Community Relations Commission - Regular Meeting

To order before I do the roll call. I just want to remind everyone the sound system is down The microphones are intended for the online feed Please remember to speak up so that those microphones can get all of us and all the things that we have to say tonight So can we do a roll call?

President

Thank you. The first thing on our agenda is the acceptance of the journal the Journal of Proceedings for the Community Relations Commission meeting held on May 14th. We have a motion to approve the journal. We have a motion do we have a second. Second. I have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion on the journal? Hearing no discussion, all in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? The journal is approved. The next thing is we have a communication from the mayor's office reminding us of the open door meeting for the commissioners that is set for June 26th from 1030 to noon. So remember, that's an opportunity to just meet with the mayor, talk to him about the commission and the things that you're finding important. We do not have any public speakers tonight, so we'll move quickly into the information only section, I'm going to invite Ron Clure from Zion Development to come speak with us.

RON CLURE, ZION DEVELOPMENT, Hey, Chairman. Good evening, everyone.

How are you?

Well, it is my pleasure to be here today before you. As you heard, I do serve as the CEO and Director for Zion Development, amongst a few other roles. So on the first sign or first slide, just kind of break down how I engage in Rockford now. So years ago I was in private real estate development with William Charles Investments here in town. Left them, went to the Housing Authority for a number of years where I I joined the Housing Authority to be their director of real estate development because they hadn't done any development in quite some time. Started that, a few months, became their CEO, served as CEO for almost eight years, and then left there for a two-year period in Washington, D.C. with the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities to think about how might we integrate health and human services into a housing model. So what you'll probably see tonight, what you've probably experienced in your, you know, really starting to ingest housing information is they're very disparate, disconnected systems that don't talk well to each other and don't work well with each other. So my hope in the alliance work was to start to get those to communicate better. And then I left, came back into a for-profit role with Gorman and Company to develop real estate. Here in town, the most obvious one that people recognize is we did do the Embassy Suites Hotel, which is not housing, but indirectly kind of. But we also did collectively in my time at RHA with Gorman, The Jane Addams Project down in the Orchid neighborhood just south of here, 38 units there. We did repositioning of Orton Keys, which is 175 units. We also did the Grove, which some know as the Newtown Project, which some of us may recognize were significant challenges getting it across the finish line with that. Then since just completed the Lafayette Hotel, which is adaptive reuse of 54 affordable housing units. I left Gorman in December and through my organization, which is called Tipping Point Consultancy, entered into an agreement with the platform group. The platform group is formerly Rockford Housing Development Corporation. I serve as their CEO under contract. And then we created a strategic alliance with Zion Development and with Northwest Neighbors. Zion is a midtown district organization who's been in existence 40 plus years. That's the role I'm coming to you today to talk to you through. And then I also serve as the CEO and director for Northwest Neighbors, which is a Christian community development corporation just like Zion, but it serves the northwest side of Rockford. If we could flip to the next slide. Oh, yeah, sorry. I'm in a mode from doing a presentation earlier this week where I had to keep saying that. I'll flip myself to the next slide. The purpose of this is to unify three community development corporations in Rockford trying to make change. both in the condition of neighborhoods, but also in the provision of housing to our residents here in Rockford. Some of you may have looked at maps before, and in those maps within the red areas that we identify as traditionally persistent poverty neighborhoods or census tracts, declining housing condition, declining home values. And years ago, it used to just be kind of the northwest and the southeast where Northwest Christian Community Development Corporation is and also where Zion is. I think a lot of folks would traditionally recognize the west side of Rockford also as having these challenges. What wasn't recognized for many years is we structurally created those inequities and those problems. Redlining and other things led to these issues. which I'm more than happy to talk about. But the fact that we're now unified as three community development corporations, figuring out how do we collectively make change, not competing against each other, but really helping to bring more resources to our community is important. So just very quickly, I'm not going to read these to you. If you don't have this presentation, I'm more than happy to make sure you get it. But Zion Development, the mission statement is building communities that enrich lives in response to God's love. We have six key components of neighborhoods. They're all listed here. And what you'll find out is there's always a different number in every organization, but the overriding values are very consistent with what is called the social determinants of health. And those are things that people need in their lives and need access to in their lives to really thrive and live their best life. So most folks call it by different things, but at the end of the day, it all comes down to those social determinants of health. The platform group, a little bit different. We're less about the bricks and sticks, the physical construction. We're more about how do we augment and increase the capacity we as a community have through partnerships to actually get the work done. And so as we look at this, we asked questions when I was part of the platform group as a board member of how do we get people to work together better, how do we get partnerships to advance housing and human services so people can thrive in all of our neighborhoods. Northwest Neighbors, again, a Christian community development corporation, but really focused on how do they get the northwest side of Rockford to become a neighborhood of choice. And so if we look back at the data about the northwest side, it traditionally was a very strong, solid neighborhood, particularly for blue collar investments, households, right, and folks buying homes in the neighborhood. What we see now is many of those homes that are built there under our current zoning codes, whether here in Rockford or most anywhere in the nation, can no longer be legally built. They're considered too small. They don't have enough amenities. And so in some cases where those houses have been demolished, they can't rebuild on those same lots because of zoning setbacks and other things. So in part, when I say we've manufactured some of our housing challenges, in addition to the redlining and the racism and all the other things, we've also physically excluded people from living in homes that meet their needs because there are other people with more wealth and much larger homes that can dictate what the rest of housing looks like in our market. And so we were excited when the city of Rockford came up with its housing strategy. And I hope all of you as members of the commission have gotten a copy of that and understand what's happening. So we've organized ourselves around these six key bullet points that the city says is important. And we agree with them. We're not in any disagreement here. We're really hopeful that collectively as a community, we could come together around a housing plan. And I think that's something, you know, in my role going back to William Charles, we've always wanted some plan in our city that says this is what we can do for housing. And folks say, well, you know, you really need to defer to the zoning code. Well, the zoning code is exclusionary. So how do we really meet housing needs for a community goes well beyond zoning and this is a really really good start so this is a framework to me that says you have permission to do the following things and that's the way I approach it in all of the work with the three boards of these organizations we work on so interestingly enough It's hard to have a conversation about affordable housing. It's hard to have a conversation about housing when we're in the newspaper for really good things, right? We have great things going on. The Wall Street Journal says we're most affordable in the nation. Zillow says we have the hottest housing market. But the piece here is this paradox, which is, yes, we are affordable if we compare ourselves to San Francisco or Chicago or Washington, D.C., where housing prices are on average $450,000 to $600,000 a unit. We're here now at about $240,000. It's affordable compared to those. But for people who live here in Rockford, it is no longer affordable. It's good we're bringing folks from the outside in, we're returning to grow our city. We need that, but we also need housing for the people who live here. We'll talk a little bit more about some of the challenges here, which because of underbuilding, in part because of costs in our market where it costs more to build housing, whether it's single family housing or it's multifamily housing, it costs more here in Rockford than you're going to make back by the rent or the sale price of the house. So what does that mean? Currently in the city of Rockford, if we're considering an average house being about 1,200 square foot, the housing cost is around, right now, close to $400 a square foot. It used to be about $130 a square foot, $140 a square foot. So if it costs us close to $400,000 to build a home, even with this accelerated pricing that we have in appreciation which is part false driven by a lack of inventory you know we're going to sell that thing for somewhere around 280. so you're upside down and so there are things that are being done there are houses that are being constructed mainly because of some groundwork that was done in the early 2000s with land zoning with zoning that was done on our land use back then. I'll hit on those in a little bit. But in addition to that, the cost of a mortgage has gone up. Interest rates are higher. I don't like to say interest rates are high because really we're in a time now where they're traditional. We got used to housing mortgages being 2.5% to 4% for really almost a decade plus. That was in response to the housing crash from 2007, 2008. So those were unreasonably low or historically low, and now they're more normal. And so you add normal interest rates with higher costs to produce, a lack of inventory, it is much harder for people to buy a home. But at the same time, it's much more expensive for them to rent a home. So I want to share both rental and for sale issues. I mentioned that housing is more expensive because we don't have any inventory. So I was cutting my teeth in real estate development in the late 90s and early 2000s. And at that time, I felt Rockford was on fire. If you look at the map, we really weren't. We were in a decline. So if you look at Rockford's hottest time for housing production, it was really in the late 60s. And you think about that. We created about 10,000 houses during that 10-year period, 10,000 houses. And these are homes, again, like in the Edgewater, or excuse me, Edgebrook neighborhood behind Edgebrook Mall, northwest side. These were much more realistic-sized ranch homes, sometimes one-car garage, that I said today you really can't Legally build unless you get a special permission from City Council. So I'm happy to say that the city has reviewed its zoning code and Is is making changes to that zoning code? This will help us but it's not zoning alone That's the problem and we'll we'll get a little more deep into this but you can see that from the height in the late 60s early 70s a construction to 2020 Later, we built really no housing the last decade. There are times, and I felt this was a good thing, there are some who may not feel this way, but I fully support Habitat for Humanity and their production of housing. Do you know that they are our largest home developer in the city of Rockford? To me, that's good that they are, but it's also not good that there's nobody else. And so Habitat's large contribution to being the single largest developer is six to eight houses a year. Six to eight, not 100 or 150 or 250 like we saw in the late 90s and early 2000s. This is a challenge. I am glad