TAPE #221 - Community Based Housing

TAPE #221 - COMMUNITY-BASED HOUSING

Welcome to our session on Community-Based Housing. We have a very exciting panel here this afternoon, it looks like our audience is a little sparse right now, and people will probably dribble in as we speak. We all know what a wonderful lunch we had so hopefully we'll stay awake. We have allot of talent on our panel today so I think you will be interested to hear about community-based housing efforts going on. My name is Kathy Tyler and I manage our loan fund a McCawley Institute. McCawley is a national housing group that works with local groups developing housing. We have a revolving loan fund. We have technical assistance. I'm not going to tell you much about McCawley today, because we have a case example where McCawley is involved. And I'll let that story tell for itself. I do want to acknowledge Heather Burns who is here with McCawley today, and she was one of the folks who suggested that we have a workshop on community-based housing in this conference. That you can't really talk about rural communities without also talking about housing as an important ingredient. And so I'd like to just acknowledge her work to make this workshop happen. And before introducing this panel I'd like to just find out who this handful of people in the room are. Is everybody from the United States, are there international people. So we don't have any translation issues, I guess. And do folks work with housing on a day to day basis? Well, I would like there are several panelists, I would like to sort of zip through, so that we have some time at the end to discuss the issues, and hear some of the things that you are grappling with. The way the panel is going to work, and I'll just ask everybody to introduce themselves as they start, but Servy DeVere is with Housing Assistance Council, and she's going to start by telling us about Rural Housing Conditions in the United States. Than we have two case examples, Deborah Fingletary, and Ruth Weiss, they both live within two hundred miles of Washington, DC in rural areas and their going to tell us about the conditions in their areas and what they've done as community groups to find solutions to some of the conditions in their areas. Ilene Fitzgerald works for USDA in the Housing Division. And Jacqueline Johnson works in HUD with Native American programs. They'll both tell us about the programs that their respective agencies offer to improve housing. I'll just ask Servy to follow. We have to be conscious about speaking into the microphone because they are recording today, and I'm sure that it helps those of you to hear.

Hi Good afternoon, I'm Servy DeVere, with the Housing Assistant Council. We're a national no-profit intermedial organization with regional offices in Atlanta, Georgia, Albequerque, New Mexico, and Middle Valley, California. We, like McCawley Institute have local organizations develop affordable housing in rural areas and have been in business for about 26 years. Our mission emphasizes focusing on the poorest of the poor in the most rural places. And we provide a range of services from loan funds, to technical assistance and training, to research and information, also information on tax credits through our subsidary organizations. Our web site is www.ruralhome.org, if anyone is interested in looking up some more information about HAC. I was just going provide sort of highlights of housing conditions in rural areas, it's by no means comprehensive. I have two maps up on the wall here, that you can feel free to come up and to look at later. It talks about poverty in the US and housing afforability in the US. And the red portions are sorta the poorest, followed by the orange. And you can see how some areas, like the lower Mississippi Delta, and over here and the border areas, I'm particularly interested, since I work in those areas, have high rates of poverty and high cost burdens for people living there. I should also add that it's really complicated to precisely define rural when your talk about housing, because every government agency has different definitions that they follow. Most of the carts and overhead that they follow. Most of the charts and overheads that I'm using, use census data from the 1990 since we haven't had the next census done yet. And also, HS or American Housing Survey Data from 1995 and also, HAC's own definition of rural which aggregates although urban places and census defined rural places in both metro and non-metro areas and sort of approximates rural developments definition of rural. This slide unfortunately is not the best overhead for what I want to say. Because it doesn't include data on the previous decade. Or previous decades. But there was a downward trend in rural poverty from the 70s to the 80s. But this slide shows that