Housing + Homelessness

- Good day everyone. I'm Karen Bonadio director of Alumni Relations, and I'm delighted to welcome you to today's Alumni Talk Policy webinar, housing and homelessness. The Alumni Talk Policy webinar series features HKS alumni and panel discussions about pressing public issues. This webinar is being recorded and closed captioning is available. I'm happy to introduce our moderator Micaela Connery, MPP 2016 co-founder and CEO of The Kelsey, who will kick off today's important and timely discussion. Micaela.

- Thanks Karen. And thanks everybody for being here. I'm really grateful to be moderating this group of MPP alumni. We have Kate from, who's a partner at HR and A Advisors. Chuck who's a manager of performance, analysis and reporting at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. Marisa program director at The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation. And Jesse, the president of Alliance Way LLC. And each of them will share more on their background and the work that they're doing and their insights into this incredibly important topic that we're gonna be covering today. So I don't know if anybody saw in the New York Times this weekend, it feels timely. It was the next least expensive city is already too expensive. So I think any of us, in any city across the US, in town across the US are seeing the impact of the housing crisis in communities across our country. According to 2012 data from the Harvard Joint center for housing studies, and that's from 2012, 40.9 million American households were cost burdened. That's over 35% of American households live as being cost burdened. And actually almost 20% of American households are severely cost burdened on their rents. We've seen home prices and rental costs significantly outpace income growth. And in America's most populated cities, only six had a healthy price to income ratio. And that's why we're actually seeing that across the country, numbers of people experiencing housing insecurity or homelessness is only continuing to rise and cities are dealing with this. It used to be an issue in a city like San Francisco, where I'm zooming in from, but now we're seeing it in every city across the country that the 2020 point in time homeless count, before COVID, tracked that over a half a million Americans were living unhoused. And so the scale of this problem is massive. And we have a really wonderful group of alumni today who all work across the diversity of systems that can and are moving to create more housing opportunities. There are different levers we can move, financing, policy, philanthropy, design, urban planning, social services, all different levers we can move to advance housing opportunities. And we're gonna get into a lot of that today and really talk about this both broad and specific issue of housing and homelessness. There's a lot to cover in a short amount of time. So I'm gonna kick it off and let our panelists introduce themselves and ask them to share their name, where they're joining in from, and most importantly the lever that they most focus on in their work around housing and homelessness. So I'll kick it off with Marisa and we can go around and let everyone get started. So Marisa.

- Great, thank you. Aloha everybody. I am computing in from Hawaii. It's great to be here with all of you and I work for The Harry and Jeannette Weinberg Foundation. Again, I'm the program director for our statewide grant making here in Hawaii. The foundation also does grant making in other priority communities that include other areas with very expensive housing, and very significant crises around unsheltered populations, like New York, Chicago, Baltimore. We do funding in the Bay area as well in other communities. You're welcome to check out more about our work on our website, but we do focus on helping break cycles of poverty and working with nonprofit organizations, direct service organizations and others that are committed to doing that kind of work in the areas of housing, health, jobs, and education. So with our housing work, we're focused on some of the things I know we'll talk more about today, around deeply affordable housing, preserving affordable housing, creating affordable housing for those very low income families that need more opportunities, and focusing on populations that need special support, particularly youth experiencing homelessness, youth with disabilities experiencing homelessness, LGBT young people and seniors, and veterans and other special populations. I look forward to hearing more from my colleagues and to the conversation. Thanks for having me.

- Thanks Marisa. Chuck, do you wanna go ahead?

- Sure. Chuck Flacks, I graduated from the Kennedy school. Exactly, well, not exactly, but 30 years ago, this June. And have spent most of my career in community development and affordable housing and workforce development work. Six years ago, I moved to Santa Barbara where I'm zooming in from and was privileged to take a policy level role, organizing the county into a system of care. And that's really the lever that even at LAHSA, which is a large homeless services agency in Los Angeles. The emphasis of our work is around systems of care. Under the first Bush administration, there were the continuum's of care were created across the country. And it's a really good sort of Kennedy school look lens at the issue because there are 700 of these that are doing community level work from the streets into permanent housing and strengthening those systems has been something that I've really been focusing on. So, and I'm happy to talk more about how those different interconnected government systems can work better together.

- Awesome. Kate.

- Great to see everybody here and glad everybody could join us. I'm Kate Collignon, I'm a partner with HR and A Advisors. I have been based in New York for the last 30 years before and after graduating from the Kennedy school in 2000, but relocated to the Bay area very recently. At HR and A we are an economic development and real estate consulting firm that has been working with public and private sectors for over 40 years on economic development and public policy goals. Our affordable housing practice focuses specifically on program and policy design for affordable housing on behalf of foundations, on behalf of cities, on behalf of communities. I within HR and A work closely with our affordable housing practice doing place-based economic development and planning. So as you are looking at neighborhood investment, understanding how affordable housing can be integrated into community plans in order to achieve inclusive growth overall. And my work builds on a history of, before going to the Kennedy school, working on behalf of a shelter that provided services for homeless families. And then after that working for a long period of time with New York City's economic development corporation and with a private developer. So very excited to be here today.

