Unknown Speaker 00:02 As the work to dig in first, my name is Cheryl Democrat I'm executive director and the Neighborhood Preservation coalition of New York State. Maybe we could just start to do so sales first amount jump in. Unknown Speaker 00:17 Ruth bomber Associate Director Bono Center for Research on Women. Korean studies in urban planning in Jamaica for hygienic housing finance students John Curran over here at Columbia Unknown Speaker 00:53 daily doing organized Unknown Speaker 01:00 I broke down some general categories. I guess I'll start with just doing sort of who I am and how I got into housing as a program CISM and Aloma Barnardos class of 87. I took my masters from Cornell was class of 89. And anybody that wants to count, it's true. I'm 26 years old as of two months ago. And not a native New Yorker, even though I've run a statewide coalition in New York now, my home was Washington, DC. So in terms of job background, and how you get into housing, I spent a year with National Coalition for the Homeless is their housing policy analyst. And I served on a lot of days of Task Force prior to the house and now March in Washington, DC. When I was a student here, I spent time in Schomburg. Center for Research and black culture because as an undergrad, I majored in urban affairs with history and had to sort out whether or not I was going to be a technician or historian from urban standpoint, and came to my most recent position about seven months ago. And it has a whole new realm of challenges. I was joking. So you come in the door with good intentions, and you might go out the door and nonprofit manager by hook or crook. Well, it's true, though. I mean, I think there are a number of management issues specific to nonprofit corporations that don't always get raised in the for profit sector, but are just as important to run a successful organization. The Neighborhood Preservation coalition is a very new organization. It was incorporated in 1989. After a couple of years in a volunteer run organization, my board of directors is elected through membership votes there 196 Neighborhood Preservation companies in the state of New York. This was a program started by state government in 1977. And the idea was to provide a steady stream of administrative funding to community based groups already doing neighborhood work to make sure they stayed in place over the last 13 years that evolved into this network now of 196, preservation companies, some advocates of the program and also non advocates of the program describe us as an industry because that's exactly what we are. We are the backbone of housing in the state of New York, these groups do. Unknown Speaker 03:38 What is Your Neighborhood Preservation? And what is your Do you have any relationship to NHS Unknown Speaker 03:45 neighborhood? All the neighborhood housing services? Yes, they are. Yeah, that's what I was getting was the activity neighborhood are you know, our coalition is a private nonprofit, entity. 501 c three. We have some government funding and we have some private funding. Our government funding strictly deals with provision of technical assistance to these 196 programs. Those programs are involved anywhere from tenant counseling, eviction prevention counseling, you come in you're a first time homebuyer and they will go through with you. What's more than with a closing on and on and on, they do all of those activities what we refer to as soft housing and services, as well as bricks and mortar new construction and rehabilitation of units. Unknown Speaker 04:42 Specifically, is to make a house proud of this coalition. Now your Unknown Speaker 04:59 notes Just about any nonprofit housing group in New York State that was around anywhere between 1980s 1977. And today got into this program because of when it was funded. It was through what's called an RFP or request for proposals. So as long as you were a 501, C three, which simply means you have IRS tax exempt status, or you have what's known as a sponsor, like Catholic Charities, sponsors a number of groups that are called United attendance of all the United States and Mount Vernon, an attendance of wherever you could apply through RSP to get into this program. It's been a very successful program, the funding for the groups, usually they leverage somewhere in the neighborhood of $9. For every one state dollar, I put that on the table in a time of state cutbacks, people want to know, are you worth your money? Yes, we leverage NAND dollars for every $1. And that means something in a market that's dominated by it cost $100,000 in New York City to bring online one unit of housing. So our coalition is the umbrella organization of all these programs. On the other side of the table, there is a whole room network of programs that at roll preservation company, my sister organization, the Rural Housing Coalition has been in existence for 12 years now, we were organized at a much later time on that model of the Rural Housing Coalition. And our primary work is to be a jack of all trades, I get a call from a program. They have a new executive director who's never been an executive director, I get on the train, I sit down with them. And I plan out a series of meetings to teach them how to be an executive director, I get a call from a program who has a problem with their contracting agency to state Division of Housing, and they've been put on probation because their last audit, wedding break in the state's view, I call them I call the state official, I bring all the parties to the table, including a member of their board of directors and I say, what's the issue here? What's the corrective plan of action, and let's make sure they don't lose their funding. So it's a real jack of all trades, which makes it exciting. Six months out the year, I'm also these organizations, primary lobbyists in Albany, I follow the state legislative process. And now because the federal government has put something on the table with no money yet, which we can get into later, if people want to follow federal legislation that encompasses anything from showing up in Albany to do testimony on homelessness prevention, which translates into tenant counseling and eviction prevention, counseling, and what our programs do, to more rigorous dialogue on why there's not enough money in a capital housing project in the state $25 million, good enough money. So all of this is a part of my work. Now, the fun side, we're a two person shop, Unknown Speaker 08:08 we have a part timer. Unknown Speaker 08:14 I'm the director and I have one program coordinator. And I have one full time college student who when there's positive cash flow, he's on board and when there's negative cash flow, he goes away for a couple of months at a time. And we have a basement office right below the capitol in Albany on a block of housing that was actually developed by nonprofits. The lower level is all nonprofits in the storefront and the top level is low income housing and condos, for people on public assistance making the 50 to 80% of median and I think I'll spend just maybe like five minutes going through what I would call the field of housing, since there's at least one impressionable mind here who could become a housing advocate when this talk is over. PhD one, that's always good. I did my thesis on the correlation between gentrification and race when I was an undergrad at Barnard and then I expanded it for my master's. But within housing, there are a lot of components. I think the first thing is that housing is very different from real estate. When you hear people talking about real estate, the short answers they're talking about making money. Real estate is at its core, housing and neighborhood as a profit making endeavor housing describes that same thing that other people call real estate, but a more socially oriented view. It's what people live in. It's an integral part of our infrastructure and the fabric of our communities and the is much more of a people investment that we see in those actual units as opposed to a profit making venture. One of my programs actually described it absolutely the best. It's like we don't do what we do, because we want to turn the money over and redevelop another building tomorrow, we want to put it in place and keep it in place for the next 30 years, 50 years, 100 years. One of the specifics about New York State is that this is a state with a very old housing stock and much of the East Coast. It is not uncommon to find units that are well over 120 years old all over the state in urban and rural areas. It is a deteriorated housing stock because it is sold and there's been so much disrepair and neglect. And not enough new construction bounced out against what's been falling into disrepair. So Neighborhood Preservation to us is preserving the total neighborhood. It's not historic preservation, which has to do with like, preserving the architectural integrity of the structure. I didn't bring my whole slideshow and pictures and stuff. But a lot of my programs, do historic preservation work in developing low income structures. Why? Because they hate projects. They don't think projects should have, you know, ugly bricks. So therefore you go and see their houses. And in the front, it looks like a single family home. And it's got a beautiful ornate cornice and it's restored with the original column. You go inside, it's actually three multifamily apartments, one per floor, and people making $196 a month on public assistance that the rent based on the public assistance schedule, live there. In terms of women in housing, I don't know Jana and I might get into a fight over this one, I would say that there are not that many women in housing, and I see it as the two waves. I think the first wave of women and housing, in many ways, overlaps with social services provisions. I think there were always a lot of women in the last 20 years involved in some capacity of social services. The vehicle that first comes to mind would be social work, you were doing tenant, California, we're doing eviction prevention, you were doing benefits counseling with the public assistance population, but the vehicle for doing that was social work. So it wasn't really housing as a new field. I think there's been a second way to some degree that I came out of which was the women that were the skilled technicians. My background was in planning, I think there's a whole new body of women who are now architects. Unknown Speaker 12:52 And I know you've probably touched on this whole theory, but to some degree, there have been two ways, in my opinion, on women's place within housing. And I'm using housing right now as a profession. And we can get into housing as a movement later. And to some degree, I was like there is a housing movement. I think there was a homelessness movement that grew up into a housing movement. And it's trying very painfully to get there in the 90s right now. So what's the breakdown? To some degree, I think it's a lot of