there hasn't been a significant different from 1980 through 1990. So practically there is the same number of poor people in rural areas in the past decade. As you can see in this overhead, poverty rates for virtually every ethnic group are higher in non-metro areas, than they are in metropolitan areas or even in central cities. And the black bar is what represents non-metro areas. This overhead talks about a fact that there are a number of differences in housing patterns in rural and urban areas. For instance a greater number of rural residents own their own home. In fact three-quarters of all rural households are homeowners. Generally, rural homes including rental units are predominantly single family units. However, not all of the homes are in good condition. This overhead depicts home ownership rates by residents and race. Every ethnic group is more likely to own their own home in rural areas as compared to the cities and even the suburbs. A greater percentage of blacks and hispanics own homes in rural areas than in the nation as a whole. But these rates are lower than whites in rural areas. Some of these numbers are reflective of the overall tend to home ownership in rural areas. This overhead depicts some of the housing problems faced by rural households. I just want to quickly define, moderate housing cost burden refers to families paying 30-50% of their income toward housing costs, and severe cost burden is when they have to pay over 50% of their income for housing costs. More than a quarter of rural households have a major housing problem. And this remains the gap between what people can afford to pay and the costs of their homes. The lower the families income, the more likely it is to have a heavy cost burden. This slide indicates the poorer the family the more likely it is to have a heavy cost burden. And you can see that over here, the gap is incredible. In addition, as you talk about renters, their even more likely to have a heavy cost burden's than owners. And this slide indicates that. 20% of renters have moderate cost burdens as compared to just 11% of owners. And 13% of renters have cost burden as compared to 7% of owners. And again, if you look at racial and ethnic minorities in rural areas, they tend to have even more severe cost burden problems. Although only 12% of rural households belong to minority groups they account for a significant proportion of rural households with housing problems. And in each instance they're likely to have more housing problems or more significant housing problems than white households in rural areas. In addition to cost burden, the other housing problems faced by families in rural areas, include physically inadequate housing, overcrowding and so on. In this slide, as you can see for instance, African-American families are more than twice as likely as rural white households to live in housing with physical inadequacy. I was going to talk a little about the lower Mississippi Delta and the Border Cloneouss Region because as I said, the Housing Assistance Council focuses allot on the poorest of the poor. And those are my areas of particular interest since I work there. But in the interest of time, we're going to skip that over. But I'd be happy to talk with anyone if you are interested. And we're going to talk a little bit, since it's a conference on women and agriculture, and housing conditions of female householders in rural America. Some of this information is taken from a report that's not yet published. And I should indicate that the term female householders might be a little bit misleading. Because it includes the way the data gathered, it includes married couple families, as do the male householder families. So, we sort of it balances each other out. And it was the only data we could get. So keep that in mind, with these figures. Female householders constitute approximately 30% of all rural householders. 27% are poor as compared to 9% of the men. 32% have total household income below $10,000, compared to 8% of the men. The number of very low income women is double the number of male householders at this income. 64% of female householders own their own homes compared to 80% of the men. 24% have high housing cost burdens, compared to 16% of the men. 15% pay over half their incomes for housing, that's the severe cost burden, compared to just 5% of the men, 8% live in physically inadequate housing units compared to 6% of the men. And there is no indicator of either economic well being or housing quality where women fair as well as men. I hope all these facts and figures provide a context for the work that they other panel members are going to be talking about because it might help you understand the incredible odds and difficulties that they surmount to provide descent afforable housing for the rural poor. Thank you.