- Thanks Kate. And last one but not least Jesse.

- Hi everyone. My name is Jesse Leon from San Diego. My pronouns are he, him, his. I graduated from the Kennedy school with Marisa in 2001. At MPP, I started in the field of affordable housing and mixed income developments in early 2000's with the funders network for smart growth and livable communities. I was the third hire, first person of color hired to build a movement across the country on equitable development, regional equity in essence. So my job was to bridge the gap between white environmentalist funders and people of color social justice funders that were talking about stop suburban sprawl, build higher density in urban areas, but too often, the input and the needs of communities of color were not in those conversations around smart growth policies. Hence the creation of regional equity and equitable development. My partner organization with policy link, Angela Blackwell, she was a also funded by the Ford foundation at the time, as we were to build a movement among nonprofits across the country on equitable development. So how do you connect housing, transportation, education, land use policies as health equity for more holistic approach. Through that work we did about 20 demonstration projects across the country. Each region had different approaches, some had TOD, Transit Oriented Developments, other were mixed income, others like Wynwood in Miami were arts based community development strategies. Since then I've worked in the philanthropy at JP Morgan Chase. I worked at the Colorado Health Foundation in terms of public sector, both at the US department of HUD on their choice neighborhoods program, as well as the Florida director of multifamily development. About two years ago, I created my consulting company, Alliance Way, which provides consulting services for foundations. My expertise is the intersections of philanthropy and affordable housing and cross sector strategies. Most recently I've been helping foundations create social impact funds for non-LIHTC low income housing tax credit, and non-public subsidized affordable housing fully funded by philanthropy, and I'm happy to be here.

- Awesome. Thanks Jesse. And we're just gonna get going right into the questions, but Jesse got our first acronym of the day LIHTC. So I am gonna asked the HKS team to throw in, we put together a little glossary, we will try not to be on too many acronyms in lingo, but we have this created at The Kelsey in a plain language guide for our advocates with disabilities, so thought we could share with you all, some of the acronyms that you might hear today if you're not already familiar. So I wanna jump right into it with a question for Chuck and Jesse around the broad topic of this today is, around housing and homelessness. And obviously homelessness is top of mind where I am here in San Francisco, but across the country as we discussed. And I'm curious to kick off with, in thinking about policies and homelessness, whether is this simply a housing supply issue, and whether the other interventions needed as we think about this particular piece of our affordable housing crisis.

- So I'm gonna go first, even though Jesse probably knows more than I do. My take on it is that, homeless people represent the canary in the coal mine for the housing supply issue. And that in fact, we probably wouldn't have a crisis or a homelessness issue as it is understood now, if we had adequate housing supply. So I think there's a real direct connection to the issue and Jesse could talk, we both could talk at length about the disinvestment, federal disinvestment in housing, that's really been at root of the crisis that you outline Micaela in your opening remarks in terms of the livable cities. And in fact, as someone who lives in Santa Barbara, I'd like to know where that match between income and housing costs really, really fits. Maybe I should move there. In terms of if we could check a box and this problem today, there was a recent book called "Evicted" and I should know the reference right away, and I don't, he's a sociologist who toured-

- Matthew Desmond.

- Thank you.

- Matthew Desmond.

- Matthew Desmond, that's it. He calls for, and I agree with him, a universal voucher system that would give people access to the rent they need to be able to afford housing in the markets they live in. That wouldn't eliminate homelessness for reasons that you're asking about, which include issues around mental health, which is also a system that's broken, issues around alcohol and drug use another system unfortunately that's broken, and then ongoing issues related to poverty across our nation, you know that contributes specifically to homelessness as well as a lot of other kinds of issues. So we are gonna solve it just with housing, but I do think that, that's a great place to start and then let's fix the other systems too.

- Yep, Jessie, anything to add on that?

- My biggest frustration in this sector in this part of the conversation is that, often the voices of those of us that have experienced homelessness, especially BIPOC and BIPOC LGBT individuals are not at the table, where our voices are not heard, we're not at the table formulating policies. My story's a little different, I didn't get to the Kennedy school or to Harvard or UC Berkeley. I went to community college for four years. At 18 years old, I was homeless. I was sleeping in a park, 135 pounds strung out on crystal meth and heroin, got clean and sober and started my educational career in community college and then transferred over to UC Berkeley in 1996. And in 1999, went over to the Kennedy school. And too often policies, when I'm at the table I'm often the only person at the table that looks like me and that has a lived experiences. And when I'm trying to recommend policies, I'm often overshadowed by other policymakers and my recommendations are not taken in consideration. That was my experience over a number of years. What I'm seeing now is, a lot of foundations are starting to step in to address this issue in markets that haven't seen, the quote unquote, homeless issue like California, Florida, New York, and trying to get ahead of the curve beyond just production and supply. So job creation, economic empowerment, economic opportunities, as well as mixed income housing strategies. Nimbyism is also real. So how do we engage the right partners in community, the faith based institutions, churches to really be this work, especially when it comes to unit production, as well as epic deployment of capital, which is oftentimes not enough.

