Unknown Speaker 00:05 For, I don't know about the last 15 years, and some of it I'll talk about today. I was the director of the Center for the Study of women in society when it was founded at the Graduate Center and have been involved in feminist issues. Since this wave of feminism began, and I'm very happy to be here, I'd like to introduce our other panelists. This is Maria FOSS Karina. She is the director of this founder, director and founder of The National Law Center for homeless on homelessness and poverty. She's a 1981, graduate of the Columbia Law School and editor of the law. She was editor of the Lord view. After graduating from law school, she clerked for the honorable Amelia Hirsi of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She has been active in legal rights of the homeless and has litigated cases since 1983. One of her many accomplishments was to be the primary lobbyist for the passage of the steward, the McKinley Homeless Assistance Act and others. She is involved in numerous investigative reports on homelessness and has published several articles. Our other panelist is April Tyler, who is a graduate of City College and biology but then promptly became a social activist. And I met April when she was an organizer at the Urban homesteading assistance board. And then from there, she went to ecumenical community development organization, which is right back there, where she now works. And as a Director of Technical Assistance, she has been very active in organizing tenants and city owned property and has been very active in in general organizing and her community, which is Harlem, she has been a member of the board nine community board, and is now a district leader, which is a big and demanding job. And at the same time, she's trying to organize an alternative school in her neighborhood, as she continues to be active in housing issues. She's a member of many advocacy groups, policy boards, and we thought maybe we could start by asking you to introduce yourselves to since it's a small group, and a little smaller than we thought panel. And if you could tell us a little bit about what you're interested in what brings you to something like this that would help us all focus Unknown Speaker 02:49 and get to practice in office based here in New York, I also teach at University of Texas at Pratt Institute here in graduate programs. And that's not the housing Unknown Speaker 03:05 issues. This was the time to connect with Unknown Speaker 03:13 Lacey recently graduated Urban Policy Program have had a variety of experience in housing, affordable housing, but I thought the Homes program I'm interested in some of the links between community development housing, homelessness bringing them all together sort of a holistic approach to market research totally important questions. The church every time I was on a run last night, for example, and every time I finish I feel like I just want to make a couple of ministration currently depressed press work. general interest in housing and all kinds of political agendas because I plan to run for office. I guess two years I'm trying to set a deadline here My name is Diane association I Live housing organizing elderly people control stabilized housing experiences family who are able to work Unknown Speaker 06:02 most people will stop writing this blog post right government assistance inquiring into how to get involved with and how to do Unknown Speaker 06:26 it seems to be a very time consuming processes are trying to do right educate myself more expeditious fashion and find out what kind of what kind of project what kind of projects are really needed Unknown Speaker 06:54 I represent three families it's a shelter for battered women and children a lot of the housing is getting friends here that are staying in permanent housing. So if you're interested to help empower women moving across America my speech. program most support services to Unknown Speaker 08:28 think Marsha is going to start. Marsha started and finished and she'll be she Unknown Speaker 08:38 can do so I started. Okay. All right. Well, I have to say that I'm very, very delighted to be here and to see the Lord's women in housing in combination. And in the context of a conference on women and social change. These are things that I think are very important, you would think homelessness really is a women's issue. And I as a woman have been involved in this issue. And I'm interested in how those two fit together and hopefully we'll say a little bit about both. So I want to just start with a little overview. Homelessness. Probably anyone who lives in this country and walks on the streets knows that homelessness is a major problem. And it's increasing and it's increased over especially over the past decade. What's particularly important here, I think, is that women are increasingly becoming homeless. The old stereotype that was the male sort of hobo no longer is valid. Obviously. Women with children with families with children are now the fastest growing growth among the homeless. And often that means women with children, single women, likewise are a major part of the homeless population, I guess a fairly conservative estimate would be that about a quarter of the homeless population now is made up of women. What I think is probably, maybe even more important is that women are increasingly vulnerable to becoming homeless. Aside from the group of people who are actually homeless, there's a much bigger group of people who are at risk of homelessness. And those are people who are very, very poor, or who are poor, and could become homeless, given a missed paycheck, given a health crisis, given any kind of unexpected expense. And that's a large group of people may be 10 to 12 million people in the country, who are at risk. Paying large portions of their income for rent is one is one identifying factor for this group of people. And if we look at this at risk population, this larger group of people, we can again see that women are particularly vulnerable, because women, just proportionally you make up the poor population. So two thirds of poor people are women. So women are at risk increasingly of becoming homeless. I want to say a little bit about about causes. And there are some causes of homelessness in general, and also some particularly relevant to women. When we look, talk about causes housing is a major cause. And when we look at what's happened to housing over the past decade, we can see why homelessness has increased around how affordable housing has shrunk. federal housing programs that used to be a source of support for poor people have been cut dramatically 75% During the 1980s, in the private market, we've seen gentrification, we've seen traditional sources of housing before people either disappear or shrink. And so there is a shortage of affordable housing. There's also, I think, it's important to also look at the flip side of affordable housing, which is income. Because when you talk about affordable housing, you've got to also think about income, nothing's affordable, affordable is a relative term. And if you have no income, or you have a very low income, housing will not be affordable to you. So the income side effects, I think, is important. And when we think about income, there are two basic counted categories you can look at. One is r&d, wages, Unknown Speaker 13:26 employment. And the other side is income assistance programs. So if we look at each of those categories, we can see why again, more people are homeless or vulnerable to becoming homeless. And there I'm thinking of low minimum wage, high unemployment, involuntary part time employment, in the case of public assistance, cutbacks or elimination, or elimination of programs. These things are also relevant to women to the extent that women are still earning less money and still have access to less access to jobs, and especially to help agents. The third piece of this equation is expenses. Income is income, but it also you've got to look at what your expenses are. And that's not just housing now, but other things like child care, health care, mental health care, these are relevant issues for all people who are at risk of homelessness and they may present special problems for women, particularly mothers who may have child responsibilities. So causes I would say housing, income, and the general I'd call social services, health care, mental health care childcare issues. Unknown Speaker 15:17 Given that very broad outline of issues and causes, what should we be doing? Mason blues? And what question? And what have we been doing, in fact, in response to homelessness, I think what's been done both at the government level and other levels has been focused primarily on emergency responses. By that, I mean, the primary response to homelessness in the past decade has been emergency things like emergency shelters, emergency soup kitchens, a response, it's, I guess you could call it crisis response. It's aimed at providing some very basic help to people when they're already homeless. And it's not been directed at either prevention or addressing the causes. Unknown Speaker 16:37 It seems to me that if we remain with nearly an emergency response to these problems, we're never going to solve them. And what we need to do is try to prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place, as well as address some of the underlying causes like housing income, social services, causes I mentioned earlier. But I think if we look at the issue that way, then what we're really talking about is systemic reform. And that is hard to accomplish. But that's what we're actually working on right now. At the Law Center at this organization, that I'm directing in Washington, this is actually our priority right now, this piece that well, I'll explain why the name later, but it's called Beyond McKinney policies to end homelessness. And it focuses on these areas housing, income, social services, plus a fourth area which we call civil rights. And that the reason we added that or we include that is because when people become homeless, what is happening now increasingly, as they become