Securing Our Future: Pathways to Affordable Housing And Stability Part 2 – ep.151

We’re excited to bring you part two of our powerful discussion from the Securing Our Future: Pathways to Affordable Housing and Stability webinar.

In part one, we heard from experts Lester Patrick, Rhodesia Ransom, and Kimberly Nash, who explored housing policy, resources, and economic stability. With Deidre Davey—California Hawaii NAACP Housing Committee Chair and seasoned realtor—moderating, the conversation laid the foundation for addressing housing challenges and opportunities.

Now, in part two, we’re diving into the Q&A session, where audience questions sparked even deeper insights and practical solutions. Tune in for this impactful conclusion, and let the expertise of our guests inspire meaningful action in your community. If today’s episode leaves you with fresh ideas, share it and leave a review to keep these important conversations going.

Melyssa Barrett:  Welcome to the Jali Podcast. I’m your host, Melyssa Barrett. This podcast is for those who are interested in the conversation around equity, diversity, and inclusion. Each week I’ll be interviewing a guest who has something special to share or is actively part of building solutions in the space. Let’s get started. Welcome back to the Jali Podcast. I’m your host, Meyissa Barrett, and I am thrilled to have you join us for part two of our impactful discussion from the securing our Future Pathways to Affordable Housing and stability webinar. Last week in part one we heard from our panel of experts including Lester Patrick Rhodesia Ransom and Kimberly Nash, who shared their unique insights into housing policy resources and pathways to economic stability. Guiding this important conversation was our moderator, California Hawaii, N-A-A-C-P Housing Committee chair and seasoned realtor Deidra Davey, who also brought her expertise to the table, setting the context for the challenges and opportunities around housing. Today in part two, we’ll dive into the q and a session where audience questions brought even more depth and practical advice to the discussion. Let’s jump back in and hear from our experts one last time.

D’Adrea Davie:  Before we open the floor for questions, I’d like to provide just a quick summary of today’s discussion because we’ve heard about critical role of housing while the critical role that the housing authority does play in providing resources and assistance to low income homeless population, low income to moderate we’ll say as well the impact of housing policies in our communities and the important of creating pathways to affordable housing and also taking advantage of the assistance that’s available when you are ready to go into home ownership. So with that, we now have the time for questions from the audience. Feel free to raise your hand and or type the questions in the chat. And we do have some in the chat, but I do know that Ms. Glenda has had her hand up for a while, so if we can go ahead and allow Glenda to ask her questions first.

Speaker 3:  Yes, good morning to all of you. Or afternoon, I apologize. I have a question about the planning commission. Does city council doesn’t have to approve the planning commission’s decisions?

D’Adrea Davie:  So I’ll answer that question. So yes, the city council does have to approve whatever most decisions that the planning commission makes. Some decisions can be administratively done, so it doesn’t have to go to the city council, but most do, yes, they do have to go to city council. The first stop is your planning commission

Speaker 3:  Initial contract of any business.

D’Adrea Davie:  Sometimes they can go straight to city council, just all really does depend. But for the majority of the people who are wanting to get permitted, they do have to go to planning. It just depends on what the permits are for. And then once the planning department or planning commission has their conversation, then yes, it does go up to the city council. Sometimes it can bypass planning.

Speaker 3:  I think, I apologize, I wasn’t clear. When it come to housing they should know whatever the planning is for that corporations to build. They should be aware of those laws and that implementation prior to development.

D’Adrea Davie:  The city council you’re speaking of? Yes. So yes, they normally are. Absolutely. Okay, I heard I see your hand. Did you want to,

Speaker 3:  I just wanted to say because I heard something about sometime the city council isn’t always aware.

Rhodesia Ransom:  Yes. So what I was going to refer to is things that are written in, some things are in ordinances and codes and if things are so as example, what would go to a commission and a council are things that are outside of ordinary uses. So there’s what’s called the general plan, which is a project of how the city’s supposed to be created. That’s a joint project, starts at the planning commission, goes to the city council. Some things if they’re already part of the ordinance, they don’t have to go to the city council. But when you’re talking about it seems like you’re talking about master planned growing communities, building new communities, something that large definitely would start first stop lots of studies, planning commission, and then it just goes for with a recommendation if you will to the city council. And sometimes depending on your council members, are they actually going to do the homework and dig into it and figure it out or what kind of relationships do they have in the community with people who are going to have them change the project.

