09:16:36 and national levels to push for policies that make housing, more fair and accessible to everyone, our enforcement staff. Investigate complaints about fair housing violations to find out when and where housing discrimination is occurring staff also assist
09:16:44 victims with filing administrative complaints and lawsuits to hold discriminated accountable, or home ownership Protection Program provides counseling services for homeowners facing foreclosure.
09:16:59 Lastly, look back at it and the fiction eviction defense program during the pandemic to provide legal representation for residents facing eviction, including undocumented community members who may not qualify for other services.
09:17:15 See, I told you all they do a lot, they do the most, it's great. We are a statewide agency that works in tandem with partner organizations and community members and put into this work without you.
09:17:26 So thank you.
09:17:28 We would love for you to get more involved in our work through working with us to offer fair housing training to your staff members clients or students making referrals, providing input on policies that impact your community or alerting us if you see
09:17:43 housing discrimination in any form, completing our action alerts are becoming a mystery shopper or tester. You can read more about our work at La fair housing.org, and there will be a link in the chat.
09:17:57 Finally, this year has shown us how important it is to be agile and able to shift our work as needed, depending on the immediate needs in our community.
09:18:08 Your support makes that possible. We're asking people in our network to consider signing up as a recurring donor in any amount today, also, you know, people get them to sign up as well.
09:18:20 The links are in your chat, and I would like to turn it over now and introduce to Shauna Hill will fax brilliant steadfast awesome executive director and really I can't say enough good things about her, and she will be moderating the first panel so thank
09:18:36 you so much.
09:18:38 Thank you Sarah for that welcome and for that introduction and always thank you for your service on the facts board, we appreciate you.
09:18:47 Okay, so welcome again everyone and good morning thank you so much for sticking with us through these tough technical difficulties. We certainly did some practice runs and and had no problems, and then today you know we've all been kept on our toes, but
09:19:17 certainly had my coffee this morning, and I think we've got things is not fully resolved mostly resolved and so we're so thankful for your patience. We appreciate you all, and, and we're looking forward to a very exciting conversation today.
09:19:24 So as Sarah mentioned my name is Shawna Hill, and I serve as the facts, Executive Director, as we start today and jump right into our first panel. I want to remind you all that you can use the q amp a function to ask questions throughout the conversation
09:19:41 today, please post questions in the q amp a box rather than the chat, and then please also feel free to post your questions throughout the panel, rather than saving them until the end and we'll address them.
09:19:56 As we have appt as we have time also want to remind everyone that you can see the full agenda, including all of the speaker BIOS at fit for a king.org slash agenda, and we'll go ahead and post that link in the chat, again it's fit for a king.org slash
09:20:14 agenda. And I want to refer you all there to check out the bios of our amazing speakers, because we will not have time to get into detailed descriptions of everyone's backgrounds today so please do feel free to read about our panelists at fit for our
09:20:33 king.org slash agenda.
09:20:36 slash agenda. So we are now going to move into the first conversation today, which is titled 606 missing homes, how not in my backyard opposition to affordable housing perpetuates segregation.
09:20:52 And I will ask all of our panelists to please go ahead and turn your cameras on and we will get started.
09:21:16 All right. And as we have everyone joining us.
09:21:23 We will go ahead and get started This morning we have john at COC with us we have Michelle Palais soo Mobley and Nelly Katzman to have a conversation about how not in my backyard sentiment which we will abbreviate today as NIMBY, and I am by how NIMBY
09:21:42 opposition perpetuates segregation in our community and in communities across the country. And we'll start first with a question that will pose to sue Mobley.
09:21:54 So Sue zoning and land use policy have long played a role in encouraging and enforcing segregation across the country including in New Orleans, and we heard in the welcome from Sarah, how this history is really rooted in the displacement of indigenous
09:22:14 peoples from their land. Right. And so as we see this pattern continue. I'm wondering if you can share a little bit of historical context to help us understand how we have come to have such segregated housing patterns in New Orleans today.
09:22:33 My favorite question.
09:22:36 First of all, thank you for having me. And for the invitation to share historical context which is basically my favorite thing to do.
09:22:46 And so, cities have been planned for millennia, we can look at workers towns and architect villages around the pyramids and see evidence of planning and zoning long before there was a field of planning or any zoning laws, putting the cemeteries on the
09:22:59 on the outskirts of town rather than having bodies in the center with a land use decision that New Orleans was making in the 1700s, as was the grid of streets laid out in the same pattern as other colonial cities across the Atlantic region.
09:23:12 But the field of planning and the laws around zoning and land use, they really give their legs under them, the beginning of the 20th century.
09:23:20 The first major zoning ordinance is passing in LA in 1904 and New York in 1916, and they come into existence in the American context with some very explicit goals around race and class.
09:23:44 based residential segregation ordinances. That's Richmond Baltimore Louisville, Oklahoma City, New Orleans and St. Louis, just to name a few, and St Louis is where that practice gotta check.
09:23:56 St Louis is Rachel zoning ordinance was challenged in 1917 with Buchanan v Worley made it all the way to the United States Supreme Court, the court throughout the law on the basis that it violated the 14th amendment.
09:24:08 As you probably can imagine that was quite a topic of discussion at the 10th National Conference of city planning in 1918 in St. Louis.
09:24:18 You can read the proceedings online, you should. It was a barn burner of a meeting.
09:24:23 It's also the meeting where many of the terms practices and frameworks that we still see us first come into play.
09:24:31 So explicitly blight is used as indicated by race, class and nationality of residents, rather than the condition of buildings and William Stanton from Philadelphia proposed as a cure for blade that cities make strenuous objection to proposals for building
09:24:49 flimsy structures for the housing of workmen as these structures would degenerate into near shacks, especially in view of the fact that as a rule, they would not be occupied by the most careful class but residents.
09:25:02 See the first strategic application of planning and zoning to support detached dwellings sighs requirements that would develop into a widespread national model of single families zoning Frederick Law Olmsted suggested zoning and building at different
09:25:17 scales for different occupants. Those having certain desires and certain limitations which are more or less, coinciding with their nationality.
09:25:27 We also see the first suggestions of the use of eminent domain and public private partnerships for what would become slum clearance and later urban renewal.
09:25:36 Nelson kind of proposed adoption of the German system for containing industrial zones and the residents who work in them, in which cities, take large sections of land raise the buildings reflect the area and develop the district's cooperation of the municipality
09:25:51 with private owners, and they may even have helped create the NIMBY.
09:25:58 And they certainly strategize to target the land use decision makers of that era Lawson party property tax reformer suggested popularizing the idea of preserving the value of a man's house, get that talked about when you meet one of these but judges,
09:26:14 tell him about it, so that when by and by a case comes before him as a judge, it will already be entirely familiar to him.
09:26:23 So the fathers of the field of American urban planning work together to strategize and develop tactics for a slightly more subtle form of racial discrimination in class exclusion than that which the court struck down the roots of the field are actively
09:26:37 explicitly segregationist, but they got a lot of help over the years from adjacent fields law, banking, public health and education.
09:26:54 Thanks, is that, as far as we're going I just want to, we're hanging out in 1918.
09:27:02 Okay, all right. Oh, okay. I just, you know, because there was there's so much, and I just wanted to make sure that you were able to get to where you were going without, without us moving on, so thank you for that.
09:27:15 So we're going to move over to Nelly and to Chris shell. And I want to ask you specifically about your experiences of NIMBY opposition to affordable housing.
09:27:28 So as you both know love facts, recent report titled delayed until downsized or denied tells us how more than 600 affordable homes right, more than 600 units of affordable housing, were prevented from being built in the city of New Orleans.
09:27:48 In the last 15 years because of this not in my backyard sentiment. So, Nellie if we can start with you. I'd like to hear about what your experience with NIMBY opposition to affordable housing has been so much in my through my role as director of the committee
09:28:08 for a better New Orleans, and previously. I was working on the feet Greenway and really galvanized communities around that space.
09:28:17 I've been a lot of neighborhood association meetings, one neighborhood association meeting that I went to was in one of the neighborhood So Jason to the Greenway.
09:28:26 It was directly across the Greenway from the live feed, which is a permanent affordable housing development.
09:28:35 And I sat in on their first meeting present were 10, or so residents, none of whom had been in neighborhood for more than two years, and none of whom looked like the people who I saw every day in the neighborhood around there.
09:28:53 Most importantly, nobody was black.
09:29:10 And I looked around and I don't know if this is going to work. I'm certainly Who are these folks to sort of kind of name this neighborhood claim it without anybody else in the room.
09:29:22 And, and when the council person for district be.
09:29:26 You may know her Latoya Cantrell
09:29:31 was asked to give feedback on what's going on in the district and so on and so forth. She said, Now I know you're not about to make a vote and make your decisions about how this organization is going to be run when nobody in here looks like the neighborhood,
09:29:45 when you don't have the representation that you need.
09:29:48 And
09:29:51 she was right, of course, the folks in the room didn't have the representation that they need. They did go ahead and elect their officers and set their bylaws.
09:30:04 With that lack of representation. And the reason I mentioned this is because not only when and affordable housing project comes up in a neighborhood.
09:30:14 But really at the foundation of the block of community we're using as a proxy for quote unquote community voice.
09:30:24 It starts from that foundation.
09:30:27 And then when an affordable housing project does come up, and you have already, not necessarily all the right voices at the table. You have folks whose structures their entire organizations were built to designed to uphold and to serve a certain group
09:30:45 of people.
09:30:47 It allows some of this language to come in. Here's some of the things that I hear used a lot of them are summarized very well in in the report which if you haven't read it and you're participating please do read it is so valuable and important.
09:31:03 And here's some of the things that people are concerned about. I'm afraid that the crime is going to go up.
09:31:08 Because of this, development, and it's a lot of anti density and anti renter language worries about trash and noise and parking.
09:31:18 We just saw this happen uptown a big to do about parking.
09:31:26 And then things that seem a little bit less insidious like design and neighborhood character, which is my personal favorite, because nobody really knows what it means.
09:31:38 And if we are upholding the neighborhood character, that one group once without a discussion about what the character of the neighborhood truly is.
09:31:47 That sort of vague language allows allows anti renter sentiment anti density sentiment.
09:31:55 to kill some of these projects.
09:31:57 I know that crucial has some really salient points here so I don't want to take too much time.
09:32:03 Well thank you, Ellie I also just want to add as we move on to crescendo that. Now you've raised. What is critically important part of the facts delayed until downsized report, which is that majority white neighborhood associations right, which are very
09:32:26 unrepresentative of the racial demographics of the city of New Orleans are really granted so much power in our zoning and land use decisions, and they have the ability, these groups that are unrepresentative have the ability, because of choices made by
09:32:43 local elected officials to stop these kinds of developments. And so Chris shell, given our understanding of these dynamics right, we'd love to have you speak to your experiences working in the advocacy space, where you've encountered NIMBY opposition
09:33:02 to affordable housing.
09:33:05 Again, thank you for having me here hailing from Houston. And so, the example that I wanted to share is kind of the opposite of what Nellie was was just talking about.
09:33:21 There was a development in Houston and I'm not sure know to what extent folks are familiar with Houston, but this is specifically the Galleria area. So a very you know well established.
09:33:34 This is an area, very well established and also very high income.
09:33:38 This is where you know there's several shops in malls and this is a robust Business Center.
09:33:54 There was an agreement with the city and with hood that the Housing Authority would actually take steps to actually develop a site, specifically in a high opportunity area.
09:34:05 And so, this particular project was actually on the was proposed rather to be on the Houston housing authorities property that they owned. And this was a mixed income multi, multi family development.
09:34:20 And this was to be like right over 230 apartments, 70% of them will be available to families who earn 60%, am I 20% with market rate, and 10%, which was just 23 apartments were set aside for extremely low income families and for public housing residents.
09:34:40 And that was the hook that the community groups really sunk the teeth in this public housing How dare you bring this public housing into our community.
09:34:50 So, of course it was a public comment. And you know I attended several public comment period before which so I just thought from the total and just, you know, give my support for the project.
09:35:01 And just to show you know, just give you how distinctly I remember this. It was a rainy Wednesday. And I remember distinctly thinking, Okay, it's rainy, it's Wednesday, no one's going to be there.
09:35:12 And when I walked into the elementary school cafeteria that there were over 200 people that were there ready to give their comment. And so, I, you know, was immediately just struck by that.
09:35:26 And I automatically felt like a shift and you're like oh wow this is like this is not what's typical, and as the Housing Authority is making their presentation.
09:35:36 I'm hearing people just loudly say things like, oh, it pays to be a loser. What about the citizenship where they check that. Oh, this sounds like the same plan they have a busing years ago.
09:35:48 I mean just blatant, they're going to bring our property value down.
09:35:53 And while you know everyone's entitled to their own position. I was extremely uncomfortable because this was NIMBY in its purest form, like you hear about the things but to actually witness it in that space.
09:36:07 And so I went on and I, although I was very hesitant, I was nervous.
09:36:13 I went ahead and get engaged my public comment. And just basically kind of call the folks out on what they were saying in the things that I was hearing, and really telling them that they have been these people undesirable without even knowing them and
09:36:27 just just using these, these racial veils and reminding them that these people are the same folks that are getting you at Starbucks and Whole Foods Market, as you go about your daily routine.
09:36:37 These are the folks that are handling your banking needs these are the folks that are serving your colleagues, as you're closing business deals, however you have not determined, or been okay with them actually living in your, in your zip code, they can
09:36:51 help you sustain your quality of life, but they can't be your neighbor. And so I challenge everyone to examine their reasoning for the opposition, and to face their fears, and to stop succumbing to to rhetoric.
09:37:05 So as you may imagine my remarks were not unethical but on, um, there were booze and other outbursts.
09:37:13 And I actually after talking to media was there, I had to actually be escorted to my car, because people were there were actual crowds that were yelling things me because I stayed at the obvious.
09:37:27 So one of the things I just want to kind of raise or just you know so that's that was the actual experience right but but then you have the inside game, what's going on.
09:37:38 The facts are, this was a proposed development. Because, in response to Hurricane Ike, so this was a project where there was no city funds that were going to this project.
09:37:49 The opposition was whitelist city council members, a school board member the state representative.
09:37:55 The property was owned by the Houston Housing Authority. And in order for the Housing Authority move forward, all they needed was a city council support or either no objection, and response, our mayor, would not even put it on city council agenda siding
09:38:13 that be units were too expensive, remind you this didn't even come out of the city budget at all. This had nothing to do with the city yet. That was his reasoning for not putting it on city council agenda.
09:38:25 Another thing I kind of want to raise, is that oftentimes you know Houston is looked at as the place that has no Sony, but zoning does not know the lack of zoning does not really lay out a plan or a pathway for more affordable housing, and to curb nimbyism,
09:38:45 if anything, it's being more so the Wild Wild West.
09:38:50 And but if people will kind of craft their agendas, in a more open format.
09:38:58 Thank you for sharing I think your last point is important we here, and we're starting to hear more, you know people who work in this space, we're hearing more and more often.
09:39:08 Well, the quote unquote solution is to just get rid of zoning right if there's no zoning anywhere. Then we won't have issues of nimbyism killing affordable housing developments and so appreciate hearing your perspective that in Houston, where they're
09:39:28 is no zoning, we still see white lead neighborhood groups, given the power and authority to kill affordable housing developments, so so john, we're going to move over to you for the legal perspective, right.
09:39:43 If we know that the end of zoning does not equal the end of nimbyism.
09:39:52 What about the law as a way to fight back against these behaviors. And so, I want to ask you because we know that newbie opposition to affordable housing is often based on racist stereotypes, as we've heard, and as we've experienced in New Orleans the
09:40:13 opposition is often based on language around quote unquote crime. We've heard at the fact opposition based on proposed developments that will according to white lead neighborhood associations bringing, quote unquote, drugs, right quote unquote prostitution,
09:40:32 there are all these race based stereotypes when it comes to the development of affordable housing that we continue to hear. And so I'd like to know from you.
09:40:43 What have courts said about race based nimbyism. Is this an issue, and we know it is that has been addressed by courts and what is typically been the outcome.
09:40:56 Yes, thank you, Shauna, I'm so glad to be here this morning with you all.
09:41:02 The courts have dealt with this on a number of occasions. There's a wonderful law called Fair Housing Act that was passed in 1968, that allows courts to address these situations and right wrongs.
09:41:15 And unlike a lot of laws in our country.
09:41:19 The courts, actually deal well with these situations and generally do the right thing, principally because I think the Fair Housing is such a strong, robust civil rights law, we normally think about the Fair Housing Act in terms of applying when there's
09:41:34 racial discrimination in renting a house or purchasing a house, but it also applies and what we're talking about here is when a city municipality prevents the building of affordable housing in a way that harms are limits the housing opportunities of African
09:41:53 Americans.
