 I'm Tom Handell, and we're here with a member highlight for the City of Portland that is putting on a forum soon for tenants and landlords. To talk about it, I have here with me Robin Merrill from Maine Equal Justice Partners, and George Boudagu from Avesta Housing. Thank you very much for joining us. Oh, you're welcome. Thanks for having us. Just in general, what is this forum all about, and who is it for specifically? So this is a forum that's been planned by a number of people who have come together. The City of Portland has convened a group that includes representatives for landlords and new manors who are new to Portland, and that group of people has come together to plan this event, which will bring together landlords and new manor tenants. The goal is really to increase understanding and communication among people, among those groups. As people recognize, there were some problems coming up and some issues, and both the landlords and the tenants that are at the table felt as though it wasn't because of any intentional, basically it just had to do with misunderstanding, and there was a need for some clarifying of the laws, and just some additional understanding, and to enhance communication among landlords and tenants. What are certain examples of some of the issues that might come up with tenants and landlords? Yeah, there's several of them, but one of them is communication, and which is due to the language barrier. As you know, there's so many immigrants now that we haven't seen for the last, you know, five years, that the number is increasing every day, and they come here without any knowledge of English. So communicating in English can be an issue between tenants and their landlords. So we're trying to make sure that the newcomers or the tenants who are renting our apartments around can understand the policies and the rules and the regulations, which is a lot for them once they are here without English, they cannot communicate well. One of the problems that come up, I mean, sometimes the experience that tenants and landlords have in another country is different from the tenant-landlord relationship here in the United States. Has anything come from that? Oh, yes, yes, I have been immigrant myself, I've been here in this country for 12 years, and coming here back home, if there was anything, if you were renting an apartment or a house from someone, there's not such a thing as a lease. You don't sign any contract. It's not verbal, but here, if you look at the lease itself, it's like more than 20 pages, and you have to understand all the clothes and the lease. So without the knowledge of English, you cannot grasp everything. So that's why we need to make sure that tenants and landlords understand each other, but also raising the awareness that they are coming here without any background of renting apartments. So we'll be, in this event, that's the only one time that we can explain them that they need to understand each other and also be bearing each other one another so that there's no such mixed communication in the beginning. I was just going to add that it's really a learning process, too, on both sides because it's sharing information for people who are new to the country, new to Maine, but also sharing information to landlords. Correct, yes. I think there's also some confusion there. And Pine Tree Legal Assistance is involved in this effort. They've been around at the table because the goal is also to share information around rights and responsibilities for both landlords and tenants, and so to clear up some misunderstandings there. Now this is a city forum, but how does Maine Equal Justice Partners and Avesta Housing, how did you get involved with this? Avesta Housing is one of the largest affordable housing in the Great Portland area. So we've seen so many newcomers coming to rent an apartment from us. And we've seen the challenges they face in their daily basis. And that's why we're trying to be involved more in seeing how we can help them, just to understand the whole policies and procedure. So that's how we got involved in trying to see how we can be more helpful so we don't, either we don't fail them once they are renting an apartment and they violate one of the lease policies. We end up evicting them, but we don't want to see that happening. We want to maintain them and teach them and educate them to be long tenants, which is what we want to see. And Maine Equal Justice, we're a civil legal aid organization, and we advocate for people with low income in the state. One of the things that I do specifically is a lot of outreach and education, specifically with new manors. And so I had heard feedback from community leaders that there was a need for this kind of communication and event to happen. Now where and when is this forum and generally how will it run, how it will proceed, and how long is it? So on April 3rd, it's a Thursday. It'll be held at King Middle School from 4.30 to 6.30. And so we've done our best to be getting the word out to both new manor tenants and to landlords. And the hope is that people will come together and it'll really be a discussion to kind of talk through what the issues are and come up with solutions to address them and work together. Now is this just the one effort that the city is making or is the city and your organizations are collaborating to do other things to bridge that relationship between tenants and landlords? My hope is that we can have more of these events because it's very helpful and that we're not, I don't think all tenants and landlords would come on that day. So if we don't see them all, we're just trying to see if we can reach out to them and have more events like this so that we can, it's an ongoing education process that we would like to see more happening like this. That's right, we really see this as a starting place and this group will continue to work together to have this channel of communication. Great, great. So if this is just the beginning, we're welcome to come back and talk about any other initiatives that you have to deal with these kinds of issues. If somebody wants more information, what would they do? Who would they call? So people are free to contact me. I've kind of been the point person on the events. And the number would be 626-7058 extension 207. If any questions, comments, or anything, people can feel free to contact me. Oh, Robin, George, thank you very much for joining us. Appreciate it. You're welcome. Thanks for having us on.