 Dr. Jenin does an amazing job on the presentation and I think every time I'm kind of left with, ooh, I'm ready to go. And then I'm like, oh, where the hell did I go? Oh, excuse me, where did I go? So that's why we got this esteemed panel today and thank you all for joining us. I don't know why they said yes to me, but this is an impactful panel in front of you. I'm gonna let them introduce themselves because I don't like messing up your body's background so we'll start off with you. All right, I'll keep it short because a lot of us and you guys have been here for a while. I'm Dio Ufnal, I'm the State Representative of Texas House District 123, which incorporates a big chunk of the entire center city goes all the way up to the colonnade as far south as Highway 90 and includes a big chunk of the west side and a very strangely jerryman piece of the east side. Hi, I'm Victoria Gonzalez. I'm the Senior Policy Advisor for Mayor Rom Nuremberg. I help advise on development and growth issues including summing housing, economic development, utility streets, a lot of the infrastructure that you all deal with daily. Good afternoon, I'm Nuremberg Caspar Ramirez and I currently serve as the Chair of the Mayor's Health and Quality Task Force created by Mayor Rom Nuremberg about three months ago. In my sort of day job, I am the President of the University Health System Foundation and just as a way of background, I've lived in San Antonio for about nine years. My family and I relocated here in 2009 when I was offered the job to lead the San Antonio Housing Authority. I think that this discussion that we're having is critically important. We are at a time where I do feel optimistic. Dr. Brennan, I think that's been sort of my outlook. And so I'm looking forward to the conversation about how we move forward with tangible, maybe realistic, reasonable solutions to ensure that neighborhoods become more inclusive and more integrated. Lotus, the U.S. too has the position that you're looking at. That's right. So I also have the honor of serving as Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Department of Public and Native American Housing programs. I've worked very closely with Secretary Pudia Castro in implementing his agenda of opportunity. And then Saha, yes, I might assert the capacity of Presidency Osama. But I think the other thing that, since you mentioned this, Brian, the other thing that is really important, given the conversation that we're having today, is that I'm an immigrant to this country. I was born in Mexico. My family migrated to the United States when I was four. And so when we talk about these issues of home, immigration, opportunity, they really mean and resonate with me. And so I thank you all for the opportunity to be here. Hello, I'm Stephen Doe. I have my own real estate company. I have been involved in real estate brokerage. Since 1985, I've lived in King William since 1983. Started doing development in 1999 with the project in King William. And I'm still involved in doing some development, also some brokerage, but the development is inville town development of my pearl. We have one in King William right now. And then I'm also a current chair of the Urban Land Institute chapter in San Antonio. Pedro Martinez, super lieutenant for the school district here in San Antonio, SD. Just been here just about two and a half years. Originally born in Mexico, grew up in Chicago. I've been in public education for about 20 years. And so, you know, I'm looking forward to this. Thank you for inviting us, Brian. Sorry, we're gonna have to toss the mic back for it. Anybody got a fan to run the MC? Yeah, toss the mic back for now, okay. We'll have to look at it after they're done. So, I guess the first question I have for all of you is from Dr. Drenn's presentation, what is the part that's set out to you the most? Well, like you, I've seen it several times. For those of you who haven't seen it, there's also a version of the presentation that she does that's key to the schools, the school districts and education, is what I don't have more to do with residential, but she ties that part together very, very quickly. Because I've seen it so many times because of the, no, I go purposefully to go see it. I see it out. But because of the job that I have, what I'm always interested in is actually attempting to create solutions and tools. I think that at a certain point, you can have this conversation over over again and you should. But at a certain point, we all start to become experts and identify what the problem is. We become very skilled and learned and talking about the depth of it in all of the different elements. But I think we're at a point now where we have to, one, accept that there's not one answer, there's no perfect solution, but that we should now arrive at a point, it's certainly the word that you're doing is is to try to create tools to try to solve it. So that's sort of where I'm at right now. And the more, the more that I hear you talk about it, the more I think about what those tools are. And I do believe that we're at a place where we have to create solutions and tools because there is a point to be one blanking answer and we have to sort of get comfortable with that. So I arrived late and missed the presentation, but I had the pleasure of being one of Dr. Drennan's students when I was at Trinity University. So I think one of the things that sticks out to me every time she gives this presentation in various forms is a call to our history and the intentionality of how we live today. Understanding that a lot of the social issues and problems that we have now are deeply rooted in the way that the city was organized in some of the unfortunate racial segregation that happened. One of the things like Brian and Dr. Drennan taught me when we were in her class, because we used to talk about articles and the facts of gentrification. And one of the things that I'll never forget was we were discussing all of the implications of gentrification, especially in communities of instability. And she said, okay, great, y'all are gentrifiers. So what are y'all gonna do from here? And so that's something that's really stuck with me, especially in the mayor's office as we were looking at policies and housing policies with mayor's housing policy task force. I think for me, what stood out was the conversation about how important it is, one, for us to not forget the 1968 Fair Housing Act and the fact that the red lining and the discrimination that was occurring was eliminated in 1968. And that following that, there was a huge investment of resources in communities and a huge investment in local community institutions. And I think Dr. Vanden Poek pointed something that I think is really important for us to understand the successes of those programs, to try to figure out how we ensure that as we move forward, we are learning from what didn't work and also identifying what didn't work. The other thing that I think was really critical also is that when we talk about housing, we normally think about sort of bricks and mortar, the structure, the neighborhood, the infrastructure. But at the end of the day, we're talking about people and Dr. Vanden mentioned, it's important for us to not forget that investment in human capital and the investment in people, it's all debated, right? And so we do need to ask the question of not just housing segregation and poverty from the perspective of the development patterns but also what are the opportunities that people have to improve their standing? What are the economic opportunities? What are the challenges that relate to education? So again, even not losing sight that as the state representative shared that there is not one sort of single approach. This is all interrelated. The thing that's to me, because I've been involved in real estate for a number of years, I've seen those deep restrictions throughout my career and knew that they no longer apply at last to my federal law, but you see them a lot. But to see how stark it is between one neighborhood to another is something that had never occurred to me. The other thing I'd point out that Kathleen didn't break out, and I always point to Pearl as the entity in the development that solved this issue was even beyond what was going on at the federal level and getting rid of the deep restrictions is that the realtor community in San Antonio has always been hyper oriented to the north side and it's basically red line anything south of Hillary. And I've been in King William since 83, heavily involved in the King William Association of the South Count Organization. And we were always amazed in doing studies and surveys out of the quarry to find out what's the awareness of King William in the South Count and how to get people down here to come to our shops and go to the restaurants and at least get some life down there. And as long as 10 years ago, you do a survey out of the quarry and people would not have known where King William is. They never heard of South Count. It's just amazing. And it wasn't until Pearl became such a big deal that the realtor could no longer tell them that viable inner city housing existed. You know, when anybody came to town, we used to hear in King William when people were down there after being in town for five years, came to town, realtor told me nothing existed in the south. Bill de Vrand took me out to the medical center. I've been miserable down in King William where the lock-ins and things are great. So it was really a pearl that kind of woke the city up to the fact that we have some great inner city neighborhoods. And because of that, because of Pearl, anybody who looks at Pearl or comes to town and looks at the inner city, they look at King William, they look at the lock, and they look at Dignity Hill. And so that's, I think, part of why the issue of gentrification really started to happen in San Antonio over the last probably five or six years. So aside from the red line that we discussed, there's a lot of other red line that's been going on over the history of San Antonio. I just want to make that point. So I've seen Christine's presentation as well a few times, and what's interesting is the first time I saw it was Christine was presented to our Teach for America cohort. There was a group of individuals that were becoming teachers, and most of them were from outside of San Antonio. And I just love the fact that TFA would have, as part of their curriculum, to help teachers understand San Antonio. I was here, it was my first week. And so I got a chance to see that presentation, and I immediately went to Christine and said, because I said, where's everybody seen this? And she said, you know, no, I mean, it's kind of been sort of a limited sort of presentation or a limited audience. And so we partnered together, and what I love is now, you know, I mean, she's out there, she's out on the road. And I'll tell you, and I've seen this probably now about my fourth time as well. And each time I see it, part of it is therapy for me because part of the challenge we have in