- Thanks so much for that. And I think your note around lived experience, I will just say, I see a hand raised already, in a few, after a couple questions, I'll transition it over to Q and A, so definitely keep those questions ready. But your mention of folks with lived experience, I think also gets to the sort of othering of housing insecurity as though it happens to other people or people in certain situations. And I'd love Marisa to share with us some context, and also some what policy implications are there for the fact that this is a universal issue, and housing affordability is not limited to a small group of folks or a small group of cities.

- Thanks, Micaela. I think that's just so important, just exactly how you framed it, that we see this as a universal issue and more and more, especially here in Hawaii, it's such a high cost area that this is an issue that touches everybody. We have parents right now wondering, how are my own children going to be able to live in the community they were raised in? How are they going to be able to afford rent or to be homeowners themselves? This question, you mentioned over the weekend, there was a lot of reporting on this, the New York Times, in Washington Post, just the skyrocketing costs of not only rentals, but of home ownership. And so this is a question we all have to answer together. It does definitely, as Chuck said, impact some more than others in a more dire way immediately, but really important to see everything is interconnected and how we work together to maintain housing affordability in our nation. You mentioned policy levers, and I think it starts too with just how we think about each other as shared members of the community and the language we use. It's so important here in Hawaii, we're being informed and really take the note that it's really not homelessness here in Hawaii, especially with our native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders that make up more than half of our unsheltered population and know no other home, it's houselessness, it's being unsheltered. And we need to really have a way to talk about how we support and share resources with the unsheltered neighbors and community members that we have here in Hawaii. And I think being on an island, helps us see how we're all interrelated. And I hope that, that can expand out to a national perspective that we're not none of us, as well until all of us as well, and how we really just see those connections and act on them in the policies we're creating and the way that we talk about resources and priorities, both at the local level and a national level.

- Yeah, and I tie you with what Chuck mentioned that, we do not currently have a right to housing in the United States, but then I'm thinking about whether that be the case, and more universal access to vouchers, and moving to a more right spaced approach to housing would be a change in this country that we have not taken. I wanna get to some of the ways that we can actually influence change and pop over to Kate around this question about that housing is developed and operated super locally, and like many policies like planning and entitlement is local or regional, or in some cases, the state is getting involved, so they do become more statewide and streamlined, yet other programs that impact housing are super federal based and things like tax credits, and Medicaid funding and HUD programs. And so curious about in your work that you do, dispersed across geographies, but also having been operated on the city side too, how you think about where we can move levers and interventions between the local regional state and federal?

- I think this is one of the biggest issues that we're grappling with, particularly in communities like the Bay area now, where you have lots of smaller communities that are each independently trying to address housing and homelessness. I mean as you said, Micaela, much of the funding is provided at the federal level, the entitlements and approvals are provided at the local level. And if those don't line up, you end up with an unfunded mandate. So, for example, I mean we've all seen, read, experienced situations where zoning approvals are being sought that will allow for more housing, denser housing, and so often, and increasingly we're seeing that rejected, you know, I'd say that there at a high level, sort of three different bases around which communities rejected one, they say, I just don't wanna see change happen in my neighborhood, I don't wanna see traffic, I don't wanna see height. There are some communities that will just come out and say, I don't wanna see affordable housing in my neighborhood, 'cause I'm worried about how that's gonna impact my property values or my lived experience. Increasingly in almost every market that I work in, and that covers not only the coasts, but also Detroit and Oklahoma City and Kansas City. The argument that I'm hearing is, I don't wanna see development unless there's a substantial amount of affordability that's included within it because I'm quite reasonably concerned about gentrification and displacement. often that is an authentic concern that people are expressing, sometimes it is language that is shielding, I just don't wanna see change happen in my backyard. But the risk is that, if the deeper, bigger affordability requirements are embedded in the entitlements and the review process, and that's not aligned with federal funding that's available, you just won't see any housing get developed, whether it's affordable or market rate. And so in addition to not getting the affordable units you want, you're also not gonna start to address the supply challenges that Chuck and Jesse were talking about. And so it starts to really point to the need to establish more teeth, frankly, around enabling development at the regional level. Every small community or most small communities have a hard time saying yes to new housing when New York City advanced mandatory inclusionary zoning almost, or I think, every single community board that was involved in review rejected it. And ultimately passed because New York City is of a scale that its approvals are not fully determined by what's happening at the neighborhood level. But when you get to the Bay area, some of the communities here are of the same size as individual neighborhoods in New York, and they're each determining their own outcomes. So I'm really excited to see some of the measures that are being advanced at the state level, SB9, SB10, that really is making it easier to transition from purely single family zoning to support transit oriented development. The creation of the Bay area housing finance authority that will provide a funding source, in addition to federal funds that can support regional housing development. These two markets that I'm talking about here tend to be, are clearly those that are land constrained and fast growing and very expensive markets, but they still provide models that can be applied elsewhere in the country with close attention to making sure that the economics match what you're seeing in terms of ground up development.

- Yeah, and I'd say as somebody who's developing two projects entitled with SB35, that's another great intervention in our state. Chuck, I just wanna ask you as somebody working on the local level, like how do see your work as impacting up into the federal level and how do you see the federal things happening at the federal level being really implemented in your own community?

