Episode 22: An Update on the Housing Crisis

This episode of First You Talk re-examines housing from new angles: landlord engagement, private sector affordable housing development, and updates on housing trends and data.

Guests:

• Mark Brewer, President/CEO | Central Florida Foundation
• Sandi Vidal, VP of Community Strategies and Initiatives | Central Florida Foundation
• Niki Wilkerson, Co-Founder | Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
• Ryan von Weller, COO | Wendover Housing Partners
• Brian Postlewait, COO | Homeless Services Network
• Anna Ashie, Director of Housing Operations | Homeless Services Network

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As our region’s community foundation, Central Florida Foundation serves as a launchpad for high-impact philanthropy. Championing the collective power of head, heart and dollar, we coordinate the commitment and investment of philanthropists, nonprofits, and community partners to target today’s most critical challenges and those on the horizon to truly transform our community. The Foundation also offers expert giving advice, a personalized approach to managing charitable funds, and the capacity to convene collaboration across sectors. Learn more at cffound.org.

Transcript

Audio file
Housing Episode - Season 3_mixdown.mp3
Transcript
00:00:05 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Welcome to Central Florida Foundation's First You Talk Podcast.
00:00:09 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Here, you'll gain a better understanding of society's toughest issues.
00:00:13 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
At the end of each episode, we'll summarize the main points and offer deeper dive options if something piqued your interest.
00:00:20 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So, ready to demystify a complex issue and up your knowledge game?
00:00:25 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Let's get started.
00:00:28 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Episode 22, an update on the housing crisis.
00:00:32 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
In this episode today, you'll hear from Mark Brewer and Sandy Vidal of Central Florida Foundation, and they'll go over the trends that we see in this space, some data, and the role of philanthropy, specifically what philanthropy is good at doing and what it isn't really designed to do alone.
00:00:50 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
You'll also hear from Nikki, a Central Floridian who, after a horrible accident, was forced to navigate housing instability for decades.
00:00:58 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
You'll hear from Ryan Von Weller, COO of Wendover Housing Partners
00:01:02 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
a private sector business that builds affordable housing at scale and Housing First Initiative communities.
00:01:09 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And finally, you'll also hear from Brian Postaway and Anna Ashe from Homeless Services Network, where we dive into the relationship between homelessness and housing and landlord engagement.
00:01:22 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Without further ado, let's jump into our first conversation with Central Florida Foundation's Sandy Vidal and Mark Brewer.
00:01:32 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
So housing affordability is one of Central Florida's most urgent issues.
00:01:37 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
The Florida rents have increased nearly 40% from 2019 to 2023, according to the Shimberg Institute, which is at the University of Florida.
00:01:49 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
And one of the other concerns is we rank worst in U.S.
00:01:55 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
metros for affordable units, only 19%
00:01:58 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
for every 100 extremely low-income renters.
00:02:02 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
I think one of the things I had done some research on previously was that it's not we don't have enough units in our area.
00:02:11 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
We just have more units on the high-end side than we do for low-income renters.
00:02:19 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
And so even those inventory increases aren't enough to offset the demand and development costs remain high.
00:02:26 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
I just read too that
00:02:28 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
Apopka is raising their impact fees by 42% on developers, which is huge.
00:02:36 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
And so, housing is just, it's complex.
00:02:39 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
It's a big deal.
00:02:40 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Well, it is, and we've talked about this before, but the market can't fix this because the demand is from people who can't afford to pay market rate.
00:02:51 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And so in any other place when that happens, we reduce rents to meet the market demand.
00:02:57 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
you're never going to reduce rents to meet the demand of low-income people if there are more higher income people who are demanding access to more expensive places to live.
00:03:08 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And that's kind of where we are right now.
00:03:10 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah, I think we're also in a
00:03:12 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
different time of development where it used to be there was land available and you would see developments and subdivisions rise up.
00:03:22 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
Now you're seeing older neighborhoods just be raised and big houses that are clearly not affordable for the people who used to live in that neighborhood are coming up.
00:03:35 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So and Florida has always had a bit of that issue just because
00:03:40 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
We haven't been around long enough to say, if you build something and you don't need it anymore, can you convert it to something you need?
00:03:47 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
As opposed to, well, let's just start from scratch.
00:03:51 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
Right.
00:03:51 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah, we seem to love to knock things down.
00:03:56 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
So, you know, when it comes to families, I think the challenge is that, you know, we are a lower wage state, particularly in Orlando.
00:04:07 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
We've got a lot of hospitality service jobs.
00:04:10 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
and so the wages on one end are very different from the wages of professionals who are coming in and we have a huge population increase from people who are coming in out of state who maybe can afford things at a different rate.
00:04:30 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Than came from a place where they might have owned real estate and sold it and come here now with a profit
00:04:38 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And then of course thinking that it's more affordable here when it actually isn't.
00:04:43 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
Right.
00:04:44 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
and if you move from somewhere, like I just had a friend move up from Miami,
00:04:49 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
where you sell your real estate at a high price, you can come here and it doesn't feel.
00:04:55 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
It doesn't look like it's so expensive.
00:04:58 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
Right, to buy a house that's over a half $1,000,000.
00:05:02 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
When you've sold a house nearly at $1,000,000, you're still walking away with a profit.
00:05:06 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Thus, most of our development is really for the people who are coming here and not for the people.
00:05:11 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
Who live here?
00:05:12 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
The discussion around the country right now is what can philanthropy do to help this?
00:05:19 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
which is not a legitimate question, right?
00:05:22 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Philanthropy can be a part of a solution, but it cannot replace things that aren't there now.
00:05:30 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So in a perfect world, we really want all three sectors to work together, and the projects and initiatives can live with the public sector, they can live with the nonprofit sector, they can even live in the private sector, but you've got to have all three of them.
00:05:47 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Gap funding is a big deal because if you're using tax credits or other specialized ways of creating financing, at the end of all of this, the property has to be affordable or attainable.
00:06:02 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And if it's not, if there's still a gap there, then you have to fill that gap with something.
00:06:07 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And philanthropy can do that because it's not, it doesn't come along with debt service or equity.
00:06:14 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And so it can do that, but a little bit of philanthropy doesn't go a long way.
00:06:20 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And so there's not enough philanthropy in the world to start 50 projects and get them all to the outcomes that you want.
00:06:28 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
I think too about
00:06:30 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
projects that are underway or have just taken place where Hope Partnership down in Osceola County did a hotel conversion.
00:06:41 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
But that still required a mortgage.
00:06:43 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
It's a lower cost mortgage because they were able to get it through Florida
00:06:49 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
home finance corporation, but there's still a mortgage on it.
00:06:53 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
They'll get rent and that'll eventually help them to pay for that, but the rent could be less if they didn't have that, which is something that they've considered.
00:07:03 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
We've also seen where the sharing center in Seminole County had land donated to them, but to your point, that land has to be processed to be ready for development
00:07:15 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
as well as, going through all of the engineering, architecture, permitting, and all of that, which costs a lot of money, not to mention the building itself.
00:07:25 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And so, building roads and getting electricity into a space is as expensive as the rest of it, and more in some cases, in order to meet all the permitting to get that done.
00:07:35 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And that's all money that you essentially throw down a hole
00:07:41 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
with the expectation you're going to get it back on the other side, doesn't always work out that way.
00:07:46 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
Right.
00:07:46 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
And sometimes it does.
00:07:47 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
There's a lot of nonprofits that are in the housing space as well as in the service space, but it is a big decision and it can be quite difficult and quite stressful for nonprofits because, you know, you are putting out a great deal of capital or taking a risk with a loan and
00:08:09 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
hoping that money will come back as a return on investment.
00:08:13 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Right.
00:08:15 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
There's also a lot of talk, and always has been, about funding for supportive services.
00:08:19 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
That's actually something philanthropy does pretty well.
00:08:23 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So if I build housing and people are in the housing that need supportive services to remain housed, there should be others in that space, not just the independent sector, but philanthropy has a long history of providing those
00:08:39 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
surround services once the rest of it is fixed in some financing deal that works.
00:08:46 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
And interestingly enough, Housing and Urban Development HUD is now switching from the housing first that we believe works really well, and we've been able to demonstrate that here in Central Florida.
00:09:02 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
housing prices obviously set aside, but the people at HUD have decided to move back to transitional housing with services.
00:09:13 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
And so we're for a long time, they were just focused on the housing piece of it.
00:09:19 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
Now they're focused on housing and services.
00:09:23 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
And so that's going to actually put us at a real deficit.
00:09:26 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So, you know, while philanthropy can play a role there, it can't
00:09:31 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Carry the ball, right?
00:09:32 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
There's just the pockets aren't as deep there as they are in the public sector and in some places in the private sector.
00:09:39 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
And when you're when you're talking numbers, we're talking about...