09:41:55 I'll, I'll just be brief here and just relate this by illustrating this through two cases, the one is the St Bernard case, our neighbor down river where the court said the St Bernard Parish was violating the Fair Housing Act, when they placed a moratorium
09:42:15 on building multifamily housing, and they looked at several things to determine that this is actually racial discrimination illegal racial discrimination.
09:42:26 It noted that African American households are 85% more likely to live in multifamily housing, than white households, 52% of African American households in the New Orleans metropolitan area live in rental units compared to just 25% of Caucasian households,
09:42:42 and then African American households are much more likely to have incomes within the income ranges for the proposed affordable housing there.
09:42:51 The court also looked at in courts and other courts in looking at these cases also look at kind of a city's history in dealing with racial discrimination, whether that be have a situate their schools or their housing policy whether they've previously
09:43:10 excluded African Americans from certain parts of the city.
09:43:13 Whether when they have public hearings, like we've been talking about. They get community input and often what's significant to these courts, is whether the community is using kind of this race coded language like this, going to bring light into the our
09:43:29 neighborhood or it's going to bring crime here, or it's going to create a ghetto. There's a usually race coded language is the language where people actually mean we don't want black people living next to us.
09:43:40 And so, it's of course look at who is actually going to be affected and then also the atmosphere and the circumstances around the decision that the municipality makes to determine whether this Valley State Fair Housing Act.
09:43:55 And now the cases of famous case from Long Island called the Huntington case for 1988, also a good case.
09:44:03 They are a white suburb, which is restricted multifamily housing to a largely minority area, and also the town board refuse to admit that ordinance to allow construction of subsidized housing.
09:44:19 And the town's ordinance as it existed prohibited construction of multifamily housing, except in only two very small areas of town where black folks live 95% of its residents were whites and African Americans were only 3% of the population.
09:44:39 And the town, historically had a shortage of affordable rental housing for low and moderate income households, and therefore the impact of this restriction failed three times greater on black folks that did on the overall population.
09:44:55 So there the court order the town to get rid of its ordinance restricting where you can build affordable housing there because it found that their restriction in this case constitute a racial discrimination.
09:45:10 So those are just two illustrations about where courts come in and how they kind of analyze these things very, very briefly. And like I say, you know, generally, courts are doing the right thing.
09:45:20 In these cases, generally when the, you can supply the evidence because I think the Fair Housing Act is such a robust wonderful so rights law, it's wrapped the same brief.
09:45:30 Thank you so much john and i know this is a topic that could go on forever I do want to ask you about one more area, you know, we certainly are talking about race based nimbyism today right but there are other ways in which this not in my backyard sentiment
09:45:44 keeps people out of certain communities. And so if you could talk just a little bit about how nimbyism is a disability justice issue as well. I'd appreciate hearing that.
09:45:56 Thank you.
09:45:57 Yeah, I want to say I want to say two things about that.
09:46:00 So, where are you normally see this is when people want to locate sober homes in single family housing areas of city, and several homes are where people who are recovering from drug and alcohol addiction, go to get sober.
09:46:18 There's, there's support networks there there's classes they go to there's help find them a job etc etc.
09:46:24 These people are usually housing insecure so it helps in that area too. And the Fair Housing Act says that if you're recovering from drug and alcohol addiction and not presently using course, you're considered to have a disability.
09:46:39 And when they sober homes.
09:46:42 Start in neighborhoods, oftentimes what happened is actually in my experience with doing these cases homeowners associations oppose them and they think criminals are living next to them there's going to be crime in their neighborhood.
09:46:55 And so they tried to stop it and get it closed and usually what happens is these. She usually unrelated people living under the same roof. And so they're usually in violation of the, of the zoning ordinances so what you can do is you use the Fair Housing
09:47:11 Act to request a reasonable accommodation in zoning to ask for basically an exception and zoning to allow this surrounding to stay open because the people that are in there needed in order to stay sober.
09:47:24 That's usually how this comes up. And the second thing I want to say is, these cases are also usually about race.
09:47:34 If not, they're usually about the other people know what I'm talking about. It's just a matter of not being able to prove that part of it. And so the evidence is not that robust, the opposition to this server home is race based or so.
09:47:51 Thankfully, the residents of this house are covered by the Fair Housing Act and they can take advantage of its mandates to request a reasonable accommodation so the federal reporters are filled with cases like this and thankfully they usually come out
09:48:07 the right way so it's definitely nimbyism is is directed at people with disabilities in that respect, without a doubt, thank you john.
09:48:17 And we're going to move into some additional questions for all the panelists. and I just want to remind us that we have interpreters who are working very hard to make sure that they can bring all of this information to everyone with us today so if we
09:48:33 can just please remember to speak slowly. So the interpreters can can catch everything that would be much appreciated.
09:48:42 So I'd like to ask everyone and again for our attendees if you do have questions please go ahead and post them into the chat or into the q amp a box I'm sorry Please post your questions in the q amp a box.
09:48:55 But I'd like to ask everyone what strategies are fair housing advocates across the country, using to counter nimbyism, and how can we see the Fair Housing Act being used successfully as one tool to counter nimbyism.
09:49:17 Sue I don't know if you have any thoughts that you'd like to share here.
09:49:22 Nelly, you know, given your, your experience with neighborhood groups and so given your breadth of experience would love to hear from you and then john and Michelle if you have anything additional to add please feel free.
09:49:40 We're gonna answer with a soft definition of advocates, because I think that some of what I've seen that's been most effective and this is from the perspective, from I'm putting on my former city planning Commissioner hat.
09:49:58 Some of what I've seen that has been most effective has been members of the public who do understand where that coded languages, who can, who are informed by work like la back nails.
09:50:16 Report.
09:50:16 Armed with tools to intervene in public comments to call out coded language as racist to call out coded language as discriminatory against families against folks with disabilities and to do that in a frame that helps the folks who are often making land
09:50:34 use decisions, if not more aware of it at least less able to pretend it's not happening.
09:50:42 Because here's the thing is that like planning commissioners aren't necessarily particularly knowledgeable about the law, land use planning.
09:50:53 It's a political post in this city and a lot of cities. So the qualifications can range a lot.
09:51:01 And when people hear from a steady stream of their neighbors.
09:51:05 they listen to their neighbors.
09:51:08 The people who can serve on them, are people who are having the luxury of usually serving in a free job.
09:51:19 You know, 30 hours a month unpaid you gotta have some flexibility around your mainstream gig.
09:51:24 So being able to hear.
09:51:28 Advocacy within the public comments helps a lot.
09:51:33 kicking it to Nelly.
09:51:35 Thank you and Natalie we'd love to hear from you I know you've got some ideas right around what can be done to create a community engagement infrastructure that explicitly prioritises equity and fair housing, which feels very important because, again,
09:51:50 we know from the low fat report and from the conversation that we're having today that these white lead neighborhood associations are really exercising outsized influence on local land use decisions.
09:52:02 Right. And so what can we all do to ensure that the engagement infrastructure looks more equitable CBI know the committee for better New Orleans has been working on this issue since 2003.
09:52:16 Actually we started looking at it at the behest of the City Planning Commission, who asked us, recognizing there's some equity challenges, asked us to reimagine the way that we seek community input now this was before the neighborhood participation process
09:52:33 right now the tool where a lot of this sentiment comes in and actually the NPP the neighborhood participation process was a piece of this much bigger structure that it relied upon to work.
09:52:47 I recently watched her history podcast about the first use of tank in warfare. And this tank went ahead of all of these infantry men on foot.
09:52:57 And the only communication they had to communicate what they got the information they got them a much faster than they've ever gotten it before was a carrier pigeon.
09:53:07 And the whole mission failed because the communication wasn't working right needed an entire structure and system to make it work.
09:53:17 That wasn't there. And I think that the NP, we're learning that the neighborhood participation process is a little like that first mission.
09:53:27 At the time, there was a thinking that more input will lead to more equity. And it turns out that it depends, who's giving that input on what they're saying.
09:53:36 And so I'm really glad that Sue shared the way that we have over time and over history designed this system, because it's really important to hold in mind that since we designed this, we can design it, we can design something else, right, we can design
09:53:52 a system for the people who we want most to engage and those should be the people who are closest to the problem.
09:54:00 Part of the challenge with using geographically based and oftentimes homeownership based groups of people as a proxy for community is it's going to recycle the same structures of power and privilege that got those folks into that place in the first place.
09:54:17 Right.
09:54:18 It's even if we eliminate the policy that's driving segregation segregation will drive itself.
09:54:26 So we need to design the system instead of for these mo already more powerful voices, we need to design the system to share power.
09:54:37 That means deliberately inclusive, right, including the people closest to the problem. It means, eliminating the sentiment of you can lead a horse to water.
09:54:48 But you can't make them drink right we tried to invite our neighbors who aren't white homeowners and they didn't want to come. Well, we need to examine that.
09:54:57 Why didn't they want to come. Is it because they don't think it's going to work for them to engage because it never has worked for them before.
09:55:05 Is it because I have a friend who I love, she's a black woman in Germany who said Nellie I love you, but you come in this neighborhood and you're always going to be a white lady with a clipboard, to some extent, stop sending in the white lady with the
09:55:20 clipboard.
09:55:22 And, and bring community together.
09:55:25 Another thing that needs to be as proactive, engaging people before decisions are made. This is really critical because it leads folks to being able to actually feel like their input is going to be used, and not think that the whole concept is few tile,
09:55:43 two way dialogue is critical here to
09:55:48 public notice is not the same as public engagement, a public comment is meaningful and we want more people to give them, and it's a one way thing that could just as well be going into the ether unless we know how that public comment is going to be used
09:56:01 and we can track it.
09:56:04 The two way dialogue also allows for people to build relationships with one another, within communities across difference. It also allows for folks to way trade offs, right, if you are a person who doesn't need affordable housing, that is, you already
09:56:21 have it, then you might be willing to say you know I care more about the design, then whether this thing is built and built with urgency. Right. You might even with the best of intentions, be able to leverage your power and privilege.
09:56:40 Through expressing a priority for something about the, the development itself to be different.
09:56:47 An opportunity that has to weigh and deliberative gives people a chance to say, oh you know I didn't think about that. I'm actually willing to live with a design that I don't love because it means that dozens or hundreds of affordable units can be built
09:57:02 in my neighborhood, and my neighbors can now live there.
09:57:08 There needs to be transparency expectations of all policy of all parties need to be clear, clearly defined people need to be able to see how their input is used and how it has been used other cities that have this community participation structure and
09:57:26 framework that CBS know has worked on for such time, including Birmingham is one example a city leader there said, Listen, we don't always do what the community wants, but we don't do anything without knowing what the community wants.
09:57:42 And that's because they have this proactive and deliberative process where priorities can be set trade offs can be examined and people have a framework to start from a foundation to start from as they move forward.
09:57:58 I will add, we put together this a structure for changing completely reimagining the way that the city does community engagement.
09:58:06 And we completed that in 2013. Now the world looks a lot different now than it did, from the years of 2003 to 2013.
09:58:14 We have 15 more years of mistrust distrust and trauma.
09:58:19 On the communities plates.
09:58:22 We have more distraction, we have social media which has completely changed public life.
09:58:29 And so we're going to need to be creative in how we design the process for who we want to attend. That means the meeting structure, location, time whether food and childcare is provided, whether it's a meeting or something more interesting than a meeting.
09:58:45 That means people need the context and education that they need to navigate the process, and you need to set an even playing field for that.
09:58:55 And you can use data to drive outreach and decisions to keep people's feelings, having more input than fact, right, use data to determine where the greatest need is who needs to be involved in the process, etc.
09:59:15 Importantly, our model relies on the city prioritizing it.
09:59:19 It needs city funding, and people's time for it to work.
09:59:24 And the reason for that is the process already has money right neighborhood associations with do is are already introducing money into the process.
09:59:37 Nelly I'm so sorry. Can I just. Can I jump in here for time sake, I wanted to see if any of our other panelists had any additional comments i mean i think what we're hearing from Nelly The, the overall theme is so important right we can really put new
09:59:57 systems in place that ensure that we are hearing the voices of people who are impacted by the lack of affordable housing, that is available.
10:00:25 Chris shell and, and Sue and john I wanted to just hear whether you had any additional insights right into what advocates are doing successfully across the country to really kind of combat.
10:00:22 This, this NIMBY opposition as we wrap up.
10:00:27 I'm kind of jumping there really, really quickly. And I just wanted to you know bounce and use the central theme here, but Mountain View was also a catalyst for the shift that we are now seeing in the city when it comes to the sighting and the support
10:00:40 of local housing tax credit deals, but that have happened had the organization I was with at the time Texas houses had not filed and administrative has complaint, citing fair housing violations and also just so happened that we video the entire meeting.
10:00:57 So we had actual visuals and the audio to go along with this so it was not just hearsay it wasn't just you know drafted in a document. So I would just urge folks to, you know, record record record as I can consistently tell my community members and fellow
10:01:13 colleagues you know if it's not recorded in some way shape or form. it basically didn't happen. But as a result of this, there were there was 100 finding.
10:01:24 a better effort and making sure that sites were supported across the city and that concentrated in low income communities of color. And so what's happened now is the housing department within the city of Houston has created a new scoring matrix for developments.
10:01:48 So it's not just, it's not supposed to just be based on you know who's who's partner whose power is proposing a project and pushing projects out, but it's suppose it's a system where if a project isn't a close proximity of a well bait at school, then
10:02:07 you get more points. If it's in a community where there's lower concentration of poverty, you get more points points. So, I will say, it's much better, but it is not totally solve the problem, but at least it's a step in the right direction.
10:02:21 And yes, we were at the table to help draft that as well to keep them honest and keep them to remember, you know why we point just want to say one thing on that real quick on at community meetings where the opposition to certain ordinance about affordable
10:02:38 I just want to say one thing on that real quick. I'm at community meetings where the opposition to certain ordinance about affordable housing is discriminatory in nature and the public body of city council say is sympathetic to this discriminatory opposition.
10:02:51 And even though they pass an ordinance that is race neutral owners space courts hold that they adopt the discriminatory Animas of the opposition, as evidence by their sympathy with it at the at the meeting so therefore, the turn something that's race
10:03:12 neutral on its face into something that has a racist component by because of the dynamics of that meeting,
10:03:23 thank you john and i think that's an important point you know as as a fair housing lawyer myself.
10:03:42 I am shocked but not shocked by the lack of understanding that some of our elected officials have that they themselves can be liable under the Fair Housing Act, and other civil rights laws for siding with the race based NIMBY opposition.
10:03:48 If I were elected official, if I were an elected official I would certainly want to be very clear about that. Unfortunately, we find that even in having these conversations because I like to make sure that people are clear about that.
10:04:02 Sometimes the message isn't sinking in right and that's an unfortunate reality of doing this work in New Orleans, when the city of New Orleans itself has already been sued right for decisions that the city council made in 2012, that the Obama justice
10:04:20 Department. Right.
10:04:24 Really allege aligned with the discriminatory opposition so we're operating in a city where our council has already experienced. Having litigation brought against them, because of siding with race based, or I'm sorry it was actually disability based nimbyism,
10:04:46 and that lawsuit and so it's unfortunate that we still oftentimes have to have conversations with local policymakers, about the ways in which the city can be held liable for siding with NIMBY opposition.
10:05:01 So we're hearing from Chris shell and john that there are administrative and legal right processes that advocates can use when these race based or disability based NIMBY groups are really exerting control over the local land use decisions.
10:05:18 So I wanted to give you an opportunity to to add anything else that you might have as we wrap this conversation up.
10:05:32 Nothing else adds to know. Okay. All right. Well, on that note, we're going to wrap up and again I want to thank you this these panelists especially for your patience with us as we got started this morning, but thank you for a really insightful conversation
10:05:48 and for helping us to kick off the 15th annual fit for a king event so thank you to our panelists. And as we wrap up this first conversation. I am going to turn things over to Sarah Carson Watson, who is love facts, new Legal Director having joined us
10:06:11 in March of 2021.
10:06:15 Sarah will be experiencing her first fit for a king, as a low fat staffer Sarah, I will turn things over to you to present the award for courage.
10:06:32 Great, thank you. Good morning everyone. It's great to be here.
10:06:37 If I could ask our awardee Sarah McDonald's to turn her camera on so we can present the award for courage to her.
10:06:49 Okay, and I'm sorry I was a little unprepared this morning.
10:06:56 That's a happy here it's good to see you.
10:06:59 So everyone I want to introduce Mr. McDonald, and before I get kind of into her story I just want to highlight how important the award for courage is when someone experiences discrimination of any form, it can be really hurtful painful, and often sometimes
10:07:16 comes with shame and folks do not want to share that experience, and it takes a lot of courage to not only share that experience, but to have the determination and the drive to hold, whoever committed that discrimination accountable for their actions.
10:07:32 And so we wanted to present this award for courage to miss Sarah McDonald, and I'll let her share as much of her story as she wants but just to give you kind of a highlight.