increasingly marginalized, and things happen, like people get arrested for sleeping in public or for begging. And so you've got this whole series of effects now that further marginalizes even punishes people, for being homeless or for being poor. So that's our plan. And that's our agenda. And that's what we're working on right now. It's ambitious, and will be very hard to accomplish. And here's where I want to talk about how women are my experience as a woman working for this kind of an agenda. And also, I'll explain to me I guess in my this was mentioned in the introduction, that currently the major federal response to homelessness is something called the store being the Kenyan homeless assistance. This was passed in 1987. This provides primarily emergency relief to homeless people across the country. It was passed as a first step to address immediate survival needs of homeless people beyond the canyon, it was specifically not intended to address the causes. It was intended just as an emergency measure. Beyond McCain, the project we're working on now is intended to address the causes. And so beyond policies and solutions in thinking about whether this can actually happen I I think it's important to remember how the McKinney Act was passed. Which happened in 1987. When Reagan was president, he signed it into law. It happened at a time when homelessness was considered a lifestyle preference, and certainly not a concern of the federal government. This is true. And soup kitchens were considered a free lunch to homeless people loved when I first went to Washington in 1985. And the idea at the time was to pressure the federal government into responding to homelessness, on the theory that homelessness was clearly a national issue, and that the federal government was supposed to be dealing with national issues. And so I went there, not having any previous experience in Washington, thinking that, well, here's a problem, they're supposed to be doing something about it. I'll go there and make them do it. And working with a bunch of other groups. In Washington, we put together what we thought was a good blueprint for what the federal government should be doing to address the problem. And it contained emergency measures, but it also contained prevention and long term solutions and three parts, emergency prevention. Unknown Speaker 21:38 So we came up with this thing. And then my role was to be to go to members of Congress and try to get some supporters and turn this thing into legislation, make it long, make it happen. And I began going up to Capitol Hill. And I figured I would first approach the people who were supposedly our allies, namely, Liberal Democrats in quotes. And tell them about this. And so I did. And typically, the response was, Well, this is great. This is, of course, what needs to be done. And isn't it wonderful that you're doing this, but surely, you can't expect us to support it because we have an election coming up and homeless people don't vote. Unknown Speaker 22:35 This was a fairly typical response, I found. Another response was to have people kind of charcoal, and think that wasn't nice. But really, this woman must be quite naive. An extreme form of this was one person on Capitol Hill, in a fairly powerful position telling me, Well, aren't you a nice little lady to be doing this. But of course, he can't think you'll ever get anything done. In fact, in 1987, about a year and a half later, Congress with huge majorities, bipartisan majorities passed storebrand, attending Homeless Assistance Act, and Ronald Reagan signed it into law. So something did happen. And it happened because we organized a lot of people around the country who cared about this issue and who did vote. And it happened because we persisted, and including me personally persisted with this idea that this was a problem. This was a solution, and it should be implemented. So I guess, the moral and in conclusion, moral I want to draw from this is that being I felt very much an outsider, I feel an outsider in Washington for two reasons. One, because of the issue of homelessness, homeless people are very much on the outside and very much marginalized. And I often feel on the outside, partly being a woman and partly working on this issue. Sometimes I think that there is a way where that can work to your benefit. And I think that that's what happened in our case, that because this wasn't seen as a political issue, and it was perceived almost ridiculous. To consider a political issue. There was an opportunity for us to present it as a human issue and an issue involving And I think in, I personally felt that I was able to draw on this feeling of being outside the system to persevere. And to just stick to that sample. And the reality. There was no reason why this problem people have. So this is what I call the power of powerlessness. You mean the power if we work with people in our city? Well, the McKinney act itself, the 1987 legislation provided initially it was a $1 billion authorization over two years. So it's 500 million the first year. It hasn't always been funded at its authorization levels, it's now up to about a billion dollars. The kinds of things that funds our emergency shelter, some transitional housing, a small SRO, housing, Portland, it funds, some mental health care, and also health care programs. These are all aimed primarily right to the heart, now homeless, you're allowed to use some of the funds for prevention. But that's not the focus of it. So beyond the kidney is of meant to do that prevention and the launch of long term solutions, because we are being affected, and Unknown Speaker 27:03 we're told we can't Unknown Speaker 27:05 shelter, right number of Unknown Speaker 27:07 days, because I forgot the number of days that they have to actually get. Unknown Speaker 27:13 No, it's not because of that. It's because it's because there's nothing more than that act. It's because of there being an emergency response. Yeah. Unknown Speaker 27:24 But you know, there is a anti eviction project of the Legal Aid Society that you're given to consider here and see if that's true. And what's up? I want to ask you a little bit about what the beyond 20 was one of the basic dimensions or strings Unknown Speaker 28:09 beyond the key Well, there actually are the beyond the key principles, which are the four points. One is ensures efficient, affordable housing. The second is ensure adequate anchor. And by anchor we mean job related issues, job training, jobs, job creation, and assistance in finding jobs as well as adequate income support for people who are unable to. So housing income, social services, is the third one, and that's health care, mental health care, childcare. And then the fourth is this, what we call civil rights, which includes prohibiting anti homeless ordinances or laws that punish people for being homeless, ensuring that homeless people are represented in decision making capacities and programs that affect them. Otherwise known as empowerment, Minister of Housing Income, social services and civil rights brief questions Unknown Speaker 29:47 don't really have some I think we'll have some time for discussion. Unknown Speaker 29:58 Especially with the homeless Okay I'm trying to my experience counseling can be a blessing was one of the main reasons is probably based on the College of Liberal Unknown Speaker 30:37 Arts should raise the notions of conservative deductions and other ideas? I just wondering if this party discussions and orientations? Unknown Speaker 30:55 Yeah, very much. This is I consider part of health care, substance abuse treat. And yeah, definitely there has to be access to. And I think a way to cut through the blaming the victim issue is to say, really, the common denominator is poverty. I mean, people who are not poor have access. I mean, lots of people have drug drugs. This is a problem that affects all American society. But we sometimes single out poor people, as if somehow it's their fault. But I think the real difference is that people who are not poor have access to health care that back home and father. So yeah, access to substance abuse treatment as part of the policy. Unknown Speaker 31:49 I have a question. Unknown Speaker 31:52 I, I have been reading a lot, and it seems with more frequency hearing, meaning that well, we know, all of those liberals told us to empty out the mental institutions. And now we have the crisis performance with homelessness because of the D institutionalization. And, you know, you hear things sometimes so much that it becomes like the reality even if it isn't, and do you have statistics or some numbers on the actual the amount of homeless people who are actually from institutions and those who are not, and those who became mentally ill because of whom was Unknown Speaker 32:43 right, right now, this is a very good question. And the way you're framing it, especially the whole thing with deinstitutionalization. First of all, that began a long time ago. And that began in the 60s and 70s. In 1963, there was a federal law where de institutionalisation was supposed to have two parts. People were supposed to be deinstitutionalized, but the idea was that they would get mental health care in the community. And what happened was it the first part happened and second part did it. So in this in this 1963 federal law that was supposed to be 2000 community mental health centers created only 800 words. And of course, it means since then it's gotten worse. meant till people were deinstitutionalized and nurses test sticks that show how many people who have previously been in institutions, then we're deinstitutionalized, but how that's relevant to the current population of people who's mentally ill and on the street is much more attenuated. I think now, the real issue is that people don't have access to mental health care. And again, it's because they're poor. And also because being on the street can exacerbate it's obvious that it can exacerbate mental illness. Some people say that it can cause mental illness and that doesn't seem implausible to me. Think that? Unknown Speaker 34:40 My background is as a