00:09:42 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
over $22 million a year that comes into our community.
00:09:47 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
And philanthropy can't write a $22 million check every year.
00:09:52 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
At least most philanthropists can't.
00:09:53 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Right, yeah.
00:09:54 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
No, that's true.
00:09:55 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Policy is a place for philanthropy.
00:09:58 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
It always has been, data collection, evaluation, and all forms of policy work to bring the three sectors together to solve these problems.
00:10:10 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And I think that's where we are right now and where philanthropy can probably play its best role, is moving toward building out strategies and figuring out how to fix the financing systems.
00:10:23 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
It's the innovation that, that's hard to come from the private sector because they have a profit requirement.
00:10:30 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And it's hard to come from the public sector because
00:10:33 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
They're working with people who don't really want to negotiate.
00:10:37 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
They need what they need to do the project, and they're going to fight through zoning and permitting and all kinds of things.
00:10:44 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So the ability for philanthropy to fund that data collection, evaluation, and figuring out ways to generate policy that works, that's still an important thing.
00:10:54 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And then philanthropy has always been a risk taker and an accelerator to speed things up, test them, pilot them,
00:11:03 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
and then scale them when they work.
00:11:05 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And I think we'll continue to see that as we move forward.
00:11:10 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah, and I think, philanthropy has been involved in things like land trust.
00:11:14 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
We've seen the support of nonprofit organizations like Lift Orlando that has both built and renovated, I believe they've renovated, housing in the 32805 area.
00:11:31 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
There's, housing that's coming in and being built from Ability Housing came here from Jacksonville and philanthropy helped to move them
00:11:42 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
from just exclusively being in Jacksonville to being in Central Florida.
00:11:46 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
And they've done some major building projects, including one on Mercy Drive that also has some supportive services and a fantastic child care center as well.
00:11:57 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
So it's got those wraparound services that are important.
00:12:01 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
And that couldn't have been done without philanthropy.
00:12:04 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
But philanthropy alone is not the solution.
00:12:08 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah, so I'll just leave this section with a comment about one of the numbers you provided.
00:12:14 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
This move back to transitional housing, which wasn't overly successful in its first machination, primarily because people would come into it, spend time in it, not be successful enough to keep it, and then be chucked back out on the street, and then come back through the system again.
00:12:37 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And so I do have some concern about a concept of funding housing and services for two years and what the outcome requirements for the people who are being housed are, because that's where transitional housing always fail.
00:12:52 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
If I say to you, have to be sober, you have to have a job, and you have to have all the things that are necessary for you to be successful before I house you,
00:13:03 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
it's almost never going to happen because you can't do that stuff from the street.
00:13:07 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And so if I house you, and then for whatever reason, you can't meet the requirements, where permanent supportive housing has lots of academic support indicating that if I house you first and then provide the services to solve for those other problems, you're more likely to be successful.
00:13:26 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
I think though, when you think about individuals and how they can participate in this process, there's a lot of different things they can do from helping to fund a feasibility study for a new property going in to supporting those organizations that are providing housing or services for people who are in those lower income brackets that really need the help or have
00:13:54 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
some sort of disability that is preventing them from being able to have affordable housing.
00:14:01 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And that is the attainable side.
00:14:03 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
That's getting people into housing they could never afford any other way.
00:14:08 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
as opposed to just affordable.
00:14:10 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Not that that's bad, but we all have an affordable housing problem.
00:14:14 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
Absolutely.
00:14:16 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And so a couple of promising models.
00:14:19 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Housing first, I think you're right, will continue, but I think the crux of investing and funding in it will move to the other two sectors and away from the public sector.
00:14:29 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And then what I fear is what I always fear after years of this is that
00:14:35 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Something won't work.
00:14:36 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
We'll come back and look at it again and then go, oh, we should have kept doing what we were doing before.
00:14:42 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
It seems to have worked better.
00:14:44 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
It seems like we have, you know, what I call butterfly syndrome.
00:14:49 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
It's like the kid running down the soccer field and there's a butterfly and they start chasing it the other direction instead of to the goal.
00:14:56 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
And we tend to get distracted a lot.
00:14:59 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
All the time.
00:15:00 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
You know, and depending on which side of the political spectrum you're on, and those change.
00:15:06 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
you always have to have some sort of opposing view.
00:15:09 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
And I wish we would change that and become a little bit more united in our approaches, because I think we can agree that we want people to have safe housing and be able to attain that housing.
00:15:22 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Well, and to that extent, if we're going to be innovative, we have to think in innovative ways.
00:15:28 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So the history of philanthropy has always been to go find a model and then copy it, because
00:15:35 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
If somebody else has made it work, then we'll take the model and we'll make it work.
00:15:39 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
I think we're at a time where we all need to be making models and not constantly searching for a model that we think is the right one.
00:15:48 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Because more and more innovation and I think creativity around things that deal with preservation first strategies, you mentioned community land trusts, the ability for us to actually try new things
00:16:03 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And I don't mean willy-nilly, like let's just make some stuff up in the back room and then go out and do it.
00:16:09 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
But I think that if we don't have the confidence to say, if we got all three sectors together and we mapped the problem so we could see it in clean data, that we can't find a way to solve that.
00:16:22 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And it might not look the way anyone else in the world is doing it.
00:16:25 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
We talk about in our Thrive,
00:16:28 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
framework and our Thrive Roadmap, we've put housing and transportation into economic stability because we feel strongly that if you don't have those two things, you're probably not going to be economically stable.
00:16:43 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
But it also helps from an economic standpoint when you think about workforce stability.
00:16:50 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
Our workforce is moving ever so far away.
00:16:53 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
And so having
00:16:56 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
all of those factors in place and being able to measure workforce stability based on some of our investments is going to be important as well.
00:17:04 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And finding ways to house people closer to their work.
00:17:08 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
Right.
00:17:09 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
That's a critical thing because those two measures, transportation and housing, offset each other at such a high rate.
00:17:17 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
If I fix your housing expense problem, but I raise your transportation costs, I haven't really done you a favor.
00:17:22 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
If I reduce your transportation costs, but you got to
00:17:26 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
spend $500,000 for your house.
00:17:28 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
I probably haven't helped you either.
00:17:30 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
Right.
00:17:31 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
And I do think you briefly mentioned something about, preservation.
00:17:36 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
And the city of Orlando has done some work.
00:17:39 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
There's a grant that we recently participated in where they're doing some energy upgrades and things like that.
00:17:48 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
And we've participated in a process of doing
00:17:51 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
some upgrades to housing around air conditioning units and flooring windows and other things that are important, powered thermostats, right?
00:18:01 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Just things that provide ways to bring energy costs down, because if your energy costs are lower, you can afford more housing costs.
00:18:10 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
Right.
00:18:11 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
The foundation recognizing that there are natural forms of gentrification and unnatural forms of gentrification, right?
00:18:20 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
As communities mature
00:18:21 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
and get more successful, more people move into them, and some people leave them.
00:18:26 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And there's not a lot you can do about that.
00:18:29 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
But instant gentrification, when suddenly a neighborhood that has a lot of legacy in it, something happens in the neighborhood attracting a bunch of people who can afford more expensive houses.
00:18:41 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And so all the people who've lived there, sometimes for generations, have to move because there's no longer housing that's affordable for them.
00:18:49 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
We recognized that in Parramore several years ago, and with two CDFI partners, we purchased 80 plus housing units there, renovated them completely, did some of the energy efficient things you talk about, and capped the rents there so that they wouldn't rise beyond the attainability factor for literally people who have been living there for years.
00:19:13 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
Housing is such a big
00:19:17 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
elephant to bite off.
00:19:18 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
It's really big.
00:19:21 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
There's politics.
00:19:22 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And it can take a long time and have a lot of politics involved.
00:19:26 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah, and there's technicalities to it too, like when you're talking about capital stacks and tax credits and permits and things like that.
00:19:36 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So yeah, so I actually believe our approach to this has always been get the biggest collaboration
00:19:44 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
of people who know how to solve the problems and then capitalize it.
00:19:48 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Don't put capital out and try to find somebody to do it all, which is how the private sector does it sometimes.
00:19:55 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So one of the things that we're really good at doing is bringing people together around an opportunity or around
00:20:02 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
a problem opportunity and finding people who know how to get it done and then being able to identify where investors can come at whatever risk level they're comfortable with.
00:20:14 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah, I think also, looking at some of the projects that are happening,
00:20:19 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
In our community, the whole partnerships and others where they are building housing or renovating housing or even helping people to stay in their housing through.
00:20:32 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
projects that are fixing things that are broken, especially after disasters and things like that. There are opportunities to invest in those kind of things.