- So you mentioned before about the different sources of funding, the key to the federal support for ending homelessness, and the other issues that we're talking about poverty and alcohol and drugs, mental health, is that federal commitment, federal investment, and the Biden administration with its approach to a broader definition of infrastructure, I think was trying to get to that language, to try to get us to think about how to do this. But even in a more conservative time under the first Bush administration, this idea that federal agencies could come together represented a sort of modeling, of what we see at local levels where county governments in particular are pulling together the different agencies and developing multidisciplinary strategies. So you'll have mental health, you'll have alcohol and drug programs, you'll have law enforcement, you'll have the faith community, you'll have BIPOC organizations, and all kinds of different groups coming together on a regular basis and talking strategically. The outcropping of that, that was most exciting in the region that I'm working in is, were two local measures, measure H and measure HHH that were passed with both conservative and liberal, and everyone in between support. Overwhelming votes in Los Angeles over 60%, one created a pool of funds locally to do development, the other, a pool of funds to create social services. And you really need both with homelessness. The whole idea of housing first as an overarching strategy to end homelessness is a beautiful and brilliant idea. And we see examples all over the country of it working really effectively. But the reason why it works, is not that we're just providing housing, we're providing ongoing social services and the more intimate, the more personalized, the better, and the more consistent over time, the better. So it's an expensive proposition, but roughly $20,000 a year to start per person. So on that scale, it doesn't sound overwhelming. It's cheaper than Harvard And the idea is that we are supporting people to stabilize their lives while they're in stable housing. And really in California, as well as other states, Connecticut and others, Utah, surprisingly, you see an alignment of state federal and local policy, that's developed these models. And I think it's not that we don't know how to solve it. I think it's that we really need the resources to bring it to full scale.

- And, you know, on reach, we've talked about sort of federal subsidy resources and unfunded mandates, and so I do wanna ask Jesse and Marisa to weigh in on the role of the philanthropic sector in this. And as in our organization, we are public, private, philanthropic dollars, and those have been all essential pieces of the puzzle. And so I'm curious Jesse, like where, and how you speak to grant makers and philanthropy about what the specific role of outside government dollars are in solving this challenge?

- Well, over the last couple of years, a number of foundations community development space, there was a lot of frustration around community development, affordable housing. Very few foundations fund the capital stack structure of an affordable housing deal. Very few provide direct financing to a deal specifically. There have been numerous funds that have been created in different states that too often use intermediaries. A lot of the intermediaries are my former grantees. I have no criticisms of them, other than the fact that, their money is oftentimes too expensive. The bureaucratic process to make decisions to get the money deployed on the ground takes too long. And you can't compete with the market, and the private real estate developers coming in and buying up properties in a lot of the communities. One of the things that the foundation Marisa is with though, The Weinberg foundation, that is extremely impressive. What they did is there was a project in Episcopal housing corporation, co-developers of Sojourner Place, Preston in Baltimore. And it was a 70 unit development, 35 of the units were reserved for individuals experiencing chronic homelessness. And the foundation made a two million dollar grant to reduce the hard debt to allow for cashflow to fund the supportive services. And so very few foundations are stepping up. And what we're seeing is, we're seeing more interest in this type of structure. The other one that caught my mind quite a bit is, Equality park in Fort Lauderdale in Wilton Manor, was the first LGBT senior housing development in the state of Florida. And I was super excited to work on the deal, I was working with the state, was trying to get the deal financed, the nimbyism was real, but the nimbyism was not from the community that I anticipated the nimbyism would come from. The nimbyism was from the gay, white, upper middle to middle class residents that lived in the community that said, we don't want to poor gay people. And so the construction was going up, tax credit pricing drop, and the Weinberg Foundation, Marisa's foundation where she is, stepped in to offset some of the construction costs as part of the capital stack structure. So we need more philanthropy to be stepping in, into some of the deals and funding the deals directly because it's easier for rapid deployment of capital.

- Yeah, and we often talk, and then Marisa I wanna come to you. But I think like we often talk at The Kelsey about how philanthropy plays such a critical role in either taking risks that the public sector has not yet taken, working around the edges that the public sector has not yet filled, or testing out new programs for eventual government adoption that actually, 'cause how we scale impact will require government funding. So I think looking at how those two pieces work alongside one another, and we're not an advertisement for the Weinberg Foundation, but I will say that you all do such a remarkable job of actually being a direct capital funder, Marisa I say that as a grantee. And so, Marisa where in your foundations mandate has funding affordable housing become so critical? And how do you think about using your investments to work alongside or leverage other public or private investment in this space?

