- Briefly read our mission statement. The Coalition of Low-Income and Homeless Citizens are a grassroots
- self-help organization dedicated to challenging the root causes of poverty. Recognizing a real lack
- of power, control, and public voice among low-income and homeless people are primary goals to create
- political will amongst ourselves and our community. Through advocacy, technical assistance, and public
- voice, we plan to expand our options and choices to take control of our lives and mobilize for social change.
- And the specific reason we call this press conference is to announce a proposal for the city's use of
- $1.2 million COA from the fall. And George is going to briefly outline a proposal to use it as state
- capital for a housing trust fund. George Gale is going to briefly outline a proposal and explain a housing
- trust fund and show you how it's going to describe the urgency of using this money for housing. Yeah,
- basically we're proposing that the city place
- the entire $1.2 million windfall into a housing trust fund. We want it to be seed money to get the fund
- started. The housing trust fund will primarily be a loan fund for nonprofit and for-profit housing developers
- to create low-income housing here in Bloomington, Monroe County. Specifically, the fund will create
- permanently affordable housing. Currently, a lot of the city's tax dollars are spent on low-income housing
- that will stay low-income for a period of five to 10 years.
- Because the money will be a loan fund, the money will be recycled and used over and over. We strongly
- feel that the co-op windfall should be invested and not spent on a one-time investment. We feel that
- this would be the most fiscally responsible way to use the money in the housings without question, the
- most pressing need in our community. Shelter Incorporated, Helen Renari, just this week, stated that 33%
- their intake is up 33% over last year at this time. And I think the big question is we're here to say
- it's stressed. And it's stressing not just for what I call low-cost housing. And with the federal cutbacks,
- the Section 8 need to change the public's mind about it being priority housing. And that we see the
- commitment for housing is going to be right here.
- buying on us right here. And this trust fund is one way, if not a very good way, to seal that commitment
- as a community. We'd like instead of just speaking to you, maybe open it up for questions, because we're
- not sure how much people know about the trust fund. Currently, there's been lots of talk about a housing
- trust fund. But I think a lot of people are talking about different types of funds. And we want to be
- able to clarify what we're talking about.
- How is the trust fund going to work so that it doesn't just disappear? Yeah, it'll be a loan fund. And
- money will need to be paid back into the fund every three to five years. An example would be, say, Catch
- Citizens Acting Together for Cooperative Housing borrowed $200,000 to build, let's say, five or six
- units of low-income housing. As they pay the money back into the fund, Monroe County Housing Solutions
- could borrow that same money
- to develop, to add to the land trust or something similar. So the money's, it's basically a revolving
- loan fund. How are you going to ensure that that money gets paid back? That'll be, we won't, one that
- we should say is the Department of Redevelopment will administer the fund and the city council and the
- mayor will appoint a board, a set of board of directors who will oversee the fund. And it'll be the
- board of the directors that
- the Council and the Department of Redevelopment will be responsible for being sure the money is repaid.
- And in addition to acting as a revolving loan fund, the money is going to help leverage additional funds
- from outside sources and bring capital into the community. Most housing trust funds on average leverage
- $5.00, generate $5.00, bring $5.00 into their community for development. For example, the state of Maine's
- housing trust fund mortgage in 1992 alone
- with a seed capital of $4.2 million, leverage of $98 million. Essentially, when you are, especially
- a nonprofit housing developer, it's really hard to get people to invest in your project if you don't
- have site control. And once you have acquired the land or a large sum of money from something like the
- Housing Trust Fund, other funding institutions are going to be more interested in funding your project.
- Whether that could be federal programs such as Home and CDBG, local funding sources,
- bankers, investors, and also the state Housing Finance Authority. So what Adam is saying is it will
- bring lots of money to this community that would not be here. It is very possible that within 20 years
- that the Housing Trust Fund, with its $1.2 million seed capital, will bring in $28.8 million in the
- fact that the $1.2 million would be used over four times over a 20-year period, and then with
- The leveraging of $5 to every trust fund dollar would come out to about $28.8 million. And Mary Brooks
- from the Housing Trust Fund Project in California has found that this is coming in half. It means they
- want some money. And we should probably also clearly indicate that this is only seed capital for the
- trust fund. That was critical to the formation of any housing trust fund.