00:20:44 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So that's a great point. One of the things I think that charitable investors, donors, and people who want to participate or give, look for ways to keep people who are in attainable housing housed. That's less expensive
00:21:00 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
than building new housing or renovating housing or trying to find ways to create housing by converting old hotels or shopping centers or any one of a number of other really good innovative ideas, but just keeping people housed. How do we fix what's driving you out of your housing? Can we help you with that? That's going to be less expensive, less risky,
00:21:24 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
than the bigger projects. So if you're, if big projects give you fear, then look for the nonprofits in the community who work to keep people housed by repairing their housing or making sure that they have the right services around them to keep them housed. So I think that the big takeaway for philanthropy here is just be at the table. Like if you're a donor or a charitable investor, and by charitable investor, I just mean you want to give money to solve a problem,
00:21:53 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
but you need somebody to help you do that. Like it would be nice if I understood the strategy and the measures and why we're doing it this way, just to add some sophistication. I think the key is to be in the discussions and not shop through the internet like you're just looking for somebody who looks like they're doing something cool and maybe we'll give some money to them.
00:22:14 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
Right, and I would say, if you're local to Central Florida, subscribing to our newsletter is a good place to start because we're always having these types of conversations. And so,
00:22:28 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
like you mentioned before, we're oftentimes called to the table, sometimes behind the scenes, to really set the stage for what's going to happen in the future and to bring and convene people around these difficult and challenging topics. But it is a good place for philanthropists to get involved so they can see it from the beginning, so they can actually have input above and beyond investment.
00:22:53 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And so I would just say, if you're interested in housing, you don't
00:22:58 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
You don't have to go get a college degree, but you have to engage before you invest. Because if you try to lead with your wallet, you're going to make mistakes and not be satisfied with the outcomes that happen.
00:23:10 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah, and I think from the smaller donor, the people like me who are interested in helping people for the sake of helping people and want to invest in things like housing, looking at those nonprofits that are doing prevention or who are
00:23:28 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
building in our community, the Lift Orlando's and the Hope Partnerships and others in the community. And there's more than I can mention in this time that we have, but there's really great people who are doing
00:23:42 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
wonderful work in our communities that can take donations from, small donations that $25 to, those $1,000,000 donations that some people are interested in making.
00:23:54 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
There's no such thing as too little and you can't give too much.
00:24:00 Sandi Vidal, Central Florida Foundation
Absolutely not.
00:24:03 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Of course, behind every statistic and piece of data that we share, there's a real person navigating those realities.
00:24:11 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
To understand what that looks and feels like, we spoke with Nikki, someone whose experience with housing instability began with a sudden, life-altering event out of her control and now works to ensure others have their own Nikki around as they navigate the complexities of the housing system.
00:24:33 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
My name is Nikki. I am the co-founder of Connections Ministry, Nikai's Closet, which is an outreach ministry that I co-found. I have been doing, I guess, ministry with connection and the focus of helping or assisting people experiencing homelessness for, well, since 2017.
00:25:00 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Tell me a little bit about your experience with homelessness. How did that first happen?
00:25:05 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
In Florida, it happened due to an accident that happened one evening when I was leaving work in 2005 in March. I was on my way to Valencia East. At the time, I was working with their language department, assisting students
00:25:27 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
that were studying Spanish because that was my favorite language and something that I was proficient in. And someone traveling on university hit the back of my car around Forsyth. And it was such a shock. I think I remember feeling that a spaceship had landed on my car and I lost control.
00:25:50 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
And trying to navigate that traffic on University, not hit someone else, being out of control, I rammed into a tree. So that was the first part of that accident. It was 2 accidents in one night. My car was loaded onto a flatbed tow truck and headed towards Merritt Island, which was where I was living at the time. And we were on the 528
00:26:18 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
traveling towards Merritt Island and just getting to that place where 528 crosses 520 and a car hit the back of the flatbed truck traveling at over 125 miles an hour. So that kind of
00:26:39 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
plummeted me into an area where I had a neurologist. I was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury. That was the last night I ever worked, March 15, 2005. So from that, trying to navigate that diagnosis and everything that came with that injury, I became homeless. I had to apply for disability.
00:27:09 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
did not know anything about that area at all. Qualified, because I had worked all my life and qualified easily. But the thing was, they said, and it'll be six months before you get your first check. I could not imagine from those words how you exist for six months without any income.
00:27:30 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah, if we could just pause on this for a second, because I think this is such a critical
00:27:35 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
thing to focus on when people who never expected, worked their whole lives, had stable housing, educated, and all of a sudden they're in a foreign land of figuring out what to do next in a life that they never expected.
00:27:52 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
I had to find out what a neurologist was. I had to start understanding that I didn't have the abilities anymore. I couldn't
00:28:04 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
I couldn't speak. I couldn't put a sentence together. My short-term memory had been damaged, which meant that I went through insomnia for three months. I did not take medication. That was the biggest thing for me because I have a rare blood disorder. So I had to do a lot of those things without medication.
00:28:28 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
And no, I didn't have any family. There was no one around me. And the strangest thing for me was I worked for a reinsurance company. And the one thing they said is this is going to be a long rd. One of my friends says this is probably going to take you three years to settle. And it actually did. I ended up having a number of lawsuits because of the accident and because of the people involved.
00:28:56 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
But the paperwork, the time, the conversations with lawyers, the conversations with doctors, not being able to be in my own skin, not, and this, I always like to share this because it was funny. I speak two languages, Spanish and English, and they were blended perfectly. The words that I did not know in
00:29:24 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
words that I grew up knowing, like light. I didn't know it anymore in English. I only knew La Luz, La Pared. And I couldn't communicate with people because I was speaking this form of Spanish and English. I couldn't think. And it was
00:29:47 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
It was the most traumatic time of my life.
00:29:50 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So after that happened, and now you're on this path of navigating a new life, in hindsight, what might have been helpful to you?
00:29:59 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
Having the me today would have been helpful, because everything that I do today is out of that experience. I had to learn to read and understand social security language. I had to understand legal terminology. I had to
00:30:17 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
understand time frames, my lawyer would file a piece of paper with the opposing lawyers, and they have 30 days to respond. So if they respond, then it turns around to 30 days for that response.
00:30:35 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
Everything that I thought was easy, you've got all of these things that can help you. Social Security is right there. Disability is right there. Your doctors are right there. I had to learn medical language that I didn't understand.
00:30:50 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
How did you, had shared with me before we hit record that you had gone in and out of housing over the last maybe 20 years now, because that was about 20 years ago.
00:31:00 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
Yes.
00:31:01 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So what experience from that time
00:31:05 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
period, which is a long time to have to navigate and try to figure things out. What were the biggest obstacles you faced after that initial three-year period? You said that kind of closed up this accident, at least from a paperwork standpoint. What caused you to go in and out of housing? What was difficult? What were the biggest obstacles you faced?
00:31:31 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
One thing I think I have learned is housing changes constantly. Six months to one year, things are different.
00:31:40 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
And when I left the apartment, housing was one price. Requirements were one thing. You could get into an apartment with like a deposit of $100. If you had a landlord, it was usually a person, and that person negotiated with you what the terms were.
00:32:03 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
Over the time, the three-year period for me, trying to find money to be able to live, all of those things changed. And one day it was, you have to have three times the rent. You have to have a year of stable rent history. You have to have a credit score.
00:32:24 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
And none of those things were familiar to me or things that applied to me. Because once that accident happened that night, that meant the end of stable housing for me. I was couch surfing at best, sleeping where
00:32:44 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
I could afford, which sometimes would be a hotel room every night, or not every night, every other night when I could find some place to stay. So, and credit score, there was no such thing anymore. So I didn't qualify. And places that I could find were not permanent enough. I could
00:33:05 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
Once I started finding out that there were some funds available to me or some places I could stay, it was never something that I had enough money for.
00:33:17 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And you had mentioned, so you are a part of the faith community here in Central Florida. Is that the community that you, that helped you get to a place where you could stably be housed?
00:33:33 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
Yes. I did not have them before the accident.
00:33:37 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Okay.
00:33:38 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
So I came across them, and it was during this season and around Christmas, and I decided I wanted to go to a church because it was Christmas Eve. And I found that church and then started going to that church. And I'm
00:33:56 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
I guess I like to plunge in. So I plunged into some of the things that they had, and they were looking for volunteers. And even though those accidents took a lot away from me, I still believed that there was a lot of me left. So I knew I could volunteer.
00:34:14 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
And I got involved and started meeting people. And then from that, having to tell them my story because of the fact that I didn't talk normally. I had to always explain, this is why I am like I am. And I think there were enough people in that community who really understood that could happen to anybody.
00:34:42 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
So I got involved with the church, got involved with individuals, people who wanted to help, people who could kind of guide me through things. And yeah, they became my family, my community.
