The summit will bring together housing and community development leaders; faith-based organizations and fair lending advocates; financial institutions and environmental justice groups; as well as small business entrepreneurs, tribal leaders, public officials and academics to discuss and discover ways to reinvest in communities across The Mountain West Region: Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Indian Country. 

In addition to exploring how water and water rights will impact sustainable growth, we will examine strategies to increase access to affordable housing and credit through the Community Reinvestment Act, community land trusts, health equity, and much more. Join us to map out a path forward for collaboration and organizing to increase community wealth across the region.

Learn more and register now at: ncrc.org/denver/

Who should attend?

• Housing and community development leaders
• Faith-based organizations and fair lending advocates
• Financial institutions
• Environmental justice groups
• Small business entrepreneurs
• Tribal leaders
• Public officials
• Public policy researchers and academics

Summit Partners:

• Chicanos Por La Causa
• Native Community Capital
• Neighborhood Development Collaborative
• United South Broadway Corporation
• Urban Land Conservancy
• Utah Housing Coalition

Learn more and register here. 

Scholarships are available for people who are experiencing financial hardship. Contact NCRC membership engagement specialist Ralph Cyrus for more information.

Deadline
Friday, April 14, 2023, at 12:55 am ET

NCRC’s National Training Academy is offering scholarships to new housing counselors for our “Welcoming the Next Generation of Housing Counselors” symposium in May. To apply for a scholarship to attend, visit here.

Welcoming the Next Generation of Housing Counselors Symposium

The work of housing counselors has gained new attention, and as a result, professionals from other industries and recent graduates have chosen housing counseling as a career choice. Learning about the many facets of housing counseling can be daunting.

This symposium focuses on welcoming the next generation of housing counselors. Topics covered during this inaugural 3-day symposium include regulations that govern housing counseling, the format of a one-on-one counseling session in addition to the opportunity to hear updates directly from HUD’s Office of Housing Counseling and network with housing counselors from across the country.

Click here to learn more and register for the symposium.

. The conference schedule includes an array of sessions on organizing, policy advocacy, community and economic development with leaders working towards a just economy.

NCRC’s Emerging Leaders Reception is a networking event for young professionals from across the country pursuing a career in the community development field.

Students and early career professionals with backgrounds in public policy, urban planning, public administration, economics and related fields are welcome to attend. NCRC also invites its members, sponsors and friends to share this announcement with emerging leaders from their organizations and communities. 

While the reception is part of the Just Economy Conference, you are not required to attend the conference in order to attend the reception. But we sure hope you do!

To register for the conference and reception, or only for the reception, click here.

And if you are interested in investing in the next generation of community development leaders, there are sponsorship opportunities still available!

Moderator: Ed Gorman, Chief Community Development Officer, NCRC

Speakers: Catherine Crosby, Board Chair, NCRC,  Mayor Randall Woodfin, Mayor of Birmingham 

Transcript:

NCRC video transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. They are lightly edited for style and clarity.

Gorman 00:00

Our honored guests here is Mayor Randall Woodfin. He has played a major role in those successes both of the BDRC and the city of Birmingham for more than a decade. Before he was elected to his current post in 2017, as mayor, he served on our school board is president. He’s also been one of the city’s attorneys. And so I’ve been proud to work with Mayor Woodfin on a range of projects, none of which I think will be talked about more or that’s more important than growth. And I’ll look at a girl woman as I say that, because it’s given us a chance to work with aid and the city of Birmingham to really make a difference in our community. So here with aid and Mayor Woodfin is Katie Crosby, the Board Chair of NCRC. Now, when Katie’s not busy helping keep us on track, and making sure that we’re doing the right things and and give she’s given assignments at the board meetings. Katie, please don’t give me another one. I’d appreciate it. But her day job, she is city manager at the town of APEX, North Carolina. So these folks have field level experience. I think you’re going to enjoy their conversation. I’m going to turn it over to Ed Gorman. So Ian, take it away.

Gorman 01:16

Thank you, Bob. Welcome, again, everybody. Glad to see so many folks out there. And if you have friends and neighbors in the hallway, come on in. So I have the privilege of talking with Mayor Woodfin and board chair, Katie Crosby, about their respective experiences in Birmingham and Apex. And a little bit about how they got to where they got to at the midway through and towards the end of this conversation, we’ll also talk about their creativity, use of federal funds to get things done that other mayor’s may not have had the opportunity to do. So we’re at a moment in time that we get a chance to talk about here. So without further ado, Mayor Woodfin. You were recently elected, I will say by quite a wide margin to a second term leading the city of Birmingham. Would you talk a little bit about your background and what it is? Had you kind of decided to run for office?

Woodfin 02:17

Yeah, well, first, good afternoon, everybody. It’s good to be here with you. At this conference, I’m excited about my city of Birmingham’s partnership with NCRC. And particularly with growth. Madam Chairwoman, it’s good to be with you as well. When in when in when anytime anybody asked me a question about why I decided to run for mayor, I always just always start with the personal and home I grew up in a home. There were never less than eight people who lived in that home. So if you’re listening to that, sometimes that meant more more than eight people lived in my home growing up. And my mother is one of eight children. My dad is one of six and I’m going to connect that at some point via the q&a. But having grown up in the city of Birmingham and having family lived all over the city of Birmingham, I fell in love with my home at a very early age. That led me to leaving Birmingham for a little while and I attended Morehouse College. It spoke this morning about at a guest. One of the areas we were talking about what’s the importance of Morehouse and the conversation went into all these people. Morehouse have produced Morehouse, the intersection of Morehouse was not only academic rigor, but in addition to that leadership, and community service, leadership, community service. And I think for me, it was important that I go back home and make a difference in the community that I grew up in seeing all the things I saw as a child that I didn’t like, and and learning how to bring solutions to those problems. And out of college. I’ve been in and around city government probably since 2003. And so I only know municipal, local government, and I think in municipal local government, from a democracy standpoint, as a participatory sport. It’s actually where you can make a tangible difference in people’s lives. And that’s why I decided to run.

Gorman 04:11

Terrific. You Yeah, we could do that. Come on. So town manager, Crosby, or would you prefer I address you as Katie? Katie? Thank you. All right. You’ve been a servant leader in two cities in Ohio before moving to apex. Yeah. Talk a little bit about your motivation, why you’re doing what you’re doing. And maybe we’ll talk a little bit too about the differences between the cities you were working in in Ohio and now where you are in apex. Sure.

Crosby 04:43

So very similar to the mayor’s experience. I got into this work because I wanted to get back into the community. One of five children. I was the first to graduate from college. My dad was incarcerated from the time that I was 13 to 25 So my mom was a single mom trying to, you know, take care of five kids. And I think she did a fantastic job because she did. Thank you. Not just for me, but more. So when I look at my my siblings, and I think for for families like ours, people count us out. And we very much I think, we were against the odds, we went against the odds. And so for me, it was about giving back to a community that looked very similar to the one that I was raised in. I never forget reading the book evicted, and having a conversation with my mom about some of her experiences that I didn’t know about about quid pro quo experiences that she had, and people making assumptions about how many baby daddies she had. And it just reaffirmed my commitment to community and wanting to change the lives of people who grew up the way that I grew up, who lived in communities, the way that I lived, and ended up meeting a mentor who actually used to be on the board of NCRC, Commissioner Dean Lovelace, he got me very engaged in community reinvestment. And that’s how I ended up on the board. And so at making the decision to say I wanted to be in a position, a decision making position where I could direct resources to communities, like where I was raised, and I could, in fact, impact policy that really benefited the communities where I was raised more than was similar to what I was raised in, I really made me pursue this position. And we were just talking behind me, before we came out about how difficult it is to want to affect change, and to be in positions of leadership and have to, you know, have these competing and conflicting values, with with limited resources, limited resources, which brings me to my next comment. So growing up in Ohio, I worked in Dayton, Ohio, and I worked in Toledo, Ohio, and the average immediate area income was about 36,000. In both communities. I now live in APEX, which is a very affluent community, and the average median income is $110,000. And in both communities, we’re having an affordable housing crisis, we’re gonna get into that. Very different experience. Yeah,

Gorman 07:06

Incredible. So Mayor Woodfin, you’re in your second term, four and a half years in? What’s going right and what’s not moving fast enough for you?

Woodfin 07:19

So what’s going right is, and I’ve shared this with you, I’ve shared this recently with my own team. Any mare that sits in this seat, sits out and sits before an audience with blinding lights and can’t see you, but you can see them and tells you they’re doing all the work themselves and everything, all the successes because of them there, they will be lying to you. A marriage is only as strong as their team. And I had a mayor Tell me a little over four years ago, that the first question he was asked six months into the job, or 100 days into the job, what have you accomplished? His response was I’m building my team, six months into the job. What have you accomplished? I’m building my team, and a year into the job, what have you done? What have you accomplished. And his response to the public in the media was I built my team? I am fortunate to have a supporting cast of folk I’ve stolen from the private sector borrow. I borrow talent, I’ve stolen talent. I’ve got talent on loan, to come into City Hall to have to figure out a way for us to reimagine how we grow our community, how we grow our city, to think outside of the box. And that’s a mix. Some folks have been in City Hall some have not. But to bring all that talent in has allowed us I’m not gonna even say me but we as our to accelerate growth in Birmingham. So the thing I’m most proud of is that the team on the ground is pushing this conversation around affordable homeownership. I would say the challenge is always resources. There are always a limited, everybody thinks a city, that cash grows on trees, but it doesn’t work like that.

Gorman 09:13

Well, this, I think is a great opportunity to hear from both of you about the use of resources. And specifically I think folks in the audience want to know, in particular, I know Mayor Woodfin you are and Katie, I suppose you were as well, I’m not sure, but an early adopter along the path of using federal money for your projects in a way or in ways that other people weren’t doing. And in fact, taking chances in a sense, because nobody told you you had a green light to do it. You just forged ahead to did it. And now what I think we’re seeing is a lot of mayors are starting to follow that lead. So if you would both talk a little bit about, you know, your willingness to take a chance on doing things and other people might not have said was okay. But you knew was right for your city. Gotcha. Okay, you want to go first?

Crosby 10:06

Yeah, perfect. That’s always good to go before politics. I’m teasing. I’m teasing. I’ve worked. I’ve worked in the political arena for a long time. So she knows me first. So I’ll talk a little bit about my previous community, because I think, you know, when I was in Toledo, that was one of the things that we were doing was trying to figure out, look, we have a structural deficit, and we have a lot of need in our community, how can we use our art performance more specifically, to address those needs? And so, you know, before the Treasury finally produced the recommendations on how to use the Treasury dollars, we were really pushing the needle and saying, Look, well, you know, this is a very general statement. So we think that it’s broad enough for us to be able to use our dollars to address racial equity issues to help, you know, a small business development, affordable housing, things that weren’t really specifically spelled out in the treasury dollars. And that’s one of the things that I appreciated about working for the mayor there is that he was willing to strike that. And in North Carolina, the need is a little bit different. And, you know, while we’re using our funds to support affordable housing, we’re also using it for infrastructure. So sewer and water infrastructure to help expand some of our development, and then also to help provide infrastructure, sewer and water infrastructure for some of our most vulnerable communities, which is, which is very small apex, but we’ll talk about that.

Woodfin 11:34

And so for us, in the city of Birmingham, there are two words that had been on repeat since November of 2017, neighborhood revitalization, neighborhood revitalization, they were revitalization. And within they were revitalization. There are all these infrastructure issues you have around it, which include your city’s grid as far as paving streets and sidewalks and parks. And there’s also public safety. But at the root of neighborhood revitalization is actual housing and home ownership. And for this conversation, affordable homeownership. And so for us, having a homeowner who’s been there is taking risks, but their property value was too low, or they don’t feel safe in their own home. And then when they look to the left or right, there’s either an empty lot or dilapidated structure. We needed to stabilize those neighborhoods first in the conversation, and they were revitalization. But we needed to invest in infill housing. And so taking the risks using the federal dollars, ARPA made sense, and our partnership with NCRC and growth. We know we went into a historic black neighborhood that hadn’t had any development development in over 20 years, then the city of Birmingham needs to pony up some resources to get the private sector to participate in accelerate that growth. I think, for us opera was that once in a lifetime, yes. Once in a lifetime opportunity to use these resources to participate in actual infill housing, and, and do proof to concept and then scale that around our city.

Gorman 13:14

You know, I think it’d be helpful for folks to know that, that the mayor, and I’m sure Katie doing the same thing, that that this money is leveraged, I think almost 10 to one it is. So the private sector money, specifically bank CRA investment has been the the catalytic has played a catalytic role in both both I know, in Birmingham and Katy, I assume, in APEX as well. You know, it’s always a good idea when bankers are in the room to thank them for their investment. So thank you. But I think you know, knowing that you can take this money, because without it, that $10 that you’re trying to get invested doesn’t happen. No, it does. So it’s a great, it was a great and very timely investment for all of you. So Katie, if if we could talk a little bit about how it is that you have affordable housing is the goal wherever you go. But a very different set of problems from the cities. You were in to apex. Now we’ll talk a little bit about that.

Woodfin 14:18

Yeah. So when thinking about Toledo, the challenge there is that the income was so low. The other challenge is is that was really the challenge. Toledo is a very affordable community, for most, but affordability is really defined around what people make and what resources they have available to them. So it wasn’t also it wasn’t only the fact that affordability was a challenge in Toledo but it was also the conditions of the housing right so that if you have poor housing conditions, if you have dilapidated housing similar to what you’re talking about, the cost to the to the owner or the renter goes up because that means they’re they’re less energy efficient. We have issues around with things like that. On the other hand in APEX where we were a rural community that is now becoming more dense, and we’re we’re bringing people in the life sciences, we’re bringing in Facebook, we’re bringing in all this technology, the median income is $110,000, we’re doing affordable housing projects that anywhere from 80 to 100%,for somebody that makes $110,000. So we’re talking about 80% of my staff cannot afford to live in the community that they aren’t responsible for taking care of. And so what we’re doing is a couple of different things. One, we’ve taken a portion of our opinion off of our tax, and we’re putting that towards an affordable housing fund, which is great. So that gets us about 1.2 $1.7 million a year. But the land is so expensive, so it doesn’t stretch very far. The other thing that we’re doing is when we have the new developers come in part of our zoning conditions, we advocate for affordable housing. And so they they add units, so you have the option of doing a fee, or units, our preferences a unit because it doesn’t matter how much of a fee you pay, you can’t afford the land. And so so we’re encouraging units, and then what we’re doing is we’re working with financial institutions, we’re putting a restriction for affordability into the DEA for single family homes. And then we’re working with financial institutions that are willing to lend against that deed. So trying to do a couple of different creative things to help drive affordable housing, but it is definitely a challenge and a more

Gorman 16:32

Well, that probably will be the last I know we limited period of time. So this probably be the last question. But talk a little bit about the challenges you see going forward, rising interest rates, even greater threats to affordability, the need for affordable housing and affordable homeownership unabated. But now we face higher interest rate to kind of future. How do you see us what ideas you think we should be pursuing to try to get more folks in homes and or to do whatever development you’re looking to do? But I you know, affordable homeownership. So the number one community need, according to the folks that we talked to, what do you see going down the road here as we’d see a rising interest rate environment?

Woodfin 17:19

So I think we’re at a very interesting intersection. You have this combination of low unemployment, right? Inflation. But we’re not an A, technically, we’re not in a recession yet. Right. So the the truth? The My honest answer is, I don’t know. Right? That’s, that would be honest, when you have all three of those things in one pot at one time. What does that yield? Because I’m not sure when there was another time, all three of those things existed at the exact same time. One of those is off, right? The inflation part tends to go with the recession. But the unemployment is low, but it turns out in the great resignation, a lot of folks just are not applying for the jobs we need them to apply for. When you are mayor, you need people on the front line. If you’re in support of your hospitals, you need more nurses invest in your your school systems, you need more teachers, making sure people call 911 You need a fire or police officer to actually show up. These are the people we who I defined them as not just working class, but these are the people your middle class. The right investments need to be made in affordable homeownership told the truth as I can’t tell you, I don’t know the answer to that what I can tell you as a city, we need to do everything we can to continue to drive down costs. The question is and the second tranche of opera bonds, how much cannot throw at this problem to continue to support and invest in affordable homeownership, right. When these are performed on longer exists. And you still the question of affordable housing, investing in affordable housing and where those resources come from. That is to be determined. Right.

Crosby 19:06

And I appreciate I appreciate you saying I don’t know, because a lot of people, I think want to say that and won’t say it. You know, what I will say is we need more subsidy to help make housing affordable. But you know, subsidy is expensive and and you know, from our financial institutions, they have lending products that don’t work when you’re trying to when you’re trying to drive down the cost of housing, we we definitely need more philanthropic investment from that perspective. To help create a subsidy just drive it down. For us, probably very similar to the challenge that you’re having. We’re taking some of our affordable housing fund some of our federal dollars to help try to drive down the cost of the land ownership, but that’s only going to go so far. So at some point that’s going to run out. And so you’re gonna have I mean, I’m still running because our 1000 is $500,000 Oh Lord, it’s that’s our average housing price. And so at some point you’re going to drive people out. And then the other concern that we have is just the naturally occurring, affordable housing for our community. So like our mobile home parks, we’re starting to see developers come and want to invest in mobile home parks. And there’s not a lot of opportunity for the folks that live there to own the park if that developer is offering a nice amount of money to sell it. And then that’s the same thing that we’re we’re seeing happening in our communities that are predominantly minority communities where we have people who are longtime home long term home owners, but developers are coming and trying to buy their property. So that’s then also making our community less diverse. So it is, I don’t know, question but a lot of work and not a lot of opportunity to do good work.

Gorman 20:51

But I will say. So thank you to both of you for this conversation. And I think we’re about to hear from somebody I consider one of the most creative bankers in the industry. I don’t expect to he’ll have answers either. Not trying to put you on the spot Steve. But But I will say creative CRA. Interested banks, will help come up with these solutions along with elected leaders like us. So anyway, thank you all for your time. And I know you need to kick us off the stage. Now.

Crosby 21:25

I do need to kick you all out. Nice. It was nice meeting you. Thank you. Thank you.

Moderator:

Miriam Axel-Lute, CEO/Editor-in-Chief, Shelterforce

Speakers:

Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, Chief, Membership, Policy and Equity, NCRC

Cornell Crews Jr., Executive Director, Community Reinvestment Alliance of Florida

Andreanecia Morris, Executive Director, HousingNOLA

Chantelle Wilkinson, National Campaign Manager, National Low Income Housing Coalition

Transcript:

NCRC video transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. They are lightly edited for style and clarity.

Axel-Lute 00:00

Welcome everyone. We’re gonna get started right on time because we have such a dynamic panel and they have so much to say. So, a lot of launch and welcome to radical goals for Black homeownership and access to housing. This is going to be an amazing panel, we’re going to start off with having everybody introduce themselves and tell you just a little bit about how their work intersects with the topics of the day. And I will go first, your moderator today, Miriam Axel-Lute. I’m the CEO and editor in chief at shelter force magazine. We’re a national magazine that covers housing, justice, and community development for all of you and other folks who work anywhere in the intersections with those topics. And of course, if you’re talking about housing in this country, you have to talk about race. If you’re talking about anything in this country early you have to talk about race and racial justice. So that is certainly something that we do. We recently published a six week series on the racial wealth gap and systemic solutions to it about half of which was focused on homeownership topics. So I am honored and excited to be assisting with this panel today because we are going to go beyond the traditional angles to these topics. So I’m going to turn it over now to Cornell to introduce himself.

Crews 01:31

Oh, good morning, everyone. My name is Cornell Crews Jr. I’m the Executive Director of the Community Reinvestment alliance of Florida. We ensure that the financial institutions reinvest in the low to moderate income communities. We also establish partnerships and collaborations with nonprofits, corporations, for Park profile for profit organizations, and government. And we also train them on the Community Reinvestment Act and how to best employed we use this to be at have a wide variety of things to include transportation, housing, rental assistance, climate gentrification, and in the community quality and racial inequality. So our organization has been around for about six years, a founder sitting right back there are the shank. So we are a partner with the National Organization NCRC had been a part of quite a few community benefits agreements concerning the financial institutions. Thank you.

Axel-Lute 02:29

We’ll head right down the line. All right.

Morris 02:30

Good morning, everyone. I’m Andreanecia Morris, Executive Director of Housing Nola. I also lead what we call the housing triad of organizations in Louisiana, and we are organized around a very simple concept put Housing First, in order to guarantee housing for all. We believe that as Miriam said, housing is the last on address a civil rights issue, and that it is centered around frankly, hatred of Black women. That is at the root of our housing crisis as our refusal to acknowledge the racial inequities inherent in our in our housing system. And we believe by addressing the needs of the most vulnerable Black women and their children. That is first and foremost is how we guarantee housing for all and put Housing First. And that includes creating homeownership opportunities for Black women and their children so that they can build wealth and build wealth in an equitable and sensible manner.

Wilkinson 03:29

Hi, my name is Chantelle Wilkinson, I work at the National Low Income Housing Coalition on a campaign called opportunity starts at home. That campaign is really about bringing together multi sector organizations to advocate for federal housing policy, affordable federal housing policy. So we’re basically the foundation of the fundamental idea that we tackle is that if you’re an educator, if you’re a doctor, if you are someone who works in civil rights and activist environmental anyway, that housing is at the foundation of that, that those goals and priorities cannot be achieved without affordable housing and access to housing. And so we bring together organizations that come on board, and they come on board to advocate for housing policy. And we do that through several ways. So we have national organizations that are involved with the campaign, as well as state organizations that are involved with the campaign all built around this multi sector approach. It really is about seeing people in a holistic manner, you know, talking about these systems, and seeing people as individuals, which these issues intersect. And so as we’ll have this conversation today, you’ll hear a lot about those spillover impacts of housing and why these voices have come together through the campaign and analyzed See, in a broader sense, we advocate for those at the lowest income spectrum for access to affordable housing. I’m glad to be here.

Asante-Muhammad 04:56

And I am Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, Chief of membership policy and equity at NCRC have been focused in the racial wealth divide space for about the last 20 years and being focused in that issues of homeownership has always come up and is central to that worked with NCRC to produce a paper called 60% of Black homeownership a radical goal with a focus on trying to highlight I mean, I don’t think people understand there is inequality in homeownership. I don’t think people understand the radical action necessary. I’m not saying radical just because yeah, like radical ism, but because we need something I do, you know, yeah, like I do like radical ism. But it’s not because of that. It’s because we really need radical change, if we’re going to move the divide of homeownership, which really hasn’t bridged over the last 5060 years. Also, just want to note, we have Sally and Monica passing out this book from here to equality, reparations for Black Americans in the 21st century by William Daredi. One of the more important books recently focused on African Americans, obviously, if you don’t want it, you don’t have to take it, but there’ll be passing it around. And Sally, do we have a few more up upstairs to or just you just have what you have there? Okay, all right. And, yeah, so hopefully, you will get the book which he will be, there’ll be passing it around. So thanks, everyone, for coming out.

Axel-Lute 06:20

Great. So we’re gonna start off the housing market has been on everybody’s lips recently with even more increases in costs, and then shifts in interest rates and things. So we’re gonna start off by addressing a little bit of how is the housing market affecting Black homeownership and access to affordable housing restart down there with Dedrick, then Chantelle, Cornell and Andreanecia?

Asante-Muhammad 06:48

Yes, um, so you know, how is the housing market? You know, and I think, again, you know, I started off noting that there really hasn’t been a bridging and Black/White homeownership inequality for the last 50-60 years. So, you know, I think oftentimes people take the current crisis, and say, This is really having a dramatic effect on lack of Black homeownership, or lack of affordable housing. I think the more important story is that we’ve had a radical divide for 60 years during generally good economic times bad economic times pre COVID, post COVID. So it’s not just about getting past the immediate crisis and or the immediate moment, and I think there is a lot to be nervous about. And the immediate moment right there, I’ve been saying, you know, I don’t think the COVID recession, for regular people is really, really going to hit until I would say, to 2020 to 2023, because the government did do a lot, and getting money out to regular people did do a lot on preventing foreclosures. And it was clear to me that once those measures are removed, that’s when regular people are going to be feeling the results of COVID financially, and actually, we’re still seeing even health wise. And so I do think, you know, again, we should look at the concerns around inflation of homeownership rising interest rates, apartment prices going up. You know, in general, that’s going to make a hard situation harder, but I think we really have to look at it’s a long term problem. It’s not a problem of immediate a bailout around current inflation is not going to do something significant in bridging Black/White homeownership. There’s something fundamental, there’s not something many things fundamental, that needs to be changed if we want to go on the path of homeownership equality, equity.

Wilkinson 08:37

Thank you. And I will, you know, just bridging off of that, looking at the broader view and the national context of what it means to be a what we call a housing crisis. So as I mentioned, on the campaign, we first we focus on housing and a spillover impacts to other sectors, meaning that housing affordability is central to health care, education, economic growth, food security, civil rights, and so much more. And so even with that, we’ve seen that the housing crisis has reached historic heights, and it negatively impacts the lowest income renter federal assistance is chronically underfunded and has been for decades, the nation has 11 million extremely low income renters facing a housing shortage of approximately 7 million homes that are affordable and available to them. Extremely low income renters are the most in need for affordable housing, and yet they have the least amount of units available to them. Across the nation. There’s only 36 affordable and available homes for every 100 extremely low income renter household. And as a result of this shortage, many households are cost burdened. And when we say cost burden, that means that they’re spending more more than 30% of their income on rent. So this directly contributes to a household and need to you know, bridge that gap between rents and the other necessities that they may need like Healthcare or food, it also makes it really difficult for households to accumulate emergency savings. So they’re not equipped to handle something like a medical bill or a broken down car expense. And so in this way, the shortage of affordable housing and resulting cost burdens contributes directly to housing instability and homelessness. Of the 11 million extremely low income renter households in the United States. 71% are severely cost burdened. So that means they’re spending more than 50% of their income on housing. And so when we say this, I think there’s also been a misconception of what these households look like that we’re talking about, because there’s a lot of stereotypes of what that could mean. And really, what we’re talking about here is this group is comprised comprised of seniors, people with disabilities, those that are in the labor force, taking up a huge amount of that, as well as people who are enrolled in school people who are single adults caring for young children, and people with disabilities as well. So this is a group that we’re really talking about that are severely cost burdened, spending more than 50% of their income on housing, housing is simply unaffordable, we can see this by looking at wages, wages have been stagnant for decades, and the house, the cost of housing just keeps on increasing. Last year, the housing wage was $24.90. So what that means is that a full time worker must earn $24.90 an hour to afford a two bedroom apartment. And this means that for a one bedroom apartment of a full time worker must earn $20.40. And we know that the federal minimum wage is still $7.25. So that’s more than double of that minimum wage that we see. And so households that really need the assistance, we also noticed that they’re they’re not getting it, one in four eligible households that need federal assistance actually get the assistance that they need. And we also get some feedback around how this is like an urban issue. And it’s really not we see it in suburban and rural areas all over the nation. In fact, only 7% of us County, and there’s 3000 counties across the US, where a full time minimum wage worker can afford a one bedroom rental home at fair market rent. And so as we are talking about here today, Black people, they feel this most acutely, because of racism past and present, Black households are more likely to be extremely low income renters severely cost burden and face a disproportionate risk, disproportionate risk of eviction. And so just talking about the crisis, in a broad sense, we really are experiencing a crisis. And we have been for decades, and the federal government definitely has a important role to play in funding programs that will address these issues. And it severely impacts as my panelists here to have been saying, that gap that we’re talking about today. So just defining the problem in a general sense, as you guys have heard, it’s really been a crisis that we’ve been addressing for decades and decades.