things that people touched on in workshops earlier today, when you need to be a technician. Housing is a field that's kind of the last bastion of men. It touches on construction, it touches on contracting, it touches on architecture, it touches on finance, well, what does all that translate into men, men, men and more men, you got banking rolled up in there with, you know, these more structural disciplines. And those are fields that women traditionally have not been attracted to. I think there's a huge overlap between what within that is blue collar and white collar. But housing is the place where those two meet. Similarly, on the policy side of housing, if I could tell you there were a lot of professional women lobbyist, I would be telling an incorrect fact most of the major lobbyists in the country are also men because there's been a predisposition toward PhD research and policy work being undertaken by men. Let me give you some examples. And I think these are good examples, because these are at least very progressive men and what they advocate for the housing movement. When you have for example, Chester Hartman, Institute for Policy Studies, that's a prime example of the first wave of radical Policy Advocates and lobbyists but yet and still very much male male dominated profession planning is a very male dominated profession. It grew out of architecture, which was male dominated and The 1920s and 30s. Most of your original planners, were architects before they were planners. I think, you know, it would be good to maybe set out what's affordable housing, as we get ready to have this dialogue, because I think a lot of people define it in many different ways the federal government set forth a definition of what is affordable housing 2030 years ago, might have been longer than that might go back to the 1949 Housing Act, because this is, in case people aren't aware, the first Housing Act, the Federal Government has passed in a million years, they reaffirmed the goal of the 1949 housing act in the 1990 Housing Act. Affordable by this definition, so that a person or family should not take 30%, more than 30% of their income on basic shelter. So if you make $30,000 a year, no more than $10,000 should go into housing, what's the idea you got to buy food, you got to back clothes, a number of other things that have to do two people working in a household or more did that include all of their combined all of their incomes, no family, no individual total income in the household household income. Now, what's going on in 1991, through a number of studies, particularly some research done by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities out of DC is proven that most people in the country spend 50 to 70% of their income on housing. And that goes for both the rental market and the homeowner market because this was a standard that should have held for both parties. How does that translate on the homeownership side, if you're spending 70% of your income to make the mortgage and you live in Phoenix, Arizona, for example, and you can't pay your utility bills, when it's 115 degrees in the summer and air conditioning in the luxury, it's a survival strategy, you get evicted. So it's important when we think about housing, not just rental housing, but also homeownership housing, because the standard applies to both sets of people. Unknown Speaker 17:19 As right now, I would also say that in the state of New York, we're paralleling this national trend. Most research here substantiate that New Yorkers pay anywhere from 50 to 70%, of their income on housing in New York City is the most bastardize example of that all because there's always been an exorbitant crisis in affordable housing here. But I think within this whole concept of affordable housing, what my group is concerned about is something called low income housing. And the difference in low income housing is that this is housing that's affordable to poor and working class people, we set forth a definition of low income housing, that deals with anyone making public assistance to maybe 50 to 80%, of median income, speak English, if you make $18,000 a year, that's the median income of your city 80% of that is roughly $15,000 income, you too, should be able to walk out the door in Manhattan and find an apartment. So this is what our specific focus is. So when you hear people talk about increasing the shrinking supply of affordable housing, particularly at the lowest level, or the lowest economic level, this is what they're talking about. Right now. There's no body of housing for people on public assistance. And contrary to popular belief, a lot of people in the US have a on public assistance that can be anything from general relief, home relief in New York state, to a senior citizen on Social Security, that's still public assistance. And I think within that there are a whole realm of like class and racial distinctions people try to make on the public assistance population, and then that gets factored off into seniors are more palatable population, then a person with AIDS who's on SSI level, what one or two in the state of New York. So although those distinctions are made, this is still the whole body of public assistance recipients, and they, the primary form of housing available was public housing. There's been no substantial new construction of public housing in this country. In the last 20 years. The body of housing that was created under the Public Housing Program was flawed as a program because although it put capital grants into new construction, it didn't have the foresight to fund maintenance, not just cleaning up the building, but every two years we're gonna put in new windows and 10 years down the road. And when we know more about how to effectively insulate a building, we got a line item that says we can come back in and insulate that building. So right now, on a hole in the state of New York, we're seeing the deterioration of the basic housing stock, homeownership, single family units and apartment units. We're seeing the deterioration of what's called the Mitchell Lama housing stock that was a state funded program that dealt specifically with creating a body of low to moderate income. And this was sort of quasi public private housing, it was public, but then there was incentives built in for private entities for profit developers to come in, get a tax break, and thereby increase the supply of housing because they had money to construct when some nonprofit contractors didn't have the money to construct. And then also the deterioration of the federally subsidized public housing. And those are you making red brick projects that you choose all over the state of New York and everyplace else in the country. So there are three components of this housing stock we're concerned about when we talk about Neighborhood Preservation. And then because our overall theme is women, the environment and grassroots movements, I think we're talking about a very micro view of environment. This is an environment as defined that a geographic boundary of an urban or rural areas within that area, a neighborhood or community, depending on how you choose to describe it. A lot of people mentioned West Harlem today, it's hard to talk about Harlem, as a neighborhood, when you have West columns, column one is that heights, Hamilton heights, all of which are components of this one, monstrous area. So it's better to say community. And within that we're talking about specifically the housing stock. Unknown Speaker 22:00 And housing, on a personal and social fabric level is much a part of the environment we live in, as is the quality of the air we breathe, or any of the pollution levels, because of you know, we just heard all this stuff's on my mind now is on like sewage plants, you know, on Riverside Drive, but whether or not you have sewage facilities in your neighborhood, housing is a big part of your environment. I guess, you know, to put this in the context of even more traditional environmental turn, it's a problem that in the District of Columbia, for example, 80% of the homes have radon gas seeping in to their housing stock, that's an environmental concern that has to do with housing as this micro environmental view. Same with, I would say, when you heard people talking about removing asbestos, from buildings, like schools, and homes up in the attic, that's an environmental concern of housing from if we take this micro perspective of how and similarly, if you're in a building in a poor neighborhood, and you don't have hot water in the winter, or you don't have heat that has a direct correlation between your personal health and safety. So when we speak about neighborhood, we're talking about a micro view of our environment, and the disparities between disparities between that environment in low and moderate income neighborhoods, as opposed to middle income and upper income neighborhoods. So I think I'm gonna stop there. If there any, like burning questions, take those now. And then jump on. Unknown Speaker 23:54 I just had a comment to make, you know, I think that the federal government and others who have been involved in what public housing was built in the past, not only overlooked maintenance, and long term capital, but oh overlooked other services, and programs that are required for a large group of people who live in one place, education, employments recreation, and daycare. And thus we have not only these buildings that are aging and decrepit, but we have crime and drugs, just random in these buildings, because there's no opportunity and there's alternatives and it has nothing to do it. Unknown Speaker 24:44 Well, I think, you know, the short way I respond to that is by giving like some structural problems with housing in this country. First of all, there's not one funding stream in the country, private, federal, state or otherwise, that links the provision Have more affordable housing to economic development at a community level. So the separate pots of money that a neighborhood group would have to apply for. So just because you got to pay money to build 30 units of housing, you'd have to go through a whole nother hierarchy, program cycles and funding to get money to put a commercial space, for example, a grocery store in that neighborhood. I think the second issue with that is that when you don't when you have that breakdown, on the other side of you know, the whole neighborhood environment men, you do see what we call sort of the alternative employment sectors of work, because that's what drugs is, for some people, you know, we need to be clear that this is really a new informal sector. And we're not treating it that way. I think that a lot of things have centered around this whole war on drugs notion, just saying no, it's a personal problem. If you're a drug addict, for example, when really it has a lot more to do with your surroundings. Nine times out of 10 most people that deal drugs have never touched a drug in their life. So