00:34:54 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
How did you, now may I ask if you feel like you're stably housed now? Have you put that period? No? Okay. So as someone who is still navigating finding permanent housing,
00:35:13 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
What tools, and I'm not just talking about your particular situation, but in general, there are a lot of people of that same scenario that you are in right now. What do you need? What do people in your situation, what would help you the most?
00:35:30 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
I think the one thing that would help me is for people, individuals, communities to understand that this is difficult.
00:35:41 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
It isn't easy to hear in conversations that the normal rent or average rent is $1,700 for a studio, because that immediately puts me out. I get Social Security, and I don't get it at the high end. So that means I've got to navigate that amount of money every month.
00:36:06 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
For me, stability means being able to do that for the rest of my life, not just the life of a lease. So when I think of housing, I think of what am I going to do for the rest of my life? What can I afford for the rest of my life? I believe that with what I see possible for me, 50% of my income, my social security, is all that I can dedicate to all of that.
00:36:35 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
So that becomes, for me, an impossibility. Where would I find such a scenario where I can have 50% dedicated to that and the other 50% dedicated to the things I need? Fortunately for me, the community that I have, the church that I'm involved with, is that other 50%.
00:36:59 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
and understanding over the time that I've been involved with them, this is going to be long-term. They've agreed to that. So that gives me some comfort, knowing, okay, there is an end goal. There's a place that I can navigate all of these things. Because I still have everything else to navigate. I still am dealing with whatever a traumatic brain injury leaves you with.
00:37:27 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
I still am dealing with the fact that things are changing for me all the time. And with that, I guess I am still in a place of not having a lot of hope that things are going to change. Because when I look at the projection, the direction that we're going, I don't see housing as being important to
00:37:55 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
a lot of industries that have to do with building housing. I know that there are a lot of ministries, I know that there are a lot of organizations that are really working hard to find some answers, but we're always hitting that wall that says, but the cost of building is too high. And then it just stops there. When that becomes the only thing you can see, then you can't have hope. And
00:38:25 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
I am not at the place where I have a lot of hope for that.
00:38:29 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Yet you co-founded a ministry and you do a lot of work in the community. So I imagine that while on the day-to-day you might struggle with hope, you're giving hope to other people in that process.
00:38:44 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
Yes, even though I have very little hope, I have a lot of faith.
00:38:49 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
And that's where I think the difference is for me. Connections Ministry, I say co-founder, I am the co-founder because I believe God gave this for me to do. When that accident happened and I was in that horrible place, I still believed I could do something. I still felt there was some place that I had
00:39:16 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
that would cause a difference, I guess, for other people. So what I try and do, and it's a street ministry, so I'm talking to people who are living on the street. I'm talking to people who maybe are on a list waiting for housing and have been for a long time. One of my friends, I went out last night to make sure he had blankets, and I met him in 2017. When I met him, he was living on the street.
00:39:46 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
he still lives in the street. And he's in a wheelchair now. So that's the place where the lack of hope. Because I see this man every day that I can. And he's coping, he's surviving. All of us are. But the idea of being in housing sometimes just disappears.
00:40:11 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
and you just live off faith.
00:40:12 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
You just know there are people there that can come up and bring you a blanket or talk to you or keep sanity going because this is going to be a reality.
00:40:24 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Nikki.
00:40:25 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I really appreciate you sharing your story.
00:40:27 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And I know that you say you don't have a lot of hope, but I think that you very likely give a lot of hope out every single day, it seems like.
00:40:34 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So thank you for what you're doing.
00:40:37 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And I appreciate you talking with me today.
00:40:39 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
Well, thank you.
00:40:40 Niki Wilkerson, Connections Ministry Nikhai's Closet
It was exciting.
00:40:45 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Nikki's story makes clear how fragile housing stability can be.
00:40:50 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
how quickly someone can fall out of the system, and how difficult it is to get back in once you do.
00:40:57 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Her experience also highlights A deeper issue.
00:41:00 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Even when people are doing everything they can, they can remain unhoused or in limbo.
00:41:06 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So what does it take to create housing that people can actually afford and do it at scale?
00:41:14 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
To answer that, we turn to the private sector.
00:41:17 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Ryan Von Weller, COO of Wendover Housing Partners, helps us understand how affordable and housing-first communities are built, financed, and sustained.
00:41:30 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Welcome, Ryan.
00:41:31 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Thank you so much for being here today.
00:41:33 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
My pleasure.
00:41:33 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Thank you for having me.
00:41:35 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah.
00:41:35 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
If you could just take a moment to introduce yourself and your role within your company and a little bit about your area of expertise.
00:41:42 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Sure.
00:41:43 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
I'm Ryan Von Weller with Wendover Housing Partners.
00:41:45 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
I'm the COO of the organization.
00:41:47 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So we are by nature an affordable housing
00:41:50 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
developer, private sector developer.
00:41:52 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So we build affordable and workforce housing all over the state of Florida and up into Georgia as well.
00:41:59 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So this episode is on attainable housing.
00:42:02 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And I'm always kind of fascinated at how, in order to make any complex
00:42:10 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
issue work and to resolve it, really takes all sectors to kind of come together or play pieces of a role to make something better.
00:42:18 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So can you explain to me really high level how the private sector is, and by what I'm saying by private sector is private businesses are able to play a part in this larger affordable housing crisis that we're experiencing in Central Florida?
00:42:34 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Sure.
00:42:34 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So for decades, the federal government actually built and operated housing.
00:42:40 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
And that went on for a very long time with, I would say, at best, mixed results over the time period.
00:42:46 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
And it led to a lot of dilapidated housing.
00:42:50 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
The federal government did not do a very good job of maintaining their assets, nor did they do a good job of vetting their residents.
00:42:56 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
And those developments over time kind of became unlivable.
00:43:01 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
And so sometime in the 80s, I believe, under Reagan,
00:43:05 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
They came up with a new strategy to incentivize people like our organization to actually build and operate the affordable housing.
00:43:13 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So the same intent that the federal government had, but with the private sector actually performing the task, maintaining the asset, and ultimately owning the asset.
00:43:24 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So what they came up with was a tax credit program that over time has evolved slightly, but pretty much stayed consistent over time.
00:43:33 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Those tax credits are actually issued by the Treasury Department and allocated to states on a pro rata basis.
00:43:41 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So the larger the state is, the more tax credits you get.
00:43:45 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
State agencies then take a look at how many tax credits they got and determine how much of each segment of affordable housing they want to dedicate for each tranche of capital from those tax credits.
00:44:00 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
a competitive allocation process that ensues annually.
00:44:04 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
And if you are allocated or win one of those RFAs, RFPs, whatever they may be, you as the company get the tax credit allocation.
00:44:13 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So those tax credits are worth, you know, a couple $1,000,000, $3 million annually, but over a 10-year period.
00:44:20 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So we take those tax credits, go out to large banks, large institutions,
00:44:26 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
and someone will buy them from us at a discount the entire 10-year stream because they're buying a reduction in their taxes owed on a corporate tax base.
00:44:35 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So that gives me the money at a very low or 0 interest rate base to build housing that I can then afford to charge a lower rent because I don't have an extremely large mortgage.
00:44:45 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So it's really a symbiotic thing between the federal government, the state government, the private sector, not only the developer, but also the private sector banking industry as well.
00:44:56 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Thank you for that rundown.
00:44:58 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
What do you think makes a private sector business more successful than maybe how the federal government went about kind of running this program in the past?
00:45:11 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Yes, that's a great question.
00:45:12 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
That's kind of the genesis of all of it because we're actually going to eventually be the owner of the property and we're not going to be able to change it to market rate housing, eliminate the affordability period.
00:45:23 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
But we do eventually own it when our investor partner leaves after year 15.
00:45:28 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So it behooves us to maintain it.
00:45:31 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
It's an asset.
00:45:31 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So we want to maintain it.
00:45:32 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
We want to keep the right tenant base in there.
00:45:35 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
We want to keep the physical plant operating at a very high level because it is something that we're going to own in perpetuity, most likely, or for a very long period of time.
00:45:43 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So seeing it fall into disrepair,
00:45:47 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
seeing things happen there that shouldn't be happening are not good for our business.
00:45:50 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
And then also, we want our residents to be happy.
00:45:53 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Every business has customers, and in our business, the resident is our customer.
00:45:58 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
If they're not happy, they're not going to want to live in one of our developments, regardless of how affordable it may be.
00:46:04 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And, you know, I was looking into doing a little research I went over when I was preparing for this.
00:46:10 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
You have several different types of communities.
00:46:12 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I shouldn't say several, maybe it is several, but three or four at least, right?
00:46:16 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And I was most interested in learning the difference between housing first initiative housing and then affordable slash workforce housing.
00:46:24 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
How would you define those?
00:46:26 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So the more vanilla type of affordable housing is your basic family development or your senior development, which is restricted to ages 55 and older.
