Commission on Aging - Regular Meeting

Organization. What we're doing to figure out who all is doing this work. And that's part of the issues that we have in this community is being able to determine who's doing what, when, where, and how, and how those funds are being deployed. And so when you talk about these priorities being identified, there are agencies out here right now doing this work. One of them being.

And so this is the first we've heard, I've heard at least, about where you're going with this work and then inform having a way to be informed about what's already going on in our community. So I'm a little bit, I guess, taken aback that we get this report as if these things are not necessarily happening, but they are. And so it's bringing all this together that needs to happen, not necessarily beginning the the the the the groundwork for making this work happen.

That's what

I'm saying that.

So I appreciate that question. I mean, in the comment, I I would like to first start out and say this was not an affront on any of the previous great work that's been happening in our community. This stems from us bringing folks together in a crisis situation from the IRC and the seven players who were involved saying, we have not had time to actually sit down and talk. And from there, they started talking about some of the things they wanted to accomplish as as the folks who were servicing our in house community. Now we haven't had the ability to reach out to every single entity in the in the system.

Right? We started with seven. It's organically grown to 35. I'm sure there's overlapping and tangential organizations here, but needless to say, we're not closed off if we're creating a circle where we don't want anybody else from the. We've been pretty open open up and welcoming pretty much anybody who wants to be a part of this. Been a big Greensboro. Simple. But we started Greensboro. And the Greensboro efforts, we weren't we weren't excluding High We were just focusing on the Greensboro organization.

It's not about High Point. It's about the county.

But

I just wanna make that be clear. So I'm not asking or responding as a result of saying, well, High Point wasn't included. I'm just saying as an organization that has previously funded the IRC, we were not in this conversation. So that is my concern. So as you're building this out, know that there are agencies countywide that are in this space already. And so I'm not sure where we are with this, but I wanna make sure that we understand we're working with prevention and diversion. We're working with emergency services and other agencies as well. So I wanna make sure that's not left out of this conversation.

So that won't be oh, sorry to interrupt you. I apologize. We're we're at this point now where this has grown. There's one, there's no funding that's happening from our organization. Two, we're at this part now where we've got to this point where we said, here are some priorities folks wanna work at work on. And now we're reaching out to the people in the ecosystem. So it's not necessarily this aspect of moving forward yet. There's still a lot of learning happening with this group. So, for example, we we had a a group of students from USCG. They're MBA students, Bryan School of Business School, who wanted to do a free consulting project, I think, just to provide us with information.

They did that. We've connected with a lot of other folks in the ecosystem just to learn. A lot of this group is experiencing this together. So not to say that this is, like, complete. There's a lot more organizations we will reach out to, and this is something that we're looking to expand not not expand, but to have over the next, like, twenty four to thirty six months. So nothing is set in stone yet, and there's a lot more work to do. So I would love to connect. I I we haven't had the pleasure of meeting miss miss Sims. Mhmm. But happy to connect with you outside of this and learn more about your work and the other folks in the ecosystem because this is something that's ongoing. This isn't just a set thing where we're closed off to anybody else. We're still learning. This group is really learning.

Or, Ian, could you identify a group just so

they're Welfare Reform Liaison Project. We're a community action agency in Guilford County. I guess my my my main concern is that we always seem to be starting over, and that's troublesome to me. When we're already doing this work in the community, I get what you all are trying to do, and I understand that. But I just think that as long as we start this process over and over again, we're not moving forward.

And I wanted to make sure that as we do this, we are moving forward from where we are right now. So you guys got the report out from CSH, and they gave you some of the work that they've already done. I don't know if seen that report out, then you know that we are at a certain space already. And so we build on what we've already done. I just don't like to see us continue to start at ground zero.

Yeah. No. I I I can appreciate that. I don't think we're starting at ground zero or starting low. I think what this group has come together and said, hey. We wanna understand the ecosystem. We wanna understand the players involved, then we wanna figure out how we can support work. We're not trying to start a new body of work. So when we start thinking about prevention, the next part of this learning agenda that we're creating is understanding who all is working on these things. Mhmm. And then start to think about strategy over time. Like, how do we partner here? How do we partner there? Is it something where if we establish a public private partnership, do we fund there? Do we fund here? So it's not something that's set in stone yet. And, we're still in the nascent part of this where there's a lot of learning around the ecosystem that has to be done and will continue will continue continue to be done.

I do believe the chair has a question.

And I see where Sam's is going. And that was the purpose of us trying to meet on a monthly basis because we wanna be able to bring to this group people that are out there trying to do the same thing, and we don't know anything about Okay? So that's why we wanna be and be able to portray them and present them opportunity to kinda share with them what they're doing. Because there's a lot of other groups out there that are we don't even know about that's trying to help them out there homeless and they're poor and mentally ill. And we're gonna be bringing them to the group, asking them to come along with us.

We're all in this together, but we don't know anything about them. But we might need to help them with the county, the city of High Point, the city of Greensboro, being able to say, okay. They're doing something in order to help us do the same thing we're trying to do. Let's try to help them too. What else can we do to help your group? Okay? How can you assist our group? But not we don't know other groups we're be presenting that we don't know anything about. We're gonna ask them to come here so we can know about what's going on out there. So we won't be kind of building walk on top of each other, doing the same thing.

Other people contacted them. They're contacting you. We don't know anything about each other, how we might be referring each other to different programs. So you're right. We didn't know a lot of things. I knew about some of the things walking into, but didn't know the details. Walker's been attending to allow meetings. Okay? But he hadn't had the opportunity to report out. So we asked him to come, report out, let us know, let the task force know what you're doing because you're doing some great things.

It's all about trying to help those. So you'll see some more of this. And we're we're searching for them so that we can kinda know who's doing what, and we won't be walking all over them either. So your concern is valid and appropriate, and we a lot of other people have very bad. Okay? But now we do. K? So, again, as mayor, this is I appreciate you all coming out. You've offered your organization. But now we know what you're doing. We might be able to even help you all, and we know that you all can kinda help us as we're in the same line as far as what we're trying to do as far as eviction prevention and homelessness as well. And just to summarize, like, a lot of

our work is going to be complementary to the the great work that's already listed. That's right. It's gonna be supporting that. You know, when I think about our goals for q one of next year, there there are some that you'll we've already heard from the county and from other entities that are just that are straight up are strictly aligned. So a lot of that is making understanding research, understanding assets, understanding price, like, like, short term preparation for where your shelter is pallet homes, looking at the county's plan specifically and digging into that.

So Yeah. Victor and I have a meeting scheduled soon. It'll be our second one. We're gonna dig into more of that work to figure out how we can further align this group to what is already happening in the ecosystem. So I just wanna rest like, everybody rest assured that we're not trying to create a new path or a new body of work. We're trying to come into this and get complementary to what's over. Gotcha.

Thank you.

I do wanna add based on the staffing structure that I presented earlier from from a staff perspective, when we talk about where we are not hitting reset, but then also in in the right now when we have private partners coming to the table that want to be engaged, there is a need for someone to facilitate and project manage all of those relationships. And so just be mindful of it as we continue to have conversations around what does it mean to support the COC, NC five zero four that moves forward strategically as a lead. How do we have staff that helps facilitate and project manage with multiple partners that are coming to the table to to make sure that we can move forward strategically and leverage those resources and get alignment. So we don't keep this cycle of reset or starting over or or clarifying to people when they come in. But someone that is facilitating this load on a ongoing basis, that's what's missing, and I hope you continue to keep staying in progress to get there.