to see that in 2025, we did issue about 90, I think it was 95 or 91 single-family permits, incredible compared to the year before when it was 20 something. But we have a long way to go. If our city plan identified 6-9 thousand housing units, No disrespect to anybody here, I'll just say it this way, I'll be dead before that happens. That's not acceptable for us as a community that's trying to grow, to preserve a quality of life, and to make sure that there's a broader tax base to spread property taxes over. It's also not acceptable that we don't provide people in our community affordable places to live. So this is just a graph you could look at closer in your own. But basically, we went from having somewhere in the area of 900 to 1,100 households at any given time on the market for sale to last year only having 250. We were below that this year in the spring, but final numbers aren't incorporated in this particular source. But we don't have enough houses on the market to sell people. And so if we just think about that from an inventory problem, that alone is a challenge. But I'm also going to ask you to think about an indicator that's pretty glaringly obvious to many of us who's lived in Rockford for a long time. How many furniture stores have gone out of business in the last 10 years? When people don't buy houses, when people can't move, they don't buy furniture. They don't spend money with lawn care companies and others. It's an economic problem in as much as it is a housing problem. This is really hard to read, but this goes back to 1995 and looks at the number of authorized housing developments, housing units that we said we could build in Rockford. The light bars on the top are multifamily, the dark bars on the bottom are single-family. You can look that there has been no real multifamily production in our community over the last decade. Now, I want to stress this because I think we celebrate like urban equity has done a hell of a job downtown. The reason that works downtown is we have the River's Edge Historic Tax Credit, which provides 25 percent of the funding for those properties. You add to it 20 percent for a federal historic tax credit and 45 percent of the cost of units are covered. Now, there's a discounted rate because you have to sell the credits and all this other stuff. But suffice it to say that that 45 percent, even after sale, let's say we net 36 to 37 percent, that doesn't exist on the east side for new construction. That's where our gap comes in, is new construction. The historic tax credit has been responsible for downtown growth, but the costs, and a lack of labor to build housing, whether it's single-family or multi-family, are reasons we don't really see production. I shared with you that all homeowners, all renters are struggling with affordability right now. I am thankful for the work of Urban Equities. I am thankful that our council has approved those projects. I am thankful our council had approved Lafayette and another project I have coming up on Avon Street, But the challenge we run into is, as a community, we don't like affordable housing. When an affordable housing project is suggested, we see folks come out in droves to our council meetings, to our committee meetings, to say, we don't want that in our neighborhood. You might recall that was the challenge we had at the Grove or the Newtown project. So they're called NIMBYs, the folks who show up and say, not my backyard. I don't want it. But there's no basis for them to say that. The things that get shared and the fears that they have are all proven by data and research that those things don't come to fruition. So you don't get significantly more traffic. You don't see a reduction to your property value. You don't see an increase in crime. When we see an increase in crime or property values tied to a multifamily project or property, it's because we have a horrible owner who doesn't take care of the property. That is not to be tied to an affordable housing project with a good owner. And so we have to address our issues of how we manage our landlords in our community and how we address the conditions of their property. But we can't paint every owner with the same brush of those that are the worst among us. So here what we're seeing is housing affordability is determined by how much of your income you're spending on housing. If you spend more than 30% of your income, you're considered housing burdened. That includes the cost of rent or a mortgage and your utility costs. So when you add those together, if you spend more than 30%, what we know is you're not going to spend as much money taking care of your health because you don't have it. You're not going to spend as much money ensuring that your kids or even yourself goes to college because you don't have it. And so these are actual proven research, data-driven solutions that show this to be true. So right now we are sitting that roughly just over 50 percent of our renters are spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent. Rent has accelerated because we don't have enough apartments for people in Rockford to live in. Our homeowners, it's just over 23% of homeowners who have bought houses are also housing burdens, which means they're spending more than 30%. Scary to me is if we consider them to be what is highly burdened, it's if you're spending more than 50% of your income. And our renters of our apartments in Rockford, that's over 35% right now. More than half of their money is going out the door to keep a roof over their family's heads. I will go through some of these things. Homeownership is big in our community. It should be bigger. We see many other communities that have much higher rates of homeownership than ours. Why is homeownership important? It's a wealth builder right and that I'll share with you some of these Statistics we know that if folks buy a home they're more than likely going to you reap the benefits of appreciate of Appreciation reap the benefits of stability stay in that home far longer than they'd stay in an apartment So their kids stay in a school that they don't have to move from school to school to school and affect the mobility rate, which directly affects their educational outcomes. So for the first time ever in the United States, the median household buyer is more than 40 years old. They used to be in the 20s. People can't afford today to buy a house. And that is an issue that we are seeing here in Rockford. So this is what does that mean? it means that if somebody buys a house in their early 20s versus in their early 40s and i'm using 180 000 as the price of that house because right now that is the average price of a house being sold in rockford the average value in listing is almost 240 000. so the higher price houses while they sell we're still seeing that the average sale price is lower And so using that average of $180,000 home, they're going to, at age 60, wind up with less than $181,000 in their savings account or in their home that they can reap the benefits of. So this has been a challenge in Rockford for decades. In 2003, when I was at William Charles, we looked at doing a senior supportive housing development in the city of Rockford, and we studied our senior population. And keep in mind at that time and this time, this was a cohort of seniors that experienced debt. Many seniors before them did not have access to the debt that was available commercially in the market, like credit cards and other things. And what we found at that time is the average senior had a net worth of $13,000. Compared to what used to be hundreds of thousands of dollars That is a challenge that we're living out today and why we have so much need for affordable housing for our seniors so You know a typical home price right now between rock and Rockford is somewhere between 170 and 250 thousand dollars Nationally, it's four hundred and twenty thousand So again, we are affordable when we're compared to the nation. We are not affordable for the residents who live in Rockford. We also only have 1.6 months worth of inventory on the market, where nationally that could be close to six months. So we just don't have enough housing. So it's not that our housing is unaffordable compared to the rest of America. Our challenge is ensuring that Rockford residents can actually access, own, and buy and own a home. So this is a report from the Realtors Association for April of this year. Again, the median sold price was that $108,000. Then we only had one month worth of inventory on the market. So we are challenged in the inventory we have. We also are challenged in the inventory we have in apartments. So while you may see varying vacancy rates, meaning the amount of vacant units people aren't living in, that are somewhere between 1 percent and 9 percent, you would think that, well, if 9 out of every 100 units are not occupied, that gives people an opportunity. That's at the high end of the market. Right at the low end of the market. We don't have enough housing and we'll give you these numbers here in a moment because there is some hope there but The other piece of this when we talk about affordability beyond the house the house price or rental price It's our taxes. And so we all hear that I'm super appreciative that the city and others have held the levy flat for the last number of years, but the taxes still went up because the value of our homes went up and So our taxes are still higher. What we're seeing is in a traditional market, the value of taxes are somewhere about 1.2% to 1.4% of the mortgage. Here we're close to 4.5%. So our taxes are indeed higher for our homeowners. That also plays into affordability because if the average home's property taxes are about $5,000, going back to that $180,000 average home, then what we're seeing is that's $400 to $500 more a month on a mortgage payment. So our biggest local barriers that we're hoping to engage folks around, and I know that the city is working towards as well, is a lack of starter homes, an aging housing stock, the down payment challenges, credit financial literacy, and property taxes and insurance. So at Zion, we have relaunched our homeownership counseling. Our one has done the same, and I just blanked on the name of the third organization that started as well. But we have three now. For a while, we had zero. After Northwest Home Start closed, there was nobody in Rockford. And if people wanted to buy a home and they were required to have home buyer assistance and home buyer training, they either had to do it online or had to go to Joliet. And so now it's good we have three, but that may not be enough. The challenges we also are seeing is, and Mary may talk about this a little bit more. I'm thankful to be on Mary's board and support her in her work, so please listen intently to what she has to say. But the challenge we're seeing is the number of people in our community with credit and collection issues. So we had a HUD meeting. Department of Housing and Urban Development came to Rockford a couple weeks ago. I was in that roundtable, and we heard that right now folks who are coming in to buy a home, a lot of folks who are first-time homebuyers are trying to get a home with a credit score of 500. That is extremely low, and you will not get a mortgage at that level. So how are we addressing helping people not struggle financially so much that they wind up with medical collections? Because that's usually the largest collection out there. So these are all challenges, but homebuyer counseling, again, please go through these slides, read the more detail, is incredibly important. So where might we as a community impact these outcomes, bring affordability a little more into check, and really have products that our realtors could sell? Last month, we had more realtors in the city of Rockford than we had houses on the market for sale, four to one. There were four realtors for every home that was available for sale. And so they're not making money either, because they're not selling houses at the limits they had before. So we can make these changes by expanding housing supply, offering first time home buyer assistance. And that is a twofold piece. We have to offer assistance that helps them with a down payment, but there also has to be some assistance, whether it's to the home buyer or it's to the builder or it's to the developer, to fill the gap. Because as I said, if it costs us $400,000 to build a house that's worth $280,000, nobody's going to build a house and lose 120 grand. If we're allowed through some land use changes to build smaller houses and bring the costs into check, then the gap becomes less, but there's still a gap. Our folks in need of affordable housing in Rockford are not going to be buying $280,000 houses. So how do we help them buy housing that is quality, that's affordable, that's also healthy? Because those old homes we have, we have a significant challenge with lead-based paint poisoning and asbestos issues