Question:

Answer:

Good afternoon everyone, I'm Deborah Singletary, Director of Delmarva Rural Ministries, over on the Delmar Peninsula. Delmarva Rural Ministries has been around just about a long as HAC, we're going into our 26th year. As a organization that was created by the Delaware and Maryland churches to address the needs of, at that time, about 15,000 migrants that were coming onto the eastern shore of Maryland and Delaware. The Delmarva Peninsula is a flat, fertile, very rural in nature area, incompasses 13 counties from the three states of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. It's the area South of Delaware Bay and North of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. If anyone has had the pleasure of going through that tunnel. About 300,000 people in that area. That was a quick calculation that I did. We in 1991, supported an economic impact study of farm workers on the shore of Eastern Virginia. That was done by Virginia Tech. And what we found through that study was that farm workers contributed something like $45.8 million dollars to the local economy. The Delmarva area. It's basically chemicals. There's a large beach resort area. But certainly farming and all of it's functions including the farm workers, certainly have a major major impact on the local economy. In addition to the 300,000 people that are on the peninsula, about 8,000 - 10,000 migrants to harvest crops annually in the three state area. And the season starts as early as late March, early April, and ends about November, December, depending on where you are. And the crops that they harvest and process are basically fruit and vegetables. The farm labor population has changed significantly since the late 60s and the early 70s. It's a very culturally and ethnicly diverse population today. Hispanics comprise probably about 80% of the farm workers that come to the peninsula. We still have small number of African-American mainly older men that travel from Florida and the Carolinas. And the farm workers are coming from South Texas and also Florida, and Puerto Rico. Average household is about $6,000 and more than half of them live below poverty level as established by O & B. For the most part, their ineligible for allot of services that many people receive, especially medicaid. Most farm workers do not have health insurance. And nor are they eligible again for medical assistance. Delmarva Rural Ministries has spent probably of the first 23 of it's 26 years as a primary health care provider for farm workers. We also provide emergency food. You would people that are working with food, wouldn't have that need. But due to circumstances, pretty much beyond their control, when they arrive to the area. They are without most basic necessities. And food being one, and money being the other. We're still a little unique on the eastern shore, with that, the farm workers are still traveling with a crew boss or a crew leader. And in other parts of the country people are traveling pretty independently. And under the crew leader system their relying on them for allot of things, transportation being one, the area has no public transportation, often times, we have people that are coming into the area, and they don't even know where they are or what state their in, let alone what little town or community their in. We have provided services on an outreach basis all of our years. It's a critical part of what we do. We were approached in 1984 by an organization that provides technical assistance and training, to other non-profit organizations to develop housing. And our board of directors was approached, our board is 51% farm worker governed. And we were asked if we would consider developing housing for farm workers. Because this organization had a difficult time identifying other non-profit housing developers to do housing for farm workers. They felt they had their hands full with nembeism. Just developing housing for low and moderate income people. And they weren't about to take on a task of developing housing for a population that, for the most part, the community didn't feel part of the community. And so our board agreed we would develop one community for farm workers. And five years later, with financing, interim financing from housing assistance council, and the rural financing coming from USDA. We had the first farm USDA-financed, non-grower owned farm labor housing in the Mid-Atlanic area. It's a 34-unit housing community. And we don't call them projects. We call it a community. It's a 34-unit housing community for farm workers. That was financed 33-year repayable loan. And party grant loans. What we realized is, isn't wasn't going to be easy getting community support in the development of this housing. Because we were developing for farm workers and because we were developing for people with moderate incomes. And couple that with the housing stock is already distressed for this entire area in the first place, we committed to developing housing for people that qualified as the seasonal farm worker as well. So our 34-units of the 34, 18 of those units are occupied by people that do qualifying agricultural work in the community year-around. They were probably born there, or they've done agricultural work in some, way, shape or form that makes them eligible for housing. And so, we're also enhancing the housing for people that are considered residents. And at the same time, we've committed to reserving 16 of the units, for people that are transiant, that are migrant farm workers, that are very mobile. The Delmarva is not considered home, their traveling with a crew leader. Took us five years to do that. And we were immediately at the opening of James Leonard Apartments in Salisbury, we were immediately approached by the State Government in Delaware. To replicate that community in Southern Delaware. Unbeknowance, they were interested in trying to help poultry. Someone said earlier I think that, housing is key, when you talk about rural America and it certainly is. Agriculture and in our area now, poultry, is a real growing part of the economy. And their having a struggle and their wrestling with housing for their workers. Their putting them up in hotels, or helping to finance stays at hotels because housing is at a premium. And so, I think most people see the corrilation between housing and business and work. And we certainly saw that. That's why we didn't just do one. We've developed two. And one of which is an award winning, Fannie Mae Foundation Excellence Award last year. And we're about to, within 30-days break ground on a third housing community on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, in Eastville. And we're doing a faze two to our very first one in Salisbury hopefully before the end of the year. That will also hopefully have the ground broken. We don't just say anymore, we're health and social services, we're health, housing and social services, and we're providing housing for people that's descent, that's safe, that's affordable. We certainly couldn't do it allow. We partner with allot of people. Including technical assistance provider, USDA has played a major part, through the loan and grant program for farm labor housing and the other part of it, we certainly don't do the management, we contract that out to a property management company locally. And they have the task, of doing the rent-ops and getting people in and out. Because turn-over at least, in the migrant units, is pretty constant. They may turn one of the migrant units over, three or four times, within a six month period. We are also looking at doing a little bit more than just the rental housing. Because we certainly have found that many of the people that are residing in our housing year around. Are also working with another organization as far as self-help housing. We've been providing home ownership counseling for the tenants in both of the communities that we currently have open. And we have a couple of families that within this year, are going to go from renting to home ownership. And that's one of the other components of our housing program that we're looking at. Not only providing rental management, but also home ownership, because so many people are making Delmarva home, instead of leaving, their staying. I mentioned poultry earlier, because what's happening, their working the fields, their working in the graters, and they also work for poultry in the processing facilities. And so, they've made the area home. People certainly have the capability, and they have the interest and they want to be home owners and that's our natural transition. I think that's it.

Question: I wanted to clarify, you said USDA, are you saying USDA Rural Development. I work for USDA Rural Development, and of course, if you don't say what organization it is, people have no idea who to contact, if you just say USDA, that's such a broad area, because their are so many oganizations under USDA.

Answer: Leonard was under Farmers Home, Elizabeth Cornish Landing, was under Rural Development, Eastville, Rural Development.

Question: Have you had indications or any type of indications that there would be a lack of funding or difficulty in finding the funding?