Sometimes we see things like that where a planning commission will do all the work and it’ll get to a city council and it just really depends on the politics of your community, but it definitely something small. Let’s just pretend there’s going to be a store. If it’s already zoned for that, then it could just go to planning commission Council will get something telling them that this is what the planning did versus something pretty large where there’s environmental quality studies. That’s another thing we should talk about. We don’t have time, but it’s called qua. It’s environmental quality. It’s something that anytime there’s a big project that’s coming to be done, there has to be like hearings. Do we need to mitigate things that will impact the environment? Sometimes those things are used as a weapon to slow down building. And so those are some other things that go before a planning commission and may not involve a city council. So it’s all written into planning. Commissioners are, they subscribe to a state law that’s separate than the rules of the city council. And so there’s overlap, but I don’t want to say that the city council gets as involved in zoning and planning as a planning commissioner would.

D’Adrea Davie:  Thank you Glenda for the question. And while you’re up here Rhodesia, there’s another question. Why has it been so difficult to get some cities in San Juan King to comply with the housing element?

Rhodesia Ransom:  Part of it is, I want to say just sheer ignorance. This is something that just comes to you. The staff does most of the work on the housing element. They prepare it, they present it to you with the recommendation and no one from the community knows what it is, so no one’s going to come and protest it and things like that. It’s just kind of something that you rubber stamp that the staff gives you if you’re not the kind of commissioner who does your homework and knows what it is. And the fact that developers are not in a hurry to build low and medium rate housing because there’s no incentive for them to build it. They have a bottom line and that’s one reason. The other reason is there’s also the not in my backyard, people are serious. There’s a lot of people who they got their house and they don’t care about nobody else getting theirs and they will come and protest everything from, we were protested for a parks that were like $1,700 a month for one bedroom and people came to protest. So it’s really about the culture of the community. It’s a community asking for and pushing for and really moving the obstacles out of the way. Most people are not even engaged and know that this is part of the project. And it varies from community. I know in the city of Tracy, they’re not in my backyard people. We have a slow growth ordinance Measure A that was passed. So there’s people here, generations, they always say, I’ve been here five generations. They don’t want to see anything built here, which creates further exacerbates the housing crisis.

D’Adrea Davie:  Exactly. So thank you for that explanation.

Lester Patrick:  Could I also comment on that? I’d just like to comment on the low income tax credits. There’s not enough that can be said about that because that does encourage investor developers to get involved and be a low, low-income housing because they get a tax credit and they maintain that tax credit for the period of time. So that can be 30 or 40 years and the housing is appreciated during that period. So there’s a lot of money and a lot of incentives for developers to get involved with low income tax credit and the building affordable housing. We have several projects that we have built with low income tax credit. Outside of that we could not have done it.

D’Adrea Davie:  And can you explain why the tax credits are so important when it comes to building affordable housing?

Lester Patrick:  Yes, because it gives the potential developer the opportunity to write off his taxes or write off their taxes rather for the company during that period, during that period of time. And then they’re sold on the market to investors, investors purchase them and there’s no real money coming. I shouldn’t say no real money, but the majority of the money is not coming from the federal government, the majority.

D’Adrea Davie:  And for these low income tax credit projects, are these mainly rentals or are they any opportunities for home ownership?

Lester Patrick:  They initiate as rentals. For example, we have built, like I said, several projects using low income tax credits. However, once those projects are completed, and when I say project, I’m really not talking about the projects. But once those constructions are completed, then the people who inhabit them are eligible for the other programs that we offer. So that could very well be an opportunity to purchase. And it all depends upon what the housing authority and the developer agrees to upfront. So if we want to make this a mixed income development, then that’s what you do. If you’re going to want to make some that are going to be available for certain programs so that people can become homeowners, then that’s what you put into the contract. It’s really important that people in the community understand these things because there’s so much opportunity, but unless people come and they request certain things, some things just can’t get done because there’s enough other things to be done to do what commissioners have decided that we’re going to tackle as a project.