Crews 13:12

So I agree with everything that’s been said. And one of my pet peeves is, and I will say it until the cows come home is corporate, corporate corporations and hedge funders purchasing homes. In our state in the state of Florida, it has been such a huge deal with 60 minutes xe did a piece on it a few months ago. In it one of the one of the one of the hedge funds that was purchasing homes actually said that Americans want to rent the American dream, they no longer want to buy the American dream. And to be honest with you, I would love to jump through the TV and just grabbed about I know that I’m on I don’t approve of violence, but every now and then some people need an answer on what it for instance, in our state and in South Florida, Miami Dade, Broward County, which is Fort Lauderdale, and Palm Beach County, which is Palm Beach in November, one has fun to purchase 1800 single family homes 1800 Gonna turn them into forever rentals. And never give low to moderate income and middle income an opportunity at the American dream. And as all of you will know, land. Therefore a home has been the American way since the Pilgrims came. Thus that’s why they took it from the Indians, right? But land represent land and a home is the first stage towards generational wealth and or leaving any type of generational wealth and as is well known has been said in this country on many, many occasions when White people catch a cold, African Americans ketchup full blown pneumonia so with corporations by doing the buying of these of these homes and pricing us out of the out of the opportunity to own, they’re not only impacting our our wealth, but also impacting generational wealth as you want to pass it down to, to your, to your siblings or correction to your, to your family members. So I think that that’s been one of the biggest burdens so far. Besides all the things that have been mentioned. Now, we have to deal with this in the 21st century of this corporate buying of homes. And that’s sure, that’s shutting out, in particular, African Americans who want to purchase a home. There’s gotta be there’s ways we can get we can get around it, but that’s going to take some political will. And sometimes that’s very, very tough. Hopefully, hopefully, I’ve seen some things, folks from Dallas, I know. And Dallas City Council has looked at ways to mitigate purchasing and mass like this and or city of Orlando, Florida has tried to do it as well. But it’s going to be one of those things that are going to that’s that’s keeping homeownership down and making it even more more of a cost burden and making it very, very difficult for those of us who want to purchase a home to be able to actually purchase that home. And unless we do something about it in a hurry, we’re going to be in and being even more cash strapped and will back us up per Dedrick’s study in the NCRC study that he did, that’s going to back us up even more and widen that Black/White homeownership gap.

Morris 16:42

So I want to take a minute to kind of flip this question over, because I kind of reject the premise of it inherently, that the notion that somehow the affordable housing market is different from the rest of the housing market. That is a huge problem that we have in this country that somehow was happening and housing prices are skyrocketing. How does it affect affordable housing, when that problem is inherent to the market? It is it’s not a feature. It’s a feature, not a bug. This is how we think it’s supposed to work. And when we talk about building generational wealth, we start with when we when we don’t move refuse to acknowledge what’s going on with renters. When we refuse to acknowledge I’m going to talk about what’s happening with homeownership and how people are caught losing it. When we refuse to talk about race. When it comes to housing, we gloss over the hard parts and kind of settle for the stereotypes does not tell us point. So one of the things that and the reason that we’re having these, this hot conversation right now is because of inflation, right? People are concerned about how much gas a gallon of gas costs. People are concerned about how much it costs, where to buy for to build housing, when, again, any economists in the room want to explain to folks how housing prices drive inflation, not the other way around. Right? That is and that stuff we used to know in this country, that stuff that we used to understand, we keep looking away from our failure to guarantee housing for everyone. We continue to let housing not just be commodified in this incredibly extractive way. But also it’s it is it’s a it’s a signature of status. It is an end, we don’t want to share that somehow, if we do a low to moderate income person, home that a home that nourishes them that lets them thrive. And if you are wealthy or upper middle class and you’re paying for something nicer, it is somehow worth less, because someone else has the base minimum. And then we allow when we talk about homeownership, we continue to allow this notion to be to be perpetrated, that somehow all we need to do is make sure Black people get a chance to buy a house. And we don’t think about how it’s going to be passed on his generational wealth to Cornell’s point. We don’t look at investing in preserving homeownership opportunities. And we also ignore the elephant in the room. We’re talking about building wealth and generational wealth. How it becomes generational. Well, what are you going to do with it when you inherit grandma’s house? Are you going to sell it? Because there’s that well? Or are you going to rent it out? So when you stand up and say when your elected officials stand up and say, Well, I don’t want to talk about rentals because I want to talk about homeownership. You should push back on them and say we can’t have first-time homeownership until we have stable successful renters. We can’t have generational wealth without renting to other people. So you are if we do not flip this on its head. And really think about this in a more holistic fashion, we’re not going to get anywhere, if we continue to see this as a this, this zero sum game, if we continue to say the only way we can build wealth, successfully, reasonably is to deny opportunities to other people, particularly, and I have a real problem with that, because if people were picking on Black women, we’ve decided, that is Black women who have to be kept out of housing opportunity. So I have a real problem with this, for obvious reasons, you all should have a real problem with you to not and not just the other Black women in this audience, because if you were gonna deny it for me and other Black women, it can be and it is being denied to the rest of you. For other reasons, you may be LGBTQ plus, you may be you may be poor, you may not be as educated there’s, or you may be the victim of COVID. You could be a Black man, there are other reasons that are given to deny you this opportunity. And so we have to flip this on its head and really look at the housing market. And when we talk about being radical, the radical solutions are ones that start with everyone having these opportunities. That’s radical.

Asante-Muhammad 21:25

One point that was put forward about bringing clarity about the market and affordable housing, right, because the market by itself has never brought about affordable housing, right, like Whites can become majority homeowners by just a strong market. Right. It was a massive government programs, why so many come as homeowners by just the market. It’s by conquering land and then redistributing it right? So there is this, I think it’s really important you highlight that idea that this idea of the housing market is going good. But that was little nothing little to do with what our people and you know, doing well in terms of homeownership in terms of affordable rental. So just wanted to build off of what you said.

Axel-Lute 22:06

Thank you, Dedrick. Amen. So, underneath, you just mentioned holistic solutions. And so we’re going to move into talking about one of the other big context that is affecting housing right now. And that’s climate change. And I’ll start on this and this time with Cornell and head that way.

Crews 22:26

Thank you, Miriam, so climate change is a big deal. In Florida in particular, Miami is, is ground zero for sea level rise in the world. If you stand in downtown Miami, you’re never ever, ever above for four feet more than four feet above sea level ever. We have a thing there called Climate gentrification, where our highest points in the county run right down through or even through the lower three counties, Dade, Bernard Palm Beach County, the rich runs right through low- to moderate-income communities. So the developers are finally realizing that. So the developers are now going in and purchasing properties in those in those high rise areas, or high higher ground areas. And as I stated, most of those folks are LMI eyes. So now what they’re doing is they’re actually going in and offering those folks literally nothing for their homes. One, one area in particular, which is just north of downtown called Little Haiti, Little Haiti, as you might might might ascertain, is mostly Haitian immigrants. So they may not be aware of the ways of our country just yet. So they purchased their home and developers are going in and giving them little and nothing for their homes, and they actually believe that they can actually go out and purchase another home. Not so in South Florida. Rents rents alone in my in January, February, and February went up 55%. Just in those two months, the average medium home that that in the last 21 months went from $365,000 to $585,000. So they can’t afford to purchase a new home. And that’s in that climate, that climate gentrification as the water rises, and we’re not doing anything about it really, as the water rises, it’s moving those folks out. Excuse me. So another thing that’s that climate has, has played a part in is that we it’s gotten so bad in our county that you can actually go to our Miami Dade County map put in your address, and it’ll tell you whether your your area is going to be flooded in the next 25 years, whether it’s going to be underwater, right. But in those same areas, developers are still throwing up million dollar condos left and right because they’re gonna get their money in there and they’re gone. So they don’t have to deal with it. So as as, as people the more people who moves our state and more people who move to market trickler area as they realize that developers are reading, developers are moving slowly, further and further west. And by moving west, they’re getting the high ground. Now in Florida, particularly South Florida, if you if you know, we have, we have nowhere to go, you have the Atlantic Ocean on one side, the Everglades on the other. So there’s really nowhere to go, but either up or out. So as it as it affects our climate change and the rising water, this affect our real estate, it also affects the low to moderate income folks. And we have constantly working to try to mitigate that, and advocating for climate gentrification changes, and the application of developers not taking over our low to moderate income areas. If you live in Florida, or you’ve read everything about anything about Florida, we’re known for three things. We know for hurricanes, we’re known for alligators. And we’re home for we’re known for developers taking over a state and they nothing, nothing is built, nothing is done in our state without developers. When you come to South Florida, I can take you around South Florida and there’d be very few places to have a blade of grass that’s not built on very few. And that’s getting that’s that’s if it does, if it does, if it is a blade of grass, without without without something built on it and he’s on park or something is really really radical wrong with that particular that particular piece of real estate. So it’s it’s it’s becoming a, a huge problem with climate change how we’re going to mitigate it. We’ve been talking about it for the last 15 years, to include building a wall to try to help the try to mitigate the waters or trying to take New Orleans taken build dikes, but at the same time, oh, we’re gonna ruin the scenery. You know, everybody wants to be able to see the water. Yeah, but I think I want to be able to survive to see the water first.

I gotta live with it, I got to live with it, it affects it affects the low- and moderate-income, it comes so much because where they’re gonna go, I’ll give you a perfect example that also goes with climate change and prices. And Key West, the folks who lived in Key West, could not live could no longer afford to live there. And the word is rising. So those folks who live the Key West move to homestead, which is on the mainland, right? That’s a two and a half hour drive from homestead the Key West one way every day. And there’s only if you ever been to Key West before ever drove it, there’s only one way in and one way out. So there’s an there’s an accident on us. One, you’re stuck for the next four to six hours just sitting there. So we have to we have to find ways and encourage government in order to mitigate the mitigate our, our, our, our flooding issue. And to stop the developers from coming in and purchasing those homes. We got a lot we got a lot to do and a lot of work to do. But hopefully we can make it happen over the next few years.

Morris 28:03

So one of the things that when we talk about climate change to Cornell’s point is, again, making sure that people can stay in their homes in the long run, right, especially when you’re talking about building wealth and radically building wealth. One of the frustrations that we have and I work in Louisiana is our failure to address climate change in a way that is thoughtful and responsive and immediate. One of the things that we can do immediately like right there’s a lot of anxiety and rightfully so about the climate crisis, right? We’ve got in Louisiana is round zero for not only like Miami, like Florida, we are dealing with the consequences of it. We climate intensified storms, not just hurricanes, but actually polar vortexes. Louisiana has been the Gulf really has been a siege we’ve been besieged in the last 20 years by climate intensified events. And so yes, we have tried to make investments we’ve tried to secure funding to make our community safer, but we are not investing in our people in in their in their homes. We are instead allowing them to be resilient and marveling at their resiliency as they get up after getting hit time and time and time again. And so and we’re in a lot of our a lot of the National Climate Change, change work ignores communities like the Deep South and you kind of write this off. As you know, we’re too stupid to understand what we need to do. When people are dealing with immediate issues that are also connected to climate change, not just hurricanes, but energy and efficiencies. Louisiana has the distinction of having the third highest energy cost burden in the country with 622,000 residents, energy costs burden 622,000 households, renters and homeowners being energy cost burdened. And so when we talk about immediate aid Choose, we could make those homes net zero, that can be a generational investment that would do several things. It would reduce residential emissions, which, in Louisiana about 30% of our emissions. That’s not everything. That’s something though, that we could do today. That’s something we could start today, that work is the work that would be great, great jobs and opportunities, it would also make these homes because once you make the net zero, you make them energy efficient, you make them more affordable, you also make them healthier, which is a big problem. We have, to Chantelle’s point, not just in urban cities, not just in you know New Orleans, and Shreveport and Baton Rouge, but in bunkie. And in, you know, Madisonville and all of these other small places all over Louisiana who think that affordable housing is a Black problem when it’s not. And it’s something that again, we’re missing out on. It is a it is a perfect intersection. It’s something that we could do immediately and solve a lot of problems. And it’s not something that we talk about you talk to the average climate justice warrior, not in Louisiana, they are not focused on on housing, they’re not focused on rebuilding community. They are it’s much more existential, it’s much more focused on polluters. And again, that is not to say that those things can and shouldn’t be addressed. But those interventions are going to take time. Those interventions are going to take political will. And if you invest in the people, guess what, you also get some help with political will. Because when your municipality balks at modernizing their, their, their their buildings, when their employers balk at reducing their carbon emissions, and decarbonizing and reducing their footprint, those homeowners and those renters can say, Well, they did it to my house a couple of years ago, and it’s great. Why wouldn’t you want this for your business? Why wouldn’t you want this for your community? Why wouldn’t you want this for your municipality? We have to start investing in people in ways and how in a ways that that gets us to these other issues. And and housing is key to that. Yeah, housing is at the root. You can’t you can’t name an inch and a social issue that is plaguing us where I can Chantelle can Cornell can Dedrick can Miriam can show you how the failure to address housing is impeding that issue. And most people don’t think about it in that way. And climate change is an is another one of those we could do this immediately. Why aren’t we? Why are we even talking about it?

Wilkinson 32:49

Thank you, thank you. Now I’m gonna double down. Environment housing are inextricably linked. So for us, it’s very important that those who advocate for environment also advocate for affordable housing. Many of the links are clear, like transportation admissions, if housing is expensive, near your job, or by transportation, you move further out, when you move further out to get and you’re clogging roads, there’s emissions or gas to greenhouse gas emissions, there’s free and open spaces now unlimited and unavailable. And so as this conference tastes as the conversation around climate change, just continues and it continues to evolve, we know that the livelihood of billions of people will change. And we need to make sure that we’re aiding in that change so that they can withstand it as well. And we’ve seen it and witnessed it through the pandemic. And so to address these issues, it really means that we need a framework that really also addresses the racial equity that’s needed in law, these policies, and it’s been failing us. So this still impacts the policies that we have today, that we need to address the issues that we have around environment as well as housing. And if we want to see the radical change that we keep talking about, we need to address affordable housing as well. And so it’s, it’s necessary for us, we really do Lean on our partners at the Natural Resources Defense Council to really advocate around climate change and affordable housing. So I’ll just kind of just mentioned something before I move on as something that one of our long standing partners said recently, and so a lot of what we influence, how to get people into affordable housing. This determines the amount of emissions that comes through homes. We’re slowly learning that we have to think about climate change is not merely the science of emissions or modernizing the grid or infrastructure is also this core social policy about how people can afford to live in a safe, affordable, healthy home that is energy efficient and includes other green amenities. The Natural Resource Defense Council has come a very long way and thinking of itself as a holistic human institution. And we’re hearing this not only from environment but also in health care, you know, it’s really the This view of looking at people and the issues that we have in a very holistic way. And it starts with housing housing is so foundational to so many issues that we talk about, again, doubling down on what the other panelists have said, you just see how where you live really impacts your everything around you, your health care, where you get food, what medicine is available, what health care is available and close to you. And it definitely has an impact in environment. We’ve seen it time and time again, you know, unfortunately, we’ve seen it in events that cost lives. And it’s really sad that we’re still in a place where we’re having to advocate for these issues. But as we say, in the campaign, if you’re, you’re advocating for the environment, you also need to be advocating for affordable housing as well.

Asante-Muhammad 35:46

And I just want to add a little story, because, you know, I think oftentimes people think if they think about climate change, they think about New Orleans, they think about Florida, but just want to highlight, I live in a suburb, closer to Baltimore. And we’ve had in a place called Ellicott City, we’ve had 2 once in 100 year floods in the last 10 years. And like as a kid, there used to be flooding that would meant like there’d be water going over your foot over your shoes. This was water that was pushing over cars, like we lost the thing. One person died, the first one and then about four people got swept away, but I just raging waters coming down. And we’re still doing studies on this mountain. It was a coincidence that they created develop, like Old Ellicott City was down at the bottom of an area. And there used to be kind of hills with trees, what have you. And we there’s questions about 20 years ago, they developed the you know the hilltop, right, and so now you have this pavement, you don’t have the grass pulling in the water, you have it going straight down. And so it’s just, you know, every decision we make about development, about development needs to have a climate justice factor. And to just want to get into this affordable housing thing, I went to a celebration around some affordable housing development. And I found out midway, that the starting price was over $600,000. And I was the first I was able to look at this beautiful stuff. And when people moved in, and then they were like at the starting price is six, you know, and maybe it’s cheaper than the thing down the block. But like you have to be real about what is affordable for who, right and like. And so you have to be very focused on that. And it should be considered like there’s a regulation about having affordable housing. In my mind, there should be more regulation about you have to get a special permit to create unaffordable housing. And that’s where we need to be need a special permit for anything of you know, above whatever your local area is 1000 points out whatever your local area is right, and especially permit for things that are going to have a negative impact on climate justice, because that’s, that’s where we are right? Like, it’s not like, oh, this might get bad. It’s bad. Like the climate justice. It’s bad that African Americans have a 43% homeownership rate. Whites have a 73% homeownership rate about and our radical goal is 60% Black homeownership still isn’t equality. I just felt like asking for a 50% increase in Black homeownership for every 20 years seemed pretty radical. I was scared to ask for more. So I wasn’t even trying to get to equalled Whites. I was just like, can we just get strong majority Black homeownership, right? So again, he’s really need to look at the real problems. What what are the real solutions? Maybe it’s not the political will. But I find if we only allow the narrative to be driven by what is considered the political will, we won’t even identify what the real problem is.

Crews 38:37

So can I add one more thing about climate change and climate gentrification because there we we put the two together. And and something Andreanecia addressed about how to help change policy or at least force policy. So NCRC is all about the Community Reinvestment Act and banks reinvesting in the community. So let’s pick on them. And I say that because I think about all the things that we could do with policy and how policy could be driven and how we can initiate policy if we have some more help from the financial institutions. And here’s here’s I’m gonna use a perfect example, in in our area our financial district is called is called the Brickell area. In Brickell, all of all the banks all the financial institutions have have a have their, their their corporate offices and things of that nature there. Here’s the kicker about Brickell, Brooklyn floods constantly, constantly, we have something we call Moon tides, which means that when the moon is close to the Earth, our tides go up Brickell area, the tides go up to about your knees or higher, and that’s when it’s 80 degrees and sunny outside. And this happens to us anywhere from four to six times a year. So I was I one of one of our one of the banks actually opened finally opened an office in Miami Dade County and they opened it there downtown and Brickell. So I was talking to the bank president and I said, you do know you’re in a flood area, right? He said what I said, you’re in a flood area, there’s going to be at least four to six times a year that you’re not going to be at your folks are not going to be able to get to work because it’s underwater. And he’s, I didn’t know that. Okay, cool. You didn’t know that. But you know what now, if we had just think if we when we stand up in front of in front of committee, county, city, commissioners, community commissioners, municipalities, and that bank is standing next to us, because we’re addressing a need that they have to have that they share as well. Think how powerful that is. I don’t even want you to talk. You don’t have to say one word to stand in with me while I yell and scream and pound the podium. Okay? If we can get those folks when those when when, when the wealthy are affected, or corporations are affected, you notice how quickly stuff gets done. Only the one thing that pandemic prove to me is when we want to get something done, and we need to get something done. It happens like that. So why we can’t do that all the time. So I would employ the financial institutions in the room to partner with the nonprofit’s and partner with community advocates to help get policies and get and bring procedures down that can help the whole community, not just a certain just not just a small field.

Axel-Lute 41:22

That was a perfect transition to the next question, which was about responsibility. How do we balance we talk a lot about public responsibility. But there’s also private responsibility private institutions and the roles that they play. So jumping off from Cornell’s comments, Andreanecia, do you want to speak to that?

Morris 41:42

Sure. So we’ve got to, we have to absolutely have to balance it. You know, again, one of the big things that we want to see from the public sector is market regulation. I know that’s a dirty word to a lot of people, they get really nervous about that. But the fact of the matter is, to Dedrick’s point, we cannot allow these things to go unchecked. We cannot ignore programs, government programs that have been put in place that were wildly in equitable government policies that we’re still living with, right. Some of you some of us in our communities have, you know, have restrictions and covenants and zoning policies to this day, that that perpetuate the inequities that we’ve been talking about today. So government’s got to lead. And it’s got to frame the market in a way that’s really helpful and strong. And then we’ve got to also look to our friends in the private sector. Again, to Cornell’s point, one of the things that was really perplexing during COVID, was the fact that landlords who had used their position, and actually you have in places like Louisiana and other parts of the country, where people equate property ownership with citizenship. And it’s not just the rest of the country, it’s the whole country, right? When we go when we think about the inequities in our country’s founding, we often we talk about the fact that enslaved Africans could not vote when when this country was founded, women could not vote, you know, Native Americans, people who were on the shores who could not vote. There’s another group that we forget about White men who didn’t own property. And I’m not here to cry for them. But I’m here to point out that going back to the country’s founding, ownership of property was the clearance to make to mean that you were a citizen. And we’ve been chasing that standard ever since. So when we talk about that now, and we look at COVID. And when you think about before COVID, you think about how landlords in so many parts of the country, you know, want to don’t want to be regulated want to talk about what’s my property, I own it. And then renters rights is, you know, not something that they want to talk about. And then when you see the effect of that we COVID How landlords get not crying for them, but how landlords are excluded from PPP loans. It’s not seen as a business, right. And then when we see how and how badly so many of our municipalities did, when given billions of dollars in rental assistance, allowing 1000s of households to be evicted and landlords, instead of turning to their clients, their customers and saying we’re in this together. They’re screwing both of us. And we need to work together hand in hand to make sure that you renter can have a stable home and me landlord can pay my bills. Instead, they went balls to the wall to fight against the perceived notion that they would now that they would be forced to house people during a pandemic and not be compensated. Instead of saying no, no, why can’t you just pay me? I should be housing This person may have lost their job to through no fault of their own. But that would take the kind of radical acceptance that we’re not ready for. That we’re in, and we can do it. But we’ve got to think about it in these kinds of ways. It can’t simply be the haves and the have nots. If your business model is dependent upon someone hat not having what it is that you’re selling, your business model is wildly inequitable, and unsustainable. And we have to move past that we have to recognize I am not opposed to people making money, providing housing, not making money selling houses, I’m not opposed to that people building wealth, I am not opposed to those things. But we’ve got to let go of this, this bias, this insistence that the only way you win, is to make sure that somebody else loses. Because it’s not going to work. It’s not going to work. That’s how you get an inflation. That’s how you get an S ignoring an inflation crisis driven by housing. Because as soon as everybody sees a gas going down below $4 a gallon, who were out of it, except those of you who have now you’re now paying double what you’re playing, and you’re out, because nobody’s gonna talk about that once gas falls below a certain price, that our friends in the media, Miriam excluded, we’ll stop talking about housing, even though that problem will not have been fixed unless we make some, some real changes over the next few years.

Asante-Muhammad 46:41

And I’ll just jump in about holding, you know, it’s gonna require mass government action. But you know, there’s much that private institutions can do anything, it’s us to hold private institutions accountable. I mean, I think one, you know, now, all financial institutions talk about racial equity, right and off many talking about green and you know, climate change, but we got to hold them accountable. Like, how can you say you’re, you know, taking important measures for climate change, but your funding development, which is making climate change even worse, right, like, we need to hold them accountable that you can’t, how can you say you’re for racial equity, but you only loan 4% of your mortgage lending to African Americans and your areas? 20%, Black? You know, and I’ll highlight, you know, there’s the NCRC, fair lending tool for all of our members where you can get the data on the individual banks in your community, and how they’re lending to different racial groups, how they’re doing lending for low to moderate income, all of these things. And so you can say, Well, you say you’re this, but this is what you’re doing. So what is your plan? What are you doing? So we do you know, again, I don’t think the private institutions gonna solve it themselves. But we can at least hold them accountable to you know, some measure of change. And again, that’s why we did the 60%, Black homeownership paper because I wanted to get understanding, what can I hold off private institutions to do? So nationwide need a 50% increase in Black homeownership every year? So I want to go to every bank and be Well, where’s your 50% increase in Black homeownership to help get Black? So 60% homeownership in 20 years? Right? So, you know, I think we need to hold on with quantifiable numbers, not just with nice pamphlets and using the politically correct language. Oh, and also, just note, I’m gonna have to leave a little bit early. I’m whatever, moderating the lunch panel, but very much enjoy.

Axel-Lute 48:28

Great. Did you address that question, Chantelle? 

Wilkinson 48:33

Before I add, I think the question that we get the most in the campaign is why the federal government needs to be involved. And we say all the time is because we need the investments. And we need the investments to help state and local governments. But we also make sure to say that the private sector also has a part to play in this as well. So I think the perfect word that was used here is balanced, and that we need to see balance and all of those sectors in the federal government playing its part, state and local playing their parts in terms of policies and local ordinances and all those things, as well as the private sector also playing their part as well, to ensure that we do have the kind of outcomes that we’re looking for.

Axel-Lute 49:07

Great. So all of you have mentioned at different times, the radical there are radical solutions we need if we have political will. And I’m going to ask you now to bring some of those up and and say them concretely, we’re going to frame this in this way. If all the players especially the federal government, but all the players if they really meant it, starting with conditions as they are right now, if they really meant it, that they cared about fixing this problem. What would it look like? What would be happening? What would they be doing?

Wilkinson 49:45

Yeah, well, I’ll say right now we have an unprecedented moment to invest in targeted affordable housing in 2021. We saw build back better come up. And that framework had historic investments in affordable housing. So Right now we’re talking about 25 billion in rental assistance, 65 billion to preserve public housing, and 15 billion for the National Housing Trust Fund, which is dedicated. It’s a dedicated funding stream for the lowest-income housing across the country. And so these efforts have been stalled by Senator Manchin of West Virginia. And recently, conversations have been starting up, but it sounds like it has recently died again. And so there’s a slim chance that we have to include housing and we continue to keep pushing for that, through the campaign. And through the work of analyzed See, we least recently sent a sign on letter which has 43 signatories of the multi-sector organizations that are involved with the campaign on that letter, urging Congress to include those targeted housing investments in any reconciliation package that they talk about at this point. And so overall, when we are talking about solutions to affordable housing, we really talked about it in a demand supply and prevention to kind of bucket we talked about that in the demand side that rental assistance is needed, such as vouchers, in order to bridge the gap between rents and incomes. We talked about that we need a increase in supply an area where there is scarcity. So we’re talking about that increase in the National Housing Trust Fund. And we also talk about making sure that people who are experiencing some type of unexpected economic shock like a broken down car, like a medical bill, like lost hours at work, that they don’t need to spiral, we’re talking about that in terms of temporary assistance, we did see that through the pandemic, we did have our kind of like emergency assistance needed and was funded to some level. But we need that to be reoccurring. We need legislation that has a stable and permanent Temporary Assistance Fund to make sure that it catches people when there is something unexpected. So they don’t need to spiral when something does occur and come up. We also have legislation that has been introduced, we have the eviction crisis act that has the temporary assistance in there, as well as the family stability and opportunity vouchers act that would create 500,000 New vouchers for families with young kids. So the opportunities are there, the policies are there, we need Congress to act on these bills in order to see some change and some advancement in terms of what we’re looking at in terms of the affordable housing crisis. And the last thing I mentioned, and I think it is important to mention, and to address is that it really goes back to that balance is that we do see limitations with the policies that we’re pushing for as well. The federal government is going to and with these programs, we are talking about huge investments in these programs. But we also do look to the state and local governments to also address things if we pass vouchers, we also need to ensure that there’s a source of income discrimination bill that also couples that because we know that landlords are rejecting people with vouchers, and that’s a problem. And so we need to make sure that there is a balance and everyone is doing their part in terms of the type of solutions that we are talking about. So in terms of what Congress can do today, there is there are many opportunities actually, that are out there, we’re just seeing it being stalled. We’re seeing frustration across the board in terms of advocacy, because we have these huge investments to all the social programs and historic numbers that have not been seen in housing. And I don’t I don’t even think has ever seen in housing. And for it to crumble and pretty much kind of just a dead end conversation that keeps coming up and coming down again, just really shows that if you care that you would make sure that housing was part of that infrastructure housing was part of that reconciliation package without question. And we have attic advocates that are talking about housing as a fundamental pillar of their own goals and priorities. So it’s just important, and I think that the opportunities are definitely out there. It’s not that we need to create them, they’re there. We’re just seeing just an activity in terms of enacting them.