in these homes. So we may have these naturally occurring affordable housing units that you hear some elected officials talk about. But we're actually harming people by letting them live in those units. And we're harming children especially if they become lead poisoned. So the other is rehabilitation programs with the city is advancing. Habitat has done a great deal of that in my role at the platform group. I'm thankful we've been able to support the Habitat critical home repair platform. So has the city. We leveraged each other's money for Habitat to be able to do those repairs. employer partnerships back in 2003, 2004, we actually had local assisted homebuyer programs that were done by the employer. So if you work for me as it was the school district, it was Swedish American, it was William Charles, you would get $10,000 in down payment assistance that was forgivable if you stay working for me for five years. That was a State-driven program that went away. And so the employers contributed it to the State contributed it. It was a 50-50 match to get the $10,000. But that doesn't exist now, and that's actually being talked about at the State level again. And the last is equity-focused strategies. We know that our black and brown residents own homes at much lower rates than our white residents, and we also know that the mortgages, the incentives, and the other benefits of buying a home are much more appreciated by our white residents in Rockford. What I mean appreciated is used, and they are not available to all of our black and brown residents. So that's got to be an equity-driven component here. So this is who gets left behind when we don't focus equitably. Our young families, our essential workers, our teachers, public safety workers, our healthcare workers, and our longtime residents. And this is the breakdown of black versus white, Hispanic versus white, Asian versus white, home ownership rates. So in the city of Rockford, white folks on average 67% own homes. The lowest is our black and African American residents at only 32%. So there's a lot of structural reasons for this that still go back to redlining and other challenges, but it's also financing. Many times they don't have access to the financing, and if they do have access, there's still racism that exists in those platforms that they can't get the loan. So metrics that we should all look at, we're going to talk about some of these in a moment, but what is our housing supply? you know, what are the homeowners, what are the home units available under 200, new houses being built, vacant homes being rehabilitated, affordability, really paying particular focus on the cost burden of residents, again, rent and for sale, and then who has access to home ownership, and what is the health of a neighborhood? So these are all things that as a city we should monitor. And so if we don't solve these challenges, one, I always view it as housing is a human right. Do you know the United States in the 1930s led the entire world in saying having access to a home is a human right? Housing is a human right. We led that through the United Nations. When it came time to vote to say who believes this, do you know who didn't vote to say we believe this? The United States. So we led everybody else in the world to say this is what it looks like, but then we couldn't make that commitment ourselves. So if we can't look at it as housing is a path to dignity and respect and building wealth for families, Let's just look at it economically because there are folks who just look at the numbers and when they do, what we know is that has a strong effect on our ability to employ people in Rockford. Businesses can't get people to come to work and live in our city if they don't have access to a house they can afford. That's an apartment or it's a home. These have significant challenges and it does hinder folks' ability to even climb the economic ladder. Economic mobility is incredibly hindered if folks can't move closer to work because they can't afford the housing that is near where they work. It's not all. doom and gloom. There are opportunities. I'm excited. That's why I came back to working in Rockford, because I felt that we all have an obligation to ensure housing in our community. And so a couple of things that are currently happening is through the partnership between Platform Zion and Northwest, we're replicating a project we did at RHA when I was there. And that is we're literally going out looking at the condition of every home. We have AmeriCorps VISTA. He stands in front of the house. He takes a picture of it. It geocodes it, puts it into a database. He goes through. He provides a score for that home. We look at the condition of the roof, the condition of the exterior. What is the yard? Do they have crosswalks? Do they have sidewalks? Do they have a bus stop? Do they have public art in their neighborhood? And we know in many of our neighborhoods of challenge, these things don't exist. The quality of the roof may be a problem. The quality of the exterior may be a problem. but we also know that there's several really good quality houses that fall between those that aren't so good and so the idea here isn't to penalize people who are living in a in a housing uh unit with struggle but to say how do we coordinate investments right so in ellis heights which is you know west rockford between school street and preston and um kilburn and north johnston we looked at this and this was what we found at the end the blue dots were areas of, or blocks where 75% of the housing was in good condition. It didn't have a leaking roof. It didn't have broken or deteriorated windows. It had a solid structure. So how might we invest in the housing units around there to continue to grow those out? So that way we wind up with a higher concentration of good homes together. And what we know that is where there's not color here, We know that those homes that were red, because we rated them green, yellow, and red, and then we combined all the greens to be a blue, just to give you an idea. The homes that were a red, we knew that on average they reduced the surrounding property value by $5,000. So if you had multiple reds, the reduction was even more. So we are replicating this in the, um, Northwest neighborhoods, the platform neighborhoods and the Zion neighborhoods. And so this is an example of, you know, the number of homes, and this has now since been built out, this is around Rockford Memorial, sorry, Mercy, um, health, uh, on Rockton. And so Nick has literally gotten all this data. It's in our database. And when he's done, we'll use that to work with the city to say, this is where we need focused investments that are consistent with your housing strategy. And so it works. What we know is at the time this was done in December, we had more than 600 homes already surveyed. that roughly 40 percent of them had significant challenges with the roofs if there is a roof challenge the likelihood of the home going into disrepair is very high and so how might we take our community development dollars to ensure solid roofs on houses so we don't see that degradation the other is mary Again, make sure you pay attention to Mary. But I'm honored to be on her board and lead the committee here through the Bridges to Prosperity of our opportunity-rich and inclusive neighborhoods. And so she has done a wonderful job of guiding us as a community to our first-ever upward mobility plan. How do we eliminate poverty in our community? We've never looked at it that way. And housing is a component to eliminating poverty. And so what we know here, that within the city of Rockford for every 100 homes we need in the in the very low extremely low and low income levels we either have 42 for every 172 for every 100 and kind of that so extremely low very low low and then at the high side we have 95 that's on average for both owners and renters and If we look at our renters on the extremely low income, we only have 31 for every 100 that is needed. So we're very short in that area of housing. We only have 67 for those who are in the very low income and 95 for those in the low income. These numbers are increased. I've reported, I think, Jim, to you before, those were old numbers. So we've made some progress on the very low and low, but we've gone the other way in the extremely low. The other piece that is interesting to me is those that are considered luxury rentals. We have almost 140 for every 100 we need. so we're over building on the luxury market because that's sexy right like you can stand in front of a commission you can stand in front of city council you can stand in front of a bunch of neighbors say we're going to build houses that are really expensive and you know they're going to attract the wealthy people to our city and many people will be like oh well that's good we like that but they don't like when we're going to build housing for low-income folks so um so how do we combat that Um, this is one way we really maintain and monitor these, these, uh, data points, uh, our committee on house on housing and neighborhoods really looks at how do we make significant change? How do we ensure we're moving things forward? So one of the few things we committed to, um, is housing advocacy. So that's why we're here tonight. Um, the three organizations I represent are out advocating nonstop. Um, and we also, um, launched this Rockford area YIMBY. So what that stands for is yes in my backyard. We want people in Rockford to come forward and provide support and cover for elected officials who otherwise stand in a room with hostile people who say, no, you're not building that in my neighborhood. I don't want that in my backyard. We're working to create an army of people who say, heck, yeah, we want that. And heck, yeah, we want Rockford to grow and be better. And so Yes In My Backyard is part of a national initiative. We also have a state chapter and so collectively we're working on this I will share with you by email For everybody on the committee our first video. So there's a series of videos We're releasing about what is housing affordability and it simply is do you live in a place where? Do you have a roof over your head and do you feel it's affordable to you? This is at every income level from our lowest income folks in Rockford to our highest income folks. Do you feel where you live is affordable? That's what it comes down to and then who should have access to that housing? So at the state level, we've been advocating for Build Illinois. There's also a great deal of home legislation that has been moving forward at the federal level, also a great deal of harmful home and related legislation at the national level that we lobby against, um, or advocate against. Uh, here I did testify to the, um, state house and Senate about a bill called Yigby, which is yes in God's backyard. So if you're a church or a religious institution and you own land or buildings, you would be able to develop those land or buildings into housing. and it would be done in an expedited fashion that would work with your local municipality, that you wouldn't have to go through and rezone, you wouldn't have to go through the same elongated processes, that because you own it as a church and you're serving your people's mission by providing housing, you have an accelerated path to providing housing, which drastically lowers costs. But then here at home in Rockford, um, our first effort was the five 15 South Alpine project, which had a number of folks rise up and one from 32 units down to 24. Thankful it passed. I think it should have been 32. That's my personal opinion. As a developer, I know the value of having those eight extra units and the cost of a development and how it does help you with stability. But I'm glad we got it passed. The other is the University Hill project that passed recently. I thought it would be a long time before we would see 300 plus units in a denser setting get approved in the city of Rockford. So kudos to everybody involved there. And then our zoning code changes that are being proposed that will go to ZBA hopefully next month. We're going to go this month. We support those. We'll be issuing letters. We'll be showing up at meetings. There will be people who stand up and say, no, no, no, we do want this. We want this. And so then hopefully that helps folks become more comfortable. So if you're interested in the YMB platform, this QR code takes you right to our website to join us. Right now on our social media side, we have more than 300 folks we can tap when we say we need somebody to go to a meeting and talk about the value of this. Our goal is to hit 1,000 at least because then we can have multiple people at meetings to say, yes, we want this in our backyards. So that is everything. I probably went over because I like to talk a lot about housing. It makes me excited. But being able to house folks in Rockford makes me most excited and I'm glad to be back.