D’Adrea Davie:  And so also Mr. Patrick Leg, if somebody is interested as you say, to go and advocate for this, say a project that’s for affordable housing and say they want more services included, childcare on the premises or something like that, what would be your advice for the best way for them to advocate for that project?

Lester Patrick:  That’s an excellent question. We do that when we build, I mentioned earlier the family self-sufficiency support. When we do a development, we include all of the things that we can possibly include that can help people make themselves self-sufficient and able to move out of low income housing. That’s our goal always. So we have childcare for example at Sierra Vista and Conway as well. We learned that the reading rate for children below between K through third grade I believe was at zero. The kids who live in those areas, we have started schools, charter schools, and now we are educating them. The whole goal is so that they won’t repeat the cycle and we are seeing results already, but if a person lives in an area that we’re responsible for that they don’t have these things, they need to come to a meeting and request it, just come and request it, call the housing authority, but come to a meeting and publicly request it before the commission and we have to deal with it.

D’Adrea Davie:  That’s wonderful advice because a lot of people don’t know that they can come to your meetings, their opinion, so that’s wonderful. I’m going to ask that we bring up Rodia, Kimberly and Mr. Patrick Alter because there’s some questions and I don’t know who all will be answering. I see a hand up for Tamara Michael.

Speaker 6:  Yes, thank you. I heard some conversations about tax breaks for developers, but for people who would say folks that own raw land that they’re interested in putting tiny homes or things like that, is there a grant money available for projects like that and if so, is there a percentage or something that you would have to declare would be available for low income housing or something like that?

D’Adrea Davie:  Great question. Would you like to or Mr. Patrick?

Lester Patrick:  We have not made final decisions as to whether or not we are going to deal with tiny homes, but we have investigated and what we have determined so far is that the cost per door is just too great for what we can do. Now, there might be some agencies who can implement and do a good job of doing that, but so far we have not felt that we could. But the same monies that are available for low income housing or affordable housing is available to do those kinds of things.

Rhodesia Ransom:  I was going to say, so when you’re asking, you said you mentioned raw land is going to depend. There are different tax credits depending on the area, like the need in the area. Certain areas have more credits than others. I’m not familiar with the program for Tiny homes. I do know that there aren’t incentives for putting some sort of housing, whether it’s tiny homes on faith-based properties where before there was no support for that. That was something that churches had to do on their own. So they are new incentives that I am aware of that will help faith-based organizations do tiny homes or some sort of support or housing. If I find the answer to your question, I will like no,

D’Adrea Davie:  And I’ll just add on that there are grants out there. It may not be on the level of with the housing authority. Sometimes state and federal may have grants to help with the development of those type of homes, but you want to check what your local ordinance to make sure that they even allow tiny homes in the area that you’re considering purchasing in. And then also for grants, you can look at different organizations like Enterprise or lisc and those type of organizations do provide different grants for building and development. And then also I would check again with the local municipalities because they do have what’s called CDBG money, which is the community block and development grant and home money. And a lot of times if that type of building is allowed in San Joaquin County or within the city are trying to develop in, then you can put a proposal in for those funds to help fund your project. And that’s on the county level. CDBG is available on the county level. It’s available on a city level as well.

Speaker 7:  Thank you. I have a question for Kimberly. As far as when people are buying homes, is it still important to have two months of seasoned funds? And secondly, if they’re going to be gifted the funds, the person that is gifting the funds, do they still verify that their funds have been seasoned?

Kimberly Nash:  So for a conventional loan, conventional financing, they do not require that the funds are seasoned. And so that was how it used to be, but that is not the case anymore. They do want to see where it has came from and so they will track that, but it does not have to be seasoned for gift funds. For the, what was the first question you asked me, Bonita? I’m sorry, one more time.