Asante-Muhammad 54:02

And I’m gonna jump in real quick, so I’m gonna have to go. I think, you know, those federal policies were great that you listed. I just want to know, you know, I think sometimes that sounds we get lost in numbers. We have more quantitative numbers, but sometimes people will. And I think NCRC does it too sometimes, right? We have a billion dollar agreement, or there’s four 40 billion being spent to this. But what what’s doing like, so after this 40 billion is spent, is there going to be a 10% rise in affordable housing, are we bringing this like without that I kind of I don’t care about money being spent to say it’s been spent, I want to know, what effect do we expect to have afterwards? Right. I think of the community benefit agreement, do we think there’s going to be community-wide change? Maybe that’s unfair for one institution? So is the institution going to be increasing its percentage of loans to low- to moderate-income, or African American or Latino, whatever you’re advocating for? We need to have those end result numbers, not just dollar amounts that seem like a ridiculous thing. out of money to us, we really would have little effect on the problems we’re trying to address. One specific thing i’ll put forward to is, you know, we well, you know, I think it’s also one challenge we have is oftentimes when people talk about low- to moderate-income, that ignores the racial wealth divide, right? Because you know, African Americans, African Americans have middle-income African Americans have less wealth than low-income White Americans, right. So if you’re really trying to create a policy that will also bridge race, Black/White racial inequality, you have to create programs that increase homeownership for people in deep asset poverty, and my and my view, middle income or even high income, right, there’s a decent amount of quote unquote, high income African Americans who don’t have who don’t have who aren’t homeowners, so need to have that type of investigation. And there’s a thing called Special Purpose credit programs, right, which banks can do, aimed at particular communities. People say, Oh, well, you can’t just create a program for Blacks. Yes. Again, it’s called the special purpose credit program. You can do it for Latinos, you can do it is even federally interesting programs for Native Americans, in particular for homeownership that needs some reform, right? Latino native Native American homeownership is only around 50 51%. We need to strengthen that but you can have particular programs for because like we have a particular problem. So we need particular, there’s a broader problem, right? There’s affordable housing is a problem as a whole for the country. But there’s a particular problem for African Americans a particular problem for Latinos that need to be addressed. So that type of advice seems to be a part of it. And thanks everyone for their attendance and thanks for the speaker.

Morris 56:41

So with Dedrick heading off, I want to Amen everything that he just said, and again, talking about why it’s so necessary because again, you can’t solve those problems. You can’t build a strong foundation on cracks, right. And so if you do these higher level programs, that’s what we’ve been having. And so to also chime in on Chantelle’s point there’s a bill that’s been passed that actually does have these opportunities, but most people don’t think of it that way. We don’t talk about it that way. It’s investing in infrastructure and Jobs Act. Well, there are there are billions of dollars available being made available, actually for weatherization to address the kinds of problems that I talked about earlier that we could use to address the 622,000 households in Louisiana, who are energy costs burden. Why aren’t we right? We’re going around and allowing this to be framed in a great infrastructure language. When there is oodles of green infrastructure and equitable infrastructure funding inside of that, and we’re ignoring frankly, the last time we did this, this this build is often compared to the New Deal. But soon as of history know that the New Deal was wildly inequitable. It built a lot of the modern public housing, it also built it in segregation in trying segregation inside of that public housing. In Louisiana. In New Orleans, for example, the first six public housing developments that were built as a result of the New Deal were built in segregated pairs, one for Black, one for White, on and on and on. That’s what came out of the New Deal. That also we also talked about the GI Bill and how it was wildly inequitable and not implemented and how African American soldiers who served with distinction amongst the greatest generation were actually pro prevented from taking advantage of it. So that’s why Dedrick mentioned that we have to have those targeted responses. Because the because the bias was targeted, the hate was targeted. In order to address it, you can’t just throw out there and said, Well, anybody who might be hurt by this, come and take your who might be experiencing this problem, come and take advantage of these other programs. And so we need to be looking at the the infrastructure bill in a way in a different way. And we need to be asking our leaders, we need to be asking the Biden administration to put the money where the need is forget about their mouths, right? And we don’t care if they put the money where their mouth is, we can put the money where the need actually is.

Crews 59:10

So I’d like to see a couple of things that I’d like to see done and and I agree with my my stream, esteemed panelists, but a couple of things and that’s strong penalties for predatory discriminatory lending practices. I think it’s crazy how we’re still in we’re in the 21st century and we’re still here. You know, I constantly say, Why am I still fighting the same fight that my grandmother fought in the 50s? I think we we got to address those those those predatory discriminatory practices. And another thing I’d like to add is appraisal. You if if, if I’m an African American and I see that African Americans are routinely their appraisals are being routinely done I downgraded simply because of their African American that discourages me from buying the houses Well, I put all the sweat and money and everything else into purchasing a home. And then someone has the authority to come in and, and down my appraisal simply because they don’t like my skin color. There are 78,000 appraisers in this country, well, less than 2%, African American, less than 2%. And we had a meeting with NCRC, we had a meeting with the with the HUD secretary and one of the things we bought up is somehow some way we got to get more training and more diversity in appraisers. So there’s something that’s something else that we truly need to work on. And then the last thing I will you know, one of the last things I would like to talk about is improving loan officer diversity inclusion. USA Today, late, late last October, ran an article about a professional basketball player, the one of the purchase a home. So he got he got he got his realtor went to what to do, what to do the found a house what to do the mortgage. And the mortgage officer actually asked him, How do you want to be what what race? Do you want to check on the mortgage form? Do you want check African American and you want to check white? And he’s African American? And he said, Why would I check white? He said, Well, you got a better chance of this mortgage going through if you check white. This just happened last year. Again, here we are 2021 Still adjusted the same things that we had problems with in the 50s and 60s. And this was a man who had who had means guaranteed contract and wanted to purchase a home. So I think we have I think that we have to do we have a lot of work to do as far as the predatory and discriminatory lending practices, and the and the device diversity and inclusion of loan officers as well. So I think that’s also some things that we definitely have to work on.

Axel-Lute 1:01:59

Okay. Thanks, Cornell. So we have questions, we’re going to move right into those. So we have and if you are willing to say your name, your organization, and also maybe stay at the mic and see if the panelists want to ask you anything in return have a little bit of a dialogue.

Audience Question 1:02:17

That’s no problem. That’s why I wanted to get up here quickly. First, I want to say I appreciate Miss Morris. I always love when I hear people again, speak about historical facts, not just speak Emotionally, I, I’m a great historian, and I appreciate that. And Bill Russell was one of the people in the 50s, who got 11 championships for Boston and was able to move into the neighborhoods and hear what you’re saying, Oh, my question has a lot to do with us as a people. us as a people, we’re talking about being able to purchase homes. And my thing is, many of us have been brought up in Roma homes, generation to generation, why my career started out as a debit agent, so many projects, those are my clients. And so from generation to generation, the great grandmother, grandmother, the mother, the baby girl, they all got pregnant, they all lived in the projects being taught, they can’t buy homes, being taught, they can’t afford to buy homes, being taught to buy homes as a White people thing. So I’m coming back to this point, how is it that we can bring about the education to our people, for them to be taught about being able to purchase those? Well to understand this thing about the wealth process for them to know, not just how why? What are the possibilities of purchase, and what they can do to basically purchase a home? How can we go about that? Because it’s easy to point fingers away, folks.

Morris 1:03:50

But we’ve Yeah, we’ve got to address that. That’s the elephant in the room, right? Because what ends up happening is unfortunately, everyone knows someone who knows someone who embodies the welfare queen stereotype, right? That’s what that’s one of the reasons why we don’t like to let it go. So one of the things that we’ve been talking about in Louisiana, with our housing for all strategy is and it’s something that needs to happen with disaster funding, it needs to happen when we have COVID relief. It all needs to be paired with comprehensive wraparound supportive services. We have got to acknowledge that housing insecurity has traumatize generation after generation after generation. And it needs to be addressed. One of the things and sometimes it results in behavioral problems, behavioral issues that we dismiss with the brushes of classism and inter racism and sometimes colorism and all the other isms. We say that that person is trash, that they don’t want to act, right. Instead looking at well, what’s the trauma, right what what caused the behavior, where is the intervention, where’s the investment in that person? And something that we’re really sensitive to New Orleans because we’ve had so many disasters, and so many crises and then you watch our government respond with callousness and insincerity and just fear sometimes, like, you have people, you have program officers, staff who’ve been hired to run programs, you’re telling people when they come in, I can’t help you. Because the program has been designed in a way without any thought, without any without any regard for that person. And when that person has an emotional response, what happens? There’s more security put out that it’s happened time and time and time and time again, in New Orleans disaster after disaster, somebody pops off because they were told something that was wrong, right? They were so well, I can’t help you. Because we have designed this in a way to screw you. And you got to just sit here and take it right. And they break in that moment. And they don’t do anything like there’s no violence. They just get upset, but they’re not allowed to be angry because they should come into that situation perfectly behaved in order to get their government handouts. That is how we view this. And so we’ve got to recognize so that yes, our people do need help. They do need support, but our people are not trash. They are they are traumatized. They are not trifling, they are traumatized. We’ve got to own that. And we’ve got to get them help. We got to get ourselves help. And so we do not we can’t I can’t accept that, that the welfare queen wants to be that way. Exactly. So we and again, there’s NCRC talked about but we’ve also got to recognize that we let our government cut cut these programs. Homebuyer Assistance has been radically disinvested in since the 2008 financial crisis. And it’s one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen. Right, because the 2008 financial crisis was caused mostly by middle class folks who did not understand the basics of arms, or adjustable rate mortgages and got themselves into trouble being preyed upon by the by Wall Street and a bunch of other dumb money that wanted to make a lot of money. And instead of saying, anybody, everybody who needs to buy a house, anybody who needs to buy a house, we had this conversation last week with bank I shall not name where we talked about that bank, requiring homebuyer education for all of its lenders instead of ghettoizing it, and only saying that it should be required for first time homeowners. And they said, Well, you know, that the fact that that person bought a $600,000 house when they could only afford $300,000 actually demonstrated that person had financial literacy. That’s one of the one of the bank officers said, because that person had knowledge of the gap, the cracks in the system, and he took advantage of it. That that’s what we do in this country. We we deify money in a way that if you have it or access it, that’s that makes you smart. When actually, it doesn’t want to make money. 

Axel-Lute 1:08:05

Yeah. I want to make sure everyone else gets Yes, because we’re running.

Audience 1:08:07

Apologize. I didn’t give my name Miami Manuel de shields and I’m the president of the be ready. Development Corporation. So okay, I was supposed to sit at first.

Axel-Lute 1:08:15

Okay, thank you.

Audience Question 1:08:17

Um, good morning or afternoon, Nikki Beasley, Executive Director of Richmond neighborhood housing services. So we have spent a lot of time as a housing counseling agency, getting people qualified, but being from the Bay Area, high cost market, we’ve been spending a lot of time on production. So for the panel, especially in local markets, when we talk about innovative radical solutions, have any of you looked into social impact bonds, which we’re leveraging, which is another way to gain capital through banks? Because traditionally what we found and another question, thoughts about how to change municipalities thought process that homeownership should not be a focus of affordable housing, because, you know, if you can’t afford a home, then you need no help, as well as uncoupling race and income in those conversations.

Crews 1:09:05

I know that we are I’m glad you brought that up the social and I love that that phrase social impact investing. I was just at a at a conference last week talking about social impact investing and we’re looking at it from a point of view of all the money flowing into our state from tech companies and and leaving California and New York come into our state and we’re looking at them as also looking at them as as investing in our in our housing. Our mayor, Miami Dade County may have just opened up a fund in order to facilitate those particular items. And so far, she’s raised almost 100 million just from just from the tech companies and things that are moving to our state so we’re trying to try and invest said I wouldn’t NCRC we are we when we do the community benefits agreements, we bring that up with the banks so they can invest as well.

Audience 1:09:57

Yeah, not just want to share it’s a little different than the A investment. It’s strictly looking at banks to be able to invest. Because what tends to happen? They’ll say, Well, we gave to, you know, light tech and others. But this is another avenue to address the car. Thank you. Thank you.

Audience Question 1:10:16

Hello, my name is Jonathan capelli. I’m the Executive Director of the neighborhood development collaborative, which is a coalition of the fordable housing nonprofits in Colorado. And my question is, so actually, I think it was Dedrick earlier who said that the market access to the market is a is very important and reducing discrimination. But that’s not how we got to the homeowners, homeownership rates broken out by race to be currently having this country. So that’s not enough. There was a huge subsidy that went in, they got us to where we are today. Right? So what’s the huge subsidy now that we’re actually going to use the bill back better plan insofar as that sort of like a strategy is $150 billion for housing, just based on what I was going through here, only 10 billion is for homeownership. And it’s only downpayment assistance, which doesn’t work in a lot of markets. It certainly doesn’t work in Colorado, where housing prices are so Hi. So, you know, rental housing, has low income, housing tax, credit, ly tech, you know, is that the idea is a larger carve out of HUD funding, you know, certain percentage of home that has to use for homeownership, what’s the specific federal program at what funding level that we need to drastically increase homeownership in this country, thank you.

Wilkinson 1:11:36

I mean, I can start off the answer, but my own is going to focus on the affordable housing piece. Our idea here with the affordable housing piece is to address those that need it the most. So I address the need of those that are at homelessness, or just right at the brink of homelessness, which they do need rental assistance, you know, we’re seeing it, it’s literally on the streets. And so when we’re talking about vouchers, and we’re talking about the National Housing, the natural Housing Trust Fund, as opposed to like tech, because like Tech has a lot of issues, and the National Housing Trust Fund is really specific to those at the lowest income spectrum, without a lot of what is we’ve seen with light tech in terms of like the controversy about where those units have been built, and how it has not helped with equity over the year. So we talked about fostering inclusive communities. But we really do stay away from necessarily putting a lot of focus on light tech and putting it mostly on the National Housing Trust Fund. So when I do talk about affordable housing in this way, and the programs that we’re talking about, we’re addressing the needs of people at the lowest end of the spectrum, so at homelessness are close to, and those programs we see is putting people in housing. And often we say that by not addressing those at the lowest end of the income spectrum, we’re having a trickle effect upward, because it’s just they’re just trying to get housing. And now we’re having we’re seeing problems at every income level, because we’re not addressing those at the lowest end of the spectrum, who are who need the assistance the most. And so just going to put that out there as when we address the need, we are addressing it at that level. And we also say that there are limitations to what we do advocate for in terms of affordable housing, and that there’s only one piece of the problem that needs to be addressed. But we do know that people need to be housed. And not just house but quality housing, like housing that is accessible, that is affordable, that is decent, that is safe, that really does look at the well being of individuals. 

Morris 1:13:32

Yeah, I got I’ve got a more specific answer on that one as well. So it’s worked because we’ve done that work in New Orleans, specifically, as a part of our housing for all strategy, we actually broke down and looked at the numbers for New Orleans just for the city of New Orleans to talk about how do we end the affordable housing crisis? And how do we create first time homeownership and to break to close down racial equity gap? racial wealth gap, sorry, and promote homeownership long term? So what are those numbers? And how do we invest in them? And that’s one of the things that we encourage people to do we want people to do mostly is to talk about in your individual communities, because you’re right, there are programs out there, that could work in your communities, but there’s a lot that won’t. And so you need to know those numbers. So the programs that I’m telling you that we are looking at number one, the weatherization funding, that is one because one of the things that we got to make sure that we do is we’ve got to talk about preserving homeownership in the long run. So you’ve got to be making investments in properties. Bringing insurance rates down is going to be a huge issue in this country when it comes to preserving home homeownership. So you’ve got to be making some investments, making programs available that weatherize the home and also make sure that that home that the insurance rates are affordable, and that works whether or not is preservation or for some homeownership because you could have someone qualify for $150,000 You have a developer who’s built the homes exactly at that price. But now what we You’re with insurance, they come in and all of a sudden, the deals dead because you can’t make the insurance numbers work, because the investment because the market is way out of whack. We also talk about not just the Homebuyer Assistance, the downpayment and closing cost assistance, but those soft sex soft seconds, and making sure that there’s money coming in from a variety of sources for those for those kinds of programs, to close those gaps. And to really not and not to be looking at it as a, what’s the word of as a gift, right, we’ve got to be looking at a stabilization, neighborhood stabilization, because you know, the prices are out of whack. So you got to start cooling the market down. And another way we want to look at doing that is increasing production, right? We’ve got to we hate talking about that part of it. But we’ve got to get our small mom and pop contractors, we’ve got to get them to stabilize their prices, there’s certain things that you can’t deal with, right? You can’t deal with what to buy for costs. That’s a national issue. But we can be talking about the fact that this local contractor is working with a nonprofit, I’m looking at one of my nonprofit builders right here from Louisiana, that when they go to build with somebody, they quote them, like they’re never going to build another house with them again. Right, they might come back in six months, they might not that contract is like, Okay, I gotta get all the money I need out of you. For this house, I gotta put it, I gotta tax you a little bit extra, because your nonprofit, you’re gonna be slow to pay, and all these other things, because that business that that contractor isn’t comfortable, you know, and again, we we we show that we lift up these issues, we talk about them in a very, what’s the word I’m looking for here, we cavalier way, right? Like all small businesses, small contractors can do this work. But we’re not really looking at the issue. So the I come back to, y’all need to really look at the issue, break down the numbers, and there are different programs out there, that needs to be better capitalized, that can work that they can work to address the problems in Colorado,

Audience 1:16:57

Thank you, I want to gentleman be able to go behind me. But every time this argument sort of happens with helping the lowest income folks, half of my more than half my members are served, you know, really low incomes, including those experiencing homelessness. So we need to serve those people 100%. However, if you make that argument in an environment of scarcity becomes a zero sum game, and you’re only ever going to find rental housing, you pass about $600 million in housing funds here in Colorado, just in Colorado, zero progress from ownership, and it wasn’t enough for rental housing. So we can’t just kind of have that org need to create new solutions that are as big and bold for homeownership.

Audience Question 1:17:40

I’ll be quick because I know everybody’s hungry for lunch. And it’s not even to the panel, just this stuff, everybody in the room. And I got I got woken up in the last panel because I got pissed off. Because I had every plan on just coming and learning not on the feedback, I’ll be shorter like this one, I gotta book it. So I think it’s my favorite panel. But I, again, this is a great seat to NCRC as a paying member of NCRC I think a lot of this information is very high level. And everybody in here is privileged at some capacity to be here. And I think like we really need more folks in the room, or we need to go to people that are affected by these issues in a very real way. Like maybe like, like two quick things. And I’m not gonna say shadows while I’m here. Well, I’ll give you an example for advocacy we NCRC is asking folks from Texas to talk to the offices of crude and quarantine, right? It’s kind of like read the room, like like, why are we talking to these people that have shown not only historically but in like very recently that they don’t care about Black and Brown folks right. Two: I’m hoping, man I wish Dedrick was here because I’m hoping that NCRC will use some of these conversations that were that I heard here to start building the people’s needs into their advocacy goals and agenda as opposed to asking us to help you with your policy goals and agendas. And then the last thing, you know, like Yeah, like, I think a lot of my my, my frustration with this is what we’re talking about is very real. This has been the best panel I’ve been to so far. And I really think the key missing ingredient that makes this a SEVEN conference out of a 10 conference is that there are people that are affected by these issues that are not in the room, right like we keep having these intellectual high level as conversations without the people that are in the room. So again, my challenge and again I say this as a person you ain’t got invited me back I’m still gonna come anyway. Like I think now like, like, like a lot of this. A lot of this conference setup is missing a geared steering by people that needs to be in decision making seats, right? We need more poor folks. We need more Black woman, queer folks, incarcerated folks to be on your board to make sure like, we can take this back in a very real way and I Miran is not okay. Um, and again, it’s just like, it’s my last thing to everybody in the room. I think we have to be serious about being able being willing to struggle together, right? Like alright, I’ll say this I’m gonna sit down sort of go, Oh, it’s 2020 and I knew I knew she wasn’t gonna change because like, this was American society, right? 2020 everybody was like George Floyd is the last time he’s gonna happen. We all act like he’s gonna do something. And then nothing happened because we are so caught up in like, actually not sacrifice enough to get shit done. In the 60s, I believe it was isolated of Switzerland. Women wanted seats at the table, women organized throughout the nation to say, You know what, we’re not going to work until we get seated at a table. Women stopped working for a week, country shut down. Now women have been in power in Switzerland or Iceland, one of these countries for the past 1640 years, right. But in this country, we keep saying we need these things. But then we keep we keep plugging back into the status quo. So nothing changes. Prime example. Everybody’s talking about we need to do something with gun safety and protect our kids at schools. But come August says in September, you will take your kids right back to the schools where nothing is changing, right? So just like what did we actually willing to do? Give up, mobilize and organize to make sure that housing actually becomes a fundamental basic human. Right, right. And that’s not on you all, you all didn’t find NCRC? I’m asking you to not be just another high level conference. Like let’s actually take this like, even in fact, this conference is always in DC. Like let’s take this conference to New Orleans in Austin were in 2016. Austin was the most segregated, segregated economically city in the country where rent just went up 54% Over the last year, like we need to take the set of people as opposed to excellent people to come to us. I got more to say, but I’ll leave it at that. 

Chaz More from Texas.

Crews 1:21:52

Okay. So tell us more. Both Andreanecia and myself sit on the board. I wrote down everything you said. I will bring it up. We have a board meeting tomorrow morning. Yes, I will bring it up at the board meeting tomorrow more than I can promise you that.

Audience 1:22:04

Yeah. You know, I mean, I think this is a good space, but it’s just like, I think the shit that we’re talking about. Is only it’s in a bubble of people that can afford to be here. We need to have it you got it. You got it.

Axel-Lute 1:22:27

Thank you everyone. Enjoy your lunch.

Moderator:

Alaina Beverly, Assistant Vice President of Urban Affairs, University of Chicago

Speakers: 

Karen Dettmer, Managing Director for Infrastructure Implementation, Environmental Protection Agency

Megan Haberle, Senior Director of Policy, NCRC

Christopher Coes, Assistant Secretary for Transportation Policy, Department of Transportation

Transcript:

NCRC video transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. They are lightly edited for style and clarity.

Beverly 00:00

Thank you so much. Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us for this panel on advancing racial equity through infrastructure investments. My name is Alaina Beverly, I am an Assistant Vice President for Urban Affairs at the University of Chicago based here in our Federal Relations Office and a frequent commentator on MSNBC. And it is my my good friend Christopher just laughed at me. I am, I am honored to be your moderator for today’s important discussion. So we still have a few more people coming in to be seated, let’s do a little bit of housekeeping. There is an app that you can use to check in for this session so that we know who is joining us for this important discussion. Feel free to use social media, the you can use @NCRC for attribution, and you can use the hashtag just economy. I’m going to stop right there and pause for a smile. All right, and that’s taken care of. So this conversation is going to be just that a discussion amongst experts. And then and then turning it over to you for important questions, because you are our community experts, our community practitioners, and we want to make sure that we get to some answers about where the rubber meets the road. So without further ado, I’ll talk to you a little bit about the goals of today’s discussion. We are going to be talking about the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law and some related policies like the justice 40 initiative, and the ways that they those policies intended to connect communities enhance health and prosperity and in doing so, also advance racial equity and reduce racial disparities. We know everyone in this audience knows the ways in which the modern day interstate highway system was largely constructed through segregated communities and redlining communities of color, generally, and the African American communities specifically. So we literally had highways that were built through vibrant economic corridors and built through neighborhoods in ways that displaced communities that disconnected communities and resulted in a devaluing of assets and, and disparate investments for generations. Similarly, historic infrastructure investments have also sought communities to connect to regional amenities, and left other neighborhoods and communities behind. Moreover, today, bipoc communities are bear the burden of legacy pollution and decrepit water infrastructure, resulting in families of color being far more likely to suffer increased lead exposure in their homes, in their places of business and in their schools. So we were all thrilled by the by the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure law and an ushered in a new era of potential investments in connecting communities and investing in community health and in, in creating jobs. And what we want to do today is talk to you about the contours of that law. The contours have other policies that are related to it, and and to explore where there are funding streams and opportunities for communities to engage with the these policies to help advance racial equity. I am joined today by a distinguished panel of experts who are helping to execute on these policies and programs. First, I have Christopher Coes, Assistant Secretary for transportation policy at the Department of Transportation recently Senate confirmed and we’re very proud of him. Second, Karen Dettmer, Managing Director of infrastructure implementation in the office of water in at the Environmental Protection Agency. And third, last but not least, Megan Haberle, Senior Director of Policy at NCRC. Now I’m I’m just introducing them by name and title, you have their bios in your programs, and they have distinguished bios, I’m hoping that they will take a few minutes and go down the line and tell us a little bit about their role, their current position and their experience, their orientation to this work of connecting infrastructure to racial equity. So Chris, why don’t we start with you?

Coes 04:38

First, good afternoon, everyone. Oh, this is good. I’m coming from a Baptist church so they everyone to back was was fine. So it’s good. Again, Christopher Coes, currently the Assistant Secretary for translation policy at the department transportation. That’s a lot of words to say my chief responsibility within the department is to guide our overall policy for the department which includes helping draft what is now a $1.2 trillion industry. As your package and that role, I have had the privilege of working with some amazing political and non corrupt leadership of actually trying to intersect our key priorities as administration, which includes for the department safety, because safety is our North Star, but also around racial equity, economic performance and competitiveness, climate, as well as recognize that infrastructure itself is transforming for the 21st century. And so bringing that in a way where we can ensure that every individual can live in a thriving, walkable and inclusive environment is our goal. How did I arrive to this space, I see so many of my familiar friends here who can probably tell you really great stories of how I got here. But one of these, I’ll just emphasize, before joining the administration, I served as the vice president of an organization called Smarter for America, which has served in partnership with a number of you on the ground, which is really bringing the intersectionality of environment equity and in the built environment, and how do we ensure we have more thriving communities for all prior to that I also taught at George Washington University and Brookings, but really, the whole whole whole, for me was also working with the private sector, recognizing that it’s critical to harness now in the public sector capital, but also the private capital to really truly invest in place in people to achieve those goals. So again, I’m really appreciative to have the opportunity to talk about some of the work that the Secretary of Bucha agenda this administration is doing. And with that, I’ll turn it to my fellow colleagues.

Beverly 06:21

Karen, you want to introduce yourself and your role?