we need to start looking at this both from the standpoint of the informal sector, in our society, and the ways people have always found to make money in times of recession, as much as clearly a problem that has housing needs right now. Because crack unlike any many other drugs does require rehabilitative living treatment programs, you can't kick a crap addiction as an outpatient. So there's definitely a housing need going on within combating this problem from the personal side of things to Unknown Speaker 26:46 does your Group Health Link housing units with that extra funding source that will put education or community or the community organizing within the community, some Unknown Speaker 26:59 of my programs, a lot of times they parallel organization, I mean, there's some programs that have three people on staff and they specialize in counseling only. Then there are other groups. And usually those are the older, larger groups that have been out there 13 years, or even predated this program. And the work they were doing, that are the developers they build, they construct. So it's a lot easier for them, as these are the folks that have computers, for example, it's in the computer to crank out a funded proposal for housing construction, nine times out of 10, they can change the words and pop out the proposal for economic development, you know, but there's a whole nother group for people that would love to have a computer in their office is still keeping their books on pen and paper. And you know, a lot of times they can't keep their books because 70 people are in the office, you know, to see the three of them to get some kind of services because they're about to be evicted. And this is the only place they can go and hope to find in a pro bono attorney. Unknown Speaker 28:05 Besides anything in life Oh, yeah, well, Unknown Speaker 28:15 we have monthly news as my sales pitch now for $25. The Neighborhood Preservation coalition in New York State, we have all kinds of categories of members. Our primary voting membership comes from these programs because we that the hierarchy works this way, the individual community group has a board of directors that's drawn from the neighborhood, so they are very grassroots. My board of directors is then drawn from these program directors. Through membership, folks, our voting membership will always be the grassroots community development groups, those are voters. But yet anybody can be a member, for example, for food is 25. That would be your individual and get our monthly newsletter. Get a discount rate. For example, when we come out to Rochester and do the mini management training seminar, you know that it's $20, you pay $10. We recently completed a 15 minute video documentary on the work of Neighborhood Preservation companies. And we sell that to all members at a wholesale rate of $12 a video. So those are the types of things you get when you're a member. And you know, quite honestly, even if you're an individual member, and your primary mission is a women's group, for example, you could pick up the phone and say I know great women's group but they're just getting off the ground come so then Director how to be a director, get on the train again and go to work with that. So those are some of the things you get it back access to technical assistance. As well as, you know, just the general information about state policy issues. Unknown Speaker 30:08 What do you worry about in terms of you know, Unknown Speaker 30:17 all of our programs, actually when the on the development status thing they develop with handicapped accessibility, because it's a part of any development you have to do right now. And I think, for us, to some degree, there's a broader meaning of that now, because a lot of my programs deal with a population of people that have HIV and HIV related illnesses. So we're moving into a whole new realm of what constitutes a disability and a mobility or an access issue. But you know, any of the projects that my group construct are always accessible to wheelchair. That's, that's not even an issue that Unknown Speaker 31:02 in our development. I'm really interested in what you have your ideas about drugs being an informal sector, which has a different perspective. And in that you say most of the people who sell drugs did not use it. Where, where would I get more information? Do you Unknown Speaker 31:25 know? Who's got that kind of? Unknown Speaker 31:29 There is no hard data on that whatsoever, I Unknown Speaker 31:32 find it really very difficult to believe. Well, if Unknown Speaker 31:35 you think of it logically, there's no way you could be a drug addict and make money. And still, I mean, logically speaking, it's almost impossible, especially on crack. I know where they are in a successful dealer. No, but they are some Unknown Speaker 31:51 guys that are that are doing drugs. But offs. But but there are people involved in the organization of the trade that do do drugs. And a lot of the retailers I think, are can't You can't sell drugs in order to have enough to do so that I think there there are. Unknown Speaker 32:13 Yeah, but I think what Cheryl was talking about was major deal is people are really making it their business to do to sell the drugs, as opposed to selling the drugs in order to buy the drugs, the two different things. Unknown Speaker 32:25 I mean, there's no, I'm saying that within this problem, I think that our focus should not only be on the individual, I think the rhetoric right now, the federal government is about just saying no. And it's a very, you know, this is a personal problem in this country. It goes against the Horatio Alger myth, everybody works hard. And they can make it and I'm saying if you put in informal sector analysis, the same way you would view women's work as sexual workers, I think some of that same theory can be applied to the drug trade. Now, Unknown Speaker 33:01 a research was done on that. But most of the people telling drones in Parliament ratio relative, right, they had this whole thing, and then they actually they're pissed off at how hard they had to work and how much they didn't get Unknown Speaker 33:11 in the end how much they thought they live. Right? I mean, you know, at its root, it's like, from our standpoint, we would put it in the category of the informal sector. They're associated Unknown Speaker 33:22 with the drug trade and the fear that it creates by those who are living next to it. Unknown Speaker 33:28 Well, I think I think we should take a breath, and I'd be happy to talk to you about it after this. But yeah. Unknown Speaker 33:41 Well, as I was thinking, since we're being more informal here, as I was thinking about what you're saying, what housing, housing is a very important issue for women, for several reasons. One is that women are the primary people who live in it, and have to deal with what, how it's designed and put together and all that are generally at home, in the neighborhood. But the issue of amnesia control under this whole thing of bricks and mortar and who has, and who does it, who builds housing and other countries and how its how its developed here in this country, I think, is interesting. So as you were speaking, I'm thinking about how women had been, what are some of the strongest women I know that are doing grassroots, grassroots organizations country are in the housing movement, and one of the reasons is because it's a long term. I mean, when you're in when you go into housing, it's a long term effort. And you see very concrete, real results that may be frustrating and pull your hair out, but it is right there. On the other hand, this issue, it's taken a long time for women to think about it housing, other than as a place to live and looking at the control issue. And if you look at the whole decade conferences, I think that what's interesting is that we talked about when Development and peace. And first of all, like the Mexico conference in 75, not getting the data right now, that'd be five. Housing wasn't a topic there. In fact, then there was this conference in Vancouver on human settlements. And I liked the word for the International better. And I think it will help us if we start looking at human settlements as a way to look at housing in this country than to look at just this building. So I'm saying conceptually, we're at, again, we're at the same Nexus that either and other people are talking about at the time of pulling ideas together, because for the poor people, we build housing, but for middle upper class people, we talked about communities and building all the infrastructure and support so we do know how to do it. And I think it's important to get language anyway. And 76, there's this conference in Canada on human settlements. And there were a few women that went there and tried to raise this issue of women and housing and basically had tremendous difficulty. So there's been kind of this world of housing, and demand. And then there's this women's world. And so women getting their consciousness about housing, what it looks like, Who Controls and operates and all that is very important in the US and our getting our analysis out. Unknown Speaker 36:11 At this point, I think is very critical, because we can now see the results of what happens when people have a set of ideas on one level, but it's implemented in another way, this whole thing about ideas and implementation and was affected by implementation, I think is very important. I mean, public housing, as you were saying, was developed for one group of people at one point and now is largely inhabited by is not women, right. And we were praying to say that we live in public housing, single mothers, they are women with children in public housing, and anybody who works in public housing and the people that live there, and there's kind of two votes. And then there's a whole move now by tenants in this country to take over and manage and control and operate their own public housing for the GOP, and can be gray our grassroots women, hardly graduates women anymore, but come on graduates in the background, strong black women who live in public housing all their life, and who has now been part of an effort that may look as if it's conservative, and this man above all the language when you get to women. And what gave me politically starts to change, it all gets colored because it has a whole different meaning. Because so most housing activists would say they are against tenant management and public housing in this country, because they feel it's the right right way to clot to take the government out of house. Whereas most tenants who live in public housing would say we want to control and operate our own housing. So you have this, that doesn't mean they don't want government to pay money, but they want to go operate it. And if anybody spent just a couple of days in New York City and went to the housing authority in this city was my favorite topic is that the Housing Authority is run by men