Speaker 7:  Oh, just if the person is planning to buy a property, if they have to show proof that the funds have been in their account for a certain,

Kimberly Nash:  So if it’s gift, they do not. But if a buyer is purchasing a property, and this is the amount of money that they’re using, let’s say if it’s 15,000 and that’s in their checking account or savings account or money market, they do have to show two months of that it’s been there. So if it was deposited in May, then June and July statements would show that it’s seasoned prior to that. They do want to see where it has came from. You do have to track it.

Speaker 7:  Thank you.

D’Adrea Davie:  Thank you for the question, Benita. And then we also have another question in regards to the student loans. So the question is, has the student loan forgiveness program aided many in purchasing a home? You want to take that Kimberly?

Kimberly Nash:  It in fact has. Yes. And so I see it all the time and I understand and know that we have been returning back to school or our education is really is super important to us. And at the end of this, you have 150,000 or 200, I saw even 400 in student loan debt. And so where the payments are 3400, 3800 and now you have a mortgage payment on top of that. And so I absolutely see it all the time. And Wood has helped. It’s really just that if it’s during Covid, we were able to calculate 25%. There has been some programs we are no longer under that. And so they are looking at some, A great example would be there’s A BMR that we were looking, one of my buyers were looking at purchasing, and so their requirements was 40% debt to income ratio. And with these large student loan debt, I think they were at 43 or 44%.

Now, logically you’re thinking, if I can afford to pay a mortgage rent of $3,800, then surely I can afford to pay the BMR was selling for 332,000 and double it. So surely my payment would be 2,800. I can afford that. And that is where it gets difficult. It’s challenging because there are a lot of buyers that can afford the mortgage payment. They should be in a home, but because of some of the requirements, it has prevented them. And so that is something that should be looked at that because there’s no way around, there’s no way around the mortgage lending guidelines when it comes to the debt to income ratio. And so yeah, it is.

D’Adrea Davie:  Thank you for that answer, Kimberly. And if you can just let them know what BMR stands for. I’m sorry.

Kimberly Nash:  So low market rate. So in cities there’s properties that you can purchase that are below market rate. And so this particular property is a condo. The condos in that development are selling for 800,000, 900,000. This property was selling it for 332,000 and with a hundred thousand dollars grant for down payment assistance. Wonderful opportunity, great opportunity. And just make sure I say that, you’ll find that in a lot of cities and where there’s low market rates and there’s programs that will help you to purchase it. So even if you don’t have the down payment assistance, typically it comes with down payment assistance to help.

D’Adrea Davie:  And Kimberly, we talked a lot about down payment assistance, but can you also let them know the importance of understanding the closing cost and you also have to have funds for that as well.

Kimberly Nash:  Typically, there’s 3% that you would put down for your down payment. That 3% is going to be used up in closing costs, which is it’s either the lender fees now, sometimes even the fee that now that they’ve changed it, the fee that you have to pay for your real estate agent, but typically it’s in property taxes, your impound account, there’s a certain amount of money that you have to have to fund for your property taxes and insurance. And so when it’s all said and you’re at the closing table, typically that comes out to a good 10 or $15,000. And so traditionally there’s been a grant, the funds are now depleted. They have been exhausted as of this month, but it’s called BWI, black Wealth Initiative. And so it’s a $10,000 forgivable grant, and that helps for your closing costs. That comes out to 10 or $15,000.

That grant helps. That way the money that you put down goes directly to lowering the principal balance, which then goes to lowering your mortgage payment. Or you can use it for paying down the interest rate, which relates to bringing down your mortgage payment just recently. And you can stack them so you can use the $10,000 grant for your closing costs and then the $20,000 grant for down payment assistance and then another $5,000 grant for down payment assistance. And so we’ve stacked them to where it came out to be about $70,000 that we were able to use in down payment assistance and closing costs and buying the interest rate down.