Dettmer 06:24

Absolutely. So really tough act to follow there. When Chris mentioned $1.2 trillion, I had to take a step back, because I think EPA has long been kind of the little sister of DOT, where he’s probably used to talking about trillions of dollars. But EPA, for the first time ever has $50 billion in water infrastructure funding investment from the bipartisan infrastructure law, enough to just shut the house down. So we’re ecstatic about that. It’s not often that EPA is Office of Water talks about billions of dollars in water infrastructure from the federal government. And I have the pleasure of joining the EPA office of water to oversee the implementation strategy of that $50 billion. And it’s really exciting to me, particularly because of the Biden Harris administration priorities of advancing racial equity throughout the implementation of that funding. So that coupled with other priorities of climate, advancing climate and climate change is not advancing climate change, advancing and addressing climate impacts. We’re really excited about this funding. And we are working fast and furiously to stand up our grant opportunities, as well as pushed that funding out in a new way through existing programs. So I’m really honored to be accepting that role at the EPA Office of Water. I actually have been at EPA for just under two months now. And I came from running the local drinking water utility in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And there it is, you know, certainly no secret that some of the nation’s largest racial disparities exist in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for many of the reasons that Elena and Chris mentioned, as far as redlining and building highways through our neighborhoods that had been thriving in the past. But primarily, what we focused on at our drinking water utility was removing 70,000 lead service line that existed within the city of Milwaukee and Wisconsin, a primary goal. And one of the things and when one of the ways that that brought me to the topic of racial equity and inclusion was how we were engaging our neighborhoods, how were we engaging our communities that were hit the hardest by the impacts of adding lead to water. And through those exercises through that, looking into, we partnered with a couple of our sister utilities, we looked at how we could engage that community. We partnered with community organizations and wrote the first ever roadmap for advancing racial equity through water infrastructure for the City of Milwaukee. And what we really decided to focus on was workforce development, making sure we knew that water equity paired nicely with the ability to have a great family sustaining job. So that was the first and foremost focus that could get us to a place where families were supporting their communities. We were bringing in individuals to make sure that they had access to those jobs that they knew that those ABS existed, and really just started the work before I got pulled out here to Washington, DC. But I’m really proud of that work and the communities and the collaborative relationships that were built through that work to understand what that the utility really is comprised of community members, and the community members have a certain expertise that the utility needs to rely on as well. So really, working externally with community partners, but also in gait better engaging our own workforce, to understand that they are part of the community, and let’s engage the community together while building their their trading capacity. So just that was just a little bit about my background, I’m a licensed professional engineer in the state of Wisconsin, really fell into public service. So anytime I any chance I get to talk to young engineers, Please invite me to your your universities or colleges or high schools, grade schools, I really love to tout the ability to make an impact in the community through public service. So that’s, that’s just my little, my little plug there at the end.

Beverly 11:17

Thank you, Karen. And Megan, please introduce yourself and your role and your orientation to the work which actually precedes even your position here at NCRC.

Haberle 11:27

Yeah, so Megan Haberle, Senior Director of Policy here at NCRC. I’ve only been on staff here for about three months. So this is my first NCRC conference, really excited to be here and be speaking at the conference today. But I have spent most of my career focused on economic justice policies and equity and infrastructure policies. Specifically, I come from an advocates perspective, and specifically, I’m a civil rights lawyer by training. So I sort of came of age to this work back during the former process of economic recovery, in 2000, around 2009 2010, we were when we’re seeing the American stimulus package flow out to community is, and there really weren’t sort of structures or guardrails in place to make sure that those funds were flowing out in a manner that was equitable. That was even, you know, sort of meeting the basic threshold of compliance, often, with non discrimination standards or civil rights standards, there was a lot of focus around, you know, let’s get the money out the door, let’s get it to flow to shovel ready, shovel ready projects. And it was the role of the advocates to sort of speak up and talk about the importance of civil rights and making sure that that money was flowing to the communities that were in need. So that was, you know, sort of the stage of my career that opened my eyes, to the way that we see these sort of inequities and infrastructure spending, you know, that were created within historical practices generations ago, manifested even today, in the present, and the way that federal systems and federal policy systems, you know, aren’t necessarily set up in a way that is going to funnel that money where it’s needed, such that it causes, it’s caused for a lot of, you know, deliberate engagement, and pushing by the advocacy community, as well as from the inside, you know, by by policymakers, who are, you know, I think what we’re seeing in this administration in particular, is really historic prioritization of racial equity and that equity mandate, in a way that I think was, you know, somewhat frustrating to advocate, you know, 10 years ago, even when policymakers were very well intended, that that money sort of wasn’t flowing out to where we thought it was the most needed. And so a lot of the way that I think about infrastructure and infrastructure policy is is contextualized by the body of civil rights laws. And those were allies that were pushed forward by the Civil Rights Movement. You know, people going to the streets marching, asking for their rights to be vindicated, and asking to make sure that there was a framework in the courts, but also within the government and policy designs within the government, to make sure that we had greater equity in the way that resources were being spent, both when it comes to the distribution of benefits, which is to say, new resources that are flowing out, but also when it comes to the burdens that we also see go hand in hand, too often with infrastructure spending. So the classic example, of course, is the highways that were built through through those African American and other communities of color. You know, but we also see that with with many other types of infrastructure, you know, in our in our country, even into the present day, another aspect of the thinking that I bring into this is looking at that framework of civil rights laws and thinking about what are the different ways that we can use those tools and sort of the different theories of change that can attach to that set of tools. So litigation, the complaint process is One set of challenging discriminatory practices, making sure that rates are vindicated either in the courts, or going to the agencies and having the agencies step in and help in their enforcement roles. Another area is within the policy designs themselves. So that’s often referred to as ex ante measures, making sure that even more for this plant those funds flow out the door, or you’re seeing infrastructure projects go in place with their policy designs that have civil rights standards, baked into them at the very outset, and that are informed by that set of civil rights laws. And then we also see, you know, a movement building aspect outside of that. So where does the community come in or their screamer, it’s giving space for community members to lend their voice to the kinds of investments that they want to see, and making sure that there’s no space in the in the regulatory framework or the policy framework for those kinds of community interactions. And then the last note, that I’ll just lift up, before turning it back over to our moderator is that I also give a lot of thought to how these these issues connect to other issues around civil rights and democracy, and in particular, to voting rights into power at the state and the local level. So some of you may have been in the environmental justice panel earlier today. And folks there, were speaking from the vantage point of environmental justice advocates and movement leaders, about the role of the states in passing through a lot of these funds that we’re seeing flowing out of the federal government, and the fact that he’s often come into control of sort of more conservative leaning state governments, or in some cases, local governments. And so do a lot of thinking too about the way that kind of feeds back into issues of, you know, who are the local electeds answering to what is the role of sort of local money and resources in shaping those local political conversations, that then in turn inform the way that these infrastructure dollars are spent? So with that, I’ll turn it back over to you Alaina.

Beverly 16:59

Thank you, Megan, thank you so much for that framework, because we’re going to come back to that over and over again, what are some of the ex ante anti provisions and measures in ways that racial equity is being baked into the policies and the the grants and the funding streams that are coming down from the agencies? Chris, I’m going to turn it to you for an overview of that $1.2 trillion. And the ways in which the bipartisan infrastructure bill aims to help connect communities and to write some of the historic wrongs it’s not I don’t think it’s explicitly spelled out in the provisions that this is, is an aim to, to write the historical record. But there’s a proactive sense of how you are trying to connect communities, particularly communities of color and advance racial equity. And if you could speak to that.

Coes 17:50

Certainly, first and foremost, one of the things that’s important to center here is we as an administration did not wait for a bipartisan efficient law to try to address the historic harms that was happening in the communities. On day one, we’ve all heard the kind of talking point the President signed an executive order that around racial equity, but also around environment justice, and joining the climate crisis, which actually created the justice 40 initiative. Through that framework, our Secretary literally on his first day came coming in, instituted through our office, a new equity guidance, and through that, that actually informed now in through the dollars that we have as OSC, but also all the memos that we worked with, with US Federal Highway, Federal Transit Administration, which basically said a couple of things. Number one, we wanted to do a data assessment of how our dollars are actually impacting community, and how we can talk about the program design and making them better. Through that. We also then identify some key language that we wanted to see in every discretionary grant that came out over the last year, FY 21. Now taking those two things together, of course, working with our sister agencies are doing that data research, we found that through that process, through that policy framework that incorporated equity and climate, in the majority of our discretionary grants, we saw an immediate impact, most notably, one that should get cheers from both sides of the aisle is that through the dollars that we were spending, just before the bipartisan infrastructure law, we saw a 23 increase percent increase in dollars going to rural, tribal and disadvantaged communities. And I think that from the from the get go, it’s really set a tone about how we wanted to leverage the bipartisan infrastructure law. And I think you’re gonna see more agencies actually begin to have those thoughtful discussions as they’re learning through their own exercise, as we did early on. Now with that those efforts, those data assessment that we all did, really did actually inform the bipartisan infrastructure law. Now, of course, you have the American jobs plan to eventually go negotiate with Congress. But one of the things are a couple of things that we saw in the infrastructure package I want to emphasize that really speaks to how are we trying to reconnect communities and address the harms. First and foremost, one of the things that we really work with our colleagues on Capitol Hill, because again, as you know, to make laws requires you to push an agenda, having a store, Northstar, but also build a coalition. And I’ll be honest with you, yes, about 70% of all of our dollars as in part of the 1.2 trillion, but also the 650 billion that comes with the department transportation flows through a formula. And that formula goes directly to state do T’s, to Metropolitan organizations, to transit agencies and into in limited cases directly to cities. Now, people will say that doesn’t change the status quo. But a couple of things actually did happen as part of that. So normally, folks will yell and say, Oh, state do T’s have all the money. Actually, within the program, some equity was incorporated, which actually instruct DoD is now to increase the level of sub allocation to localities and MPOs, which means advocates, local governments, mayors, business leaders, this is your opportunity to actually engage in the transportation planning process that you otherwise would not have been engaged in, because that’s normally a process that had been held and managed by your state, DOD, or MPO, this is a new opportunity to organize. The second piece here is we saw significant increases, because of what we’ve been seeing in terms of deaths on roadways. As you know, what we released a report that shows nearly 40,000 individuals are dying on our roadways, disproportionately, that is black and brown communities. And if you actually take a step back and look through the history of redlining and infrastructure spending, there’s a direct coalition correlation, when you look at communities that have high pedestrian impact are generally in places that did not see the necessary investments that actually made it safer for mother to walk her child to her school. So her child could also then leave school and go to the grocery store to bring back eggs home before the sun, the lights come on, right. And that’s the speaking from my own experience living in a rural town. One of the things that infrastructure bill did was actually create $5 billion dedicated to supporting and reducing local governments tragic story of roadway fatalities. And from our perspective, we just released this NOFO, several months ago, we are looking for communities to actually prioritize equity in that. So it means who’s dying the most, where and how are you going to address it. And this for the first time, we’re actually designing the program where as part of the infrastructure law, we are prioritizing local governments more so than stay do tease. The last few things I’ll emphasize here is that we can’t talk about equity. And if we don’t talk about access, right, the idea that we are living in an environment where we’re dealing with multiple fires, we’re dealing with the economic crisis and recovery that’s induced by the COVID-19. On public health crisis. We have a climate crisis, we have a equity crisis. And we have a crisis of the future of how do we make sure that we as a nation are competitive against our global adversaries. Through that, we’re finding that we have to actually bring these things because they have intersectionality, we have to bring them together. And one of the ways we do that is recognize that people need to have more options to get to places. And that means we need to invest more, not just in the car dominated society that we built out, but also in more walkable, biking, and inclusive spaces. Where if you’re disabled, whether you’re a child, whether you’re a senior citizen, you should be able to live in a thriving community. And if you take a step back, if some of those were in a real estate community, you know, this, places that have multiple options of getting around, are rising in costs. So from our perspective, if we’re going to compete in the future address, climate, and also sensor equity, it also means for the first time, we had to invest in a span transit. And that’s one of the things that I’m really excited about is that for the first time, this is the largest investment and public transportation ever, the largest investment and passenger rail ever, which means more communities want to have the ability to dress equity. Now, with that being said, and I’ll conclude here, we also recognize that as we have these new leverage, I mean, again, from the department transportation, not only do we see increasing foreign load dollars, we also see an increase in our discretionary dollars. Now recognizing that we have a framework that seems to be successful, we’re going to continue to address that, but also recognize that for the first time, the bypass Institure law actually did something that many advocates have been calling out for a long time, which is yes, we need to acknowledge that some harm has happened. And so for the first time, we’re going to be announcing very soon the next couple of weeks, a new program called the reconnecting Communities Program, and the reconnect community program is intended to do three things. Number one we recognize as part of the bypass In Shuttle law, there, many communities are now sitting on assets, we talk about highways as someone from come from rural America is the railroad lines, right? Living on the other side of the railroad track is a common phrase right? infrastructure that are coming at the end of the lifecycle. For many communities across the country, we recognize that they need capacity, technical system capacity planning dollars to actually ask a simple question, what has happened here? How did we arrive? And how can we move forward. And so we’re going to be providing those technical assistance and planning dollars. There are some communities now who have already done that iteration and process of understanding the intersectionality of land use and transportation and impact on their community on public health, and hadn’t actually designed transportation infrastructure projects, or removal of transportation infrastructure projects, to actually reconnect their communities. And so we’ll be also plot supplying Kabelo dollars as well. Recognizing that there’s only $1 billion, we are also looking to see how we can actually use the other dollars that we have as our $650 billion to actually leverage and make reconnected Communities Program, be more of a printable. And so to do that, we are looking across all of our discretion to see how we can incentivize those projects and those planning efforts, but also work with state do T’s and because what you may not know is that state duties are seeing the crisis too. And they’re asking how do we engage in this space. And so we’re going to use our bully pulpit, our convening power, and hopefully working with you who are on the ground to actually bring those strategies, lift up those voices, but also recognizing that this is a journey that we all had to take together. And if we do that, then the bipartisan interest of law years to come will be one that will catalyze more investments in the type of intervention that needs to happen to redress some of the harms that we’re seeing in rural and urban communities across the country. 

Beverly 26:53

Okay, so, Christopher, just to put a fine point on it, this reconnecting Communities program it is it is discretionary funding, it can go in partnership to community, community members to help participate in this planning and review of the way in which land use and transportation decisions have affected community.

Coes 27:13

Absolutely. And this is a game changer for us. Traditionally, department transportation doesn’t find community based organizations or partnerships or committee based opposition. Normally we find DLTs transit agencies MPOs. So in this case, community based organizations are eligible for our funding, we are highly encouraging organizations to partner amongst themselves, because you can imagine there are a lot of community groups in one place, but we’re encouraging community groups to partner also trying to partner with philanthropy, other civic organizations, particularly the private sector, and also your local government, you’re generally going to be more competitive that way. In addition to that, we recognize there gonna be a ton of communities who are not going to be ready. Yeah. And so we are later this year are going to be announcing kind of a learning a community of practice of sort, where community groups and local governments can come together to learn. And so we’re going to facilitate that in a separate announcement later this year.

Beverly 28:05

That’s so exciting. Incredible. All right. I’m hoping that there’ll be a lots of questions from this audience about that opportunity, because that is a direct way to engage. And it’s, it’s hot off the presses. It hasn’t even been announced yet. So I’m feeling good about this panel already. tweeting or tweeting out, right. All right. So Karen, that’s going to be a tough act to follow. First of all, they do okay. So talk to us about the way in which the bipartisan infrastructure law is helping to address the lead water crisis and the community wastewater crisis. I mean, we most of the national attention has been focused on the Flint water crisis. But we know that there are elevated levels of lead in cities from Newark to New York to Baltimore to here in DC to Detroit, where I’m from. So help us understand how this law will help to address that and makes historic investments in that transformation.

Dettmer 29:04

Absolutely. So I mentioned the $50 billion. I just can’t say it enough, even though I feel like it’s been rubbed in a little bit over here by Chris, but it’s a lot of money. But $15 billion of that is exclusively for LED service line identification and replacement. And I mentioned identification because a lot of communities are out there. They don’t know where their lead service lines are. They don’t know how many lead service lines there are. So a good portion of that funding for fiscal year 2022. That has been announced we have $3 billion going out through similar to do t through formulas that we work with and we put that funding out to states tribes and territories. A lot of that funding will be used to identify where those lead service lines into our and get communities ready to replace those lead service lines. So we are really focused right now on technical assistance. We have a lot of technical assistance funding availability through EPA set aside that we receive from the bill funding. And we also have technical assistance funding that we are regularly using that we put out to states and community partners through our environmental finance centers that we use on an annual basis. And as far as you can see, I oversee Bill implementation, and I oversee the infrastructure implementation, but we are pulling that money from everywhere that we can to, to leverage those resources and make sure that communities are well prepared, and their community partners are well prepared, I know firsthand, that you’re not going to get a property owner to sign off on the paperwork when the water utility comes and knocks on the door. Right? They’re gonna say, I don’t want to talk to the water utility, what have you done for me lately, and they’re gonna slam the door. But when you have a community based organization that comes and knocks on the door, and explain and uses their expertise about the neighborhood, and explains to that individual, that household, the importance of getting that lead service line replaced, and engaging them that property owner to understand what their concerns are, a whole world of opportunity opens up and gathering that community expertise, understanding what the anxieties are associated with getting that lead service line replace, understanding that for a childcare facility, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, had an or still has an ordinance, that all childcare facilities are to be operating with out a lead service line. So if you apply to have a childcare facility in the City of Milwaukee, the water utility will reach out to you replace the service line at that location free of charge, fantastic program. But what does that mean to a childcare operator, if they have to shut down for a day because they don’t have water to take care of those kids. So those types of bits and pieces of expertise that we know that our community partners are more willing to talk to? Or are our community partners are more able to get that information, and input and expertise and information about what those anxieties are for those households for those childcare providers. For those school operators. That is critical. And we need to arm those community organizations, we need to arm the utilities, we need to arm the states with the ability to get all that information together. So we will have an announcement later this summer. And we will be rolling out a lead technical assistance program. And we’re still developing it. So I wish that I was a little bit closer. Because we really need to focus on getting that technical assistance out not only to engage and get the identification to get the inventory is put together. But also how how does the small or disadvantaged underserved community put together a grant application to get that funding from the state, the $15 billion that’s put out to states, from the EPA, for states to implement and provide to communities 49% of that has to be provided to disadvantaged communities through principal forgiveness loans or grants, free money, and it has to go into disadvantaged communities. So we need to ensure that we’re arming disadvantaged communities with the information to apply with the technical expertise and assistance to apply for that funding to access that funding. And we are going out full force on that 39%.

Beverly 34:12

Again, 49% funding must go to communities that are quote, unquote, disadvantaged, but that means underserved or historically marginalized communities who have the expertise and the insight and the trust of the communities to be able to carry out this work. 

Dettmer 34:29

That’s right. And we’re not a big fan of that the word disadvantaged either. That’s what’s in this in the in the statute. So that’s what we use. And it’s important to note that the states actually define what a disadvantaged community means in their particular state. That is something that the EPA does not have control over. However, we have ability to encourage and incentivize the change of that definition of disadvantaged communities. So we put out in March of this year a bipartisan infrastructure law State Revolving Fund, which includes that lead service line replacement funding, implementation memo, a lot of words, just look up water bill implementation memo from March of this year. And in that we give some information about what states should be looking for in their definition of disadvantaged communities. We have many states that define disadvantaged communities as small communities, we know through engaging those states that they are really they are looking at that they are evaluating what their definition is of disadvantaged communities, because they know what they’re just looking at small communities, they’re not going to have any chance of getting this funding actually utilized. And they are very interested in utilizing this funding, they want to get the lead out, they want to ensure that they’re using this funding. And I’ll pivot a little bit from lead because that is very important, a high high priority for the EPA, but we have a lot of priorities. So in addition to the lead funding, the the the funding that’s going out in the general state revolving funds for all water infrastructure projects, stormwater, wastewater, clean water, getting wastewater removal systems, and treatment systems to communities that don’t currently have that small rural communities is so essential. And we’ve seen that firsthand, it is a public health issue, significant public health issue in certain communities. That funding also had that that $22 billion also has a requirement of 49% of it going to disadvantaged communities as principal forgiveness loans, which means you don’t have to pay it back. They forgive the principal, or grant funding, this is significant. And we need to ensure that those communities that are defined as disadvantaged by their states are getting access to that, and that the states are utilizing the correct definition of disadvantaged communities to get that and to get that money out to the right people that need it the most. I’ll also mention, we have a significant amount of funding that has been allocated $10 billion in total $5 billion included in that State Revolving Fund allocation. But also $5 billion, that we have an announcement coming out tomorrow, me too. We have an announcement coming out tomorrow about it, the emerging contaminants grants for small or disadvantaged communities, and that funding will address will be accessible to communities for water infrastructure projects related to drinking water to remove and address emerging contaminants, including pee fast perfluorinated compounds, forever chemicals. So significant amount of investment, that’s $5 billion over the five year span of the bipartisan infrastructure law. We’re announcing $1 billion going out tomorrow. And we’re really looking forward to all the states that have already engaged with us letting us know that they are interested in getting that funding and getting that funding out to communities that need it most. Again, that’s for small and disadvantaged communities to address emerging contaminants including PFOS or forever chemicals. So really excited about that as well.

Beverly 38:40

Awesome. Okay, so I’m tempted to test the audience. But I’m not going to do that to you. We can talk a lot. I’m tempted to test because I have identified from this discussion thus far three grant opportunities that can go directly to community that can help to create jobs. Right. So first, I heard the reconnecting communities planning, I heard the lead service line identification. I heard the wastewater programs and emerging contaminants grants. I think I might have missed one from Christopher. But will he’s going to reiterate that. Is there anything? Are there any other programs or opportunities that you would want to identify or overarching themes that you’d want to raise? Either Christopher or Karen, about the way the bipartisan infrastructure law is creating jobs? For me in that not just any jobs, creating jobs for those who have been historically marginalized? Because, as Karen mentioned, I believe when in her opening remarks, she talked about how during the the Recovery Act, and in the rest rescue plan, there was an emphasis on shovel ready. And those shovel ready jobs tend not to go to contractors of color, they tend not to go to community organizations of color, and so I’m wondering how we talked about the 49%. We talked about the interest in racial equity, are there other avenues for job creation that you want to emphasize that are going to communities of color?

Coes 40:10

Absolutely. Three things, and I didn’t see this one. But three things I want to highlight. We all know that a bipartisan issue is a law. When we invest in infrastructure, it creates jobs. Like I don’t we don’t need to do the economics around that. We know that. The question is, are we building a workforce for these transition jobs that actually reflect the communities upon which we’re investing in point one, two, are we actually creating the infrastructure jobs and preparing communities for the innovation that is actually happening right now. And in three, to the extent that we are actually enhancing and building the ecosystem for the industry that we have now to prepare to deliver that? So let me take each of those. And I recognize I do have to? I’m gonna keep my comments short, because I do have to have a call of a secretary momentarily. But I will definitely, hopefully facilitate some q&a and possible, okay, great. So number one, we, as part of the justice 40 framework, we have to identify key programs that we want to deliver 40% Not just investments, but benefits to disadvantaged communities. One…

Beverly 41:22

40% of the benefits of federal investments in climate and clean energy, including sustainable transportation is that justice 40. Go ahead.

Coes 41:29

And so from that standpoint, one of the most premier and marquee programs within the department transportation that literally touched upon a number of those key points we talked about earlier, is our rollout of the 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations across the country, we are literally supercharging an entire new marketplace supercharging and building a new infrastructure platform that our kids our grandkids are going to look at us and say, did you do this right? Just last week, we announced our 180 Day guidance for our Navy former program and eventually launching our discretionary grant, why is that important? Right now state do T’s are sitting on $7.5 billion, they have been waiting for us to tell them how to act do they need to spend it? One key aspect of that guidance, as well as the 90 day guidance that we gave several, several weeks ago, really emphasize one key point that only you’re touching on which is we are as each day has to actually issue what’s called a state plan of like how they’re going to execute. One of the things we’re asking them to tell us, how are you engaging, underserved overburden communities, key stakeholders in their eco space where there’s HBCUs, whether it’s small business, disadvantaged business enterprises, who can actually do the following, build the darn things? Right, locate them, make sure they have maintenance? And also how are you intersecting that with other community groups and ensure that the placement of these important infrastructure is actually providing community benefit. Now, those state plans are gonna be public, those state plans will have to be engaged agencies will have to go to those communities and what justice for they actually afford a lot of us to do as agencies is to publicly say, and we had to do this, in partnership with the Department of Energy, we basically said to the states, here are the communities that we want you to prioritize. Now, for you as advocates, those who are in the commune development space, I’m asking you, if you’re in that map, activate, because we are looking for you to be present in those state plans as we reviewed them. So that’s one key place that we’re tracking. And of course, we’re going to be tracking jobs and Workforce Performance. But of course, this is also an opportunity for us to engage our labor colleagues, right, because they are a key aspect and key instrument and making sure that we meet our promise that the President has made. The last few days I’ll just emphasize here is that Department of Transportation recognizes we can’t do this alone, we are grant risk, we give money out. We don’t build bridges, we don’t grow trains, we have to give and we work in partnership with partners. But one of the things we also recognize is that we can’t just leave the workforce in the industry alone. And so one of the things I’m just really excited about my colleague, pay seven who we brought in recently, as our cgj advisor on workforce development, she is literally have created a new MOU between the Department of Transportation and the Department of Labor. And where we are actually working side by side and identifying what technical assistance dollars are needed. And where is it on the grantmaking side? Is it on the workforce development side? And if so, how do we deliver that out and I think that’s going to morph is going to be stated on that very, very soon. But working hand in glove or hand in hand with Department of Labor, leveraging their technical skills that can actually go to community based organization is going to be phenomenal and huge. The last thing I’ll say here in turn more of how we’re driving workforce is the fact that within an apartment transportation, just like some of our sister agencies, we issued a equity action plan. A key aspect and one key pillar of our equity agenda is around wealth creation. And in order for us to go, Yes, that’s right. In order for us to, you know, serve in the bullet pulpit with our secretary, where we’re saying we want to drive these dollars to the communities have been underserved, overburdened, but also lifting all boats, we recognize we got to walk the walk and talk to talk. And as such, we have committed to ourselves that we are going to increase our disadvantage in small business utilization. Right now we’re hovering about 18%, as of last two fiscal years, just this fiscal year, we say, You know what, we’re going to be ambitious, we’re gonna go to 20%. With the idea that by 2022, we hopefully we get up to 22 to 25%. And right now, we’re getting pretty darn close to meeting that mark by the end of this fiscal year. So again, we are working with Shelby scales, who may have you know, who is managing our, our office for our small business utilization. She’s partnered with HBCUs, local CDFIs. To use her resources. Well, those loans was a technical assistant grants, and leveraging her dollars with SBA to again, build that ecosystem that can actually be ready to now and receive these dollars for also lead the future on the innovation. That was something

Beverly 46:29

That was excellent. Okay, thank you. Karen, do you want to add to that?