and women and a lot of our own groups, black, white, from the left of the 60s, they come out of the Housing Authority staff are people that were in the war on poverty in the 60s, Bell Coleman is a public relations person, I'd be sitting if they approve it. And they are very well aware of empowerment, committed development and continued participation. And the other hand, the most unempowered group of people that are where it's run almost as if it's a plantation is public housing, where the tenants have structures built in where they are supposed to have a tenant association. But the way the structures are set up, and I don't want to get into all the details, but it's basically to pit 10 against tenants, to give them no power over anybody, because the manager of each public housing site is accountable to the housing authority, and not to the tenant association. So basically a tenant associations that may be the voice for, for for, say, 4000 tenants in one public housing site, no money, no staff, you have a community center, the public housing site that has a different board, you have tenant patrols that have another board, you have a whole structure that where they are pitted against each other. And then you have the housing authority that only relates to the president, who is almost invariably a black woman in the city of New York, almost every tenant leader as a black woman dressed with wonderful power progressive women leader who basically is CO opted, bought off offered goods offered jobs offered this allowed to keep her dog when there's a law against dogs, all kinds of thing to keep people in candlelight. So part of what I want to talk about housing is the is one is the need for a gender analysis for to add a woman's perspective, that here's one place this country we're adding a woman's perspective has a lot of political possibilities, because most of the tenants of all housing, low income and affordable housing, and I would say maybe 80% Are women with children now they're black, Hispanic and white ethnic women. They are so you have to Look at how gender race and class late, but they are. By and large tenants, most of the housing groups that are emerging, have men are run by now there is amenities, but they are run by professionals, largely outside professionals to those communities because it's highly technical, as Cheryl is saying, and the women that go there, and there are a lot of women in them haven't raised the consciousness and race, class and gender because they've had to learn all the technical aspects, but not the participatory aspects. And because of the way the funding flows is you do have to know this stuff to be able to survive doing housing, so that we have some real problems is that we because the women at the local level aren't looking at themselves as women, and they are participating as clients in these programs. They are not prepared for what it means to end up being again, a Unknown Speaker 40:53 what a renter, right, I was vulnerable, and not in control of your own housing, whereas most of the women a lot of control their own housing, but they're not getting the agenda out in the local neighborhood. Housing groups are there but they are not necessarily reflecting the people that are there. And we are not claiming ownership of space. So women are extremely vulnerable. And there's lots of books written out there. Leslie Wiseman is coming out with tremendous statistics laying out how women are mostly the arson victims are largely women, the gentrification areas, you know, it's largely women's of the people that live at the top floors of the high rise. tenement buildings are largely single mothers, with children. I mean, you have a very vulnerable group. They largely have public housing, if you live in public housing, most of the apartments are now doubled up, would you say they're doubled up, if you were doubled up and you live in a public housing apartment, you are not counted as eligible for the for getting other city run housing because you are not seen as homeless if you're double out most women's homelessness is not counted today. In this is what I'm talking about what we need intellectually, I'm just trying to put out the idea that there needs to be a lot of thinking and thought around this. If women are not competent, because they have friends that will take them in because their children, it is I mean, there's largely the most of the housing for homeless is going for men in New York City. So now actually, women have come in the only time single mothers have come in, in the last few years that people have decided to homeless men are more troublesome than the women with children. And now a lot of the community groups are for the first time willing to do housing for single mother families. So they don't call them other Unknown Speaker 42:38 families because the women are less or less destructive than these as the single men that had basically been kicked out a lot of houses because they're drug addicts and alcoholics that are families don't want them anymore, besides the fastest affordable housing is out there. But there's a huge stream of men that are out there in the world that basically wouldn't want to take it to their houses anymore, right? Because women are getting rid of men that are troublesome and bothersome. And they're out on the streets and people don't like them. But within this so that within this effort, women literally are the group that are being affected, but the consciousness about the fact that these are mothers is not there, which means that they when you not only do they not control the places they live in, which means they're infantilized once more as public housing did, which was not the original scheme, as I have now got the opportunity to read by being a student over here, Columbia is that when Catherine Bauer and all these women developed the housing movement in the 30s, they literally put in the tendency is to control, manage and operate their own housing. But when the laws were passed through government, they circumvent that and they built the housing authorities originally to be like, groups of people that would support these efforts of local tenants running an operator on thing but not become real estate. You know, big, powerful political bodies in the New York City Housing Authority, and they will not sell or let one tenant group take over. Any public housing in New York is 50%. By the way, a lot of public housing in this country is in New York City. So one public housing ever became a tenant master tenant control, it will totally tip the whole power base of the housing authority. And the people that have talked about the kickback and scandal that they killed. So I'm saying that there were those four years ago and I'm not joking, if you looked on the fifth page of the papers in this city, five people that testified about kickbacks contracts in practice in the housing authorities in this city. were killed two of them by hanging all night and letting their blood drain out. I'm saying because when you graphically say in a warehouse in Brooklyn and other places it made the 50th page was not front page at the same time. That big scandal was taking place in the Bronx. What was the You know, the one that we listen to forever. So the point is, is that dollars and the money and lots of women, a lot of women are afraid to look at the control issue, we want to have the vision, right, we want to look at how to make the world better. But we don't want to get into the control issue. So housing is in place. And now women have started to organize in this city, there's a group called women's Housing Coalition, right, that at least is beginning to look at making the link. So I don't think they want to look at all the control issues, either, because a lot of them are organizers, largely white women, organizers that are working within housing groups, and haven't figured out how to make the partnership with the women who are going to live in the housing in an empowered way. Because that's the other point here is that most of us were going into implementation, we talked about control, many of us now have jobs that are in these institutions that are that are earning our money off. We're doing services for poor, right, poor working class people so that when we start looking at the issues of empowerment, people get nervous. Where are they going to be it's the same problem with that are women shelters have, which was a housing program. And if you look at that are women shelters, women that went into battery never ever, ever thought they were joining the housing? Believe me, it's like two different worlds, they thought they were doing emergency that they were going to help women. That was like how we can go together, you basically have had this revolving door system where you have women coming into the shelter saying isn't it wonderful that these women, these women do help us when we need it, and they go home back to their neighborhoods? And the women that are there wonder why the battered women's movement is not growing to include the women of color that are coming into the shelters, besides the fact that who controls the shelters? And where does the money come from? And how can we move, they did not to help the battered women because then there wasn't the affordable housing on the other end for the woman to go to. So she would end up going back home to her as Unknown Speaker 47:01 as far as women going to other organizations like there's like all these like, like a very individualistic approach where a woman goes, because she's enterprising. And he's like a reactionary stance. Is there anything in favor of us themselves? So that I mean, people who live in different neighborhoods will know best what they want and need? And are there any, any groups that are forming of in any area anywhere? Just the women like a women's coalition? Unknown Speaker 47:39 Yeah, there are I mean, one is that was a group called the National Congress, the neighbor of women. And they my Rs is kind of like a support network of women that are it's like a network of grassroots, community based women's organizations that run their own thing, and each have their own neighborhoods. So for example, we are linked up with groups in East Harlem, the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn. Besides in other places, there's different levels of consciousness and activities going on, a lot of these groups have different abilities to be able to partner with professional women coming in from the university. But most of them, I'm just saying that most of them, most of the groups that exist, like say they were gonna last for three point or the urban limit society and these girls need to have like anybody else, they need technical support. And that doesn't mean as long as we're looking, you know, we need to have ways obviously a partnering and bringing people together so that we've already established the state, right, that this ability to bring diverse