psychologist versus appropriate to this particular situation. And I got involved in housing because I think that it's very important place for human development, both for child development and bolted up development and for community development, and the long run worked in the area. More concerned, I've got gotten with the split between housing as a commodity that's produced in our society almost entirely According to financial and physical ideas. It's treated it by architects, mainly as an aesthetic property are armed or not. And it's treated by the institutions that produce it as a good, a good, that has to be efficiently and profitably met, developed. And unfortunate, I think it's a good that has an awful lot of impact on how human development occurs. And then the way in which housing is developed or for or not developed in a community, and has a great impact on what what that community has to offer the people who live in it. And I think there's a very direct relationship to women here and that, in most cultures, women are co producers of housing, and they're unpaid co producers in housing, because housing is only most economic analysis focus on putting it onto the market. But after its long life thereafter, except for this time, so it's sold. Women are in very large part responsible for daily maintenance, and for seeing that it functions as a home and a habitat for people. And throughout the world. Women are involved in housing problems and are in the take offs, and particularly very low income and take the lead and trying to press their needs for housing and their children's and their community's needs for housing on the government's. And I think they do it in kind of consistent ways. Which I'm going to talk about, I'm wanting to talk a little bit about the relationship between homelessness and the problem of housing production, and this sort of set treatment of housing as just a commodity and not as part of the human habitat and for the development in the community. There have been a couple of studies focusing on women, homeless women and child development, one of them was done at Bank Street, and another one's being done at NYU. And the what has come out of them is that there are certain risk factors for women and becoming homeless. One of them is being young, one of them is being an African American, and one of them is being pregnant. And these factors together greatly increase a person a woman's vulnerability to becoming homeless. And certainly being a woman, being an African American and being young are all social factors in our society, which also relate to not having a steady income, with having problems with discrimination, having access to a whole bunch, all the kinds of things that Maria was talking about are far beyond this, when they come together for a particular young woman, they can end up with her on the street pregnant, or with a very new baby, it's, I was particularly disturbed by the finding that pregnancy was a risk to babies, having gone to, you know, some of these transitional shelters into or to shelters in New York, for homeless women, it's a, it's a terrible time not to have a stable environment, and not to be able to take for granted the physical and emotional support of an established home. And it's really, it's really terrible. And from everything I've studied about child development, and everything I know as a mother about Mother development, Unknown Speaker 38:53 the idea that we could possibly not be, you know, seriously harming hundreds and 1000s of, you know, hundreds of 1000s of young people if they start their lives under these circumstances, it's obvious that even a probably a relatively brief episode of homelessness must have very serious consequences, which takes an awful lot of love and care to overcome. Not that you don't see mothers who can do that. Of course you do. But I think when you talk about things like substance abuse by single mothers, that it's really it's important to understand the stresses that normal adolescence go through and the stresses that mothers normally go through, single parents normally go through and to understand how those accumulate and what this kind of total stripping away of resources does in the ability to function in that way. And I think that this complex relationship of being a woman and the economy, rolling and production and the world at large So many women have in their communities in which they are responsible for domestic life and purses, family ties or social ties, but sort of the weaving together of a community that functions on a daily basis and people aren't harmed and so on. And you see how all the factors that don't take those things into account and work against them can harm them. But out of that also comes, I think, a typically female approach to the provision of housing, which I think is very exciting. I am with Jackie Levitt, who was at that time and professor of urban planning at Columbia is now at UCLA. She and I did a study of how women how do tenants survive landlord abandonment, which is an important factor in New York and actually currently is coming elsewhere. But the reason we wanted to study that as we were, we had been in a seminar on women and housing run by Donna Shalala and in the workshop at Hunter College. And it was really depressing, because it was one of these things where the best experts in the wheel, you know, in the eastern seaboard would present and one week, we'd have a wonderful presentation on the demographics of being a woman, which were pretty terrible, particularly if you are female headed in from a minority population. And the income levels, you know, have been for that segment of the population have been really disproportionately disadvantaged over these last 15 years. And so those income levels were really pulling away from the population and housing production programs, were going the opposite direction they were pulling away from they were becoming fiscally responsible. And so we were having lots of government money going into how producing housing for people who aren't 25,050 $7,000 a year. And out of that we have things like that the housing in the Bronx on Charlotte Street that much value, this is going to solve the problem. Well, what you need there is you need two incomes in order to be able to afford those houses. And so female headed households were out of that market. And most of the production problems during this last Republican period have been of that sort. And there are lots of complicated reasons when some of which I understand some of which I don't. So what do women do under those circumstances, they use the skills that they have learned to survive as a household to try to provide housing, through shoring up their networks with others in their immediate community. And through trying through the domestic production of housing to substitute for the withdrawal of it economically. And I think you even see, homeless women doing this often in shelters and wherever they happen to be, to try to use their homemaking skills and networking skills to build a physical and social shelter for themselves and their families. And what we discovered, one of the things that's that's come out of the Bank Street and the NYU study that is very important is to see how little difference there is among low income people between those who are homeless and those who are not homeless. on almost all of the measures, in both studies, there have been very few differences attributable to anything in origin, there is somewhat greater depression among people who are homeless, which seems reasonable. Unknown Speaker 43:31 Interestingly enough, women caught low income women who are comparable to those in the homeless population, who have homes are more worried about housing or more stressed out by housing because the work it takes to provide it since these other women are interviewed, usually in shelters, once they've made it into a shelter, that kind of struggle to keep housing there for their families has an enormous burden on them. There are lots of sexual harassment is incredibly common as a problem for particularly single women in low income housing. Discrimination against welfare families, discrimination against families with children, those are both and discriminate and racial discrimination are all factors which really burden low income women and particularly in minority populations and trying to so they have to develop this huge amount of of skill really, and a lot of informal, non monetary resources just to keep housing. So when I began to study landlord abandoned buildings, something I discovered this analysis I'm giving you now came after that was that actually, Lord, landlord abandonment was not such a problem for them, that they hadn't been getting housing services anyway, and that they've had landlords who presented lots of problems from demanding rent through sexual harassment and and through bringing in people into the building who were threatening to them and so on. And that when the landlords withdrew from the building and before the city took it over particularly began this research in the early 80s. And so a lot of the people we studied had been had gone through abandonment in this mid 70s. And what we found is that, in buildings, in many buildings, women, particularly elderly women, and elderly minority women, would begin to use the social ties and the kind of skills that they'd use to survive in their own apartments and define departments to organize the building, and to begin to take care of the building within the resources that were available. And through that, they developed the ability to provide usually better housing services even without even before they reached a program that would give them help than they had been receiving under the old landlord situation. So I think, whenever you're looking, one of the things I've learned by working around issues of housing, and talking with very low income people is that very often, the bureaucratic analysis of the problem uses terms and categories, which are absolutely wrong for the experience of the problem, and very often leads to solutions, which