00:46:37 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
They have a very stringent rent cap provided by HUD annually.
00:46:42 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
And inside those developments are mostly people that have jobs.
00:46:45 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
They just are having a hard time affording the ever-increasing rents, no matter what community they come from.
00:46:51 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Around the country, it's certainly a problem.
00:46:53 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So that's really the vast majority of what the tax credits do around the country are these effectively
00:47:02 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
normal apartments, but they are income restricted.
00:47:06 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Housing first, when you look at those type of developments, we have two developments for formerly homeless individuals and families, which is a very niche subset of the tax credit world.
00:47:17 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Those developments are specifically catered to single individuals and families that are experiencing homelessness or at a high risk for homelessness.
00:47:26 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
A lot of the referrals to those developments come through your local continuum of care.
00:47:31 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
HSN here locally.
00:47:33 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
And they have to be vetted by them before they'll put them into that kind of situation.
00:47:37 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Now, inside of those developments, we provide privatized case management.
00:47:42 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
We coordinate with other area agencies to ensure that those most vulnerable populations have the keys to success and are getting whatever services they need to ensure that their tenancy is successful.
00:47:54 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
When you're looking at Housing First,
00:47:57 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
communities, is it more expensive?
00:48:00 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Like what are your considerations before you enter into something like that?
00:48:04 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
It is more expensive because we provide the services.
00:48:07 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Now could you build an apartment for housing first or formerly homeless at the same price as you could for a regular affordable lot?
00:48:14 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Yes, it's very similar.
00:48:16 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Physical plant is very similar.
00:48:18 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Those things all kind of align with the cost to construct.
00:48:21 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
But what you're really looking at is how do I provide the services needed?
00:48:25 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
And some people that build these around the country do not provide the services.
00:48:28 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
They rely on social work or other area agencies to provide it.
00:48:32 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
We happen to hire a specific agency here locally called the Sharing Center to staff these developments full-time.
00:48:41 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
And you can't force the residents to go to get counseling or get supportive services, but they are available every day.
00:48:48 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
How is that regulated?
00:48:50 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So when you go and
00:48:52 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
apply for tax credits in the state of Florida.
00:48:54 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
They have a set aside for that particular type of development.
00:48:58 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So they come along and say, we're going to fund 2, 3, whatever it may be, this year, developments that are specifically catered toward formerly homeless individuals and families.
00:49:09 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
And part of what they want to see that differentiates your application from somebody else is if you provide privatized case management.
00:49:16 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So do you have to do that?
00:49:17 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
You do not.
00:49:18 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Does it help you get funded?
00:49:20 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
It certainly does.
00:49:21 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Okay.
00:49:21 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So we're working alongside of the state agency to make sure that we're doing a good job providing what they want to see.
00:49:28 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
And we're working alongside the COC locally to ensure that we're providing the right
00:49:32 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
management for their residence base as well.
00:49:35 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So the sharing center is providing services.
00:49:38 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
A little bit of everything.
00:49:40 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
It's actually a very interesting organization that I was working with prior to these two developments we have here in Central Florida.
00:49:48 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
But they have a campus in Seminole County that's got everything from mental health services.
00:49:53 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
They've got locker rooms and showers for people that are homeless to come.
00:49:57 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
They have a place to get clothes that's free.
00:50:01 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
They have a secondary, a second-hand shop that raises money for the rest of the balance of the place.
00:50:05 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
It's an old shopping center they've completely rehabilitated into kind of a one-stop shop for people experiencing homelessness.
00:50:12 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
As a part of that, they do have kind of outsourcing of case management services, but they're doing it with the backbone of what they've already got on their campus.
00:50:21 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So if they have someone that needs clothes for a job interview or needs a specific subset of
00:50:27 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
job training, they provide that as well.
00:50:30 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So you really have kind of someone on site at one of our developments that's relying on the central hub, so to speak, to provide whatever else may be outstanding.
00:50:39 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Can you talk a little bit about the success of these developments, specifically Housing First right now?
00:50:45 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
We came into the Housing First space maybe right before the pandemic.
00:50:51 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So
00:50:52 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
We had never done it before.
00:50:54 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
We were asked by a couple of different agencies to help figure it out.
00:50:58 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Orlando had a couple similar developments done, but this funding source was relatively new.
00:51:04 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
And so it was just really coming about.
00:51:06 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So to say that we had really any idea what we were getting into was a lie.
00:51:10 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
We kind of hired some experts, worked with some agencies to figure out how to do this.
00:51:15 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
To design the physical plant, how do you divide on one campus, single individual,
00:51:22 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
mostly males, a lot of veterans, versus families.
00:51:25 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
How do they coexist?
00:51:27 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
How do you provide security for each of those?
00:51:30 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
How do you share amenities?
00:51:31 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So all those things, to be honest, we just kind of used our best knowledge and guesses, and it worked out fine.
00:51:38 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
We have a building with single individuals, wholly, so a one-bedroom building that's on one side of the campus, clubhouse, pool, et cetera, and then the family building on the other side of the campus.
00:51:48 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So
00:51:49 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
What we've seen is really an integration between the families and some of the single individuals, very positive.
00:51:57 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
All the people have to be vetted, background checks, et cetera, to make sure that they're not having any criminal background that would endanger, obviously, children, because children live there and women as well.
00:52:08 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
But what we found is that there has been a very strong cohesion between the two groups and a lot of, you know, kind of
00:52:16 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
communication, they'll eat together, they'll do different things together, which we didn't expect to happen, but was kind of a byproduct of the way we set it up.
00:52:23 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So we're forever learning.
00:52:26 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Florida Housing, who puts together the funding for these, comes down every year or so to one of our developments and sits with our staff and with the residents to make sure that what we're doing is actually effective.
00:52:38 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
And they have come back and told us that, you know, what we've done is beyond what they
00:52:44 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
comprehend it was possible.
00:52:45 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
And so they're trying to use these two as models for the rest of the state of Florida.
00:52:51 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So, I think we've done a pretty good job.
00:52:52 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Of course, we can improve.
00:52:55 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Funding is a challenge.
00:52:56 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
You know, these services cost anywhere from $175,000 to $225,000 a year to have full-time staff, which we're paying currently ourselves.
00:53:07 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
and we're having a hard time finding local government matches.
00:53:11 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
But agencies like the Sharing Center, HSN, do have other services they can provide.
00:53:16 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
They don't directly offset those costs, but they kind of provide ancillary things that supplement what we're able to do with the money.
00:53:23 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Gotcha.
00:53:24 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So moving from Housing First, and that was a great rundown of that, let's shift now to kind of affordable housing.
00:53:33 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Can you now define what that looks like?
00:53:37 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So these terms, attainable, affordable workforce, get kind of tossed around a lot.
00:53:42 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
They do.
00:53:44 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
And there's some overlap, but the intent is the same.
00:53:48 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Truly affordable housing, by definition, is serving 80% of the area's median income and lower.
00:53:55 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So the area's median income is a number determined by HUD for a household of four in any county around the state of Florida, county by county.
00:54:03 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Central Florida, that usually is a mom and dad both working, or two earner household, two kids, let's just say, is the median.
00:54:10 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
That's about a $98,000 number in Seminole and Orange County right now.
00:54:15 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So if you look at 60% of that, there's some other magic that goes into it, but you're looking at people earning $50,000 to $60,000 dual income, or single income, whatever it may be.
00:54:27 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So that's the target demographic of what we can serve.
00:54:32 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
And that number fluctuates annually as given to us by HUD via Florida Housing.
00:54:37 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So unfortunately, if there's income bands, you know, 80% less, 60% less, these numbers continue to go down.
00:54:43 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
There's a chart.
00:54:45 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
And you cannot move in if you make $1 more than the upper threshold.
00:54:49 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
It's very stringent.
00:54:51 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So we have to go take a look at if they're employed, their total salary,
00:54:55 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
other benefits, pensions, all these things weigh into it, and we have to be very careful.
00:55:00 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
There's just no variability in that with what we can do and what we can't do.
00:55:04 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
It's just very strict for numerous reasons, but that's just what we have to do.
00:55:08 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So in the affordable housing world, they're very bright lines about who can move in and who can't.
00:55:15 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So sometimes you have people that desperately need it,
00:55:18 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
but either don't make enough or make too much, whatever it may be.
00:55:21 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Is there a minimum?
00:55:22 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
There is a floor also.
00:55:24 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Now, you can look at vouchers.
00:55:26 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
There's a lot of other things that can help people that can't meet the floor.
00:55:29 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So we explore those as well.
00:55:30 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
But you're looking for someone, ideally, that either has a voucher.
00:55:36 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Of course, we look at people that have special needs and different things.
00:55:40 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
But, you know, some type of income that can help pay the rent at that level.