10:07:46 Miss McDonald experienced a lot of her home experience of damage following one of Louisiana's several hurricanes and her landlord rather than following through on his duty to make sure that her home was safe and ready for her to return following the hurricane
10:07:58 chose to offer a quid pro quo sexual harassment situation, instead of doing his job as a landlord. And rather than feeling discouraged or ashamed Miss McDonald not only recorded that discrimination to our office, so we could conduct a full investigation
10:08:16 and file a complaint on her behalf, but she also rallied her community, she got a bunch of people via Facebook to report, other experiences with the same landlord and really gave members of her community who experienced the same thing of voice, and a
10:08:32 a community to express their experiences, and this experience is not one that is uncommon. In fact, Miss McDonald's experience represents kind of an overlap of a variety of issues that folks that so look back see in our work in terms of issues post hurricane
10:08:47 landlords abusing their power in various ways. But it really also highlights how we cannot do this work without people who are willing to come forward and willing to stand up for what's right and stand up for their own rights.
10:09:00 And so it is my distinct pleasure to present this award, the 2022 Award for courage to Sarah McDonald and I wish I could have to see you in person, but we will be mailing it to you as soon as possible so you can have it and hanging up wherever you want,
10:09:13 and I'll let you say a few words.
10:09:16 Well, I just want to say thank you so much. And, you know, when you say it like that, it does, it gets makes me a little emotional, so I was over here, tearing up.
10:09:30 I think you explained it. Well, and I just am just shocked then. It's great. I'm excited and, you know, thank you so much for your help, you know, couldn't have done it without you.
10:09:46 We're happy to help. Thank you so much for trusting us with your with your story and trusting us the experience that we can try and hold them accountable, really appreciate it.
10:09:54 And thank you for joining us today and we'll be in touch about mailing The, the award 2000 Great, thank you. And now we'll be moving on to our next panel, which is moderated by live facts Director of Policy and communications Maxwell car dealer.
10:10:16 Thanks so much, Sarah.
10:10:18 And I'm just going to ask my panelists to turn their video on and unmute themselves will get everybody here.
10:10:27 And this is the weekend stop eviction success stories from the field panel that we're going to move into next.
10:10:35 My name is Maxwell hello and I'm the Director of Policy and Communications at the fact.
10:10:43 And so great, it looks like we've got almost everybody on here.
10:10:47 And as we were first conceptualizing this panel, I knew that I wanted it to be at least a little bit celebratory and optimistic.
10:10:55 This might be to some extent influenced by the fact that I just finished station 11 on HBO max if anyone else has been watching that.
10:11:03 For those who haven't seen it, it's based on a book written in 2014 about a deadly flu pandemic that wipes out 99% of humanity.
10:11:09 And when I tell most people that they're like, Nope, not for me now right now. And that is totally understandable.
10:11:16 But the series is actually quite beautiful and hopeful, and that it shows a possibility of community care compassion and art. After the apocalypse.
10:11:24 And so, thankfully, we're not in that position.
10:11:27 but the last few years have been exhausting.
10:11:31 And this work can be exhausting.
10:11:33 And sometimes when advocates like us get up and talk about it, we end up sounding really cynical and jaded and focused entirely on the negative.
10:11:41 And so I didn't want that to be the focus of this panel.
10:11:45 Instead, we want to celebrate what we've accomplished, under incredibly difficult circumstances, and share some possibilities for the future and how we can all be a part of the next successes.
10:11:56 And so we've got a really amazing panel, who can help do this.
10:11:59 And I'm going to give brief introductions here and then we're going to jump into some questions.
10:12:03 So our first panelist is Rashida Phillips, who currently serves as the director of housing at policy link a national research and action Institute, dedicated to advancing racial and economic equity.
10:12:15 She also recently served as managing attorney of housing policy at community legal services and Philadelphia where she worked for over a decade providing representation and advice to low income tenants.
10:12:26 And then we also have Tricia Alamosa, who was the coordinator of the Jane place neighborhood sustainability initiatives eviction court monitoring project for folks who aren't familiar, Jane places a local community land trust that also organizes and advocates
10:12:38 for housing justice.
10:12:41 She first moved to New Orleans shortly after Katrina to help out her younger sister and her sisters new baby who were living in a dangerous and substandard home, and that experience helped propel her toward the eviction court monitoring project where
10:12:51 she has personally monitored over 1000 eviction cases in New Orleans first City Court, over the last year and a half, Daiquiri Jones is also with us because the community engagement coordinator and lead or as or at James place, and daiquiris a New Orleans
10:13:05 local born and raised in the city, and they've been part of various radical bookstores libraries and protest movements ranging from occupied a black lives matter, and organizations like books to prisoners.
10:13:17 And in addition to being a member of the renters rights assembly Daiquiri also create storytelling performances and is planning on a project uniting storytelling and housing justice.
10:13:27 And then lastly, we have Frank South Hall, who is a housing justice and political organizer, who currently works with Jane place helping with outreach communications organizing strategies, and he's been involved in racial on housing justice organizing
10:13:41 for nearly 20 years, is a member of the renters rights assembly here and also serves on the boards of the Orleans Parish prison reform coalition, and the New Orleans food cooperative.
10:13:53 So thank you all for joining us.
10:13:56 And I'm going to start asking some questions to our panelists and if you have questions please drop them into the q amp a and we'll try and get to, we'll see if we can get to this at some of them at the end if we have some time.
10:14:07 And so, despite opening this by talking about the positive I do want to at least set the senior by asking about what it actually looks like, because I think there's probably a lot of people who haven't spent much time in eviction court, if any, and aren't
10:14:21 really familiar with what that process looks like what it was like before the pandemic and post pandemic, who is most likely to end up an eviction court, and how that's changed and so Rashida I'm going to start with you, to share a little bit about what
10:14:36 that's look like in your experience in Philadelphia and then Trisha, I'll come to you to talk about it here in New Orleans.
10:14:41 So Lee thank you so much for having me on the panel today.
10:14:45 So I'm just going to start off with talking about Philly a little bit and then I'll briefly give a picture of the national outlook on evictions and Philadelphia, you know, much like the rest of the country we were dealing with eviction Christ as well
10:15:07 before the pandemic.
10:14:59 Before the pandemic we saw on average about 22,000 eviction filings a year prior to implementing a local right to counsel program, and then we saw a significant drop in addictions down to about 18,000 a year but it was still very high number right and
10:15:13 so the highest rates of filings occurred in black and brown communities we saw about 71% of those eviction filings regardless of income occurring in black and brown communities which really tells us right that it's not just you know what what we were
10:15:26 hearing a lot was that it's a poverty issue people are ending up in eviction court because they're low income but really right it's it's a gender justice issue it's a it's a race issue it's an issue of habitability and substandard housing.
10:15:41 And then, when the pandemic occurred right we saw a pretty very very significant drop in eviction filings, but still disproportionate impact on black and brown communities.
10:15:51 Part of the reason for that dropping eviction filings was because of the various moratoria, but it was also because Philadelphia came together as a community and really push for specific emergency housing protections during the pandemic.
10:16:03 And so because of that we saw in the past couple of years since the pandemic about 5000 eviction filings.
10:16:10 That's because we were able to implement very quickly aid addiction diversion program, which had not existed in Philadelphia prior to the pandemic that was mandatory and pre filing and so that meant that landlords were required to apply for this diversion
10:16:24 program and go through it. Prior to being able to file in landlord tenant court. And so with that we saw about a 90 90% success rate in the, in about 2500 cases that have been through that diversion program since the pandemic started which is really significant.
10:16:40 And so, also I'll note that we were really able just to speak to your question about how court has changed what's been happening in court.
10:16:48 We were really able to advance really significant court reform during this time.
10:16:53 There is a lot of different considerations that I know lots of people are dealing with around state courts. What's authorized at the local level just all of these different tensions and entanglements and sort of various degrees of courts pushing back
10:17:05 or just going with with whatever they're told. And so in Philadelphia, we were able to get some investigative reports that came out during the pandemic.
10:17:13 These things were years in the making, but when they came out they came out at a time that really helped to shift the court practices. We were able to get a new president judge who believed in diversion who believed in working with landlords and tenants
10:17:24 to improve the process and really expanding the awareness of fair housing issues and within the landlord tenant court. So those are just some of the things that we saw.
10:17:33 I'll talk more later but just quickly want to just talk about at the national level, the eviction lab is a place that folks can go to look at. If you want to see about national level statistics and a typical year a day average that landlords fall about
10:17:47 3.7 million evictions a year for you and place last year they said that the US has seen about 1.5 million fewer eviction filings than normal, which is about 49% of the historical average so really what we want to hear right we want to see these trends
10:18:03 continue, but also have to say right but that looking at the number city by city, there are concerns about places where renters have fewer legal protections that are still seeing the same levels of addiction violence.
10:18:16 Thanks so much Rashida Trisha, you as your bio mentioned you've sat through over 1000 eviction cases in New Orleans city Korea spent hours upon days in there.
10:18:26 Can you just give folks a sense of sort of what that feels like to be in court about the the, sort of, like, emotional and and sort of, sort of other scenes that people are seeing in court and that you witness every day.
10:18:43 Actually, since I gave you that number.
10:18:49 A couple weeks ago I'm now up to over 1300 cases in court, which, if you can believe it is really only about half of the evictions that are going on.
10:19:02 You know, the cases are, you know, some are quick and summer wild and they're unconscionable and some, you know, might Some might say are justified.
10:19:14 But no matter what they're always emotional and gut wrenching and life altering, you know, what we do is just sit and, and take notes but being in that courtroom is watching case after case, where people, our lives are being changed is, and it being so
10:19:50 of fact, in the courtroom is is insane. I wasn't involved in the project yet before coven on but I asked Madeline who was the coordinator at that time. And she said that pre pandemic she was seeing as many as 60 cases a day and sometimes more and cases
10:19:58 would go so fast. They were on average about two minutes. And they were trying to capture what happened between the judges the plaintiffs and the tenant.
10:20:11 The main thing that was going on. Then, and still is a major problem is that, you know, like, one third of the people who were being who were being evicted came to court at all.
10:20:25 And a lot of that was because it was just hopeless, like there was no reason of the 671 cases that they saw pre pandemic that Jane place was able to monitor five over 500 of them were evicted.
10:20:42 So, that I mean, Why you didn't go to court. Right.
10:20:46 But the pandemic changed things a bit, the number of cases dropped obviously because there was safety concerns and.
10:20:54 But, it meant that the judges were able to devote more time to each case, and there were protections put in place and now there's the emergency rental assistance so there's some recourse for the tenants, but court and still like incredibly, just like
10:21:12 They're tentative and they're scared and, you know, they walk in, not knowing what's going to happen or what to do. And then on the other hand you have the landlords of property managers who who like barging, and they're confident and they're comfortable
10:21:25 unbalanced power game. On the one hand the tenants come into the courtroom, and they're fighting for their lives for their livelihood for their security.
10:21:40 and they're making small talk with the court.
10:21:45 Workers you know they're they're asking after grandkids and giving congratulations on this year that.
10:21:51 And sometimes some are worse than others in that vein but it's always very evident.
10:21:57 And it can feel very much like it is the court and the landlord versus the tenant.
10:22:05 And through this pandemic and through the changes that we've made.
10:22:12 You know, more, more tenants are coming in, represented like a ton more before pandemic. There were only about 30 of those 670 cases where the tenant was represented, and were much higher than that it's more than that seven 860 to 70% of them do.
10:22:36 But, and then having a lawyer in the room changes the dynamic completely immediately without any question that the power equalizes having someone advocate for the tenant slides that just sides the judge to a more neutral position at in the way that that
10:22:55 someone to actually argue the merits of the case, because in Louisiana, a landlord has every right to ask for 24 eviction without almost any for any reason, and unless the defendant can give just causal get it.
10:23:12 You know tenant after tenant gets bulldoze by the landlord's just for non payment, because they didn't ever hear the CDC declaration or for lease violations or terminated leases without proper notice and whatever in the end the landlords.
10:23:32 Just get it, because there's nobody that knows what they're looking for.
10:23:38 To be fair, it's happening less and less, and I like to think that has a little something to do with us being in the room
10:23:46 watching, you know, and during the moratorium landlords had to get real creative with their evictions because they weren't able to evict for non payment.
10:23:58 And having a lawyer was the only way to, to find these little technicalities that were the life.
10:24:16 afraid we may have lost Trisha.
10:24:20 Trisha you back.
10:24:21 Am I here can, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry.
10:24:44 it is and how, how, sort of, final those determinations are.
10:24:39 I want to move in just as come to Frank for a second, and also our interpreters have asked us to just be mindful of how quickly were talking so that they can keep up with us.
10:24:51 So, Frank.
10:24:54 I want to talk a little bit also about how evictions impact people moving forward. After there's an eviction that has happened what that means to have that on their record, and how it impacts them when they seek new housing, and who that disproportionately
10:25:07 impacts.
10:25:12 Yeah, thank you for a question and. Thank you.
10:25:19 splits and be with everyone on this panel they talk about this issue.
10:25:20 I'm giving eviction on your record relatively anywhere in the US, it's like the scarlet letter. It prevents you from accessing quality safe housing, um, you know, in addition to all the other requirements, takes to rent.
10:25:37 You know, safe, affordable housing.
10:25:41 You know, having eviction your record is standing chance having a low credit score in you know Surprise, surprise, we know that this disproportionate effects, black women.
10:25:54 The most gene place Xs data that from our eviction court monitoring project before endemic. That, I think, 56% of all people who were facing eviction or black woman in court from the court monitoring project in 82% were black in general.
10:26:26 And so, you know, we see a lot of people shut out of safe housing, once again eviction no record in particular with this pandemic. A lot of people are facing eviction due to the fact that literally their workplaces are close for, you know, six months,
10:26:44 eight months two months, or maybe they were living with folks were.
10:27:05 So, black women are definitely the ones who are most impacted by evictions like full stop in New Orleans, in a venture sale so nationwide black women are the most impacted by evictions as well.
10:27:24 Thanks Frank and Rashida Did you have anything you wanted to add your experience in Philadelphia.
10:27:29 Yeah, I think Frank really said it all right in eviction record it comes with a scarlet letter, no matter what the outcome of the cases, even for tenants who are never actually evicted right the tenant might have won their case they might have entered
10:27:42 into an agreement, they might have, they could walk hand in hand out of the courtroom with their landlord right and that record will follow them for the rest of their lives.
10:27:50 And it's in it's in some ways it is very much like a criminal record right as Matt Desmond talks about black and Hispanic men are locked up black and Hispanic women are locked out it's a very parallel process in terms of the impact of that record on a
10:28:05 person's future possibilities to access housing to access stable, you know, to education, all of those different things that it has that lifelong life changing impact that is not just at the point of the eviction at the point of being kicked out it's
10:28:20 that record that also follows folks and Philadelphia, we were able to do some work around this particular area.
10:28:27 In some places, folks are able to get their record tilled meaning taken off of you or close so that certain people can access them. We fought for that kind of protection of fill in Pennsylvania, but we're not able to achieve it.
10:28:39 And so in the meantime what we were able to do at the local level, was to get a tenant screening policy in place that top that said for landlords that they could not have these kind of policies, where they have a blanket eviction ban.
10:28:54 And so for example in Philadelphia where you see like like Frank talked about in Philadelphia. We also see that black women are disproportionately impacted by eviction records they represent over 74% of the cases that and end up in landlord tenant court
10:29:06 and so inevitably when those when those folks are trying to look for housing. They are the ones who are being denied because of that eviction record because of what the tenant screening score says and so the law, in a nutshell says that right landlords
10:29:20 cannot have policies where they're saying you have one or more eviction record we're not going to consider your application. Landlords and Philadelphia now have to do a holistic review of a tenant application.
10:29:31 They cannot look at certain eviction records so at the federal level.
10:29:35 Your eviction record can be reported on your tenant screening report or your credit report for up to seven years. And so in Philadelphia, with that new law in place.
10:29:45 Landlords can't look back more than four years, they cannot look at eviction records that came up during the cold at 19.
10:29:52 lost income, various things happen, and they have have these now we have even more people with these eviction records. So it does a couple of other things and it also gives the, the tenant an opportunity to request a reconsideration of their application
10:30:13 if they've been denied due to one of those reasons or and can also request that a landlord hold a or put their name on a list for unit if they deny them mistakenly do to have record that they shouldn't have looked at.
10:30:28 So that's the law in a nutshell, and one of the ways that we've tried to address this issue in Philadelphia.
10:30:34 Thank you Rashida and that's, I love that we're sort of starting to get into the optimistic piece of this and some of the successes we've already had.
10:30:43 I'll actually share one quick story to we worked with a woman from the Baton Rouge area.