Commissioners, what questions?

I think it was very thorough.

I actually do have one because you only mentioned the project on... Right over here.

Lafayette?

No.

Oh, Avon?

Yes.

Yeah.

What is that project?

So Avon is a 14-acre site. It is a blend of various housing styles. And so we did master plan that the platform group did. When I was on the board, I left the board to become the director of the organization. And we did bring that through city council. Interestingly enough, back then there was a great deal of disdain for housing and it took us eight months to get it approved. It includes 64 units of apartments in a single apartment building that are affordable to people who earn up to 60% of area median income. It includes six single family homes that Habitat for Humanity will be building on our site. It includes at the south end a historic warehouse that's at the corner of Cedar and Avon. And in there, there will be up to eight artist loft apartments and an arts gallery and an arts incubator. And our residents there, in exchange for a lower rental rate, that is going to be a purchase agreement so they can rent to purchase. They will provide our community our neighbors around us Access to arts programming after school and in the summer and so they'll open up their space to our youth to ensure they have access so In between there, it's a total of a hundred and six units. And so I think I laid out 78 the balance are going to be duplex units that are townhomes that will be for sale so we'll be looking to build those the zoning is approved and financing on these things takes forever the last component of financing the federal government did not move forward with legislation around the new market tax credits which caused everybody to go on hold they did approve and ob3 bill the one big beautiful bill if I have to say it all the way The name is a little wrong, but whatever. But they did approve new market tax credit extensions as well as opportunity zones, which this happens to fall in. So that's all wonderful. That's all what we needed. But they still haven't released the applications, which are supposed to be out in December. So it continues to get delayed because of some of the financial challenges. But these are the tools that allow us to make these units affordable. Without them, we wouldn't be able to do it. It's about a $48 million project. So, yeah, it is the first parcel west of downtown in our west side neighborhood. So we're excited to get going on that. Thank you for asking.

So thank you for coming and sharing that because I think you did great. I mean, you explained everything that your organization does. And I own a supportive housing in Midtown. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

We are. Yes. Yes. So, you know, I keep my fingers on a lot of different things. When we're creating housing units, we're ensuring that we're taking local referrals so that if it's a for rent situation, we're ensuring we're trying to house as many folks as quickly as possible. There are some legislative challenges currently with public housing funding around the Section 8 program that are going to have a really challenging impact on the city of Rockford and other cities like ours. And if we don't fix those, we're not going to be able to house people as quickly or as many. So we stay on top of the legislation, but we also stay in touch with the folks we work with. And so that's one. From the homeowner counseling side, we have a network of banks who also assist us in sharing their lending products, how to improve your credit score, all these other things. So there is a great network of people. So if they get somebody who comes in and says, I want to buy a house, I'm a first-time homebuyer, I want to use your homebuyer assistance, then we can come alongside them and say, these are the other programs that are available. In most cases, we're finding that credit is the challenge. And so you may not be able to buy today because you can't get a mortgage, But let's put you on a path that you could buy perhaps in 12 months, right? Because that's important. These are all important factors. Karandis is going to talk a little bit about some of their work. And they provide great resources through the FSS program that do help people fix their credit before they get to a position where they may be ready to buy a house. Because the reality is, while folks don't generally believe this, Public housing residents do leave public housing, and they do buy homes, and we're thankful for that. So when we can get away from deciding who's worthy of housing as a community and have real conversations about how do we treat people with dignity and respect to get housed, it will be a much different place, and we'll have much more focus and attention on increasing housing production.

Do you know, though, how they gather marketing for strategic groups, though? and the reason i'm kind of asking is because like there i see in my area right um there is a big push on rent-to-own right right these rent-to-owns are basically like you drop cash and they give you these ridiculous interest rates and rates that you will never be able to pay off right these houses just go back in the market and they just put themselves but are they using strategic ways to be like okay we need to target African Americans or Latinos in this age group to get them to come to these home ownership classes so they're not being steered towards winter home programs versus they need to be communicated. They couldn't afford a home, they just don't know they can. I don't know, you have marketing or y'all doing anything

Yep, so we do do that outreach as well. It's a little tricky in a home environment because you can't segment potential customers, if you will, or residents based on race, based on sexual orientation, all these things under the Fair Housing Act. but there is a way that we can share right like you could go to a latino chamber meeting with members or you could go right and we we actually do do those things because we want people to know that home ownership is an option I know that many are fearful of rent-to-own programs. And if we look particularly at why most of our black Americans don't have wealth from housing, it's often because they fell into this rent-to-own trap. And they pay on a house for 20 years, and then they're late with one payment by two days, and they lose everything that they put in for the 20 years ahead. Thank God the laws have changed. since then, but not everybody follows the law. So it's not to say it doesn't still happen. It just doesn't happen through a bank. It could happen through private financing. So those are all real challenges we have in Rockford. And affordable housing that is equitable is still a big problem in Rockford. And so I'd encourage you all to think about, if you haven't already, bring Prairie State Legal in to talk to you about fair housing, because those are challenges that they test for. And back in my time at RHA with the Grove, we did testing to see, because racism rose its ugly head very high profile during the Grove project. And so the Prairie State did testing, and 10 out of 10 black families who went to rent an apartment or buy a home were treated very differently than the 10 out of 10 white folks. So it was two polar opposites. They were all treated very differently. There wasn't even one family in our black and brown cohort that was treated with the same respect and opportunity that the white folks were. We got it. We got to really continue to push on this because that is a big challenge It does Yeah. So we note vacancy as well. We track vacancy to make sure we're aware. And then why are they vacant? Right. I mean, it could be that it's just he's there on a day when somebody moved out the day before and somebody is going to move in. Or it could be that that house hasn't been occupied in three years and maybe it's in foreclosure. Maybe it's, you know, owned by the land bank, whatever. We want to know why, because we want to make sure it can be redeployed.

Yep, so, yep.

Yeah. So Northwest is working to identify a series of houses that we could renovate in the Northwest neighborhood. The platform group is going to do the same thing, building out from our Avon investment, building outward. And then Zion has done this for several years. But our goal over the next year is really accelerate that to make sure we're doing residential infill. And now with the city last month, I don't remember exactly, but it was in April, voted to redirect funds that were underutilized in the home and CDBG program to homeowner repairs. And so there was about $780,000. So our goal is, as all three organizations, to ask for some of that funding to go ahead and start to repurpose these houses. But the other thing is, we don't have to be the only ones, and we don't want to be the only ones. City of Rockford needs a cadre of developers developing at all different levels for all different styles of housing and we should meet we should be encouraging that so we work with other developers to support them they're not competition there's so much work to be done we all have to work together and so we approach it a very collaborative way to support each other to make sure they're doing work and We're not in their way that we don't interfere with the work that they're doing instead. We augment and accelerate additional housing Yeah, this is a much longer conversation we need to have So the you know to just bring it to a close and get on to the other speakers The zoning piece is just one and so I'm going to send a letter to the city on behalf of Zion on behalf of The platform group in Northwest as well as the Rockford area Yimby group to say keep going like this is good Please support this when it comes before council for the ZBA. Please support these changes in 2007 we changed the zoning code and And we, like many other cities across the nation, went from, well, we'll accept these smaller homes on smaller lots to move towards bigger homes on bigger lots with more amenities, right? You must have a two-car garage, or we encourage you to have a three-car garage. Whereas so many of our homes in our city right now either don't have garages or have a single garage. Those aren't bad homes. Those are starter homes. And so how might we encourage that? The city is looking at that. We encourage that. But there are other resources that we need to work on and to mention, you know, a taboo word in some worlds. If we can get back home rule, that would help us in this area to to advance housing as well. So that's all I'll say about it. We'll talk about it more later. But I would love to talk about what other communities are doing and how they're doing it, because we can learn from them. And those are good things.