00:55:45 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So, you know, currently in Central Florida,
00:55:48 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
The affordable housing rents for a two-bedroom, let's say, are $1,400 a month, right?
00:55:52 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
And that's not just my portfolio, it's everyone's portfolio.
00:55:55 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
It's set by the federal government.
00:55:57 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So that number was about $1,000 five years ago.
00:56:02 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So, you know, we're seeing escalation with inflation, with all the other costs.
00:56:08 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So the affordable housing rents are actually rising
00:56:12 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
probably commensurate with the regular market rate rents, but they just started at a different point.
00:56:17 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Right, okay.
00:56:17 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So you're still seeing an increase, which is still pricing people out of the marketplace, unfortunately.
00:56:23 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
But that's just the nature of the world currently, and those numbers come from beyond our control.
00:56:29 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
You know, attainable housing and workforce housing have definitions of basically 80% AMI to 120.
00:56:36 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So you're serving
00:56:38 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
maybe someone making a family making 75,000 or someone making 100 plus thousand.
00:56:44 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
And you can do those projects without tax credits.
00:56:48 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
You almost have to.
00:56:49 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
You cannot get tax credits on anything above an 80% AMI unit.
00:56:54 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So when you hear about Live Local Act and the people doing these workforce housing, they're really figuring out ways to build apartments that can charge less rent because they cost less to build.
00:57:07 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So they're not really doing tax credits and all the things that we talked about in the initial part, because there is no real financial resource for that currently.
00:57:15 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
They're working on it, but it doesn't exist right now.
00:57:18 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So you're really looking at workforce housing being mostly market rate developers or traditional apartment developers that can just charge less rent because it costs less to build the facility?
00:57:29 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Do you find that with, so what do you officially call it?
00:57:33 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Is it workforce housing, affordable housing?
00:57:34 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
We do is affordable housing.
00:57:36 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Okay.
00:57:36 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Yeah, so the acronym is LIHTC, so Low Income Housing Tax Credit.
00:57:40 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So that kind of encompasses
00:57:42 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
all of the true affordable housing world, because the money has to come at either a 0% interest or a very low interest rate.
00:57:49 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So the state of Florida has a loan program at 1%.
00:57:52 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
That's competitive.
00:57:53 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
The tax credits are effectively 0, and then you're getting a discount on what people are buying.
00:57:58 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
But you eventually have a permanent mortgage when it opens, but it's such a small amount of permanent mortgage that you can service the debt like you could in your house.
00:58:06 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So think of it as your house, most people had,
00:58:09 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
and 80% of their house is mortgage, 20% is equity, right?
00:58:13 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Just a rule of thumb.
00:58:14 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
We have the opposite.
00:58:15 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So we have 80% equity, 20% debt, which allows us to keep the lower rents because we have less debt to service.
00:58:21 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I see.
00:58:22 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Okay.
00:58:22 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And then Mark had mentioned when I was talking to him something about a 4% versus a 9%.
00:58:29 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Can you explain the difference between the two?
00:58:30 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Sure, this will probably help bore everybody to death, but we'll try.
00:58:33 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I can cut it later if it's terrible.
00:58:35 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
No, I'm just kidding.
00:58:36 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So the 9% tax credit is the gold standard of affordable housing development.
00:58:41 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
It's the most finite, it's the hardest to procure, it's the most competitive.
00:58:45 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
But if you get an allocation, effectively, almost your entire project is paid for with that singular source.
00:58:51 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Now, you get a private mortgage at the end or private debt at the end, but very little amount.
00:58:56 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
But you're basically getting your whole meal in one fell swoop.
00:59:01 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
4% tax credits are non-competitive, worth less.
00:59:04 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
I won't go through all the math with you, but obviously the nine versus the four gives you an indicator of the differential.
00:59:10 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
But you got to couple that with municipal bonds or tax-free bonds.
00:59:15 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
And typically also with other money, we call it soft money or gap money, which local governments can provide, the state can provide.
00:59:22 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
But you're looking at a 4% deal needs four or five different things to be brought into the capital stack, which takes a longer time, has a little bit more risk factor to it.
00:59:34 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Whereas the 9% is pretty well, already done.
00:59:38 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
If you get that allocation, you know you're going to have enough resources if you've performed the project currently to build the job and operate it.
00:59:44 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Does one oversee 9% projects?
00:59:45 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Yes, we do both.
00:59:47 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Okay.
00:59:48 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
The 9, the problem with the 9% allocation is that it's not that, even for Florida, you know, the state has basically determined that with very few exceptions, Miami, Dayton, Broward being the main one,
01:00:00 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
they're going to give one singular 9% allocation to each county at the most in any calendar year.
01:00:07 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So the most that Orange County will see under regular circumstances of a 9% allocation is 1 transaction.
01:00:14 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So we got the award two years ago in Orange County, and we're about to start a project in West Orlando for 100 units of senior affordable.
01:00:25 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
And then every year going forward, you're going to get one more.
01:00:28 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So the county in Orange County and other large counties has a say in what project they want to kind of push to the front of the line.
01:00:37 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So you go to the city or the county, depending on the year, pitch them the virtues of your development, which all of them have the same need no matter where you put it.
01:00:48 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
but you try to show that the need or the story or who you're going to serve here is different than any other competitor.
01:00:54 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
But that's the challenge is it's very finite.
01:00:56 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
It's hard to get and there's only one at each county.
01:01:00 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So you look at Seminole County or a different county, you know, anywhere you can think of in Florida, they're probably going to get 0 in a given year.
01:01:07 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
They might get 100 units or 80 units two years in a row, not see anything for five years.
01:01:12 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
You know, it's just the nature of the beast.
01:01:14 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So it's very hard to
01:01:15 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
look for local governments to plan and say, I'm bringing on 200 units a year for the next 10 years.
01:01:20 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
That just doesn't work that way.
01:01:21 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I didn't fall asleep.
01:01:23 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
That was great.
01:01:23 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
That was so helpful.
01:01:26 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So if we zoom out for a second, you know, one thing that, you know, we look at models all the time of what's working.
01:01:35 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And Wendover is an example of affordable housing being created at a large scale, right?
01:01:44 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Where
01:01:45 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
What do you see in the future of affordable housing?
01:01:48 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
What could, what pressure valve needs to open up and release for there to be more affordable housing created?
01:01:56 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So the main thing around the country is money.
01:01:59 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
You know, we've hidden it.
01:02:00 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Low cost of capital drives the development of affordable housing, just bottom line.
01:02:06 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
You know, there's just not enough of it.
01:02:08 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
It's difficult to procure.
01:02:09 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
We've been through all the kind of the challenges of that.
01:02:11 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Secondary to that is the willingness of the local government to assist.
01:02:16 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Now, we've had some movement in Florida in the last couple years with Live Local, which is wonderful, that basically does a lot of different things for affordable housing.
01:02:23 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
One of the main things is it says, hello, county, city, zoning jurisdiction, any commercial or industrial property that you have on your books has to be allowed to be affordable housing without being rezoned.
01:02:38 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So if I go to the city of Orlando and I have industrially zoned property, show them that I'm going to do affordable housing, put the restrictions on it as I should, by law, they have to say, okay, no rezone.
01:02:50 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
You're allowed to have the maximum density within a certain radius for this development if you're going to do truly affordable housing.
01:02:57 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So that's been a big help because the NIMBYs and the people that want to kill everything
01:03:02 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
show up at these rezoning meetings and go crazy and try to stop everything before it starts because they don't really understand what's happening.
01:03:10 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So the future of affordable housing is something that we've looked at, and others in our industry are doing the same thing.
01:03:17 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Larger scale developments,
01:03:20 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
partnerships with larger employers.
01:03:21 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
We're doing a project with Universal Studios right now called Catchlight Crossings in the tourist corridor directly across from the convention center, which is a 30 plus $1,000,000 piece of land that Universal donated to this cause.
01:03:35 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So seeing, you know, very, you know, Fortune 100 companies get involved with donation of land, resources, talents, all the things that Universal did with us is a way to get more units done.
01:03:48 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So Catchlight
01:03:50 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
is 1000 units, which is 10 times more than we can usually do with a singular allocation.
01:03:56 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
It's also taking a lot more time to put together and get built, but the challenges of the resources and everything else still remain.
01:04:04 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
But doing more and planning for more at a singular time is really a way to get, obviously, to get more scale.
01:04:11 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
When it comes to something like that project that you just mentioned with universal,
01:04:15 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Do you think the motivation is because they're realizing a lot of the workforce can't afford to live here?
01:04:22 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Is that maybe one of the motivations for large companies?
01:04:25 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
That is probably the most important reason, because the senator that put this through Senator Passidomo a couple years ago was the Senate president.
01:04:33 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
And it's called, she came up with the Live Local terminology, because you know you want people to live within a certain radius of where they work.