are also absolutely wrong. So one main point I'd like to make is that homelessness is big can't become kind of a fashionable topic. But housing hasn't become a fashionable topic. And I think that's a problem. And you see it in the city of New York, our mayor spends a huge amount of time and energy dealing with assaults on his ability to handle homelessness doesn't spend much time and energy on the development and provision of housing. And I think the whole professional community and the bureaucratic response, which is made homelessness an institutional category is a serious part of the problem. And that somehow, we need to be on another route with that. I think that the These usually female led housing cooperatives developed out of this kind of organizing that I'm talking about, which April's an important part, Unknown Speaker 47:19 I think, provide an alternative model for housing development. And I think it's a very powerful alternative model. But unfortunately, it's powerfully alternative also, in the sense that, for it to work well, you really have to put resources active under the control of the people living in the housing, and you have to work with them in terms of technical assistance, and even organizational development and sophistication. But you can't make them be in a program your way. And that's really against, you know, sort of the form of bureaucratic housing provision. And I think, within the city of New York, it's been very interesting to look at how these Co Op programs have fared, you're not a favorite program, they're not a favorite approach. And they have, nonetheless consistently been one of the least expensive programs that around. And a reason I recently did a study with the Bronx with the task force on city the city wide Task Force on city property. We chose to study city on Prop presently and formerly city on property in the Bronx to look at who lived in it. What kind of housing was being provided by bluehat, the housing that was still owned by the city and that which was in this division of alternative management, which includes coops or a program to sell buildings back to private landlords after having rehabilitated them, and a program to sell them to community groups. We didn't have a very big community only sample. But the findings were extremely strong in two ways. One people living in this housing were very poor, very low income. Over half the sample were under made under $10,000 a year. And we had reached 2700 People in this housing that's we surveyed about 20% of the buildings. Out of this 69% of the people who responded to our questionnaire We come from a third of our population came from shelters of the of those 69% were female headed households and other people living in the city on housing 60% were female headed households. And when you looked at the demographics of male headed households and female headed households, the only real big difference was in education wasn't very different. being employed wasn't very different or even self reported. But 61 1% of the female headed households earn less than $10,000 a year as compared to 38%. The typical household in our study was shockingly large. We were, I was always surprised that there's like five people in the household. And the typical household that the average, you know, the the modal household would be one woman and three or four children. It says a lot about the Bronx that in a way, I don't think that's our image of it. We did a very small study that April was involved in Joe center ecumenical community development, and the households are much smaller in three, usually three person households. And but again, female headed households and very low Unknown Speaker 50:47 incomes. Unknown Speaker 50:49 But one of the most significant finding to me of our study was an overwhelming preference among tenants for tenant ownership and cooperative ownership and an overwhelmingly superior track record of housing production among the coops. On every measure that we studied. The coops produce the most satisfactory housing from the point of view of the residents plumbing was rated better lighting was rated better hot, water was ready. All building services were made it better security, cleanliness, social problems, like drugs, crime harrassment noise graffiti were all much longer. And this is another interesting finding that we had I just discovered this this week was that buildings with in which we had surveyed more women reported, she were social problems to me think we didn't have a completely we had a random sample of buildings, but not of people within them. But we think that probably it, I think it probably does mean that buildings and have more of a majority female population don't have as many of those kinds of problems. The other let's see, management was rated much better. What's interesting, though, is if you look at, certainly local housing policies, city housing policy, and even a tribal housing policy, that it co ops, I think we've seen as kind of, you know, the lunatic fringe. And usually in housing policy, when I speak to someone, even someone who's worked with has with cooperative housing, their first line is we'll call Oxford, Greg, those leaders are really special people. But you know, coops aren't for everybody. And I think that's a bias. I think that that's not necessarily true. If you look at the private ownership programs, which are supposedly for everybody, that what you see is that the city invested a huge amount of money in buildings that private landlords had abandoned, and then sold them back to private landlords, having invested city money and not making money out of it. And then the outcome of that 10 years later, five years later, is that those buildings are in worse shape than the buildings the city still owns. Now, is that really for everybody? Really? Another. Another interesting finding the leader to women is that women are in general more in favor of cooperative ownership. And I think Unknown Speaker 53:31 that there are a few lessons we can learn out of this, I think that it would housing policy ought to learn that tenant participation control and an even ownership are probably the best way to produce and retain good low income housing. This is a real redistribution of resources in the society. And therefore it's a really serious difficulty and but I think that the waste, the approach that I would like to try to take, although it's very hard to do is to try to document the cost somehow, or to at least make it clear what the cost of doing the wrong thing is and how, how it isn't just that by not doing the right thing. With housing, what you do is you generate homelessness, which is a huge cost to the society, you generate bad housing, and you waste your resources, and you also spend a lot of money on bureaucrats and lawsuits. And that probably, if you could total that up in itself, it would mean that even a great deal of support to towns and to tenant ownership would be possible just by freeing up some of that money. If you could tally the cost of the social social negatives the generation of have the creation of habitats that breed drugs, crime and I'm sure for child Development, the cost of that, to have that to our society is enormous. As all of us know, I mean, just the cost of raising a child in this society, even if you're wealthy is increased by this. I mean, just if you just think about the social tension and the difficulty of being in a public space, and all of the issues that are raised around that, I think that definitely, there could be another direction. There are a lot of details about this, but I don't think it's worth talking about. cops do however, need certain kind of support, people with this kind of incomes don't support housing within the current economic situation, the cost of housing is beyond what their income can support. And it isn't, it's been a really long time. In America, since we've had even a modest amount of support for the provision of housing. The previous administrations have been interested in selling off public housing. Section Eight, subsidy was one of those programs and entitlement programs just in and of itself too expensive for us to even consider. But it's required. The other thing is then to treat this housing as a public resource not to expect that it will be paying property taxes based on speculative, speculative kinds of levels. Things like for water charges are really having a devastating effect on low income housing, because a lot of the housing even if then much we restored is still expensive to maintain, and as plumbing problems. So a lot of the coops are almost going back into city ownership through just because of their inability to face sewer water charges on tax, and the property taxes. The other thing that these kinds of organizations do need and those of us who are involved in human services and social sciences want to recognize is to is help with organizational development, conflict resolution, leadership, development, leadership succession. You know, every major corporation in America spends a whole lot of money on organizational consultants. And those are people who have, you know, kind of every resource, it is crazy to think that because coops are characterized by conflict and why leadership comes in. So in that they're a different from any other organization in the world, be ineffective in providing housing, and see only for those special people who are charismatic leaders. But that doesn't deny that there are lots of problems in doing it. What I think we can learn from the people who are men and women, but really very often women is one once we asked, we all often asked that toward the end of interviews with people why there were so many women involved in, in the tenants associations, walk around, there aren't very many men in this building. And when you get down to these kinds of income levels, you do see that the statistics are real. Anyway, I think there is a very important organizing model, where Unknown Speaker 58:21 the emphasis is put on communication on consensual decision making on informing and developing consensus around what needs to