our school district is sometimes it just feels like the challenge is just so overwhelming because the poverty is just so dense, it's so high. We look at our academic results, especially compared to suburban districts like North Central Northeast, and it just feels really overwhelming. So for me, it gives me context. It really motivates me to, you know, really push Christine and others to just really understand it. And for us, you know, we've now used, you know, sort of with this, motivated us to really look at our families, the 50,000 plus children we serve. And we said, okay, so let's really understand what's going on. Muhammad Chowry is my Chief Innovation Officer in the district. And you know, one of the things that we did is we said, okay, let's look at census data and let's look at, you know, this issue of poverty in our district because, you know, we can see Christine's, you know, sort of historical perspective. One of the things that we found, this is something we're gonna talk about this weekend my State of the District address, is that we have almost two thirds of, you know, the high poverty families in the county. These are families that are literally, you know, poverty based on the federal guidelines. If you combine us in Edwood and Harlem down in South Sand, we have 82% of the families. And so that is the task. That is the challenge. And it's interesting because some of my other colleagues will say, well, you know, in North side and Northeast, we have poverty as well, even in, you know, in some other communities, I mean, the poverty is growing. And, you know, it's interesting because when I, I'm building a strong team and some of the team is from outside of San Antonio and when they come here, I always tell them, I say, just drive around the city. Like, just do me that favor. Just, you know, just do what you see. And they always tell me the same thing. I can't believe how stark the differences are between housing, between development. It's just so visible. And I gotta tell you, for somebody who's just been here two and a half years, like, I don't get it. I didn't want to mean by that, folks, I don't understand how it could have become this bad. And people didn't see it. And what I realized is that when you live in an area and you grow up here, you really don't see it. And so because of that, I really pushed myself, I said, people don't get it, they don't understand it. And it shouldn't be me coming in with others to, you know, say, look at this, like, it's not right. So for us, you know, it's just been a big motivator in our work that we're doing. So, you know, we're creating new school models, we're making sure those school models are being created with a certain design, because we want to make sure that we don't promote our own type of segregation, even in our own school models. You know, Cynthia said, you know, working so hard to improve our existing schools and we're seeing people respond. And so, you know, more and more that will come this week and more questions. So you can actually keep the mic down there. Can everybody hear me okay right now? Okay, cool. The next question I wanted to ask, you mentioned housing stock, I want to bounce off of that. One of our audience members had mentioned the idea of an affordable revolving housing loan or improvements. Steve, I wanted you to kind of take this from the private side and with regard to housing stock and improving and the balance between formal housing and quality housing, what is your perspective of that when it comes to gentrification or housing availability in San Antonio? I thought about the gentrification issue for a long time. I've always had this idea in my head of some kind of, I always have it, I always call it myself, the revitalization of anti-gentrification acts which should be angles that you can think of to protect people that don't get forced out of their home, by rising property values in order to keep their rents where they want to keep them instead of having to jack them up in order to pay property taxes and or sell the house because it gets taxed as the same value as a single family home. And so the frustrating thing, and I'm on one of the subcommittees of the housing tax board, then we were in a session last week and Mike Laskita from Barrett Brasile District was talking about how the code is set up and I've always known that the commercial property is hyper undervalued versus single family homes. And I always thought, well, if you just pass laws to make Texas a disclosure state where you have to disclose your property values, have to solve the problem, he made it clear, there are a myriad of tricks and gimmicks in the code that allow commercial properties to be substantially undervalued. So all the work that we're trying to do to solve the gentrification, people being forced out, people being able to build equity in their homes is diametrically opposed to all the things that you would do because of property taxes. And King William, the people that lived there a long time have always known that you never paint the outside of your house. You know, you walk into a home and it's pristine, but outside it'll look like a tear down because the second you paint it, the second you fix your roof, property taxes are going up and it affects people at all levels. So that's the question, you know, what do we do when I made a statement that San Antonio, and it's becoming a big deal all around the U.S., a big deal in Texas, I got a ULI, so the issue of gentrification and the affordable housing crisis and the talk about not just equal, but the equity, looking at everything with an equity lens and how do you bring things back to a normal state is huge on across the U.S. So I mean, the comment that if ever there was a perfect storm for pressure to come to bear on the state legislator to do something about that, now would be it. You know, you do it on a revenue neutral basis and property taxes for residential would drop by half, I guarantee you. And then, you know, all this stuff would, you would, you'd be starting, you'd be getting somewhere. And so I think the number one thing that the city needs to do is get the best lobbyists and if it takes five years, 10 years, 15 years, get on it now and link that with all the other people and the groups just like this and Austin, Dallas, Houston, everywhere to try and make that change. So that's, you know, that's the one thing that I would say. You know, to me, that's the elephant in the river. And I first experienced that myself. I used to have a little duplex on Callahan, I had a triplex on Adams Street and not to go into investment, you know, analysis and the rest of it, but when you get to the point that, you know, you go in to get a praise and they don't look at the value of your property based on your income, they look at it as there's a house across the street that's sold for 300,000, there were 300,000, it's like, that's three quarters of my rent on property taxes. So what do you do? You sell. The other thing that is accelerating the process is that in the old days, King William LaBaca, people would buy a house, young couple, and you'd fix it up over a 15, 20 year period. Now, you can't compete with the flip industry. There are so many people that are out there just ready to pounce on any house that's getting ready to come on the market that buy for 150,000, put 50,000, put it back on the market for 300,000. So that is drastically accelerating the process. And then the other thing on the rental side is that any neighborhood that becomes remotely interesting or attractive, close to downtown, whatever, if people who have the small scale, three, four, six, you know, sixplex, have that tax issue, they're going Airbnb. And 15 years ago, the King William Associates has spent a lot of time and energy coming up with a BNB ordinance because we're being overrun with BNBs. Why the city didn't just take that and say, here's our BNB ordinance, you're an Airbnb, here's the rule. We're now going to have a slew of grandfathered Airbnb's if and when the city comes up with a plan and puts it in place. So there's a lot of stuff that's happening that works against everything that we're trying to do. And it can make you, you know, kind of pessimistically, we're just talking about it. You've got to be optimistic, but it's sometimes in the face of all this, it can be kind of, it can't tend to be pessimistic, you know. And so, you know, that's where I come from. You know, there's been a lot of work that happened after Katrina in New Orleans, and I think San Antonio in New Orleans are very similar. I call San Antonio is kind of the German, Mexican version of the French, African-American New Orleans. And there's been a lot of work to see how you can create affordable housing and how you can take the way that people have maintained their homes over the years and kind of use those same mechanisms the same way that they've figured out how to make their homes work and maintain. And keep that working in the same way without ruling it out via codes and building codes and that sort of thing. So there's a lot of great ideas, a lot of smart people, a lot of people that have been, you know, that have been working on solving the problem, but until we take care of property taxes, you know, the second anything nice starts to happen, anything good starts to happen in your neighborhood, if everybody doesn't want to put on the brakes or it's gonna start forcing people out and that's just the nature of, you know, of economics. You know, there's no keeping things the same. Another King William story is I always joke that people that moved in in 1971 to be like it was in 1977, people that moved in in 1981 to be like it was in 1980. And so on down the guy who moved in five years ago wants to be like it was five years ago, but economies kind of balance on the head of a pen. And if it's not, you're not moving forward, you're falling back. There's no spaces, it's just that or the other. So we have to kind of decide if we're going to, you know, if we're really gonna get this thing going and solve a lot of these issues, you know, there's gonna be some difficult choices and some hurt feelings and that sort of thing, but to me it's kind of one or the other. So since you mentioned state legislature and you mentioned district one. I'll be quick, but I think you're right. The environment that I'm in in Austin is not a friendly environment, but I did want to let you guys know of some of the things that we're trying to do to that end, but I will be very clear with you that the only way that it happens is both if enough people care about it. It's really interesting about all these issues though. They should give you some hope. If you think about them politically, they don't belong to one party or the other. We're talking about property taxes in some ways. That's the most bipartisan issue you can get a hold of and we just need to sell it that way. So very quickly, one, if we fix or do better with school finance in a significant way, that would allow some school districts to lower to some degree