I just want to say thank you, Ron. No worries. The presentation tonight is just like mind-blowing. And I love the work that you have done in the past, those organizations you mentioned. I love that you're with Zion. It was a tragic loss to Bob Campbell.

It was tragic.

I love that you're there. Is there any way that we can get this information in our hands?

Yeah, I'm assuming through the powers that be here, they'll distribute it to you. Obviously, I rambled on a lot more words than you see on paper, so if there are questions about it, happy to share that with you. But that's my job. My job is to know housing. My job is to make sure we execute on housing, and it's to advocate for housing. So I take that very seriously, and I am happy to speak in any room and talk about what we need to do. Great. Thank you. Thank you.

Commissioner we're going to move to our next presentation We're going to have Mary Cassiopeia come up from bridges prosperity Good evening

My name is Mary Cassiope, and I'm the founder and CEO of Bridges to Prosperity Northern Illinois. I really appreciate the opportunity to present our programs to you this evening. I would also like to thank you for the regrow grant funding that you allocated to our organization in 2025. It really helped us to grow our Getting Ahead program that I'll be speaking to you about today. So in addition to my role locally, I also serve as a national consultant with an organization called AHA Process. It's a national poverty reduction organization. And in this role, I work with communities across the nation to assist them with their poverty reduction goals. Through my consulting role, I've also authored a book economic development that benefits everyone. Poverty reduction is a key strategy. Um, and I've also created a national workshop that I provide across the nation on that same topic. A little bit about my professional background. I have 26 years of experience in community and economic development and poverty reduction. I have held leadership roles at chambers of commerce, economic development organizations, I've led the economic development efforts for a municipality and did a little bit of work in commercial development along the way also. I serve on national and local organizations boards that are focused on poverty reduction. I'm happy to report that I've also recently been nominated as vice president of the Community Action Agency Board. So really happy to be serving in that capacity. Additionally, I have earned certifications in both poverty reduction and economic development over the years. Bridges for Prosperity Northern Illinois is a nonprofit consulting organization that helps communities, organizations, and local government develop data-driven strategies to increase economic mobility and reduce poverty. We have a very dynamic group of individuals leading our board this year. A couple of them that I'm sure you're familiar with, Anquinette Parham, who is serving as our board president this year, and of course, our co-presenter here, Ron Kluwer, along with many others that really have a high level of expertise and experience as it relates to reducing poverty. So some data that helps to inform our work. This is the ALICE report from United Way. If you're not familiar with it, ALICE is an acronym that stands for asset limited, income constrained, and employed. So these are households that are in the workforce, but still not earning enough to afford bare bones household budgets. So in Winnebago County, 26% of our families are considered ALICE families. The data does not go down to the city level, but a tool that we use to help us really understand more deeply the poverty that we see within the city of Rockford is the Distressed Communities Index. So this map was developed by the Economic Innovation Group. It's available on their website at EIG.org. And the map shows how counties across the nation really range from prosperous to distressed. And it allows us to drill into zip code data as well. So if we break down the data by zip code, here is how the city of Rockford ranks. 43% of our population lives in a distressed zip code. 32% reside in an at-risk area, 17% mid-tier, 8% live in a comfortable zip code, which is 6-11-14, and none of our zip codes rank as prosperous. We can see how each zip code ranks out of the 1,111 zip codes that make up the state of Illinois, ranging from 1,108 out of that 1,111 down to 419. We can also see the components that drive the discrepancies across these zip codes. So the criteria that they're looking at to really identify the distress includes poverty rate, no high school diploma, medium income ratio, It also includes housing vacancy rates. It also looks at the number of business establishments moving in or out of that zip code. So looking at the 2025 rankings, we can also see the changes that have occurred just in one year. So what this data is telling us is that approximately 21,682 residents in the city of Rockford are in poverty and also reside in a distressed zip code. It also tells us that based on the 6-1104 zip code ranking at 1,108, that there are only three additional zip codes across the entire state of Illinois that are any more distressed than 6-1104. So the work that we do to help really mitigate this at Bridges to Prosperity Northern Illinois, our work is really on creating economic mobility, and it falls into three program areas. Our Getting Ahead classes are for individuals experiencing poverty. It helps them to build pathways to stability and self-sufficiency. We also have a series of workshops that we offer in the community. We're helping organizations move from insight to action and equipping them with strategies for lasting impact. And through our boosting upward mobility work, we're helping communities create poverty reduction strategies, something that we've never had in the city of Rockford before. So over the last five years, in partnership with local agencies, nonprofits, and churches, we have graduated over 250 participants from our Getting Ahead classes. Want to thank Pastor Norma. Pastor Norma was one of the first organizations that hopped on board when she was leading Life Church, and we hosted a Getting Ahead class at that location. I do have a brief video that I'll share, but there was a technical issue with that, so we're going to share that at the very end instead of in the middle here. Our participants have achieved measurable results from the getting ahead program the handout that you have outlines these results and this is the aggregate outcomes from all of the classes that we've hosted and So with with each class that we host we provide a report on the outcomes just for that individual cohort and then we provide an aggregate report of all of the classes that were held within one specific year and Then we do a super aggregate of all of the classes that we've hosted in the history of hosting getting ahead classes here in the city but our participants are achieving just incredible results 43 percent have had an increase in income and 44% a decrease in debt, 59% obtain additional education, and 24% reduce need for state or federal benefits. So I always joke that if the state of Illinois would just give me that 24% back that I'm saving them, I could really grow and scale this program. But we know that's not the way it works. I do want to recognize Corandus Brown with Rockford Housing Authority. Corandus is one of the facilitators of the Getting Ahead curriculum. RHA was one of the first organizations to hop on board and say, yes, we want to partner with you and provide this. We also partner with Winnebago County Housing Authority. We have classes hosted here at the City of Rockford through Community Action and Head Start. We actually graduated one of our last classes through the city just today. And then we also graduated our very first class from the Goodwill Excel Center. So they offer the Getting Ahead curriculum as an elective at the adult high school. So really excited about the partnerships that we have and the impact that the program is having. On your handout, it also lists on the backside, the participants learn about all different areas of resource in their life, and they learn how to build life stability. So the percentage of the increases noted on the back of that handout is what the participants have told us. And this is just after 10 weeks of the classes. We know that we're planting seeds that are going to continue to help that person in their journey to self-sufficiency as they go forward. So here is the economic impact that is really created by our graduates. Our investment in each participant is $1,000. Each participant receives $250 over the course of the 10 weeks. We don't feel that we're paying them to be at the class. We feel that we're paying them because they have lived experience about poverty that we need to better understand in our community. So the return on investment is double the rate that we're investing. and that for every 100 graduates, an impact of $217,000 is generated in the city. So with the 250 graduates that we've had over the last five years, that's $535,000 of impact that those graduates have achieved that are going right back into the city. Also, the grant funding that we received from Rigo, that was $50,000 that we received in 2025, We've reinvested that right back into the city of Rockford with three classes that they've hosted. They've graduated 24 individuals. So we've given almost half of that money right back to the city to help support the program. So we have a really big, bold goal that we're talking about here. If Rockford reduces poverty by just four percentage points over the next decade, the result could mean more than $100 million annually in increased earnings for local families, reduce strain on public systems, and stronger economic growth across the entire community. The multiplier indicates that the city would realize several hundred million dollars in combined economic and social value over that time. So we're starting to look at how do we scale the Getting Ahead program? Instead of sending just 50 people through the program every year, how do we scale it to a number that is actually going to make poverty decrease in the city of Rockford? And what we found is that if we can send 500 people through the program every year, we will meet that goal of reducing poverty by four percentage points just in 10 years. So we know that poverty reduction is not solely a social service issue. It is an economic development strategy. Communities with lower poverty rates tend to experience stronger workforce participation, healthier business climates, higher educational attainment, lower public cost, and greater economic resilience. In October of 2025, along with Mayor McNamara, we released our community's first ever upward mobility action plan, which is essentially a poverty reduction strategy. And our strategic priority areas that came out of this 18 month planning process included housing affordability. I'll talk a little bit more deeply about that with a couple of slides. Financial empowerment was an area that we chose to focus on because 26% of households in Winnebago County currently have debt in collections. So, I mean, a quarter of our community. And this is debt in collections. It's not past due debt in the collection process. There's also huge racial discrepancies when we look at neighborhoods of color. Neighborhoods of color have 43% of households of neighborhoods of color have debt in collections. So huge racial discrepancies there. I think that there is a lot of financial literacy that is available in the community, but it's not getting to the people that need it the most. And so we're helping to support the idea of bringing a financial empowerment center to the city of Rockford so that we can help mitigate some of this. And then our other initiative that we're working on is childhood literacy. So we've seen that in the city of Rockford in Winnebago County, the English language arts scores are below the national average. And so we're partnering with United Way to support their Reach Out and Read program. It's a nationally recognized program that is an evidence-based approach to helping children to increase literacy. So Ron and I didn't really coordinate our presentations ahead of time. So we're sharing a little bit of the same information here. But as Ron mentioned, the predictor for housing affordability goes back to the number of affordable and available housing units for every 100 people with very low and extremely low incomes. So again, I'm not gonna go over those numbers again, but that was another really big eye-opener for us in learning these metrics and these numbers. Again, duplicate slide here, but the strategic action in this area was to form that advocacy group that Ron spoke about, creating a community dashboard where we're starting to track housing production over time, housing affordability status, housing demolition, housing cost, preservation and mobility trends. And we have a great group of individuals that are meeting on a monthly basis to help move this data dashboard forward So with that if we can move over to the video and then I'm I'll have to be happy to answer any questions It's just a minute long video, but it's testimonials from our getting ahead partners facilitators and participants Thank you.