10:30:49 Last year, who was evicted during the pandemic actually during one of the moratorium so her eviction should not have move forward, but it did.
10:30:56 And so she spent last Thanksgiving, with her, you know, two kids, and her elderly parents in a single, you know hotel room.
10:31:09 And was there for 45 days.
10:31:19 And the first place that she tried to apply for was another apartment complex in the area.
10:31:19 She had, you know, hustled and maintained a couple of jobs despite losing a lot of income. So had income and the apartment complex had vacancies and said we'd love to have you.
10:31:31 And you can move in today, but we're going to run you know we're going to do credit and background check and if we find an eviction will ask you to move out in 24 hours.
10:31:41 And so she was barred from that place, and she actually became one of our sort of advocates at the legislature to help improve some of that. But then my next question or what I want to talk about here we've already touched on this a little bit but it's
10:31:55 sort of about why I think we sometimes separate sort of renter protections and, you know, eviction defense from fair housing work, but I think and I think we need to start thinking about them as very connected and part of the same work.
10:32:14 And one of the ways, I'll just share about that is, you know, Rashida the ban on the, sort of, making sure that landlords can use a blanket ban on evictions is very similar to the federal guidance about criminal backgrounds right which is that you can't
10:32:30 have a blanket ban on arrest or blanket ban on convictions, because that would violate the Fair Housing Act, and so it's really exciting that Philadelphia has done that as well.
10:32:41 So I'm going to, I'm interested in hearing from all of you about this about sort of how we connect renderer protections and fair housing work but Daiquiri I'll start with you, and then let other folks jump in.
10:32:54 Yeah, I feel like when people who have been marginalized from society.
10:33:01 You'll find that most of them are a lot of people are more likely to be ventures, these protections are going to protect everyone, including them a lot of discrimination that you see happen a lot of unfair
10:33:18 expectations from people you see that it is, and you'll see that it is presented with coded language, you'll see that it's presented in various ways that might not be outright discriminatory from outside perspective, but they have uneven consequences.
10:33:38 And I feel like the protections that we give across the board, inevitably affect people who might be marginalized because of you know their skin color or because of their gender identity or especially in our work, we see a lot, a lot of people who are
10:33:57 elderly and disabled.
10:33:59 They have fewer protections that it's harder for them to navigate the system. So, really fighting for protections and fighting for Fiction defense generally it's a way to capture people across the board.
10:34:14 You don't have to be very explicit about discriminating against someone you don't have to be explicit in your policy to really have unequal consequences across the board for people.
10:34:26 Yeah, thank you and Frank can you actually just talk a little bit about some of the work that I know that you helped organize around, non English speakers in the emergency rental assistance program because I know that's another place where I feel like
10:34:39 there's overlap here.
10:34:42 Yes, so few members, bring your scripts simply very early on, then pin them except up the Spanish hotline to be See, I'm primarily, I'm Monica Lingle lingual speech speakers.
10:34:57 A lot of folks are undocumented. Just get like their questions, answer, he gay connect their resources.
10:35:04 I'm in so basically what happened was it when Biden came into office and he expanded rental assistance to individuals who are undocumented. Basically what a few of our folks, J Charlene key found.
10:35:23 Is it, people are calling them telling them like hey we're not going anywhere with this to be silly they got all those families, individuals together create a whatsapp group, NBC just some people to share their struggles story.
10:35:35 And then basically in that whatsapp group people start organizing gather.
10:35:40 And so, folks, organize the Spanish speaking, the Spanish hotline folks organized folks go to City Hall repeated times as supposed to direct assistance Jay went with folks office community development to basically literally walk people through the process.
10:35:58 And so I think by doing that is sped up my particular opinion is sped up how rental systems, has been disperse because they think that people realize, in, in, you know, city hall that people need this now, and they think that's one of the reasons why
10:36:18 the federal government's given us so much more money because now have this small to get money out, you know, at first, you know, people directly impacted weren't being listened to, and then the city started listening to people, because people are organizing,
10:36:34 and now they create like some best practices get money out really quickly. So I think that was one most beautiful thing seeing from like runners start some new members working with community, you know, undocumented folks to get this money out ASAP into
10:36:50 empower and Bill agency collectively for folks.
10:36:56 Awesome, thank you for sharing that.
10:36:59 So, I want to now talk to sort of more explicitly about some of the, the winds that we've had. Obviously we all believe housing should be a human right.
10:37:10 And as we work towards that though. We've already I think started to make some shifts in people's understanding of evictions. We made some had some accomplishments and stopping evictions and mitigating their impact.
10:37:20 So Rashida you've talked a little bit about some of the successes that have happened in Philadelphia, do you want to just connect some of those are flesh out any more than a little more.
10:37:30 Yeah, absolutely. I mean I think a lot of what what my co panelists have talked about are the solutions that need to be uplifted and spread right, quite frankly, things like right to counsel and part of how we thought about it in Philadelphia, is that
10:37:47 we sort of strategize around three specific areas, which is right the council eviction records and the version as three interconnected ways to approach the issue of the eviction crisis that all really fed into each other.
10:38:02 And so you know having a diversion program helps folks to avoid that record. It helps folks who don't need you know to be an eviction court who shouldn't be there to be able to try to work or attempt to work things out with the landlord, you know, whether
10:38:16 it's about just rebuilding that relationship or the landlord's not being responsive to things and you're actually withholding your rent you're not just you know not paying the rent on whatever it is having a space where you where you can avoid that eviction
10:38:29 record, and you can try to work through your landlord tenant issues right but the version alone is not enough. Because we know that some landlords are not going to go through it, they're not going to do what they said they say that they're going to do
10:38:39 whatever the case may be some situations just are not appropriate for diversion some places some situations you need a lawyer you need your day in court, you need the port to enforce and do what it's going to do.
10:38:50 And so having a right to counsel paired with a diversion program, making sure that there's a pipeline that if things don't work out and divert in diversion or things don't go that route that you do have someone who's going to be able to help someone access
10:39:03 the processes of landlord tenant court. You know what my co panelists talked about earlier. Tricia about the unfairness of that court about the power imbalance there, you need, you know, most people will need an attorney or someone who's going to be able
10:39:17 to assist them through that navigating that process and be able to access their rights. And so having a right to counsel that's period along with diversion court.
10:39:25 And then finally right that last component of the eviction record again like I talked about earlier, you can go to landlord tenant court there are some situations where a tenant is going to win, especially if they have an attorney right but you still
10:39:37 have that record unfortunately no matter what the outcome of that cases. So having mechanisms that allow for that record to be skilled for landlords to not be able to consider those records is really important to have paired alongside of those three those
10:39:51 other two things and so again right to counsel diversion addressing the issue of eviction records is a start right to sort of shifting the system in a way that impacts families and black communities and protect black and brown communities in particular.
10:40:08 Awesome.
10:40:09 And we're not quite as far along in New Orleans, as Philadelphia is but we have had some incredible successes over the past year and I think some of that really started with the court monitoring program, and so Tricia and I asked you to talk for a minute
10:40:22 just about sort of how that change things.
10:40:25 about sort of how that changed things. And then I want to come to Frank and Daiquiri to talk about the early eviction notification system and the right to counsel when that we, and sort of how those things work together.
10:40:34 So Tricia Why don't you start.
10:40:36 Yeah, definitely. I would say that having us in that, in that room. I'm really, like, just being in there it's like a small motivator for everyone involved to behave with a little bit more awareness.
10:40:53 And, you know, just taking notes makes makes them behave differently judges will like glance at me when they've done something that they're either really proud of and they're like, Hey, did you see that or they're like, hope she didn't notice that you
10:41:08 know where somebody who's new when I was newer I didn't catch all the things that they were allowing it to court and as I got in there I started catching the, you know and and then asking them about it like wasn't that hearsay and then, you know, that's
10:41:26 sort of, definitely.
10:41:31 I mean I've seen the change in in them.
10:41:33 But on a larger scale the data that we collect.
10:41:38 You know, within that same data we were given the.
10:41:45 The solution to the problem you know like cases where the tenant was represented had better outcomes. So, obviously like everyone should have avoided cases where the tenants come to court, have a better outcome.
10:41:59 So we need to get more tenants into court and those are the things that got the right to counsel Spark, and the things that got the eviction put our early notification eviction postcards, like sparked and turned into a reality.
10:42:17 And, yeah, that is that.
10:42:21 Yeah, yeah, that's great. Thank you, and then either directly or Frank, feel free to pick up from there.
10:42:27 In terms of the early eviction notification system, or one I've seen even council members reference the data so that's, you know, exciting that the data is being seen.
10:42:37 And listen to.
10:42:39 But in terms of other projects that come out of that, even with early eviction monitoring monitoring system I got a call the other day, and it was such a relief first the first thing that someone was the first piece of information someone see received
10:42:54 about getting eviction was, you know, and asked if, for us, you know if you need assistance you know do you need to talk to a lawyer, do you need to talk to someone.
10:43:02 And I think that makes a major difference when people see that someone is, whether it's in court, you know, keeping eyes on the process. Are you know if someone is you know alerting you and reaching out to you.
10:43:17 When you are faced with this life changing situation. I think that, you know, not only does that make a material difference in the world. But also I think emotionally for tenants and makes a big difference.
10:43:29 Awesome.
10:43:35 Yeah, I think it's really interesting, the flow of the conversation because the eviction court monitoring project was one of the first projects that got started.
10:43:47 You know when gene place was just like, Hey, we're going to do more, you know, robust runners rights work. We're going to work with the New Orleans Cerner starts similarly to like make it happen right.
10:43:58 It's never been like wait like we're monitoring this data, but we need to get in front of it actually was like a combination build that like Trisha, Madeline, and I like thinking about like how do we do this, it got birthed like you know Trisha was just
10:44:14 like, we need to send mail to people, and we just can't put like letters, some people stores because landlords would take them down.
10:44:21 And then, like, the ideal of the postcard team is so then we win like, all right, you have the data from what happened, some people give Vic that when they're in the core were know five people before but what's Missy, the lawyer piece is so I'm, I'm just
10:44:37 really excited I'm still a bit shocked that we won right to counsel because I was just like, this is going to take three years to make it happen. By think detail relationships we built, not just in community and coalition of other organizations such as
10:44:51 like you know the fact, obviously, um, but also like the willingness and observations of RC council go like, oh we if they're telling us we should do this we should do it.
10:45:03 I think it made it possible to get this $2 million funded which was like above and beyond what we thought would be a think it's going to have a major impact because most folks like you know hundred percent people are going to cover.
10:45:18 And then there's gonna be a lot more education outreach opportunities coming from all the different groups working, same place with fact, you know, SOS just educating the public about their rights and say think we'll start to see the turn Ty when comes
10:45:34 to, um, just some of the abuse we see from landlords tenants. Um, I think we'll start to see things start to norm in the way that we see, or not norm because nowhere in America so perfect but we'll see better outcome term to this VC eviction.
10:45:54 So I'm really excited so leads us into the next bucket work we're doing.
10:45:59 Thanks, Frank.
10:46:01 Okay, we're getting near the end and I want to save at least a minute or two because we did get one good question that I want to come to, but I want you all to each take just a minute, and we'll go around and here is sort of what do you think our next
10:46:17 steps should be and how people can get involved in this. So Rashida Why don't you start.
10:46:20 Yeah, that's a great question. It's hard to kind of say, on a national level what the next steps are but I think what I am seeing and what we're, we need to continue to put the pressure on is to really expand our notions of fair housing, and to understand
10:46:37 who fair housing, who is who is disproportionately impacted by fair housing keep up lifting that I mean I remember there was a time when I was doing this work five or six years ago where you couldn't really tell me race was not a part of it.
10:46:50 It was not a part of the discussion, it was not being talked about in the media about who was disproportionately impacted. And now we can have these conversations.
10:46:59 It is, it is becoming more normalized to talk about who is being disproportionately impacted by things like housing instability and and housing insecurity so we need to keep the pressure on and continue to have these conversations, that's a start if we
10:47:13 can sort of align ourselves nationally at least around the message around the narrative that we want to push forward, then minds and hearts can change from there.
10:47:21 But if we're still going off those same old still narratives. I think right we're going to continue to be in the same situation. One thing I'm really also interested in and continue to talk about is sort of our values around.
10:47:35 What we even want to see in terms of housing.
10:47:39 You know a lot of folks talk about this sort of.
10:47:42 What do they call it the the homeownership. Well, the black wealth gap, which is really important right but there's also a black health gap.
10:47:50 There's also when we talk about intergenerational wealth, we have to talk about intergenerational health and and not just poverty right, a very expensive notion of health it's not just physical bodily health but it's people's ability to thrive people
10:48:03 to ability to be connected to their culture to their community, to have options of where they want to live in the world right so just all these different things that we need to uplift alongside of obviously the policies and the laws and all of those different
10:48:24 things, but we can only do that when we have these kinds of conversations and where when it's not just the people at the top. Determining what what you know where the values lie and where the policies go but it has to be done with the people on the ground
10:48:29 the tenants themselves right that the folks who are most impacted organizers advocates, all of us needs to continue to come together and and and do what we're doing.
10:48:39 So, I'll leave it there.
10:48:40 Thank you so much and I apologize but for the sake of time, maybe Frank or Daiquiri one of y'all could speak for Jane place about sort of next steps and what you see on the horizon, and how people can get involved, also.
10:48:54 Yeah, you can go really quickly. Um, so next steps is habitability. The landlord retaliation, that's what we're going to be working on the next two years.
10:49:05 It's going to be major shift and housing policy, when this. And so one of the ways you can get involved is, you know, if you're a renter working class homeowner if you're someone who is on house or has any type house instability you get 10 or runners
10:49:20 right similarly, on the first Wednesday of the month as well skin the work, and then I'm going to quickly, plug it Daiquiri because Daiquiri semana will contact.
10:49:33 Every second visit our page on Facebook, but really quickly to tie into what was just said about that larger conversation happening we see 10,000 members on bad landlords now that community is growing people are having that conversation, and that conversation
10:49:51 is really what we're going to be building off of as we, you know, bring forth a healthy homes ordinance, which is our major plan.
10:50:01 Over the next.
10:50:03 You know few months. Next week, a couple years.
10:50:07 Awesome, thank you and I'll just flush that out quickly right in New Orleans, but in Louisiana for sure but in New Orleans.
10:50:15 There is no way to hold the landlord accountable for deferring maintenance for all sorts of serious health and safety violations and Jane place and fair housing have been working on this for the better part of a decade, and it's time we actually have
10:50:30 to get it done so that's definitely going to be our next big move.
10:50:33 get it done so that's definitely going to be our next big move. So we had one question that I want to pull from the q amp A, which is given the lack of tenant rights and landlord oversight in Louisiana, which is certainly true.
10:50:45 Is there a comprehensive guide that exists for landlords who want to make sure that they are operating in a fair legal and just way.
10:50:52 Jane place folks do you know of resources out there for landlords who want to be on the right side of this.
10:51:01 So, in terms of law, there's some died. I'm sure when the SLS folks can come with the correct name has come up and moving out in this career by like the Attorney General.
10:51:12 A couple years ago so explains briefly, like where someone to rights responsibilities of landlords and tenants, but it's not comprehensive and for my belief is not more of a moral document in terms of how you should treat your tenants.
10:51:30 So that's something that we're interested in working on, you know, such as having all the lease to be to promote to community because gene place isn't just housing rights organization where community land trust principle we build affordable housing so
10:51:46 we are developers, we are technically landlords. And so we have our leases. And so we want to promote that to a world like you know our practices and what we do to keep our tenants stable, especially for economic instability that we've experienced.
10:52:17 and get probably out probably searcher egg and just drop in the chat, but it's like bookmark my own nothing but computer. And the other resource that I would, I know that Jane place has been talking about.
10:52:21 At some point, making the least that uses available to landlords who want to do the right thing and so that's something that hopefully will be available soon.
10:52:31 And then the other resource that I can share is one that Southeast Louisiana legal services puts together, it's sort of an online site that is primarily for renters and other folks who are dealing with the legal system.
10:52:44 But I think it can be a good guide for landlords who want to do the right thing as well. And it's Louisiana law help dot o RG Thompson that might also be useful guide.
10:52:55 And so I just want to thank a moment here and really thank our panelists for joining us this has been really amazing and we really appreciate all of your contributions.
10:53:03 So, thank you so much. thank you so much pleasure.
10:53:08 Thank you for.
10:53:11 Absolutely.
10:53:12 And so we're going to move in I'm going to stay with you all we're going to move into our next segment on the agenda, which is our Mondale Brooke award and so I'm going to ask representative rice Du Plessis to turn his video on and join us.
10:53:30 Right.
10:53:32 Welcome.
10:53:35 Amy. Morning.
10:53:37 Morning.
10:53:39 So, the, the word that we're presenting today is the Mondale Brooke Award and the word is named after ciders Walter Mondale and Edward Brooke, who worked diligently to make the Fair Housing Act a reality and who finally succeeded in 1968.