be done and also the informal, taking care of housing and the involvement that in the recognition that housing is part of the fabric of a community and all of the problems of people in that housing are part of the problems of that housing offers a really important organizing. It's very different from the one that operates. It. Also, there's there's also a kind of a critical change. And I think organizing approaches that moves away from a protest clients kind of demand. Orientation is the only thing you're organizing for, to a kind of a self production of what you want that you're not asked. You're not just saying do this differently. You're saying work with me to do this the way it will work for us. And that's it. That's a very different I think all in there because I think there's a lot of important things to add to this. Unknown Speaker 59:40 I'm happy to introduce our fourth and previously missing panelists. Those who are new martial art well, maybe we better just move on and let you speak. Well, I think it's on women and homelessness and housing. Isn't isn't so I think people want to hear and so I'd like to make sure Unknown Speaker 1:00:15 I understand that you have I'm sure most people know you but could you give like a little tiny history five Unknown Speaker 1:00:24 and a half hour ago I just feel like sponsoring complexes across the streets and like the contrast between what this market looks like and intended to bring to this half of the country so Columbia University School of Social Work so this this very year is across the street on the issue of women many visual voices so the women that we're not here already overburdened those that are here you guys had everybody else but so I apologize for joining and may actually hear from you catch someone named Secretary Cisneros for the position of executive director see a chance to see what Unknown Speaker 1:01:26 sort of transition it is interesting Unknown Speaker 1:01:32 that you're talking about who this person is indeed, I think that he is a very important one he was oftentimes the as the director of the mayor's office in homelessness, housing is required to see that approximately 5500 incidents on housing Unknown Speaker 1:02:00 which we work with Unknown Speaker 1:02:06 housing authority, Unknown Speaker 1:02:07 which for me to try to Unknown Speaker 1:02:11 ensure that certain percentage wins in Congress. Central policy recommendations Unknown Speaker 1:02:53 are very, very interesting asked the government to give it away to doing business with transitional rehabilitation and support services for families and individuals. Transition commission recommended to use vouchers developed vouchers, vouchers for housing understand the man sitting next to yours be and that's actually a 50% of Unknown Speaker 1:04:01 what he had planned to do. Unknown Speaker 1:04:05 Because the physical crisis is considerable. Yeah, it's still in the document it's causing Unknown Speaker 1:04:14 to go into families and individuals. Housing Authority has in the last six years about 1000 years of Spanish still uses about 60,000 axis certificate expiration This is the consummate access housing commission recommended city government to leverage other resources looking Extending the advantage of doing privates typically Unknown Speaker 1:05:09 is up for grabs, physical places, all segments of the population with the voucher sources giving us an indication recommend creating the transition system. So essentially, government for the last 16 months has Unknown Speaker 1:05:40 issues and indeed, Unknown Speaker 1:05:43 as started to implement a system based on those recommendations and picking the first one that government should get on so to business Unknown Speaker 1:05:56 was that government should do to support the nonprofit jobs we would have stepped beyond that one to submit contract and Unknown Speaker 1:06:11 it's to do with doing he looked at the capitalism and established Homelessness Prevention Initiative where all the income support centers have diversion tools into innovation teams in place to try to help. Essentially, those teams are essential. Increasingly screening teams which intervention teams Unknown Speaker 1:06:46 doing eviction prevention work in about 10 of our income support centers in the city looked at that case for social intervention. And combined those two supports it was the city had diversion tools to integrate all of them be emergency assistance and housing diversions. Since the program's been operational 900 families under the Freedom your family's received two systems since January integrations into alliances never adjustments Unknown Speaker 1:07:46 with the maximum variance Unknown Speaker 1:07:52 as a social worker at the same time, I feel that it's a real accomplishment for social worker systems from Florida who are experiencing crisis and the first step was making sure that whatever legal families and whatever additional resources and supplements and other contaminants as it's brand new, just start expanding that addition to wonder who have invited the nonprofit sector talk to us about transitional shelters with a standard approach to support some are calling causing ratings causing the patient that I think quite frankly to begin with assistance services specific assistance. Unknown Speaker 1:09:24 We know they're limited opportunities and assistance to state entities. Just so interesting, so different. Unknown Speaker 1:09:47 After this, housing, education and education are one of the pieces that's gotten added to our program as follows services for families of transition into the Unknown Speaker 1:10:04 field that homelessness is an unbelievable disruptive experience on itself. In reality, it cannot exist under any circumstances given Unknown Speaker 1:10:19 least that we can do. Services and services aimed to families, connected communities Unknown Speaker 1:10:37 developing necessarily just Unknown Speaker 1:10:45 social services and supports, most of that's on the family side and suicide. Same kind of model. We're looking for to assess the needs of this system by better transition services. While everybody feels and focuses on 50% of the services in this program services Unknown Speaker 1:11:16 to people or similar services Unknown Speaker 1:11:24 are not just the US residents of the shelter program. This is being trained to disappear security officers in training to institutional and nutritional learning to work with some of the schools to work at the schools, etc. Then we have mental health transitional. Now I can say to you it's over and it's not tonation by any stretch, but you know, giving me access to capital services and transition services. In the 12 years of litigation, then the system has developed its hodgepodge of the systems in a system based Unknown Speaker 1:12:32 organization, effectiveness and efficiency. So do their Times reporter is doing a retrospective on this crisis more city. It's going back and talking to lots of people Unknown Speaker 1:12:48 just sort of doing the free cops years. During the contours it cost was principally involved with NASA and shelters. And lawsuits follow that line. And that was useful for a long period of time for system their standards of care. Unknown Speaker 1:13:22 It's now kind of albatross around its neck. Unknown Speaker 1:13:28 Office space and normally Unknown Speaker 1:13:37 are safer. Here's Unknown Speaker 1:13:40 some advice. And we face for the first time I think in the city's history. Callahan versus Carrie was originally lost go ahead are scary, creating the right shelter. Versus Unknown Speaker 1:14:05 versus several losses that ensure the shelter we're up against it probably never been in the station. Unknown Speaker 1:14:22 administration because the ministration has tried to say that adding capacity doesn't matter. We have to revisit Unknown Speaker 1:14:34 issues of discrimination, racism failures in schools. Unknown Speaker 1:14:43 Domestic violence, that indeed maybe 10 or 12 years ago as a crisis raise our shelter system to the New York Unknown Speaker 1:14:58 society It has been Unknown Speaker 1:15:07 a challenge to the administration not to build a bigger solar system or to make it was a system that was principally in the welfare state we're alive that was the agenda with consequent illustration, make it so that we know that that is Unknown Speaker 1:15:36 experiencing a crisis in this country Unknown Speaker 1:15:40 that the shelter system in the city of New York has to come up with recently we have seen we visit the system is training everybody not coming into the system, first of all services. The best the government can do to make the system make it worse, shorter period of time getting the necessary skills and support. And then for Unknown Speaker 1:16:22 the one thing that I think besides one thing that it's become really, really bad lives around politics. And people like you and I decide who gets to decide who gets to go with this show during Unknown Speaker 1:16:47 this special program school where you and I decide that we should not do business. Government is responsible for the needs of the system. To the extent that our social welfare system in the United States Rachael Ray has been doing it ever set up a transitional housing program, it's just not recommended. So we have finally decided to create simulations to run out operate, administer all the services, the transition facilities for single adults and the mandate will be to not build more buildings to make up all the shelters that are in the homeless programs, anything that has to do with homelessness, HRA transitional bases, emergency shelter transition services involve prison insurance right now there's a lot of Americans facilities and service development going on this was created a lot of broader concerns about that on social surplus Street location, street given the resources for this lecture, my background has become that the decision to create an agency with a great care for because the idea of this new agency is only to transition services people do not have the means transport which is a system which is