D’Adrea Davie:  Perfect. Thank you for that. Kimberly, if we can bring Rhodesia back up. The question is, can you speak on banking, banking, community Reinvestment Act, CRA and creative financing programs through government? So

Rhodesia Ransom:  I actually can’t, so you’re talking about Creative Bank. I’ve been out of the lending area for quite some time, so I really don’t really want to pretend like I know the answer to that particular question. So if there was one, there is a government, a state loan that I’m familiar with that we want to make sure that’s sustainable. The California Dream Loan, one of the things that I would like to see happen is make sure that they run out of those funds really quickly. We need to make sure that we’re building that there is a sustainability feature, which is an equity share, probably very related to some of the programs that Kimberly Nash just spoke about, where it’s like you get assistance with getting entry, but then you’re going to pay it forward by sharing the equity or portion of the equity. So those are very good entryway that are government lending programs or down payment assistance programs that I’m aware of. But other than that, I don’t want to go deeper than what I know. So thank you.

D’Adrea Davie:  No problem. Thank you for that response. I’m actually going to ask if we can bring up Mr. Bivens Melyssa, because I know he asked this question, but he knows the answer to it, so I’d like for him to give us his knowledge. If you don’t mind.

Robert Bivens:  Thank you for asking the question. And CRA is the Community Reinvestment Act that was initiated in 1977 where banks are required to make loans to minority business people and to minorities for homeowners brought up by black folk as usual. But they’re not monitored nor are the cities to my knowledge, and that’s why IS or state utilizing their tax dollars as leverage with the banks that do not follow the federal regulations of inclusionary programs for black people. So that was the reason for the question. And so that everybody can know that one, they have a responsibility and a law in place that was just upgraded last year for lending responsibilities to black folk. And I’m going to say black folk because everybody else benefits as well as the banks that do mergers, have commitments that they’ve signed commitments with the government to make loan, have available, loan programs, have available grant programs, consumer loans as well as home loans, business loans. So those are some areas that elected officials as well as people in the community need to know that there’s new money out there, there’s fresh obligations out there, and we need to take the advantage of it. And as an former elected official, that’s something that all of our local level governments have failed to do is holding the lending institutions accountable or use the government’s money as leverage to force them to implement CRA.

Lester Patrick:  Can I also, along those same lines, as far as lack of monitoring here in the county, there is an organization, some of you I’m sure know about it already, a committee, the COC, but the continuum of care, and that’s how HUD funnels all of the money designated for homelessness. And it consists of a group of organizations that receive that money and that gets some share of it. Those kinds of committees need to be, we need to attend those meetings, we need to attend those meetings, give input as to why it is so much money coming in, but the homeless problem still exists. Those are real questions because we get a lot of money and should it be going to, one or two organizations should be going to any organization, for example, that’s not responsible for developing housing. That makes no sense, but that is what happened. So we need to be I’m sorry,

D’Adrea Davie:  You are absolutely. Did you want to say something?

Lester Patrick:  No, I was just going to say we need to be asking those tough questions. Is the COC they receiving that money? And this is designated money for homelessness by hu,

D’Adrea Davie:  You want to add onto that?

Rhodesia Ransom:

No, I was going to just say overall thank you Mr. Bivins for bringing that up. It’s actually part of a bigger systemic issue. When we look at all of the different systems of government, all of the different policies we’ve seen over decades, right? So we want to address housing, homelessness, education, things where traditionally there were codes that said we as black folks weren’t able to access those things. We now have rules that say we’re supposed to do it, but who’s holding people accountable? So we need to be aware of things like the CRA that I just learned about. I was three years old in 1977. But if that’s a thing, we need to know those things. And one of the things I’d like to do going into the state legislature right now, we have the Prop 2 0 9 and people are using that as an excuse for why we cannot do things.

But if there are things on the books that will help create a system that is inclusive, we need to make sure that it’s just not on the books and we need to make sure that the people it’s supposed to serve, whether it’s the COC or the banking institution, we need to hold all of those folks accountable. There’s very little accountability that I’ve seen in Sacramento. They just write a lot of laws and leave those laws and never check back to see if they’re effective. I come from a world where you don’t just get money for things that are not working. You don’t just get to have a law or a thing on the books if it’s not working or serving who it’s supposed to serve. So it’s really who are we holding accountable to make sure that happens. That is why it’s important that we all are engaged, whether it’s individually through an organization like the N-A-A-C-P or Delta Sigma Theta or whatever, whether it’s nrap, it’s really important that we are bringing people to the table to make sure people are inclusive and accountable.