- that receive dedicated revenue sources that will continue pouring money into the fund. And that although
- the money is held in trust and it is recycled, 1.2 million dollars isn't going to live. Even if we did
- generate the 20 million dollars over a 20-year period, it's not really going to address the kind of
- substantive needs that exist in this community. What do you feel are the advantages of your proposal
- over others?
- what is going to be your selling point for it? Well, I think, absolutely. Well, it's fiscal. I understand
- there is a definite need for a low end, or at least reasonably priced housing. Yeah, exactly. I mean,
- it's outrageous what they charge. I understand the need for that. How bad is the, it seems to be well
- hidden in this community. How bad is the homeless situation?
- Do they want to answer that? I'll address it. It's bad enough that right now I've got two sets of family
- living in my trailer with me because they can't afford the rent. And the homeless shelter, I will say,
- they have helped. They help a lot of people. But they get out, you know, you get so much people in,
- you know, to the homeless shelter, then they get a place to live. And the reality hits that
- that income, that rent is too much, the utilities are too much for them. And they come back to be homeless
- again. In this area, this year alone, I myself have took in at least 11 families this year. And that's
- because I, and I don't, they don't pay me nothing. I let them come in so that they can help save their
- money to be able to have a place to live. This one family that's staying with me has four children.
- She can't find a place that'll accept her and her children because she's got four children and she's
- a single parent. She can't afford the rent. She's working a minimum wage job. It's bad. It's real bad.
- I see people sitting in a park and sleeping in it. I live by Cascades Park and I see people play at
- the park. They have their children playing at the park late at night and then I'll come by later and
- see their children sleeping in the back of their car and they're sleeping in their car.
- because they have no home. Currently Shelter Inc. has about a dozen families, all of whom have emergency
- needs on a waiting list. These are people we are not yet helping. We also have seen on a scale with
- the Blemerton Housing Authority that there is about an average of, there's about
- from what I've heard from 1992 to 1994, we had an average of, we started out with 400 and we came up
- with 4,000 people that were homeless. 2,000 of that average is on a waiting list at the Bloomington
- Housing Authority. They had to cut their certification signups because they didn't have any place to put them.
- the other two percent the other two percent of the of that two thousand are either have been relocated
- because of present housing that was tore down because of because of developing like uh... like condominiums
- and so forth and they were relocated because they were good tenants the other ten percent of that of
- that uh... we're are homeless now living on our streets of Monroe county and they desperately need homes
- do you have any designs as far as uh...
- What do you want the housing to be for low-end? Are there any designs what I'm trying to get at as far
- as self-sufficiency as much as possible? Because a hard core fact of life that I've learned is you can't
- depend on, you especially can't depend on the government for anything. As far as, are you going to have
- like a community garden
- something like that where you can grow your own food. Is it going to be that sort of thing or? The housing
- will be scattered all over the community. We're not, we definitely are not advocating for a housing
- project of any sort. It would be basically a loan pool for, for nonprofit and for-profit housing developers
- to develop housing anywhere throughout the community. And, and definitely we would, I think in our proposal,
- scattered site is one of the priorities. And would it be up to the
- that you mentioned earlier to keep, to make sure that this housing remains affordable? Yeah, I think
- that would be a condition, assuming the monies that remain commonly affordable. One of the things we've
- talked about this funding is, as the federal government bails out of the Section 8, the vouchers and
- the certificates, that that money could be pooled to save and protect the housing complexes that we
- have here, which already have anywhere from 150 to 350 families.
- I mean, you're talking about some 2,000 units here. This is Shelter Incorporated? No, this is, I'm talking
- about all your private-based complexes like Henderson, Oatdale, Country View, there's Havy Square. Federally
- subsidized. Federally subsidized. They're all being cut, and it is,
- They have made a commitment to go out of the business of Section 8, but we have got families sitting
- there. We've got elderly and disabled. One of the things that's been so hard is that everybody that
- general public thinks, well, there's income housing for people that are below the poverty line of $13,800.