their property taxes, which provides some level of property tax relief. The second is we're not a sales disclosure state, which means that when a property, whether it's commercial or residential is sold, there's not required to share what the price was. What happens because of that, especially on commercial properties, is that those properties get under assessed and then those people, because they're often of means fighting that assessment. And what happens is they don't care nearly as much what they should be on property taxes, leaving residential homeowners to bear the burden. That's number two. Number three, we talked about pools. There was a bill that we got all the way through the House and the Senate and was vetoed by our great governor, Greg Abbott, which was a homestead preservation district, which would allow the city to draw boundaries, sort of like a residential TERS, draw boundary around certain areas, collect the property taxes that were over what they were before and then use that money for whatever they wanted, as long as the charge allowed it. So it could have been investment infrastructure, it could have been low interest loans, it could have been a variety of things. It could have been used to keep people in their homes. When we're talking about justification, we all might need different things in our mind when we hear it. So for the purpose of the next one, then I'm done with the tools that we're working on. All the things I'm talking about, there are bills that exist that have been filed and gone nowhere or have been killed. These are not ideas that we're currently trying on now. So for the purpose of the last one, I'm talking about making sure that people who own their homes aren't taxed out. Right, that's the phenomenon I'm talking about with this next one. And that is a legacy homeowner tax break of some sort. The way it would work, I don't have the numbers just yet, I need the economists to help me out. It would be if you have been in your home for X number of years and it's owner occupied, then whether after a certain point, whether it's a temporal point, meaning you've been there for a certain amount of time or your property taxes have risen so violently that it's double or triple, then you're entitled to the kind of rate that we give people when they hit 65, or something like that. The purpose being, making sure that people who own their home, especially those who own their home outright, can stay in it. And in my mind, there's a lot of indignities that we can pass on to people. One of the most undignified things that can happen is being forced to leave a home that you own. And so I just want to point this out that these are all things that we're working on. These are all things where bills exist. These are all things that the legislature can and has the ability and the power to do. In many ways, they are the broad scope, large scope solutions, or the solutions that Dr. Brennan mentioned. But if you want to talk about it further, we can because these are not just ideas where at the end of our conversation, or after we've had the cup of coffee, we go back and there's nothing to do. These are actual real, these are action items that exist. Sure. I was wondering if you could say why did Governor Vito, that bill you called the residential term, to help us understand what's the argument that was going in the other direction? Why did the Governor Vito, the constant- Why did he say he didn't know the reason? So there's a public and a private answer. Right? The private answer is that it was fully sponsored by Democrats and Republicans who have high-taxed districts voted for it, but originally they knew their districts were blanket. God forbid they actually represent people that they represent in their districts. But the public part was that there should not be the goal of the cities to interfere with the market, that the market will sort itself out and this is essentially market manipulation and that fell a foul of the general principle of the state of Texas. Me and Oledo who worked on my office during that time, sitting in the back, who now works for Sawhide, did I get that right? That's all right. All right, all right, all right. Okay, so that was the answer. Go to Governor Vito, you all want to chime in? You don't have to, you don't have to. Well, maybe this is a great sort of opportunity to also describe what the Mayor's House of Policy Task Force is doing and the approach that we're taking. And basically, so the Mayor created this policy housing task force to address the great need that we have in our city to create housing that's affordable to all segments of the population. With a focus on households that are really struggling economically. And just a couple of statistics that I think are important for all of us to know in terms of sort of the baseline. I think over the last five years, property values have increased about 48%. But income has not increased, or hasn't kept up, I should say, it's increased by 15%. So hence, you have the cost of rental housing and homeownership going up, but wages not keeping up. And some of these points were raised during Dr. Brennan's Q and A that what are we doing to ensure that the limited public tools or public investments or public incentives that we have are directed towards creating more affordability. And so the Mayor's House of Policy Task Force is exploring these five policy areas. We've created five areas of focus to help come up with a set of recommendations that we hope will allow us to turn the corner to create more affordable housing to address some of these issues of preventing displacement, protecting older neighborhoods. But also recognizing that it's not just a housing solution why it really requires collaborating across sectors. So we've created five policy areas. The first is ensuring that we are providing under really understanding the need to provide housing and services for special populations. We have individuals that are homeless, that are currently homeless, individuals that are aging out of the foster care system, individuals that are aging in place that maybe need a different type of housing environment. So we're really interested in coming up with solutions to tackle that space. The second area of focus for us is looking at the private market and the private sector. One way, we recognize that there are not enough federal resources or state resources to create 150,000 units of affordable housing. And so the question for us is what can we do to incentivize the private market to create affordable housing? What are some of maybe the regulatory barriers that are in the way? And so this question that was brought up earlier that the mayor and the council have suspended automatic incentives, gives us the opportunity to take a pause and to look at how these public incentives are being directed to create affordability. The third area of focus is around looking at new funding and financing mechanisms, looking at what more can we do to bring in more dollars to assist the fourth area, I'm going by memory, so help me, Victoria, if I forget. So I mentioned funding and finance and coordinated housing system. During our conversation with the city staff who have been wonderful in conversation with the nonprofits and the for-profit housing development community, we recognize that as a city, we don't have a coordinated integrated housing system. So in some sense, we're all doing some part, but we're not doing it in a coordinated fashion. So we're interested in figuring out, can we come up with a coordinated housing system that allows for us to be smarter about how to be able to invest and interact the impact that we're having? And then the last? Neighborhoods, yes. And the last, exactly, that's great. So it is about understanding the tools that communities that are already in communities or the tools that we need to scale to address the issues that have come up while you're investing in older neighborhoods. Someone mentioned earlier that there are conversations about a relocation assistance program and I think it was couched in the sense of we need to be thinking more comprehensively and I agree, I think we need to look at what does an anti-displacement policy look like? And then a subcomponent is relocation assistance. So I think the way that we look at these things has to start with the perspective that traditionally the market does not think about poor people. They don't come at it from that perspective. And so if we come up with a set of policies that allows for us to recognize the history, to understand that this is an issue of poverty also and inequality, then I really believe that the policy recommendations through these five buckets will enable us to be more comprehensive and to be more system-syncing from maybe what we've done in the past. Let me get a Q and A at the end. I just want to make sure we get through a lot of this stuff. So one of the, and my wife and I talk about this quite a bit, one of the things that we talk about when we discuss the solutions or gentrification, whatever, is a matter of, there's been a concern and there's a lot of vocal advocates about making sure that low-income households or low-income individuals have a place that we have housing for them, that we have a space for them in our city and they're not being pushed around. The discussion that we often don't have when it comes to gentrification is how do we ensure that low-income individuals don't aren't stuck in a cycle of generational poverty? And I really like to, so my favorite topic in this all this stuff is education, also because in my perspective, that is the foundation of growth in any sector when it comes to these discussions. So Pedro, I'm gonna toss the mic in your direction and kind of get your perspective. And I want you, you mentioned recapture the other day when we spoke. I want you to kind of tie that into this, but I want you to kind of key in on how education is truly a great equalizer, right? Thank you, Brian. So first of all, one of the things that I want to make clear is that when we see, so what I always remind our staff and I remind the community, when you look at public ed institutions, we're one of the few organizations that it gets that sees the families on a continuous basis, I always say that we see everything. So we see when families are doing well. We see when families are not. We have children for at least seven hours a day. I mean, if you think about it, what other public institution gets that kind of access, right? Because hospitals even don't even get that access. They see a patient for a certain amount of time and then after that, they're gone. We are, it's continuous for us. And because of that, one of the things that we talk about is how do we make sure that we're, what role are we playing, especially knowing the context that exists here in San Antonio. And what we talk about is how do we make sure that we are part of the solution that families have access to quality education because like Brian, I truly believe that there's a lot of things that need to be