Dettmer 46:35

Absolutely. And I’ll add another grant opportunity to it as well. We just can’t get it, get it out fast enough. So, you know, similarly, we are a funding agency there. We can’t do it alone. We we don’t train the workforce, but we can empower states and communities to train the workforce to get the workforce that’s needed. And technical assistance is a huge part of that. So we have technical assistance that we’re putting out to communities to make sure that people are aware of these opportunities, that contracting is being done in compliance with, you know, Minority Business Enterprises, disadvantaged business, business enterprises, a lot of communities have small business enterprise goals and, and requirements that they are moving forward. And so so we’re pushing that information out, we’re pushing that information forward, also engaging with states and what other technical assistance do you need community? What are you hearing from your communities, communities? What technical assistance? Are you seeing a need for in your community? And how can we help and get that information out so that we can best prepare everybody to get the funding spent to get it into the communities that need it the most, and we’ll see the largest impact and the largest benefits from it. And one opportunity, the grant opportunity that I mentioned, is actually not part of the bipartisan infrastructure law Congress afforded us for the past three years, a water workforce grant opportunity, not a whole lot of dollars there than not in the billions in the low millions, but still really an exciting opportunity for communities to come together, partner with water utilities, partner with universities, and come up with an innovative water workforce approach to train those individuals that are looking for great family supporting jobs, and get them to work for water. So we we’ve had the 2022 is our third funding year, we should have an announcement coming out soon about that grant opportunity. We have just funded other I think it was 10 different 10 different programs. But we receive one thing that was so exciting about the first round of applicants that we that we saw come through we received 60 Different applicants, 52 of them were eligible applicants. That is so exciting. And that shows what need is out there for this water workforce planning and training opportunity workforce development opportunity. So we’re so excited that Congress has continued to fund it. When I mentioned, you know, it’s not bill funded. This is the type of opportunity that we’re looking for. We’re pulling out every single resource that we have, and utilizing the bill priorities that Congress had put has put out there that the Biden administration is moving forward to ensure that the funding is meeting those justice 40 goals. that we’re really tracking higher than 40%. EPA has long, long been a proponent of environmental justice. And we’re just ecstatic that we have the resources to move forward environmental justice in general. And that, of course, includes racial equity and inclusion, making sure that we’re getting people to jobs, making sure that we’re writing those historic wrongs. So really excited about that. So watch out for that, that water workforce opportunity, we will have an announcement coming up later this year. But really excited about how we’re seeing that need come in and that ask come in much more than the funding, because then we can go back and say, look at the need that’s out there. Let’s get more dollars to this program. And I’m so excited about when we start showing some successes out of that program. The bottom line is the money is there. Vice President Kamala Harris was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I keep bringing up Milwaukee is like I never left was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin back in January. And she highlighted to the labor community that the need is there, the money is there, come get the jobs be and really, you know, put them to task to say, we’re going to hire people, we’re going to train people up. This is five years, this is not one year of funding towards led service line replacements, which many utilities have had to deal with, just year by year trying to get the funding in place. Contractors aren’t going to build up their workforce for for a one year opportunity. But when they see the amount of investment that the EPA is putting out over the next five years, they are going to grab people train people, they’re going to be making that investment in the communities, and we’re going to be giving them the tools and resources to make that happen.

Beverly 52:01

We’re going to pause for a second for some housekeeping here. Christopher, do you need to step away and come back? Do you have how much time do you have left with us? I know you need to leave to for the nine minutes, nine minutes. Okay, that’s enough time for Meghan, to speak to the importance of the sort of the political landscape related to this work. What we saw in the bipartisan infrastructure law was part of a two part agenda. And it was an investment in sort of the bricks and mortar hardcore infrastructure with the emphasis on build back better investments in human capital and human infrastructure that languished in the Senate. So if you could speak to a little bit what’s what’s missing? What didn’t we get? What would it have meant for economic opportunity? 

Haberle 52:46

Yeah, and, you know, I’ll start by saying that I want to acknowledge that the infrastructure act is momentous historic levels of investment. So very exciting to see that package to see that that package did get passed. And it includes funding, you know, for for water resources, transportation resources, as we’ve heard, as well as for broadband and other kinds of environmental resources, or cleanup, energy, investment, etc. That said, a lot of that work did remain to be does remain to be done. So for example, the build back better Act contains historic levels of funding for affordable housing for rental programs, for resources for public housing, to fix it up, make it healthier, and broaden the amount of affordable housing that is available for people, as well as you know, a suite of other funding packages that didn’t manage to make it through the Senate. And so advocates are continuing to push for those things and lift them up, even as we are focusing on the implementation of the infrastructure package at the same time, because we do see those programs that didn’t get funded as being equally critical to serving our communities. The other thing that I would say about the infrastructure package is that in part because it is bipartisan, it didn’t have what I think a lot of advocates would have said was an ideal amount of pointing towards equity outcomes or equity directives, they’re actually within the legislative text of that bill. So there’s a lot of potential around the funding that is in that legislation, and that was funded, but it’s really being left to the agencies to implement that, to come up with the program designs that are going to make sure that that money gets where we want it to go and to spend in the ways that we want it to, and that also that harm isn’t done that mirrors some of those historical harms in the past. So very fortunately, as you’ve heard, you know, they have an arsenal of tools at their disposal, their competitive grant programs where they have a lot of discretion to identify, you know, what kind of projects are going to be competitive at the local or state state level in order to be awarded Funding, you know, they have enforcement arms to engage in civil rights oversight. You know, they have technical assistance resources. And of course, the stakeholder engagement efforts that we’re seeing within the administration now, all of which are incredibly important tools to make sure that this money is spent the way that we want it to be said, that said, there are pre existing challenges, right, because we are working often within, you know, existing program design. So a lot of the transportation programs that were funded, were pre existing programs, and DOD is stepping in and reshaping those, but there are some existing challenges there. So one is that enforcement resources within the federal government have been severely depleted over the years. And so, you know, one thing that we’ve seen in these legislative packages is more recent sources for enforcement within those agencies. They’re all charged with enforcing civil rights laws, making sure that these programs comply with civil rights directives, but often, they just haven’t had the personnel to be able to do that. Or they’ve had to make really hard decisions around enforcement priorities. So, you know, we’ll, you know, we’ll bring in complaints around sort of particular circumstances of individual discrimination. But maybe that means we don’t have the resources to engage in, you know, systemic oversight, and really push for systems change at the state or local level. So really hard decisions within those oversight structures when you have a lack of resources. And so it’s been great to see that there are additional resources that are there within the budgeting process that are starting to flow out the door. Another challenge is that a lot of these programs are designed with a lot of state or local discretion or as block grants. And so this was actually a policy shift that we saw, in many arenas, under Reagan, sort of in the 80s, a lot of social programs were eliminated, but then a lot of other programs were converted, from programs that serve really specific social policy is to these block grants. So there’s a lot of talk around, you know, local control, or federalism and state control. But what that really has translated to in practice is that often that money is is still flowing to the people who are the most financially and politically empowered within those communities, rather than having really specific requirements attached to it as far as flowing to, you know, the people who are the most in need. And so as you’re hearing that agencies are doing a lot of work to sort of rewire the way that those programs work, you know, but it’s, it’s a big lift, and that cuts across a lot of different agencies. And capacity varies among the agencies, you know. So it’s, it’s a varying level of challenge, I would say, from agency to agency.

Beverly 57:44

So what I’m hearing, Megan, though, is that that’s an opportunity for advocacy, when we when we know that there are these big, big budget items that are coming down the pike, this is an opportunity for organizations to to conduct their Hill days and lobby for more specific and targeted funding streams for the communities that we care about.

Haberle 58:04

Yeah, and and to think that, you know, I think, often engagement with civil rights laws and enforcement is something that people have encountered with a degree of cynicism, because it hasn’t necessarily been working, the way that it’s designed to, and the way that it should be done. Now, I think we are seeing sort of a new momentum there and a re energizing and a reinvestment. And so I certainly encourage people in communities to think about, you know, how can you play that sort of constructive role from the outside, either by going to, you know, community engagement platforms, meetings, or sometimes by, you know, bringing, bringing litigation, you know, or filing a complaint, and that’s a way to document a problem, bring it to the agency’s attention, and the federal agencies have a role to engage that and say, you know, this problem has been brought to us it’s been documented, it’s part of our role, you know, as, as the entity that is bringing the civil rights to fruition to go in and actually, you know, investigate that situation on the ground and, you know, make that right, you know, actually come into the end.

Beverly 59:09

Wonderful. Okay, so I have additional questions. Most of them I’ll just flag for my panel are related to the equity action plans and carrying out the executive order. I have some questions related to to which which tools the the audience can eat most easily access to get more information. But I want to flag for the audience members, we’re about to hit q&a. So if you have questions, would you please stand up stand in line in a socially distanced fashion so you know, maybe a couple feet behind the person in front of you. Before we take our first question, I will and I’m going to start with with my senior st over in the corner, who I understand is not going to go to the microphone. But before we get to our first question I want to ask Christopher do you need to if you need to step out do before you step out Let us know what what’s the one resource that you want the audience to leave with as their website? Is there something they should be following?

Coes 1:00:06

Absolutely. For our department we have, we are tracking all of our bill announcements, availability of resources, as well as our new initiatives on our website. So go to www.transportation.gov/bil. Or just to go to our website, and we co host resources. Also just know that we will be launching what’s called a thriving communities initiative, which is to support capacity builders and our 10 major regions to actually identify nonprofits, both large or small, to provide direct capacity to these communities. And for us, we want to have a new pipeline at the end of this infrastructure timeline, that when we go back to Congress to ask for another reauthorization, we can show that not only are there needed projects, but there are actually capacity to deliver them. So definitely call you to those. So again, thank you for the opportunity again, dear friend, and to all my friends here. We love to stand in partnership with all of you as we move this forward.

Beverly 1:01:01

Thank you so much. Get let’s give him a round of applause. Okay, and now we can take our first question, the beautiful young lady in blue, if you could please say your name where you’re from.

Audience Question 1:01:19

Thank you. Yes, my name is Ramona Taylor Williams and I hail from the Mighty Mississippi. I wanted to ask some questions for Christopher, but I’m going to get his direct contact information. I’m gonna contact him directly. As I stated, I am from Mississippi, I live in Jackson, Mississippi. And we have major major, major issues around water and lead in our water. In fact, Jackson is under a long time consent decree. Unfortunately, we are having some issues, getting resources into our communities in order to abate delay at in our lines. I’m also concerned about the win program, and how it appears that Mississippi State University who I partner with ain’t got no problem with that. They have the wind funding, but I’m concerned that HBCUs are not being involved and they are not getting their fair share of the spending of these funds that millions of dollars about I’m a great grandmother, my great grandson is going to be paying back this money. And I want to make sure that he has a benefit or return on the investment that I make on the investment that he is going to ultimately make we got issues in Mississippi. And let me give you a for instance real quick and I know I don’t want to take up everybody’s time. But I have to take advantage of the opportunities that are here….your point when he Okay, Senator wicker for he earmarked and I know they say we don’t have earmarks anymore, but we do know we do he earmarked for water and sewer. Lord, He earmarked for water and sewer funding of $13.6 million for the town of Clinton, which is majority white $10 million for Meridian $10 million for Oxford $10 million to Rankin County, and $10 million for Madison County with this now the most wealthiest county in the state of Mississippi $0 for the city of Jackson. We need to do something about this. We need to do something about this. If we’re going to we can’t just let equity be a generic word like pampers and gasoline. We got to make equity mean equity. Thank you.

Beverly 1:04:17

Thank you.

Dettmer 1:04:23

So I would love to follow up with you to hear a little bit more about some of the issues specific to Jackson because that’s part of the reason why I’m here is to make sure that we are engaging directly with our community partners and hearing where those needs are. We do as as I mentioned, we have a technical assistance program that we’ll be announcing probably early Fall late summer on led service line inventories and identification and replacement. We also have a technical assistance pilot that will be moving out related to closing the wastewater access gap because we know that wastewater in rural communities is very difficult, as well, as I had mentioned earlier, we’re also piloting a program where we’ll have teams come into certain communities, and just gather an understanding of where those technical assistance needs are, and where the need is the greatest so that we can identify the resources and get those resources to the communities in a quick manner. Finally, I’ll mentioned we do, we do have new requests for applications that are out for environmental finance centers, and for accessing some of those technical assistance opportunities and the grant funding for some of our more traditional programs, but also adding the bill funding in there. So we have a lot of resources, and I would love to hear more.

Audience 1:06:00

Fortunately, I can afford to talk about maybe going to Starbucks so that everyone can talk. However, there aren’t so many people who can afford to buy water and it’s killing them.

Beverly 1:06:23

Thank you. Thank you for your question. And for your powerful testimony. It’s so important. I hope you all can connect after the panel. And for our next member of the audience, please introduce yourself, tell us where you’re from what organization you represent.

Audience Question 1:06:37

Sure. Hi, I’m Oscar Perry Abello. I’m the economic justice reporter at next city. I really wish Christopher was leader for this question. But maybe you can answer to speak to this at the EPA. On Did I miss something maybe maybe I missed something. But I thought someone would bring up the local hiring ban here. There’s two folks on this side of the microphone. Does everyone here know about the local hiring ban Did something happened to it that I didn’t know about? Because as far as I know, it’s still mostly in place. Even though the bipartisan infrastructure bill partially repealed it, but I think it’s still mostly in place. And if we’re talking about investing some of these dollars in the communities we’re talking about. The local hiring managers still seems to be something that maybe we need to talk about more. Or maybe I missed something. 

Beverly 1:07:23

I’m not familiar with it. Maybe Maybe Secretary Coes would be familiar with it. And when the local hiring ban, you mean local hiring ban as it applies to the District of Columbia?

Audience 1:07:32

No, this is a federal infrastructure spending ban on local hiring preferences for federally supported infrastructure projects, was created under Reagan in the 80s.

Beverly 1:07:45

I’m not familiar, I don’t know if Megan or Karen, are you able to speak to this at all?

Dettmer 1:07:50

So I, you know, I certainly am not as well versed in this as I am in water infrastructure issues. But I know that that is a concern with many local communities. And this is kind of going back to when I was in Milwaukee, just a very, very lengthy two months ago, I was actually serving as the interim Commissioner of Public Works for the City of Milwaukee. And so this came up under a transportation issue, as well as a in a water infrastructure issue. And the the issue primarily is that, and this came up, particularly for our PA funding, that that was going out to communities and communities were forced to rebid programs and projects that were already underway because the local preferences, Milwaukee in particular had a what was called an RPP, the residential preference program that, that put goals on publicly funded projects to hire within certain zip codes. And the the federal funding doesn’t allow for that much, much like the federal funding doesn’t allow for the local definition that many communities have of small business enterprises that put a geographic requirement on it. I I don’t know enough to be able to speak on where that but just for the education of the community. I do know that local officials and and local attorneys are closely closely tracking this and it was my understanding that there were some opportunities to to move that funding forward, particularly for our BI I’m not sure how it relates to the bill. But I would presume that it would be similar to move that funding forward with some of those local preferences as long as they were more stringent than the federal requirements rather than less

Audience 1:09:54

Interesting. Okay, we have that’s exactly what I’m talking about.

Dettmer 1:09:57

But I certainly you know, do Do your research on it?

Haberle 1:10:03

Thank you. I can’t speak to that question directly, either. But I would note, you know, to the question of, you know, how can we foster better hiring practices that promote equity, some of the other initiatives that were within the build back better act, and unfortunately, it didn’t move forward, regarded recruitment, outreach training for people that had been in contact with the criminal justice system, as well as outreach to foster youth, as well as recruitment pipelines to historically black colleges and universities. So I think it is a you know, it’s an important issue and merits creative thinking, and certainly some policy reforms as well.

Beverly 1:10:41

Thank you for that. And for the next member of our audience, we have about 15 minutes left, ladies and gentlemen. So if you have questions, please feel free to raise them. And if not, I have a few for the panelists as well. Great, thank you. handled. 

Beverly 1:11:09

Thank you, we call them federal cross cutters.

Audience Question 1:11:13

Hi, guys, afternoon, I Bob Sudanic in Essen, former director of special initiatives at NCRC. But I’m back in California. And I’m bringing the two rural coalition, the San Joaquin Valley housing collaborative, which I’m interim director, and California coast for rural housing. And I want to talk to you Karen about water and drought. We have over a million people in California do not have water, no access to fresh water. And none of them are farmworkers because our works mostly in the central San Joaquin Valley, which is where the majority farmworkers and also receive a drought, people are losing water wells. And then there’s getting contaminants. It’s a it’s a huge crisis. And then we have small towns that have zero, I mean, Fresno has a lot of capacity, but some of the small towns that zip and so it’s really become a crisis that is growing with the drought and the water issues in you know, throughout California and part of the West, but notably in the San Joaquin Valley. And so what types of strategy, do you have these funding opportunities, but hopefully some we can start targeting some of them towards some of these communities that have no water?

Dettmer 1:12:14

Yeah, so and you’re obviously very well versed in this. So you’re likely very much aware that the Vice President Kamala Harris was recently visited California to roll out that the plan to discuss and address resiliency within our water systems, particularly in the West, and we’re working with our offices working very closely with the White House on that plan and looking at strategies on how we can address this very important issue. I will say, you know, the the bill funding that that has been put out, there are some opportunities or some synergies there, where that that clean water SRF funding can be put as a resource. Certainly I discussed the emerging contaminants funding that that was included in the bipartisan infrastructure law. So there are some synergies and some opportunities that I think are very much in alignment of addressing the drought conditions and and that ongoing climate impacts overall, you know, addressing climate impacts, is is an overarching theme in all of our funding and looking at making sure that states and encouraging states to fund projects that have those very important priorities is one thing that we’re focusing on, but I think there’ll be there’ll be more to come with those strategies coming out.

Audience 1:13:43

Great, because I did the climate change workshop yesterday. But I think if we can be in conversations, we have a couple of really key. I don’t want to belabor it, we have a couple of key networks. And there’s some unique issues that we’re dealing with Redwater got some really good solutions, but capacity and resources.

Dettmer 1:13:57

Yeah. technical, technical assistance is going to be the game changer.

Beverly 1:14:02

I have another question for the panelists, as we have another member of our audience walking to the Moscone concluded 315 Oh, no, we’re gonna session starts at three. My apologies. I thought we went to 330. And my sincere apologies. Really quickly. Let’s one last question

Audience Question 1:14:19

earlier. Karen, you and Chris, were talking about the programs? They’re going to be funded discretionary discretionary monies, use the word it wasn’t disadvantaged. Do you remember what’s the word communities?

Beverly 1:14:30

It was disadvantaged

Audience 1:14:31

It was disadvantaged? How are you going to find that for the community? So that’s my question. How do you define that?

Dettmer 1:14:37

Yeah. So I want to separate two things a little bit because I know Chris was talking about discretionary funds. We we have some discretionary funds, but they’re not necessarily associated. I would pull that apart from the definition of disadvantaged communities. But I appreciate the opportunity to talk a little bit more about disadvantaged communities some definitions. Heard the Safe Drinking Water Are act states are obligated to set the definition of disadvantaged communities. We know that some states have inadequate definitions of disadvantaged communities. So part of the bipartisan infrastructure laws state State Revolving Fund implementation memo that we put out in March that I mentioned, addresses that and give states some of the ideas that they should be prioritizing medium household income, for example, to better defined disadvantaged communities. It also encourages states to kind of look at their definition of community. So if there is a water infrastructure program that is going to a city that has not historically fallen into the definition of disadvantaged communities, because maybe some members of that city are, are more well off than other members, or it’s it’s a size issue where the state’s definition of disadvantaged communities is really just small communities, because of an affordability criteria, we’re encouraging states to look at if there’s a water infrastructure project that focuses on a portion a disadvantaged community portion of a larger community than they should consider that to be fundable under that 49% principal forgiveness and, and grant opportunity. The other thing that I’ll add to that is we have a report coming out very soon here that analyzes all the state’s definitions of disadvantaged communities, and really lays it out nicely of where states are at currently, because we wanted that baseline so that as we go through fiscal year 2022, and I have a staff member when you will, she’s super smart. And we got it. Yeah. Oh, sorry. I can talk. So we’re also looking at those intended use plans when they come into the states and they are talking about what their definition is to ensure that there is progress and so that we can identify where those leads are better engage those states that aren’t changing their definition.

Beverly 1:17:09

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, I apologize for for committing the sin of running over in a in a forum. I’m super embarrassed, but I’m grateful for your participation appreciate appreciate you and grateful for your participation. Please sign on to the app and evaluate this session. If you feel like it provided some helpful information, important information, please let our hosts know. And thank you again for coming to the panel.

The community benefits agreements which NCRC staff assist NCRC members in negotiating with banks form a substantial part of our impact on the ground. To help Just Economy Conference attendees gain insight into how these processes work, we asked representatives from both the membership side and the banks’ side to discuss their experiences with the process during the mainstage Just Economy Awards Gala on the first night of the 2022 Just Economy Conference. Here is one of those conversations, featuring M&T Bank Executive Vice President Mike Keegan, Association for Neighborhood & Housing Development Executive Director Barika Williams, and NCRC Chief of Membership, Policy and Equity Dedrick Asante-Muhammad.

Moderator: Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, Chief of Membership, Policy and Equity, NCRC

Speakers

: Barika Williams, Executive Director, Association for Neighborhood & Housing Development; Mike Keegan, EVP & Head of Community Markets, M&T Bank

Transcript:

NCRC video transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. They are lightly edited for style and clarity.

Asante-Muhammad 00:00

and just a little bit more about the M&T Community Benefit agreement NCRC supported the M&T Bank Community Benefit agreement last year, because it provided specific and separate lending commitments to people of color in low and moderate income borrowers. And because M&T Listen thoroughly to 115 different local organizations from different states. These are just some of the acts if y’all could line up a little bit more. Let’s see. There we go. All right, that’s fine. Line up. Everyone, let’s give this group of font of representatives and financial institutions and Community Benefit Agreements, a round of applause for this community benefit agreement we put forward. We have put together over five this year, and we’re going to have actually, Barika Williams come up from association for neighborhood for neighborhood housing development, New York– Barika is gonna say a few words for us.

Williams 01:16

Hi, everybody, good evening. Can you hear me okay? All right, because you thought y’all feel very far away. Um, my name is Barika Williams. I’m the Executive Director of the Association for neighborhood and housing development or a NHD. And we’re about a 50 year old umbrella organization that does housing, economic development, community development and bank reinvestment advocacy in New York City, with our more than 80 neighborhood based nonprofit community members, many of which are represented up here. And I am up here today, because in M&T’s agreement, M&T made specific commitments to New York City. And so what we actually got was for M&T to say, we are going to make specific and further commitments around what New York City needs. I’m gonna give you a little bit of what that included. So M&T agreed to a new bank branch in the Bronx, which is huge shout out, shout out to the Bronx. And some of what ANHD does, you’ll see data that says New York City is over banked, and that’s never true. What that means is high income. And predominantly white and wealthy areas have a lot of bank branches. But places like the Bronx or underbanked, underserved and bank deserts. So for M&T to say we’re going to keep a branch here was incredible. They created a new home repair product, in order to help our our LMI and BIPOC homeowners and many of our immigrant homeowners. And they also did an incredible thing, which really matters for us HD, which is to support community organizing. And that’s not something I’ve heard talked about as much here at NCRC. So, community organizing is how we actually get this work done. Right. These are the folks who are on the ground, knocking on doors throughout COVID, talking to our tenants and talking to our homeowners doing the work of getting people activated and mobilized. I specifically want to highlight and thank M&T’s local staff, Steve Flax, and John Vazcones, who have worked with us for years. And I think that this is really important to highlight, especially for so many of our banks in the room, and so many folks and philanthropy in the room, that you can be incredibly impactful when you have local partners who really understand local organizations and local groups and are willing to have those tough conversations. So Steve and John for years have said, what’s going on? What do you all need? What are you all seeing? How can we tailor our products and our grants to actually advance the racial equity work that you’re trying to do? As groups on the ground, not just check the box as banks that say we do racial equity, and we’re incredibly appreciative of them as our partners. So I just want to thank all of the M&T team. I want to thank Mike Keegan and his team for all of the work and effort that they’ve done, to put in place this strong commitment around low and moderate income communities and communities of color and immigrant communities for New York City and for the rest of the country. We really look forward to continuing to work with them.

Asante-Muhammad 04:43

All right everybody line up, let’s say community benefits. All right, everybody. One more round of applause for everyone who worked hard for this and I know many of you in the audience says work for community benefits in your local area. Now, if everyone could come off the stage and I’m going to sit here and have an opportunity to talk with Mr. Mike Keegan, from M&T to talk a little bit more about the community benefits agreement in the work that we’ve been able to do together.

Asante-Muhammad 05:26

See other community organizations already trying to have a meetings with the financial institution on stage.

Asante-Muhammad 05:42

All right. All right. So we’re gonna have you’re miked up, I got a mic in my hand. I think that works better with my mask. And we’re here with Mike Keegan. We’re going to talk a bit about the MIT community benefit agreement. So Mike, you’re head of community banking division, can you tell us what that means?

Keegan 06:01

I am. I can tell you, it means that everyone’s enjoying themselves right now. I’m just doing a check out there. What does it mean to be head of community banking, I mean, if you think about it for all the folks here, if you don’t have community banks that understand the places in which we live, and work and play, then you just can’t connect to the reality of how we provide capabilities to customers, how we understand the needs of the communities. So what we want to do is a bank that has size is stay small, stay relevant, and stay connected. Some of the partners are up on the stage when we work through this community growth plan. They were instrumental in telling us stuff that was in front of us that we didn’t necessarily see, so that we can adjust accordingly.

Asante-Muhammad 06:48

So what was your background? And how did you come to M&T?

Keegan 06:51

So my background was in seventh grade, just seeing if anyone was paying attention. All right, good, good, good. And actually, in seventh grade, my father came to me and needed $900 To buy a really shitty car. And I gave him the money. And I wanted to make sure I got repaid. So I laminated for those of you who remember what that is a card, and I called it MasterKeeg. And I gave him the card, and he actually paid me back. And 30 years later, he gave me that card back. And he said, I’ve paid all my debts, and you went into the right industry. So that’s how I got into banking. But the other reason I got into banking is, if you think about what is possible, if you’re a banker, you can impact people’s lives, you can reshape communities, you just have to be on the right team to do it. And that’s why I’ve stayed on.

Asante-Muhammad 07:48

Well, speaking of like being on the right team to do it. How did you connect with NCRC? What made you at MIT want to engage in NCRC, and even more importantly, all the community groups that you know, working with NCRC means you’re going to engage with.

Keegan 08:07

So this story goes back to 2015. When KeyBank was working to acquire First Niagara and Brad Dawson, who’s in the crowd tonight, he’s the one who’s talking the loudest. That’s why I can’t hear anything. Sorry, Brad. We were going through this whole process of who are we and watching what he was going through. And what we realized is, there were a gaps in the way we needed to show up in our community. And so we said back then that we need to at least think about a community growth plan, in our own mind. So when this opportunity with People’s United came up, we said, we should actually reach out to NCRC and start a conversation about a partnership. And your organization has been terrific ever since.

Asante-Muhammad 08:57

That’s good to hear. Let me give you an opportunity to ask some questions about NCRC or direct the conversation as you would like.

Keegan 09:05

So what I want to know is, and we’re gonna go to q&a with the audience. What I want to know is, why does all this work matter? Because we see we see community groups on the front line, pouring their heart and soul into this work every day. So when you look at financial institutions, how do we develop a relationship that is interactive and sustainable and not episodic? Because what you find is, is there a moment where you feel the need to connect versus creating this ongoing dialogue around working together and making communities better?