10:53:56 A week after Dr. King's assassination.
10:53:59 And we present this award each year because then we know that change is made by movements, and by a lot of the folks who just saw in the last panel. We also know that is greatly assistant by smart and savvy policymakers and so this award is specifically
10:54:12 for policymakers who distinguished themselves as champions of civil and housing rights.
10:54:21 And so this year's award he is state representative Royce Du Plessis whose district stretches from Central City and the Lord Garden District to the seven four and same rock and New Orleans.
10:54:29 And prior to serving in the legislature Royce worked as a special counsel for the Louisiana Supreme Court, where he champion criminal justice reform. After observing the human impact of inequalities in our criminal justice system.
10:54:41 He also served as chairman of the New Orleans City Planning Commission where he was always a reliable vote in favor of affordable housing and against nimbyism and we miss him there.
10:54:50 But we understand that he's got bigger and better things to do. And he's also a past president of the Lewis a Martin it says legal society and since 2012 he's volunteered as a mentor to teenagers through the nationally renowned silverback society.
10:55:05 And the particular efforts, we want to lift up and honor for today is his tenacity last year and getting a new renderer protection bill to the legislature.
10:55:14 Despite fierce opposition from local and national lobbying groups.
10:55:19 The bill was initially designed to ensure that families who faced eviction during the pandemic wouldn't be haunted by that record for years into the future, which is exactly what we were just talking about on this last panel.
10:55:30 And so I approached rice about carrying the bill, because I know he's one of the legislators who really only knows how to give you full commitment.
10:55:38 He gets into every detail and wants to make sure that he can explain it himself.
10:55:42 Which in this case means that he basically became an expert on the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act.
10:55:49 And as many of you know, it's near impossible to go up against a business lobby and Louisiana and plan.
10:55:57 But thanks to his skill negotiations, some excellent testimony from were most effective. And what we were able to get our bill passed out of its first committee hearing over the objections of the apartment and realtor lobbies, as well as the National
10:56:12 Credit Reporting lobby. So, Experian Trans Union, Equifax were against us and we still got this out of committee.
10:56:20 And so, last year was. It was my seventh year at the legislature, doing this work. And that's the first time I've ever seen that happen, and ultimately that forced a compromise, and ensure the final passage of the bill, which is now law, and requires
10:56:36 any apartment that wants to charge you an application fee to disclose whether it may use eviction records criminal records or credit scores to deny you.
10:56:49 It also requires apartments that charge a fee to give applicants an opportunity to explain any hardships they may have experienced like an eviction, and how they might have been related to, to the pandemic or hurricane.
10:57:00 So this is an important new protection, and they're very hard to come by in the state. So rice. We really thank you for your commitment to housing justice, and we will be delivering this.
10:57:11 This award to you in short order, I think, please feel free to say a few words.
10:57:17 Thank you, Max. Thank you, Louisiana, fair housing, and the boss, Krishna Hill and your incredible work. You know this is this is truly a collaborative effort, I was I was really excited when max approached me about the bill, because I hadn't followed.
10:57:42 Some of the debate in previous sessions. A lot of the groundwork had already been laid, and we were able to go back and look at previous testimony where you had opponents who had agreed that there were certain flaws with the way that it was being done,
10:57:54 and who who who recognize that someone's previous eviction record should.
10:58:01 As a result of some disaster or something that was out of their control should not haunt them, and that we should have a system in a way where they can at least explain themselves and not automatically.
10:58:14 You know stricken from consideration. So we were able to bring those kind of things up in negotiations, but that was only because Max and his team, and some of my colleagues before me had already been working at issues that were sort of around this but
10:58:36 you know when we got in committee. It was, it was a fight, they didn't want to hear it. Because oftentimes if you've ever been to the state capitol. There isn't a great sense of putting policies first that that that that promote people, and people who
10:58:42 are who are vulnerable people who are on the margins and who people, people who are just trying to make it. And that's a big part of the reason why I chose to go into public service is to try to push policies that that put people first.
10:58:55 And this organization. And this collaborative of organizations around fair housing.
10:59:02 That's exactly what you all are about so I was just really honored to work alongside Max, we had some very, very difficult. I mean they were really really dead set on trying to kill this bill I mean we would get to a point where they, they didn't even,
10:59:15 we didn't, we had a schedule and then they like pulled it off the agenda we didn't understand why so we had to navigate all of that but we ultimately got it through.
10:59:22 Max was incredibly patient and and I think we made a good, good team and I was I was happy that we could get get a win for the people and also I cannot, cannot, cannot, cannot go without saying that the testimony from the, The, the people from the community
10:59:39 who had experienced this.
10:59:42 I think Miss Miss Aereo is is her name. I mean, she was just amazing, but to be able to tell those stories, but people who had been impacted that's that's really, I think, just played a crucial crucial role so look I'm always going to be on the side of
10:59:58 fair housing, and my district right now we're going through district thing, it's forced me to take another hard look at the district I represent which includes the CBD of New Orleans central central business district warehouse district French quarters
11:00:13 from a seventh Ward st Roch lower Minh city, lower Garden District Central City.
11:00:20 These are all neighborhoods we're familiar with. but we're also very familiar with the housing challenges that that exists in these neighborhoods, these neighborhoods also house many of the tourism jobs that many people work in but can't afford to live
11:00:34 in the same district in which they work. So, you know, these are all challenges I know that Louisiana fair housing is leading and trying to trying to close those equity gaps around housing and I'm just so grateful that you all are there with us, because
11:00:48 just like it's not easy for us to be up there every day. It's not easy for you, all of you out there every day fighting these fights so I appreciate that and I salute you and I thank you all for for this.
11:00:59 So much rice. Always a pleasure working with you and and definitely appreciate you lifting up the teamwork that really got this done so thank you.
11:01:11 And I think we're going to move into our next panel.
11:01:18 And so, Sarah Carson Watson is going to jump on to moderate that.
11:01:27 Thanks Maxwell, we can have our remaining panelists, come off mute and turn their cameras on that a great guy and get started.
11:01:40 So we're looking for Dion Dylan, and Gabrielle.
11:01:45 Great, good to see you all. Hi, good morning again everyone, and thanks so much for sticking with us this morning we are on to our final panel of the day before our keynote presentation, and this panel is titled decriminalizing identity strategies to
11:02:00 end disproportionate criminalization. And so as with x Legal Director you know this is an issue that is really near and dear to us we see this a lot in our work across our various enforcement activities which includes litigation, their housing testing
11:02:14 and representing clients and Hud or LED oj investigations, we encounter the harms of over criminalization of marginalized groups very frequently. For example, a mystery shopper investigation showed that discrimination against people with criminal justice
11:02:28 involvement is often used as a covert way to discriminate based on race, almost half the time the facts white mystery shoppers who said they had a criminal background were treated with more leniency then equally qualified black applicants.
11:02:41 We also continue to come across housing providers that have blanket bands against those criminal records policies that have a significant impact this based on race and given the prevalence of these issues and the impact they have on somebody communities.
11:02:53 We are so excited to have this amazing panel of experts here to discuss over criminalization and its impact on access to housing for marginalized groups.
11:03:01 Before we hear directly from our panelists, I just want to remind everyone, you can put your questions in the q amp a box and we'll do our best to get to it during our session, feel free to indicate that question is directed at a specific panelist, and
11:03:12 we will be sure to continue monitoring that box.
11:03:15 So with that, I will have our panelists, start by telling us a little bit about yourself, your work and how the communities you work with have been historically impacted by over criminalization Dylan, why don't we go ahead and start with you.
11:03:29 Hi everyone I'm dealing with respect us he him and they them pronouns.
11:03:34 I am the senior public policy and External Affairs Director at Cyndi Lauper his true colors united. We're a national nonprofit organization working to advance housing justice that focuses on the unique experiences of LGBT q plus and by POC youth and young
11:03:49 young adults in particular those with lived experience of homelessness.
11:03:53 I also am one of the members of the founders circle of house a tulip here in New Orleans, which is where I'm from, and and have a pretty extensive lived experience of homelessness myself as well.
11:04:06 So, the communities that I work with, really are made up by the the folks that I was just describing right people with lived experience of homelessness primarily LGBT Q, and black young adults, youth and young adults.
11:04:20 When I say youth I'm talking about ages 12 to 17 when I say an adult I'm talking about 18 to 30 really broadly right.
11:04:29 Knowing that people's experiences with homelessness are off and recurring and happen over long periods of time, when they start when they're young.
11:04:37 And in terms of how these groups of people are historically impacted by over criminalization what we see consistently, is that the normal adolescent behavior of youth of young people who are LGBT q blacker indigenous or some combination of any of those
11:04:59 those identities is pathologist and so you know we we see like normal risk taking, or other sort of like things that that we would consider just really typical teenage experiences and we have these incredibly desperate over reactions to them in sort of
11:05:20 system settings, and the result of that ultimately is that we see a disproportionality and the number of young people who are LGBT q or black or indigenous youth who are in, who are who touched the foster care system who has to the juvenile justice system,
11:05:44 and to experience homelessness. And one of the things that we find is that sort of every one of those experiences our identities it's layered on top of each other, the harder it is for young people to break through some of the barriers and challenges
11:05:58 that I'm describing. And so, you know, in particular we see in across the country transgender youth, but in particular black transgender youth who are at the highest risk of coming into contact with these systems.
11:06:14 The other piece of that is the more contact you have with these government systems, the more likely you are to, to have contact with policing and criminalization right.
11:06:25 If anyone's not super familiar with, with what it is like to be in a homeless shelter in particular.
11:06:32 The police are there like every other day, right. So, this is a sort of area where we see just those compounding challenges.
11:06:41 Great, thank you for that. Gary I would you like to go next.
11:06:45 Sure. Hi everyone, my name is Gabrielle Perry, I'm a 29 year old epidemiologist, I'm a native of Louisiana born and raised. And I'm also the founder and executive director of the diamond Perry foundation.
11:07:01 Don't bury foundation is a Louisiana based nonprofit, we operate nationally though and service of women and girls who had been impacted by incarceration.
11:07:08 We are a direct giving organization working to address how the mass incarceration epidemic affects women and girls, particularly, who are honestly too often overlooked in this movement, despite being the fastest growing demographic and America's jails
11:07:25 Our mission is to ensure that educational resources, direct fiscal resources, public health resources as well are given to these women.
11:07:34 We are currently the first and only organization in the entire United States that is addressing period poverty and menstrual and equity directly inside America's women's prisons on a monthly basis, and addressing the healthcare crisis and period poverty
11:07:48 amongst incarcerated women, the girl code program, which donates organic cotton fragrance free die free and chemical free products to women who are incarcerated in Orleans Parish prison LC iw beginning and May, and in the DMV area beginning of the year.
11:09:53 We've been around for 32 years now.
11:09:50 It feels weird to say that but 32 years work was started just really doing community outreach harm reduction in health promotion around HIV and women's health.
11:09:50 And after Hurricane Katrina we realized that we, we really worked on the need to look at policy and advocacy around why people started out using a public health framework.
11:10:01 And that was kind of our focus and realize that the work we have been doing was really rooted in reproductive justice harm reduction. Drug Policy and looking at ending the epidemic and fighting for LGBT rights.
11:10:16 And we also felt like, at that time, after Hurricane Katrina, which I.
11:10:21 We don't have all day to go through all that but looking at all the ways that people just weren't. Nobody gave people the opportunity to to be involved in issues that deeply impacted them, their health in their lives.
11:10:35 And so, the work kind of shifted after that, looking at policy and advocacy, as a way to make these checks to make the change, but led by the people who were directly affected.
11:10:49 And so our whole goal was about working alongside of them.
11:10:53 And then in, I want to say 2009 we started looking at how Louisiana crime against nature large were affecting trans women black trans women specifically black women and gay men around sex work or dis at the police discretion.
11:11:15 And so we challenged that law and end up removing over 800 people off the sex. Sex Offender Registry, and it kind of propelled us into like this.
11:11:24 This way of looking at not just policy on a state level and change in laws but how can we do that locally and how can we do that agency wide, looking at structural racism and criminalization of the groups I just named.
11:11:41 Thank you so much, women incredible women incredible work that your organization does. And thank you all for sharing a little bit about yourselves and so what I heard was, you know, we've got several groups who are experiencing increase access with criminal
11:11:53 We've got several groups who are experiencing increase access with criminal justice systems, we've got LGBT q folks, particularly LGBT q you, we've got black trans women we've got black women and black girls who are experiencing higher rates of interaction
11:12:06 with the criminal justice system. So how does that translate into access to housing, what are some of the concrete barriers that folks you work with or folks the communities you serve are facing when it comes to accessing housing as a result of that interaction
11:12:18 with the criminal justice system.
11:12:25 Want to start.
11:12:27 I can go.
11:12:41 And so one of the things we saw, to know justice majority of the people who were convicted are charged with a crime against nature had to follow these, the national guidelines as a sex offender because you were now in Louisiana considered a sex offender
11:13:01 right. And so, that made housing really hard for women and women with children and for trans women, it was extremely hard for them to get housing, especially in neighborhoods where they had to get the part that many of us have seen that comes in our meal,
11:13:19 actually have you listed as a sex offender actually put people at risk, and made just everyday people kind of my neighbors policing who I am and how I'm round, right, how they moved around.
11:13:31 The other thing that we see is
11:13:35 we see a lot of women who are on section eight when they move in certain neighborhoods, we see just the community policing them where we've had clients where they finally got section eight housing we had a client who had like four little boys right and
11:13:49 her neighbors were calling the police.
11:13:53 On her on a daily basis, kids were playing basketball. They were skating or riding your bike. So just the policing of who you are, right, just a black woman trying to have safe housing with her kids, and so I feel like one of the biggest, even in, if
11:14:10 you think about renting an apartment. We had a young woman and it has to do more with, I want to say it's rates.
11:14:17 You know, it's all the things right race, homophobia, transphobia, but also the sake of the shame and stigma that we put on people in our community. We had a young woman who had got an apartment and one of the new in harmony out name them because I don't
11:14:33 I don't care if that's all right with y'all, but I'm harmony and, or, you couldn't have someone of the opposite sex, spend the night more than so many nights.
11:14:46 You put my head. If you did, you can look at being evicted so it's these ways in which we are policing people, and what's considered to be safe housing but the police and the police and actually has made it unsafe.
11:15:00 I think that's a really before I launch. Gabrielle are doing jumping I just want to highlight the personal policing piece there, because one of the kind of emerging areas of fair housing advocacy right now is around nuisance and crime free ordinances,
11:15:13 and I think it's really interesting. Not only that, you know, the police the system of policing already exists to terrorize and criminalize certain groups, but it's the leveraging of that belief system by individuals that actually continues to fuel it
11:15:29 so in the new sensor crime free example, you may have a practice a housing provider that has a policy or a municipality that has an ordinance saying that if the police are called to a certain unit or a certain home X number of times in a year.
11:15:43 That person can be evicted as a nuisance so if you have neighbors who are personally policing people calling the police on people that could lead to someone being evicted from their homes simply by existing so I think it's really important you were talking
11:15:55 about these large systems, but they are fueled by individual people who harness that system to continue policing their neighbors were people in their community.
11:16:03 Go ahead Gabrielle.
11:16:06 And, first let me say I'm so happy not only this question was asked, Miss Haywood listen you are a woman after my own heart and just the way that you answer that because that is constantly what I'm always trying to tell people in that.
11:16:20 It's not just the system itself that women have to contend with is society itself. And, and that is the compounded issue that women are having to deal with, especially formerly incarcerated women comes to fair housing because that's really who had the
11:16:50 that my organization is having to deal with, especially like would be a currently incarcerated formerly incarcerated women, their daughters whoever is really formerly incarcerated women that are really bearing the brunt of it when it comes to their house
11:16:55 and I, I always tell people, it really starts with this.
11:16:59 How do I say how do I say this is not talked about enough that
11:17:07 I want to say this right women and girls have different pathways to prison than men do. Yes. And these risk differences are can contribute to and even compound them not having access to safe and affordable housing.
11:17:21 Now, statistically speaking we're talking about the last 20 to 25 years of research, have proven that really the majority of women like was hey what was the majority women who are incarcerated we're talking about nonviolent offenders.
11:17:33 Talking about women who are, and I want to preface this by saying it's not that women are not doing the same thing as men to go to jail. they're doing it for different reasons the Why is different.
11:17:44 Yes Why is often different.