01:04:41 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Here in Central Florida, you know we're a service-based economy.
01:04:45 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
And in the I-4 tourism corridor, now that Epic's open, we've got over 100,000 hourly workers commuting into the corridor daily, right, between all the theme parks.
01:04:55 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
100,000.
01:04:56 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
100,000 plus, yeah, you know, between both universal parks, convention center, restaurants, all these things.
01:05:03 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
And links showed us that the commute times in this corridor were the highest in their entire system.
01:05:09 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So you have hourly workers coming in for a shift, taking a 2, 2 1/2 hour bus drive.
01:05:15 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
both directions.
01:05:16 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
If you're late, the bus is late, you miss your kid's pickup, you miss your doctor's appointment, whatever it may be, that causes a problem not only for the person that's experiencing it, also causes a problem for the employer.
01:05:29 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
You know, all these things kind of come together because they're trying to create stability for their employment base and provide them with benefits.
01:05:36 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
And there's just no housing in a corridor like the tourism corridor.
01:05:42 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
everything's a hotel, everything's an attraction.
01:05:45 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
And that's what the highest and best use is.
01:05:47 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
But yes, it's going to come down to these large-scale, massive, you know, kind of regional employers understanding, do I get the benefit of selling this land?
01:05:57 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Do I need to?
01:05:58 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Can I write it off?
01:05:58 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Can I put it into a non-profit?
01:06:00 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Whatever it may be.
01:06:01 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
And then finding someone like us that can come up with a solution, because we're not just housing Universal employees at that development.
01:06:07 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
We're going to house anybody from the general public now.
01:06:10 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Of course, Universal will have employees living there, but it's going to help the entire corridor find housing solutions for their employees.
01:06:18 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Do you find an upward tick in the amount of people applying to these communities?
01:06:24 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Yes, short answer.
01:06:26 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So usually I get asked, are we getting closer to solving the problem?
01:06:31 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
And the answer sadly is no.
01:06:33 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
The need is increasing.
01:06:36 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
The product type that we produce is not getting increasing at the needed rate.
01:06:44 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
We still, and we're about at the end of this period, but there's still affordable housing projects from
01:06:50 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
20, 25 years ago that people have taken out of the program and converted to market rate housing, which literally opened up the bottom of the bucket and took units out of circulation at an exponential rate faster than we could put more units back in.
01:07:06 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So in a place like Florida where you have thousands of people moving in a week, I see the studies now it's slowing down and certain areas are having a net migration out.
01:07:17 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
I still believe that Florida's long-term vision or viewpoint is that it's going to have a lot more people coming in than leaving.
01:07:26 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
So we're going to be in one of the several states that's going to experience significant population growth probably in the next 20 years.
01:07:33 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
And with that comes strain on public schools, comes strain on roads, comes strain on all public, everything else.
01:07:39 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
But you know, the housing situation is going to be something to very closely monitor because we're going to have to figure out a way to get more
01:07:47 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
product and stock out there than what our industry can provide.
01:07:51 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Thank you.
01:07:51 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
That was great.
01:07:52 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I appreciate you being here.
01:07:54 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Thank you.
01:07:54 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Of course.
01:07:54 Ryan von Weller, Wendover Housing Partners
Thank you for having me.
01:07:59 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Ryan walked us through how affordable and housing-first developments come together, from tax credits and capital stacks to the non-profit partnerships that make these projects possible.
01:08:10 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Now, we'll shift to how attainable housing is achieved through landlord engagement, from large private companies to individuals who own individual units.
01:08:20 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Homeless Services Network's Brian Postoway and Anna Ashe explain how developing strong relationships is key to getting people off the streets for good.
01:08:32 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Welcome, Brian, to the podcast.
01:08:35 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
How are you doing today?
01:08:35 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
Doing good.
01:08:36 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
It's great to be here.
01:08:37 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah.
01:08:39 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I love that we've been around long enough to have repeat guests and HSN Homeless Services Network is, I think, our first repeat guest.
01:08:47 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
Oh, fantastic.
01:08:48 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah, thank you for being here.
01:08:49 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I appreciate it.
01:08:51 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Brian, we're gonna, I'm gonna have you introduce yourself and then that'll lead into a conversation with Anna on your team.
01:08:57 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
But Brian, can you share just your role with HSN?
01:09:01 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
Yeah, my name is Brian.
01:09:04 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
I'm the Chief Operating Officer with Homeless Services Network, and we're the lead agency for Central Florida's Continuum of Care, working with people experiencing homelessness.
01:09:15 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
So we actually don't do direct service, but we're kind of in the background as the backbone of all the work of the amazing providers and
01:09:27 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
advocates across the Tri-County area doing such amazing work, good work with our unhoused neighbors.
01:09:35 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So when you say Tri-County, are we talking Seminole, Orange, and Osceola?
01:09:39 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
We are, yeah.
01:09:41 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And just as a quick, we've talked on the podcast before, different episodes about a lead agency.
01:09:47 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Can you just briefly clarify what that means?
01:09:50 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
Yeah, so the federal government, the state government, and then local governments,
01:09:55 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
fund a lot of initiatives to combat homelessness.
01:10:00 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
And we've become kind of a clearinghouse for some of those funding.
01:10:04 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
We help agencies pursue best practices.
01:10:09 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
We manage grants.
01:10:11 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
We also manage data.
01:10:15 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
And so there's a lot of kind of work that enables us to collaborate and coordinate.
01:10:20 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
between organizations that have their own secret sauce.
01:10:24 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
They're doing really good work in a lot of ways.
01:10:26 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
And so we try to be a force multiplier in the work that's being done in every neighborhood and every little place across the region.
01:10:37 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And, you know, this episode is on housing, and obviously there's a huge connection
01:10:44 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
between housing and homelessness.
01:10:47 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
How would you define that kind of relationship between those two issue areas?
01:10:54 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
Yeah, the best analogy that I've heard talked about is musical chairs.
01:11:01 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
Everybody knows the musical chairs game and
01:11:06 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
So our housing system is a lot like musical chairs.
01:11:09 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
When there's not enough housing, there's not enough chairs, and the music stops, and somebody doesn't have a place to sit, the question then becomes, who doesn't have a place to sit?
01:11:22 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
And while there are a lot of things that people think about when they talk about homelessness, they think about addiction, they think about
01:11:30 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
mental health challenges.
01:11:32 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
They think about disabilities, a variety of other things that oftentimes get kind of tend as a cause of homelessness.
01:11:39 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
But really, these are just vulnerabilities that predict who doesn't have a chair, who isn't fast enough, nimble enough, wealthy enough to get a roof over their head.
01:11:55 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
So, you know, the real, the real
01:11:59 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
truth in Central Florida is we don't have enough housing.
01:12:03 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
As we kind of set up our next conversation with Anna from your team, when it comes to HSN's role with housing, where it seems like
01:12:17 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I'm going to ask an ineloquent question because I don't know how to word it.
01:12:19 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
But it seems like, I know you just said you don't do direct services, but it seems like Anna works with landlord engagement.
01:12:26 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So where does HSN fit?
01:12:28 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
Yeah, we're kind of the emergency room where when people who have, are so destitute in a place where they are not able to self-resolve, we come in and we provide a rental subsidy
01:12:45 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
and supportive services in the form of a case manager to assist that person towards some sort of housing stability.
01:12:53 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
For a family, that might be a short-term subsidy with supportive services.
01:13:00 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
For somebody who is disabled, and most times they have more than one disability, that might be a very long-term subsidy that goes several years.
01:13:12 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So that is direct from HSN.
01:13:15 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
It is, yeah.
01:13:16 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
It comes from federal, state, and local grants.
01:13:20 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
And we make sure, and that's what Anna, who you'll talk to shortly, her whole team is all about making sure that we comply with all of the federal grant rules, local state grant rules, that we're paying reputable landlords, that we're paying them in an appropriate way, that units have been inspected, and it's
01:13:41 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
Quality housing.
01:13:43 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Thank you.
01:13:44 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Thank you, Brian.
01:13:45 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
You did a great setup for Anna, and now we're going to do a switcheroo and put Anna there.
01:13:50 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Thank you.
01:13:50 Brian Postlewait, Homeless Services Network
Thank you.
01:13:51 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I appreciate it.
01:13:52 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
All right, HSN guest #2, Anna, how are you?
01:13:56 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
Hello, I am good.
01:13:57 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
I'm very happy to be here.
01:13:58 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
Thank you for having me.
01:13:59 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Thank you for being here.
01:14:00 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Can you just take a minute to introduce yourself and your role?
01:14:03 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
Absolutely.
01:14:03 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
So I'm Anna Ashy, and I am the Director of Housing Operations at Homeless Services Network.
01:14:08 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
And what that means is that we have a centralized housing operations team here in Central Florida, which not every continuum of care has.