So it's really important to have access to tours like this that really help to lift families in a real way.

Getting Ahead and Adjusting by World is a 10-session breakout that helps individuals in poverty build their resources for a more prosperous life. Poverty exists in any situation. It don't have to be a circumstance. Our role is to continue to expand the Getting Ahead classes to provide more families with the opportunity to take the classes and to provide a foundation that they can build on. So that was the really short version of the testimonial. We have a five-minute version that's available on our website that I'd be happy to share with you as well. But it really goes into the heart of what the participants are achieving from this program. And we're really happy that we had the testimonials from our City of Rockford partners as well. You can kind of see the interaction that takes place within the classes also. So happy to answer any questions that you might have.

I don't have a question, but I would like to say the experience that we had, it was amazing to see them after 10 weeks, how they looked. Sometimes we just don't know what we don't know. So this brings up information, no shame, no guilt, but really helping them to start where they're at. So I wish this could be in the high schools, this program, because it really talks about things that maybe we wouldn't talk about ordinarily.

And they are overly confident. And one was actually three tenants, and one is a mother and a son. So I was happy to see them actually be able to have this relationship together and go through this process. You actually touched on something we haven't even touched on, and I'm so happy to see it was the childhood literacy. Because I think the biggest disconnect that happens is most people say, I didn't have anybody to teach me finances in my household.

The Financial Empowerment Center. So it's actually something that Dr. Sheila Hill and Think Big are advocating for. There was just an advocacy group that was created where we're starting to look at the success that the city of Aurora has had with this program and just starting to put data behind what that would look like. So I think that it's something that they're starting to just put budgets and models together, but I know that you'll be hearing more about that. Thank you, and that's what we see at the end of the ten weeks the participants are like well We don't want this to end now like we want to keep going like what's next? So we do provide them with It's a really great guide that family credit management puts out it's a financial planning book and so we allow them to go through that at their own pace and There's also a great hundred ways to save so it's really like looking at what is your thermostat set at? You know that you can save this much, you know those many dollars per month just by adjusting that so it's giving Just real world ideas for people to be able to save just a little bit here and there I Yeah, so we provide that to each of our graduates. They can connect directly with Family Credit Management if they want to go through the program. But we feel like it's just a next step. We've also created what we call our Staying Ahead Network. And it's just simply a page on our website. But it correlates all of those different areas of resource and life stability that the graduates are learning about. And they identify two or three goals. Like out of those areas, which ones do they most want to increase? And so on our website, we're listing all of the programs, resources, and services that can help them in that journey to self-sufficiency. Our, our goal would really, we would love to have a navigator that would help the graduates after graduation. Um, we have just implemented, um, like I said, we've been doing these results reports for each individual cohort. It's wonderful for the partners that's hosting the class to see what the participants are achieving But we've just started implementing that we're giving the participants their own personal results report so they can see what were their goals You know, what did they what what life stability measures or resources? Did they increase over that ten weeks and it's really just to give them encouragement to keep going All right, thank you so much for your time thank you

We'll now move on to our.

Pay attention to this guy too. He came to RHA when I was working there and he made us all look good. So we'll enlighten you. I have to leave. I'm sorry. We have Ruthie's Garden fundraiser for Ruth Fairchild in memory of Ruth Fairchild. So I have to go.

All right, our next presentation is from Corandus Brown, who works at the Rockford Housing Authority. He's going to share with us about the family self-sufficiency program.

Okay, so I need to apologize first because on the way coming in, it was raining so bad. I was trying to run, and my glasses fell, stepped on them, and broke them. So I can't see that good right now, you guys. So I'm going to do the best I can to keep to the point, but a lot of the information actually is going to end up coming out the head because I'm not going to be able to read all that, okay? So I apologize now. All right, so I'm here. My name is Karandis Brown. I am the human services manager over at Rockford Housing Authority. And I am here to talk to you guys about the human services aspect of what we are doing to help make affordable housing and home ownership. And we do that through different ways. Okay, so I'm gonna try to use my notes the best I can. But basically, we have a two-pronged approach when it comes to helping residents to build the process of understanding home ownership right and for me the biggest part of that comes in with where the challenge is and for us that we've noticed is building building homes is only half the solution preparing families to purchase and sustain home ownership in Equally is equally important. Right. So what does that mean? The challenge is, is something that Ron kind of talked about. The challenge that we've seen is really the dignity part. When you work with residents and trying to get them to understand the first part of that is a lot of residents do not see the path to homeownership. One, they've never been shown it to be able to see it, and they've never seen a way of it being obtained. And so when you don't see that, it's hard to be able to believe in that, right? The other part of it, and I got to admit to this, is accountability, right? And why I say accountability is... When you work with residents that already have a demeaning attitude and they have been approached by different agencies after different agencies and They have been promised things, but promises fall to the wayside, right? You get a lot of residents that just feel like, man, a lot of people come in and say what they want to do, but don't necessarily live to what they want to do, right? And so for us, it's really taking accountability. How do we improve our image? What does our image say about can you trust us, can you rely on us, and can you build with us, right? And I think the same approach has to come in the community-wide basis at the same time, right? So some of the things that we believe in, first, we follow HUD regulations. And I can't read that, so I'm not going to try. Okay. But if you guys want to share the slides with them, you're more than welcome to. But basically what HUD regulations is, is it guides us by a certain standard that we have to make sure that we are fitting into the guideline to help residents understand that, look, here's a path that you have to follow. But in order to follow this path, we have to make sure we equip you to understand what that path looks like. And so for us, it's building... partnerships within the community. And through the slides, I'll share some of the important partnerships that we have built to help when it comes to affordable housing and home ownership. But it's also core values as far as the preparing and to educate. We have come up with several different programs to help residents understand that path to success, right? Through our LIPH program with BMO Bank, through our HCV programs with Associated Bank and Midland Bank, but also through our LDI class, which is our Life Force Development Institute class. this is a class that's a 12-week class that's offered to it's actually offered to residents but also to the community as a whole and it's a class that teaches soft employable skills it teaches financial empowerment it teaches bridges bridges into prosperity and and it teaches digital empowerment, but also we work with several different community partners that I'm proud of. So we have a partnership with Family Counseling Center where if we have individuals that have certain blockages that may be preventing them from understanding how to get ahead, we can send them over to their office and they're willing to work with them and offer them Counseling to help them figure out, OK, what's the steps to help you unblock? So I'm really proud of that initiative. Right. The biggest part of what I believe we do is really trying to get people to understand the goal and the path. And that's where guidance and support come in. Our biggest part is one following the core principles. So HUD core principles is one family-centered approach. And what that is, is we put the family first. We make sure that you may be a parent, but if your kids are struggling, then you struggling. A parent can be doing good, but the kids may have a hard time and the parents still struggling. And you can have it the other way around. Kids are doing good in school, but if a household parent is struggling because of relationship-wise, because of other issues that's going on, can't pay the bills, then that kid is still struggling. So we try to handle everything from the family-centered approach with helping connect the holistic approach of connecting the families to different resources and different sources so they can get ahead. We don't want to take a person into home ownership if they got five, six different blockages ahead of them. We need to focus on, okay, what's the main step right now to help them understand how do you get to the next step and what's the overall goal? So that's how we try to look at things. And then incentive-based models. So the biggest part of the FSS program is that the incentive through building escrow accounts So when a family come in into the FSS program, they have up to five years and our caseworkers They sit down with each person and kind of like help them build their goals. So what is your first goal? It may be to get your GED, high school diploma, right? Okay, how do we help you get to that goal? How do we help you achieve that goal? Then we don't want to just stop there. What do you see yourself doing outside of your GED, your high school diploma? Going to school, okay. If it's going to school, what type of school? What type of program? How do we help you get to that point? If it's not going to school, it may be just you need an immediate job to help you pay bills, okay? In the process of getting that immediate job, how do we help you to blossom, though? Because just getting an immediate job doesn't keep you in that job. It just keeps you in the moment to pay the bills, right? So it's big for us to make sure how do we help you come to a better understanding that you have to figure out a way to blossom. And blossoming is more of a direction that it encompasses feelings, it encompasses emotions, because if you can't see it, it's hard to get past those feelings and emotions. And a lot of people, residents that we deal with come I don't want to say a failing attitude, but with a failing attitude. And if you don't mind me sharing, I just want to, the reason why I say this and the reason why it's so important to me because I grew up in public housing. From the age of five when we first moved to Rockford through high school, even as an adult, I still lived in public housing. For me, my change came when I had my daughter. Having my daughter first really helped me to change my life around. I didn't learn to read and write until I was 26 years old. Went and got my GED in 1999. From getting my GED in 1999, I went and got my associate's degree. From getting my associate's degree, I went and got my bachelor's degree. From my bachelor's degree, I went and got my master's degree, right? Seeing my mom struggle her entire life to take care of five, four kids, five with the foster kids that we took in, right, was big. So it's big for me to help families understand that a path is possible, but it takes work. It's my job to help families understand that. It's not easy, but it's possible. And you have to see it, right? So that's the biggest part that kind of leads into the FSS program components, supporting home ownership and why it's important, right? But the partnerships, that's very crucial. And I'm really hoping that from this dialogue with the city of Rockford, we can all come together as a community and figure out what's the best way of helping residents come to understand that. We want to do better as a community. We want to live better as a community, but we want to thrive as a community, right? That's where I see my role and how we can kind of really build affordable housing and build dignity, right? So what do RHA do in that process? So we have our public housing program where with BMO Bank, 2024, we established a LIPH program where BMO Bank has agreed to come in and teach class. And a part of this class is directly only for the LIPH residents, right? The low-income public housing residents. And this program is designed to help them figure out what steps they need to have first. It's a one-year program. And then after they figure out the steps, it's how do we get you to accomplish those steps? Now, the one thing that I like about it is BMO guarantees that any individual, well it's not so much of a guarantee, but it's more of a promise. Any individual that go through this program that meets all criterias, they cut away a lot of the red tape. So they are willing to take them in and say, okay, you met this goal, you met this goal, you met this goal. Now they can technically go to any other bank, but because BMO already is working with them through this one year program, It's easier because they know them, they see what they then built up, and the biggest part of that is the reason why it's a year. In order to qualify for a mortgage, you have to have one year on the job. If you don't have one year on the job, then you can't even go to that step, right? The next part of that is really, and let me just kind of, you know, I'm going to kind of backtrack some, but... Right here. So the full-time employment, that's a big part of things. One year on that. The credit score. So, yes, it says a 620 credit score. Why do we shoot for a 620 credit score? Because a 620 is that marker that says, man, we ready to work with you. But not that they ready to work with you. During this process, you can get the best – I can't think of the word right now, but the best rate, the best rate for where you're at, right? Now, we do have programs in some banks that will take lower credits, but it's going to be even harder. And then, to be honest with you, is it worth it? So if we can set you up for the best success possible, that's our goal. And if we can get you to wait, so maybe you're at 600. If we can get you to wait an extra year by working with you to get you to that 620, that's our step, right?