- It's not so. You have to map. Before, you had to be a priority. You could be disabled or elderly or
- paying more than $50 per city to rent.
- You have to be a priority in several ways. And that's going to get tighter. And what we're finding,
- like Summit Point, they've got 23 apartments that will accept certificates. They're deciding to not
- do it anymore. At least this is what we found out yesterday. And starting next year, that they may go
- flat market rate. Well, as those cutbacks federally are going to affect, all these places that just
- have been scattered
- 23, 25% at Section 8, and we're going to be losing them. So they're going to scale down or eliminate
- Section 8 funding without making any concessions for those who are already on the funding? Right, exactly.
- It is a government that has really made a decision that homelessness is a lifestyle and a residue of merit.
- That's the stigma. How are you going to overcome that stigma? That's your battle right there. I mean,
- the stigma is that you are where you're at because you want to be there. Well, I'll tell you what, I'm
- not homeless. I'm fortunate. I work, but I pay 70% of my income just to have a roof over my head. I
- don't even know if I'm going to get to go back to college. I came to Bloomington because I thought,
- I heard it was a great place.
- You know, great school. You know, I thought this is a really neat place. I can learn a lot. You know,
- I'm socially active. Well, I'm just trying to keep a lip over my head, and it's ridiculous. And I'm
- a hard worker, you know? And there's a lot of people, they're out there, they're paying, you know, they're
- paying over 75% some of them. I mean, they're just, they're not making it, you know? And the most they
- can get is maybe some food stamps.
- you know, they can't afford to have the car insurance, they can't afford to have the gas to get to the
- job. So... Over 90% of the people, like, in intakes and surveys at Shelter Incorporated actually are
- employed and working, they have been full-time, they have been in excess of four hours a week, so I
- think it can be demonstrated, it's like sufficiently demonstrated clearly in this community that there isn't
- It isn't a question of like lazy or just a question of extraordinary. But as an organization, how do
- you plan to counter that? And is this proposal a part of that? Are you trying to attempt to set a public
- agenda? Yeah, we see this as a critical way of returning control of housing in this community and to
- the people that live here. Tom, did you?
- Yes, I'd just like to point out that The Times recently published an article, a study out of Washington
- DC that demonstrated Bloomington was among the states least affordable in terms of rent. It is the number
- one highest rent area in the state. And that article came out about three weeks ago or so independently
- of Bloomington researchers. It was out of Washington DC. What we're saying is we've got people paying
- two and three weeks worth of income for a monthly rent. And that's the nitty gritty. We're not proposing
- that the city is gonna step in and solve the housing problem. We think this is one way that we can seriously
- address the community's housing needs. We think currently the way the city spends tax dollars on housing
- is very inefficient. We're proposing more inefficient use of city funds. Currently, we give large tax
- abatements, grants, and loans
- for-profit housing developers to build low-income housing that only stays low-income or low-cost for
- five to 10 years. And that is very short-sighted. We have, like Tom said, one of the most serious housing
- crisis in Indiana and in the Midwest. And if we're gonna spend public dollars on it, we need to do it
- efficiently. And I think without question, this is the most efficient way we can do that. What happens
- after that five to 10 years? After 10 years goes back on the market, low-income people are priced out.
- housing and we do that. That is the Allen Building received tax abatements to keep low-income a few
- low-income units in there for 10 years. We've just we've done that historically here and it is a tax
- abatement is it's basically foregoing tax dollars that would come into the community and we have this
- 1.2 million dollar windfall and I think I think you'd be hard pressed to find a way that would be better
- to invest it regardless of whether it was housing because
- from the fact that it's a loan fund and it will never disappear. And because of its leveraging factor,
- which is well documented, it brings $5 to every $1 into the community. Have you talked to city officials
- yet? We have. We've spoken with council members and have developed the proposal that you all have is
- being presented to them individually. Are you going to speak to the council, to the mayor? Yeah, we're
- going to speak with the mayor.