Good afternoon, my name is Ruth Wise, and I'm with New Road Community Development Group on Virginia's Eastern Shore. And I'm going to talk about housing just a little bit differently than Deborah talked about it, she talked about it in terms of the migrant workers who come there to work during the seasonal times--that starts around March. And she's exactly right, there is some resistance in the community to migrant housing, particularly since there is so much to be done for the people who live there on a permanent basis. Clearly, however, there is no real reason that they are all poor people who need homes. Yet, still with people on a day to day basis, people tend to think about what affects them first. And there's plenty of room for housing to be done, on Virginia's Eastern Shore and as she said, probably on all of Delmarva. The New Road Community Development Group began in 1992 when we learned that in the town of Exmore. And the New Road Community is in the town Exmore, had a discussion on the table about bringing in a regional sewage system for the town and surrounding areas. Most of the approximately 90 units of homes in the New Road Community, did not have in door water and sewer. So 85% of the people used outdoor privis, in 1998 America. And the community was kinda napping because it didn't appear anything was ever going to change. And than a community organizer from the organization known today as VISAGE at the time was North Hampton Housing Trust, learned that there was a discussion on the table in the town of Exmore, and went around in the New Road Community, knocking on doors, if you people are interested in having in door flushing bathrooms, toilets is what she said, we suggest that you be out at the town meeting on Tuesday night. And so, on Tuesday night the residents was out at the town meeting. And the town was not prepared for that many people in the community, because they'd never seen them in a town meeting before. And that's not unusual in communities like New Road, where people disenfranchised and don't feel that their presence in a town meeting is really going to make any difference. But they were shocked that on this particular Tuesday night, there were many people. The community is largely African-American and sets on the west side of the town proper. The town proper most of the residents are European American, and all of them have indoor plumbing and running water. And there's another African-American community to the east of Exmore, and about ten years ago that community did get a drain fill system for waste water disposal. However, the system that was being proposed in the New Road area was a regional system that would have been funded by USDA. If the regional concept had been accepted. Because the people in the town felt that they did not have a need to hook up to the regional system since they already had indoor facilities since they individual septic systems. This whole debate in the county went on approximately two and a half years. And the concept of a regional sewer system died a slow and painful death. Indeed before all was said and done, it turned into a very racial kind of discussion. The community of New Road had already decided that if the regional sewer system did not fly, indeed we would look to the state for a Virginia development community block grant. And so, in 1994 when we learned that the regional concept had died, we indeed did turn around and we went for the community block ramp to bring in a mass drain fill system. We did not feel than, nor do we feel now, that that was the best solution, but it was the best option that we had at the time. The community incorporated and became a non-profit early in 1993, so that we could begin to work in a uniform way on this business of housing and sewage infrastructure development. And I need to tell you that on May 11, 1998 the tractors did role and the ground was broken for the sewage system on New Road. So it's been a five year struggle, but the journey's been worth it. There's still some discussion going on about a regional sewer system, whether that will take place or not, we don't know. But we do know, that the folks on New Road had decided if it was going to entail this kind of struggle, that it would probably be several years before regional sewer system would come to the area, and therefore, went for the mass drain fill system. Since it appeared the regional system was not going to make it. It created a kind of problem for us, because originally the $1.25 million that came into the town of Exmore, in the form of the community development block grant was designated for housing. So in affect, the money that was been designated for housing had rural development's money been able to build the sewage system got diverted to a sewage system, and that meant that they community had to look for housing money. But I need to tell you that something else happened in the process of this. In about six months after we had formed, we realized something. Most of the community in the New Road Community, was owned by to major absent-tee landlords. When I say, absent-tee I don't mean that they did not live on the eastern shore, in fact, they lived in very short distance from the community. What we realized as we got started. We were going to be fighting for a sewage system to come into the area. And indeed, if we did get the sewage system we were going to be in the same shape we were in before, except that folk would be in housing where the toilets might flush. Because of the fact, that it was going to be owned by two absent-tee landlords. And the value of the property would accrue to them, and the benefit of our work would accrue to them. And than we sort of came to a sort of a little screeching halt. We didn't stop completely, but we said wait a minute, let's stop and think what we're doing here. We're going to fight, yes, we might have indoors bathrooms. But we're not going to be a great deal better off than we were before. And so we went about looking, and we came up with idea, could we buy these two absent-tee landlords out. And we kind of thought it was foolish, where would poor working class people get the money to buy out two absent-tee landlords. And yet, that same community organizer, who had done some traveling around and met some people. Said to us, you may not be a foolish as you think you are. I know an organization that may be willing to talk to you. And so, in July of 1993, McCawley Institute came down to talk to the people of New Road and we met out under a tree, and we fed them, pigs feet, cabbage and potatoes. In July, in the hot summertime. And they heard our story. And they said, we're going to stay with you all, and pay attention, and follow how well you do, and what have you. And I reckon they wanted to see if we were going to stay with the struggle, and if we were going to fold up and go home, and if we were going to be able to deal with all of the things that were going on at the time. And the grant was written for the CDBG block grant in March of 1995, and we were held hostage by the town basically, that maybe they would accept the grant, if the county would agree to do what the town wanted them to do. And it was that point that McCawley stepped in, and as Kathy often put it, it was the first money in to sort of say this is a viable deal, and so the McCawley Institute loaned the New Road Community $343,000 to buy out approximately 30 acres of property. And it is on that property that the sewage system is now beginning. They have worked with us all along to see that this becomes a successful program. Along with many other organization, the Virginia Water Projects, the Virginia Eastern Shore Economic, Empowerment, and Housing Corporation-VESEEHC, the North Hampton County Planning District Commission, and other entities that have worked with the community. So at this point, we have a comprehensive redevelopment plan. We plan to develop approximately 75 units. It's a total of 100 units. We already have 25 owner occupied houses. 25 rentals, and create a approximately 50 new home ownership possibilities. We have an economic development component, we understand that if people are going to be able to survive and pay for those homes, we don't think rental situation is the best idea for folks, and people in the community want to own their own homes. And I'd like to address the lady's question back there, in some cultures people don't seem packing very many people in the same room without care, I don't think it's a matter of not caring, I think it's a matter of not having no choice. I lived in a four room house on New Road, and there was eleven of us in there. I didn't have a choice, at the time. I now live in a larger house. So, I think people have to do the best they can with what they have at the time. We have an economic development component to help people pay for the cost of the housing, and we have a human development component, because we understand that the housing and economic component will not survive unless we also build human capital, that is the real strength within the community. Did I make it in two minutes, Kathy?