done whether it's in housing, whether it's social, different social supports, that at the end of the day, if that thing is gonna escape poverty, if they're gonna build wealth, education is a significant part and in some cases, in my case, in my family, it was what did make the difference. And so a couple of things we're doing. So first of all, we are raising expectations that are very high about what we are making it very clear that not only are our children gonna graduate from our high schools, but they're gonna be going to college. I get a lot of pushback on that because there's a lot of people to say, why are you so obsessed with college? Because not everybody should go to college. And I say, well, let's have that conversation because if you're coming from a middle class or a class family, all right. I respect that. I can't have that conversation within your family. I'm curious to see if all of you agree on that, but let aside, but if you're coming from a high poverty family, especially the families that I serve, I say this very clearly, I don't think our families are gonna be okay if they don't obtain higher education. Now, whether they should go to Harvard or whether they should go to San Antonio College, that's a different conversation, right? But in terms of them going beyond high school, I don't think they're gonna be okay. I think they're gonna end up in a minimum paid job. I think they're gonna continue to, continue the cycle of poverty. There's high, you know, these neighborhoods that have this dilapidated housing, they're gonna continue to live there. I just don't see them improving their conditions. So because of that, you know, we doubled down on this. And it's interesting, in the last two years, we saw the number of students graduating and we saw 80, 85%, but more importantly, we're seeing more and more students going to college. We've increased the number of students from the top tier one universities from 2% of our graduates to now 7%. And I mean, and we're pushing on this very hard. And so for us, you know, does it mean that, you know, we still have a ways to go? Because I'll tell you, we are now at the point where we're looking at every single school, every single neighborhood, and we're asking the question, do the children of these neighborhoods have the access and the chance to be successful? And because of that, we're trying very, you know, different models, we're creating different programs, we're creating different partnerships. And so for us, you know, that's the direction we wanna go. And I will tell you again, we have our ways to go, but it's interesting, like we're seeing things like, we started, you know, we're screening students who are advanced and first and fifth grade. And so what happens, these are the sort of secrets that people don't tell you. So when people have means and they have children, they will make sure, kind of bless them. I mean, you know, I'm the same way, to make sure their children have every opportunity they can, right? So for example, in very wealthy neighborhoods, they make sure that if their children has a chance to be identified as gifted or advanced, they make sure that happens. They'll pay for tasks, they'll be able to do, you know, they'll do these things. And high poverty families, they don't know. They just don't know. So we started doing universal screening. We increased the number of children that we identified as advanced or gifted from four to six percent. And by the way, the children were already smart. In fact, some of the families said, but Petra, you know, I'm so glad you're doing this because I didn't realize that my son was gifted. I thought he was just a little off, you know, because he was acting out, he was not behaving well, and all of a sudden I realized, oh my God, like he was just bored. He was just really bored. And then we didn't have, you know, again, and so now the school and the town are working together to make sure that child is challenged. So I use that as an example. Let me talk a little bit about property tax because let's face it, you know, it's just, you know, when you look at your tax bill, San Antonio is, you know, stands out very quickly because we represent more than half of your property taxes. Here's one of the things that's really frustrating for me and Diego knows this, is that what I think is that when your property taxes go up, none of that revenue directly increases our budget. In other words, so when your taxes go up every year, and I know they go up all the time, literally that revenue in essence goes too often. We used to think that it was used for education, right? So I used to tell people, well, when you go visit, you know, another community like in El Paso or another Aurora, you know, make sure they thank you because you're paying for their education, right? Because we're subsidizing because they don't have enough property tax wealth and so that's how the state makes it work. So I said, make sure they thank you. Well, then I learned later that that isn't even always what's happening, that they're using this money for other things other than education because rather than say, and be honest and say, hey, you don't have any income tax, that's okay, like that's cool that we don't have any income tax, but you gotta come up with revenue somehow. And rather than tax, you know, having a business tax, rather than increasing sales taxes, we're gonna just leverage property taxes and that's what's happening. And so now you see a movement that's happening, actually starting in the northern part of the state in Dallas and in some groups of Dallas, they're starting now to just, I mean, they're so angry, they're actually putting out videos and flyers and trying to get people, anybody who will listen and say, you know, start protesting this because this is wrong. And so you just need to know that that exists. So sadly, we are a cap in terms of what our revenues are. So at least, by the way, a lot of these are formula driven, at least some of them have been updated in 20, 30 years. So think about that for a second. So we've been funding, in many cases, the same way, even though our state is poor or in some case we have all these challenges, some of these funds are 20 to 30 years old and the state refuses to update them because now it's so expensive. And instead of using these extra resources that are coming from your property taxes and using them to fix that, they're saying, well, now we have other parts of the state budget that we have to fill. So that's what's happening. In the meantime, what that's forced us to do is to look and say, okay, so how do we make sure that we are getting the resources that we need for our schools? And so we're leveraging more than ever. And think of it, we have a very generous community with philanthropic donors. We did pass two ballot questions so that we could keep some of that revenue local. But that required, again, you had to approve that. And again, for us, our goal is just to make sure that we can invest in these needs. And again, we're starting to see some very fruitful, some very, we see some potential overseeing, especially like I said, the number of kids right now last year we had in our graduating class, we had over 54% of our students attending college, more than half point to universities. That was the first time ever that we ever saw that. I had four students right now that are in Middlebury and Vermont. I have a student at the University of Alaska. So when we have students at record levels at all of our top universities in Texas. I'm gonna jump over to Diego. I know he's just... No, I mean, I think the education department, I feel the same way. The way I see it is, you know, education is sort of like no one coffee, the more of it you add, the more everything else changes. But the reason I'm one of the young hitters because I'm really, really interested in almost my topic about making sure that you guys know that these are the things that we can actually work on right now. So this year, the committee studies the way the state funds public schools, the school finance committee that the government put together. I'm honest. Don't ask me how I ended up there, but I am. But my point is that there is a conversation about changing the way we fund public schools right now. But just to make his point, think of it this way. When we settled on this formal school finance in the 80s, core students in the way that we measured poverty was about 25%. So arguably they were a special population. Today, there are over 60%. So over 60% of the students we have in public schools in Texas are poor and yet we haven't changed the way that we fund the public schools. And the state has decreased its contribution to public it, which is squeezing the property owners, which is also again the conversation we're having now. But again, and I'm going to pass it on. The point I'm making is this is not just a session where we're voicing our frustrations. I am telling you that there are individual things happening right now that we can all focus on and try to get done. It is not impossible. It's just. To follow up on Diego's point, as some of the federal laws are changing and some of the state laws are changing, we're really working on here at a local level is engaging passionate people to be involved, to keep your elected officials accountable, to serve the boards and commissions. And for the first time in a while, we had an unprecedented record number of people applying for boards and commissions this year. We had over, I think, 60 applicants applied for the planning commission, which is a lot of time. It's a lot of work. And so much so that we've had to create a special group of subcommittee members to weed out some of the board applications to just go through the interview process. And so I think what's really important and what's really great about all of you being here and recognizing a lot of the faces in the room is you also come to the Mayor's Housing and Policy Task Force meetings, you come to other community events, is that part of the reason that Brian set up this panel is to get people to come up with solutions. So we have wonderful people like Pedro, working at the school district level. We have Diego, we have Lourdes, we have Steve in the private sector. And we also need help as well. And so a lot of that is getting neighbors involved and also being welcome to high-quality development that benefits low-income families. Sometimes what we see, so my prior job, I worked in the private sector in real estate. And so we would be representing high-quality, affordable housing developers trying to utilize some of the low-income housing tax credit programs in order to bring affordable housing into New York because where there weren't any options. And it was such a difficult process at the front end to get the entitlements, like the zoning that was needed to make those developments happen, that a lot of the developments would have failed. And then there would be, as a result, those tax credits, because it's a very competitive process, would be awarded