if you dedicate some essential resources, narrow the focus Unknown Speaker 1:19:12 just need more people in the homeless services. Unknown Speaker 1:19:19 Hospital different social services so that's kind of nutshell redesign design. We're headed one other thing just like a blocker as a demonstration of how the administration is not interested in building some people will say all this began with the Maris five year plan and facilities around the city Unknown Speaker 1:19:51 CPA exam which is the remember discussion with that came to him $80 million and administer I decided to do instead of Unknown Speaker 1:20:02 transitioning soldiers into five sites to take a buddy of mine and to go to HQ where the development specialists are between 13 and 1400 additional Unknown Speaker 1:20:19 companies about 250 million families in their 60s 60 million will go to downsizing our 25 million you if there is some very strange need for specialized transitional or special occasions Unknown Speaker 1:20:47 like the principal surgeries now we're doing not that we don't work for you it's just that Unknown Speaker 1:21:02 we have to change your business so that's our plan to do I guess I would go back to my roots I agree with you that it's not the same as many days this break it's coming close to a tie up the short the short into the short answer question is build shelter. work does not say housing but it says children are needed to vary Unknown Speaker 1:21:57 and the focus of attention has to be citizens to save period and make it affordable and understand that will not be able to be able to afford that these days I don't think America is ready at this rate to decide that Unknown Speaker 1:22:27 it's okay if I don't take 50% profit on the house I bought myself a few times its value we have to decide as a citizenry and if we keep the focus on homelessness, homelessness is cheaper for instance is by far cheaper and it's on us I would say it's not on the person who is homeless it's on us to say everybody should not work to develop programs and shelters the system itself which is the other by the way I have to leave I feel very bad about this. I love some books are really interesting and leave you with one thought that someone a homeless person said this to me was living in Canada that was this case people have no weights jobs. And the key to the new is jobs and if you look down the street and sort of see somebody and think to yourself, which is better the or disguise unemployed to keep this job keeps me decided to quit, quit. And his comment was that it just was encouraging things what are your options? What are your options? Now because this is a housing issue here is a very physical space full on other people it's the interest of racism and discrimination. The lack of distribution of resources Unknown Speaker 1:24:42 I can only say stration. Conversation For me it's just Unknown Speaker 1:25:07 like our wishes sorry Unknown Speaker 1:25:30 thank you so much well, Unknown Speaker 1:25:46 well seesaw back and try to be positive as I'm sitting him shuttering, just thinking that when what is now HPD was developed, it was supposed to be a temporary agency, it was supposed to manage and monitor the increase landlord abandonment, and has now blossomed into this monster and monstrosity, that I sometimes say like, you know why I, and I'll tell you a little bit about it. I am the coordinator of coalition of buildings that are the tenant owned cooperatives and buildings that are in city ownership that I say that we should change our name from a coalition to the tiller weathermen and bomb HPD and maybe start all over again. So I shudder when the smart man sitting here and saying this agency is only going to more institutionalization, which I think is dangerous, it's more creating a monster for homelessness, to make it permanent. And but I'll try to get back to the positive because that's what I came here to talk about. I work as Susan said, across the street, my offices across the street, and while I'm very rarely there, that's where my station is. I work in West Harlem, north of 120/5 street, and I live in West Harlem. I work with primarily residents of city owned buildings, buildings that are owned and managed by HPD. And when I was originally asked to come sit on this panel, and I saw that the focus was on homelessness, I said, Well, you know, that's not really what I do. I work with tenants to try to preserve and to own their housing. I don't really deal with homelessness. But then I thought back and in a lawsuit that I was involved within the context of organizing a group of tenants, there was a study done by Anna to have an on, and she found that over 50% of the residents have shelters. Their last home was a city owned building. So while I don't directly deal with homelessness, I do like I am on with the people that I work with on the absolute last stop before homelessness before they get go into the street before they're doubled up before they're in a shelter. And so what we do is we add ecumenical and through this coalition of buildings, we try to encourage tenants to take over some some of the responsibility for where they live, take over if, when if and when it's possible, the management of their buildings through a couple of particular programs, and then eventually the ownership of their building. And I don't want to talk too much about that. I want to talk about the coalition itself. And the it's called the Community district nine till and city owned buildings coalition until stands for 10. An interim lease, which is a particular program that is run by HPD, the Division of Housing Preservation and Development and It allows tenants to manage and then eventually own their apartments as well as coops. This coalition started as a subcommittee of the community board, of which I was a member. And a meeting was called have residents of city owned buildings in Harlem until buildings in particular. And we realized while we were sitting there, that and let me just interject that I live in a building that was owned by the city was at one point on the list of buildings to be sealed up and demolished and is now attending uncooperative. So I have a lot of personal experience from which Unknown Speaker 1:30:48 we were sitting around talking about our problems, and you know, HPV, this HPV, that our coordinators, no one really helps us. And we said, Well, okay, why don't we help ourselves? You know, we're doing that in our houses, why don't we just connect on a neighborhood level, and do it together, and make this program a little bit better make it work a little bit more for us. And this was in 1989, that this meeting happened and in fits and starts, the coalition has floundered and now been, for the past two years, reconfigured outside of the community board as not an official organization, but a conglomerate, I guess. A group of buildings and we meet regularly, we deal with issues related to the nuts and bolts of our housing of how we are going to make this program which everyone who lives in until building, everyone who has gone through the process is convinced that it's set up to fail, it's in there are all sorts of mechanisms that are used by agencies that are supposed to help by elected officials, by everyone so that tenants don't own their buildings. But how is it that we can make the program work a little bit better for us, and we meet pretty much monthly, we deal with management issues in the building, we get an opportunity to network we share information about contractors about policies about the vacancies and in the HPD policies and how to overcome them. And also, we one of the major focuses is to encourage buildings that aren't in this process, the buildings that are still in city ownership, and in city management, to join us and to become a part of this program. So that there are more till buildings and more tenant cooperatives in this neighborhood. And we don't just deal with housing issues. We deal with every like almost everything under the sun, like there's a a couple of the people who are members of the coalition are trying now to start a food Co Op, getting some information on what other people are doing in other areas of the city, how we can start doing that. We're also trying to, to start a fuel Co Op with the minority fuel pump fuel company in the area, so that we can pull our resources and derive some benefit from all of the all of this money that we have, that we in isolated forms. We also are this summer, and I'm really pleased about this, we're doing a place Street for neighborhood children near one of the tilde buildings and members of the coalition are going to serve as volunteers for the play street and we got a little bit of money to hire an intern to coordinate and run it. Unknown Speaker 1:34:27 We also are in one of the it was mentioned earlier that I'm now the district leader of Part D in the 72 assembly district. And one of the reasons that I did that decided like after much deliberation to become a district leader is because I see what we're doing as intrinsically political. And each of the speakers before me said something about the need for CES dramatic change and systemic change. And we, I think that my moving on to this role and getting involved in the political arena that so negatively off times affects us will give me a chance to learn more, and then transmit to a broader audience and a year to four, forgotten audience and ignored audience and wrongly bored audience and get them also more involved in the political system in order to hopefully change. And I say wrongly, because when I worked with Susan, a few years ago, and we did a study, we found that residents intil buildings, and an HDFC is so more than the general population regularly. So people there sort of like like the Chinese would call the sleeping giant, the sleeping pills, buildings. We, we also are in the very, very, very beginning stages of trying to form a credit union because as I said, we have while we are, we are, we are poor, I don't know I'm a two income family, but by no means consider myself financially advantaged advantage. And most of the