Tape #221, Side two

To the borrower, to write down the cost of operating the property each month. This program has almost 50% elderly projects. Again, most of those are occupied by elderly women. The average income in a 515 project is $7,300. And time and again we hear how, particularly in the elderly projects, these are programs that enable people to stay in their community, enable them to stay living independently, and without that they would wind up being in a nursing home and living quite far from their community. We have a new program, a 530, it's a multi-family guarantee program. That is designed to serve a little bit higher income population, and bring in more rental housing to rural America. As an example, the poultry workers who probably are very low paid. But often, in business recruitment strategies or retention strategies having any kind of housing available, not just

the lowest steep end subsidity housing but afforable housing for somebody making $25,000 a year. It doesn't exist and than you can't get an economic development strategy because you don't have your housing. So, we really see the guarantee programs on both the single family and the multi-family side as a way of trying to help with that economic development approach in rural communities and really helping to say, here, people need someplace to live. Homeownership doesn't work for everybody and there's just a real lack of rental housing opportunities across rural America. So that was me in a nutshell.

Hi I'm Jacqueline Johnson. And I'm the Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Native American Programs at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. How's that. My Klinket name is Chrisein. I'm a tribal member of the Klinket tribe in Alaska, I'm also a member of the Apthabaskin tribe in Canada and Alaska. And I'm responsible for the Native American programs within HUD. And what I'd like to tell you first of all is about the tribes. As you know, we have about 578 tribes right now throughout the nation. And they are located throughout different geographic bases. Primarily 226 tribes in Alaska and allot in the Southeast and Southwest portion. And of this, the population is about 2.1 million compared for the 1990 census. Which is a growth of 1.5 million in 1980. And of those native Americans 60% of the population live in rural or very remote communities. And the other 40% primarily live in urban areas, and we call them urban indians. And allot of them have moved from the reservation areas, or the remote just for opportunity for jobs, and other opportunities that the community provides for them as well as other services that are there. And of those, 60% of the Native American population, or actually the whole Native American population 56% of those households are listed as poor or very very poor. And as was stated earlier, Native Americans are one of the poorest of the poor in the rural communities and their housing is very critical. Now let me tell you a little bit about HUD and what it does. First of all, the Office of Native American Programs was created 30 years after public housing was created for the rest of the United States. So the Indian programs are like a little bit behind the times. And when the indian programs were created, they just took a regular public housing program, and they tried to make it work for indian country. Which obviously with the remoteness and the different problems such as lack of infrastructure, that it was very very difficult to do. And we've come along little by little, and now we have, this last, in 1996 the Congress and the President signed the Native American Housing and South Determination Act. And that's what I'd like to focus a little bit about. Because this is a real opportunity. First of all, the HASDA, first of all this act, was the very first time that indians themselves were really part of creating legislation that dealt with housing for themselves. So, of course, it's empowering and yes, it's self-determination. And the basis for this change in the environment of housing with indian communities was really a first time recognition of the trust responsibility of the Federal Government. And I'd like to make that very clear at the very beginning of our presentations, because not only are we underprivileged and economically have our own challenges, and we have critical housing needs. But we also have another responsibility and that is the Federal Government, through treaties and other vehicles, has a responsibility to tribes, just as states have and other communities have. And many people when their developing programs in their communities, they sometimes wonder why we get indian preference for certain things. Or why when we have a community-based program or a state-based program and that if a Native community or reservation has the right to exercise indian preference sometimes people feel it's a violation of fair housing but it's not. So I wanted to make sure that you understood that. Now HASDA is a very important vehicle for indians. Because it is the very first time that they get to create and design their own housing programs. The Federal Government isn't saying that you have plan A for rental housing, you have plan B for home ownership. Home ownership is a very very successful model in indian communities, for the same reasons that all the other rural providers feel. Home ownership empowers, home ownership has pride, besides people who live in these communities stay there forever and ever and generations upon generations. And so do our people. And so, HASDA allows them to create their own kinds of housing programs, whether it be housing support programs, whether it be programs to create jobs in partnership with developing housing. Whether or not they actually want to develop a manufacturing housing plan to create more housing. Whether or not they want to provide transitional housing, that's never been provided before in indian communities. Whether or not they want to create a voucher program. Those are all local decisions. And they do that by putting together a comprehensive plan. And I think this is one of the most important things that rural communities need to do. You saw the successes