11:17:47 These women are going together selling drugs they're engaging in property crimes most often they're engaging in sex work often as a means of either coping with victimization by you know childhood traumas, things like that or or abuse from an intimate
11:18:01 partner majority of women are our domestic violence victims their sexual abuse survivors. Many are economically motivated because on the outside, they're already been paying less than a man because of the gender pay gap there economically motivated to
11:18:15 turn to crime by having to care for themselves and their children often due to poor economic conditions or racism or sexism, and though it may sound like men have the same motivation social and economic effects are compounding with the car service system
11:18:31 for women, and they're compounding these issues. So that's why when 81,000 women who are released from state prisons every year returned to their communities, you don't see halfway houses available for them like the way you do for men have surplus of
11:18:46 support you see people calling the police on them in their kids. You don't see resources offering housing voucher access for formerly incarcerated women, despite the fact that 84% of them are sexual abuse survivors 64% of them are our foster care, come
11:19:16 care system, 80% of them are domestic abuse survivors which you do see our communities rallying together to ensure that sex workers are allowed in the neighborhood where you do see is public housing landlords sexually harassing them on section eight because
11:19:19 they know they have nowhere their housing space to go to. And it's because they are over criminalized for their traumas that they're shunned from the resources that they need to pick up the pieces of their lives and what does that lead to recidivism.
11:19:33 Yes.
11:19:37 Absolutely.
11:19:38 Bill would you like to chime in a little bit. Yeah, I have a couple of thoughts, I want to take us back to the nuisance laws piece too because I just want to flag that in Louisiana thankfully in 26 to 2015 Millie our state legislature did pass a law that
11:19:51 perhaps those local ordinances, with the exception of any of the already existed which is not a great exception to make but I believe Mandeville was the only city that had one.
11:20:04 And so that's to stay if that's not to say that like a city does not now have one, but they are illegal. And so if you hear of one and you want to flag it.
11:20:15 I think the folks at the Louisiana fair housing Action Center would be very interested in hearing about that so that it could be challenged and tossed out not to volunteer y'all for that work.
11:20:24 Absolutely.
11:20:27 And and then in the context of the social policing we see this so much with with young people in particular, experiencing homelessness, there is this incredible paternalism built into our homelessness services system, that is, you know, historically basically
11:20:47 says like we know what you need better than you do. And therefore, you're not going to have the dignity of choice and the services or the housing that you receive and and that's very much amplified for youth and young adults who also experience sort of
11:21:01 the classic sort of adult ism where we don't treat young people as though they have agency as a human being. And so with with young people who have who hold identities that experience greater marginalization, we see that show up in the way that they receive
11:21:18 services so LGBT q plus youth are significantly more likely to be placed in a transitional living program as opposed to a more independent living program when they're receiving services, because they're perceived as like being poorly behaved and requiring
11:21:33 greater supervision, just because of their, their sexual orientation or their, the way that they express their gender. Right. And so there's this like way that that social policing shows that in services that like ultimately again places people at greater
11:21:48 and greater sort of surveillance systems, which ultimately exposes them to greater policing, and then greater, sort of, like, access to that pipeline to prison that we see that young people experienced through all kinds of different systems.
11:22:06 Absolutely.
11:22:07 Okay, but I just wanted to quickly say that, Oh, I love this. I love this panel, by the way, um, you know one things we see if we continue to see a we receive mail from women who are incarcerated, all the time.
11:22:22 Right.
11:22:23 And one of the things we get is our supposed to be released, six months ago I was supposed to be released a year ago, but I have nowhere to go.
11:22:32 And we've seen this especially with women who've been charged across the board but definitely sex work. And at the time, back then, the crime against nature laws but it still happens because because patriarchy cuz it is what it is.
11:22:47 Men will have some woman, sister.
11:22:51 Cousin, Mom, grandmother.
11:22:55 Part partner or partners who will take them in women don't get that nobody wants to take them in because nine times out of 10. If they always feel like, you better get it on your own, like we don't hold women and girls especially black women and girls,
11:23:12 the way we hold men. Right. We don't do that. And we've seen so many women just struggling to come home but you know you need to have an address. So if they don't have an address and somebody's a place to go.
11:23:27 They don't come home and as you heard Gabrielle you know we've all said they're really not that many programs where women can go and be in a halfway house to work their way through whatever systems that I probably wouldn't agree with, to have a place
11:23:41 to come home so you have women who are still locked up and have to stay locked up longer because they don't have a place to go. And then when they do come home.
11:23:50 make it, there's really no, not only is there, limited support in terms of systematic services, right, the systems that you're supposed to navigate.
11:24:09 There isn't any of that for you know in terms of families either like families, sometimes tend to treat them the same way, systems treat them right and so it's really hard for them to be stable and stay out of the system, right, because we all know how
11:24:25 you get trapped in but I just wanted to say that because when Gabrielle and Dylan was talking I just, it brought up for me how many people we get letters from.
11:24:34 Do you know where I can go I just need to address my release date was actually six, six months ago.
11:24:41 And we know that the prison system could care less because they're paid to have you there.
11:24:57 That is such a fantastic point. And I think it really speaks to you no matter, no matter what kind of civil rights social justice issue we're talking about I often find that it comes back to housing in so many different ways is absolutely foundational
11:25:01 to life for every single person it means whether you can access healthy food, it means whether you can access good schools for your kids whether you can access opportunities for employment, and we're talking about people who are reentering society from
11:25:14 incarceration, you can't do anything without having an address you have to have an address to even get released to apply for services to apply for a job to apply for a driver's license, but you may need to get some type of employment so absolutely wonderful
11:25:28 point, we're talking about a barrier to housing is simply having having an address to put down as you re entering in trying to navigate all of these systems having a physical place to be, is really really really crucial.
11:25:42 Now, we talked about some aspects of overcoming ization, that can be a little bit bleak, I'll just say that, but this the the conversation is now without some ways right like there have been incredible advocates Missy on you talked about your work at
11:25:55 overturning the crimes against nature law, but there's also some recent wins as well and so Gabrielle I was wondering if maybe you could speak to kind of the work that advocates and people who are formally incarcerated, who have done to lead the charge
11:26:08 for reform in Louisiana including, you know, with support groups from the fact, but we want some important protections against housing discrimination, including a model criminal background screening policy at the housing authority and Orleans and some
11:26:21 statewide prohibitions against discrimination based on criminal justice involvement, specifically in subsidized housing, so be great to hear a little bit about what advocates are doing on the ground and some lessons that you can share with advocates around
11:26:33 the country who have joined us that they want to work on these issues.
11:26:37 Absolutely.
11:26:38 First let me say that what made many of these winds possible was the dedication the perseverance of every single person and Louisiana fair housing Action Center policy passages like their fair housing and screen when this past summer, stuff like that
11:26:57 don't just happen out of nowhere, you know I happen to be present for it. I was grateful to be able to testify in support of this passage both as an advocate and as a formerly incarcerated and formerly house was woman, And it's just it's just a testament
11:27:12 to the work that they do. And the care that their advocates have to see you know about Louisiana for all of us.
11:27:18 For those who are on the call who don't know the policy itself that was passed this is back in July, I want to say.
11:27:43 It basically brings the state of Louisiana into the Department of Housing and Urban Development fair housing guidance and compliance with that something they should have already been happening anyway.
11:27:37 But it ensures that everyone in the state of Louisiana, seeking housing in any of the 60,000 public housing units and all future units to be built under the Louisiana housing corporations low income housing tax credit program, one cannot be discriminated
11:27:53 against for a criminal record that did not result in a conviction for a record that was expunged or vacated, they cannot be discriminated against, for a juvenile record they cannot be discriminated against know anyone living with them cannot be discriminated
11:28:05 against.
11:28:07 For a criminal conviction after a certain date so if you had a marijuana conviction at like 17 or something like that because you are legal in adult a 17, but you're now like 35 trying to get housing and public housing they cannot discriminate against
11:28:19 you for that.
11:28:35 What does it all it requires that all housing providers, also have to wait any conviction that they do see on your record that gets a social service program as you can, as you complete a job training program so what a lot of the courts are doing now is
11:28:37 that if you are arrested for drug use or something of that nature but you complete a drug treatment program, then they'll kind of let you go, you know they'll let it slide, but what was happening was that, you know, if you apply for public housing and
11:28:52 whatnot the landlords were not letting it fly and they were just throwing those applications out they can't do that anymore.
11:28:57 So, it was just a monumental win.
11:29:03 And I just I'm just I was happy to even be present for just to see a much less be able to testify in support of it and I think that it's, it's people like the fact is, people like organizations like Bo organizations like operation restoration you will
11:29:16 also there in support of it. I just think that you know wins like that don't happen every day, especially in this state and I'm.
11:29:25 It just cannot be overstated. How monumental It was also say what makes the push towards these housing reformers possible is the unprecedented times and we're living in.
11:29:34 Then, educating the public on how what how Housing Works, I don't think people really knew how Housing Works, and how close one can be to becoming houses.
11:29:44 How over criminalization and how housing are intertwined.
11:29:50 And how many organizations in their community, like boat, like operation restoration, like the fact like everyone on this call and their orgs that are affiliated with and President helping to fight against housing discrimination for us all.
11:30:02 49% of the residents of the state of Louisiana have a criminal record.
11:30:09 Everyone in this state, know somebody who has a criminal record.
11:30:14 And that's been a call to action for a lot of people to get involved in reform movements.
11:30:22 And in terms of fair housing reform, you can look at the microcosm that is New Orleans 50% of the city of New Orleans are renters, a high proportion of those renters are living in subsidized housing.
11:30:34 So, with half of our state, and a high percentage of our most populous city are being regardless, as unworthy of the most basic human right. And that's house.
11:30:48 Right. And I think that that's honestly you know woken a lot of people up is driven a lot of people to the polls is has a lot of people donating to community organization in fact performs charitable giving things back to pre pandemic levels.
11:31:01 And so, it has just a lot of people asking questions of their elected officials I mean we're just an unprecedented times that people realizing that it could always be you.
11:31:11 It could always be you. You are not exempt. It could always be you. so I think that that has really pushed people to look at their neighbor, and to really want to get involved, and just want to push for change.
11:31:26 I think that we just live in an unprecedented time and that has pushed for a lot of these wins that we're seeing in in the reform movement.
11:31:34 I think you are absolutely right, this, this pandemic where you know something that is so contagious and so infectious and the one safe place to be in a pandemic like the cover 19 pandemic is at home.
11:31:47 And I think that message of Oh, just stay home we're all going to be fine I think so many people had a new realization that everybody does not have that luxury, you may not have a place to call home.
11:31:57 If you get cold and you may not have enough space to isolate from your family, you may not have childcare to keep your you know to keep your children out of schools where they might catch, catch rotavirus.
11:32:07 So I think you're absolutely right at these times and kind of shifted the public narrative towards a more holistic view of housing not only that housing as a human fundamental right that everybody deserves access to, but also how how access to housing
11:32:20 impacts so many other systems, and the ways that people try to navigate and agree that when the LSC when is a huge huge huge win for Louisiana and for our communities.
11:32:33 And I know that advocates have long pushed for expansion of protections not just around criminalization but for sex, adding sexual orientation, gender identity to Louisiana's fair housing law protections.
11:32:44 They already already included in Orleans Parish, and more recently has issues, guidance around this.
11:32:50 But why do you all think and deliver Miss Tiana especially here in your house. Why do you think this particular reform has been so difficult. And what do you think advocates can do to push for more for change for that inclusion in the coming year.
11:33:07 I have some thoughts, Stan of.
11:33:10 All right, so I, you know, I, some of what Gabrielle was saying really resonated with me around there being. I think more energy around housing issues right now than we've seen in a really really long time.
11:33:25 possibly possibly, you know, most of our lifetimes.
11:33:29 What What is consistently true is that our elected officials are are very far behind us, as sort of the the people who elect them.
11:33:38 They, it takes a while for them to catch up to where their constituents are. And so, you know, as a result, we've really only seen in in very recent year.
11:33:49 Thanks mostly to the work of the folks at Louisiana fair housing Action Center, our elected officials, especially on the state level, pick this up as a priority and I think y'all heard from representative race Du Plessis right before this panel, we have.
11:34:07 Amy Freeman who, who has been working on this bill that, that adds these protections. Most recently, and before her representative Patricia Haines Smith from Baton Rouge who works this issue for several years before leaving the legislature.
11:34:21 That's three people.
11:34:25 Rep Pat Smith was also the person that passed the bill that preempt the nuisance ordinances that that would get people kicked out of their housing right so really small number of folks who have set this as a priority.
11:34:37 And, and that's going to take a while to grow some momentum behind, I think.
11:34:43 We also consistently see people who inferior supposed to be like allies or have said that their allies to the LGBT community, just not show up for us.
11:34:53 And I'll just be really Frank like this is, this is something that is very frustrating to me as an advocate, where we have all of these folks who are in these positions of power who are really really excited to quietly tell us how much they support us
11:35:10 and then they don't show up for us.
11:35:13 And that's been the case with, you know, some of the, the most power to stop just short of naming them, where we just don't see any action on these issues and in fact we see a lot of reticence to even talk about this stuff because it's perceived as toxic.
11:35:35 And, and so without some of those folks help to just normalize this word, we continue to be perceived as radical, when we have these conversations and that has to change.
11:35:50 The standard you want to add anything.
11:35:53 Yeah. Um, I'll just say that one of the things that I've learned in the years here at women with a vision is the beauty of seeing what our communities can do right.
11:36:07 Um, and so I feel like one of the things I've noticed it was easy to talk to people about Oh your health, or your drug use and using harm reduction modalities throughout our work, but the real power for me came when we started doing voter engagement work,
11:36:22 Right.
11:36:23 When we started doing the integrated voter engagement work, we saw people like just own what it's what's happening for them. And, you know, and we've moved away from how I think I want to say those of us who saw people in our community does not trying
11:36:53 change their situation, when we know community is trying to change the situation, every day, and as a person who, who was born and raised in New Orleans and lived in different areas. Even now, the beauty of same people, tap into their own power.
11:37:04 When a woman with a vision founder said to me one time that she said well people like you because you're safe, and I was like what she said well you're, you're the kind of lesbian that safe to people so it's easy for them to talk to you because you look
11:37:29 like them. The way you dress, it's comfortable for people because you look, you look, quote unquote, she was joking when she said normal. Right.
11:37:38 But the beauty of it like do throughout our deep south, D cram Abele around decriminalizing sex work here in Louisiana, bringing almost 200 sex workers to testify to the capital was really big.
11:37:54 Right. And some people wouldn't see that as a, as people who affect housing but these are people who need housing and want to keep their housing. And so, watching people to step into their power is the way forward for me is making sure that people have
11:38:07 the information that they need and they don't have to advocate like we do. We've decided to do this this week, but having people who are directly affected really tap into their networks and people in their community in their neighborhoods around what
11:38:22 they want to see is the way to go. And I'm like, Dylan, I'm all about holding people accountable and so over people like. For the moment, right, for the election time, and that you want us to show up.
11:38:36 Well, we're going to continue to tap on your door because you need to show up for us and just about holding holding them accountable, and making sure that people have what they need, and I've just seen that it's a big shift.
11:38:50 There was a time where no one who was involved in sex work would ever think about showing their face publicly to discuss that, right, or formerly incarcerated women or women who are domestic violence survivors, really show up and talk about what their
11:39:07 needs are and demanding that, and I want to see more of that and I believe we're going to get more of that moving forward, because they are behind We are, we are ahead of the game, community and activists we are ahead of the game because we're living
11:39:21 it and we're seeing it every day and figuring out strategies to push.
11:39:37 I know that sounds like you know, whoo but it's true. It's what it's what we're right.
11:39:39 It's what makes this work possible and knowing that it's not just you. There are other organizations where we're all saying, you know that.
11:39:54 No, we're gonna change this and it's happening so it's been really beautiful for me, for somebody who started this work at 1953.
11:39:57 But watching the change in my city and not always by what politicians will do but what we will do.
11:40:04 And throughout the state has been really beautiful to see that growth and emergence of people power.
11:40:11 I don't know about Tom, but this has been absolutely amazing.
11:40:17 We do have a few more minutes so I do have one final question for our panelists, but I want to remind everyone if you do have a question for any of our panelists, please feel free to put it in the chat, and we'll be looking on the lookout for that.
11:40:29 But my final question to you all and thank you all so much for your your pearls of wisdom. Wisdom throughout this last hour so I know we all work for organizations to advocate for a lot of different policy changes advocate for a lot of different things.
11:40:44 And we're also organizations with limited resources you know we've got to try and pick and choose our strategic objectives, where we can get past that this time what makes the most sense.
11:40:54 But I know we also have typically have a wish list right like we have those things where if we could just wave a magic wand and get rid of this one thing, get rid of this one policy, things would be a lot better for the communities that we serve.
11:41:07 So it'd be great to hear from you all. You know what is your, your wishlist item your one thing that you're working on or thinking about right now, as it relates to over criminalisation.
11:41:18 If you could wave a magic wand would go away and and have a significant impact on the communities that you serve.
11:41:28 Okay, great. Um, so, I was in.