Asante-Muhammad 09:51

I think, you know, I think we’d NCRC I think we feel proud that we’ve moved forward well and make the first second steps and is creating strong connections with you have over 700 membership organizations, strong relations with financial institutions like yours. I’ve been creating this Community Benefit Agreements, where there is opportunities to engage. I think the biggest challenge is, like you said, how do we maintain those conversations, because the issues we’re trying to address with racial economic inequality, or economic equity, you can hear me better now. Racial economic equality, or economic equity is not something that’s going to be solved through one meeting now through to meetings. But it’s going to be something that we have to engage over months years, and really have a relationship where we’re on the same page. So I think the Community Benefit Agreements is a starting point. But the question is, do we all have the will and organizing to move to help move the country past a space that we haven’t moved? I just saw a paper recently called I think the wealth of two nations were looked at the racial wealth divide from 1860 to 2020. And it highlighted that since 1980, racial economic inequality for many groups for blacks in particular, it’s actually been expanded and not decreasing. So you know, we’re doing, you know, important regional efforts, small efforts, what can we do to help change the direction that the country has been going for the last 40 or something years?

Keegan 11:27

And I think Dedrick, there’s certain things that we can do, but but part of it requires that we listen, and that we hear those things that that we may that may be in front of us, but we don’t necessarily see or observe. So if you think about the process that you took us through, there were five sessions, two hours each, and the majority of the executive team of M&T, the CEO, included sat through every minute of that, and what we did, thank you. Wow. What we learned is, when we listen, we actually learn. And when we listen to people who tell us, things that we’d like to think are different, but aren’t, then we can start to shape our thinking around that. I mean, if you think about everything that financial institutions do, it’s with a level of kind of historical reference. But we can change that when we listen in on the conversations. And we hear from groups that are on the front lines, when we walk with them. And more importantly, when we view communities as places of economic vibrancy and opportunity, and not underserved or underrepresented if you shift the narrative, and you just say this is a place that so much is going on, and we can thrive together, then things start to unlock. And that’s the power of what this room represents.

Asante-Muhammad 12:59

Ya know, it’s been around a bit applause for that. And again, looking into the crowd, I recognize that many people in the crowd have been part of these meetings. And I think it’s been one of the biggest learning experiences I’ve had, is sitting down and listening to different regional meetings of 30 different community groups, giving their expertise, their years of expertise, on how financial institutions can better invest in support their communities, and, you know, really hope that we can develop a stronger best practices that can be shared throughout the country, and that banks can share. And banks could be learning from each other, as well as communities learning from each other.

Keegan 13:38

I think that’s right. So if we approach this from our perspective of constant interaction, learning from each other, and figuring out how we can improve the way we show up, communities will thrive. If we don’t, then it becomes this interaction out of necessity, which isn’t the best way to build sustainable communities.

Asante-Muhammad 13:58

And I think sustainable is a key phrase as we’re dealing with more and more teams economic turmoil, concerns of inflation, that are really hitting the average working person very hard each day, concerns about recession, concerns about retirement going down because of the stock market. So I know we need to move on to the next phase. But let me ask you if you have one final question you want to engage before we move on to the next section here.

Keegan 14:25

So other than please at my table, save my salad. I want to know why you chose NCRC. What What’s your story and why are you here?

Asante-Muhammad 14:39

So I chose NCRC. I guess really I chose the racial economic space, racial wealth divide. For the last 20 years. I’ve been focused on addressing the racial wealth divide. And I did that not because I had a deep love of economics, but because the 30 years before that, I worked in multicultural centers. I worked at a maximum security prison for women. I did some organizing in Harlem I worked for Reverend Al Sharpton for some years. And I saw that economics was at the key of all of the issues, I was trying to engage whether it was working with kids whose mothers were in prison, whether it’s trying to, you know, have safer streets, that economics was essential, you know, and this is a saying I saved a lot of presentations at the foundation of racial inequality is racial economic inequality, and foundation of racial economic inequalities, the racial wealth divide. So NCRC, I think really provides a unique space to engage nationwide with community organizations and financial institutions to create best practices, and also hopefully advocate for best policies that can, you know, hopefully, move the country out of the morass. It’s been in the last 40 years in terms of racial economic equality.

Keegan 16:00

Yeah. Well, they’re glad to have you and we are as well.

Asante-Muhammad 16:03

I’m glad to be working with you. Let’s everybody give a round of applause for Mike Keegan, and we will then go to the next stage. Thanks, my friend.

The community benefits agreements which NCRC staff assist NCRC members in negotiating with banks form a substantial part of our impact on the ground. To help Just Economy Conference attendees gain insight into how these processes work, we asked representatives from both the membership side and the banks’ side to discuss their experiences with the process during the mainstage Just Economy Awards Gala on the first night of the 2022 Just Economy Conference. Here is one of those conversations, featuring U.S. Bancorp Vice Chair Timothy Welsh, U.S. Bank Foundation EVP Reba Dominski, California Reinvestment Coalition Chief of Legal and Strategy Kevin Stein and NCRC Director of Organizing Juan Leyton.

Moderator: Juan Leyton, Director of Organizing, NCRC

Speakers

: Timothy A. Welsh, Vice Chair, Consumer and Business Banking, U.S. Bancorp; Reba Dominski, EVP, Chief Social Responsibility Officer and President, U.S. Bank Foundation; Kevin Stein, Chief of Legal and Strategy, California Reinvestment Coalition

Transcript:

NCRC video transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. They are lightly edited for style and clarity.

Stein 00:00

How’s everyone doing? Okay, great. Let me just start off by saying it is great– I can’t see everyone now. But it’s been great to see everybody at the conference. So it’s just so terrific to be back together again. So thanks to NCRC. I’m going to talk a bit about the U.S. Bank community benefits agreement that CRC and NCRC members negotiated. We feel very proud about it. You can’t get much done without collaboration and deep listening. And I got to see another set of folks bring those skills to another major project. That concluded a little over a month ago. NCRC supported U.S. Banks $100 billion community benefits agreement with 60 billion for California. And that’s right $100 billion for the nation. While I speak, if I could encourage folks, including bank leaders from U.S. Bank, folks from California and others throughout the country who worked on the U.S. Bank CBA, if you would come forward, please at this point, so that we can take a picture and acknowledge all the great work, please do so. Thank you. And now and while people are coming up, I’ll say a bit about the agreement. The CBA with U.S. Bank was the biggest such agreement ever. As usual. NCRC acted as a facilitator and a convener to help bank leadership connect with 90 Different NCRC members across 23 different states. NCRC also worked closely with the California Reinvestment Coalition, the NCRC member organization where I am the Chief of legal and strategy. We held five separate listening sessions to bring these folks together. And when it was all said and done, U.S. Banks leadership made concrete firm commitments to match the concerns our members raised. U.S. Bank will increase mortgage lending by at least 20%, nationwide, and 30% in California, specifically to the communities who need it most. They will boost their investments and community development, social impact lending and affordable housing by 50%. In California and 40% nationwide, and they’ll open new bank branches in majority minority California communities make their ATMs easier to use for more services, and launch multiple Special Purpose credit programs targeted to our members priorities. All this was possible because we all got together to talk plainly to listen to each other and to identify creative solutions. It was a huge team effort. Again, I want to emphasize 90 Different NCRC member organizations helped shape the agreement. And folks, this is the part I want you to hear. So if you’re half listening, if you want to listen a little bit more, because this is the part that I really think is important. Someone who couldn’t be here today was our Executive Director, our CEO Paulina Gonzalez Brito and one of the things that they– yeah, yes, a little applause for Paulina. One of Paulina’s mantras and maybe I’m, I’m nuancing it a bit. But this I think is important for NCRC. When we stick together, when we organize and when we fight, we win. What does that mean? Here we had 66 CRC members and allies who oppose the merger initially, we won at the time rare public hearings from the federal regulators, our members delivered very strong and compelling testimony about what they thought the merger would mean for their communities. And we were able to negotiate a record commitment. And we were able to do so because the bank listened and engaged and tried to address our concerns. We are proud of the community benefits agreement in in particular, because it creates three special purpose credit programs, who’s heard of a special purpose credit programs? Come on, folks, three special purpose credit programs. What does that mean? It means that U.S. Bank is committing to race conscious products and programs for homeownership for small business development and for affordable housing development. And at this time, when the CRA is being reformed, and we have this proposal we need for the CRA rules and for implementation of CRA to be much more race conscious.

We are also pleased that the bank is devoting resources to target outreach in rural communities and Native American communities to meet the broadband and other needs of these areas. And I will say this to be, you know, somewhat, I feel like I can talk to you all, I can be transparent with you, you know, we’ve received a lot of positive feedback on the community benefits agreement, which is great. But we’ve also received questions about it, whether it’s enough and whether it is real. For example, some folks are asking is this just another press release? Will communities see the benefit? So we want everyone to know that CRC and NCRC are invested in this CBA. And we are committed to ensuring it gets implemented. And we look forward to working with the bank to make it so. Thank you to all the members who made this agreement possible. That’s a big group, and a pretty good looking one too. Please give U.S. Bank in our members a round of applause while we take a group photo.

Stein 06:34

Thanks, everybody, good job. Thank. You. Okay, so now we’re going to, to move forward. And it’s a pleasure to say, we got incredible collaboration and partnership from the bank side as well. You saw the great team that we had working on the community side, and the bank met us more or less halfway, the U.S. Bank team sitting across from the table from us. At those listening sessions were truly open minded and committed to getting this right. To have the leaders are here tonight to share more about what this deal means for our communities. And for NCRC is members in the many states where U.S. Bancorp has a major presence. First, Reba Dominski is Chief Social Responsibility officer and president of the U.S. Bancorp Foundation. And I want to personally thank Reba on behalf of CRC and NCRC for very good faith back and forth and for having a sense of humor. And I also saw Erica Opstad up here from U.S. Bank. And so for people who wonder like there’s anything happened with the CBAS. So we just negotiated recently and Erica has already reached out and started the conversations about how to implement so we feel very good about that. We also have Tim Welsh, US Bancorp’s Vice Chair for Consumer and Business Banking. And joining them for this conversation is Juan Leyton NCRC is director of organizing. Thank you. Juan, Reba and Tim are going to talk you through a bit more about the process. Please welcome them.

Leyton 08:33

Good evening. So before we were going to have a little bit of a conversation here, I hope that you’re enjoying dinner tonight. How is dinner tonight? Good. Before we have this conversation, I’m gonna let the team lead some statement from Andrew Cecere, the CEO from U.S. Bank, who couldn’t be here today

Welsh 09:00

Thank you so much Juan. As you said Andy really wanted to be here but couldn’t but wanted to pass along this statement. On behalf of the approximately 70,000 U.S. Bank employees. Thank you. The leadership, passion and commitment of NCRC CRC and so many individuals across the country helped inform a robust community benefits plan that pending closure closure of the transaction will have an impact on our communities for generations to come. During this process, I had the honor of being joined by more than 200 community leaders in six listening sessions. With passion and dedication showcased by these leaders to their communities and is to be applauded. The insights shared helped us learn where we could build on our strengths and make an impact for the underserved. This input is why our plan is intentionally focused on increasing access to capital for those who live and work in lower income communities, especially acknowledgement to Jesse, Paulina, and Kevin, whose leadership and experience was essential in helping us achieve this critical milestone, we look forward to building on the success and working with you as we move forward. Thank you.

Leyton 10:18

Thank you, Tim. Now, we’re going to have a little bit of a conversation with Tim and Reba. And one thing that I wanted to say that the commitment that all of you have with the process have been so important. That’s what we are here today is spending this time to the community benefit process. Also, the fact that Andy wasn’t here, I want to say that he has spent time in five meetings, two hours just listening to community groups. So I wanted to start with that questions. What were the most significant learning lessons from the listening sessions with the community groups?

Dominski 11:00

Yeah, I can start. So you know, this was a really fascinating process and everything we do in community, we start with listening. And so immediately after announcing our intended acquisition of MUFG, Union Bank, we contacted NCRC, and CRC and we scheduled, all told six community listening sessions, two hours each. Our CEO, President and Chair Andy Cecere, attended everyone, Tim Welsh and several other senior leaders across the bank attended every one of those listening sessions. We heard from over 208 community leaders, many of whom are in this room. And I think in Andy’s remarks, you heard a very consistent theme, which is how profoundly your voices impacted the creation of our community benefits plan. In fact, when we talk about our plan internally at the bank, we say it was all of your voices that helped create the plan, the 100 billion dollar plan that we’re here to celebrate tonight. So while we heard different things from different communities, we learned from every conversation, and the other thing that we heard consistently, was about the need for equitable access to capital in low to moderate income communities and communities of color. And that’s something that you see absolutely throughout our plan. Tim, would you add anything?

Welsh 12:26

Yeah, I think you said it so well, right. But first of all, it was incredibly insightful to hear the voices from this group, and from so many others incredibly insightful. And the other thing I would say it was inspiring. I mean, the work that you all do, and the work that so many other community groups do, is making an enormous difference all across the country. And frankly, this was part of the reason we wanted to create this plan was to support that extraordinary work in so many ways. And it is our privilege to partner with those who were so inspiring.

Leyton 12:56

Great. During the listening sessions, community organization is spoke about different issues, needs. And so they gave a lot of constructive ideas in the process. I want to hear from you why it’s important to work with community organizations. When putting something like this together. Why do you think is so important?

Dominski 13:17

Yeah, my favorite quote, My team’s gonna roll their eyes, they’ve heard it so many times is a quote from Maya Angelou. And it’s once you know better then you do better. So to me, the community listening sessions were about knowing better. And the plan that we created was about doing better. And whenever we approach any situation at U.S. Bank, whether it’s solving a customer problem, or thinking about how we can better serve community, we always start by listening. And that will, that’s exactly what we wanted to do, we wanted to make sure that it was clear that we do not have all the answers, we don’t have the solutions. And what I also want to be clear about and Kevin mentioned that earlier, when he said that Erica Austin, and my team has already reached out, we want to co create the solutions that are part of this 100 billion dollar plan. So that’s why it’s so important for us to hear from all of you is because that wasn’t just about listening. And then, you know, turning off the Zoom call and going back to business, it was about listening, thinking about what you shared with us and then thinking about how can we work together to drive solutions that really work and community? Because I think that’s what we all want.

Welsh 14:26

I just couldn’t underscore that enough. Right. I mean, I think what is so important is the level of understanding that you all have and that so many other groups have, we can’t do this work unless we’re really listening. And as Reba said, creating solutions together. That’s what this has to be about. And by the way, also acknowledging that when we create those solutions, we’re going to have to learn from the communities themselves once we try them, right, because we believe that the the listening doesn’t end when you introduce the first solution. The introduce the listening continues so that we can make our solutions better and better over time.

Leyton 15:02

Right now regarding the the agreement, the plan are the areas that you would like to highlight Kevin mentioned, three special purpose credit programs, would you like to talk more about that and your priorities regarding sort of like close in the way the racial wealth gap, and things like that if you want to do more?

Dominski 15:20

You know, I could talk about the details of this community benefit plan for the rest of the evening, but I don’t want to bore you. And you’ve already heard many of them. I will say again, access to capital equitable access for low to moderate income borrowers communities, communities of color is at the heart of every element of the plan. There’s a couple of things I would highlight in mortgage, we committed to a 20% increase nationally, over the combined baseline of U.S. Bank and Union Bank in mortgage lending units over a 30% increase in California all focused on LMI borrowers LMI communities, communities of color, in small business, a 15% increase nationally over 25% in California. And I do want to pause on community lending and investment because that is an area that CRC and NCRC both pushed us hard on and I think we delivered, we have a 40% increase in community development, lending and investment nationally, it’s over a 50% increase in California alone. So thank you for the applause. 50% in California 40%. Nationally, as Kevin mentioned, 60% of the plan impacts California, which is the geography that is the most impacted by our merger, and three special purpose credit programs. Now, I want to tell you a secret, we have been trying to get special purpose credit programs that U.S. Bank for a while I’ve been there seven years. And I think every year we’ve had a conversation about special purpose credit programs. And I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. Because this plan, this experience was the catalyst to bring all of the right partners of the bank together and to say, our community partners are asking us for this, we started with a small business Special Purpose credit program, which Union Bank has one, we committed to evaluating it, expanding it, rolling it out to all of our markets. And then we got another push from CRC, we got another push from NCRC. As Kevin mentioned, there was a lot of back and forth. And we expanded and agreed to a special purpose credit program and mortgage, which includes a significant focus on downpayment assistance. And then finally, a special purpose credit program focused on developers of color minority led minority owned developers who are working on affordable housing. That was the third Special Purpose credit program. So this plan was a catalyst for a lot of activity, a lot of initiatives, a lot of innovation, that honestly without all of you in this room would not have probably happened for years at U.S. Bank. So again, I just want to thank you for that.

Welsh 17:57

It’s nice, I want to make sure that we recognize that we’re applauding for you, because you pushed us and you helped us do things differently. And that is a core commitment that we’re making in this is to do things differently. These special purpose credit vehicles are a reflection of that they’re a reflection of what you know what community said, and we are listening to that. And we are trying to act differently. So thank you for that push. The other thing that I would just pick up on that Kevin highlighted is this is real from our perspective, right? We want to get out there as already been indicated by initial work, and we’re going to make this happen together. Because it is our hope is that years from now, we look back and we have made a generational difference in the lives of these communities really in a profound way. And we look forward to partnering with you to truly make these ideas of big reality in California and all across the country.

Dominski 18:51

And I do want to put out a plug I forgot for special purpose credit programs. There is a panel tomorrow that Brad Blower is leading Erica Opstad from my team is on that panel, I think it’s at 945. And we will be digging deep into those special purpose credit programs. So I encourage you to attend the panel and learn a little bit more.

Leyton 19:09

Great. So remember, a special purpose credit programs, kudos to CRC, California and others who are pushing for that. This is a pressing unprecedented agreement with special purpose pay programs. So let’s continue with other banks in the future. But now we have the plan. Tell us about the next step is what is next?

Dominski 19:32

Yeah. So I think Kevin heard us and I know Jesse and Paulina did, too, when we finally got to agreement. And for those of you who have worked on these plans on any from any angle, this is hard work. It is real work. And so when we got to the agreement, I got the phone call. And I think Kevin, you had sent an email and I honestly I think I printed out the email and framed it when Kevin said, I think this is a good plan. I was like, Yes, I think we’re getting there. We were so happy and we celebrated and then I called Eric on my team who has been a driving force behind this plan. And I said to her, now the real work begins. And that’s how we feel getting the plan across the finish line took a lot of effort. It’s fantastic that we got there, but now the real work happens. So a couple of areas that we’re focused on. The first area is resources.

Moderator:

Marisa Calderon, Executive Director, NCRC Community Development Fund, Chief of Community Finance and Mobility, NCRC

Speakers:

Bulbul Gupta, President & CEO, Pacific Community Ventures

Marla Bilonick, President & CEO, National Association for Latino Community Asset Builders (NALCAB)

Donna Gambrell, President & CEO, Appalachian Community Capital

Transcript:

NCRC video transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. They are lightly edited for style and clarity.

Calderon 00:00

All right. Welcome everyone. My name is Marisa Caldron. I’m executive director of the NPRC community builders. And I also hold a also hold something back there. Yeah, there you go. I am also chief of community finance and mobility for NCRC for the parent company of the CDFI. Thank you all for joining us today for this really exciting conversation with me today. I have a really exceptional panel of speakers. Lenwood unfortunately couldn’t be with us had some some flight issues. So he won’t be joining us today. But I’d love to introduce you to Bulbul Gupta. Bulbul is President and CEO of Pacific Community Ventures and nonprofit impact investor and community development financial institution. She’s a 20 year veteran of the industry. Under Bulbul’s leadership PCV has doubled their community investing in business advising portfolios and recommitted to addressing racial wealth gaps through a good jobs agenda. So thank you so much for joining us Bulbul. Marla Bilonick is also with us and Marla is President and CEO of the National Association for Latino community asset builders, who many of us know is now CAB. Prior to joining now CAB, Marla served as executive director of the Latino Economic Development Center in Washington, DC, and has been a board member of now CAB since 2016. And also with us today is the incomparable Donna Gambrell. Donna is a legend and is President and CEO of Appalachian Community Capital where she’s responsible for attracting and directing investments to CDFIs and other mission driven lenders in Appalachia. She’s also the longest serving and first African American woman to be appointed director of the US Department of Treasury CDFI Fund. So please join me in welcoming everyone. So just to kind of set a little bit of context, established in 1994. Through a bipartisan act of Congress, the CDFI Fund vision is for an America in which all people and communities have access to the investment capital and financial services they need to prosper. In our conversation. Today we’ll discuss the origins of the industry before the fund, whether and how now 28 years later, CDFIs are positioned to accomplish the mission codified by the fund. So Donna, long before there was a CDFI Fund, community activist organized in church basements and local businesses, establishing institutions to bank the unbankedable, and provide access to capital to marginalized communities. Can you provide some context on the history of the Community Development movement that led up to what we now know, as the community development finance industry,

Gambrell 02:48

Happy to do so. And first of all, good morning everyone. I have to tell you how thrilled I am to see people in person, I haven’t been out, I felt like a mushroom for the last two and a half years. I’m trying to get my travel muscle back into gear and forgetting that there are certain protocols, so I was actually here on time, and then had to get tested, which absolutely makes sense. So my apologies for running in, like the wind at the last minute. So good to see everybody. And so good to be here to talk about the role of CDFIs, where we are at the industry and really re centering our efforts to where we began to our roots. Ramona is here from Mississippi. And we were talking about this earlier about just how important it is to not forget the history of the CDFI movement and where we started. And so when you look back, and certainly the origins can go back as far as the 19th century, where you saw in neighborhoods, particularly neighborhoods of color, black, African American communities, where there was a lack of financial institutions, a lack of affordable access to funding, people were segregated in particular areas of communities and did not have a way of looking at opportunities, frankly, that would allow them homeownership or to create small businesses or to get further their education. And so what you saw at the very early stages, were the creations of minority depository institutions, in particular, black banks, black owned banks, and I can’t you know, as difficult as it is to start a bank today, I can’t even imagine what it might have been like, you know, 100 years ago. And in fact, one of the banks that still exists today, the longest operational bank in the country is citizens bank in Nashville, Kentucky, I’m sorry, Nashville, Tennessee, created in 1904, and continues to operate today. And they were created primarily to provide African Americans an economic opportunity to help build wealth, to help create assets to provide a longevity, for generational wealth, all the things that we’re talking about today, were things that were present, you know, 100 years ago or more. And so as you see that evolution, you see the role that these institutions have played not only for minority, black owned brown owned banks. But also, as you look through that arc that has happened from the beginning of the, you know, first bank that was formed, you also saw the creation of credit unions, community development corporations, that were specifically in neighborhoods that had been marginalized, that had been historically shut out from the financial mainstream. And so communities came together, as communities often do, when there’s a gap, to try to fill that gap. And they had been doing that for decades upon decades. So you see, again, the growth of the credit union industry, you see the growth of the CDC industry, but you also see this convergence of those institutions with the Civil Rights Movement. And so many of those institutions were either supporting or actively supporting the movement, financing activities, in some cases, sheltering, providing the kind of shelter and protection that was often needed. But they all had one common interest. And that was to push for equal rights to push for economic justice. And it is a theme that continues to this day. Now we’ll talk about what more needs to be done. Because like a lot of things we start, you know, walking in tall cotton, and we forget sometimes where we come from, and the need for especially the CDFI industry, to go back to those roots, or at least to recapture those roots. But up until even the 1990s, what you saw are these, you know, the evolution and the engagement of these different institutions and and up until the point of 1994, when the real act put into place, the CDFI fund the creation of the CDFI Fund, you already had these community development financial institutions that were doing the work in the communities for decades. But now you had a vehicle that actually certified the CDFIs that went through criteria, vetting, if you will, with the Department of Treasury, and said if you are lending in low and moderate communities, but in particularly if you’re living in low income community 60% of your lending is being done in that then your you will become a certified CDFI. Of course, there are other criteria as well, in terms of governance, you know, accountability, and all of that. But you saw, again, the formation in those early 90s, of the certified CDFI industry coming together, started out with just a handful, a couple 100 now has grown to over 1,200 CDFIs located across the country, and you have CDFI bank CDFI credit union CDFI loan funds, CDFI venture capital funds, if you ask any of them, what they do or what their mission is, hopefully, it’s all the same answer. And that is to support underserved communities through affordable access to capital, credit, technical assistance and other types of support. So it really is this arc that we’re going through, I think that we’ve seen in terms of the industry and the movement itself. And again, it’s a movement that intersects with civil rights, with equal rights with economic justice. And so our charge, I think, always is how do we make sure that we’re staying on track, that we are staying focused, that we’re keeping our eyes on the prize that we’re doing what we need to do as organizations and to recognize and to celebrate, that we are very different from banks, and we should be. And my mantra always is, is that there’s a place for each of these institutions. There’s a lane for a bank, and there’s a lane for a CDFI. And when you see a CDFI acting more like a bank, then that’s where you start to question or start to question. And so I’m looking forward to this discussion today about how we can and you’ve got these fantastic women here. On the panel today, we can talk about what we need to do, what concrete steps we need to do to make sure we’re staying true to the mission, but it’s also staying true to our history

Calderon 09:59

Thank you so much for that. So Marla, let’s jump right into to that. So from your perspective, what does it mean to recenter civil rights in the CDFI? Industry?

Bilonick 10:12

Thanks, Marisa, I also wanted to echo Donna’s comments about how wonderful it is to just be in a full room of human beings, it’s really not to be understated just how different the energy is, than being in my bedroom behind my computer screen. So it’s just great to see you guys. And to see old friends as well. So I really think what’s interesting, sort of about this question and about sort of recentering is the industry as we’ve seen, it has really come to a place where sort of larger CDFIs higher performing CDFIs are lauded as the gold standard. And I really hope that in this conversation, we can kind of flip the switch on that a little bit. Because really, sort of what we’re celebrating doesn’t always align with serving the community that we are intended to serve. And so to me, sort of that sweet spot between serving the community in a culturally competent way, in a community competent way, a community grounded way, while still achieving scale, while still performing while still not, you know, making unwise decisions with other people’s money. That is kind of the sweet spot that we’re aiming at. And I think, you know, to Donna’s point, when CDFIs begin acting, sort of like quasi banks, that’s a really dangerous spot. And it’s a real departure from, to my mind, the origin of, of the CDFI industry and why CDFIs were created. A couple of other points that I wanted to make were that I think, and we’ll talk about this later in the panel, but what we measure can also be sort of off base and skewed. So, you know, for any bankers in the in the room that that fund us as CDFIs, you know, I would challenge you to sort of think a little bit differently with regard to how we measure success of CDFIs. And maybe put, if not less emphasis on performance indicators, like a healthy portfolio, or, you know, to also put emphasis on sort of racial equity, ethnic equity measures, as well, um, and this is mirrored in the new CRA Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, and we’ll talk about that as well. But you know, to keep a lens that includes racial and ethnic ethnic equity. And then the last thing that I wanted to say, and we’ll I’m sure touch on this as well, later on, is that in the housing world, we have data that shows discriminatory practices with openness, a ghost. So I was just gonna say, the housing world, we have hard data around the discriminatory discriminatory practices that have happened and can measure if and when those happen moving forward, that does not exist for small business lending. And so, you know, I just want to continue to put pressure on the CFPB, to enforce section 1071 of the Dodd Frank Act, because while we have self reported and inferred data around discriminatory practices in small business lending, we just don’t have that hard data as a baseline to start from. And so, you know, it’s very difficult to say how successful CDFIs are being in the small business space without having that sort of baseline as a starting point. So I’ll move on from there, but those were sort of my initial thoughts around that.

Calderon 13:46

This particular point, I think is so important that I’d love to invite Bulbul and Donna to share a little bit about your perspective on what it means to recenter civil rights in the CDFI industry. So if you want to sort of go first Bulbul, that would be great.