of developing comprehensive plans. Well, it wasn't happening before in indian communities, and so now, this housing project mandates that the way they get their money is that they develop a comprehensive plan. And they look at all their partners, they at their needs, and they look at their resources, and they do a one and a five-year plan, and based upon that by a formula allocation all tribes get dispersed money. Now I want you to know too, that this formula was decided by, and all the rules that were decided for this program, were done by negotiated rule-making. Which means that fifty-eight people sat down in a room together for eleven months. And determined how they were going to run this program, what were the rules, what was the oversight, what was the monitoring requirements and how were they going to disperse money thoroughly and equitably between the five hundred and seventy-eight tribes or those who chose to participate. Negotiated rule-making is also a vehicle that I would promote. Because I think that is one of the best ways of empowering people and empowering communities. Because they felt very much a part of the choices and took accountability and responsibility for the choices that they were making at the table. And so, the tribes will be receiving this. This is our very first year. July 1st is the deadline. For them submitting their first plan. We have about 200 plans, 30 have been approved. Representing over three hundred tribes. And some of the tribes have chosen not to participate for various reasons. Some tribes have made decisions economically that they would prefer not to take the government's money, or because they don't have the basic capacity to run a housing program. As I said, many many of the tribes are very very small. In addition to the HASDA program which is our main program, we run the indian community development block grant program, which is very similar to the community block grant program that other communities get to receive. And we have it set aside that we disperse the money on the based upon a grant application process. We also have two loan guarantee programs, the 184 Loan Guarantee Program is a mortgage lending program, is very successful. And to me success is measured in very small stages. Because what I want to let you know is that we only have like two million dollars worth of loans guaranteed in rural parts of America in indian communities. And we have ninety-some loans in the loan guarantee program. Lending in indian country is very very new. It was only when the 184 loan guarantee program was created, there was a 248 loan guarantee program that still is run by the Office of Housing in the Department. But it wasn't marketed and it was very difficult to for us to get those first steps in lending. So there isn't a great private sector in indian country whose going to create this great housing stock, for people to buy. And there isn't allot of economic development for people to buy that. But the 184 loan guarantee program is assisted many many times to be able to provide 100% guarantee of the Federal Government to provide the opportunity of home ownership for those who have the means to be able to purchase a home through that program. And than we have another new program, and it's called Title 6 program. This program is similar to what communities have a 108 loan guarantee program that's offered through other regular municipalities and communities throughout the nation. And this program helps provide the other necessary things for community development. Such as, infrastrucuture, it can do bonds, it can provide a guarantee for larger pieces multi-family housing, and than the tribe can use five years of their funding to guarantee the repayment of this particular note or whatever it is they choose to do with guarantee program. And this is a brand new opportunity that we'll looking forward to exploring. I would like to tell you that as far as indian communities go, some are very very small. And these are the things that I like to let people know that they can do. First of all, I think particularly if your a community provider that indian communities could always look for that kind of assistance and support if your ever in the vacinity or your in the area where you might be able to. We're looking for technical assistance. We're looking to other regular non-profits throughout the nation who haven't reached out into indian communities. We're looking for creating partnerships with people like the Neighborhood Reinvestment or LISK or Enterprise or any of the community programs that are available in your community, just make sure that their available or that the indian communities have access to them. And I think that will be able to bridge some of those gaps of understanding. Also, one of the other things is is that the Office of Native Ameircan Programs we only have six offices, and we throughout the nation, and our Chicago office, for example serves 36 states. We're obviously spread very very thin. And if anybody's interested in wanting to know more about indian programs, you can certainly contact one of our various regional offices, HUD offices. And we have information that's available to you, we'll be glad to come and give presentations to any community organization, we'll be glad to put you in touch with any tribes in your local area to try and create partnerships. And to see whether or not we can support each other through the initiatives that we have. I truly believe, just like the rest of the women sitting here who are very very committed to their perspective groups, and I am very committed to indian groups, that I truly believe that this is the era for change for indian communities. That this first step of empowerment and HASDA was just the first step. And being able to create a vehicle where they were able to make choices themselves that weren't demanded or mandated to them. But they have to be able to learn, to be able to know, what other resources are out there to make the right choices and the right change. And the second big piece is to get the private sector involved, and get the financing pieces involved so that we can create a market in indian country. Thank you. Gunash Shish.