11:41:33 I was in DC. Last month, with Congresswoman Ayana Presley, Congresswoman Corey bush and Congressman Hakeem Jeffries. And for a press conference on the Capitol steps for the introduction of the fixed come of the Act, the fixed quantity x stands for the
11:41:52 and independent experts and clemency act and so this is a bill that my organization that the very foundation as well as some amazing organizations around the country got to offer input on the drafting of, um, and it will be, and I say, well, because I
11:42:13 I'm, and it will be, and I say will because I am putting all the good Juju in the air, once it passes will be a complete overhaul in the clemency pardon the restoration of rights process currently how clemency works is that it starts and stops and the
11:42:29 DOJ.
11:42:32 And when someone introduces an appeal for clemency, you know they want to come out of jail.
11:42:39 Literally, the unilateral decision can be made in the DOJ and that can introduce so much bias you know the cops from your hometown can call up there and just be like, you know, We ain't feeling it.
11:42:51 So you know we just gone. You know, we ain't you know Dallas down here we don't like it, we thought they need to stay. And that can that can be the end of it before it ever hits the President's desk.
11:43:03 That can be the end of it.
11:43:04 And so, when this piece of piece of paper federal policy passes.
11:43:12 Instead, there will be a non person panel made up of at least one formerly incarcerated person, along with mental health experts, all appointed by that sitting president, and they will be the ones to decide.
11:43:28 Everyone, be a part in process and restoration of rights process and the clemency process and they will be the ones to go through those applications and send it to the President's desk.
11:43:37 There are 15,000 people waiting on just just me sitting through multiple presidents.
11:43:46 Right, waiting to come home.
11:43:48 And you can literally just make a call some cops on where I can make a call and just be like, you know what I just don't want them to come home so prosecutor can make the call somewhere just be like I'm not feeling it and just he just got to be something
11:44:00 something done it's just got it just, it just, it just can't work like this.
11:44:04 And so that's my that's my wish list that's we. That's my that's my that's my hope.
11:44:12 Right. Anybody else.
11:44:18 Um, I'll quickly say. So this is something that had
11:44:23 that's been on my heart for like the last maybe three or four years.
11:44:30 One, I want people to mind a business.
11:44:34 It is my dream that if it's not benefiting somebody else. Mind your business and just let people live like that, that really is my dream sound real simple but it really is my dream.
11:44:47 Number two is as a person who was born and raised in New Orleans, and you know, my family struggled like many families we've experienced the same traumas living in living in the city as many other people with having family members incarcerated, family
11:45:04 members, murdered, where you've done a live where we going to find safe housing.
11:45:10 Were you done to live where we going to find safe housing. So as a black woman who is a black lesbian who had two children, and I remember moving from uptown to mid city, so that I could live in a safer neighborhood, but it really wasn't safe because
11:45:25 my son was constantly harassed by white people, and police.
11:45:30 And so, as I as my career progressed, you know, you think about like we're taught that we're supposed to move where they are. because now we've made it.
11:45:41 And I did that. And the third home that I bought in the city is actually in the upper lights war in the upper nine in the same cloth neighborhood. and can I tell you I love my neighborhood.
11:45:52 Can I just tell you like I would like us to make the investment in those neighborhoods that historically been us. I remember telling my wife, I don't want to live in a nice war.
11:46:04 I didn't work hard to live in the Ninth Ward, I don't want to be there. I'm so glad that I changed my mind.
11:46:16 I am so, so overjoyed that I changed my mind. I'm so for me I would like to see more of us just Can we just build on what other people are trying to take away, can we build on like when I see people, you know, white women jogging at seven o'clock at night
11:46:31 in the ninth ward with the stroller and all this kind of stuff. Yet, we have been taught not to move in those neighborhoods because of this exist, and I'll just say this quickly if we really pay attention at all, most people to realize that the same things
11:46:45 you think that exists in my neighborhood existing yours too and we're seeing that play out right now right so there's no more us in them, where we're supposed to be we've moved on up to we supposed to live here.
11:46:58 I am very happy and pleased that we live in the upper nine. I love walking through my neighborhood and talking about people and all I see is like really the beauty of black people who are struggling but also who have joy.
11:47:11 And so I would really like to see more of that, you know, more of that around like who we are and what has historically been ours that we would claim that as a be doing.
11:47:22 Absolutely.
11:47:24 Absolutely. And last but not least them would you like to share your wishlist item for we wrap up. Or, for me, you know, it, it does go back to electorial organizing and that's not a part of the work that I'm involved in personally but it is the thing
11:47:41 that would make my work possible in a lot of ways and in a lot of places and so, mine, mine would be, you know, passage of the comprehensive federal voting rights reform bill that's being held up in the senate right now, but also youth suffrage.
11:47:58 I want to see the the voting age lowered significantly like to 14, right. I think that like it's absurd to think that like anyone could possibly make an argument that an eighth grader is any less equipped to make an informed decision about the world that
11:48:14 they live in, then, then your parents.
11:48:18 Have you talked to your parents lately.
11:48:20 In their opinions, right. So I want to see that happen and we know that the younger, young people get involved, politically, the more likely they are to stay involved and that's something that I think would would benefit us immensely across the country.
11:48:35 That's something that I had not what I obviously that issue was one of my when necessarily come to mind and this conversation so thank you for raising that and I think that's a really important you know people should have a voice and at whatever age of
11:48:55 So we do have to wrap up but I just have to say this has been such an amazing, amazing panel. Thank you all so much for joining us for sharing your wisdom your work and your energy and your community with us.
11:49:11 It has been so fantastic talking with you. We did get one question in the chat about recommended reports or studies on the disproportionate over representation of black women in the criminal justice system.
11:49:21 So perhaps if anybody, any of you have one or two off the top of your head, we can go ahead and put them in the chat as we move on to our keynote, but thank you thank you thank you again for being here.
11:49:31 And next I will turn it back over to our executive director cristiana Hill to introduce our keynote speaker. Thank you all so much.
11:49:39 Thank you Sarah and thank you to all of our panelists.
11:49:52 I'm so excited to move us into our keynote. We have had, I think, wonderful conversations throughout the morning, that will set us up very nicely for the speaker, that is next going to share some insights with you all.
11:50:06 As we bring Professor Cashin in and get everything set up, I will just do a brief introduction and then turn things over. So again for people who may be just joining us for our keynote address.
11:50:22 My name is Shawna Hill, and I'm executive director of the Louisiana fair housing Action Center for everyone who has been with us for the entirety of the event we thank you.
11:50:33 And I would like to introduce to you all Professor Cheryl Cashin Professor Cashin is an acclaimed author who writes about the US struggle with racism and any quality.
11:50:44 Her books have been nominated for numerous awards, including the NAACP Image Award for nonfiction.
11:51:02 Their Hurston right Legacy Award for nonfiction, and an editor's choice in the New York Times Book Review. Professor Cashin is the karmic Waterhouse Professor of Law civil rights and social justice at Georgetown University, and she's an active member
11:51:12 of the poverty and race research Action Council.
11:51:16 Professor Cashin is a former law clerk to US Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, and she also worked in the Clinton White House as an advisor on community development, inner city neighborhoods.
11:51:30 She is a contributing editor for political magazine.
11:51:34 Professor Cashin his latest book is white space, black hood. Opportunity hoarding and segregation in the age of inequality. She currently resides in Washington DC, with her husband and twin sons, and you can follow her work at Cheryl cashin.com, and we
11:51:54 will share a link to professors, Professor Cashin website in our chat box. Professor Cashin thank you so much for joining us today.
11:52:05 Thank you for having me. Is it because Shauna Am I saying your name correctly. Thank you. Yes. Okay, great, thank you for that generous introduction.
11:52:15 I have been listening in a little bit this morning, um, I just want to begin by saying, I really appreciate what all of you do, you know, you're out there trying to make stable housing available to people.
11:52:34 And I just so appreciate you and that's why I'm here with you today, and I love all hundred four participants.
11:52:42 So thank you. Good morning. I'm going to share with you some key insights from my latest book.
11:52:50 Yeah I'm plugging a book but I have spent.
11:52:55 It just so happens to be that my passion is your passion, right I've spent two decades of my life, researching and thinking about residential segregation and why it is that we have communities have incredible abundance and advantage and communities of
11:53:25 need and and how its racialized. And it gets to the larger themes you guys are dealing with the source of need nimbyism and as I tell my students I hold no punches in this book.
11:53:35 It's really the whole system, I say we have a system of residential caste, and it's born of antipathy to black people.
11:53:45 Let me just go ahead and start my slides, and I'm going to try to get through them so we can, can, can have a conversation. So, let's do this shared my screen.
11:53:58 Go to my desktop. I do this for virtual teaching.
11:54:03 I assume there are lots of lawyers here and this will feel like you're back in school but in a positive way, I hope.
11:54:12 All right, let's see.
11:54:19 Just a second. slideshow play from start because Shauna Can you see my slide I just want to be sure. We sure can. Everything looks great on our end Thank you.
11:54:26 Excellent. Okay, so I'm thrilled to be speaking on the theme of fit for King.
11:54:35 In this.
11:54:39 This is my book cover I'll keep going.
11:54:43 I'm going to start with this map of
11:54:50 Minneapolis, and the star.
11:54:54 The Black Star is the place where George Flory endured his slow execution.
11:55:03 And what a lot of people don't realize about that pivotal event in American history is a store there's a serious story of segregation there. What you're looking at two on the left one green.is 100 black people.
11:55:22 This is Minneapolis right and on the right one red dot represents 10 poor people. Right. And so you're seeing a concentrated poverty and concentrated fluids.
11:55:39 This is the floor at white space, and this is you know some of the doors Ford was killed in a neighborhood called powder one was due south of some of the highest poverty neighborhoods in on the lower side, and a
11:56:01 part of what I'm arguing are part of what I show in the book is that you know it would not have been possible for millions of individuals or you know hundreds of thousands of individuals in this city to produce this Stark concentration of poverty and
11:56:21 influence, just through their individual pred prejudices.
11:56:27 This is produced segregation, which helps explain why the Twin Cities region has one of the highest standards of living in the country, and among the nation's highest rates of racial inequality.
11:56:43 At the same time on dimensions, like income wealth, employment, life expectancy, educational attainment I heard discussion about all of these things and in my book I claim that we have a system of residential class, in which we construct and maintain
11:57:00 community, a fluent white space.
11:57:04 We over invest and exclude in those places, and at the other end of the spectrum. We contain segregate. And frankly, prey on people in concentrated high poverty, black and brown neighborhoods, and we tell stories about the people who live in the hood
11:57:27 to justify the way things are. And this, and I say we have this system of residential caste.
11:57:36 And, and by the way I want to make it clear, some some top of the line points right in the last two decades residential segregation has been getting worse in this country, and the two most persistent types of neighborhoods are a fluent poverty free spaces
11:57:55 which are overwhelmingly, they're always majority white, and I'm concentrated poverty neighborhoods, they are the most persistent types of neighborhoods and often they do exist right across a boundary, or a highway or some or river from each other, and
11:58:15 the boundaries to these neighborhoods are hardening, meaning it's increasingly more difficult to get into a fluent high opportunities space, and it's increasingly more difficult to get out of concentrated poverty, black, or the hood, I use, I use that
11:58:36 phrase for me.
11:58:40 That is not a productive. Okay. No. So, and then what I argue is see if I can. Next slide.
11:58:49 This is a follow on institution of white supremacy. Each time or era in this country in which we seem to have put to bed a peculiar lack subordinating institution, we created another one from slavery to Jim Crow to the iconic residential segregation,
11:59:11 that I just showed you on that map, and each of these institutions.
11:59:20 There was a stereotype and anti black stereotype that was propagated to defend and normatively justify the institution.
11:59:33 All right.
11:59:39 Now I'm going to go to
11:59:49 this. Hold on. Sorry. Apologize.
11:59:41 I'm here are some of the
11:59:46 stereotypes and public policies that over a century constructed and maintain our current institution of residential cast.
12:00:00 And I underscore this one underscore to my law students that there's an iterative relationship, you know, a stereotype gets propagated and weaponized in politics to justify the adoption of a public policy or law.
12:00:18 The law, you know, creates structures of opportunity for some, an absence of it for others, and then the people who participate in those institutions or laws and benefit from them, they begin to acquire or participate reified, the stereotype, and the
12:00:44 stereotype, and the institution has a way of conscripting people into participating in the institution as well so we're in this, we've been in this vicious cycle for more than a century.
12:01:00 I'm not going to go over, line by line. The, the different types of policies, I'm pretty sure you're, you're quite familiar with them.
12:01:13 Richard Roston covers, particularly the history of red lining and the cumulative blunt force trauma to black neighborhoods. I do that in my book as well.
12:01:27 Now, continuing on, I use in the first chapter of my book.
12:01:33 I follow Baltimore through all of these stages. Right. And now, and I'll underscore Baltimore in the 1890s actually Baltimore during in the antebellum era had one of the largest populations of free black people
12:01:53 in the country.
12:01:56 Certainly in states that were slaves were slavery rained and was legal. In fact, those free black people moving around as part of what inspired Frederick Douglass when he was working there.
12:02:15 I think it was on the docks to to escape to be free. Well in the 1890s, A.
12:02:30 You couldn't even at the turn of the century if you were black in Baltimore, you could go to the stores try on the clothes, um, you could, if you could afford it, you could buy a house wherever you want it to.
12:02:39 It's only with the Great Migration on set of the Great Migration in the team.
12:02:45 I'm 1910s, and 19 teens.
12:02:50 10s Okay, um, when the beginning of the Great Migration over seven decades, more than 6 million people move north and west to escape. Violence back Jim Crow and seek opportunity and the primary response to the great migrants, wherever they landed in large
12:03:14 numbers, was to use resident restrictive covenants and straight up violence.
12:03:24 And they tried zone at racial zoning that got struck down, and became vs rarely but to contain them in their own neighborhoods, and then to redlining a cut those neighborhoods off from the kind of credit and subsidies for mortgages and public investment
12:03:44 that was rain down on majority white areas. So by the 40s, you know you get this Stark neighborhoods.
12:03:55 Baltimore colloquially the, they're the areas, East and West Baltimore heavily black, um, and referred to as the Black Butterfly, and those very neighborhoods.
12:04:08 As you can see, looking at the Ho, LLC, redlining maps.
12:04:13 Wherever black people again landed. Oh in the 200 cities were Ho, LLC had them geographically map. They were marked in red explicitly deemed hazardous.
12:04:30 And immediately, you start to see disinvestment and decline in these neighborhoods, many of which were quite vital.
12:04:38 There's a neighborhood in Baltimore called Harlem Park and that was where, you know, leading jazz singers Billie Holiday and others would sing and perform.
12:04:48 And there's a Fed study from.
12:04:55 I think it's 2018, a very recent fed study which said found that eight decades on you could go back to the neighborhoods that were marked with a D.
12:05:05 And it correlates to this day with disinvestment decline and racial segregation.
12:05:15 Then you know the the federal government piles on.
12:05:18 This is a map of the same areas the purple areas are there are the red line areas with urban renewal major urban renewal Park Park developments, the numbers here are the numbers of how 1.6 1600 homes are the number of homes that were mowed down.
12:05:42 You get a displacement. And then on top of the displacement the disruptions of urban renewal projects, which Baldwin.
12:06:07 My hero James Baldwin famously called infamously I guess famously called Negro removal.
12:05:59 The city and Hud pylon by their decisions about where to put the people who are displaced.
12:06:07 Many of the black families that were displaced by Urban Renewal projects and highway projects that mode through black areas were put into public housing intentionally built on a separate and unequal basis.
12:06:22 And what happens when you have a new public housing, particularly a dense public housing development, where 100% of the people have to be poor and it's assigned on a racial basis where you overnight, you are creating a ghetto.
12:06:45 A extremely dense concentrated poverty, which had not exist again at the turn of city black people actually were scattered around the city they weren't concentrated in the social distinctions that come naturally to people become much more efficient.
12:07:03 When you overlay it with race. Right. When you can point to extremely concentrated poverty neighborhoods, basically right across a boundary, this this is a color coded map.
12:07:27 Blue is one diet is one person. Blue is white, green is black, red is Asian this orange is Hispanic, and there's, you know it's hardly too hard to discern but the few Native Americans and other race people, but when you have, you could point to neighborhoods
12:07:38 that had been historically be funded historically dis invested, they look shabby. There's concentrated poverty. Surprise surprise you get, you know, habits of avoidance right and and that's the nimbyism that people who are trying to build affordable housing
12:07:58 or get people access to affordable housing have to deal with every day, you know the attitude of places like here's, hell no. Hell no, a nerd deep anti black nasty stereotypes animating perceptions of subsidized housing Low Income Housing people coming
12:08:21 from low income areas because of this long history.
12:08:26 Okay.
12:08:28 Um, so I argue in my book that we have today I've gone over the past, but my argument is, we have a system in which public policies.