residents in West Harlem while the median income has gone up and still blows my mind to think it's $20,000. But the when we did our survey of residents of city owned buildings, the median income was more like seven. So it's a very poor population. And but when residents take over the management of their building, and the control of their building, the resources are tremendous when taken as an aggregate, and just totaling up the yearly rent rolls of the monthly rentals, excuse me, of the buildings that are now members of the coalition and a few more buildings that are in city ownership, who are about to become members of the coalition, we've got well over a million dollars, and I'm not even talking about all of the buildings, it's like 20 buildings, and you've got we've got a ton of money. And a lot of other people see that, but sometimes we don't see that. And so we're trying to get that message out that we can pull our resources, we don't, oh, we don't need outside assistance or services all the time to in order to derive the benefit of that pooling, and we can control it. That's the main reason that we started the coalition, that's the main reason that we keep working on it. And that's one of the the ultimate benefit is the betterment of our Housing, Community. And also the not just the physical benefit our community, but the interpersonal relationships that develop that have developed and will continue to develop as we move forward. Unknown Speaker 1:38:43 And the the title of this conference was something like women is change, change makers, and I thought like that in in Susan and Jackie live, it's both from abandonment to hope and the cute community household model and how women are particularly attuned to working together and doing things that are in their housing and then in their communities which seemingly they should they shouldn't be able to do and most people would are surprised that they're doing and I just think I always think you know, these are my, this is my mother, these are my aunts. This is my grandmother. This is what we always did. This is what they always do. They always did the unattainable surmounted the insurmountable. And I just like as examples, there's Mrs. Mrs. Adams who lives in a building on Riverside Drive a building that was abandoned by the building tenants to go over. They manage the building themselves before they got into the toll program, they are now in over six years, they managed to building in the 10 of the total program. They're now a co op, they've been a co op for a very long time. And it's truly an integrated building. There's, there's almost every ethnic group in the building, there's there, almost every income level in the building. And they are really like, the gorgeous mosaic that Mayor Dinkins likes to speak about. Right in that building. In my own building with all of our problems, we have done some of the same thing we've taken, we've taken our destiny in our own hands. And there are hundreds literally of examples of this, in, in just Harlem. And in West Harlem, there are more than 60 examples, successful examples of at the end end stage when the buildings are cooperatives, and owned and managed by the tenants. And anywhere along that process. There are a few 100. And so like, it is a while the housing picture is grim, when you look at a walk down the streets of Harlem, and there's a lot of abandonment, there's a lot of and I think like willful abandonment, on the part of landlords on the part on the part of the private sector, on the part of the municipal government. There's a lot of destruction, a lot of encouragement of tenants to lose relationships with where they're living, to not have Unknown Speaker 1:41:47 not have a commitment to their space, their personal space, and their space, meaning their communities, their neighborhoods, their blocks, even their buildings, because it's such a frustrating process to just keep the housing in livable condition. And there are so many forces working against tenants that tried to do that. And, and I'm not just talking about like the obvious landlord who tries to bust up attendance Association, but almost daily are running to tenants who they've tried to get a repair a simple thing like a hole in the Morphix, so that rats don't come in and bite their children. And after 15, phone calls, after 30 visits to the site office after maybe writing a letter or to calling up the mayor calling up this person or that person, because the whole still has not been fixed. The hole is down getting big. Your child now has eaten some lead, eaten some lead has inhaled lead dust is now lead calls. And the rat has bitten their child and then and so what are they to do but to do you know, they say buy this building manage this building, I want to move I just want to get out of here. And I think that that process started a long, long time ago. And it's been systematic. In Harlem. It's been systematic, not just in Harlem, where we see the disastrous effects of it in the South Bronx. But it's also happening in Harlem, where they haven't actually birthed the buildings down, but where they're burning them down from the inside, and then redeveloping them and saying we're doing a great thing, but 50,000 are lost here. And 1000 are built there. It doesn't make any sense to me. And and it makes me very frustrated. Because I see. Yeah, it's it's a problem. People need housing, people need shelter. But let's talk about preservation. And everyone also said, let's, let's revisit the preservation question. People need to stay where they are. But when I started doing this work, three years ago, I couldn't find another organizer who worked in the city. And the city owns over 30,000 units of housing. And that was just amazing to me that there are all of these organizers. Everyone's calling themself a housing organizer, attending organizer, but no one's working with these people. But then everyone is going like not everyone but then there's this whole slew of people who are going to get jobs to deal with homelessness, to deal with them in shelters. But then no one is there stemming the tide and then there's the other people the not for profits who end the for profits who are then saying, oh we need to develop we need to develop we need to develop units, but then all of the people who could stay there who could get, like Susan was saying some of the services, the organizational development services, some of the resources. And if the process were made a little bit more easy for tenants, to own their buildings, to manage their buildings, and buildings, to develop a different relationship to their community, before they leave their community and enter the shelter system, and then have to be re integrated with a whole bunch of other service providers, then it would make a lot more sense to me, and it would be cheaper, and I totally don't understand the comment about homelessness being cheaper effort. So, you know, I'm like, sorry, that I'm disjointed that I just, like get riled up about this, because I think that even with all of the agencies, all of the organizations, all of the institutions that are working on parts of the problem, the seemingly easiest solution is not being dealt with one by two, or three. And I said three years ago, I was the only one that I could find. And now maybe there are five. So over three years that you've got four other organizers who work with 30,000 units, and there's a slew more coming into city ownership. Unknown Speaker 1:46:48 But again, it's you know, it's the picture is grim. housing, housing, the lack of housing is a problem. The housing that exists for the poorest population, the most disenfranchised population, the people who are on the fringes, the African Americans, the Latinos, the women are, the picture is extremely grim. But there are signs of hope. There are lots of people who are working in isolated areas trying to, to keep their housing to help others keep their housing to, to build on what they filled in, maybe their buildings, and do something in their communities. And one of the things that I see as my mission is to try to bring them together so that that they can become a force that is reckoned with, and others aren't always speaking for them. But they are speaking for themselves. And I say they but I mean, we because I'm one of them. And then I do think that we are largely, and you know, I was thinking about this are we the catalysts for redevelopment? Are we like these agents for change? And I think that we are because there's the market, like market forces have changed a little, there's been a lot, a lot of private investment in communities that had been disinvested. In, in the 70s, like Harlem, Microsoft, like that stock investment from private sources and investment from government sources. And there's a lot more political focus on some on these communities. But when you when there was no one else there, and everyone else had left, we were the ones who stayed and we were the ones who stem the tide, and at least in Harlem were the ones who had made sure that Harlem didn't become some of the worst of like, the South Bronx, and the buildings, a lot of the buildings were abandoned. All of the buildings weren't abandoned the some of the tenants refuse to leave. And now they're, they've been become an inspiration to a lot of people in not just their buildings, but in the neighborhood. And it's, it has sort of caused a chain reaction, and then the not for profits have come back and they're doing development. They're doing management. And now again, there's a lot of talk about banks even coming back to Horace I think it's just talked about was See? So I think we are these, like we were mostly women, we are these changemakers. And we have been catalysts for the redevelopment of our communities the holding on and the redevelopment of our communities. And so, you know, I was I was wondering how I would fit in to all of this and is what I do relevant to this conference. And yeah, it is. Unknown Speaker 1:50:31 And then I guess just as to end, I was just like, I just had these this thought and music is seemingly unrelated, but it