to another community, which for an affordable housing development, paying $50,000 in entitlement fees on the front end is really difficult and ultimately affects the overall affordability of a project. And so I think the reason I'm telling you that is so that way we do see quality development coming because we want quality development that benefits people at all income levels. We don't historically, and this is part of a document I was saying, a lot of our low-income housing is just dilapidated housing, right? And so people deserve to live with dignity and to live in quality housing. And so I think part of that is having that conversation, being open to working with developers and other entities that are coming into your neighborhood. And then also keeping them and your elected officials accountable, I think it's really important that's where we're working on this thing. Well, just building, I think, what Victoria said, participation, getting involved, critically important. And we have some great institutions here in San Antonio that are also doing a lot of great work. The local public housing authority, the San Antonio Housing Authority, is leading a really comprehensive neighborhood revitalization effort in the East Side. Nothing is, what's important about that approach to the choice neighborhoods is that this is the first time that there is a look at the three major components of what it takes to be able to revitalize public housing. Traditionally in our Hope 6, the approach was to basically demolish public housing, replace it with nice looking housing without a real sense of understanding of the impact that that had on residents and also without a one for one replacement. Under the model that Saha is leading, and this is not just your local, you've been across the country, there's a focus on replacement of public housing, there's a focus on investing on individuals. But there's also an understanding that within the neighborhood investing in education, in bringing in new businesses and investing in infrastructure is critically important to sustain that level of investment. The other piece that I think is also really important to the point of being optimistic and what are the things that are occurring. We have a number of nonprofit housing developers that are in this space of creating affordable housing. The model of the approach in our most more recent years has been to create what is called mixed income housing where you have housing that is subsidized and housing that is market rate, bringing diverse socioeconomic groups. I think that's a model that allows for us to be created and it's a model that needs to continue. So all that to say is that there is good work that is happening, but I do think that it is important for us now more than ever to ensure that we are maybe working smarter across sectors so that when you're thinking about housing, that there's also an understanding that housing is connected to health, for example. My role now within the university health system has enabled me to look at health from a very different perspective. When you live affects your health, health outcomes. If you don't have access to a safety, same quality housing environment, if you don't feel safe when you live, if you can't walk, if you don't have access to a park, all of those things affect your health outcomes. And so there's opportunities for housing and health to come together. There's opportunities for housing and education to come together. And so I think this is really an important moment for us continuing to work across sectors, continuing to be involved and engaged and really being solution oriented. So there's a, we seem to be on kind of a theme now of ecosystem where everybody has to work with each other in order to come up with a solution because there are no silver bullets to any of the issues that we are running into with regard to electrification or inequity. Steve, I'm gonna toss the mic back to you from a private side because I mean, these folks are in the public sector itself from a private side. And I do cybersecurity data and that's mine, that's who pays me. But all this other stuff is kind of on the side because you can't just go through life and not contribute back to society. So I wanted to get your reflection on how difficult is it to spread your time between professional and then also contributing to society in a public sense. I've always, and there's a lot of folks who are in the industry here locally who I think who feel the same way. One thing that's interesting or nice about San Antonio is that you don't come to San Antonio, don't come back to San Antonio because you wanna make money. For all the San Antonio being the seventh largest city in Texas with the fourth largest economy or seventh largest in the US with the economically with the fourth largest in Texas. So you don't come here to make money. Most of the people that are coming back that are local developers, local guys that are trying to do things here and there, do it because they believe in San Antonio and they're trying to, from their standpoint, they feel like making things better, trying to lift, elevate us and keep us in the ranks. So we don't fall back and become that in league with, not that there's anything wrong with El Paso, but it could easily become a love like El Paso, the radio as opposed to keeping up with an Austin Dallas Houston. So I think speaking personally and then for a lot of the other folks that are involved in Urban Land Institute, they really feel like they have to be involved. They have to sit on panels, go to show racks, try and do what they can to keep San Antonio moving. Things we say at Urban Land Institute or locally is that the nice thing about it is it gives you exposure to all the other markets and all the other cities in the United States and even worldwide. And so what we say is because San Antonio grows so much slower than the other Texas markets is we have the chance to do it right. To grow in a way where we don't lose our soul, we don't become an Austin, we don't become a Dallas, we don't become a Houston. What we say, what they did right, we can model after the same things, we can learn from their mistakes and take care of it and address them before we get to that point. So the two kind of go hand in hand. Spend, you know, at times I spend, you know, probably 20% of my hours on, you know, either it's King William or Southtown or, you know, the U of I, which I consider also be kind of a public deal. And it's just, it's just part of what you, part of what you do in my opinion. Anybody else wanna expand on the theme of ecosystem and how we can better work together in our different, from our different perspectives in it? Well, I will say, you know, my wife and I talk about this all the time, that one of the reasons that we feel, you know, optimistic that, you know, we can transform our district and really improve education outcomes is that there is an ecosystem, I don't know if it's a window and how long we have in that window, but it does feel like the conditions are sad. You know, I feel this myself personally because the level of support we get from our community, the level of support that we're getting even from, you know, our state commissioner, from our mayor, from our county commissioners. I mean, they all want us to succeed. I find it very easy to collaborate here. It's not always easy. I've been in other cities. I grew up in Chicago, I lived in, in both Las Vegas and in Reno and Nevada. And you know, in some cities, it's just easier to collaborate than others. I think San Antonio is one of the easiest, frankly. I don't see a lot of the equals. I mean, maybe it's on the side, I don't see a lot of the other politics. Maybe again, I'm naive and it's on the side, but it's not as visible. I think the challenge here is one of us all having the same context. It's just why I'm a big advocate for Christine to be out presenting and showing the historical perspective. I think the other is a real honest conversation about policies and decisions. And I'll just use one little example. So if it was on the radio, maybe a few months ago, I heard something young who was going to be expanding in San Antonio and they were going to expand significantly. It was like 500 jobs, these were all wealthy jobs, 15,000, 80,000 and above. And I'm like, great, right? And so, because they have those small presence not here now, and I know they're working very well. And so I know it has a lot of other benefits so I'll come with it because of the kind of clients they serve, et cetera. And then I learned that, well, but they're already in Northside and they're going to be expanding out in Northside. And I just thought, you know, and I saw one of the commissioners and he was like, who's so crazy? It wasn't that great that we're having here's the youngest man. And I said, yeah, commission, but why wouldn't they expand in downtown? Why in Northside? I mean, my God folks, every time I go out down 10 and 87, if I see another crane, I mean, the cranes are everywhere. Just go out there, or you go out down 16 or four. The cranes are everywhere. And the reason I said it's not because, you know, people's are great communities, they're nothing against the government in those areas. But if you really want to tackle the issue of wealth, of inequality, you got these people, our community has to have access to jobs. And you have to have good paying jobs because if the economy doesn't change and most of the jobs that are available are low paying jobs like in our hotels or fast food places in our malls. I mean, that's what I see our families having access to. And so, unfortunately, when you have development and it's happening outside of our area, each of us promotes segregation. And so, definitely housing is a part of it, but I think it's something that again, and I just think it's just something that I feel that both our city and county have to look at and trying to, they just have to be thoughtful about it. So from the city side, one of the things that, so I'm on the board for a central partnership, which we make downtown move, but one of the things going off of the speak of downtown and sprawl from the city side, which might be a decade of downtown was a big effort. When it comes to this lens of equity and working off of the comprehensive plan and bond programs, how does the city tie into that sprawl effect and kind of reducing it? Right, so a lot of that ties back to the city's essay tomorrow comprehensive plan. So this current council has gotten a lot of attention about using an equity lens as it makes decisions with regards to the budget. But I think even prior to this council, if you look at the essay tomorrow plan, the idea of expanding equity in places where people had access to jobs that they could live, work and play throughout the city, not just downtown or not just on the more side, but at 13 regional centers throughout the city with one of the kind of important parts of bringing equity to San Antonio, right? So instead of just investing in downtown or just encouraging development outside of the city limits and how do we manage growth, how do we manage growth sustainably and how do we ensure that our entire city is benefiting and being able to access areas of opportunity within their communities? And so that's kind of the basis of our comprehensive plan. And as you see that being implemented, we'll start to notice the idea of the plan is to have things like our economic development policies, like our incentive policies to align with those targeted areas, richer centers to out there town. So that's been one of the ways and that they're looking at helping bring that investment to different areas. Christine, if I could get you for one second. I wanted you, can you speak on just very briefly, economic mobility? Just kind of give us a basic overview? Yeah. What I would call social mobility? Yeah, what about? She's like, I was done for the day, Brian. What about it? Can you kind of just kind of give us a basic definition of economic mobility and how it fits in the conversation? You mean inner generation? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so he's using economic mobility and I would use social mobility for this, I think for the same time. So American dream, you'll do better than your parents. They have a certain income level and you're going to have a higher income level above inflation and currently in the United States, not just here specifically, but in the United States, that's been shown to be reversing in that we are not socially mobile any longer from generation to generation and in fact most, especially with the millennial generation, probably will not do better than their parents did. Why? Because that, especially with the shrinkage, shrinkage in the middle class, right? So there's not, so there isn't those abilities in terms of income for one thing, but now this wealth thing is the other one, is that because the wealth is the long term, is that that's like how you buy the mouse and how you get the better education. And with real estate doing what it's doing right now and we don't understand that fully and actually it's part of like a whole equity package. It's just like, but real estate's become the new investment. It's not expensive and it's really real estate. And so a lot of us can't afford to get into the real estate market anymore. You can't accumulate wealth, social mobility no longer. Perfect, thank you. Okay, so going off of that, I would like to go down the line and hit it from each of you. What is your not favorite solution, but what is your number one mode of addressing the issue of social mobility and trying to flip that on its head to where we are going back to being able to make more than our parents? Yep. I'll just keep on short, if I had to provide a quick one, I think it's improved in public education as we gave you the numbers in the outline before. I think the more that we can do to tear our kids up to do better and make sure that they can make progress, that is the one surefire way to do it in our city in particular. That's very much the same kind of story of someone getting education and coming back and doing more than their parents were going to do, so that's my one. This is not an easy question. But I think that education is really important. I think for the millennial generation, I can only speak to first hand experiences that I have, but it's just the large amount of debt that we're undertaking in order to fund our post-high school education if you pursue it is large. It affects your debt to income ratio. It affects the amount of equity you have available to purchase property. I myself am not a property owner, so I don't pay property taxes because I rent. A lot of that has to do with being able to afford to have the cash on hand in order to make that purchase because I am paying off student loans, which were a result of being able to fund my education. That's a really tough question, Brian. So I would say that we have to figure out how to eradicate poverty. I mean, how do we reduce poverty? Because really I think that's at the core of everything that we're discussing. And that's, there's a lot of different approaches I guess to that, even from education. But of course also as a housing person, I would say, invest in affordable housing and invest in an affordable housing that allows us to recognize that there are, really that we have a more obvious obligation to take care of members of our society that fall on our tons. We saw, I saw that firsthand when I, of course work in public housing. The average, I think most of you know that the median income here in San Antonio is about $50,000 in public housing to be able to qualify for public housing or section eight. And really the program is designed to target 75% of all families making under 30% of AMI. So for a family of four, that's about $25,000. But what I saw when I was there in public housing authority is that a family of four on average was making about $15,000 a year. So we have to recognize that affordable housing that allows for individuals to live with dignity, to live in a place that is safe and sanitary, but also that allows for them to connect, to connect to education, to connect to services, to connect to employment opportunities is also equally important. And as you know, Secretary Kastner used to say when he stepped into the Department of Housing and Development as the secretary, he renamed that entire department or he couched his term that, how was the Department of Opportunity and that we should think about housing as a platform for opportunity. And that is the lens that I embrace and that I use in the work that I do around housing. You know, I'd go back to solving the profit tax issue as one of the main things that needs to be addressed because as I said before, anything we try to do to improve the inner city and improve our inner city neighborhoods and values are gonna go up and it's gonna be a sore. Aside from that education and we have a lot of economic analysis and economy people come through and talk to you online. Everybody says the same thing. Education, education, education. In San Antonio, that's a lot of good public works. The, what's happened with the rivers out of downtown has been absolutely transformative to, you know, you see families out there and you know we're sitting on a couch and we could go around riding bikes and doing that sort of thing. But anytime some of these other deals come up like a baseball stadium downtown, if there's 50 million to a baseball stadium, there's 50 million to go into education and solving the social ills of some of those families that prevent those kids from being able to learn when they go to a good school. You know, that's really what it comes down to. One of the things that I have found that's, you know, a plus about the gentrification of King William of the Locket is that when I moved into King William, we had Elmira Doors, a restaurant and we had the highest concentration of methadone clinics in the city all within our neighborhood and walking distance. And I would think the kids at Brack, you know, how motivational was that to walk to school and that's what you're walking past. And now you go to Locket, King William, South County, and you see all the local restaurants and people that are working there. And if you do go there, ask any of your servers, any of the people that are working there and seven out of 10 of them went to Brack. And while they're going to, while they're working there, they're going to SAC or they're going to UTSA or whatever. So that's a huge deal. And there's something in the paper today talking about, yes, we're starting to get housing and there's gentrification on the east side, but where's the economic development? And I'll just tell you, it takes a long time. Up till six years ago, you could lay down on, you know, the middle of the South Island on Sunday and nobody would hit you. And today, you know, it stopped start day down the street on Sunday morning, it's just, you know, it's just, it's just out the thing. But it was bad for a long time. So it takes bodies and people to keep after it and that's, you know, density. You know, I've always said before, the only way to get housing costs down is smaller units and more of them for a project. We have to all be willing to accept density, be willing to accept new people in your neighborhood. And, you know, I think that's all that's starting to come. USA moving 2000, ever many thousands of people that are downtown, there's been a huge endorsement of our downtown and the fact that things are starting to happen in our neighborhoods because that's where the young people want to be. They don't want to be out of I-10 and 1604 anymore and people are starting to wake up and see that people in the, in industry. So, all that goes well, but we gotta solve that tax problem with, you know, pressure. So for us, it really is, you know, I would say twofold. One is really changing the conversation about expectations and what, where students are gonna go and when again, you know, I've been very clear from day one that we are gonna have more students graduating, more students going to college, more students graduating from college. We're gonna be very intentional about if a student can get into a tier one Ivy League school, they're gonna get into a tier one Ivy League school. Even if our students that are struggling and they, you know, you know, I have siblings who, they go to universities, they went to the community colleges. So, even with that, we're talking to them about what is your transition plan? What are your actual goals? Are you going into a field that's gonna have a job that's gonna give you employment? And the biggest challenge we see with our families is for many of the students, many of the parents that just can't see it. They literally, they cannot see themselves in the university. They can't see themselves in a college. So two, two and a half, three years ago, we went to have about 10 students going to do our college trips. And it was a really nice thing. One of our volunteers, former teacher, former counselor used to do it. They used to go to a band. When I first learned about it, I was so bored. They said, well, who's this gentleman who's taking these 10 students in a band? Go to a psychologist, because, you know, you know, we can make sure that it's safe. One of them being a wonderful story. They came out of the paper. We wound up expanding that initiative. Then last year, we sent 80 students going over to see universities over the connoisseur at the top of forming juniors. This year it's 250. And trust me, not all the students will go or leave the state or leave San Antonio. What I love is they go to see Harvard. They go to see Middlebury. They go see colleges all over the country. And then they come back and they realize, wow, I could attend a top university. So all of a sudden, now instead of thinking of San Antonio College, which is something wrong with San Antonio College, now they're thinking of UT Austin. Now they're thinking of a college station. Now they're thinking of