Gupta 14:05

Sure. So I’m newer to the CDFI industry than probably both of my amazing colleagues here. I came into this role, leading a CDFI in California a couple of years ago, having spent 10 to 15 years in the impact investing space before that. And I think for me, coming in, and realizing that CDFIs and having certainly worked with CDFIs before that, but if CDFIs were created out of the tail end civil rights legislation out of a federal acknowledgment of systemic discrimination and redlining in the formal financial industry, then why are we not measured with race affirmative metrics. Being colorblind in our industry is like saying all lives matter when someone is saying black lives matter. And I that was very eloquently said on a call last week, but I don’t have the woman’s permission. yet to quote her, so I will not take credit for that quote, but I think it really makes the point of why we’re here and why we’re having this conversation. And that is exactly the kind of language we are pushing for in CRA reform and the CDFI funds governance this summer when the comments are open. Because if we do not recenter that mission, we are only worsening the black, white and brown white wealth gap that exists in this country and has worsened since the creation of the CDFI industry, which is perverse, right? That’s the opposite of what was intended to happen. So that’s why I’m here. And that’s why I’m committed to this topic.

Gambrell 15:41

So Bulbul said it very graciously, very eloquently. You know, I think for for me, it’s a couple of things. I actually started my career at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, bank regulatory agency, focused on consumer protection Community Reinvestment Act and other areas that were particularly consumer focused. And so I also think that I, I understand the value of clearly a financial institutions, I also understand the value of CDFIs. And CDFIs, to me are like the on ramp, you’re helping folks get to the highway, which might be the financial institution, there are things that CDFIs do beautifully do very well. But we don’t do everything perhaps that a bank can do in the bank has certain levers, I think of power, that relate to how they look at risk, how they mitigate risk, who they access, who they open those doors to in terms of customers and who they don’t. And so, for me kind of recentering really means looking at ways in which we can really be very clear about our role for CDFIs, in particular, but also, as partners with those banks, true partners with the banks, and opening the doors for people who simply have not had the key for generations, the key to opening up those doors. And so what does that mean? That means that we need to be looking at our own policies, both banks and CDFIs, as it relates to credit, it means means we need to be looking at specific programs that will help create not only wealth, but also close that gap. And for me, it’s always been two things. It’s always been about homeownership. And it’s always been about business, small businesses and business financing. Those are the two standards for me in which you actually can gain wealth and help close that gap. And so what are those concrete steps that need to be taken because we talk about closing the gap? But we don’t talk about what that really means? What are those steps that are actually going to be taken have to be taken? What are the programs that are going to have to be put in place? What are the policies, frankly, that will have to be either revamped or abolished altogether, in order to allow that access to happen. The playing field will not be level until there are some specific, aggressive actions to make that happen. And for those of us who are in the financial services industry, we have to look at this as a way in which we are working in partnership to make that happen, in the same way, frankly, that the Civil Rights Movement had this larger umbrella. And folks from different walks of life, who looked different, different income classes, different races. There, you know, we have to look, I think at what we’re doing, and saying what do we need to do to make sure that that umbrella is wide and includes everybody under there that can really affect change and be serious about it?

Calderon 18:57

And Bulbul, I wonder if you can talk a little bit about why this is an important conversation now and whether under this administration, there’s even a small window of opportunity for systems change.

Gupta 19:08

Well, we certainly hope so. I think some of us were here, maybe last in DC for the President Biden signing of the racial equity, executive order, right. So what does that mean for different agencies to be practicing and embodying that order, not only towards racial equity, but also racial justice, as someone said this morning as well on the affordable housing panel. I think when we think about why is this an important conversation now, right, Donna was talking about the on ramps to the highway, but is the highway working? Right? So if we talk about she talked about homeownership and business, when we think about even pre pandemic 99% of black entrepreneurs get rejected from formal financial loan applications pre pandemic 95% of black small business owners were denied access the PPP through the In 2020, right 41% of black owned businesses went under in the first three months of the pandemic. So what we’re talking about, and in the venture capital space, only 2% of venture capital dollars go to entrepreneurs of color, less than 1%. Go to women of color. Right? So we’re talking about if lending isn’t working, if venture isn’t working, right, what are the forms of capital that are working? I think that remains to be seen. So why are we here, because none of those streams of capital are working very well, for black people, for brown people, indigenous people, the range of Latinx people, immigrant entrepreneurs, were denied access for language barriers, all kinds of different streams of capital, right? At the same time. So as a leader, I want to know if half of my customer base, my potential customer base isn’t being served by products and services I’m designing right. So if I’m the leader of this country, if I’m leader of these different departments practicing the racial equity, executive order, if what I’m putting out in the market isn’t resonating with half of my country’s population, I’d want to know that. And by 2044, this country is going to be majority people of color. That is in my lifetime. That’s when our all of our most of our lifetimes, my kids graduate college, right? What does it look like for us to dismantle these systems that haven’t worked for our people to create a new majority that has access to equitable capital to realize their full potential. And when we’re talking about wealth building, we’re not talking about just getting people to paycheck to paycheck living, right? We’re talking about good jobs, where you can actually thrive. So that’s why I’m here. I certainly hope it’s a systems change moment. But there’s a lot of things converging that really show us like, what is it look like for us to reimagine a financial system where we are empowering the new majority to come into their own and really actually realize equity and not wait for another 100 years for us to actually get to equity?…This is a conspiracy, Marisa.

Calderon 22:08

I feel like it is. So kind of with those comments that Bulbul will just made in mind, I wonder if you could talk a little bit in more detail about the black white wealth gap, and in some steps that need to be taken. Just leave it on the table maybe yeah. Okay, yes. Even the laptop is enthralled?

Gambrell 22:48

Well, you know, the gap is a serious gap. I mean, we’ve seen again, 20% more than about now. Yeah. Okay, great. So the gap is a serious gap. I mean, we see that the widening gap, when you look at the homeownership rate, the fact that we, for black homeowners, we are still at that same level that we were when the Fair Housing Act was passed in the early 1960s, a 20% gap between black and white households, you’d see it in the wages that are, you know, wage gap that’s happening between black and white families as well. So I mean, this is we can keep going on and on and talking about the numbers. We know that the gap exists. We know that it’s a serious gap. And as long as we you know, 50% of Black homeowners lost wealth after the 2008 financial crisis. Now, if you’re already behind, how do you gain? And it’s only been, you know, what, 15 years since then, if you were already behind a little, you know, somewhat in 2008, you lost 50% of your wealth, we are now we’ve hit another crisis. Within the last couple of years, we’ve had an economic and a health crisis, you can continue to see that you’re, you know, black families, brown families, brown households, black households, indigenous households, continue to fall behind. And so you it’s a it’s a gap that can’t be ignored. And I think again, we have to find some really workable solutions to how that gap can be closed. It’s, it’s real. And it will continue to exist. You know, I look at where I am today. And I even in my own family. I mean, my parents probably didn’t make more than $10,000 a year in annual salary. Certainly my mother did not my father, maybe a little bit more than that. He was a laborer at the Department of Treasury. And in a strange twist of fate, I ended up at Treasury and I think he would have said he would have never imagined that but in his lifetime, because he never really was able to make economic gains, his daughter happened to make some gain. You know, I had a great salary I had worked for the FDIC, I’ve worked for, you know, places that we’re paying the top dollar, certainly within government, but I look at my generation that comes after me, my niece, my nephew, and they’re struggling, once again, I mean, their annual salary is I am trying to figure out how they’re even living from day to day, frankly, my niece has a daughter, a six year old, you know, daycare and all of that. So you know, it really is real for me, it hits home, because what I see in them is a regression, not a progression, but a regression, where they’re making less, they have less affordable places to live, their job wages have are stagnant. And they are living in places where, you know, again, in this beautiful city of Washington, DC, you cannot find enough affordable housing to accommodate the needs of people who need it the most. So if we again, I keep saying the same thing over again, I hate to sound like a broken record. But if we do not find concrete ways to address these issues, I worry about not only the generation behind me, but the generations that come after them. And where will we be if in fact, our children, our grandchildren, our our grand, great grandchildren, aren’t even able to live in a country, the richest country still in this world without having a livable wage and affordable place to live enough to eat? You know, a good education, affordable health care, all of that. So I don’t know if that answers your question. But it’s real.

Calderon 27:02

Yeah, no, it is definitely. I mean, and Marla, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the Latino white wealth gap and sort of provide some context as well, as, you know, how, how does that differ in ways than it does for the black white wealth gap?

Bilonick 27:19

Yeah, so a couple of things, even just with the the couching of the question, I think I want to very much underscore that, I really think it’s important that our communities come together. And so to me, it’s less important about sort of, like, what’s the difference between the black and white, you know, income levels, household income, versus the Latino and white? You know, I think it’s really, the disparity is between, you know, racial and ethnic minorities and, and their white counterparts. So I don’t think you were trying to make a statement with the question, I just wanted to sort of put that out there. I

Calderon 27:52

I mean, I think the thing that folks would hopefully, sort of take away is that there are different reasons why these things exist. And I know that you’re well positioned to sort of, kind of point out why those things differ.

Bilonick 28:05

100%. And I think, you know, the other thing that really was resonating for me, when Donna was speaking is that I think our society has gotten to a point where sort of overt racism or overt discrimination is more generally frowned upon, but financial oppression still exists it very much, you know, is is holding us back. And it’s it’s much more subtle, much more covert. And so I think this work is so so important in terms of, you know, closing that gap. And addressing the the injustice is, but I did want to sort of throw out some points just to understand, you know, exactly where we are in looking at at the Latino wealth gap. So these are just, I’m just gonna throw some stats at you. So Latino household median income is 18%, lower than the national median income and 24%, lower than the white household median income. Latino men earn 69 cents to the US white man’s dollar, and Latinas earn 58 cents to that same dollar. You know, another sort of important point is sort of the vulnerability, you know, so 71% of Latino households are in liquid asset poverty, therefore, over half of Latino households would be vulnerable. If they were faced with an economic shock, they probably would not be able to overcome that. That could be anything from a medical emergency, a divorce, a death in the family, you know, all the things that life throws at us. And so that’s, you know, real vulnerability. The point that I wanted to make that was really shocking to me, and I had not seen this data point before and it actually came from a report that that Dedrick put out if he’s in the room is that let single Latinas from age 18 to 64 have a median wealth of $100. And so I just thought that was unbelievable. And so I think, just, you know, the point of these stats is just to say this is real, this is dire. And really, you know, the whole point of this panel is that CDFIs were created to address this, you know, and how are they? How well, are we addressing it? And so I just really wanted to, you know, put that out there just to underscore the challenges. You know, it’s, it’s real.

Calderon 30:37

Well, and I think what I hear the two of you saying is also that there are some real serious capital needs for these groups within our communities. And, and I wonder, Donna, if you can talk a little bit about how establishing the CDFI Fund has helped to provide liquidity and direction for the industry in a way that can help to address some of these, you know, significant gaps.

Gambrell 31:01

When the CDFI Fund was created, it was created primarily to provide the kind of capitals access for CDFIs. So it still remains the only government agency that is solely devoted to fulfilling the capital needs of CDFIs that are supporting low income communities. Now, I came in in 2007, at a time when the CDFI Fund and other community development agencies within government were being viewed as duplicative and perhaps unnecessary, and that there was a call to combine the different community development agencies. To me, that was the worst thing that could have happened, it didn’t happen, because the crisis hit. And I think, you know, the financial crisis became the major distraction. But when I came in the CDFI funds budget was $50 million. That’s a drop in the bucket. That’s pennies, compared to what the real need and what the demand was, during the time that I went was at the CDFI Fund, I think the budget, the appropriations went up to something like 220 million a drop in the bucket, compared to what the demands were. And so what you saw in the just recently, certainly with the administration’s support of getting more funding into the CDFI Fund, even the $3 billion that has been set aside, that’s separate from the 9 billion that went to NDIS is a drop in the bucket. So we need to be thinking about I think, for the CDFI Fund, I think there has been great strides made, great accomplishments made, but there’s still more that needs to be done. And the fact that they are still the only agency within government specifically targeted or focused on CDFIs with to me a very, very limited budget, that you can only do so much with what you have. And that means that for the time that I was there, and I know certainly when Annie Donovan, succeeded me and now Jody Harris at the helm. What we spent that appropriations on 90% of that went to awards to grants 10% was for staffing and research and compliance and certification. It was never enough. There was never enough staff. There was never enough funding to support additional staff. And so I think when we look at the role of the CDFI Fund, there’s still an important role, a critical role that they pay that they play, but we need to be I think, great encouragers and advocates to making sure that Congress understands they need a lot more money to do the work that supported by the great work that CDFIs are doing all across this country.

Calderon 34:20

Yeah, thank you mean, so Marla, despite the fact that there are these sort of serious capital needs still for CDFIs what makes them well suited to meet the needs of underserved communities.

Bilonick 34:36

So I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir, you know, with what I’m about to say. I mean, I think, particularly now, PPP was a test that proved exactly the positioning and the uniqueness of CDFI is to respond quickly. I think the unique position of CDFIs in terms of being entrenched in community is very different than traditional finance. It’ll service providers just in terms of the depth of understanding of what’s going on and communities, that cultural competency, ideally, the reflecting back, you know, in terms of the staff of the organization. So I have taken it upon myself, starting this calendar year to come up with analogies for various things that I’m talking about on panels, it’s kind of just a self challenge thing, but I came up with this one, and I think it’s actually accurate, which is that the difference between CDFIs and traditional financial service providers is that, you know, your traditional commercial banks are the individual sending the child support check. Whereas the CDFI is the parent that’s at home and knows exactly how that check needs to be spent. And so, you know, whereas the check is very, very important. And without it, little can be done, the parent that is at home that knows, you know, schoolbooks need to be purchased, a uniform needs to be purchased, we need this much for groceries, we need this, you know, or there’s, you know, something coming up that isn’t, you know, the typical thing on this month, summer camps are coming, whatever it might be, obviously, I’m a parent, so I, you know, have these things here at summer camp is like, in my head, you know, the 1000s of dollars that are going to be spent on summer camp, but, um, you know, so I just think that the depth of understanding is the understanding of what’s going on in the community. And I don’t know, that’s my fear is that as CDFIs grow, that that touch and contact with the community can be lost, I’m not saying that it has to be lost, but it can be lost. And that is, is a dangerous, sort of point, a teetering to be on. So as much as we can grow and serve more clients while still having that understanding of what, you know, Joe, on the corner is facing? You know, and I don’t know that I have the answer to how to do that. But, but that’s kind of that’s there. And then I had another thing that I wanted to say just real quick, around, because in my current position, I fund CDFIs. But we are also a CDFI. And so, and also having run a community based CDFI, I know that it’s also challenging to just as as challenging for the end beneficiary or the client, the small business owner, the consumer borrower to access financial services for, particularly for minority led CDFIs. It’s challenging to get funding to run programs, or even to deploy out in the community. And so I just wanted to put out there that there are over 1000 CDFIs, there are less than 100, Latino led CDFIs. And that is a big disconnect if you’re talking about who’s being served versus who’s serving. And so, you know, I just wanted to put that out there because it’s, it’s, that’s where we could improve, I believe. Thank you.

Calderon 38:03

Yeah, please.

Gambrell 38:04

On through that. In the same way that Marla talks about the small number of Latino led CDFIs, you’re seeing, again, the same sort of thing with black LED CDFIs as well. So Linwood Long, who is not here today, and I am so sorry that he missed, his plane was canceled, he’s coming out of North Carolina. But Inez Long, who is the CEO of the Black Business Investment Fund of Florida. And I formed an organization four years ago, called the African American Alliance of CDFI, CEOs. And we did that primarily because what we were seeing was that even within the industry itself, there was disparity with how black LED CDFIs were receiving investments, the types of investments, the amount of investments. And I remember telling Linwood that I was in a room with one of my colleagues who I treasured dearly. And he was talking about this $10 million investment that he was just getting from one of the banks and I thought, wow, what must that be like? Just to be… He said all now we didn’t go through much underwriting and I said you didn’t. And he said, not only that we’ve had this relationship with them for years. And so it just drew a fine point for me on just what those disparities are Hope Enterprize corporation that delta love Bill Bynum and the work that his organization does, they have a policy institute, and they did a study and analysis a few years ago, that showed where that disparity was for minority led CDFIs. And the difference between those that were minority led and white LED just in terms of CDFI Fund awards, but also investments themselves and it was like a, you know, a five to one difference. I mean, it was white land CDFIs are getting five times the amount of investments that minority led CDF eyes were. So it really, I think clarified for us why we needed to come together. As a group, we are a group of CDFI, black lid CDFI loan funds executives, we are there are 60 loan funds that we that are members of ours. And that doesn’t include, of course, the banks and credit unions. But again, a still a small number when you look at us compared to the rest of the industry. And one of our main focuses has been not only advocating for the CDFIs, many of whom are small, but again doing, you know yeoman’s work day in and day out in these communities, advocating for those small CDFIs, but also advocating for changes in public policies, the way that policies are actually put into place that are not necessarily friendly in terms of the investments that are going into those CDFIs across government, but also the role that private sector must play as well. I mean, we are talking about both public sector and private sectors that need to better understand the investments, and what these investments do and build those relationships in a way that they have not done today. So I’m proud to be part of that. And as I said, I’m sorry that Linwood isn’t here because Linwood is, is, well he’s I was gonna say he’s a former pastor, once you’re a pastor, you never give up your vocation. But he would be here preaching today, for sure about the need to really continue to put put the pedal metal to the pedal and the pedal to the metal, whatever the saying is, for us to keep, keep pushing forward, because we can’t stop we cannot stop.

Bilonick 41:49

Just a one quick. Hello, hello. Two second advertisement, that now Kab is launching, or has launched formally the in partnership with and friendship and sorority or brotherhood with Triple A or the Alliance, we are launching the National Alliance of Latino CDFI executives called NALSA. So it’s a little bit different, because we had already convened a group of CDFIs within our membership. So within our 170 members, we have about 55 CDFIs. But this is kind of a fence around that group for exactly the same purposes for advocacy for investment for peer learning for, you know, just moving the field ahead. But we very much anticipate and have already worked in partnership with the Alliance. So I don’t want it to seem divisive, but there you go. Alliances, alliances and alliances between alliances.

Calderon 42:53

And another area that is I would say, you know, less explored for CDFIs. But which there’s a need for more engagement is around impact investment work. And Bulbul, you’ve talked in the past about decolonizing capital through your own investment work and at your fund. I wonder if you can talk about how impact investments have the potential to affect real change in democratizing the sort of finance landscape.

Gupta 43:21

Thanks. And I’m still hunting for more Asian American CDFI CEOs out there to start our own little Alliance friendly group. So anyone of you know any Asian American CDFI CEOs, please please email me. But yes, so One interesting note, I think we do not talk about this often enough at all in the impact investing industry is that similarly to the origins of the CDFI Fund, impact investing was formed out of its its origins trace back to the early 1800s. Similarly to what Donna was describing earlier, it was born out of the movement in the UK, to divest from the enslavement of blacks, and the enslavement of labor practices and slave plantations. And we have lost again and I beating a dead horse perhaps but we have become colorblind as an industry because the majority of assets held in this world are still held by white asset owners. And while impact investing was formed officially about 12-14 years ago, out of two sort of major practice changes from the traditional financial industry. One was that we were going into investments with an intentionality of having social or environmental impact. And the other was that we were going to measure the outcomes of our investment to make sure that they aligned with the social and environmental impact outcomes. We intended going into that investment. PCV my organization Pacific Community Ventures was one of the first impact investing funds in this country. And so So we became a CDFI, about eight years ago. So when I look at, you know, how do we go back to the roots of both impact investing and CDFIs. And the organization that I run decolonizing that to me means one dismantling practices that work for white majority asset owners that don’t necessarily come from community and work for people of color. Looking at are the outcomes of my investment working? Right. Are they meeting the goal that I set out to meet? And that’s part of why, you know, we’re here having this conversation, because it’s one thing for the CDFI Fund to be created to have some assets as Donna was describing not sufficient yet, but to have some assets to meet that goal. But if we’re not measuring the outcomes of those investments, are we improving the black white wealth gap or the people of color to white wealth gap? No, right? We’re worsening it, we’ve worsened it in the last 30 years in this country on top of 400 years of of not having that access to capital. So in decolonizing, our capital, how are we decolonizing, our underwriting practices, right to not only be intentionally inclusive, because we use that word really broadly. But also where are we being unintentionally punitive? What are we asking for that we do not need to be asking for to get to a yes, one of our first values of PCV is coming from a place of Yes, and this is probably where we bake it in more than anywhere else, is really looking for reasons to not have to say no, I hope I didn’t do a double negative there. But you know what I mean, and democratizing access to our capital, both on our, for us on our lending side of the CDFI Fund, but a loan fund, but also on the mentorship program that we run nationwide. And when I think about what that looks like, that is inherently in the impact world, a blended capital model for reparative capital, right, so CDFIs, if we were formed to address a market failure of the banking industry, we are inherently, in order to address market failure, you can’t address market failure with market based approaches, and market return approaches. Right, because then similarly to what Donna was saying earlier, you end up acting, and Marla too much like the banks that you were meant to disrupt. And we’ve forgotten the disruptive part, I think in the way that we are governed at least tends to lean towards being so intentionally inclusive that it becomes colorblind. And that’s where I think when I think about where are their impact investing best practices that we bring? Absolutely. The measurement part is something that I really take deeply into where we are, with both the CDFI Fund and the CRA reform opportunity to think about how are we in baking in better data collection and measurement to make sure that we are really looking at designing the right product and the right service and actually measuring s it having its intended impact? And if not making different decisions. But we don’t know the answer to Marla’s point earlier. And housing, you know, industry you have at least more disclosure and with HMDA especially. And we’re not doing enough yet on the CFPB side with the section 1071 in collecting race disaggregated data in small business lending, and we absolutely need to. 

Gambrell 48:30

I’m stepping in as moderator because I’m, I’ve always been fascinated by what your organization and under your leadership has done. And you’ve done it in ways that I know other CDFIs are doing it. But I think just talking with you and working with you, probably a year ago when we were co authoring that article, can you just talk a little bit because, you know, I think it’s really important as an industry for us to also turn that mirror on ourselves and say, Okay, we may not be able to make drastic changes today and how we look at our credit policies or underwriting or you know, credit scores and things like that. But there’s a place where you can start. So I know that you all certainly started even longer than a year ago. Can you talk a little bit about what you saw as the pieces that needed to be fixed within the organization so that you could better serve the population or the communities?

Gupta 49:27

Sure, thanks for asking. So one of the first things that we did is look at our underwriting and look at what were we you know, if we’re, if we’re a small business lender, we’re doing non bank non SBA lending. We are not a collateral based lender. So why are we asking for collateral? Why are we asking about collateral, too, we found in our research that entrepreneurs of color tend to under report personal assets, whether it is because they don’t deem their assets as worthy enough worth reporting, or because they’re suspicious of a loan go south. They We’ll be seized, probably both right we can imagine. Why are we asking that if we know it is going to disincentivize them from applying or from getting the capital? Why is it part of our scoring? So really intentionally looking through our underwriting and taking out anything that was unnecessary to get to a yes. And then re scoring our underwriting to really make sure it was matching what we bare minimum needed to get to yes. to It was also looking at, you know, were we doing a blend of micro and small business lending to make sure we were building the pipeline, working better with micro lenders in our community to really make sure we were building a better continuum of capital. How do we start to share diligence behind the scenes, which is our next couple of steps. And also, you know, really, frankly, I’m the first person of color who’s ever led PCV. And we’ve led Ron through a pretty tough transformation in the last couple of years, having tough conversations and intentionally saying to ourselves, if this this has been colorblind for so long, we’re impact investors, if we’re not collecting the outcomes of our data based on what we’re supposed to be measuring, we’re not going to know for meeting the mission or not. So we’ve gotten in the last two years from deploying about 65% of our capital to entrepreneurs of color and women to 90% as of the end of 2021, and we are collecting race disaggregated. For the first time in the last two years, we know 30% of our capital goes to black entrepreneurs, 20% is going to Latin X entrepreneurs, it’s so on so forth, and intentionally measuring that so and you know, so that way we know what we need to improve on. We did our first earned media placed multi language translation last year when we launched our Oakland restorative fund. And again, that’s out of small grant dollars, right. But knowing that the PPP didn’t reach many, though our communities because of language barriers, and hearing from our community partners that they needed Spanish, Vietnamese, Cantonese, Tagalog, etc. We intentionally use grant dollars to launch in different languages, right from the get go and build it in advisors who are ready to support and languages but that’s a blended capital model. I’m not getting money from the CDFI Fund to do that I’m not getting money from my investors to do that, which shouldn’t be the case. Right? So those are some of the things we’ve done.

Calderon 52:30

I’d love to sort of dig in a little bit more to what you mentioned earlier, Bulbul and and Donna. And for you, Donna, you were talking about, you know, being concerned about when CDFIs begin to act too much like banks. And so I wonder if you can talk a little bit about how CDFIs can sort of lean in to CRA to help them hold true to mission to increase capital that’s provided to them from banks, and and to better serve the communities that they’re intended to serve?

Gambrell 53:01

Yeah, well, this is a perfect time, because CRA is going through a reform and, and unlike the last effort a few years ago, the bank regulatory agencies are pretty much aligned in sync working together. And I think are very interested in getting comments. And I tell people all the time, don’t send and I realize it’s easy to send them the standard template letter. But be personal about it really talk about what’s happening in your community, because I think when you look at CRA, there are things about it that won’t change, it’s going to be lending investment, and services time and time again, and how does CRA make an even deeper impact in those communities that we are supporting? And so, you know, in my own personal opinion, is that I think the regulator’s almost went too far to the other side a few years ago, because they said, Well, if you’re a small institution, we’re not going to come in as often we’re not going to examine you as much, you’re going to have a more streamlined examination process. And I think in many ways, it actually worsened the impact of CRA because I think there were a lot of institutions, not all of them, but a lot of institutions who said, Hey, I’m just doing the bare minimum, I’m getting a satisfactory CRA rating. I don’t want to get an outstanding, we’re perfectly fine where we are, we’re going to stay in this little space and just an operate and I think that there there was a missed opportunities. Because I think there are some banks that say, you know, we want to go beyond CRA. We’re just trying to figure out how to do that. And so there is an opportunity now with CRA reform to really make it even more meaningfull than it has before. I think that we have skirted around this issue of race and CRA for much too long. You redlining, you know, CRA came about because of redlining. I mean, I remember folks like Gilson, kata and others who talked about what was happening in neighborhoods in Chicago and other places. And, you know, throughout this country were folks of Black and Brown hue simply could not move into neighborhoods where others have been because of the very strict real estate laws that were in place. And so I think, see, that was an opportunity to acknowledge that, yes, when we talk about low income, we may be talking about different races. But we also is part of that, talking about whether it’s low income, moderate income or another income, we’re also talking about marginalized people who are black and brown, indigenous, as well. And CRA, I think, has to finally recognize that this is an issue that needs to be addressed. And it can be addressed through reform of this legislation that let’s say, of this act, you know, lending, investment in services, this is what it’s all about in our communities. This is what we do day in and day out, we make loans, we provide investments in grants and others to organizations that provide that cushion, that helps elevate the work that CDFIs are doing the services of financial services, and looking at ways in which you know, you use stem the flow of branch leakage of branch closings in these communities that still rely on brick and mortar. You know, not everybody is digital, not everything is digital, and Technology is wonderful. But how do you continue to serve those communities where people expect to go up to a teller and have a face to face conversation and face to face interaction. So I say all that to say that, you know, I hope that everybody in this room really is very thoughtful about the providing the comments and providing some real recommendations, some real, thoughtful recommendations about how the Community Reinvestment Act can really better serve the communities that we serve. Because when we talk about this being once in a lifetime, once in a generation, in terms of what’s happening in this country today, CRA is just as important as everything else that’s going on. As we look at the economy, as we look at, you know, the communities that have been hard hit by COVID, this becomes just as important that shouldn’t be at the top of our list.