- Thank you. Well, thanks for the endorsements. I hope that there is this broader leadership conversation about how donors and philanthropists can make a difference and really glad to get feedback that being a part of the capital stack and thinking about the overall financing has been helpful. Our program director, Amy Klein has just done an absolutely phenomenal job at the foundation, really thinking strategically with partners about how philanthropy can best advance and strengthen housing and helping people exit homelessness in our priority communities. And so I guess I would just add a couple of things, or add color to a couple of things that you said. One is that, we're definitely thinking about these pilots and these models that sit outside right now of current government funding guidelines or subsidies, and government financing might make it actually not necessarily the community generated housing solution that would be the best for that particular community. So I'll give you a specific example here, in Hawaii we have an amazing local effort called Puʻuhonua O Waiʻanae and it is a community led initiative to end houselessness for an existing unsheltered community in one of our rural areas here in Hawaii, on Oahu. And the way that they've already stepped up, and demonstrated community leadership around solutions has really taught us all about who the leaders can be in this equation. And back to Jesse's point about people with lived experience, not just asking them to sit at the table, but asking how are they already leading and how can we support and grow that leadership? I think that's another area where our foundations and more foundations in general can really make a difference. It's not just who's around the table, but who's leading the conversation. How do we strengthen those voices? How do we think 10 years out about where that leadership is gonna come from? Both in terms of community voice and organizing, and also in terms of the workforce development pathways to who is working in affordable housing, who is working in ending homelessness and taking the people with the heart and the lived experience and helping provide those technical skills and the education, and the pathways to really continue to play that leadership role in a more formal way. So we're really glad to be able to privilege the informal leadership that's there, and then see it develop over time into really changing policy and approaches. So this community Puʻuhonua O Waiʻanae, they managed to secure 20 acres of land and they're now gonna be building their own housing based on what they know will work for them and take their existing community of 250 people where they have strong relationships and migrate them over to this village that also brings in food security, workforce development, and some of the things that we talk about when we talked about permanent supportive housing that comes with supports and social services, but really thinking about it more in terms of the way, I think, many of us try to think about it, who is our network? How do we rely on each other? How do we build capacity together? And so in addition to the capital funding that Weinberg does in housing, which will continue to do always, and with the leadership of our trustees, always focusing on at least half of our grants and capital, just complimenting that with our program and operating funding, thinking holistically, helping communities to do that. James Koshiba is another MPP graduate. He's really on the forefront of that local movement here in Hawaii, Puʻuhonua O Waiʻanae And we know that they're leaning on HUD, and HUD's already looking at, oh gosh, maybe some of our requirements are limiting this type of community generated housing. And maybe those networks and relationships are crucial to long term success. And how do we help do that, not only in the built environment and relaxing some of those restrictions that we have there, but in terms of the other types of regulations and requirements that we have.

- Thank you for that-

- Just to add a little bit, to add a little bit to what Marisa was saying. One of the biggest challenges that I'm coming across is, a lot of black and brown BIPOC entrepreneurs, and communities of color that want to build socially conscious affordable/workforce housing, but just don't have access to capital, and want to do 10, 15 units smaller developments that don't necessarily pencil out for a low income housing tax credit deal. And what you have is, you have other Kennedy school grads like, some that work at Kresge that funded the first trans-development in state Lewis. You have Genesis LA in Los Angeles funded by Conrad Hilton, and they do the 10 to 15 unit smaller transitional housing developments that don't necessarily pencil out for a traditional low income housing tax credit deal. You have BIPOC individuals that wanna enter the field, but because there's lack of access to capital to acquire and entitle the land, and the low income housing tax credit industry is so competitive, and so time consuming that the barriers to entry are really real. So what you're having now is, you have a push of BIPOC leaders in real estate that are saying, hey, look at us, we're experts in affordable housing, we're real estate developers, but we wanna do some social good, help fund us. Help create black and brown CDFI's. Give us access to capital as well. And so I haven't seen others, other than just philanthropy really stepping up and taking that risk.

- Yeah, and I'm gonna transition to some questions, and I'm gonna take privilege and ask by the last question after we do some audience discussion. But I do wanna in this huge topic of housing and homelessness, just highlight as we transition to questions that we have kind of gotten at the three, I would say tranches for impact, which is who gets to lead in this space, around like who are the voices at the table? Who has influence? Who's working in the field, who are the advocacy, power positions? What is it that we actually are building? What type of housing, what size of housing? Where is it located? What is its density? And then how do we pay for it? Where's the subsidy? Where's the philanthropic investment? Where's the land thing and so I think that, in a massive problem really focusing in on, which one of those are we addressing in our discussion? But I'll stick it over to attendees for some questions. And I think that the team here is gonna, if you have a question, you can either raise your hand and you'll be promoted to a panelist so that we can see or hear you or unmuted. And I will not try to do that to technology, but raise your hand and we will bring you into this discussion for questions for all, or one of our panelists. Here we go, we have our first one, James. James, I think I took a class with you when I was at HKS. Nice to see you. I think James, your mic's-

- [James] Sorry, I needed to unmute, I apologize. Again to be very quickly, thank you. And it's good to see some colleagues and friends on this call as well. And I appreciate the topic and I also appreciate the fact that you tied housing with homelessness, and often even from a policy perspective, we separate the two. You go down to City Hall on the corridor on your right is the homeless office, on the left is the housing office, and never certainly crossed the path if you will. So I appreciate the coupling because it's very, very important. There is a question, but I just wanna preface it with my comment about the issue around capital access and particularly around equitable capital access and something I've been working on at Harvard for the past year to the advanced leadership initiative. And my concern is, is that often what we see in the production of affordable housing is the use of low income housing tax credits, which is one of the key. It is the key federal financing tool for the creation of rental affordable housing. However, when we look at different significant markets around the country and low housing tax credit developers are primarily, primarily white males. And so the benefit for communities is often, yes, we're creating affordable housing. We all applaud that, but the benefit, the economic benefit is often not accruing to people of color, to women, etc. So I'd be interested in hearing from the panel, and addressing issues around equity relative to affordable housing development.