Rice University. And so those are the programs we're changing. On the other side, what we're also doing is making sure that both within our new schools and our existing schools that we're improving quality. That parents can really see whether it's an innovative dual language program, whether it's the type of market that's in the classroom. We have an initiative where we're paying teachers additional compensation if they have a strong track record. If they show the qualities of being a very strong, we call it master teacher. Because our vision is to have master teachers across all of our schools so that when families see what we're doing there, they want to be in that school. Because we know that neighborhoods, housing, frankly, a lot of it is very correlated to our schools. And then finally, as we're looking at our schools, making sure that we do have diverse schools. Because I would tell you, without additional resources, having schools that are 100% not just poverty, but in-depth poverty where I have an majority of the children in low-lake housing, I have an majority. I have 2,000 children that are homeless. If we don't have diverse schools with the funding levels that exist in the state, it is almost impossible to make significant gains. We're working hard towards it. And trust me, we're working harder than ever. But that is just a batch without additional resources. So we are purposely now looking at our schools. We know where children are there, what their demographics look like. And we're trying to create programs that frankly give these children a fighting chance. And so that's, you're gonna see that as we continue to think across this problem. So keep the mic. We're gonna go one more back and then we're gonna do a few Q&A questions real quick. But my last question is, what can we do to help? How can we get involved in each of those areas? So the biggest thing for me that I will tell you, so first of all, now that we're gonna own having quality education, that we're gonna, we are gonna significantly, we're gonna push expectations. And that's, it's not gonna be, we're in the beginning stages of our transformation. Again, when I look at Christine's presentation, it just reminds me that this didn't get created over the last few years. It was over 50 years. The West Side is a great example. It's my highest property area. But we're creating innovative school models, we're creating great options. When I think about Brian, what's frustrating for me is the speed. Because I'm seeing these children, I go to the graduations every year. So every time, I'm seeing our numbers get better, but it's still not, I mean, we went up to 54% of our children going to college. That's better than what it was three years ago, but it's not 100%. It's not even 80%, right? So for me, I was frustrated because I wanted those numbers to be higher. I love the fact that we have poor students a bit over it. I got six of them in, only four of them went. Now the other two, one is a college station, one is a UT Austin. So I'm okay with that. But again, I want those numbers to accelerate. I am convinced that the direction we're going is the right direction. It's not gonna be always smooth, but the speed and how we get there is gonna be dependent not only on our work, but what happens around us. So in other words, and if we don't look at housing policy, if we don't look at policies around economic development, in other words, if you don't get my families a chance to better their situation by having a better paying job, by improving their housing conditions, those are always gonna be challenges for us. And one real quick example, I have thousands of children that are learning disabilities just because they live in housing that has exposure of value. I mean, thousands. I mean, like I talked to our staff and spread the special needs and they say, tell me why I have so many children when they start a disability. And I said a big factor for them is they live in this dilapidated housing where they're supposed to live on a regular basis. I mean, those are the things that we're having to deal with. And so as you can imagine, I mean, that's what I mean by, we need your help to come together to solve some of these issues. We will own education. I can't own a lot of the houses. I like to invite people both at the local, state and federal level because at the federal level, we are seeing the current administration do a lot of the great work that was done under the Obama administration. So I think that's equally important to stay engaged at that level. And then I would, you know, invite you all to be part of the Mayor's Housing Policy Task Force, specifically if you're interested in being in the next part, not keeping up with the times or we don't have, you know, middle housing available to help families. Like, I think that's also another issue that we need to keep in mind is what Diego was saying is the right number matters, but also what do we do after that? What's the after effect of people being laid off? Right. And then also if you don't, we want to ensure that people have the place to go or have a job and you can't just change it overnight. But I think that's really important as a millennial, obviously. I think understanding that, you know, probably in the 70s, you could work a minimum wage job and afford your education. Now that's not necessarily the case. I was just gonna mention something very quickly that when I was at the housing authority, the board adopted a living wage for all Saha employees. And it was interesting because if you don't stop and think and go get your, as an employer, how you are contributing to this problem. So it really required even that, even the housing authority had, we had loans that were earning, maybe just above a minimum wage, which doing the math, they're living under poverty and they're providing housing. And so I think it is important to have the conversation about wages. I think it is important to have a conversation about this, a living wage. And then to understand sort of the pros and cons. But, you know, I mentioned earlier that home prices had increased almost 50% in the last five years. Wages had increased only 15%. So there is, you know, when we talk about inequity, you have to address wages. If these two and I got you last. I'm pretty sure that would be a good deal. Thank you. So my question is, oh, sorry. My question is to what degree is Steve's ULI involved in the mayor's housing policy task force? And then also for the woman that's chairing that committee, what kind of timeline do you see for the task force? And the reason that I'm asking is, the density that you're talking about, Steve, I think from what I hear from people that I talk to you is that people are supportive of density and they're supportive of the growth centers, you know, versus sprawl. But until there are those safeguards in place to address the fears that people express regarding gentrification or change of an undesired type. So not in my neighborhood, but go to my neighborhood. I think I've heard some people say, gimme, yeah. And with respect to the comp plan, so there's trains on parallel tracks here. And with, I think one or two of the regional centers are being planned with a few of the neighborhood community plans currently going on. I've heard some kind of general, general national kind of generic things thrown out about housing, which didn't really seem to get up what I understand to be the issue. So the question is, what relationship does the ultimate solution of the policy comes up with? To what degree are those being related to the parallel process with the comprehensive plan, which is asking for people to buy into a future vision of change. But without those sureties, I'm not sure that buy-in is going to happen. Does that make sense? Okay. Two, two, to the three in the middle. But the two on the end are wonderful too. The first question, ULI, a number of our members are kind of scattered throughout the committees. Jim Bailey being one of the big guys, one of the great architects and the King Wayne guy who's been kind of been down here and in it since he was born. So the second question about density, there, as you know, I'm a preservationist. So I've been in King Wayne, King Wayne Association. And I haven't seen a house yet that you can't bring back. We had a house in King Wayne that was just basically the burn structure, basically the exterior and some two-by-four walls and it was brought back and it's a great house. It costs money obviously. But the projects that I've done so far, it's all been on industrial sites, industrial fairs, commercial fairs that has been abandoned or that owners have sold for higher prices and moved to the west side or whatever the case is. So San Antonio has plenty of sites without getting into the neighborhood and demolishing housing, existing housing, you know, walking up in the middle of the neighborhood and putting that before the unit complex or like one person did from Austin, you know, kind of four or five unit deal that dwarfs the rest of the neighborhood. That kind of stuff is what gives density a bad name. So we have plenty of land that's in the right locations to do the density that we need. Keep in mind though, when that happens, good things are going to happen, restaurants are going to come in, stores are going to open and then we've got that tax problem again. So, you know, setting that aside, I'm also one of the little subcommittees for VIA. And so we always talk about transportation, etc. and it's going to become a much bigger deal as, you know, people may scoff at autonomous vehicles, but they're coming. And so what does that look like 10 years down the road? And what I've talked to, you know, the point I've made to VIA is that particularly in our environment, money is going to get tougher and tougher. You can't look to the federal level to do anything for or at least fill things changed. For housing issues or local issues, transportation. And so what I'm talking about is, this goes back to that ULI deal, learn from what other people are doing and try to do something different or something better. Is that, you know, for all the talk about light rail and San Antonio, maybe you say, we can't, you know, we can't afford that, but let's do something that's better than that. And so the VIA plan relates with the new city comp plan, which is to have nodes of density in high-important locations. So you have nodes of density at the medical center. You have them at I-10 and 1604. You have them, you know, obviously downtown and UTSA and some other spots west side or south side at Randolph and Kelly. And if you can serve those transportation in a very tight way and you've got plenty of land in those locations and plenty of land kind of scattered up and down or forwards to do the density, I think that's what you do and you have to do it in a way and get the codes in place that let people know that your neighborhood is protected. So it's not continuously a one-off fight to preserve the neighborhood. And that's what happens when people