Now when Oh, I'm sorry. Questions from the task force. Sorry. Go ahead.

This I don't

have a question.

I just wanted to know what the cities were that you're visiting that you're looking at.

So we we don't have a set list of cities. So we're looking at some different ones. So, of course, there's Charlotte. There's some work in Asheville potentially. We're looking at considering Louisville, Houston, Atlanta. We're also looking at Bergen County in New Jersey. Some interesting things there as well. Some of this is from personal relationships, and then some of this just some of this place is that, the the study that USCG students provided, just looking at data based off of what's happening here in the county and other places. And they narrowed down a list from about, initially, a 100 places before. So we've added a few more to that. Again, those trips aren't set yet. We're still diving down.

Thank you very much. Thank you. We appreciate the support out.

We are going to move on to the rent reasonableness and community land trust.

It will be 2,900.

Corporate support. Okay. Hello,

everyone. Happy to be in communion with you all. And if it's okay, gonna sit here. It's for real up here. So feel like I'm always interested. So we're happy to be here with you all today. Yeah. We're gonna be talking a little bit about rent reasonableness, community land trust, and then we'll just finish out with a high level overview of the SWAT that we'll share out with the POC. And while I'm, again, pulling it up, I think that is due to myself. My name is Chelsea.

She, her pronouns. I am I am a senior program manager with the Corporation for supportive housing and have the, privilege in honor of leading this project with Maya Saxena. Maya, can you hear me?

Can. Can you hear me?

Yes. I can.

Great. Hi, everyone. Good afternoon. Maya Saxena. I use she, her pronouns. I am co project manager alongside Charlesy Nance. I am a senior program manager on our Corporation for Supportive Housing's national consulting team based in Arlington, Georgia.

She's getting pulled up.

You're gonna shit. Hold on for one minute. We're gonna try to get your video up, your picture. Okay. Open up on a for video or slide deck.

They have a they have a slide deck, but I think they're trying to do introductions to show.

Okay. Why don't you forward while they.

In the interest of time, why don't you continue with what you were saying?

Maya, think you were wrapping up your ears.

I was wrapping up my introductions. We have a couple of other CSH colleagues on the call as well. And so maybe it's best to briefly have them introduce themselves, and then we can move back to the folks in person.

Sounds good.

Afternoon. Afternoon. Good

my name is Giedra Bolden. I am the director for CSH Southeast region, based in Florida. Thankful that we are continuing to work alongside the Guelph County team and the homeless the, homeless task force, to advance the work that you all are doing there in Guelph accounting.

My name is Naomi Dion, program manager of data analytics on our strategy and external affairs team. I work nationally, but I'm physically located in Maryland.

Thanks, Naomi. Jennifer?

I don't is Jennifer

Yes. Can you hear me?

Hi. Yes. Jennifer

Garcia. I'm a person with lived experience. I live in High Point, and I'm with CSH.

Thank you. And And now to

in person, I'll start with Lena.

Hey. Good afternoon, everybody. Good to be with you all today. My name is Steven Hudson. My program is. I'm the senior program manager based in the Atlantic Region, and I'm physically based in.

And Latoya? Hello. My name is Latoya Smith. I reside in Greensboro. I'm a public in CSA. I really.

Thank you, Latoya. And so just for the there it is, for the sake of time, I'm gonna say if you wanna follow along, we have a printout here just for minor updates to that. So for today's agenda, we're gonna talk just a little bit about we were asked to kind of cover a very high level rent reasonableness. We'll talk a little bit about community land trust, and then we'll wrap up with the CLC, the high level overview of the CLC SWATO shared house. Maya, you wanna get us started?

I absolutely can. If we wanna push through the agenda slide, and I think we'll briefly sit here while we do have folks that are in person and virtual. We do have a large c s CSH team supporting this work. So there are a couple of slides with their photos on them. But let's jump right into, the rent reasonableness topic.

And so before we get into specifics, want to do a little bit of framing that when we're talking about rent reasonableness, we're talking about two different major categories. There is an official HUD definition alongside regulations and guidance related to rent reasonableness, for several HUD programs. And then we're also talking generally about rent reasonableness, looking at the affordability of rent within a community and taking into account a couple of other factors, like the average wage or income and household size. And so when we're thinking from the HUD perspective, rent reasonableness means that a housing unit that is supported by grant funds is not more expensive than a comparable unit that is not supported by grant funds. And so when HUD dollars are used to pay rent or maybe a portion of the rent for a housing unit, HUD program administrators have to check for rent reasonableness to comparable units, and this is a pretty robust comparison.

Looks at things like location, size, type, age of the units, proximity to amenities, amenities on-site, different services provided, maintenance and utilities provided by the owner. So it's a pretty in-depth comp study. And at the end of the day, really, this comp study is trying to ensure that the grant funded unit is not more expensive than a nongrant funded unit, but the quality of the unit, is comparable.

Alright. So when we talk about rent reasonableness and housing programs, often times it may come to mind like your public housing authority. Right? So how the choice that vouchers have to go about rent reasonableness. Also, housing units that are part of the seal that are paid for with CLC funds are using the rent reasonableness.

So in a lot of communities, what you'll see is a form one supportive housing projects, whether it's funded by these fundings or not, are aligned with rent reasonableness just because, again, we we see these two big programs that have rent reasonableness as a part rent reasonableness as a part of their structure. And so talking a little bit about rent reasonableness, I think we have to talk about understanding the income. They're like having a real conversation about the median income. So in 2023, the household there was about 20 216,000 households that were surveyed as a part of this number. There is a source, so there's DataUSA where we, you can go on there and pull this information.

If you're interested, I can send you the link. But 216,000 households surveyed, and the average median household income was about $666,000.

Ask you a question. The

area you surveyed, where what was that area?

Was it That it's a national data store. So this is a national and it's it's a national search. So, like, on the day, if you go into it, it'll give you some details about kind of the resources pool. But this is a national, it's called DataUSA. You can go in and kinda it's a tool, really. You can go in and look at any specific area.

Thank you.

And very quickly, the the region that this data is pulled from specifically is the county, so Guilford County at large.

And so

previously, it was 62,000 for Guilford County, so it kinda went up. But, again, that's on average of about $5,502 a month. And so when we are talking about rent reasonableness, we know that 30% of an individual's income is kind of considered reasonably to be considered as a part of, you know, contribution to housing. And so, really, what we're saying is about the rent would need to be about $1,600 based on this area of this rent this median household income for a household to be considered not cost burdened by paying rent. So moving a little bit more into the context of, like, the local pieces of it, and this is also in your Guilford County profile.

So the Nash North Carolina Housing Coalition does it every year. It's really, really helpful to understand. They actually do work for North Carolina, and then they do they drill down to each county. And so when we're talking about how really what this is saying is 32% in Gilbert County, 32% of the household is considered cost burden. And what would be reminded that cost burden means 32% of people are 32% of households are at least paying 30% more for their rent.