D’Adrea Davie:  Yes. Thank you. That’s perfect. And we have one more question and then we’re going to wrap this up because I know we were past our time.

Speaker 10:  Thank you. Is that me?

D’Adrea Davie:  Kimberly Range? Yes.

Speaker 10:   Okay,

Thank you. De Rodia said it in terms of she named the organizations that could come to the table or advocate, and maybe it’s my ignorance, but that’s probably what we need is a collective group so we’re all on the same page seeing the same hymnal, and that would help a part of education so that when we do go and do advocacy work, we’re knowledgeable and we are strength in numbers. Because if I went to city council to talk about housing, I would be sitting there silent. I’m just being truthful. And I think this session has been extremely helpful. I hope it’s not a one and done where organizations and the community can get together and continue learning because new things pop up. And if we’re going to go advocate, we need to know what to say. What does that mean and how does that impact the community?

How does that impact me and my family? So that’s one thing. The second thing is many of you, I moved back home to California about what now? Eight, nine years ago, what was back east were two programs. One was the MPDU, which was moderately priced dwelling units. That was in Montgomery County. That is where in order for builders to build homes, they had to set aside 20% for moderately priced homes. They either built the homes within the community or had a plot of land where they built some affordable homes where people could purchase a townhouse. Back then, way back then would be maybe a regularly priced townhome back east would be maybe 200 something thousand dollars. And then a smaller unit that’s squished in between, these are townhouses in between the other units, maybe $50,000. The other program that I was very much aware of, and I had actually was going to buy a home in there.

And then I was like, I’m not buying a home there because it’s so far away from work, which is the Hope six project, which they built a whole community. And within that community you actually had section eight low income, regularly priced homes. So you might’ve had a home for 500,000, and then someone who was on housing in a townhouse somewhere in the community that paid the price of what housing charges. So I’m just curious as to, and that was a federal program. Montgomery County was more or less a, I think that was like a county ordinance or something. What’s the advocacy behind what grants are out there that could support something of a community? And then on the other end, in terms of the county where Montgomery County had this program, what do we need to advocate for to have, because we’ve got all these builders building these million dollar homes, what’s their responsibility to the community and how do we advocate for that? So that’s the end of my questions. Thank you.

Lester Patrick:  One of the things that you hit upon is a concept called mixed income housing.

Speaker 10:  Absolutely. That’s what it was.

Lester Patrick:  It’s mixed income housing. We build that, the housing authority of the county of San Joaquin. Some of our developments are mixed income. Some of the people are not low income, and there are good reasons for doing that. First of all, there’s intermixing of low income people and people who are not low income, and it gives them some incentive to not want to be low income. Also, that goes without saying. And there is a lot of support for mixed income developments and it is just dependent the local housing authority. And these are federal funds, the local housing authority and the developer, one of the ways it’s done is through low income housing tax credit. That’s how we did mixed income housing. I know there’s no time for me to go back and show you some of those, but hopefully there will be another time. But that’s an excellent comment, Kim, because we need more of those.

D’Adrea Davie:  Absolutely. And Rod, you want to,

Rhodesia Ransom:  Yeah, so there’s different ways to do that. So in the development world, what you described, so in the housing authority world, it’s mixed income. In the development world, we refer to that as affordable by design. Were you designing something smaller? Because at the end of the day, if you’re working with private developers, what they care about is bottom line, can they afford to do this? And the other thing you described is that set aside, it’s housing, right? Where you’re asking a developer, look, you’re going to come make all this money in our town, which I personally work well with developers because I think we need people to build the housing, but you do have to ask them to be accountable. And if they can set something aside or if they can, if you can’t afford to put it aside, can you give a credit to the community so that we can make sure that there is access to affordable housing in our community?