- Anybody wanna step into that specifically?

- There is a group called the real estate executive council out of New York, of African American real estate developers or black owned real estate development companies pushing for a more investment into black-owned development companies to have that access to capital. What I've seen, and I've just probably right place at the right time. Maybe it's my story. I've been blessed to work with foundations that have been extremely interested in looking at the Weinberg model that Marisa's team has been getting off the ground. And what other foundations have been doing, working on creating a hundred million dollar it's not a homeless housing fund. They're looking at 40% to a 100% AMI. If you look at 40% AMI, it does fall within the very low income tax bracket. And so, the income bracket, sorry. And so what you're seeing is hundred plus million dollar workforce housing funds for non low income housing tax credit developments across the country. They're very nascent, no one's done it before. We're trying to figure out the deal structures, and the social impact fund structures. And one thing I gotta say is, one of my clients, what they did was, they hired a woman of color owned impact fund manager fund and gave her capital to help structure that deal. So Facebook is looking at a similar non-LIHTC workforce housing funding California, It's happening, it's just not happening fast enough.

- [James] Thank you, Jesse.

- And I would just add that the California tax credit allocation committee is looking at a lot, that is for tax credit funded specific projects, but how they're scoring prioritizes and includes BIPOC developers and new emerging developers who haven't X so much of this, is funded on experience. And so how do you bring people who haven't historically had access to capital into the experience level to be able to access these LIHTC funds and other subsidies. So I think that's actively being looked at on a policy side. I think our next question is from, I hope I know, Zayba, Zayba.

- Yes, hello. Can you hear me?

- Yes, and I apologize if I mispronounced-

- No it' all right. Thank you. Yeah, my name is Zayba, I graduated in 2020 from the MPP program. I currently run a homelessness policy organization in New York City with two of my former coworkers from New York City's department of homeless services. So New York is going through a lot of big changes right now, as everyone knows with the new mayor. And for the first time in a long time, positive coordination between the state and the city, given our new governor in New York. Last week, the mayor and governor announced a new plan called the Subway Safety Plan that intends to move people experiencing homelessness off the subway in New York. We're worried, my coworkers and I are worried that this goal will really only result in the criminalization of homelessness. And it really distracts from the like 60,000 or so New Yorkers who are currently living in New York city shelter system that haven't been connected to housing. My question is, I guess since we're just trying to rethink our strategy given the new mayor, and this new Subway Safety Plan. I appreciate any thoughts, how people working in this space can keep policymakers focused on the problem, or maybe just keep policymakers focused on the problem, that is the number of people in the New York City shelter system, and maybe less so on the media attention that goes to subway homelessness or the people that you can see experiencing homelessness, who absolutely deserve attention and resources, but tend to be sensationalized at least in New York. But yes, sorry, this is very live happening for us as we figure out our strategy in response to this new situation in New York. So I appreciate you going with my thought process here.

- Kate, I immediately wanna stick it to you since you have a lot of local specific experience, but I don't wanna put you too much on the spot.

- No, I mean, I think your underlying question, I'm interested in getting our other panelists take on, which is how from an advocacy perspective, advocacy standpoint, you make sure that the message is out there front and center, that the kind of stories that are being told about what's going on in the subway is not the full picture of homelessness. And there's a variety of other issues. There's variety of other faces that are part of it. There's much broader experience from that. Yeah, I think that New York Times story this morning, acknowledging that only one of the eight assaults on the subway over the last week was actually committed by somebody who's homeless, that's not really the underlying cause of the discomfort that many people feel coming back to transit, having been away for a very long time. Something that I have been reassured by, and I'm interested in getting your take on this also, over the last few years is, how much broader discussion, my sense is there has been about the underlying issues of poverty and homelessness in New York City, and that even as people weren't necessarily seeing it on the street, both through times coverage and through public conversations, there was a recognition that this was about families. This was about people ending up homeless on multiple occasions because they couldn't afford housing and long term stability. But I think your question about sort of, how do we make it front and center so that we're creating the right policies is a really interesting one from an advocacy standpoint and interested in hearing from other panelists on that too.