And so we also have some stats over here that talk about renters who have difficulty affording their homes, and there's also they kinda give you the threshold. So the 32% is based off of 65,000 households. The renters who are having difficulty affording their homes, that's based off of 40,000 households. And then homeowners having difficulty affording their homes is based off of 24,000 households. So at the bottom, again, like you said, families that spend more than 30% of their income or more are considered cost burdened.

And so and if they're spending more than 50% of their income on rent, they're considered severely cost burdened. And why this is important? Because when we talk about, like, the local context and we talk about wages and making sure that people actually can afford to live in places. We looked again, these were just three specific jobs that the like I said, the North Carolina Housing Coalition survey. But if we look at this, we talk about, you know, elementary teacher, child care, firefighter, $22.50, the housing wage, is the house the hourly wage needed to afford a fair market rent apart.

So what we are trying to get at here is, like, when we look at in context of Gilbert County, right, and those that are working in the county, we really have to ask ourselves to kinda drill down on this and understand, like, what do family what is the amount that families or community members need to be able to truly thrive and not be cost burdened in living in their community? And then we see on the left when housing costs too much, a family can lose their home. So when we're talking about evictions, Guilford County is ranked number six, in North Carolina community as a home for evictions among rented households. And that's one being the highest and 100 being the lowest. So there's something for us to think about, as we talk about kind of innovation towards housing affordability.

So I would turn it to Lynn to talk about some strategy.

Thanks. Hey, Chelsea. So, essentially, as Maya's mentioned, there are multiple ways that we can look at referees and events.

One being the

fine definition and programming. So Hunt employs multiple mechanisms in order to be able to determine the accurate referees and the miss. First of all, we have a standard referees and the checklist which all providers are expected to hereby use on a frequent and individualized basis. They also have written policies and procedures on how all awardees must assess and document rent reasonableness. So this includes the methodology for documenting comparable rents, the case file with checklists and forms, standards for certifying comparable rents as reasonable, staffing assignments, strategies for addressing certain special circumstances, and that the determination must be documented in each case file, again, on an individual basis.

And so all public housing authorities must consider the unit, the quality, the size, the unit type, the age of the unit, the amenities, housing services, maintenance, and utilities when they are considering their very reasonableness checklist and then they're doing all of their backwards. In terms of general reasonableness, which isn't necessarily as reg rigid as I've or documented as I've, there are some things that property owners will enforce, which are complying with programs to ensure that they have a steady stream and rental income. So a lot of the property managers will automatically go in and look at the fair market rent and make sure that they're redo those units around and about. It also helps attract and retain tenants because you know that your units are gonna be affordable. You know that they're gonna be quality inspected.

It also helps ensure the financial viability is not been borne. Again, your units are being regularly inspect inspected and being regularly checked for affordability, and so you're not gonna have a lot of long term damages occurring as as you might with some private situations where you that are being rigorously checked. And so, oh, it again, it also helps to maintain the long term stability of rental properties. So rent usable, this requires an understanding of the area median income. So that's what Charles, he was talking about just a little bit ago.

You know, ideally, the income to rent ratio is less than 30% of the income per spend of your rent housing. Anything above that is considered cause of burden. So I need to know what the area we can eat in and what's the what's reason we're based on that 30% percentage. You also wanna gather rental property data and evaluate rental comparables. So you wanna know not only the size of your units, but what are the amenities close by? What what is the structure of, like, how long ago was it built? How frequently is it updated? You know? Does it have common spaces? And so all of these things are gonna be considered in your very reasonable in your very reasonable reports.

And

then

you also wanna have a willingness to adjust for differences. You know? I know if you had a spurt development in the nineteen seventies and then you didn't have your next spurt development development in the nineteen nineties, those are gonna look a little bit different. Right? But they might be in the same area.

They may be there may be a ton of reasons why you still wanna compare those two units even though on paper, they may not be exactly the same. So having a checklist and having something, to really help you identify, and categorize what you were looking for in terms of quality is always helpful, but, again, for making sure you're able to document that on a consistent basis. And so moving on to our next topic, we also wanted to discuss community land trusts. We will not be you're not to be confused with community land banks, which are a little bit different. They will just be talking about trusts, which are a nonprofit corporation that owns land on behalf of a place or community.

This this nonprofit is gonna be tasked with stewarding that land, any development, any community gardens or civic buildings, commercial spaces. I don't think that's all that land that nonprofit is going to be in charge of overseeing that and and the ownership of that. So some ways that a community managed trust can work or the way that we've last worked are it's managed again from a nonprofit on

on behalf of the community.

There's usually a ground lease ninety nine years. So the idea is to keep the space deeply affordable and community based as long as possible until that contract runs up. The organization, again, it's a non profit land owner. They have a corporate membership that is open to anyone living within the organization's service area. But it's this could be as small as a a single neighborhood or as large as an entire city or region.

It really just depends on how you wanna set it up and how about resources might be allocated. In terms of operation, so, essentially, you're gonna wanna look for an organizational commitment to preserving the permanent affordability of the housing in that area that's located on the community mattress. So, again, there is an organizational commitment to maintain AP structures to making sure that they're in good repair. There you know, there's an organizational commitment, and there's also community buy in in making sure that these units maintain even bigger and also affordable. This has also been a proven way to boost home electric.

A lot of community land trust, and we'll again, we won't get into community land banks today, but a lot of community land trusts are set up with the idea of promoting home ownership. And so I think we'll just get to a different level of stability there as well. And so, Maya, I'll turn it over to you to talk us on this side, please.

Yeah. Thank you, Liam. So this is a little bit more in-depth about how exactly does a community land trust work. So here on the left, we'll start at, you know, phase one, a community land trust. And, really, what we're saying by community land trust is nonprofit. Right? The nonprofit organization is going to acquire property or pieces of property in a focused area, usually from various sources. Maybe it's a parcel here. Maybe it's a parcel here, but they generally share, an area. And then that nonprofit or that community land trust is gonna go ahead and move forward with facilitating rehabilitation to maybe existing buildings that are on that property.

Maybe it's new construction of homes, of community amenities. Like Liam was saying, maybe it's the construction of a community garden or a community center. And then that community land trust is going to set sales prices to ensure that permanent affordability. And so that really ties into that ninety nine year lease piece that Liam mentioned, is with that ninety nine year ground lease, the community land trust is able to ensure nearly permanent affordability, ninety nine years being a rather long time for a lease. It's able to ensure permanent affordability of any homes that might be on that land.

And then lastly, the community land trust is gonna find qualified buyers, buyers for those homes that they either renovated or constructed on that land, and they will provide supportive services. Nothing mandatory, of course, always voluntary, but there are supportive services that are accessible on that land as well. So once the community land trust has gone through this, acquisition of land, they've gone through this, phase of construction or rehabilitation, they've got homes to sell, they're gonna sell those homes to the buyer and just the home. The community land trust is still going to own that piece of land, that piece of property that the home is built on, but that physical structure, the home, the townhouse, whatever it might be, is now owned by a homeowner. This also plays into to the part of ensuring affordability in terms of home prices.

Because the community land trust owns the physical land underneath the home and the buyer is just paying for that physical structure on top of the land, housing prices are typically a lot lower than, maybe purchasing a home that's not on a community land trust. And then, lastly, say that homeowner has lived in their home for several years, they're ready to sell, the community land trust will set a new sales price for that home to ensure affordability. So the community land trust this whole time still still maintains ownership of that land. They will assess the value of the house. They will adjust prices, if necessary to ensure that both that homeowner who's selling and, the new homeowner coming in strike a deal that is affordable for everyone.