women together to work in effective ways, is an ongoing issue right now, and that some people are better effective at it than others. But it's an area that at least finally, in the 90s, is clear that it's taking place. So that the women in, for example, in East Harlem, are very open to other women coming in, as long as you see that their issues are important, right, as you clearly got out of the speech today, because most of these groups cannot prove the value of their work. They cannot prove they don't have time to document their validity. They don't have ways to, to combat, say funders or politicians that are giving them a hard time and they need ways of being able to validate the things that they're doing. So that there are many groups or public housing tenant groups in this city that are trying to organize outside of the housing authority, you know, that have networks within and without, you know, because they can't highly ignore it. Here in the city. I mean, one of our groups just got offered $50 million dollars, and this is how it goes with that little stuff. I went into complain about the housing authority, and I walked out with $1,000 contract because they could see where we're going. I mean, I'm just saying that that's how the Housing Authority deals. They are our best strongest group in the cities in East Harlem, who was clearest about tenant control. They were offered and are getting $15 million to redevelop their entire public housing site and to to make it a more workable housing for the women and children that live there. So you can either take old infrastructures that were poorly designed not from the groups that people are there and begin to redo them, as has happened in St. Louis and Washington and other places. The issue still comes down to are having a more clear analysis about what we're about and how these issues come together. Because my fear is, and I'm really, you know, I wanted to look at who was in the room is that you have a lot you have the split, that Adidas talked about and others, you have a split between, you know, women that are looking at vision and out there and not looking at how these things really go through the system and are implemented at the local level. You can have an eye like AAUW was in the third, AWS, the American Association of University Women, was part of the initial round of pushing for public housing, this country in the 30s was interesting. And that now they are again in the 80s Pushing Again, for more affordable housing, but not looking not looking at a gender consciousness. The fact that women will tell you that I'm like how these houses are designed. Every woman if you sit in a room and you ask them, if you could design your own house, we'll tell you in five minutes, how to do it better and even saved money, and how to build community because we had mostly single mother, women living in the house, obviously many ways to foster community. We are trying to do 31 units of housing in Brooklyn 31 little tiny units with enterprise and money and HPD money. And we are group because we do everything participatory had a whole group that plan and kitchen they planned with kitchen where the kitchen would be open to the living room. Right? That woman Architektur at HPD said no, I don't like that kind of kitchen. This is we're supposed to be running a mill yourself. She wants the kitchen with a door shut off from the living room, you can have a bathroom Unknown Speaker 52:09 off of the living room right here and she has the power architect Unknown Speaker 52:14 is a feminist architect. I'm just putting this up because I want you to stimulate some of the academics one of the best architects in the country today is our architect. Though, as typical for women, she doesn't have much budget, she doesn't have much staff, right. She's worked with us for seven years, we fought through the getting this project, she can't draw money to get paid until the architectural plans are agreed on. They're saying they won't agree they and everybody the city will tell you that this one woman, one will and two women at HPV stopped every innovative idea that might have to look to making the design better, just like we're going to put a door between apartments, so it's not out in the hall, so that a mother might run out of the store and just open the door so the other mother could look at our children, things like that. I mean, hopefully we'll get away with some of it. Each one is a battle. So first of all, we have to add the women's perspective, on top of all these other issues of race and class to look at design, then we have to figure out ways of how we're going to battle when through the implementation process. But make sure when the bills are even developed, the legislations develop this consciousness is in there, because the bills that were passed in the 70s on the women's movement was pretty strong. Made like the better women's movement, the only reason is able to survive today. Where it is, is because money was what he called targeted, targeted in this country for battered women's shelters. So that stream of money is there. If the stream of money courses totally killed, they won't be there. But the fact that it was built into legislation enabled the groups that had done it already to get the money. Most new programs coming out right now have no targeting toward women's anything's. So there's no way to foster the beginning organizational work that women are doing. And because when they're first getting into the housing stuff late or they're in, they're not conscious in the places that they are right, they are not getting a foothold in the housing arena and most community development most community development work is going to be controlled by these major housing and economic development groups in at the local level and model them are run by men and outside professionals so you're now beginning to get a power block within local communities and graduates from have done most of the community work and that's been documented Rana Lawson's article it shows you that almost all the blocks Association Tenant Association, work has been done by women. When the organization gets more money and grows the women step back and the men step in right we know that soft international stuff. So that we I'm saying the several things that happen. One is that we have to stop tiptoeing around the fact that it is very important that grassroots women raise their consciousness As on race, class, and gender, and have a methodology of how to do that which exists to get into that they can't skip those women's consciousness because it is hurting women in the local neighborhood and lot of churches never bail Scott in their book. And they only have a consciousness raising group, there are millions of people running programs from bed and women's shelters to job training program, where there is no consciousness about race, class and gender at all in these programs, or empowerment or what empowerment means a lot to say that either before I said in this country, people think empowerment is I make you feel better. And it's counseling. It is not organizing, it is not organizational building. And let me say that empowerment is organizing an organizational building. And you nurture the development organizations. That's what our organization is doing. But that doesn't exist for almost all women's groups in this country, either don't have a proper, let's say, don't have a mouse that has control and housing and community development. And they're on the sidelines of things and social services. And there's that real split between housing over here. And social services over here. I mean, can you believe it? Women who need holistic human settlements with job childcare, everything together, these agencies don't talk to each other. So that you have a housing movement in the city that is neighborhood focused and neighborhood based. And you have a movement to deal with poor women in this that amount of movement, a met a policy structure that deals with poor women in this city, that is run to the Human Resources Administration, that is not neighborhood focus and neighborhood base. So the very people that are holding neighborhoods together, the women that are doing the block work in committee work, it cannot and who cannot stand welfare anymore, because our country has made a decision can't stand welfare, you have to get a job, even if it doesn't exist, right. And you have to go to school or get a job. The programs that serve those women are not in the neighborhoods where the women live. Almost all the programs, JTPA and training are in Manhattan, and most of the poor women here live in the Bronx, and Brooklyn. So the housing programs are locally based. And the programs that have to do with the one group that's not mobile, are away from where the women live, and on top of it, because they service largely women, that women don't get to run and operate control in regards to jobs. And yet, I think so I just want to put out is this rambling thing here that when we're talking about organizing, and housing and neighborhood, it's very important that dialogues begin to take place like this, because I think that this is a very critical period of time of re thinking, looking at what has worked in the past, what hasn't worked? Why is it work? Why as? And how do we need to link up the different strengths and weaknesses. For the future. It's not enough to say I'm going to go to school and get out there and do something in reality, what's taught in the schools reflect the problems. And the Social Work anybody has done in social work school down the street knows there's no community organizing committee development anymore. There's not a class here I come in development at Columbia University. Women in urban planning week, I took a course with Susan Sater, in urban planning on gender and the environment. Right across the street, there were three courses, three quarters of the class for women in urban planning, and one quarter were men and guess who spoke the most. Unknown Speaker 58:15 And they were sweet. They were very nice men, but they did speak the most. The women didn't speak women and urban planning are not speaking from an informed women's perspective, their consciousness is not there on on gender. So that is certainly out there and racing, you know, out so that these issues are not even corporate. So people are learning things that are that are harmful to can we say that harmful? Basically, people that are sending people that care the most are going into fields that are teaching them material that is making them harmful to doing the very kind of work they want to do. So that we are finding as we hold forums across the country, never women, and we listen to professional women and grassroots women is that you have several problems here. One is that the whole analysis hasn't been accurately put together so that people know why they're doing, what they're doing and where they're going. Right. On top