- I'd like to add to that because I really think there's a danger in talking about the homeless or to over generalize in any of these categories. And I think you're getting at that Kate. I think we wanna blame problems on individuals and people, and that isn't getting in any way at solving it. If we're just putting people into the criminal justice system. My belief is that the more laser-like you can focus on people's individual problems and needs, the better. So the mantra that we sort of use in my circles is, homelessness is pretty simple to end. You start with outreach, you work with, and that's a long term prospect. You surround that person with what they need, and then you also find out what they want, and work with them to get it on a case by case basis. So policing the problem is not gonna do anything. I mean, it just pushes people into different parts of the system and it adds cost, it doesn't add benefit. But when we really focus on the pipeline, so you talked about the shelters being full, well, that's clearly a housing problem. So what are we doing to get those people out of the shelters and into housing? What are we doing to reunite them with families, or diverting them into other kinds of services that they may need and get them out of the shelters? It's a pipeline issue that by focusing on it, in a comprehensive way with a multidisciplinary strategy, we do make significant change. I mean, in LA, 26,000 people a year are housed through the homelessness system, but we're not addressing the fact that it's something like 30, 35,000 people a year are losing their housing. So it's this snowballing effect. And I think New York has similar countervailing forces that are pushing people onto the streets and into the shelters. So, yes, I mean, I think your questions are right. And I think we need to be, as advocates, we need to be talking about the multidisciplinary strategy and not resorting to kind of nimbi, and criminal justice approaches.

- [Micaela] Thanks for that.

- And I put a resource in the chat for frameworks institute, and they have a toolkit around framing the conversation, and I think it's really helpful for a number of different social conversations that we need to be better at having. So I put that in the chat, and I do think that if possible, just focusing on individual stories, it's still a way that humans respond to each other. It's so important. And having the opportunity to have a panel of people that are impacted by the new approach on subways and having a diverse group of people that are experiencing homelessness, and reminding people that 20% of people that are homeless are children. And just putting more dimensionality to this crisis, and then how we all solve it together just by relating to each other more. So I would love to see more of that. I know these panels are limited to Harvard alums, and I'm so glad Jesse's here to provide some perspective from lived experience, but the more we can have that the better, and thanks to the link to your book Jesse I'm pre-ordering. So I do think the more we can broaden the conversation, put people at the center of the conversation that can just speak from a personal level, and that we can go in at the neighborhood level. Our role as Harvard alumni and in the roles that we have just using that to broaden the conversation and bring other voices in and just build those relationships.

- And I do want to, before I do a closing, we have one last audience question from Kelly. Go ahead, Kelly.

- Hi, everyone, my name's Kelly Hunt. I was in the class in 2010, and I work in Washington DC. And so resources are not our problem at the risk of sounding like someone who brags because they're tall or rich. We have money for the housing. We put hundreds of millions of dollars in our housing production trust fund every year. We have money for vouchers, both traditional and locally funded and PSH, and our own special kind of set aside program. So our problem on resources is that we can't get the housing on the ground fast enough for the vouchers out the door fast enough. The problem we can't seem to wrap our heads around is encampments. 'Cause as Chuck mentioned, it's not a complicated problem. You meet people where they are, you find out what they need, you get them what they need, but we're still just doing that traditional whack-a-mole kind of strategy right now, which is not working. And you know encampments are toxic for everyone, not just the neighborhood, but the people who are living there. And I'm just wondering if there's anyone who's getting it right. I've been looking at what other jurisdictions are doing. And it seems like we're all doing the same thing. And I'm hoping there's a better way that we're just missing.

- So I can respond to that directly. I'm actually responsible for the encampment problem in the city of Goleta, which is a small city outside of Santa Barbara. There's some really good writing about encampments that came out of, I'm not prepared with all my resources here, but the same, I can let folks know and get back to you with it. But basically the encampments are a special problem because they tend to be organized communities and often organized communities around a particular leader or a group of leaders and they become entrenched. And so in some respects, a whack-a-mole approach isn't necessarily bad if you're providing alternatives for people to go to, aside from the encampment. One strategy that's worked well in the county of Santa Barbara was a pretty aggressive clearing of the encampments combined with a broad hotel room strategy. And there was very little resistance for about 80 to 90% of the residents of the encampments in going into hotels. And in fact, the state provided a significant amount of resources to local governments for this purpose. But that didn't solve the problem of the leaders. And so, that's where I think, we're talking about a mental health strategy and an alcohol and drug treatment strategy. And I don't know, I mean, Jesse may have a take on this, methamphetamines and heroin is not only a lethal combination, but it leads to lifestyles and communities that are very difficult to deal with unless you have effective treatment and a way to get through to those folks. So I think that that may be a critical piece that's missing in a lot of jurisdictions is effective street level alcohol and drug treatment.

- Anybody have anything else to share on that one?

- Ooh, we don't have enough time. You touched on so many different pieces, Chuck. I have a hotel developer reached out to me. He has five hotels that he wants to do hotel motel conversions for. He has a private fund that wants to buy them from him, but at top dollar, but he wants to do a socially conscious motel conversion for affordable housing, for people experiencing homelessness. And I'm blasting all of my network. It's three in Reno, Nevada, one in Fort Collins, Colorado, and the third is in Northern New Mexico. And it's in areas where there's somewhat little philanthropy in, but I'm trying to see if I can get a social impact fund to acquire and hold, to figure out ASAP how to convert them into housing for similar issues. But the challenge that I've seen is the wraparound services and getting people moving from encampments outward. So I'll stop there.