That previous homeowner is gonna recoup their original investment and gain some equity based on the appreciated value. So we're seeing some equity building and wealth building in homes specifically on community land trusts. And then that new income qualified homeowner is able to afford. Right? They are a new home buyer.

They've owned they own this property, or this house on the community land trust land, and this cycle just kind of continues. And, really, the the priority of community land trusts and the way that it's set up this specific way is to ensure that any home buyer who is purchasing a home within a community land trust is guaranteed an affordable mortgage, an affordable rate for buying that home, and that can be guaranteed for, right, ninety nine years. So, permanently is how the how the the way that we look at that ninety nine year ground lease.

Thanks, Maya. And so when we talk about community land trust outcomes, there are some obvious outcomes, but, like, increase in housing stability and, you know, what we're hopeful for is that all the work that we're we're doing with you all in community, we could say not only housing stability, but thriving community. I think when we think about family and living and being able to thrive, that's what we really wanna see, not just people being stable. It also, helps with avoiding frequent moves for households with low income. So, again, when we think about, folks wanting to settle and call and place their home.

You know, we don't you know, we oftentimes don't think about people wanting to live and be able to stay there. I don't think anybody will maybe take pleasure and just have to pick up and keep moving. Right? When we talk about accumulating wealth and assets, so we've seen this as one of the ways when we're talk about housing and ownership, a pathway to that. It could be a tool or how your community uses to address minorities and how we give them access to ownership.

Also increasing when we're talking about, sorry, operating with very low delinquency and foreclosure rates, encourage neighborhood improvement. So, again, it also creates kind of the sense of community. So we see, you know, neighborhood and parks, gardens, food pantries being created, increased nearby property values. So, again, that kind of nimbyism reduces kind of the blight in the neighborhoods that tends to come up when we're talking about affordable and supportive housing, minimize displacement of residential low income. So, again, it it allows people to feel like they can become stable.

And when we become stable, we truly are able to thrive where we live, and preserve affordability. So I think one of the things we don't think about in housing affordability is we create units to come online, but then there's a window on the back end when some of that that affordability period is up, and now the the unit can come back on full, you know, market rate. And so this is one of the ways that we protect it and sustain the units that we already have online while bringing new units online for affordability purposes.

Chelsea, is it difficult to get the standard mortgage for this type of home since the plan doesn't

I that's something I have to follow-up you on. I'm not sure. Maya, do you know

I don't

top. My assumption would be that there might I wouldn't say difficulty. The mortgage might look or be structured differently, but I'm not 100% on that.

Follow-up. That's a good question. Any more questions?

I have a question regarding the the sale of the land trust. The previous owner goes to slide up, maybe one back. On the right, under Grain, and on one cell number two. Previous owner recludes original investment and gains some equity based on appreciated value. Is it qualified as to how much from equity is, or is that determined at the time, and who determines that?

Do you wanna?

Yeah. I'm sorry. It's a little difficult to hear. I think the question was about who recoups the Who investment? Who

determines the amount that of equity that is removed by the seller?

I believe that that would be up to the community land trust, aka the nonprofit, as they are establishing policies, protocols, regulations, etcetera, to have something written into their plans and also into the materials that they disseminate to new homeowners, on their land about what that ratio of equity looks like. And I do wanna just circle back to the other question really quick. I just did some quick looking up, and it does look that like, there is a specific type of mortgage for community land trusts. There are federal resources available to go into depth about what those differences might be. Are also federally available trainings that, inform folks who are, in charge of assessing those mortgages and assigning those mortgages of what exactly those differences are.

Thank you. Mary? Yeah.

I'm just gonna going to add that there's a formula. And when the buyer first enters into their room to purchase the home, that formula has already been established by the land trust. And so

at the time that they are ready

to sell, then there is some share. So that is established on the front end. It's not anything that, oh, I'm ready to sell. We'll come up with that percentage now. And as far as mortgages, it's be very similar to a condo, something along those lines because you've done with

a condo, you simply own own from wall to wall. You don't own you don't own the.

So something very similar to that. So But the initial five one. Ten years later, that's out. So it's time to sell it. The percentage of value increase has already been set. It's 5% or 10% regardless of what the market might be. Right. That percentage, that that that ratio or that percentage, that formula is established on the front.

She she just asked about percentage of market increase. So not not percent of market increase. So let's say let's say that house traditionally, we were buying it for house and land was 200,000. Because land trust owns it, makes the price was set at $1.50, that means that you're buying at 75% of what the value should be. I would imagine that that 75%, that percentage travels. That means that the house then gets appraised, the tax value that at 300,000, then the house now is gonna sell at $2.25.

Would that would that be right?

Yeah. So $75.25, we're having.

So so it's it's not percentage of the market increase. It's the percentage of whatever the market value probably is, that formula gets set. So wherever the value is at the time, there's a certain percentage of the formula that's set at that time. So as value increases, it's just the percentage stays, and it sort

of follows in that line based on what the market value is.

We're always have a margin of 25 or whatever the form of the set. Your margin is

25%, whatever it is, what it's

So question, does that cover if the

market goes to the opposite direction?

Something is increasing. Remember, everything else may be increasing or not decreasing as much. Just thought.

Question. Let's say someone has

went into the I'm sorry. The questions really just come from the task force.

Oh, is that alright? No.

No. That's okay. I apologize.

Any other ask one question? On the land trust,

or can

we go back? You can go back one.

You can go back one to the this one.

Oh. Just

a quick question. It says thirty two percent of Gilbert County resident for house or house burn totaling 65 to 11, and then you had the breakout by renters and homeowners. Does that 30% include the 30% cost burden, or is it the 3050%?

When we're talking about that's a sort of great question. So I think if it does break it down, I can go on the because, again, North Carolina House Housing Coalition, it we will have to look at out of those 65,000 households how we met that threshold. But we know for sure that all of them met the 30% threshold. So let's just say for variable purse purposes, we're using 30% because that we don't wanna say that some were severely. We know at least all of those households that were surveyed were 30% calls for. So

they could be voted in

there, just not broken out? Correct. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome.

If you contacted the mail also, since that's specifically for our area as well.

Alright, ma'am. So, yeah,

I know y'all have a good weekend, so just wrapping up that section real quickly here. Just wanna point out that, you know, our land trust has has been in the works and has been something that y'all have been working on in multiple intervals for almost twenty years now. So, you know, for about ten years, you did multiple housing assessments and studies. You know, your city council directed directed a housing effort, and you you've done a lot of things in the team. You know, your housing GSO was adopted by city council.

And you've got and you've retained grounded solutions. You've done community engagement and listening sessions. So, really, now, you know, as we move into 2025, you know, quarter two, I guess, that we're in now, this is not something, again, that is gonna move. This is something that y'all know a lot of and have have done have been building for about the last twenty years. So, it was not surprising to us or to me that it was something that showed up in the research that we were seeing overall. And so with that, I'll turn it over to you, Charles.

Yeah. Maya, I think we, we were just gonna wrap up with this slide before we go into the share out.

Yeah. So wanna think through and talk through some strategies to invest in community land trust growth. And I'm gonna get a little bit more detailed here on these examples. I'm gonna try and keep it quick. But these strategies, right, they're nuanced, and they are geography dependent.