That's our goal.

But now if some people, they're just ready to own a home right away. So like I said, we do encourage. I think the lowest right now we have is a 580, and that's a program through Associated Bank. That program will take individuals on work with them help them out but like I said the rating for what they are beginning for it is not always the best and what they pay in monthly is more than what they may be able to afford, right? And if you can't afford it to where you may get in the first year, make all your mortgage payments and stuff like that, but if you can't sustain it, then the way I see it, we failing you because it's not good to put you in something. If we know you can't afford it and your income don't align up to afford it, then it's a failing blow that we have to look at and say okay how did this fail or how did this go right so that's big for us um the cash assistance program so All individuals get a cash assistance through their escrow account. So we just had a couple individuals that have graduated our FSS program. One person just graduated with a check well over $40,000. A few people have graduated with $20,000, $30,000. but they put the work in, right? They put the work in. And the best thing I can tell you why it works is because in the FSS program, they may come in with a low income, but through building their goals, they have come where they maxed out. And as soon as they max out, they are literally putting their entire rent into that escrow account, right? And that escrow account starts building effortlessly from that point. So how does that path looks, right? The path from renting to owning, it starts with following the HUD regulations and going into the process of helping get it together, right? But from financial literacy, that's the biggest part because if we can't get you to understand, and so I just want to say this part real quick. Financial literacy is important because financial literacy isn't just understanding the finances. Financial literacy is understanding what to do with your finances. And when we teach that, a lot of individuals just understand, okay, well, it's about having a savings account. It's about putting money into a bank, but it's not. It's about how do you achieve financial literacy to understand, like, you can take $5 a week and just start putting $5 a week up and don't touch it. At the end of that five weeks, you will have $2,500 you can have at the end of that five weeks, right? Wait, am I doing my math right? Okay, we know. So basically, it's the point of getting them to understand by putting money up and building on that gives you a better route to have it. But you can't touch it. That's the most important part of it, because you have some people that when they fall into a crunch, they quick to go and touch that. No, when you fall into a crunch, that's when you put even more money aside, right? It's going to hurt, but guess what? Nothing worth having comes when it's easy, right? If you want it, you're going to have to go through the pain for it. And that's the biggest part of what it comes to that we try to help residents understand that. Financial literacy isn't just putting money into a savings account and just thinking that, OK, I'm building money, but it's not touching that money. It's not accessing it. It's not going into it just because you have in the rainy day and you want to do something right now. What I encourage individuals. When you start getting into a depressed state, start looking for free activities to do. Start looking for activities to where you can get out into the community and just have fun, thrive with people. We try to put together a lot of different activities at Rutherford Housing Authority to... help our residents thrive in moments to where it cuts away from the depression, right? But not every moment is going to be perfect. Not every moment is going to be happy. And we understand that. So what can be done, that's still something that we are looking at, still something we thinking about, you know, and I'm open to any suggestions anybody may have to say, hey, have you ever thought about this or have you looked into this? I'm open for it. Going off of credit counseling, now that's the big, that's the credit score part. Like I said, for us, understanding that credit score is where a lot of people fall short too, because people will think, oh, once they get their credit score up to a certain level, they don't understand one little thing can drop it by 50 to 100 points. Right. One mistake can. So understanding your credit score and how to maintain it is very big and very important. Because when you're going through that homeownership process, if you don't have where, you know, like, man, I'm going to buy a house. And what a lot of people do once they see their credit score go up and they start getting all these credit card offers coming in. they start getting into it, and then all of a sudden, their credit score dropped, and now they can't get a home because their credit score dropped before they went to the closing, right? So at the end of this, you'll see we stay with our residents all the way up until that closing point. Once they sign off on it, that's when we know, okay, you have achieved this, right? You are ready. And we are hoping that from this point, you've learned how to maintain and sustain the sustainability of a home, right? just numbers. So currently right now we have 101 individuals that's in our FSS program. Out of the 101, we have 62 active participants that's enrolling in the escrow. That means that they are actually building money in that account. We just graduated 15 individuals from our fss program from january 2005 2025 to june 2026 our last graduate was in may of 2026 right we have currently two more people that's graduating by the end of this year so we have a very active um participation with our FSS program. And one of our FSS coordinators was going to be here tonight, Mr. Elias Soria, who he's been with Rockford Housing Authority 20, 28 years. So he has the full background on just the history of FSS, but he also teaches domestic violence. So he had to go to work for domestic violence tonight. With that being said, since 1996 when we took on FSS, we've had over 300 plus participants that have went through the program and graduated the program. Now, 300 doesn't sound like a big number, but it actually is a big number when you really think about, at the end of the day, honestly, if it's just one, ecstatic about that because it's something to build off of right so 300 doesn't mean that oh okay we stop at that because it's there or we don't do anything because it's not good enough right it just means we continue to take these numbers on and build on it and keep growing now over the next 10 years i'm hoping we can see that number double I'm hoping that if we come back 10 years from now, if I'm still with Rockford Housing Authority, that that number would look like a thousand, right? And it's going to start from this moment. It's going to start from how do we build in this moment? so since the inception though we've had 56 residents from 1996 out of the housing choice voucher program who have bought a home right who have went through the home buying process that went through so one of the biggest things with that is If you are on Section 8, kind of like what Ron talked about, some of the funding is being shifted around and being looked at different, but the biggest part of that is that through our HCV Section 8 program, individuals that have that, if you come in and you are maintaining your goals and maintaining focus, you can use your voucher for a 15-year where the money that you're paying into housing that will go into your mortgage for 15 years, right? And if you are elderly and disabled, it'll actually cover you for the full 30 years of your mortgage. So it's there to continue to assist you and continue to help you if needed, right? Now, the biggest part of the 15 year aspect of that though is what do we do that if any point you make over the income you will get shut off of that but we want to make sure that you understand what what do you have to put in place to see that getting this house is going to maintain you right and paying your bills so we teach that always keep something together so if you run into an issue you have at least five Right. At least five monthly payments already put up, because if you can put up five to where hopefully you got a five month stretch to kind of get on to get back on your feet. Right. So we teach always keep five monthly payments always put up. So keep a bank account and that just holds your five payments. Right. We've had 31 LIPH programs that have. Participants that have went through the program and graduated and went on to home on a process. Now, it's a little bit different because that 31 actually what they what they went through is they ended up going through the. the LIPH program, but transitioned into the HCV process, right? But as they transitioned, they went directly into the homeowners program. So that's why you see the difference between HCV and LIPH. So proven track record. Once again, I PROCESS WITH BMO BANK AND THE LIPH PROGRAM. WE CURRENTLY HAVE THREE INDIVIDUALS THAT'S IN THE LIPH PROGRAM RIGHT NOW THAT'S GOING THROUGH THE HOME BUYING PROCESS AND TWO HCV PARTICIPANTS THAT'S GOING THROUGH THE HOMEOWNERSHIP PROGRAM. AND HOPEFULLY, I'M GOING TO SAY BY JUNE OF NEXT YEAR, THEY WOULD HAVE BEEN IN GRADUATED AND BROUGHT A HOUSE AND, YOU KNOW, KEEPING TRACK OF THINGS, RIGHT? COLLABORATIONS, THE CITY OF ROCKFORD, ONE OF THE THINGS I WAS TALKING TO MR. ELIAS ABOUT IS WE'VE ALWAYS HAD A HISTORICAL RELATIONSHIP WITH THE CITY OF ROCKFORD IN PARTNERING AND HELPING RESIDENTS UNDERSTAND THEIR GOALS. AND SOME OF THE PARTNERSHIPS THAT WE KIND OF WORKED WITH THE CITY OF ROCKFORD ON WAS WEST SIDE ALIVE. working with the Family Magic program. And the city at that time had a program, he said, called Project Self-Sufficiency. So we've had a historical relationship working with the city of Rockford over the years. I would love to be able to reestablish and keep things going and get that back going right. Habitat for Humanity. We refer a lot of residents to Habitat for Humanity to where we work with them. We help them understand that this is how you, be able to afford the home by putting in that sweat equity right but one of the things that i love is we'll go out and if we have a resident that gets selected for that process my team will go out and help work towards their hours and things so we put in the work with them and like to see that look it's not just you on your own we right here with you uh youth build so we currently um have a process with youth build to where youth build is currently working with some of our scatter sites projects to help build and what that does is it teaches the young people how to really like put back and invest into the community And then just the local banks and credit unions. I'm looking at really trying to put together more financial empowerment with more local banks and credit unions. So why Rockford Housing Authority? The biggest thing is all I can say is it's our passion. Our passion, one thing that I can say with... leadership right now is they really push the need to try to find what we can do to help our residents to help like figure out ways and one thing i'm good at is thinking outside the box and going over different ways to say okay we can do this we can do this and we can find this and just talking to different partners getting out making the need for community resources to bring in the additional help that residents can succeed. Now, is it easy? By no means is it not easy. And I'm going to be the first to admit the biggest issue that we, hurdle that we have to overcome is just the fact that you have some residents that's gung-ho about everything you got some residents that they just don't trust the process right um but i'm fine with that because i want to figure out how do we overcome that if i'm not willing to catch and take the heat then i don't need to be doing this right and So improving our image and improving our goal and showing, you know, the proof is in the pudding. And that's the biggest part of things for me. And I believe my team, we are all on the same page. I believe that from our CEO to our COO, they really give me the freedom to really like make that push and find what we need to do. I'm excited about where we are going as an agency and what we can continue to do as an agency. So that's why we're offering housing authority. So I can't read that, but it's something good. So, you know, as I get it, you know, man, please feel free to read it and go from there. And that's the end of my slide. So if you guys got questions for me, I'm open to it.