- Yeah. And I do want to in our, and I think it's re related to what your blasting networks and trying to get done. I always like to think of our closing time of like the solutions oriented, magic wand question of, we've covered a lot of topics today and covered a lot of need, but if you could wave a magic wand and pass one policy or launch one program, or unlock one significant chunk of funding. What would that thing be? So I'd love to ask our panelists to close this out and sharing their own magic wands. I will give my example which is, as someone focused on housing for people with disabilities, I would like to see every person who either uses or is eligible for Medicaid, home and community based services to have a voucher that pays for their home. And that would be my intervention of a universal voucher for HCVS users. And I will kick it off to our panelists, starting with Chuck about which one, what would be your magic wand?

- Well, you kind of stole mine, I was talking about. I mentioned the voucher issue. I think that it's a real Kennedy school kind of solution because you create demand as well as an incentive to create supply if everybody can afford to live in the market that they currently live in. But the other magic wand I mentioned is this notion of, a solution to alcohol and drug problems where we don't blame them for their problems. And it's not enough to call it a disease. And it's not enough to have AA be the fallback. We have to figure out a way to help these folks with these addiction problems at the street level, and then continuing on through their lives. And we need to change that conversation. And I don't know who's doing it well. I'd like to know more about it if people on this call know more, please let me know.

- Thanks Chuck. Marisa.

- Thanks, now I appreciate what's been shared already. And I would just add a couple of things. One is, I think we do need more resources for sure from government. We also need to make the existing resources more accessible to communities and individuals that want to make a difference in this area. And we're really trying to learn more about housing pre-development funds and the role they can play. And I think policies that link those types of funds with specifically Micaela you mentioned this earlier, people that are not able to access opportunities, recognizing the systemic racism that has been both a barrier to accessing housing over generations, and home ownership over generations, but also access to capital for being part of solutions for these types of interventions and developments that we've been talking about today. I think that would be really important and then building capacity for people that want to access government resources, but just find it extremely overwhelming and daunting, and then helping government meet them part way. We've had so many things that we've seen could have happened if we'd had the funding a little less restrictive, a little more technical assistance from government to access it, not 450 pages of guidance that it's just really difficult to understand, and to understand the legality and take the risks. And so just helping to unlock some of that funding and make it accessible.

- Thank you. Jessie, your magic wand.

- It hits home personally for me and I take care of an 80 year old mom who the only reason she pays so little rent compared to the rest of the neighbors, it's 'cause she's been in the same apartment for 40 years and the landlord cares about my mom and I have to subsidize her rent. And if it wasn't for me subsidizing her rent and my siblings, I don't know where she would be if it wasn't for us. Because she intergenerational housing, and the lack of intergenerational housing is a real big issue. Cost of housing is so expensive. If I had that magic wand, I wish I would've known when I was dealing with living in a park. I was a sex worker confused about my identity, that the resources or information about what was available, would've been available to me and my family, and they weren't. And so LGBT sober living homes, intergenerational housing, non- LIHTCH subsidies, or resources to get BIPOC developers and BIPOC entrepreneurs, and BIPOC individuals and communities that want to do two, three, four, five unit developments on their property, to be able to do that and have less barriers of entry. That's basically my wishlist. My other wishlist is that my book sells 2.5 million copies and I can start creating my own impact fund and start building housing in a lot of these communities across the country and leverage that for other resources. So thank you.

- Thank you. And Kate to close this out.

- I mentioned earlier, my excitement about regional and state level regulatory and funding relief to really get through some of the issues that can't be solved at at the level of small communities. But I think one of the things that I'm most excited about seeing, which frankly is largely, very largely, due to the black lives matter movement, is that equity and inclusion are now an essential part of every conversation that's taking place around neighborhoods, around cities, around development. Sometimes that's just lip service, but it's part of the lip service, and that wasn't the case 10 years ago. And universally the policy makers that we're seeing and the folks who are involved in making things happen, even if they don't quite know how and what it means to be inequitable and inclusive community are trying to figure that out. When I was at the Kennedy school, first day of intro to econ, whatever that was called, somebody asked, well, how does equity fit into the economic equation? And the answer the professor gave, a very progressive professor, gave at the time was, well, it doesn't. It's not something that we think about in economics, which clearly stuck with me. And so I'm really excited about the fact that we have seen that much movement, even as we've seen income disparities grow tremendously. And that the next generation of policy makers can really help find the tools that can make a difference.

- That's a good note to close us out on. So unless the HKS team has any final housekeeping to add, I'll just share my thanks for this amazing group of panelists who are not just great panelists, but actually people moving the needle on the ground and communities around in housing and homelessness, and the policies and interventions needed to create more equitable housing, just opportunity rich communities. So thanks all for sharing your insights, but even more thanks for the work you do out in communities. And thanks everyone for joining us.

- And I just too wanna just share my thanks for all the panelists, to all the panelists for a dynamic discussion and for the alumni who joined us today. We hope everyone enjoyed today's discussion and we look forward to keeping you all engaged in future months. Please save the date for our next Alumni Talk Policy on March 29th for a discussion on LGBTQ plus and policy. And for the most up to date school news and events, please visit the HKS alumni website. Stay healthy and safe everyone. Thank you so much.