Calderon 57:51

Thank you, Marla, earlier, you meant you said what gets measured gets managed. I’d love if you could sort of talk just a little bit about how some of the metrics that CDFIs are managed by are helpful or hindrance in accomplishing what we’re trying to set out to do here.

Bilonick 58:10

Absolutely. And I quickly wanted to follow up on on Donna’s call to action, I believe there’s something set up in the hallway where people can actually comment

Calderon 58:19

There is. Actually, you know, as folks come off of the escalator area, to your right, there’s a CRA comment station.

Gupta 58:28

And it’s very interested in being part of a sign on letter that’s actually intentionally trying to center race and race disaggregated data collection, we’re working on one with the African American Alliance of CDFI CEOs, so please come see me as well, if you’re interested.

Bilonick 58:42

And I will say like, if there’s a point that you’re looking to drive home, that’s just kind of a broad point is that the the proposed rule, look solely at income as a lens, there is not a racial equity lens for evaluating CRA activities. And so I would just, if you just want to drive one point home, I think that’s the big one. That being said, there, there are some, you know, good things there in the sense that like any activity with CDFIs, is, you know, is worthy or eligible. And then also the focus on native and rural communities, you know, sort of calling that out is is different. So those are, I didn’t want to make it sound like it was all bad nor nor did I nor did you but that that one kind of oversight of a very big, you know, piece of the work that we do needs to be stated. But to answer your question, where is that around? Sort of what’s measured? I think there is a conflict between what’s measured and how we can be successful in centering CDFI work, you know, as a civil rights activity and so, you know, what are what is being measured what is allotted scale performance of the portfolio. You know, the level of risk taken, you know, all of these don’t exactly jive with successfully carrying out the mission of a CDFI. And so I think we really need to re examine that and think about different ways that we can measure activities. I know. You know, certainly increasingly, we’re looking at sort of who’s receiving those loans. What was the pricing on those loans? What was the term offered and extended on that, that loan, even for CDFIs, we should be, you know, looking at ourselves and seeing what we’re doing. You know, I think the thing that’s interesting is that, you know, funders always want to look and how ironic the people who fund our work, do our work for a living, so they understand it, they, you know, they, they have their own criteria of success, and therefore, those are sort of overlaid on top of CDFIs. And the challenge is, you know, we actually should not be allotted for having perfect, you know, performance in our portfolios, we should not be allotted for having zero, you know, loans par, you know, under 30, are we that, that is actually in conflict with the reason for being of CDFIs. And so, actually, Donna and I sit on the offene board, and we had a conversation, a lively conversation on our board meeting around, you know, how wonderful that Oh, offense portfolio is performing, so well. But, you know, should we be making some riskier deals, does this mean that we’re not, you know, extending loans out to sort of smaller, less established, less known, less proven CDFIs. And so, you know, I think maybe it’s a set aside, maybe whatever it might be within the CDFI, where you’re kind of doing that I know, the CDFI, that I used to run had a scoring system for each deal that came through. And I think that was really helpful in terms of balancing our portfolio. So it wasn’t to say that only the A’s would get through, we wanted to know, okay, we’ve got 25% A plus plus 25%. D, you know, and that was, that was a healthy portfolio, from our point of view, because it meant that we were covering all of our bases, I’m not saying do not make healthy performing loans, but I do think there’s a room for a balance, rather than putting all of the eggs. You know, and I think as if, and when we go into a recession, we’ll see what happened, you know, in 2007 2008, where folks who could have gotten bank loans in the past are now coming to CDFIs, which then totally skews the system, because then you have, you know, these amazingly performing CDFI portfolios that are basically made up of like the the people who are just a hair below that bank credit box. And so, you know, I just would challenge all of us to really think about how to convey or how to spin, you know, the negative as a positive, because, you know, if you make a loan that defaults, it’s still a loan that wouldn’t have been made by a bank, and it still should be, you know, celebrated. 

Gupta 1:02:59

yeah. I mean, just to add to that, to be frank, what that does to CDFIs, measuring us similarly to bank, you know, financial health solvency metrics, is forced us to act more like the banks, we were meant to disrupt. And I have seen in my community in Oakland, where that breaks trust with community partners, who look at us, like, you guys were supposed to meet us, like you failed us to if we can’t even rely on you to meet our community’s needs, then why the hell do you exist? Yeah, like, what’s the point, I’m gonna go do this myself and not be a CDFI. And that actively breaks trust in government and the role we are supposed to be playing? Right. So I am really appreciate because it’s hard to say, it’s hard to say some of this stuff, when perversely, the majority of funding to CDFIs still comes from the same banks, we were meant to disrupt. So we inherit the colonizer rates, terms, rules, restrictions into our industry, that we then have to perpetuate to communities that we were meant to solve that for. And that is why we are calling for CRA reform as well as the CDFI Fund to not only be race affirmative to meet their intended mission for why they were founded, but also to collect race disaggregated data, and to change their metrics to not just be 60% LMI capital but also be 60% bipoc focused, because we are not going to get to equity with colorblind approaches.

Calderon 1:04:39

Well, thank you. So on that note, we’d love to invite any questions from the group if you can, there’s a stand mic here if you want to kind of take a spot and we’ll get through as many questions as we can in the remaining time.

Audience Question 1:04:55

Okay, thank you. My name is John Verona. I work for a bank. We do a lot of investments in CDFIs and lending to on providing grants through the foundation. But one thing that I’ve sort of noticed in talking to some local CDFIs, as well as some black owned banks in my area, they’re actually having trouble getting all the money out the door. And I heard you earlier. Now I agree with what you were saying that you need to do more. But Have y’all heard that? I’m just curious. And a lot of that is, you know, just all the money is funneled down over the last couple of years, and from non traditional sources, like the pipe house and other places. So I’m just

Bilonick 1:05:38

Can I just, I’ll just have a quick answer to that. I think part of that challenge is that most investors want to invest debt into CDFIs, rather than also offset operational expenses that are needed to deploy that debt. And so there’s a disconnect there. And I just, I think, you know, a huge service to CDFIs would be operational grants that would then allow them to staff up deploy that money, you know, that’s, that’s the challenge is you have a very liquid fund, and you don’t have enough staff to deploy that money. And so it’s, I don’t think it’s a reflection of the need, it’s a reflection of the capacity of the organization to to deploy the capital,

Gupta 1:06:18

it’s also rates, if banks are lending capital to us at rates that are higher than what our communities can afford, yeah, there will not be as much demand for that, especially in the hesitancy to take on more debt right now that we have communities that have been disproportionately hit by health and debt costs as well. So we, we need that capital to blend with the rates that we are able to access to offer what the community actually needs. And we have a $10 million pipeline and PCV that I’m trying to raise capital to meet, because we’re slashing our rates for the community, but not accessing capital at rates I can’t afford to take.

Audience Question 1:06:51

And I understand that, but in this case, it’s actually been equity investments. And so I think it goes baby back to your point, having an optimal leverage structure on the liability side. And so I think there is something missing, because it sounds like, you know, I don’t know, if it’s deposits, do they need more deposits, if they’re getting a lot of capital, you know, from an equity perspective, and so I’m just not quite sure, but there’s something not quite matching up.

Bilonick 1:07:21

Hangover of of COVID funding as well, which will not perpetually be here, you know, is that a lot of organizations, you know, the irony of, of the industry that we’re in is that crises put us in our best position. So that might be it too.

Gambrell 1:07:37

You’ll you’ll you’ll probably start to see that change, the demand hasn’t changed is the ability for some of those institutions to get that debt, quickly out the door. As the other types of support programs, you’ll see that starting to decrease your that demand will increase even more. And I think you’ll again, start to see some Lebanon, Lebanon, Lebanon leveling, leveling, leveling out. Thank you. But I, you know, I certainly hear from some banks that, you know, they can’t take any more deposits right now, because they’ve been so deposit rich as a result of COVID as well. But it’s it’s a capacity issue. I think it’s you know, so you need resources to move that out the door.

Audience Question 1:08:28

My name is Erica bed, and I’m from Columbus, Ohio. And I lead an organization which is I basically addressing human trafficking, drugs, gangs, violence, gun violence in youth. Columbus is second largest community for Somali population Somali refugees. My question is, do you have any good model that has really built the capacity for refugees program? Because I hear minority I hear black, I have been an NCRC member for a long time now, I’ve been in meetings, we have been given some time to talk about a little bit about refugees. But really, I mean, I’m the only organization right now from Ohio led by an immigrant person, my background is media, I had to look up sites Efdc. And all of this last year when I became a member of NCRC. Many of my committee members leaders don’t understand what is out there. When they say refugees come from Afghanistan, Syria and all of these places, we don’t really know how to help them. So really, we need to know if there is a model that has been adapted anywhere in the country that can help us who can help our people. The refugees that come are many, many very professional people highly qualified to run a business and they can be very successful in very short time and we are really given the proper you know, and we have built the capacity. So I really want to look into NCRC’s leadership and all of you who you have done some talk about Different races, and I appreciate that. But really, we really need to have this as a separate policy. And we really need to work and I’m here to do work with you or to learn from you, whatever could be done. Thank you.

Gupta 1:10:17

Thank you so much for that question. I really appreciate it. I think the language is pieces. One thing we’ve been talking about with immigrant and refugee populations. I know in my community in Oakland, there’s a couple of organizations that are particularly trying to change at least state policy in California and leveraging being able to make loans to folks who don’t have a social security number, who are undocumented. I think that’s one piece of one for some refugee populations. I also know so African Development Center, I think it’s called ADC in Minnesota also works with a lot of Somali refugees. And I think that’s, I’m just starting to get to know them better. But I think they’ve really carved out really interesting. Micro, I think it’s mostly micro lending, but particularly to Somali refugees, that might be an interesting conversation, at least for you to brainstorm sort of a similar model and what’s worked for them, but happy to put you in touch with them if that’s helpful.

Calderon 1:11:11

And I would also add the mission assets. Yeah. Oh, yeah. These like, like, is like not working. Mission Asset Fund in the Bay Area – Yes, has a model that would probably be of interest. It’s immigrant focus, not specifically, right, refugee focused, but on helping to find the naturalization process, because it’s extraordinarily expensive to be in poverty in general. And, you know, worse so if you’re an immigrant trying to pay for that process to become a naturalized US citizen. So that maybe addresses part of the thing that you were talking about, but we’d be happy to put you in touch with them as well.

Gambrell 1:11:49

And there’s also an organization in New York, the name escapes me at the moment, but they have spent most of their CDFI spent most of their tenure, working with refugees and settlements. So we need to get your

Bilonick 1:12:07

Yes. The group that Donna was talking about is called a company capital, a company capital.

Calderon 1:12:21

Yes, I think we have time maybe for one more question. Yeah.

Audience Question 1:12:25

Okay, I had a question and just an observation. I’m here with my colleague Kerwin Brown from the state of Arizona, just a quick snapshot, 7 million people only have 13 Community banks, we have 16 CDFIs, eight of them tribal, eight of them, non three of them looks suspiciously like banks, extreme lack of access to capital, more than 90% of our money is deposited in non local banks. 76% of our money is just in Chase, wells and BofA 76% of our total deposits. So it is truly we’re in a difficult situation. So my question is, I only know enough to be dangerous, and I’m trying to come up with ideas, we’ve been very active with the CRA. What do you think of the idea of tying the CRA requirements to the percent of holdings that they have by state? In other words, in a state that has so much money in these banks, and they’re advocating to not give back in our state, it’s outrageous. And so I wondered, you know, you have big brains, and you’re in this space, what do you think of that idea? And then second, my observation is just being members of NCRC. And being out here, I have to say it really was deflating to see all of these logos on these sponsor lists for well, all the people who got us here, the very evil core, and I know you have to take that money, but dammit, we don’t have to let their logos go on anything. And anyone in this room that wants to fight for a just economy, you cannot have your money in one of those banks, and fight for just economy. So I just wanted to share that as an observation.

Calderon 1:14:02

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. And I know there were a few people who had questions and I’d love for us to maybe if I can invite my colleagues here we can, you know, collect in the hall. That way the next session can get kind of get ready to be able to get started with that way.

Speakers:

Megan Haberle, Senior Director of Policy, NCRC

Andreanecia M. Morris, Executive Director, HousingNOLA

Kevin Stein, Deputy Director, California Reinvestment Coalition

Will Gonzalez, Executive Director, Ceiba 

Joe Reed, Senior Policy Advocate, NCRC

Transcript:

NCRC video transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. They are lightly edited for style and clarity.

Haberle 00:00

It is an honor to be here with you this morning. We’ve been hearing a lot throughout this conference about the work that needs to be done to advance a just economy. But I want to talk for a moment about some of the work that has already been done just in the past few days. With our advocacy week for our members, we want to celebrate all of our members who engaged in advocacy week. And thank you for taking part in this event. Advocacy week is a crucial opportunity for our coalition. It’s an opportunity for Congress to hear directly from our members about the issues that you are facing in your communities. This year, we addressed three issues within advocacy week for Congress, given the pending CRA rulemaking, we focused on the need for Congress to support a strong robust CRA rule. We also focused on the need for Section 1071, which reform the Dodd Frank Act passed 10 years ago, and the need for the most robust possible rule under 1071 to be issued. In addition, given the pending talks around the federal budget, we of course focused on a number of areas that are in need of federal funding for our communities, including affordable housing, rental housing, homeownership and counseling resources, additional community investments and workforce supports for CDFIs and other entities. So thank you so much for our members who took part in advocacy week. It is staff supported but member led and it was really a great privilege to witness advocacy week in action. So now to report out on how some of those meetings went are three of our star board members, Kevin Stein, Will Gonzalez and Andreanecia Morris.

Morris 01:56

Good morning. I’m Andreanecia Morris, Executive Director of Housing Nola and NCRC, board member, and chair of the membership and policy committee. So we’re so happy to be with you this morning to talk about advocacy week. How many of you are familiar with advocacy week? All right, so those are the folks who participated last week. So we’re here today to talk about, as NCRC board members and state leads, about the experience that we had last week during advocacy week, and how important we feel it is to participate as members of NCRC as well as advocates in our community. I had the privilege of doing three of those meetings last week with some of our resident organizers in Louisiana, where we met with our two state senators offices and one of our congressional offices, and to have the conversation with them about Louisiana priorities as they aligned with NCRC is an amazing opportunity. But it also reminds us how we have to hold folks accountable, particularly the folks that we send here to Washington to make critical decisions. Sometimes the conversations are pleasant, sometimes the conversations are frustrating, but the conversations always need to be had. And so I want to thank the NCRC team for organizing this opportunity for those of us in Louisiana, and and commit to following up with our congressional delegation. And to expand those meetings. Louisiana is not the biggest state in the Union by any stretch of the imagination. Our delegation is eight people. It’s what sorry, seven people, seven people. And hopefully next year, we will have in the next few years, we’ll have the privilege of meeting with someone who represents the second majority minority congressional district in Louisiana, as a result of lawsuits championed by Louisiana advocates like the power coalition, the NAACP, and the housing Louisiana delegations. So representation matters and making sure that you connect with your leaders matters. Thank you.

Stein 04:04

Good morning, everyone. I am not Matthew Lee. I’m filling in for Matt. I’m Kevin Stein, I work at the California Reinvestment Coalition. And I’m an NCRC board member. Really glad to talk with you about Advocacy Week. You know, I’ve been coming to the conference for about 25 years. And there’s so many great things about it. And hopefully you all feel that. But for for me, one of the best is the opportunity for us to advance our advocacy. This the one time a year. So every year, this is the one time that we come to DC the last few years being a bit of a wrinkle, and have an opportunity to bring our members. So CRC members and NCRC members, it’s this kind of the same community groups working every day in their communities. And we think it’s so important for the policymaker to hear, you know, they spend most of their days meeting with lobbyists. We try and meet with regulators, they spend a lot of time I’m sure talking to financial institutions. So it’s a rare opportunity for them to hear from you all about what’s really happening on the ground. And so we try and take advantage of that. We, first of all, I do want to thank my colleague, Doni Tadesse, who helped us organize the meetings for California. So I secured some meetings and Doni helped organize, we had a great participation from CRC and NCRC. Members, I would say 10 to 25 groups, we took advocacy week, seriously, we had about nine or 10 meetings, we met with representatives from our senators office from the House Financial Services Committee. And we like to also meet with the regulators. So we were fortunate to have meetings with the Acting Comptroller Hsu, who visited us by video yesterday. Martin Gruenberg, chair of the FDIC who spoke before us yesterday, act, sorry, Director Chopra from the CFPB. And we also we’re really glad to meet with our old friend, Janis Bowdler, who’s now at the Treasury Department and who I think is coming to speak later today. We focused on the NCRC agenda. We also, as I say, like to have our folks talk about what they’re seeing in the community. And people were raising issues that, you know, I’ve heard raised at the conference, for us a big issue, and a tough one, what is the solution, but the investors that are buying up all the properties, really consolidating ownership in a way that prevents homeownership from working families, makes life difficult for tenants living in buildings owned by people who don’t really care about them and don’t live in the community. Similar things happening with investors buying mortgages, and as we understand from one of our members in the reverse mortgage context too, concerns about affordable housing a critical need in California and throughout the country, small businesses, Special Purpose credit programs needed. We talked about broadband access as a way to help communities connect to all the benefits that CRA is meant to provide. And we talked about the needs in rural communities and Native American communities. We of course, focused on CRA in particular with the regulator’s who weren’t really in a position to say anything because the because of the open rulemaking. And you know, there’s just so many issues with the proposal that as you’ve been hearing about, and Josh and NCRC, have been doing a fantastic job of kind of walking us all through that and helping us develop positions. What we tried to emphasize and I think what we feel very strongly about, and I sense there’s no amongst us all, there might be sympathy for this position, that though the regulator’s came yesterday and may have said otherwise or suggested otherwise, we really feel that the regulators let us down when it comes to incorporating considerations of race in the CRA. And we’re also concerned Yeah, so we’re hoping that that is something that we all can kind of build some consensus around and make some really strong recommendations around and maybe, hopefully change the proposal. Because I think for a lot of our members, as we’ve been talking to them, they’re they’re wondering, why is this better? How is this better? This is, is this really what we want CRA to be? And the other thing that’s maybe related, and again, tons of issues, but acknowledging our friends at ANHD and Jamie Weisberg for the thinking around this around this placement, so they think they’re dealing with displacement of households. Not really, and we need to have not just giving credit for banks for doing things that are good by penalizing and downgrading banks for doing harm, like discrimination, displacement overdraft fees. So I’ll stop. But this is for us. It’s always a big thing. We have all these meetings, but the follow up is key. And the time this is the time I mean of all the times, this is the time while they’re working on CRA. If you’re wondering how best to do that, or you want a little extra help, contact NCRC we really need to fight in these last few weeks leads last few months before CRA and of course continuing because there’s a lot to do. It’s great to see you all thanks for your advocacy and look forward to see you soon.

Gonzalez 09:52

Buenos dias. My name is Will Gonzalez, I’m the executive director of Ceiba in Philadelphia is great and quite the honor to be here and quite an honor to be on the NCRC board. Advocacy week was a special week. But as you know, it’s a year round endeavor. And we have a great team at NCRC. Want to give special thanks to Joseph Reed, who prepared us very well of series of meetings to be able to advocate on this particular week. As you know, like I said, it’s a year long thing, many topics, but for this week, we focused on three, obviously informing our elected officials about the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking of the CRA, the strengthening and defending section 1071 of E CoA, and the Consumer Financial Protection Board. And last but not least, increased support for community investments, including affordable housing. And so focused on that we went to the meetings prepared, the policy agenda is on NCRC a website. And wanted to reinforce I think what Andreanecia said yesterday about membership. Remember that you have a lot of brains that NCRC and that whenever you’re wanting information about or an issue or background, even if it’s at the micro level of your community, NCRC is there to help and it’s one of the benefits of membership. And I heard some complaints that we weren’t using them enough. So let’s keep them busy, because there’s a lot of work to be done. And advocacy week is a collective thing. The Pennsylvania delegation was blessed to count with Donna Henry from Southwest CDC and her crew, Ken Bigos from Affordable Housing Centers of Pennsylvania. So we prepared for the meetings and started off with meeting with our the staff of our senators. Senator Bob Casey, Senator Pat Toomey, Casey Democrat, Toomey Republican, the meeting with Casey was pretty good, because we heard from his office that he wants to make it quote unquote, a signature issue, the enhancement of LMI-tech, low income housing tax credits for affordable housing, and that he’s going to be working on that on the hill. And so obviously, that set off alarm bells, because we want that to happen. And so NCRC is going to follow up, we in Pennsylvania gonna follow up. And it’s an opportunity, right? Because again, right now there’s a bottleneck in terms of affordable housing development, because we need more capital, we need more resources, we have the muscle, at least in Philadelphia, we do with some amazing, strong CDCs. But what we need is more capital and access, low cost capital to with Pat Toomey, it wasn’t as friendly a meeting. As you know, he’s a powerful senator, his last few months in office, where we got stuck on what I think and he’s on many of the committees related to banking was on issues of data for small business loans, etc. And, you know, we’ve basically simplified it, they’re concerned that if you put, if you ask for all this data, you’re going to put a onerous charge on the small financial institutions. We said, Look, we’re in the 21st century, you want this data, whether the Feds asked you to get it or not, it’s a business nowadays. So you know, there’s no one more blind than he who does not see want to see right. So if you cover your eyes, so it’s not, you know, so I don’t know if it resonated with him or not. But obviously, we said the importance of data in the 21st century. Last but not least, not related to finances. We thank the Senator for standing up in this in the winter, November, December of 2020, in January in 21, when he was one of the few Republican senators who didn’t agree with the big lie. And although it was a 32nd comment, but it’s an acknowledgement of that leadership in that issue. We we had meetings with two of our congressmen in person via zoom. One was Congressman Dwight Evans, and the other one was Mary Gay Scanlon. And again, we were blessed that on our team, we had constituents who lived in his district, and obviously with Congressman Dwight Evans, my colleague, Marcos Lomeli, and Ken Bigos from Affordable Housing Centers of Pennsylvania. Were able to talk with the congressman about these issues that we outlined in advocacy week and bring it home and commitment from the congressman to follow up with Mary Gay Scanlon. It was great to see a great conversation between Donna Henry from Southwest CDC and Mary Gay Scanlon because they were talking about all things going on in a neighborhood and board home the history of small businesses and the support that small businesses need. Last but not least, we met with a staffer from Madeleine Dean’s office, and it was intro seemed to see, it wasn’t we weren’t as engaged. But it was interesting to make her aware that NCRC is there for information for them to. And obviously, we’ll follow up and keep working. But again, thank you, thank you, thank you for being part of of this great NCRC family. And as Mr. Taylor said yesterday, we got to speak out. Because otherwise, we’re not going to improve our communities. So Muchas gracias.

Hareble 15:36

Thank you so much. Andreanecia, Kevin, and Will, and everyone who participated in our advocacy week, I’d now like to introduce Joseph Reed, our senior policy advocate, who’s sort of our in house Maestro who orchestrated all of those advocacy week meetings – 121 virtual meetings in all. So I’ll turn it over to Joe to talk a bit about where we take it from here.

Reed 16:12

All right, thank you, Megan. So, good morning, everyone. Know after two long years of looking at you, many of you through zoom, Microsoft Teams, WebEx, Google meet, sometimes even Skype, which has surprised me. No, I can’t begin to tell you how excited I am to be here in person with all of you today. This is a great feeling. So again, thank you for coming. And for those of you in this room who participate in advocacy week, yes, I am the one who sent you all those emails over the past few weeks, with talking points, documents, the policy agenda webinars, fought to prep you for all of your meetings. And thankfully, it seems like it was a success advocacy week, when all a better than expected NCRC had 121 meetings scheduled this year. Yes. Great Accomplishment, which is the increase from last year we have 108. So that kind of scares me away, because now we have to try and top this next year. But we’re gonna try. And we met with members of Congress from both political parties from across the country, which included the Speaker of the House, the minority leader, the majority leader, members of the House Financial Services Committee, Senate baking staff and other power players on Capitol Hill. And thanks to the leadership of Kevin Stein, NCRC board member who just heard from, who met with regulatory agencies, two out of the three regulators of the CRA, including the CFPB, as well, and the Department of Treasury. And one of the key takeaways from Advocacy Week we this year, just from the reports that I’ve seen, and by the way, state leads I’ll be contacting later on for some those reports were that? Well, of course, some offices were non committal some of our issues, of course, but most desire to see some to learn more about the CRA and our issues. But there was also a desire to help low and moderate income communities. Of course, the sticking point was how to actually do that. Which of course sets the stage for future conversations down the line. And now, I know many of you who went Africa so we have meetings already in the works, which is great. And advocacy week are for some long term attendees or members of NCRC. Hill day, as you might know, this is my favorite event of our conference, advocacy week. It’s our memberships opportunity to interact with congressional members. Not via email, not sign a letter, but face to face or where in this case screen to screen, but you get what I’m saying with a member and one of the joys I get it from this job in the Policy and Government Affairs Department is seen just the excitement of our members faces like on their faces after they come back from meeting with the members that everyone’s just super excited. And no I live for that. But the work to create a just economy does not stop at Advocacy Week. In fact, it does not stop after this conference. And in fact I’m don’t think I’m providing any spoilers here is not going to stop anytime soon. But that’s why we’re all here today. And why so many of you actually join in CRC. You want to help guide our nation onto the path to create a just economy on the path to creating equality for all for equity for all to put us on the path that so many civil rights leaders and groups in the past have attempted to put us on in the past. But one of the most pressing policy issues as of today, as Megan stated early and you’ve heard a few of other board members mentioned, of course, the notice of proposed rulemaking for the Community Reinvestment Act, from the Office of the Comptroller of currency, that’s the OCC, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, FDIC and the Federal Reserve. And by the way, yes, I am saying the entire name of the organization because I’m about 105%, certain, with a positive 5% margin of error. Some of you do that math in the car, that there are many in this room that don’t know some of those acronyms. We speak them all the time. So we’ll make sure that everyone’s on the same page. But this proposed rulemaking presents the most significant change to the CRA regulation in two decades over two decades, actually. And we could use the help of every single person in this room. That’s why I would be remiss if I did not plug our theory common table that’s right outside. Well, you can use some of our sample climate letters, which can be found on our CRA, treasureCRA, landing page, which can be found on NCRC’s website. And I will also be remiss if I didn’t, I think there might be a slide for those I’m not sure but membership for NCRC. If you are interested in participating in this event next year, which again, the people who actually come to Advocacy Week, so we must be members of NCRC. Or if you’re just interested in some of the work that we do in the policy, and advocacy space, feel free to join, I encourage you to become members. And please contact our membership department if you would like to do that do so. And again, I just like to thank everyone who participated in advocacy Week this year. Again, just a huge success. I hope that I can see all of you here again next year. Hopefully, it’s a hill day, not a week. That’s easy to plan. But I really hope to see all of you and of course new faces as well in 2023 and thank you all for coming. I want you to enjoy the rest of the conference, and have a good day. Thank you