don't know where you're down or they'll sneak it in the back door and then all of a sudden density is evil. Well, it's not evil if it's done the right way and it's done in the right place. Just briefly on that question about the timeline. So the technical working groups will meet beginning this month through the end of May. The groups are very diverse in terms of discipline, perspective. We have individuals that are experts maybe in housing or land use or financing and individuals that are community advocates that are working in education, health, transportation. The idea, again, being that we want to make sure that the conversations and really the policy recommendations are crafted with a diverse set of, you know, sort of perspectives, right? These are complex issues and as Maria Mediosava reminds us all the time she's one of the members of the House Task Force. This is the first time that we have done this in this manner. This is really a public policymaking process and we have tried our best to ensure that those of us are on the Task Force. While we know something about housing or something about how to get this done we don't know everything and we don't plan to know everything and so as she likes to say this is a historic moment and I was reminded as I was thinking about preparing for today's session and the reason I brought up the Housing Act of 1968 this is a year that we celebrate 50 years of Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination and shortly after who was assassinated President Lyndon B. Johnson adopted or signed the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and you know, I think that it's really significant right that in 1968 we did away with discrimination based on race, color, religion class and then in subsequent years discrimination against discrimination based on sex, familial status and disability 2018 and we are still dealing with some of these issues and so I think it is I think that this is an important moment for us and it is important to understand the historical sort of legacy of disinvestment segregation the role that the private market and the federal government have had and I think it's also important to recognize that we have the ability to change these things and so, yeah Other processes are going on for a little track what is the process of what is the coordination and the confidence as in one example there are many others going back out and how do you see that is there a relationship right now? Yes, so there is a relationship and one of the things that the mayor asked the mayor's housing policy task force to do is to look at the alignment of policies out there. We know that there are multiple policies that have housing including the comprehensive plan we know we have multiple wards of commissions related to housing and so how do all of those come together? Yes, so we have the comprehensive plan and this goes back to some of the work that they are doing but specifically with regards to the comprehensive plan our office works really well with the planning department so we actually have an individual from the planning department that is working on the comprehensive plan working on and saying is also in line with that plan and it's not bringing that to our attention so that way we can say what direction are we going in what did the comprehensive planning process out of all of that outreach and neighborhood engagement what did they say so that we are trying to line in, we are trying to work with other departments I think part of your question of chef's life and one of the biggest things we have is just an uncoordinated system multiple departments and policies and wards of commissions that are all trying to do the same thing and so one of the that's one of the big goals of the task force itself is to make sure that we are working cohesively in order to bring the best policies to the internet and the last part of that which is the comprehensive plan is very broad policies so very general but right now there's a couple regional plans there's brooks I forget all the other brooks that's going on there's two community plans I think there's a downtown plan those are implementing these broad policies and that's happening real time now it's a very aggressive timeline how it is the solutions that haven't yet been created because you guys started some of it the plans that you're talking about downtown UTSA, west side, brooks or lanes plans of course that affects into forms or development eventually but your idea of the timing is a little different there are policies in place right now for example the sea chip policy and also the city's policy for how they distribute 100 grants that have to keep going in order as we're going through this process so we're working together yes, there are five lanes plans that are going on right now they are related but that's specifically looking at lane use itself yeah, I'll just pull that one up and do it off but my fear is that lanes are not going to get to form because those are the policies that are in place today that's not your problem I'll go with this okay Cynthia, did you have a question Cynthia? I'm going to get this one right here and then we'll go out and close it out Hello everyone my name is Clement Solomon and I'm relocated from New York and as I sit and listen to each and every one of you all the issues you discuss about San Antonio remind me of New York, urban from 1984 to 2005 for you Steve I'm going to disagree with you even though San Antonio is the center of that city and the fourth percent economic it is a nightmare in the rough and why ought to be aware of that especially in central Texas the question I'm going to put forth to you is what's the impact as new people relocate on big cities like my side is having on new medication because I'm seeing that it's wanting to change it could be a huge disaster climate conditions or too expensive to live in a city like New York, California and stuff like that and when they come they come with skill knowledge, academic education and that would happen and see how important that is so you know for us what's interesting is so you guys saw Steve's presentation of the different boundaries that exist for our district we can take it to a different attitude and he said pretty much the entire city and the entire counties are boundaries so one of the things that's unique in Texas is that by law I can accept children from anywhere they can come from Houston as long as they're from Texas they can come from Houston as long as they can get to my schools and I don't have to get anybody's permission and so because of that when we set up our schools and we now have 25, 26 plus district charters they have opened attendance boundaries and what's interesting what we're finding is that as families are either finding out about those options some of them are brand new families coming into the community some of them are ones that have been out beyond 1604 they're actually willing to drive and come to our community and what's interesting is that we're using that as a way for them to get exposure to certain neighborhoods so for example I had the schools we had and that school is attracting young men from all over the county and I want them to see like look I don't even use people that are crying there and that there's always challenges but it's a neighborhood, it's an upcoming neighborhood or the best way in the academy which is not so far from here again around that area it's not that pretty but it's an upcoming area and families are driving from everywhere so we're leveraging that to really attract diverse families and I think for us the biggest caution that we have is that for some of our schools they become very popular and so if we're not careful we can exclude or not include the inclusive number of our neighborhood families and so those are the things that we are thinking about a lot but then one beyond that is how to make sure our high poverty families don't get blocked out of that access as well because many of my high poverty families are hiring households, are working two jobs and so I want to make sure that they are aware of all the things that we're doing so we're actually starting to reserve slots for them to make sure that they're not isolated but that's how we're seeing the and we see the entire area as our as a potential potentially our families that come to our district I would as to talk about the benefits of that because it is happening and in some of those folks who are coming from out of the state and while they come to so much from California and they move into a lot they move into a big new hill and they buy a property those were some of the first people who started by in the urban neighborhoods because it's what they had seen before and they were comfortable with it and it's what they do and they weren't afraid of what was going on the other thing I think that's been good is San Antonio is historically has been a very provincial city I always think that it still has kind of a colonial Spanish legacy and so getting that new blood in from out of town so the San Antonio kind of run by Alamo Heights has been a big plus some of those people that have come in Rackspace has been huge most of those people have a much more philanthropic bento than our locals that we think of as the people that support our institutions H.E.B. Renfield Combs we don't have a Renfield Combs business school at UTSA it's at UT we don't have it's an aqua engineering school at UTSA it's a college station somebody told me the other day that the symphony that the Houston symphony gets more money from San Antonio and the San Antonio symphony gets from San Antonio people that live in San Antonio and that's one of the mentalities that San Antonio has had for a long time and those people that I think that have kind of run the city in that way for so long are becoming less and less and less than a factor so the city and the way people think about social issues and how things work and how to bring things together is much more worldly sophisticated and altruistic now and I think it was 30 or 40 years ago because there's a lot of people in this town who don't look at and not to pick on high so there's a lot of people that that view Alamo Heights as their city not San Antonio the only thing San Antonio is good for is to run down to the gunner hotel at one of their events and do fiesta once a year and that's it so there's a lot of benefits to new blood coming into San Antonio and it's that's what's going to help bring new industry to San Antonio more businesses to San Antonio because when they come and they have a hundred jobs they're not going to be filled by a hundred Californians there'll be 10 or 15 Californians and the rest won't be San Antonio so you've got to have that so it goes back to that deal of being willing to embrace it and keep moving forward but solve solve the issues that make it a double-edged sword and build more housing and build more housing alright thank you guys thank you guys thank you so much for coming out thank you to our panel members