And so learning what other cities and jurisdictions have been doing can better inform the way that, Guilford County, Greensboro, High Point could maybe move in this space of community land trust. The first strategy is to use the right of first refusal policies to allow tenants and community land trust to purchase existing housing. And so talking to this Washington DC example first, since the nineteen eighties, renters in DC have used the city's tenant opportunity to purchase act to buy their buildings when they're up for sale. Under this act, tenants can create a tenants association. They can collectively refuse the sale of the building, and then they can buy the building for themselves.

Tenants will typically seek financial support, of a nonprofit or a a for profit developer, and the city of DC also provides low interest loans to tenant associations for building purchases. In San Francisco, in 2019, San Francisco adopted a community opportunity to purchase ordinance similar to the the act in DC, which allows tenants to assign a right of first refusal to select community development organizations that can purchase the units as long as they keep them affordable. And so when I was learning and reading about this particular strategy, I'm reminded a lot of, the coop model of housing, right, where tenants own the property. They own the housing. The second strategy here is providing lands for community land trust homes.

So Seattle, Chicago, and LA have all enacted policies to use surplus city owned land for affordable housing, but these these cities did not prioritize community land trust. And so there's some potential here to let nonprofit organizations take ownership of surplus city owned land to start and to build a community land trust while also circumventing the high cost to purchase that surplus city owned land. Thirdly, we have create citywide community land trust. So cities can provide initial funding for a community land trust startup to help get projects off the ground and to overcome those initial financial barriers. In the late nineteen eighties, the city of Boston granted power of eminent domain over privately owned vacant land to the Dudley Street neighborhood initiative, which eventually evolved into the Dudley Neighbors Community Land Trust, which present day now holds 225 affordable homes.

They have an urban farm, a community greenhouse, and other community amenities on that land. Very briefly in 2017, New York City created the citywide inter borough community land trust. And then in 2018, Houston launched the Houston City Community Land Trust. And so wanted to give these more specific nitty gritty, examples to, one, show that it is possible to do this. Right?

There are other cities and jurisdictions who are using these strategies to get community land trust off the ground. I think the last bullet point here, and it's highlighted in this citation down at the bottom, but what really helps this work and moves the momentum along is having every level of government committed to providing housing for all. In the surplus city land example, the city government, right, is is on board with committing and providing housing for all. They demonstrate that by potentially providing their surplus city owned land to nonprofit organizations to get a start up community land trust up and running. And so wanted to very briefly deep dive here, and I know we'll move it right along into the, COC's SWATO share out.

Thanks, Maya. And so we had the, pleasure of meeting with the COC, body in I think it was March 6 at the March to kinda go through the share out similar to what we did with the task force group, but we wanted to make a more intentional space for, you know, the reaction, feedback, what stood out for folks, what resonated with folks. And overall, we had about 35 to 40 attendants, participants on the call. We you know, there was we really didn't have we had a few questions, that were raised. They were very good questions, but there was a survey that was shared to understand the interest of COC members and create some idea of what does the alignment look like from, you know, the task force priority to what COC members think that that are important.

And so Victor will talk a little bit about that. But just high level, the share out went well. We did have some considerations. We have some follow-up. I think, folks are really energized to kinda move this work forward forward to miss Bernadette's point, and, like, how do we do that?

And so I think, overall, that's what I will share, but I offer up thoughts and reactions from my colleagues. And anybody else that Well, we have a few folks that were on the call. So if you I welcome you to share your perspective. And with that so, you know, everybody's energized, so I will switch it to Gilco to Victor to talk about, like, those aligned priorities that came up in the survey.

So we do give a

regular participation with the survey. What we wanna do is to honor the COC and allow them to look at their report and approve it. And so the next time we meet, we will have that official report. We're still in this phase of of evaluating when I honor their information and give them the first pass. But, definitely, they have been participating in the survey for the.

Next item.

That's all for CSH. Thank you.

K. So then we move on to other business, and we start with the Munhaus services update from Andrea Arrow. Okay. Thank you. And Andrea is our assistant's meeting manager.

Yes. Over our community safety department, police department, fire department, and metro number one. Our community safety department now has our services, but then I'm also gonna do a quick housing update from National Gray who is our assistant state manager over over that department. So just really quickly, don't have any slides or anything. I'm just gonna do a quick report out on kind of where we are.

As you know, we do something called the doorway project, which is pallet homes and RVs that houses 83 people. Because of Department of Insurance regulations, those pallet homes can only stay up for six months at a time, and then we have to take them to cycle. Over the last six months, that Norway project has served a 108 individuals and 17 replaced in the, which is great. 82 individuals are currently engaged in active case management with that program, which is that case management is run by the IRC. The community safety department has also worked with the IRC to ensure that individuals have thirty, sixty, ninety day personalized housing plans and that referring agencies, are engaged with their clients on-site at the doorway project.

So that has been located at Pomona Park. Today, we had to close that location. As I said, the the Palatin's gonna lease it up for six months. So we closed the locations today. Those units are being cleaned, and they will be moved to 2701 North 03 Boulevard, which is where the Regency used to sit.

We do not have immediate plans to start construction at that site, and so we can use it for six months to get up through the summer. The units will be down for about ten days to do cleaning, maintenance, moving them, that sort of thing. And during that time period, the IRC is going to house those individuals over until we can get the pallet put back up. If you are a current doorway project participant, you are automatically enrolled when they move over to the Regency site. And then we'll continue to get people into housing and and cycle people through that program. And

Andre, I just wanna say moving the shelters from one location to another isn't as easy as it sounds.

It is not.

Because each one of those shelters has electricity run to it. So, you know, the whole the whole site has to have electricity run. It has to have infrastructure for for sidewalks, walkways. So it is a significant investment every time we move it to a new location to get that new construction put in.

You're absolutely right. We've been working on at the location for about six weeks to get it prepped to have the Paladins do do there. The downside to to the Regency location, we will probably only be able to use it this one year. We'll have to find another location for next year because we will start construction there. So that's something that we're actively looking for. And it really helps us that we have them all in one place because the site upfit really costs about the same no matter how many structures you're going to put there. And so it makes more sense to us from a cost perspective to move them all together. So we will move them back to Pomona Park for the winter So we we at least have them for another year when we have a place for them to be. In addition to running the jewelry project for the last six months, we've also had four winter emergency shelters. Those were held at churches.

Two of those are still open. We know as it gets warmer, less and less people are gonna use emergency shelters. And so we have, like I said, two that are still online through the

April, and then we

have two more online in the summer months. And then all we're going get that pulled up. They will come back and do winter emergency sheltering for us. Yeah. So that's been a different success. Any questions about our unhoused emergency sheltering paladinomies? Alright. I will move on to our housing update. 2943 West Van Dillionaire Road. That is Oakwood Park.

How many? 16 new construction, units there. A loan was executed with AHMI, and a little under $2,000,000 in home ARP funds were used, likely closing in May with construction starting this summer. So that's exciting to bring those units online. The Summit Executive Center at 817 Summit Avenue project still in motion. We are waiting on updated budget and some design plans there. Still slated we still have our service provider slated for the application. May originally were planning for 25 units. May reduce that a little bit just to create units with more availability. Partnership Place.