of it. You have women that really want to build a women's voice and care about community development environment, pitted against grassroots women, and they can't understand how they got in these positions, where they are trying you have middle class professional women holding up organizations like battered women's shelters and others with their working day and night for a little bit of money. And they can't understand why these poor working class woman coming through are not staying and sticking and being a part of that because they have never raised their consciousness and control issues and power and what that really means. And so they're both being hurt by the inability of getting it together and we're all losing because we're not building the organizational structure that we need to make a difference. So I would say that's very, I want to live with more positive positive eyes I've got myself, because I know Geeta in here and who I admire so much. And a lot of things locked in, it just felt like through my thing. Unknown Speaker 1:00:10 Is there a model, for example? Just? Well, I'm Unknown Speaker 1:00:14 Yeah, I have to think just like, I think that, first of all, the fact that conferences that tema could go on putting on conferences after all these years and roots, and bring the kind of dialogue together, is part of the hope. And the fact that people are open, I think, from the Nairobi conference on AI, is that there's been a real opening by women everywhere to listen in a way that they didn't listen before and to realize that nobody has the inside track, and that there really needs to be connections between rights, and development and peace, and that people are, are forging, let's say, alliances and dialogue in a way that did not take place. I think in the past. I think that there's organizations like my own organization, where people have spent 20 years, you know, thinking about this stuff are out there every day and grassroots communities and are willing to struggle through and it is a struggle, I mean, that I think they struggling when you want to work across race and class and gender differences, it is a struggle, some of it's very painful. And it's not for everybody, at least we've even gotten down clear to the backlog and say, you know, if you don't want to work, if you don't want to work with some tensions, and you know, diversity is very excited. But if you don't want to work with that kind of tension, please don't come in and go work on myself. And I can even say and that work may be very valid, like I heard today, saving the whales is extremely valid, right? So that there are many ways that people can work. I think that the hopeful thing is that there's a more of understanding about that different people need to work in different ways, in different places. And that there's ways we can connect up. And that is very helpful. And I meet a million stories a week. I mean, I'm constantly a lot of energy, because I had hearing successes all the time. And I had never left here and successes from the 60s to the 90s. So I'm not one of the ones that, you know, feel that the whole bottom has dropped out. I don't know why I mean, I should probably should. But I hear them all the time I see people's lives changing. I see women making connections, you know, I see lots of stuff happening. And it is happening in local areas, and it's happening at national and international, you know, and if you're in the right place it's going on, so I'm always refilled. And I think it is hooking up and work and admitting what I thought give us some very well is that people have made a lot of mistakes that they didn't know what to do. We didn't have all the thinking out and and somehow putting that out so that people don't have to run away saying, Well, I failed because I said a thing that was racist or sexist, or, you know, I did this or that is that admitting that in order for us to work together, we have to admit, we don't know. And we have to take some process time. And for women, at least processes are thing. So we can take some of that time. Unknown Speaker 1:03:10 You know, to play I guess, go the opposite view on some of the things that you said. I think in the broader scheme of setting that agenda, you have to be clear that you're setting that agenda because right now the federal government sets an agenda that says women and children are more palatable than single homeless men. And there may very well be some legitimate personal problems that make you know, one particular subset of our population male having a different set of problems that relate to their housing as opposed to problems women have that relate to their housing. But, you know, I refer to it as the easy sell and anti poverty work women and babies is an easy sell to make money for. So if we're really going to have a progressive housing agenda, we need to be talking about a human rights agenda that encompasses every person, regardless of their gender, or their race or whether they're palatable or not to have access to affordable housing. And then access plays itself out, I think, in the form of race and class. As somebody who you know, was born into the civil rights movement, I lived through the Civil Rights Movement. I was actually born on the day Malcolm X was assassinated. You know, I'm living in 1991 and anyone who tries to tell me that we live in an integrated society, I laugh at them. I was one of 30 women of color that went through Barnard between 83 and 87. I was one of fast students of color and Cornell department of state and regional planning. I am now the only black anti poverty advocate in Albany, New York. I am one of three women Who runs an anti poverty organization in New York? So we need to look at this whole question of access and services around race and gender and class as much as anything else. Because you find more and more, you're the exception, as opposed to the norm. And that translates out and how are we setting that agenda? You know, I mean, I Unknown Speaker 1:05:23 think I used to like your brain was right. Unknown Speaker 1:05:26 To some degree, I'm agreeing with you. I mean, I didn't buy into this whole analysis of you know, the men are the ones that are the problems. I think my analysis is more so that the system is the one that's the problem. And the problem is for me, in this country is 250,000 people marched on Washington and said, housing now in one voice, and wow, in 1990, Congress put a housing bill on the table. Is that a housing bill that's going to end the affordable housing crisis in the country? Absolutely not? Is it going to be funded primarily through shutting down existing federal programs that are doing a fine job? Absolutely. But the reality is, there was a direct correlation between that 250,000 people that came together in this country to march around a particular issue. And what was the success of that everybody agreed to leave everything they do alone, there were three issues on the table. Everyone deserves a right to decent, affordable housing, there should be an expanded supply of affordable housing in this country. We are here to say housing now. That's it three. Okay. And I mean, there was a tooth and nail battle around, can we talk about the fact that the military budget in this country comes from the same place that the housing budget comes from, and there's a direct correlation between military spending, and has expanded, and because there might have been alienating as it were to some other folks that don't do the, you know, build homes, not bombs wreck, that bit the dust, much to the dismay of some of us who may have wanted to raise that issue, because it isn't strong, you know, both from an environmental standpoint and a housing standpoint, in a foreign policy development standpoint, but Unknown Speaker 1:07:11 you wouldn't agree that adding the word women to when you're looking at the issues of race and class certainly come up in housing, and people have battled it out. Like I we just had the head of the mayor's office, the Incans offices talking about how they're Broadhurst are several plays, that they're doing this whole comprehensive development process. And it's, I guess, a largely black community, but they couldn't, they couldn't find a black development group, community development group that really could take it on and from the area. And I guess they couldn't find it from someplace else. And they were very concerned, again, that a major development issue was probably going to be run by white professional men who had this technical skill so that the fact of adding women into the pot of the voice that doesn't take away sitting in Washington and coming up with three issues, but the fact that if women really started to talk about control issues, most of the housing groups, we'll get a little nervous because most of them are run by men, their largest, largely are servicing women. And they're just wondering why the woman has never pointed it out. It's really, because I raised it yesterday, we use I'm a racist. So you can't say what would happen if women start getting into that point? Well, that's x access and power and control, they need to be there. I think we're saying because even today got lost several times. With speakers up front, they're willing to talk about women, and they don't know if they want to put race, class and gender. We say one sex word when you say but together uniformly all the time. That is a really big issue. Unknown Speaker 1:08:42 Right? Well, I mean, from a terminology standpoint, you know, race, class, gender and sexual orientation. I mean, there are a whole lot of issues, you know, that can be opened up within that context. But I think the example you described, I would view as a capacity problem, there's a capacity problem and grassroots movements that have to do with how they grow up and become able to move the system, as it were, why is it that you know, grassroots movements in this country, aren't able to mature to get through the legal paperwork to be 501 C three, and access all these wonderful private foundation dollars? That's a capacity issue. You know, I think the women's side of that capacity issues you should have more of around than one feminist architect to be able to draw from, you know, I think the second layer that is in 1991, there approximately 30 Black certified women, architect, architects in the whole country. The whole US survey, if you read the roster of who's who and the American Institute of Architects, there's 30 certified black women architects, and I haven't looked at the comparable statistics on how many black certified planners there are that within that there are one Did you know Unknown Speaker 1:10:01 those are actually working for the types of issues you? Unknown Speaker 1:10:09 Buy, they get brought up. Right. That's, that is what's happened. Unknown Speaker 1:10:14 And and so I think that, you know, the breakdown to some degree in housing and women has to do with making this sort