- hopefully Monday. We've also spoken at length with the redevelopment department. Tell me about your
- housing and homeless congress. Well, could we maybe make sure there are any further questions about
- the trust fund? Well, I also read in the paper that there were several options for this windfall.
- And I'm curious as to what we as individuals and community leaders can do to influence the city and
- city council to move in this direction. Yes. I think, obviously, currently we're all meeting individually
- with our respective representatives. And we really have to encourage everyone in the community to do
- that as well and encourage the city council to do that.
- like make the wise choice and invest the money. And I would encourage a July 10th is the budget meeting
- with the council and it may be drying for the rest of us, but the fact is it'd be a good time to show
- support for housing. It's July 10th. July 10th. Yeah. Right. Have you ever thought of using the resources
- available at VCAT and putting together some sort of a documentary film
- portraying just how bad the homeless situation really is in Bloomington. We are working on a film showing
- how gentrification has kind of run rampant in Bloomington. It's displacing large numbers of people in
- fell swoops, focusing on the Allen building, the south side of the square of Vermilha. See, it's kind
- of hard when you can see there's a new municipal building that you'll be adding.
- I mean, you see all the development in the Marriott Hotel, the Convention Center, and yes, we believe
- that there has to be some economical development, but we think the strongest economical development
- is from the base people that are here, surviving every day, and that housing is crucial to make it stable
- for them to do so, to not lose your lives if you're constantly in transition.
- And with the minimum wage jobs, they'll find their way out for six weeks during the winter and six weeks
- during the summer. So we have a high cycle of homelessness turnover just here just because of that.
- But we need to get our directions and say, our support, our strength in labor and in resources and in
- responsibility isn't outside of us. It's in our own communities. And start addressing it from the ground up.
- But that's absolutely true. One of the problems I'm sure you have to face is the fact that I see all
- the time and hear about developers coming in from California, from New York. And that's fine if they
- want to develop here. But what the city leaders, I think, need to do is make it specifically clear in
- writing that this will benefit our community.
- in some way, you're not just going to come in here and make your millions and then leave. Which is what
- leads people to the situation we're in right now. Take Marriott itself. They're not using union letters.
- They're not using people here. And yet they're getting tax evasions. They're getting as long as $700,000.
- We've got to start directing ourselves more to addressing at least a balance between the two.
- think would be a fair compromise. But I'm ready for us to have our time. Just the other night at the
- council meeting, we found out that at the Allen Building, there were supposed to be four units that
- were supposed to stay low income for five to 10 years. We found out Wednesday night, that that company
- has the option to take the pass abatement or not take
- They do not take the tax abatement. They don't have to keep those payments as low income. There's going
- to be seven, I understand, that are federally funded, but they're only going to be for 10 years. What's
- going to happen after 10 years? I mean, I don't think the general public understands that with these
- tax abatements, sometimes there's a whole menu of options that they can do. And one of them is having
- affordable housing for a certain length of time. But if we're giving you tax abatements, I think that
- it should be a permanent
- This trust fund, we would have the revolving part of it. We'd be able to build it. And there would be
- no need for additional funding. There would be no need for additional Section 8. Because Section 8,
- what it does is the people that can afford to be there, that are placed in these homes, they pay what
- they can afford, 30% of their income, between 25% and 30% of their income. And then the general public,
- the Section 8, picks up the difference between that
- landlord is still asking. The landlord's not losing out on these Section 8 homes. They're still making
- their profit. And what we're saying with this fund and building or renovating a home to rent out, all
- that rent would go back into the fund. And that they would pay their 30%, their 25% to 30%, and that
- would be it. They could continue living if they wind up down there at Winding Brook.
- It was great. The county was so excited that we had somebody that was willing to build low-income housing.