Partnership Homes is working with InterVape Affordable Housing Initiative to fund the reconstruction of six. We're in support of housing units at Partnership Place that were originally destroyed by fire. And then, the Regency site, once we move the Palatins back off of that site in about six months, that location may be open to some public supportive housing excuse me, permanent supportive housing as well, working on some sale negotiation terms and, voucher support.

Any questions? Yep. So with the housing that's being built that you're utilizing

tax credits for it, so

I understand they're get they're thirty, sixty, maybe 80% of median that goes into the calculation of who moves in. My question, when those, units come online, are we utilizing the COC by nameless to fill those units?

And I will be honest. I do not know the answer to that question. Not our ACM overhousing is not here. I'll provide you for update. I can definitely follow-up and get back to you on that question. Yes. I'm sorry. I I did not I'm prepared to answer that.

That's all. That's okay. I I was just curious because we do have that list where we talked about the number of housing units that we would need in our community based on where we were at the time, I think, a couple of years ago. And so when those units were talked about coming online, it was with the understanding that it would impact our homelessness numbers from the binaing list. And so I'm just curious to know if as we're filling those units, are we using that list, Sure. To to to decrease the amount number the amount of homelessness in the county? So that that's the question.

Yeah. I'll I'll get back to you on that tomorrow.

Anita, are you referring to the Van Derby, the one we had the discussion on?

Not necessarily, but if that's one of those units that was, like, slated change leaders. Oh, okay.

And that's where it's not. Yeah. It can't.

And so we need to go back.

It happens. Okay. Because that was to be a priority as part of the house. It was considered those on the finances.

Pretty I can tell you that, you know, some of

our tax credit units that we're doing, I don't know specifically, so we are using referrals for them, but we'll get a

a better update. We'll get it to them.

Okay. Thank you.

Can I ask what the status is when you said you were using vouchers? When you're referring to vouchers, what vouchers are we referring to as it relates to we can refer to those I'm assuming you're talking about transfer housing. That's correct. Okay. So are you are there conversations now with James and them about that? I know that there's been some conversations before when we talk about regency about making sure we have some dedicated vouchers. I know there was a little bit back and forth about that. And then we also have the only reason I ask that because they're also CoC vouchers as well. And so what does that look like in this process as we're moving that forward? As it relates

to the Regency site specifically, they were looking at COC vouchers. Oh, okay. Yes.

And one more question regarding the Doret project pallet homes that are currently at Pomona but being moved to their region. Have approximately 83 with two person and the two trailers. Correct?

The two trailers are not not gonna be moved. The those have to be returned to be leased to those. But as I mentioned, we don't see the need for as much sheltering in the in the warmer months. Okay.

But we've been able to we have been

able to secure a place to stay for everyone who lives out

of the way at home.

Any other questions, Baker?

I do wanna say thank you for continuing to power shelters even for summer and spring of summer season. I'm going to this. I think we all recognize that there was a shortage as it relates to just emergency shelter and new beds. So thank you for looking at the space outside of just the seasonal. I

I did just have to I know the school system is not here, but one of the things that we we have all talked about in this space is about families and just putting that back on the radar. But, again, we're we still have no real addressing of families around shelter and. So

I

will say this. We did run two locations for White Flag, and one of those was dedicated to families. Families did utilize that location, and we had a lot of community safety department resources there trying to assist the families in obtaining some type of. But family shelters are, as you know, a lot more difficult. They are. Thank you. Yes. Absolutely.

And I think one of the church just handled women. Three three handled men, and one was specifically for men.

That's great. And so as we move into the supper, we're gonna

have one for men one for men and one for women.

Okay. Now we're moving on to tenant education, advocacy, and mediation program team, the Center of Housing and Community Studies at UNCG, and this will be Renee Norris.

Hi.

I'm Renee Norris at UNCG. I'm the Victory Mediation Program coordinator. We are partnering with legal aid and the team manager. So just to give some background about what we do and how we operate, we were talking so much about eviction prevention. One of the things that I truly believe and wanna have so captured about our mediation efforts is that we try to avoid convictions by helping people at the beginning.

You know, legal aid is there for when it's delayed, you know, usually, but they're there to give people their legal rights, etcetera. But I just think that the more we can do at the front end, the better it is. And we can help people avoid these unhealthy homeless that is so much, what, nomenclature for everybody in the community. I think I'm gonna give you some numbers. I don't have a slide, but one of the things that we do is just we could really help anyone who calls us, like I said.

So we get people from every town, city, and the county would go through it. You know, we started out not well known. We did a lot of outreach, and now we're at the point where people we get referrals from fans. People say, my friend or my family referred you to it. And what we do is use the information that we have about all these organizations we provide services so that we can fine tune it.

We're not just sending people will willy to different agencies where they may not qualify for those. So here, we've tried to make sure we get that information together. One of the things that we recognize pretty early on in doing our program, resource navigation is one of our things that we do as part of our program is that people have a hard time finding affordable housing because they don't know where to book. So what we did, they usually would get the NC housing search list, and sometimes their properties were scanned or they were no longer available. So we were able to, with the help of our students, start doing a weekly call to these places and making sure that they were legitimate, get as much information as we can about those properties.

We update it every week. We share it with anybody who asks us for it. One of the things that I will say that that are children is here. She's our landlord outreach specialist. That's part of our program is that we're reaching out to landlords to educate them about the various voucher programs and to get their buy in for housing, the need for affordable housing in our area.

So she's been very successful. I'm glad to talk a little bit about that. But with the mediation part, a lot of this happens outside of the court, I'm glad to say. But we are at the courthouse in Greensboro two days a week and in High Point two days a week with legal aid so that we're there to assist them in mediating. And I will share something.

Sometimes magistrate there. They'll even ask us to do noneviction mediation because there is no wait list. But because we wanted to know we're there to help them have to to avoid looking at decisions when we see what people are there. Oh, this whole place simply started in September 2029. We in legal aid after the clinic, we had seen 3,771 people Wow.

Come through. 3,627 of those clients were either were assisted by legal aid either with information, with the pill package, etcetera. At the center, we have, as of December, 2,985 people reached out to us from a variety of things. We get people with healthy home issues. We get homeowners. We get people that are homeless. We just wanna help them identify resources and get that remain.

Aye. So I do

landlord outreach, and my goal is to reach out to landlords to bridge the gap and to find out what their issues are and to help them to solve those issues. One of the first things that I realized when I started in that position was that there was a lot of tenant advocacy, but no one really understood the point of view of landlords. And so I set out to understand their point of view to see how they were feeling about rental assistance. And much to my dismay,

it wasn't very popular before that. So I turned my focus to

looking for landlords who are new landlords who do not have a lot of experience with the program so that I could not hardly engage them, but educate them, give some realistic expectations. And by doing so, we've been able to highlight the program, number one, add properties to our search list because that has been really good thing. We wanna be able to have a place for tenants to be able to actually go to say, hey. This person has an available unit. They're willing to accept the voucher, and so that's been a big push.

Also, to tell them about our mediation program. We have made great strides because now these landlords who who may not even have a vacant unit are able to take advantage of. So that has been.

Any questions? I

have quick question for you. Yeah.

You you mentioned that a lot of

the landlords were hesitant to take the rental assistance or to accept the rental assistance either from the tenant or on behalf of the tenant. Yeah. The top reasons why they said that.

