinking about how to build better and address environmental injustices and housing access as well. Bless you. Sorry. That's a really good question Sarah and yes, absolutely. Honestly, are so I would say that I am not the expert in terms of talking about housing and addressing disasters, environmental disasters, but that is something that an LHC is working on and the disaster recovery housing group. And then the coalition is working a lot on and I know that they've made a lot of really good progress these past couple of months. And I think that the other thing that I'll mention is that's, that's tangential is there has been a lot of really great work towards addressing homelessness in the past year ish. And I think that makes me very hopeful. So a lot of so the California for example used a good chunk of its money to invest in project home key I believe it's called and they are using that to pretty much adopt hotels and motels to convert them into residencies for people who were experiencing homelessness, and they're going to become permanent, permanent supportive housing systems. And that will be the people will be able to use that moving into the future since they're actually. Anyways, I think that that's very exciting. So that's a sorry go ahead James. So I end up, I'm actually from New Orleans, or, you know, of our home I'd say New Orleans, and I ran a housing organization in New Orleans, both the year before Hurricane Katrina and then for 10 years afterwards. And we, we filed suit against the federal government and the state government over their housing recovery programs. And I guess one of the main things that I would notice that I haven't seen local and state entities, really addressing affordable housing need related to environmental issues, but I have seen the federal government addressing. And so what I've seen since Hurricane Katrina is a, there's been a constant set of changes to federal policy both that at HUD and that FEMA around housing recovery and about around getting people back into housing and doing so in an equitable way. It's still not perfect. You know, but, but, but I've seen a constant evolution in the policies in order to, to make sure that they're better prepared and to make sure that the response is more effort. I just want to, I love that answer and we're pressed for time so I'm going to ask just one final question and what Rebecca said about project home key I think is, is, is sort of perfect for the framing which is, and then the question comes from Elizabeth Garlow. In the short time we have left I just be, I want to hear from you all. What are the bright spots in either unemployment insurance or rental assistance from 2020 that we might learn from briefly, was there anything that came about this year that you think was innovative or pushed things forward, or that we should keep as we go through our post pandemic world and Maurice, I saw, I see that you jump back on so just jump back going, thanks for having me. Of course, briefly if you have any thoughts for any. What was your question. Yeah, if you have any thoughts for any takeaways from 2020 bright spots that we can keep with us in a post crisis world. Oh, lots of bright spots in my mind. What is this incredible leaning in right now, particularly in the private sector but I now also think within with a new federal governmental partner in really trying to do something about the racial wealth health and opportunity gaps in the country, it is a huge opportunity, one that we need to lean into and make sure it's more than a 2020 phenomena. And so, all these entities are making these commitments to fighting the good fight on this and we need to get these commitments and make them real and make them long lasting. You know, we launched something called project 10x which is designed to capture some of this interest, and we are asking partners to commit for 10 years to do this work. And so I would tell you that amidst the incredible pain and sorrow of 2020, what has been encouraging is more and more, particularly in the private sector groups have committed to doing something about the inequities that we have, and the key is making those commitments real and lasting and so I'm looking forward to jumping on that and trying to make sure it actually is something that we can take and do some real work with for the next generation. I love that Michelle James Rebecca any final thoughts on any bright spots we can take with us. Organizing, you know people have been organizing around you I like crazy like I mentioned before. And what I what what we find is when somebody learns how to flex that organizing muscle, they don't forget. And so they'll bring that organizing into the next thing in their life into their workplace, you know, I just have great hopes that this is the beginning of a real cycle of organizing around our issues. And similarly, I think the organizing effort of Black Lives Matter, over the course of the spring and the summer was an incredible bright spot over the relative to all the challenges that we've seen over the course of certainly 2020 and the start of 2021. And, you know, I think the outcome from from that organizing may be at least relative to this conversation. So, you know, we have a lot of new affordable housing programs and more money. You know, no matter where folks fall on the side on this on the concept of defunding the police. We have seen a number of jurisdictions decide that they were going to use money, either from the police budget or from other budgets to increase affordable housing opportunities. And that's a very welcome trend. I'll take you back on that really quickly. I think that we've seen that housing is increasingly a form of health care it prevents people from experiencing all sorts of all sorts of negative health outcomes. And I think that that's going to be really key to pushing for more housing provisions in the future. Fantastic. And on that note, I just want to say thank you to you all for joining. It's been a really exciting discussion and conversation and I will pass it on to Julia to close this out. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Malcolm. Thank you to all of our panelists, presenters and to our fantastic audience for tuning in and asking provocative interesting questions. As we know, this is a topic that will continue to be very top of mind as we move through 2021. So I really appreciate this discussion and know that this is not the last time we will be visiting these issues. Thank you again to everyone and enjoy the rest of your afternoon.