12:08:43 Still, double down and encourage we tend to encourage through public policy, the maintenance of boundaries, we have three predominant anti black processes that explain the continuation of the stark patterns of segregation boundary maintenance opportunity
12:09:03 hoarding and stereotype driven surveillance.
12:09:08 A, everybody here who's listening to me is, is intimately familiar with the policies that maintain boundaries and I and I put exclusionary zoning at the top of the list.
12:09:22 It was a very revealing New York Times article in the last year, which showed that in many cities in this country, a lot of them happened to be ones were great migrants landed.
12:09:35 Um, it's illegal to build anything other than a single family detached single family home on as much as 70 75% of the land.
12:09:47 The major public policy decisions that have shaped residential space in this country from the teens forward, have been designed to a.
12:10:18 I guess accommodate to or shape, the desires, mainly of white homeowners, particularly a fluent white homeowners. Okay. And then there's opportunity hoarding in this is a point that I think is less understood.
12:10:25 Then boundary maintenance in American society, what what is opportunity hoarding, it's just love what I said it's over investing in neighborhoods of advantage, excluding and dis investing elsewhere.
12:10:43 And, you know, you look at I'm going to be showing you maps shortly, and other places, but all of you familiar with this you know where the advantage neighborhoods are in the communities you live in.
12:10:56 What's really important to understand is that all of the people who are excluded from high poverty space, which is the majority of people in most metropolitan areas are subsidizing the golden infrastructure you often find in those neighborhoods subsidizing
12:11:18 them with their tax dollars they're gassed their income tax dollars sales tax gas tax, you name it. Um, and, and we can get into explicit examples but here's an example, even in black run cities like Baltimore and I say black run because Baltimore.
12:11:43 It's a majority black city and it has majority black representation on the city council and it has, has had something like seven of the last eight mayor's have been black, even with that kind of representation.
12:11:58 They did a study and found to their own horror that when they looked at their community development funding and their investments in infrastructure, etc.
12:12:09 that they were spending four times as much in majority white areas, as in black neighborhoods.
12:12:16 And this is this is the same in Chicago, you know, Chicago, research, a recent study found that white neighborhoods in Chicago receive three times as much public and private investment as black was that is opportunity boarding.
12:12:34 And then stereotype driven surveillance is familiar to anyone who's just been paying attention and watching. We have a distinctly different kind of policing of lewd back to the, to the map of Minneapolis right a distinctly different type of policing in
12:12:53 high poverty, black and brown neighborhoods, a kind of policing that would not be tolerated in a fluent white space one where police come in those neighborhoods with a lens of presuming every young man is a thug every young man is a potential criminal
12:13:12 stopping in arresting. A lot of people, particularly and I cite a study in my book about arrest for non violent
12:13:25 offenses in Washington DC Surprise, surprise, you know, black people are way, way disproportionately arrested for things that white people will receive a pass on, like, you know, drinking with an open container, stuff like that.
12:13:41 But then we have exploding surveillance of black bodies, and it happens, particularly in gentrifying areas, but not by the police just by, you know, a lot of citizens.
12:13:57 Right. Um, and the worst example of it is the kind of vigilante ism that that killed for a mark our bridges for jogging in a white neighborhood.
12:14:08 Okay. Well, here's more evidence of what I'm talking about the concentration of influence and of poverty.
12:14:18 These maps are from Paul drug ASCII, who's a demographer and the person who invented I suppose the technical definition of a high poverty distress neighborhood or a ghetto is a neighborhood where 40%, or more of the people who live there are poor, and
12:14:44 you see what this color coded map. They highlighted read highly Crimson places are very very poor and look what happened in Pittsburgh over about a 15 year period.
12:15:06 I'm certain areas, which had some socio economic diversity, have been scrubbed completely clean and it's become a.
12:15:11 Well, I wouldn't say I mean it's not the same as when these areas. Right. But you see, the footprint of concentrated poverty has been shifting.
12:15:23 And in here, you know, this is by the way.
12:15:28 August Wilson the playwright's Hill district, right here. But, you know, this is in an era when the city was in theory revitalizing, um, something like 60 robotics companies there had a tech revolution going on in the city.
12:15:45 And I cite evidence that as cities were becoming more popular again and suburbanites we're moving back to the city and cities were revitalizing, in theory, actually, many black neighborhoods, particularly ones that had been worked with the D all of them
12:16:04 had been marked with the deed actually declined and we're worse off.
12:16:09 In that period. And again, what happens when you get the stark differences.
12:16:16 Here is a low poverty area now there's a big Cliff here, if you're familiar with. But here's a low poverty area and then you have this concentrated area of attitudes people get crazy attitudes about blackness and black people, in part because of situations
12:16:35 like this, and if you're living over here. Well I switched but anyway. But yeah, here's Philadelphia, your center city.
12:16:44 I have a great grandmother, an ancestor sitter city used to be very black but you know Center City has been scrubbed out the moat you know fluent white space, and look at the footprint of concentrated poverty it's exploding and growing fastest in the
12:17:03 suburbs.
12:17:07 I'm just showing you some of these maps. Some of you may be familiar with this, but it's it's very common for a interstate to become the boundary dividing a fluent.
12:17:21 A white, and tons of tribe concentrated poverty space.
12:17:26 This is a map of Houston. What you're seeing here, this pale area is majority white.
12:17:35 A star is a Houston. Public Housing Authority project.
12:17:42 A never in the history of building public housing in Houston, had they ever built a housing project in a majority white area, and they actually had proposed to do to, to atone for their sins of concentrating poverty, I have a different map.
12:18:02 I wish I'd used it, that had little green dots that showed low income housing tax credit sponsored properties, same pattern, right almost none in this majority area but they propose to atone for their sins by building a mixed income, a public housing
12:18:24 sponsored development that looked beautiful near the gallery and affluent white space and people there, obviously, engaged, they engaged in incredible nimbyism got to the black mayor and the project was scuttle, and this is after you know that in.
12:18:43 Around the same time, the city of Houston.
12:18:47 A settled a Fair Housing Act lawsuit brought against it by the Obama administration's hood, and they conceded that 71% of government subsidized housing projects in Houston, had been built in only five of its 88 neighborhoods.
12:19:09 Right, so, government, particularly the low income housing tax credit.
12:19:19 Is it we're spending money to concentrate poverty still.
12:19:19 Okay, this is just a quick map of Chicago showing that middle class people have left the city and basically you have a tale of two cities. This is very high income, you know Magnificent Mile.
12:19:32 And this is the rest of Chicago, very low income, right, and Chicago, the state of Illinois I have the stat. In the book, spends a million dollars every four years on every inner city block on 851 inner city poor blocks in that city to incarcerate people.
12:19:57 Every four years the state of Illinois in the city is spending almost a billion dollars to incarcerate people, and at the same time, They have had gone to waves a school closures closing schools here, and opening new ones here, right, enormous gorgeous
12:20:20 public art spaces and things like that. And again, I said, I'm in Chicago majority white neighborhoods have been getting about three times as much investment.
12:20:31 The new mayor has is trying to disrupt that she has this new billion dollar initiative to put money into the south side, but this is what residential cast looks like.
12:20:42 Okay, so let me leave you with some hope.
12:20:47 I'm the beauty.
12:20:50 Once you understand these systemic processes of residential cast.
12:20:58 The beauty is the way forward is clear.
12:21:01 You just need to do the opposite.
12:21:05 So I'll go back to this slide, inclusion, rather than exclusion mandatory inclusion Arizona, rather than exclusion.
12:21:15 I'm green lining of historically defended neighborhoods and racial equity and buzz budgeting, rather than the opportunity hoarding I've decided. I've described, and I'm when it comes to surveillance, changing the nature, the nature of the relationship
12:21:33 of the city with high poverty neighborhoods, from punitive to caring and I give examples of. In fact, if you're interested I just wrote a piece for Politico came out on MLK day where I held up examples of
12:21:53 cities and places where they seem to be trying to innovate and racial inequality and racial justice I show you this this is, you know, we had this moment, Summer 2020 2500 places across this country, more than 20 million people holding up signs, claiming
12:22:13 that black lives matter.
12:22:16 And I'll stop the sharing out to conclude.
12:22:23 The thing that I say in this MLK piece and the thing that I'll leave you with a in championing the creation of the Beloved Community. I'm Dr. King.
12:22:41 You know, it wasn't an utopian abstraction for him.
12:22:46 Um, it was radical but it was a realistic vision for building communities in which racial integration and reconciliation, could be achieved through a critical mass of committed citizens working together, right, and getting there required, you know, gathering
12:23:07 information about existing systems, educating people about them, and then going through direct action to demand different policies, and I offer examples, I'll just end with
12:23:23 Minneapolis, Minneapolis much in the news, right through a multi year education process where civic minded people and I believe some professors,
12:23:40 gave presentations, like the one I'm giving with showing the history of how segregation was constructed, and educated people about it.
12:23:57 They changed the politics around zoning, and were able to create an overwhelming majority to rescind its single families zoning ordinance, it past 12 to one, the one to center was the representative of the affluent white space I pointed out on the map.
12:24:14 And now every neighborhood in Minneapolis, pastor at least have to be open to duplexes, try plexus, and they zone, particularly your transit, for a lot more, you know, dense multifamily housing and mandated that 10% of those units be moderate income that's
12:24:36 modern, I mean it should have been like 20%, it should include a very low income, but the point is a they've gotten started on a radically different vision, than what they had before.
12:25:01 Stop there.
12:24:52 And take questions. Thank you, Professor cash and you have really tied together so many elements of the conversations that we've been having today throughout our panels, you know, we actually had a panelists on from who used to be with Texas houses and
12:25:09 is very familiar with the fountain view example and we discussed that and in our first panel which was on NIMBY sentiment and the ways in which nimbyism right perpetuate segregation and communities across the country.
12:25:22 We've also had a conversation about how the over criminalization of certain people who are marginalized within our societies, really creates barriers right to Fair Housing Choice for them.
12:25:35 And so there are there are so many threads that your presentation has brought together for us today, and just following through a little bit on on some of that.
12:25:47 I'm wondering if you know of any examples or can share any success stories where some of these solutions that you mentioned are actually working right so communities where mandatory exclusionary zoning is making a difference communities where, for instance,
12:26:06 local elected officials are implementing neighborhood engagement processes that are more representative and equitable and I'll just say, a little bit around that piece specifically.
12:26:20 Here in New Orleans, the Fair Housing Action Center recently released a report showing that the outsize voice that is given to white lead neighborhood associations, is really perpetuating segregation across our city.
12:26:36 That kind of deep nimbyism has led to the killing of over 600 affordable homes in New Orleans, since Hurricane Katrina hit, and you shared examples from Baltimore and Chicago right about how even when cities have majority, or very large populations of
12:26:57 black folks, we have elected officials and policymakers, who are still listening to the voices of people who have historically had power in this country right and so if you have any examples, or can discuss, where folks might be doing things a little
12:27:13 differently. I think that would be so helpful to hear for us as we're all trying to grapple with next steps and how to move forward. Okay, so I'm just, I'm going to highlight some of the examples I just gave in the piece I wrote for political.
12:27:35 Pardon me, I'm a little mentally tired so I'm just I'm pulling up my problems problem.
12:27:49 A problem period is. Okay, Hold on. Got it.
12:27:56 Okay, so
12:28:03 I'm gonna so around the zoning this this one won't won't. I mean I gave you the example of Minneapolis right and and I just wanted to underscore that it took a couple of years of a group of people
12:28:23 going around and educating key people about about the history to change the political context, right, um, one thing I've noticed like if you wherever you are.
12:28:38 You could Google like Google like redlining New Orleans, or redlining, you know, wherever you are.
12:28:46 I could see that there's quite a bit of consciousness that has a.
12:28:52 I'll be honest, my friend Richard Ross seen his help raise this awareness, but there are on the ground places that are using like Louisville, for example, has a website.
12:29:04 The government has a website where they put their whole history on the website, and have it it's been, it really seemed to educate the mayor and been a source of an ongoing conversation about how they need to put more money into the West End.
12:29:26 Right.
12:29:26 Baltimore, Minneapolis and Seattle have all formally adopted a racial equity law that requires neighborhood analysis about where the money is going to disrupt that systemic press practice of over investing, or dis investing in black neighborhoods.
12:29:48 I was just on the phone. A couple weeks ago with a guy who's head of the office that negotiates.
12:29:58 The Mount Laurel obligations in New Jersey, New Jersey is lucky because they have this famous Supreme Court case, which requires under the state constitution for every Township.
12:30:15 In New Jersey to have its fair share of affordable housing. So, because of that, constitutional obligation, the office the state office that administers that obligation and the point is something like 300 towns have formally adopted mandatory exclusionary
12:30:38 zoning ordinances right now that's not good that's small solace to you working in, in, in New Orleans where you don't have a state mandate coming down, but the My point is, it can be done but you have to
12:30:58 build coalitions and what building one New Jersey has done, they kind of, they actually come in and teach people how to do coalition building. The key is to get to majority power with the decision maker by building coalitions between majority minority
12:31:18 neighborhoods black and brown and the struggling white neighborhoods that are also that also have more than their fair share of affordable housing. Once people understand
12:31:30 the ways in which they're basically being put upon. I mean, you know, in terms of more than your fair share of affordable housing and less than their fair share of equitable investment, the kind of investment that makes neighborhoods nice, there's a potential
12:31:48 point of coalition building that can build majority power on the zoning board on the city council. Right.
12:32:05 You know, and this is kind of what King's message was about, like, you don't have to necessarily convince the super wealthy neighborhoods. What you do have to do is get enough power among the people side of it to say, this is how it's going to be, we're
12:32:29 forcing this on you now. You know, we are disrupting the the systems that have over advantage you now, and you gotta live with the program that's what democracy is right.
12:32:40 And I actually think that cities have a better offer to particularly progressive ones have more of an opportunity for majority of power to actually decide the policies because there's less.
12:32:56 You know, you know, we know at the national level their structures designed to stop majority will right um you know, and yes some, you know, some cities are in red states often, sometimes, you know, the state legislature interferes it doesn't let you
12:33:12 do what you want to do, but I'm in often I find particularly with housing, the places that do best, are, are places where there's a faith based community that's that's really central to building.
12:33:34 The moral case.
12:33:36 You know, I actually, I do think there are people of goodwill.
12:33:41 I'm.
12:33:43 I don't want to be Pollyanna about it, but if you've got sake leaders in there, you know, I'm trying to get people to walk the walk, it's it you know this society we've constructed is an immoral society.
12:33:59 That's why I wrote the book, you know.
12:34:01 Anyway, I hope this is helpful, I could give other examples I mean you know there's a
12:34:09 60 mayor's now you can see there's mayor's for a guaranteed income for 60 mayor's who said, we support having a guaranteed income pilot, you know, a universal basic income pilot.
12:34:27 There are city that have made their bus routes to the poorest neighborhoods free right there are cities that if you look at the office of the website advanced piece.
12:34:37 There's something like 20 cities that have opened these Office of neighborhood safety and alternative to mass policing and mass incarceration, that are really helping reduce gun violence by working with the relatively small number of young men in, in,
12:35:11 a neighbor has plagued by gun violence to change their lives. Right, so I hold up these examples of things that all we have the power to do right now. Thank you, and you've you've, you've shared so much of your of your brilliance with us today that I
12:35:17 don't want to tax you anymore.
12:35:18 want to tax you anymore. So I just want to say thank you and what I what I very much appreciate about what you shared with us today and what you just shared in response to the question is that you're really helping us see beyond, right, the idea of trying
12:35:31 to convince people who are the beneficiaries of this white opportunity hoarding, right, we can have a strategy beyond trying to win their hearts and minds which there are certainly people doing that work, and they can keep doing it.
12:35:45 But, but you've reminded us really of the power that we can hold and the ways in which we can see the change that we want on trying to get the people who benefit from the power structure to agree with us and I think that's so helpful.
12:36:01 I bring my, my hero up power sees nothing without a demand, go build some power and demanded.
12:36:09 Professor. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for your time. And thank you for sharing your insight with us. Thank you. All right. Bye bye.
12:36:19 Have a good afternoon everyone. Thank you so much and as we wrap up today's event. I would like to just thank all of the speakers who joined us today.
12:36:30 Thank you so much to the friends and partners of the Louisiana fair housing Action Center, who have joined us. I see many former low fat staff members in the, in the attendee list and so we thank you to to people who have shaped this organization and
12:36:49 in ways, large and small. Thank you to the board members. I do want to give a special shout out to, to my team the staff members at the Louisiana fair housing Action Center.
12:37:00 Every day I'm so honored to work with such dedicated and talent advocates, the work that you do.
12:37:08 does change lives as we've seen today and I'm so thankful to get to work with such a wonderful team for those who are joining us today. I do want to ask that you please fill out your evaluation and survey via the link in the chat will be sharing that