Well, I think that, number one, they had outdated ideas about what it meant. They thought that once you they didn't realize that a doctor's tenant is just like any other tenant. Right? So they were looking for case management. They were looking for a place to call when they had tenant issue. They were expecting that they were going to have some assistance with when they were ready to evict the tenant who may not pay. And so they were just disillusioned, really. And so in my process, what I've been able to do is when I'm working with new landlord, I really try to set the expectation. I let them understand that, look. You're bringing in someone with a doctor just like any other tenant.

You're going to have to do the work upfront to make sure that this is a good tenant for you. If you come to a place where you need to evict them, then, of course, you're going to follow the same procedure. They were telling me that, well, you know, they destroy the properties, and there's no recourse. Well, my question to them is, have you had a non Baptist person not take care of your property? So, again, it's just missed this misinformation. And so I think education has been the biggest tool that I'm using with the newer landlords to get them to lots of work in the program and as well, explaining to them how it benefits them and stabilizing their

And and I just wanna share the education part. One of the things that people call us, like, or resource information, there's education that happens because we wanna help them to think about their situation. They'll call and say, I'm past due on my rent, and, you know, I I don't know what to do. And I can suggest for look. I can serve as a media and try to assist you, but I want them to learn how to tell me what is your plan.

What can you do? You know? Or the repair issue, have you done these things? So we very much believe in empowering people to be able to move forward and not have to rely on, you know, all of the sudden when they can take care of the problem themselves. Any questions before I turn it over to legal aid?

Yes.

Want to acknowledge that as legal aid comes, this is a three legged stool. You have the mediation case management happening by Renee and her team. You have landlord engagement, diminishing stigma, and then you also have legal representation within the courtroom. This program was for out of profit funding in County. Around $2,500,000 was approved by the board of county commissioners to start this program that has year over year received a lot of feedback in our budgets and our halls around its value.

What I will say is is that, we are nearing the funding of of our book. And so with that being said, this task force is to be aware that that all things considered in terms of the length of budget process for this year, for all jurisdictions to to consider the work. I do wanna say to the city of Brainsborough, this budget cycle of commitment has been made up over $300,000 to expand the the court days. And so we are in collaboration around, and we're we're seeing good outcomes. So I just wanted to put that on the table that since 2021, they have been at this very level of work.

And and they're seeing an increase in homeless individual families that concern Yes. There

are so many families with children. And the other thing that we are seeing so much is people that are coming that are homeless because they can't find a new place because they have an addiction on their record. So one of the things that we try to do with our our landlord outreach and our resource navigation is we will identify some landlords who will give someone a chance. We helped one person that had an eviction not too, you know, long ago. But because Tara knew in a relationship with landlords, we were able to get this person out.

You know, her eviction wasn't years ago. It was months ago, but she explained what happened. As we tell people, he can explain what happened. Sometimes it's beyond the control of what you've done to correct it. So, yeah, absolutely. It's it's it's scary to see the number of calls that we've got from families with children who are facing eviction and are gonna be homeless or who have evictions on their records, and they're staying in hotels because they can't find another place to move into, and they've been in a hotel for two years.

And the best part about

that story is that in this particular case, we had at least five landlords reach out to us and say, we'll work with them. You know? Don't worry. You know? Send her here. You know? Here are three properties that I currently have that we are more than glad to talk to her and to help her out. So building those bridges and building those relationships has really helped me to be effective, when it comes to helping benefits by suitable.

Also, this is just a comment, but we we we need to figure out how to communicate better to the public about what's what we're doing Because we are finding distances where individuals are being evicted for amounts of money, $200, $300, which is really ridiculous. And then they come to you for hotel assistance that's $600 a week or $700 a week. And so somehow we're missing something in the communication space to let individuals know there are options to help or assist you with paying that rent. And sometimes by the time they get to court with Renee's team, it's kinda too late. But we could've mitigated that situation, kept those individuals in their housing for $600.

And so I don't know what the answer to that is and how best we get that word out, but, there are some landlords that just will not work with you, period. I mean, it's it's it's cast in stone. If you don't have that money, you're out. And it's for small amounts of money. And so I just not I I think I congratulate you, Renee. I know you all are doing yeoman's job in what you're doing, but I think that our communication has gotta get better about how we can help these people because it doesn't make sense for us

to

pay hotel rates when a person can stay in our own home.

I would also say that one thing that I found out from landlords that I thought was quite interesting is that they will appreciate tenant education because they feel like tenants are educated, right, it can take some of the burden off of them, and they're more likely to work with them when a situation comes along that they need

to

sit. Right? So when you have tenants following following you, tenants delightful, you're less likely to want to work with them because you're doing so much work with that tenant, and they're not really it's not a partnership.

So Just one more question. Victor earlier mentioned the that three legged stool with the the project and the legal aid. And, Renee, you also mentioned earlier about vouchers. Do you have money, vouchers for the assistance? Maybe that $200. Do you have that money at all?

No. We don't have any money as that comes from UMCZ, the center. So and so people know when people call us,

they're they're not calling us.

They're calling us maybe originally for money, but when they call us back, it's not for money. It's because of the information that we provide to them, the direction that we give to you about the agencies that do have money, and how to find you know, how to apply for it, what the requirements of the various nonprofits are. Because people get very frustrated when you just tell them,

oh, go here. Go here.

Come here. But what we try to do is tell them, okay. You can go here. You should go on this day of the month. These are their requirements. You need to have a job. This is the limit. So we're helping the nonprofits avoid being flooded, but also keeping people from wasting their time and being very frustrated and giving up. You know? So if we know there's a program, and that's one of the things, like, yes, the more we can find out about all the zip the late work that's being done and what the requirements are, then we tell people that so that they, you know, will will take advantage but not over well with the limited resources.

We all know that it's very limited. But if we can just be honest with them, and sometimes you have to tell them, sorry. There's nothing now. What what else? You know? Is it possible if you can move out or to another place where you have to think and see what is just help them try to think of things before that eventually gets on the better. Thanks.

Hi. I'm Janice McColly Blue, and I'm the managing attorney for legal aid of North Carolina. Colleague, Nicole Miller, who is the leading manager of the team project for our office. We collaborate very glad that we collaborate with our friends at. And I wanna thank Victor for mentioning free legged stool.

He covered one of my slides. So and I also wanted to start off by addressing a little bit the money question that was asked because I think there's a little confusion here between the vouchers that are provided by the housing authority and rental assistance, which is now provided. We were so thrilled that rental assistance is now provided. So that's one of the legs on our right there. Wanna thank you all for giving us some time today.

I can see how packed your schedule is, but this is a project that is very dear to me, very important to me. My I'm the managing attorney for the Greensboro office, but throughout my career, the focus of my career has been on housing and keeping people housed and stably and and safely and housed. So I do thank you for that. We received support, as mentioned from Johnson County. We also received support from the City of Greensboro.

And as I mentioned, is now no one available for Greensboro. And we also received support from the Greensboro United Way. And as Renee mentioned, the collaboration with our friends for UMCG that

we're too late to

install here. And I think when we have rental equipment, we have a third leg there to keep things going. This is a lot of statistics in the interest of time. I'm gonna skip through this. I think

we all

know how severe a problem we have in The United States and in Gilbert County and Stamford, Carolina with a high eviction rate and a lack of affordable housing. Why do we have evictions? Because most of the time, not always, but most of the time, it's because people can't afford their housing. So this is legal aid. Legal aid creates solutions.