Thank you to the panel. Those were great presentations. What I'd like to do now, is spend some time asking questions. I'm sure that you've stirred up your questions for the panelists.

Question: You had mentioned in regards to your organization, economic development activities, and social service activities. Will you please expand on the community/economic development activities that you all are working on, and specifically how it brings in your community members.

The question is asking Ruth to go into more detail on the community development activities that her community are involved in.

Answer: In the economic development component the property that we bought, the part of the thirty areas, the main artery of the eastern shore runs through that property. And so, we have kind of an intersection thats on Route 13. That creates for us, a commercial kind of space. So one of the things we want to do is start business within that space. There are opportunities on the Eastern Shore through the Visage organization for people to start small businesses through the micro enterprise program. So those businesses within the community interested in starting businesses, small businesses to bring in part-time income, or to create full-time income, than we are looking to working with them. Also on part of the property that we bought there is an extension that will run to 13, that is near a shopping mall. Not very close, not right up on it. But near the shopping mall. There are about eight lots there. That we intend to turn into economic development. These we hope will be a little larger than micro enterprise buildings. We're looking at certain kinds of buildings that we can put on that lot. We don't intend to sell that property. But we will lease it. And we'll be looking for money to put up buildings ourselves, that we can rent and lease to people that want those properties from us. In terms of social services, we don't so much call it social services as we do community ammenities. We think that just to have housing and business component. The business component is very important of course. But that part of the community polise is to enable people to be able to socialize and interact with each other. So we feel that it's important to have a community center, a day care center. We're planning to have a community theatre. We're talking about places where our young people can grow and develop. Like basketball courts. Tennis courts. When we said, tennis courts, freaked people out. Oh tennis courts. So we're thinking about the things that can help our youth grow and develop and develop other kinds of skills, and socializing skills and what have you. And other ways that they community can interactive with each other. And we think that those ammendities are just as important in the survivability of a community, as is the economic, as is the housing.

Question: Is your area an incorporated area on it's own or are you part of another city?

Answer: Part of us part of another town. Part of us, is part of the town of Exmore. We lay partly in the town of Exmore and partly in the town of Hampton. And that's creates a little bit of a craviate for us sometimes, but the county is pretty supportive of us. And the town with us pretty well. At last.

Question: Transportation adequacy?

Answer: On the Eastern Shore, recently, beginning last October, there has been a small tranportation system that has been initiated. A good number of people did not have their own cars and transportation. Now it isn't adequate to meet everybody's needs, but it is adequate to help some people get to work, people get to medical facilities, people get to other important appointments that they have. It only runs during the day. So, therefore people who start work like very early in the morning or stay at work after 6 o'clock, it doesn't help a great deal. But it does help a great deal, particularly those people who have to get to medical appointments and that kind of thing. Also, on the Eastern Shore there are a number of organizations that do have their own, I guess private transportation system. Like mental health and retardation has it's own vans, community agent areas has it's own vans. So they do some transporting of the clients that they serve. But for the public at large the small transportation system, Star Transit has been a tremendous help. And the initial monies for it was from the Department of Transportation, ISTEEP, that's a federal program, part of the highway bill. Other community entities kicked in funds that they had available. For instance, the Eastern Shore Community College that ran one of those little van systems, stopped running the van systems and donated the money that it had for tranportation to the Star Transit System and enabled any students going to the Eastern Shore Community College to ride for free if you were a student going to the college.