To be honest with you, I actually don't.

I will.

This is going to sound weird, and Miss Michaela, who used to be my coworker and stuff, I like being behind the scenes. I'm not one who want to be out front. So unless a person, if I see a person that really needs it, I will share it. But if I don't have to, I try to keep my life to myself pretty much. And it's not that I don't want to. I just... I want to help people get ahead by discovering theirs on their own, if that makes sense. All right. Well, I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Who does this go to?

Commissioners, we're now going to move to unfinished business. The first thing is the commissioner's questions for the alderman. Kayla is going to give us an update on that.

So Eric did reach out to the mayor, and I talked to Haley's assistant, and I think we're just going to plan the sessions. session, Haley did say for the ultimate that that would be needed.

But if you guys or some of you feel that that would be helpful with scheduling, we can make one of the five this Saturday. If not, then we'll go forward with three days and then two evenings. And Haley's going to work with me on sending everybody a doodle poll with those dates and times.

Scott, before we move to the next thing, are you good time-wise?

Starlight got canceled. Okay. So I'm good. Awesome. But I think, could we hold off on that until Mary June is here? We absolutely can.

Next month? We absolutely can. Okay. So we are going to table until next month the discussion on the affordable housing pilot program update from Commissioner Pekalik and Garvik. The next thing on our agenda is the biannual report draft as You all know in July we have to turn something into the mayor to share with the council Many of you have received an email from me in the last few days just kind of saying The things that you're working on the projects that we've all been talking about all year send me two or three dot points on that work And we're going to put that into the report for the mayor We are working Kayla myself and Commissioner crew are working on a new reporting mechanism for the next cycle But for this cycle, the thought is just send us, you know what you're working on. What are some of the things that you're noticing and Commissioner Bravo, you have not received, you've received one email from me. You will receive another one related to the food insecurity. I know that that work's happening, but if there's any work that you guys have been doing, I'll send that out to both you and Pastor Martin here in the next day or so, so that you can get that information. Are there any questions, concerns?

I think we're also leaving it up to Commissioner Johnson. Yes.

Yeah, so that's on the action plan feel free to jump in I know that we're also planning another strategic planning discussion for more opportunities to be part of that group and I know that you also were not able to join the last, so if there are things that you're seeing that are coming up, feel free to just let us know and we can get you connected with the folks that are working on those projects. Anything else related to the annual report in July, I will tell you, I gave everyone a deadline of June 22nd to get me all of your notes. My plan is to have that report ready to go so that when we come in in July, we can review it, we can submit it to the mayor for that. Now we have, just as a reminder to folks, the projects that are coming up. We have the modular home pilot programs presentation on July 9th, 2026. Commissioner McDowell and Commissioner Bravo, so you all are prepared for that. That will be for the next meeting in July. And then in August, we have the food insecurity panel discussion, August 14th, Commissioner Martin, Commissioner Bravo. Anything with those two, or those that are in the room, anything that we need to think about with those dates, or are those dates okay? Okay for food insecurity, is there anything we need to consider for that or is August far enough out for If something comes up let myself Michaela no just so that we can make some adjustments if we need We have reached the end of our agenda do we have any commissioners reports I

I do. So coming up next month, I was reached out by a workforce board for clean energy. They will be doing a round table here in Rockford, TBA. And what they're doing is trying to navigate to see how we can come together on economic opportunities that are related to like your gas bill, your life bill. As you notice, everybody knocks on our door, but they're trying to be strategic of how we can implement some of those ideas as a one-stop shop um they're just getting ideas and one of the ideas was to bring it to our commission to see if anybody is interested in just doing a round table setting um if so they have a doodle poll and questions and you can give me the questions i do i did print off um a couple of the flyers too so that i can pass it on and i can actually give it to michaela and um larry to be able to email to us I think it'll be a great opportunity for us as a commission.

Thank you. Any other reports?

Will you be sending the slides for today?

Yeah, so we can get the slides? OK. Those will come, I assume, from Larry probably in the next few days.

I will email first two presentations because they're within our limit to be able to. The last one is huge. So I can print it and mail it to you. You can scan it. Oh, that's what we did. Thank you. See? So you'll get all of it. Thank you.

Any other commissioners' reports? All right. Well, I will entertain a motion to adjourn then.

I'll second.

We have a motion and a second. All in favor of adjournment? Aye. Any opposed?