is its intrinsic to my existence, and a lot of hours are selected historically, as an African, it is spiritually important to me. And when I was leaving, I was listening to as before I left, I was listening to Sweet Honey in the Rock, singing, good news. And so what's the good news? And she was singing, that it's a spiritual, I'm going to lay down the world, and shoulder my cross. And I was thinking, yeah, that's what we do. That's what we're doing. We've told everyone who told us that we don't know what we're doing. All you are, are a statistic and an entity. And we decided we're not. And we are building our world our way. And that's what, that's what we're doing. And I hope that we can do it on a larger level and on a more cohesive level, and assist each other. And that's what I that's what I do. And I hope that's what I do. Unknown Speaker 1:52:12 In relating the housing that you work on to homelessness, and besides 50% of the people in that study, homeless, coming from city owned housing, in our study, 30% had come from shelters into this house. It's really, very closely related, even when treated as complaint. Unknown Speaker 1:52:34 Do you have some questions? Or comments? Unknown Speaker 1:52:46 Just wondered about the development of leadership in the community. I know that you say that they are going to be the moment for taking care of the but and and certainly impressed by the work that you've done. But I'm thinking that there are a lot of other women who in that same position for a number of different dealing with all kinds of other things that can stand in the way of getting people getting what are the kinds of support to their work? What is it that you need people more in the building? What happens to this kind of leadership pulled together and to be determined? Or? Or is your need to develop that on there? What is the support network there that can help to get them and just something as simple as getting rid of completely off your building, get get rid of it one day, and it's back the next day? And you're just and you continue doing it? And then you just give up? What is the support? Network is there for those women? Leadership? And then why can't we get them? You know, I'm just Unknown Speaker 1:54:13 I think that largely, there isn't a support network. And that's part of the problem. They're there a lot of the a lot of organizations that assist our, in the business of assisting with things like either social service needs, like negotiating certain bureaucracies, like HRA or HPE in some cases, or the court systems, things like that. But they're I can't I don't think that there are any organizations or systems other than you informal networks that help with leadership development help with fostering new development help with like bringing people who haven't classically participated in the building or in the block or the neighborhood. And I think that that's something that's needed. That's the I know, that's something that Susan and I only see each other talk about. Unknown Speaker 1:55:26 Actually, I'm working with the National Congress of neighborhood woman has a public housing project in West and East Harlem. Johnson houses, the leader of that EPA was a member of the National Congress of neighborhood women, and she wanted to do a couple of kind of combined research, organizing and organizational development together. And so the three of us, the tenants Association, housing environments, research group in the National Congress of neighborhood, women are trying to work together to do that, to make research be part of increased information and learning to, you know, analyzing enrollment, you want going after it, and also through the whole process to get people involved in talking to their neighbors and deciding what they want. I have to say, though, what you were saying about dealing with agencies, is it true that the tenants of the building and the National Congress here, it's important that the Housing Authority put some money into this, because they get millions of dollars a year, supposedly for tenant training, and they spend it on their staff, and they don't feel they're getting much out of that. And so they want to dispense of it on this. But I have to say that I almost don't want to do this anymore. Just trying to get a contract with the housing authority is an you know, almost ruins your life. So imagine living in the building. And I do think that that there that a whole lot of what people do for the poverty problem is to take up the time of poor people so that they just start to discriminate to do anything else. And I don't know if I want to work with any varsity agencies after the ICO. model experiments you may see I can identify potential. However, it's hard to get people in well, we organize them Unknown Speaker 1:57:43 when they have an interest in coherence, your participants read it. It just seems like there has to be Unknown Speaker 1:58:19 I don't want to answer all the questions. But um, yeah, there has to be intensive case management. And there has to be there has to be well, maybe not even that there has to be services and there have to be escape mechanisms for people and there has to like there, there's no drug treatment. And so the woman who is addicted to crack is going to stay addicted to crack until she gets aids. Or until she dies. Because she can't say I want help and find help. And then she's not going to be able to take care of her children because of that. And so yeah, there needs to be services in place for them. But you can then if the husband is battering the wife, maybe you need to approach the husband and get him interested in he lives in the building. You know, there like there, there's more than one way or you work with the people who are most interested. And maybe right now you can't deal with them. And you find something else that they need and steer them toward that and form the tenants Association and then perhaps later they'll follow on follow in. Oh, it's fixed. You fixed once you started Yeah, you And well, you don't do it yourself. But the tenants, the tenants, collect the rent, the tenants Association collects the rent and they make the repairs with the rent, the city provides also some major repairs in this particular program that we were talking about. And so, yeah, that I'm not gonna say they do the best job, but they do. And but just, you know, yeah. Maybe it's not fair. And you know, every time I meet someone from HPD, they, they think that I'm like, a crazy, which maybe I am. But um, they I went to a open house yesterday, and exactly what you were saying there. There's an organization now in Central Harlem, that just started largely funded by HPD, with a former colleague of mine, and they're looking at community organizing in a very holistic manner, a small geographic area, dealing with housing, dealing with social services, dealing with other issues, like education, dealing with community open space. And I think that that's the best approach. And I wonder why, you know, the movement has been around for longer than I've been living. And we're just getting to this point. Yeah, I think it's something that's needed. And it's high time. And thank God that it's HPD that's doing it, maybe it won't be corrected, maybe, we'll see. Unknown Speaker 2:01:44 I'm wondering if I can make a comment, which is just a little bit of a pitch for the bigger picture. Because I think that what you're talking about is terribly important, and especially the organizing and focus on people organizing in their neighborhoods. But I want to say I think we also need to think about a bigger neighborhood, and a bigger community, which is, this whole country was all of us. And to keep in mind, the big picture, which is the incredible lack of resources, I mean, you're talking about holes in the wall or crack addictions, we sometimes tend to focus on individuals or on very specific problems, we need to keep in mind, the incredible disparity in income and resources that exists in this country. And, I mean, this is clearly a country that has resources, but it's spending them not on the kinds of issues that we're talking about. And unless we do something about that, I think it will be hard. And I think these things go together. I mean, I think you do the community organizing that you also put pressure on the bigger system as a whole and those things can work together. Unknown Speaker 2:03:01 Can I say something on that too, because I think the bigger picture is very important in the in the last chapter. So we tried to put that together. And really what you have to get to is kind of movement in position. But I and I think that part of the problem of advocating policies at the bigger at the bigger picture level is that they're only occur if there's a wall behind. And so having a way to bring people who are not being advantaged by the current situation into the political, they really have to be pursued together. But I think they would change because I think, you know, I was struck when Mark Marshall Martin said that New York has produced more housing in the west of the country probably is true. I think even when money is spent, because it's not spent from a position of trust in the people you're trying to help or an understanding of what it takes to build community that it doesn't have its impact. And what I've seen in these, these tall buildings, is that such a little money goes such a long way if it's used right. And I feel like if we I'm sorry, it's very frustrating, someone from the administration would stay long enough to ask the ask a question. But I feel like that you're we need more resources, but we shouldn't just advocate around that issue. And we shouldn't just advocate around distributional issues. Because if we don't get down to making every single agency accountable, and every single program has something to do with it, then it's not going to matter, then that's what happened. That's why people got sick of the new system. Great is that it wasn't just as expensive it was ineffective. And I really think that I can think of so many things that could be done without spending a single more