of transition from being activists and organizers into, you know, the more professional realm. I mean, nothing changes the fact that to package, a housing development program takes a lot of work. I mean, that's one of the reasons I'm critical of this whole shift toward tenants automatically assuming control of public housing, particularly in New York City, when we're talking about an average project is 600 units. And a tenant group that has the best intentions in the world may be willing to commit to doing 20 hours a day over and above their normal job to take over their property and run, will they through good intentions, I'll ever put together a tax credit syndication to finance the major capital improvements on that property without some extra help. I don't think so. You know, and that's a realistic constraint that has to do with being in you know, the technological world. Right now, that plays itself out in housing, I think that the examples of Kimmy Greenberg are guilty of perfect, those were model projects, they were models of the federal government, they got more subsidies going. And those two projects, I don't think you know, too many of us here, if you put these two books together, and multiply them by three, that's what the proposal looks like, for how those projects are financed, and how those women are looking so good. They're very big government subsidies in there. And that was a creation, and that was a tool, you know, are we happy that those women are doing? Well? Absolutely. You know, at its core, don't you think that a woman who lives in a project could run it better than the federal government? Probably, you know, but is that something that you can just wholesale advocate for? On a statewide or national level? No, because not everybody's gonna have access to those subsidies and resources Unknown Speaker 1:12:10 already as they have? Unknown Speaker 1:12:13 No, I don't, because I'm the 60s person. So it's quite, you know, me, I guess we always believed in modules that you could empower people in, you know, who were champions, and you could be used technocratic Lee trained experts to develop modules, you know, a computer, you know, a write a basic document that people could fill in the boxes for it might run into 700 pages. But the specifics would be, you know, fill in the boxes. Oh, is there any talks about that? I mean, it's it has been, from my, from my perspective, and I should get out of it. You help me if I have to get out of it. If they want to be a way to empower people who don't, who aren't technocrats that aren't professionals as a full time, as they put there are a lot of models that are out there. You know, Unknown Speaker 1:13:06 I mean, I'm not advocating that everyone has to suddenly become a technocrat I think we're saying there's not a large enough pool of politically conscious technocrats to go around. And at least that's one message that needs to be put out in an academic environment, having these dialogues when you think about what you want to do, and what you want to train to be, think about how you can apply those same skills to the social sector, because there's a need for him in the social sector and the Human Services arena, the same way there's no need for him in the for profit sector. The flip side, however, is that personal choice line that says, Do I want to make money or do I want to be okay, how do I define success? How do I define happiness? And if it's only from a monetary standpoint, I certainly couldn't tell somebody to come into the nonprofit sector. You know, I mean, like, a store that'll be very apropos here. When people say, what should you do take a walk down the street. Two of our contracts are through state Division of Housing. A woman, a college student, who was in a master's in planning program at SUNY. Albany called me she was interning volunteer at the Division of Housing, which already said to me, right, this woman obviously has some money, because she's not a work study student. So she's volunteering, called me to see if she could sit down because she was working on some research and the Division of Housing said, oh, you should call you know, two of our contractors that run Technical Assistance Project. She comes up sits down to talk to me and said, Well, you know, they told me you would tell me the other side, and I said, Well, you know, the first thing I mean, she was in shock when she came in because I don't blue jeans and like hightop orange sneakers first of all, and I said, Hi, this is how I look. When I do research. I don't wear suits for fun, you know? down and she says, Well, you know what? Can you tell me about the other side and I said, I laid off my staff today because the place where you volunteered, didn't see fit to cut my check and a time we fish as they welcome to the other side. And I mean, you know, that's like, the normal constraints that you're under a lot of times when you decide you're gonna go into the nonprofit sector, it's not for the faint of heart. Unknown Speaker 1:15:28 But what is the what is the title in New York, I always forget those ones. But one of the most successful programs in New York is that tenant management housing, what is that pump, liquid, pump, not PUMP PUMP until I made where tenants basically bought apartments for $250. And then we're trained to take over management of their building, oh, damp it to damp and till I mean, that's seen as one of the most successful ever so those are tenant development, people are trained, they learned how to do this boom, the rent collection, and all admissions and Savior's work with from abandonment to hope, or you had the women in these in the Harlow buildings when the buildings were vacated by the bad landlords. It was the larger women, there were some larger women that held those buildings together, then the technic, the technical assistance people come in, because here's the other side of the problem is you have to get the right technical assistance is that they, because they're women, they built this wonderful tenant groups, of course, don't look like others tenant groups, right? They have parties, birthday parties, they visit the sick, you know, they do all the carrier things. And then you bring in the technical training people. And of course, they never saw that what the women had done. And they taught them how to run the typical type of meetings where you sit at the table, keep your books do this, that and the other. I mean, it's still it's work. But we have to look at how do you bring the best of these two worlds together? So it'd be one it's highly I think it's successful. But HPD doesn't like to put its money there into those programs. It's not it's not a priority issue, the fact that it's work, and everybody comes to look at it, like pretty good. And St. Louis, I mean, the fact that it works, that doesn't make St. Louis Housing Authority happy. Unknown Speaker 1:17:15 And their geographical disparity? I mean, there's no place like the state of New York, we shouldn't believe this state functions like any other state because it doesn't. at a city level, there's no place like the city in New York, you know, there's zoning regulations here as far as like the zoning regulations and any other urban or rural areas in the country. So yes, there are specific models that work in specific places, you know, but cost Unknown Speaker 1:17:41 is what a third more cost $90,000 to do an affordable housing unit in the city of New York, where the cost 60,000 or so another somebody was giving me some home rent is because of the the graph the amount of the contractors, the whole business, you get into, you know, which is Unknown Speaker 1:17:59 a question around that that issue of housing. Has it been? Are you finding that people who have the expertise to be to renovate or build new housing, are pulling out because the city and state just won't pay them? I mean, they just they submit vouchers and all and it takes them years and years and years, I've worked for someone who I think when I came to work for him, he still had owed him money for like five years or so how could you have? How could you go along? I mean, it just happens like that you'd submit these vouchers and nobody pays them. Nobody, nobody pays attention to them. They say, Well, we get around to it, they start you do all this, like formula stuff, so many different percentages of this, it really is frustrating. And that's what we Unknown Speaker 1:18:43 term, you know, a barrier to affordable housing. Our programs, when you look at the composition of their funding, a big chunk of the state because this particular Neighborhood Preservation Program provides them the administrative money to leverage the other money, but then their capital programs that they apply to, like turnkey and Housing Trust Fund. And okay, we're in a fiscal crisis, we go to freeze, does it matter that you 50% constructed on a new 60 unit development and you know, you've packaged this deal where you have the state money matched by the city money and because of the city money you gotten there, they're doing the housing lottery, and there's a family in the shelter that thinks they're getting an apartment, but the state's in crisis, so that piece of money doesn't come through and then you run around the banks trying to find bridge financing. And then what is common practice in nonprofit sector, which doesn't help give us any stability, you borrow from the staff line item and pay that you know, you spare. I mean, you do the best you can is what I'm saying you do this piecemeal no funding was dropped. And it's really, I mean, a common barrier to this whole thing is not just the vouchers, but the way the state programs are set up, if you have a Housing Trust Fund contract, you are required to open three separate checking accounts to receive that money, you have to have a general fund that you're gonna pay the staff portion from that debit, a contracting fund that you pay, the contract is out of, you have to have another fund, that's going to be the checking account, you're going to write for your supplies. So here you are a group that already has two checking accounts, you know, basic payroll, and then basic, you know, whatever programs you support, and you got to get this new money now, just to develop this property and open three more checking accounts. I have a group that got in this program and started maybe five, six years ago, and now runs 30 checking accounts, they haven't been able to bring a unit online for two years, because there's what's known as the pipeline, which is when the vouchers don't get paid. So they're like, great, you know, we're tarping up the buildings, because it's winter in Albany, and nobody's paying the vouchers right now. That's a very common barrier to affordable housing. So on the one hand, you say, okay, great, we're going to build up nonprofits, we're increasing capacity, we're getting tenant groups together, everybody's getting empowered, we're doing this work. But the