The mission of legal aid is to address issues of economic justice for poor people. We help with food, health care, housing, safety, and more. So I think this is interesting. We've got some of these tools in where we can kind of play with some of these statistics that are going on here. Is for housing cases in Guilford County on some of the demographics for our housing cases.

The case counts for this is alright. I'm not entirely understanding this, but nine hundred and seventy two clients sounds more like it. But just on a CalPhoto member, it's 2,486. And then our demographics over there count by race. We have 78, almost 79% of the tenants we represent are African Americans, people of color, and about 76% are female.

In Guilford County, we handle this is overall for our office here in Greensboro. We handle 2,200 cases in twenty twenty four and certify 219 individuals. Very close statistics overall, 77% women, 80% people of color, and the median household income is $18,000. Obviously, is a huge priority for our office because 45% of our cases involve housing. Then this slide, there's a lot going on here, but I'm gonna try to talk about some important things.

Over there, the bubble over there far to the left is objective achieved. The light blue part is that we achieved the objective for seventy three percent of our clients, if I can read that correctly. And then down at the bottom, it's broken out by different types of cases that we have. The over here on the on the right, this bubble is the poverty scale. So the blue area represents 73.8% of our clients are below a 125% of the poverty line.

And this is for our housing clients alone. And the things in the middle are also very interesting. 813 cases closed. 2,000 we have 58 household members. 983 children in the household.

It's A little different because we're going by cases closed on this screen. So the cases closed, we have outcomes for. So when provision and eviction judgment, we talked about that sort of FARLA E that people get for when they're evicted with $206.06 of those cases, and then we prevented loss of housing in 02/1969. So the ones where we prevented loss of housing, we also prevented an eviction judgment, but those are separate, if you can understand that. In some where we didn't preserve housing, we still were able to prevent getting that eviction judge.

Say,

you would

add those together. And if we had delayed eviction, we delayed eviction, we could use a break in. A lot of times, it just need a little more time to move on or they need a little more time, get a little more money together. That was in a 170 cases. And, again, that's separate.

Those are cases where we didn't we don't qualify for prevented evictions or prevented loss of. Then down here on the bottom right, this shows the cost of of legal aid services versus what these same services would cost in the market for a private attorney. So there's quite a savings with legal aid. We cost a lot less than a private attorney. And this is just the related school slide.

So as you can see, we're the first leg there. We're attending to meet legal needs. That is our purpose. Financial needs now are being addressed not completely by any means, but there is at least some rental assistance that is available through the city of Greensboro. There's gonna be for much more.

We're very grateful for that. And then there's human needs. And we try to address those human needs too, but we're very happy to rely on our partners at UNCG for some of the supportive services that are needed, the education and assistance with finding housing and so forth. So I thank you. I am going to move to the next slide, and I'm gonna turn it over to my colleague, Nicole Mueller, who is gonna be talking more about our pre THEME plan. Everyone.

I'm Nicole Mueller, and I'm the Greensboro Housing program manager. So we've already talked about the team project, which stands for tenant education advocacy and mediation. A lot of that is USCG, and then we are the legal aspect of that, some of our partners at the bottom. And this is the flyer that we have. If anybody would like a copy of this flyer, our contact information are in the slides, and we would be happy to provide that to you if you would like to make that available to any of your clients or anybody in the community that you know has a need.

It lists our hours and the things that we do. So our legal services in court are focused on a lot of these things. Folks, tenants can come to us at any stage of the eviction timeline. So we have folks that will be coming to us before they've gotten evicted, saying that I'm having problems with my landlord. How can you help me to fix that?

And we provide them with resources. We provide them with legal advice in person at our clinics to let them know exactly sort of what their situation is looking at and try to prevent things before it gets to this stage where the eviction takes place. We do referrals for community resources. We represent clients in court every day. We help negotiate with landlords. We also provide appeal assistance. So a lot of times clients will come

to us after the fact.

Maybe they didn't get connected to us or find out about us ahead of time, so the eviction has already happened. What can they do at that point? We can help them to appeal, potentially let them on appeal, but at least give them the advice so that they can move forward with that on their own if they choose and still continue to kinda work with their landlord and mediate after the fact. That's still a possibility at that stage. We also talk to folks about remedies if they have uninhabitable conditions, which a lot of times

is when folks will come

to us before they eviction a spouse. And sometimes we even do things such as facilitate what's going on in the courtroom. So sometimes there will be children there that, you know, a parent has to step a tenant has to step out out with their child, then we help facilitate them getting back in front of the judge and the judge maintaining order and and things like that. So those are all sort of the services that we do. Some pictures of our team as well as some of our amazing American Friends service court watch folks who are there every day watching the proceedings and are a great partner of ours as well.

We have this kind of flowchart of the legal services. So there are two ways that clients come to us. They can either come to us through the clinic, which is really we're trying to show from this chart the fastest way to get to us, and we provide the most services in person in real time there. But clients can also come to us through calling our helpline, which is like a normal legal aid process. And the left side of the chart explains sort of how that flows and goes gets eventually gets to our team.

And then the last thing I wanted to talk about is just some success stories. Y'all have this packet so you can read the stories. In a lot of cases, we are really successful at being able to represent clients in court or settle with their landlords. These are some examples of cases that, you know, landlords were taking advantage of their clients. Doesn't happen all the time, but that's when we step in and negotiate or win, hopefully, win cases and are able to get some money back for the clients that they have lost because of lost wages, because of the conditions in their home and things like that.

And then a quote that I got from one of my personally, of my clients, the one in the middle about communication and attentiveness. Rental assistance kept him from being evicted after his fourth child was born. So what happened was with three other children in the household, his wife in the hospital for a month with their premature child, he lost his job. And if it had not been for us helping to facilitate that rental assistance for his family, they would have been evicted. Fortunately, everyone is healthy at home now, and they were able to get that assistance to stay in their home. So that is also one of the services that we provide, and we

have our contact information. Thank you

so much. Any questions? I know I know we're running up against the time tonight. The secretary has agreed to come back to our next meeting, but she would like to introduce the people who have been here.

Hi. I'm Jody Lorenzo. I'm the executive director of Great Street House. We do usually arrive in a a group of people. Our board is with us tonight as well as we are partnering with leadership teams. But I'm working with us on our business plan for the project that we're sharing with you. So, Kate, let's help acknowledge the companies that is

with us tonight. But yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So our leadership, Greensboro, group, most of them over there. Some of the companies that they are associated with, Connell, Connex Construction, and Ross in and.

That's why received. I got all of them. Correct.

So just thank you for being with us.

Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah. So we we are very appreciative that you that you set to lose two hour meeting. Actually, that's Thanks. I and, Jerry, I think

for now, You're not Yeah.

You're not we're going to your presentation. So before everybody leaves, we do want you to put May 7 on your calendar for the next meeting. May 7, and it'll be in the county. They will let you know where it's going to be. I do wanna thank the county for always coming and setting up the room and doing the IT and taking the taking the minutes. Thank you, ladies, very much. Appreciate that. And if that's all, I think we are adjourned. We must first question.