I know that in our programs in our multi-family program for years. We had very poor regulations on citing which are finally getting changed. That often meant that projects were put in totally inappropriate places when you were thinking about, particularly family projects, where your trying to encourage self-sufficiency, getting people back into jobs. And they were totally put way out, totally inaccessible to transportation. I think there's been a realization that's been a problem, unfortunately, the reg has to be changed very strongly, because a developer can appeal, and we don't have enough strength in our regs to break the appeal. Because this is a partnership, a private public partnership. But we're starting to see a change in that, where at least when there is accessible transportation, which in many rural communities there still isn't but if there is at least trying to keep it within those routes or something. Farm worker projects, allot of times, depending where they are, there may not be any accessible transportation. And there is nothing we can really do about that in the short term.

Statement: I do work for USDA Rural Development, and on the farm labor housing, initially I started out in the single family housing, I'm now in the multi-family housing and in the area I worked in previously in single-family housing, there was a farm labor housing program, and your community, as such has to be involved in that, because the labor housing was developed and it was next to small German community, and they objected so strenuously that they had a problem getting the water to the complex, which was already built. So this complex set there for quite some time before they could talk the town into letting go and letting them hook onto the water system. So this has to be a community project. You can't just say, you know, I want this here. Even though they need it, not everybody may want it. You have to really consider what is the community as a whole willing to allow. And work with them. The other is on multi-family housing, and I know Ilene probably can't answer this, and we have allot of housing complexes that are now about 20 years old. Their in need of rehabilitation, we've had some private owners, and oh course their in it for profit, they want money back in their pockets, and that's what they've done for most of the years, instead of putting it back into the complex. So you know have some housing units that have carpeting that's 20 years old, have appliances that's 20 years old, that type of thing. My concern is of course, funding, within a government project or agency. There's no funding to build new complexes, so that's a concern, as to where are we going to come up with the housing in the future, if there's no money for that, when you have to use the funding to take care of what you already have. So, and I don't know who can help me on that. You know if you don't have any other agencies that can provide some housing, than maybe we need to start working on the agencies that are there, and getting them the funding they need.

From our perspective, we work very hard to make sure, that we do not support communities that are doing Nimby. And it's just unacceptable for a community to say that they don't want farm workers in their community. Obviously there are things like local zoning, like it can be very difficult and typically it is non-profits that are taking the lead here in trying to get all the infrastructure in place and trying to get the zoning requirements. It is clearly the policy of USDA to strongly support any non-profit who is trying to put farm worker housing or any other kind of low-income housing and we do not accept that a community doesn't want farm workers. Because that community's fundamentally benefitting from those farm workers. So if their economically benefitting than our role is to try and educate them. Our role is to try to educate them, but if we have to we will do whatever we can, and we have started a more aggressive partnership with HUD to see what tools we can bring against communities that are trying to put a Nimby. So in the example there, I don't think that we did the wrong thing. We maybe should have figured out, and I don't know the specifics of clearly you don't want a project sitting there idle, for three years or something because that's bad for the project. People have a right to live somewhere. Basic fair housing civil rights laws. I want to be clear about our position. Oh, nimby is an American term for not in my back yard. And is basically a communities and individuals fighting against usually the housing projects that they don't want next to them, or in their community.

My experience with farm worker housing. People often object to it, because of a fear, of what the housing is going to be and in most cases it turns out to be the nicest housing in the community. And once it's built and once it's running, people go, oh, if I'd have realized that I wouldn't have objected.

We lived through, I really thought we were cutting our teeth on the one that we did, but we ended up cutting our teeth on the one we won the Fannie Mae Award of Excellence. We were invited by state government as I said before, but we ended up having to appeal on two fronts, with the lending institutes, the state director was not recommending this project for financing, and we even had to appeal a half rejection on the interim financing. We were right outside the town's jurisdiction, in the county and within a year and a half of operating we were invited by the town to be annexed. Now certainly they saw it, you know we have people that stop, the manager will tell us, quite frequently, about people coming from this area, going to the beaches, and stopping and saying, attorneys and other professionals, is this a condo, can I buy it, can I rent it, it's close to the beach. And another thing is we are good neighbors, it's in the way you manage and the way you look. And our housing is a major asset to the communities that we exist in. And certainly you want the community to work with you. And we do everything we can do. I don't even go in and mask it. It's just multi-family housing. This is housing. It's multi-family. But it's mainly for farmworkers. Because you gotta fight the battle. If you don't do it in the beginning, your going to get so far in the process that you don't know what your doing. I think as long as we do what we can do, and we're up front, if we don't get the community behind us, we're still going to move forward because it's the right thing to do.