tools you use are state funded, there's the tools, you use our federal funds, there's never going to be enough of one pot of money, or the other. I mean, there's a projected shortfall. So Unknown Speaker 1:21:37 So part of that is I mean, one hand. So for practical experience, to understand implementation is strong recommendation, people do have experience, so that you know, the other side of the end and the other hand, this whole country is going to as the rest of the world, right and go undergo structural change. And that people are now looking at these bureaucracies that we've developed over time, and are foreseeing that they are not working very well. And not only are they not working, they're causing tremendous problems. Some people have learned to live with them at great cost. And so that beginning to figure understand limitation, to figure out alternative solutions, this alternative idea, and looking at what we can learn from these lessons is pretty important for surviving in the future. Because I was gonna say three more things, even with women, for example, a lot of people like we want our building because it is small, we want it to be racially ethnically diverse. Sounds good, right? There is no law that ensures diversity, there's laws that are against discrimination, there is nothing even though we are in a racially ethnically diverse neighborhood, there is nothing that will allow us to ensure diversity. Secondly, is that women need to in order for a poor woman, any woman to survive and has children, you need to be in a community. Generally, I did admit, I don't know about the rest of you, but I need to have support from my neighbors or I can't even go off to a meeting when I have a kid right there. The way the policies are on the city is that if you want to get in a public funded housing, you get unless you get drawn, your name is drawn in a lottery. So that the fact that you live and your family and your network is in Waynesburg, but you get drawn for an apartment in the Bronx, they don't look at the fact that by the time this one goes from Williamsburg, to the Bronx, first of all, she doesn't count because she's doubled up. And second, you know, generally she doesn't count. But she gets to the Bronx, she loses her whole network of support, which for most human beings, today, you're not your relatives and your friends are your most important network, your least important other social workers and professional providers, but you are now more dependent on professional devices and will cost three times as much as the front. Now on top of that, if you had to use today, I don't know if this change will tell me is that in order for a woman to Kenosha to go to the welfare hotel, he had to be on the that we made, that's changed now. But you had to be on the list of a welfare hotel for 18 months to have this homeless so that by the time any woman is in this hotel for 18 months, you're a basket case your kids are problems, you are psychologically stressed. Nobody wants that person in their new housing. Because they have so many problems in order to deal with the problems created by the structure and the way the thing operates. I just putting it out that without an analysis without an analysis and a clear understanding of what we're doing we continue to put ourselves in worse thing and that we don't look at where women are coming from how they're moving what they're doing. That's depressing again, I know Unknown Speaker 1:24:39 I take the plus side even though there's emergency shelter in New York City, right no place else in the state of New York and their right to shelter loss. So that's the positive side at least you got a system to try and manipulate because that system doesn't hear Unknown Speaker 1:24:53 out man everybody. Good debate back just to be great. Okay, that's Unknown Speaker 1:25:02 such a fascinating. And I don't know why you keep saying you depressed, Unknown Speaker 1:25:07 looking depressed. I knew that the Unknown Speaker 1:25:12 attorney who's depressed I was at the socialist scholars conference last week, which had must have been over 1000 people was nothing like this. And they had totally depressed and of course, they've been depressed for years. The boys, the girls, I mean, whoever was there. And they were all depressed, mostly depressed. Because they seem all, you know, sort of the big picture and everything looks like it's falling apart, and they can't figure out. I mean, they've been saying, we draw the lines, we need to recognize grassroots movements. I can say, I've heard this for 15 years now. And they haven't figured out how to do that, what that means or anything. So of course, they keep telling us on the hour, and I've seen no reason why you should keep saying you're different. As you as you save yourself, the point really is I think, that somewhere at this moment, and I really see this is a critical moment, even though today in some ways, it's one factor, which at one level might appear impressive, which is the to this conference, which has grassroots organizing. At the top, we get 100 people coming in, right? Well, that's an interesting thing, given the news, the 18 year has gone in years. And I don't know what happened last year, or whatever. But I think this fundamental thing in this country, you see, because whenever you talk these days, Third World Development outfit, grassroots organizations, are it money pouring in? Everybody's interested, nobody talks about love. Let's talk about grassroots organizations. Whenever you mentioned grassroots organizations in this country. You don't want it at the time of thing. Why is that the case? I mean, the minute you say, grassroots organization, out there, there's all this interest, what are they doing? I mean, it's going back and everybody's jumping up and down, trying to find out what they're doing. People want to put money in there, they want to go out and look in there. The minute you say you're a community organization or grassroots organization in this country, you know, you can see, it's like, yeah, yeah, that's right. But it's boring. It's boring. I mean, that's just one of these. I'm interesting one that may be, I think one of the reasons may, to do something with the fact that it's been identified with something that's on the margins. It's identified with something that's not about the whole process for the full system, but about equity to people who are being left out of the system. Unknown Speaker 1:28:05 And, and I would say Unknown Speaker 1:28:07 you're on the right targets, related to, you know, women. From the gender and development perspective, we've been critiquing the concept of equity for a long time, and saying that equity within development the way it is, is not what we're interested in. But somehow that hasn't gotten done enough for say, racial equity, or gender equity within the US that some and therefore it's been, somehow I think people have in their minds, the sense of a system, which is basically okay, but some people are being battered by it. And so, you know, it's, it's still that notion of welfare. With respect to all of these grassroots organizations, they're the ones that are, you know, sort of, in some, in some senses seen as managing the margins, rather than being about the mainstream. Unknown Speaker 1:29:08 And Barbara Ehrenreich adds to that. Unknown Speaker 1:29:12 That's right. But really, I but the mainstream is totally depressed. And in a sense, the mainstream in the ABS has gotten to a point where it's not sufficiently self aware, I think of the fact that it's about them. It's not about that it's not just about the margins in the 70s, it was still possible to think it was about margins in the 80s and became impossible, but it's not been sufficiently sort of brought home, that, that these are the same things, and this is the same sets of issues. So that somehow, you know, and I'm not I mean, I don't know where to take it from here, but I think somewhere that's what needs to come up. I mean, for instance, If you were talking about militarization, I don't know enough about this country's budget nor works at all. But just the other day, someone said, Look, do you know that there are now separate caps on this? There's no, there's no peace dividend anymore. Not just because of the war gonna happen, but simply because the separate caps and all of these budgets so that you cannot transfer even if you've cut back the military budget without major legislative change, you cannot transfer it into other areas civilian budget, right. But what I'm I've not seen? I mean, that's not there's no public debate around that. No, there's no general you know, there's nothing around it. And while there's been a Unknown Speaker 1:30:46 defeat by the main voices, as you said, from the left, you have that group feeling defeated, the War certainly knocked it out. The churches, the same way that churches got divided on the war, and I was in a progressive, liberal progressive churches, people flocked within the churches, so people that were leaving through the church that had been really almost immobilized by Reverend Wright, people are saying, but a lot of the left people are feeling that they now understand that we have a class society, and that their interest because that basically, she's putting out there, people are now well aware that there's a dwindling economic pie. And there's going to be some people that will have it and a lot that won't, and people are talking about holding on to what they had. And that there's no more view that we can go out and try to to deal with the inequities. And it's because they are recognizing that they're still own self interest and her stuff was her own their own self interested in it. And then you said that before. And that's another thing is that a lot of people know that they don't want to jeopardize their jobs and their jobs are through managing the poor in certain kinds of organizations. But the other is the fact that people don't want no they want to deal with issues of race and class and gender too painful. They feel they did their best, they got hurt in the 70s. They're tired of it. They don't know what to do, how to do where to do it, and they don't want to do it. And they don't want to be with people that are going to call them names. And I mean, there's some of that too. I mean, there's some Well, Unknown Speaker 1:32:13 the key to the marginalization is that marginalization in the US has always been a factor of race. It's been nothing more, nothing less. I mean, I know within the women's movement, historically, there's been a lot of dialogue that had to do with incorporating domestic women of color, because at a basic level, we always worked, you know, our mothers and our grandmothers, we always work so it wasn't enough to have an analysis about becoming incorporated into the work world. It was like within that your equity in pay and access to higher level jobs, but the marginalization in this country begins and end