In some states, they’re able to do that better because I’m going to be a hundred percent honest with you. Having worked. As for Congressman Harder, one of my jobs was to look at what other states were doing and it just costs less to build some housing in some other states because of how we, in California, we like our fresh air, we like those things that we like that costs more to regulate. And so we’re going to have to ask ourselves, how do we walk and chew gum? How do we work with CQA and make it so that these developers don’t have to go to 10 different agencies to approve one project. Time is money. We can point our fingers at the developers, but we also need to make sure that we are making these cities like the Tracy Planning Department cost these developers so much money because it takes so long to do anything.

Lawsuits from developers suing a city because they want to build houses and they’re not getting approvals. We have to make sure that we are looking at everything affordable by design is what you just talked about, mixed use housing. Those bring back the duplexes, bring back the townhouses, put them in the same community, not so much as people are gaining equity, they can take their little growing family from the smaller home to the bigger home. You don’t see that anymore in communities. That’s what planning commissions do. That’s what housing element, that’s what general plans do is design how communities are built. And so I hope that was helpful, but there’s just different ways to skin a cat and we have to figure out how to do that.

Speaker 10:  That was actually very helpful. It’s just, it’s educating communities, educating community-based organizations and folks so that when we are sitting in front of city council or whatever with the planning commission, we’re knowledgeable and we hold them accountable. Thank you so

Rhodesia Ransom:  Much. And now you know what to ask for, right? When you go to your city council, you can say, why are we doing affordable by design? Why aren’t we asking the developers for a certain percentage? That’s called inclusionary. That’s what that’s called. So thank you.

D’Adrea Davie:  I’m glad you brought that up, Rhodesia, because it’s important that when that housing element comes around and it comes around every, what, five years or so, you definitely want to make sure that you’re at the table and saying, Hey, we need to have the local municipality put inclusionary zoning in the housing element and then hold them responsible for when projects come up to make sure that it’s included. And yeah, it is an extra cost. There’s extra requirements that the developer has to do, but if your area needs it, then they need to comply and just do it. You have to advocate for that kind of thing, and you have to hold them accountable. So anyways, I just want to thank you all for this conversation. I want to thank our presenters. If we can give them a round of applause. Ms. Rhodesia, Lester and Kimberly, we appreciate you sharing your knowledge today. And then I am going to go and everybody who asks the questions to contribute to the conversation, thank you. And I’m going to give this back over to Delta Sigma Theta. Thank you for inviting us all and I’ll give it back to Benita. Thank

Speaker 7:  You. My first one to take the time to say thank you to everyone who agreed to be on the panel today. We appreciate all your wisdom and the wealth of knowledge that you displayed. It was very informative. I also would like to take the opportunity to introduce the Economic Development Committee, who we work together to bring these important topics to you today. One of the committee members is our VP of Delta Sigma Beta. Tanya Vaughn. She’s not on camera, but the other person is Tamara Michael. There she is, and myself, Benita Turner. And our chairperson is Melissa Barrett. So I just wanted to introduce each of us and I hope that you heard something today that will be helpful to you, a family member or someone in your committee, I mean in your community, that you could go out and share with them because the information is very important and it’s very serious for securing not only our future, but those around us. So hopefully they can find a pathway to affordable housing and stability. So once again, thank each and every one of you for taking the time out to spend with us today, and I wish you a blessed weekend and go forth and be blessed. Thank you, and bye-bye.Melyssa Barrett:  Thank you for tuning into part two of this special conversation on affordable housing and stability. I hope the insights shared by our panel and the invaluable expertise of our moderator, Deidra Davey, resonate with you and inspire meaningful action in your own community. Remember, securing our future begins with connecting, sharing knowledge and building pathways to long-term economic stability for everyone. If today’s q and a left you with fresh perspectives or ideas, please share this episode and leave a review to keep these conversations going. Until next time, I’m Melissa Barrick and this is the Jali Podcast where we continue to amplify voices and empower communities one story at a time. Thanks for joining me on the Jolly Podcast. Please subscribe so you won’t miss an episode. See you next week.

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