- But those homes are $65,750 with no appliances. You're 25 feet from an income. Unfortunately, in this
- day and age, that could be considered low-income housing. I know. But the trick to this one is it's
- a guaranteed 3% rate. And it's tied to your income. Whatever the loan is signed at at the day of closing,
- The general public, again, it's like another subsidy. We're paying the interest on that. We pay the
- difference between the guaranteed 3% and whatever the going rate is at the day of the sale of the home.
- And then people have to go into debt to get their appliances. You have no control over really the design
- of your home. And you have it tied to your income. It's tied to your income so the more you make,
- The more your rent goes up, the more your mortgage goes up. You can never pay it off. Because the trick
- at the end of that says if you sell this home, you have to pay us back all the interest that was paid
- for you. You can never get out of it. It's putting the back of another cycle. And that's what we're
- trying to eliminate is this constant cycle.
- Has your proposal been submitted formally to the city council as of yet? Yes. It's individual members.
- As you were developing the proposal, why did you decide that the loan fund would be better administered
- to the city over an independent agency like CATCH, or maybe even CATCH itself? Well, CATCH would be
- an applicant to the fund, so there would be a conflict of interest. But Mary Brooks's offer as technical
- assistant, she
- directs the Housing Trust Fund project, which is a project of the Senator. And she has actually flown
- out here from California to talk with us, and we have been reading her literature and talking with her
- extensively over the phone. She is without question the guru of housing trust, and has helped set up
- over 100 across the country. She, from her experience, that that is the best way to go, to have the
- city or county department
- who deals with those with housing situations, administer the fund. What problems doesn't the city encounter
- that private agents have read? Well, one, the city can be held politically accountable. The other, what
- some people have tried is establishing a separate nonprofit, which we don't really want to create a
- new set of bureaucracy and spend money from the fund on some new nonprofit that we essentially wouldn't need.
- I've been to two big things. It's also a capacity question that redevelopment has a bit more capacity
- than staff. They point out too that the Department of Redevelopment has successfully administered community
- development block grant funds for many, many years. I think there's public perception about it too.
- Appreciate it. Get back to the radio station. Listen to the news at noon today. You'll probably hear
- something about that. Thank you. Great. Any other questions? That's a good question. Yeah, I think that
- Andrea would be both. A lot of that will... Our proposal would include both. I think, of course,
- as we know, this will be hashed out.
- A lot of this will be really flexible, different types of ownership agreements, like cooperative housing,
- non-interested agreements, and things like that. And of course, there's going to be a lot of rental
- property constructed, but also trying to look at purchasing mortgages for people off of this one. One
- of the biggest drawbacks from our community is we don't have anything to rehab. We have to start building
- from the ground. And what we have found, there isn't that many money before the agency's ready
- We should be clear that the money would be for
- for-profit, non-profit housing developers. It wouldn't be for like a long-term person couldn't come
- apply for the money. This money would be seed money. Housing trust fund to really work needs to have,
- like Adam said, an ongoing revenue source. I hope you put that anything right because it really wouldn't
- be a housing trust fund. It would just be a revolving loan fund. It needs to be more than that to really
- address this community's housing needs.
- Mary Brooks has said it's not a housing trust fund unless it has this ongoing dedicated revenue source.
- We think this is a really opportune time for the ceiling to begin committing to this type of project.
- And this would be a very important step in securing a lot of resources. We've been working on it. I
- think it's important to note that the housing network
- has been working on a housing trust fund extensively, and we're working. Any meetings prior to the July
- 10th meeting that we can attend and possibly influence? If I were you, I'd just call some of those senior
- council members. I think they'd listen to you. But I do think it's important that we need to be involved
- in the process of decisions. From what I understand, this
- The council will meet at Twin Lakes tomorrow. Do you know about this? Yes. And I think this will be
- discussed tomorrow at Twin Lakes. So this is definitely already being discussed. No, it would actually
- be a meeting. We feel this is a good time for us to really make the community aware now that we're going
- through changes of not only elections, but a shift here. And I think we've reached a point that
- We have to make a commitment and the community has the bypasses to maybe not be aware, but we're here
- to say as a group that there is a problem and needs to be. Do we have a question? All right. Hey, thanks
- for coming.