01:14:17 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
We have a team of eight that is responsible for the recruitment and retention of landlords in Orange, Osceola, and Seminole County.
01:14:25 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
And we are looking to partner with landlords who are willing to rent to people who are exiting homelessness.
01:14:31 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
So we are not only looking to facilitate the lease-up process, such as seeing it through approval, but we also perform the inspections
01:14:40 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
And then we are making sure that once the lease is signed, that we are putting together a payment package that HUD will approve that is compliant in order to get those rents paid every month.
01:14:49 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Can you talk a little bit about what those requirements are through HUD?
01:14:54 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
Yeah, so I mean, there's a lot of logistics as far as like we have to prove that the person that we're paying is legitimate, that it's not a scam, that they actually own the property or have a right to receive the rent for that property.
01:15:05 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
We have to make sure that rent is reasonable and within fair market rent, which
01:15:10 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
what HUD, deems required, deems necessary.
01:15:14 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
We have to make sure that the property is habitable, making sure that it's safe, that there is a working smoke detector, that the windows open and shut and lock, and that there's not loose wires or a leak or an infestation and things like that.
01:15:28 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So that is required in order to receive the funding from HUD.
01:15:32 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And does that trickle directly to you guys from the federal government, or does it kind of go federal, state, to local, or is it a direct?
01:15:40 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
I mean, most, we have a blend of funding that comes to us.
01:15:43 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
So there's funds that directly come to us from HUD, then there's funds that come from the state through DCF.
01:15:49 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
There are funds that come to us locally, and then we even have a few private grants as well.
01:15:54 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Okay, so the funding comes in for you guys to do this job, right, this massive job.
01:15:58 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Now, quickly, you said continuum of care.
01:16:01 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Can you define what that means?
01:16:02 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
Yes, so continuum of care is a term that HUD uses, and they designate areas of the country as continuums of care.
01:16:11 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
So they've carved up the country into these
01:16:14 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
administrative regions.
01:16:15 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
And there's a lead agency for every continuum of care.
01:16:19 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
And Homeless Services Network serves as the lead agency for Orange, Osceola, and Seminole County, which is the continuum of care for Central Florida.
01:16:27 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And how long has HSN been doing this?
01:16:30 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
Gosh, I mean, I think it's 1994, so that's 21 years, not 21, 31 years, sorry.
01:16:36 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Yes, unfortunately, that is 31 years, it's true.
01:16:41 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So
01:16:42 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Let's get to that level of landlord engagement.
01:16:46 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Now, I'm sure if HSN has been doing this work for decades and decades, you probably have long-standing relationships with some landlords, right?
01:16:54 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
We do.
01:16:55 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
How does that look from a new landlord perspective?
01:16:58 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
How do you engage?
01:16:59 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
How do you find?
01:17:00 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
What are the qualifications?
01:17:02 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
What does that look like?
01:17:03 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
So as far as recruiting new landlords go, we do that a couple of ways.
01:17:07 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
So we are constantly looking online, of course.
01:17:11 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
We are physically driving around looking for signs.
01:17:15 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
We are going to investor club meetings.
01:17:17 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
We are partnering with the Orlando Regional Realtors Association.
01:17:20 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
They have a property management council that we have, you know, attended to try and network with.
01:17:24 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
But honestly, our best referral is word of mouth from other landlords.
01:17:28 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
What happens is we are partnered with landlords and they really like having a supportive partner who they can call and say, hey, Mary's smoking in her unit again.
01:17:38 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
and I don't want to have another conversation with her.
01:17:40 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
Can you please talk to her about this?
01:17:42 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
They love having a supportive contact when things come up because things happen in the general population all the time.
01:17:49 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
It does not matter how much money you make.
01:17:51 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
You can destroy a unit.
01:17:51 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
You can be a terrible neighbor.
01:17:53 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
You can be a terrible tenant, regardless of your income.
01:17:56 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
And so having a partner that not only is helping to guarantee some of that rent, which you're not getting from the general population, and also serving as a supportive contact, excuse me, is huge.
01:18:08 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
That, so when you are able to pair an individual with an apartment or a housing unit, right, with a landlord,
01:18:18 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Is it always subsidized?
01:18:20 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Is it always HSN helping, making sure that rent is paid?
01:18:25 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Or are there some individuals who are self-supportive and they just need those wraparound services?
01:18:30 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
So the housing team that I am working with is only looking for landlords that are working with folks that will receive a rental subsidy.
01:18:40 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
So HSN at this time does not have as many preventative dollars available to us.
01:18:45 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
So typically we are always placing
01:18:48 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
people who are disabled, who are families experiencing poverty and crisis, who are veterans into housing.
01:18:56 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
And so we are going to be subsidizing, if not all of the rent for a period of time, some of the rent for a period of time.
01:19:04 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
And it just depends on what their situation is as to what they're eligible for to receive.
01:19:10 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
But there is always a rental subsidy involved when we are recruiting landlords.
01:19:14 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And does that look like, is there a time frame that you typically propose to a potential landlord?
01:19:22 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Like, hey, we're looking at six months or a year for this individual to, how does that look?
01:19:27 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
It's really tough to sell a landlord on support that's anything less than the lease term, right?
01:19:31 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
Because they're concerned like, hey, at month 6, what's gonna happen if you guys aren't supporting?
01:19:35 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
So most of the time,
01:19:37 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
we are going to say that we're going to walk alongside that person for 12 months.
01:19:41 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Okay.
01:19:42 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
Now, if there's a situation where that person has already used up some of their rental assistance and they're going to be able to, you know, self-sustain after month 6, we certainly can do that.
01:19:51 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
But most of the time, our ideal situation is to be able to say to them, we are going to be subsidizing some or all of the rent for 12 months.
01:20:00 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Questions are popping up in my head as we're talking.
01:20:02 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I'm going to grab my pen really quickly so I can write them down as we're talking.
01:20:06 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
No worries.
01:20:07 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Is there anxiety that builds up with that person as they know their services might drop off after 12 and 24 or 24 months?
01:20:16 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Is there a gap there?
01:20:17 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I think about people who, you know, are cared for in the hospital and then walk out those hospital doors and then kind of fall off and then no one kind of continues to look after them.
01:20:27 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Is there a gap there in the system?
01:20:30 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
Absolutely.
01:20:30 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
So while we know the work that we're doing works, we have like a 95% success rate overall, and we know that these interventions are really successful.
01:20:40 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
We also know they're not enough.
01:20:42 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
There is not enough funding and resources and support to basically address the need that is happening.
01:20:50 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
for every one person that we're getting into housing, it feels like, another one pops up.
01:20:55 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
The inflow is what we have to address.
01:20:57 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
We have to address prevention.
01:20:58 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
We have to address that we do not have adequate resources to meet the need when record numbers of unemployment are happening all around us, when people don't have access to their food stamps at the moment, when insurance rates are super high, which push up rents and mortgages.
01:21:18 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
It's really a tough time to be in this industry and see the overwhelming need versus the finite resources that we have available.
01:21:30 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
And so there is a lot of anxiety that builds up as someone is exiting the program.
01:21:35 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
But the work of our amazing case managers
01:21:38 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
is to try and prepare them for that moment, not just at the end, but throughout the entire 12 months.
01:21:43 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
You are working towards that goal of what can we do to make sure that you have a rainy day fund?
01:21:49 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
What can we do to make sure that we are putting you in a place that you can afford once our support is all said and done?
01:21:56 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
How can we get creative?
01:21:58 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
You know what I mean?
01:22:00 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
And the ways that our case managers are able to work with these folks and help them meet that moment,
01:22:06 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
is honestly amazing to witness.
01:22:08 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
But most people are their own best advocate, and they are going to do what it takes to meet that moment as well.
01:22:16 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
But sometimes the resources are not adequate, and that is heartbreaking when that happens.
01:22:22 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
It really is.
01:22:24 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
And I feel like if people understood sometimes how little it takes to help people be on their way,
01:22:33 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
they would be amazed at how even, 500 bucks, $1,000 can intervene and stop people from entering homelessness because their kid got sick and they don't have sick time, or they missed the bus and they were late to work and missed a shift.
01:22:50 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
So many things that become a domino effect that if intervened early on, when it's a much smaller amount, could have really big impact.
01:23:00 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So when, tell me about an ideal landlord.
01:23:03 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
What are you looking for?
01:23:04 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
What's the right partnership look like?
01:23:07 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
So I think you're going to have on the podcast Wendover, and so I'm happy to use that as an example.
01:23:13 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
So Wendover is a great partner of ours in that they provide not only housing for folks, you know, that sometimes have higher barriers, but they also offer case management support on site.
01:23:26 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
So our partnership with them is actually established through the Florida Housing Finance Corporation.
01:23:30 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
We are their mandated link partner.
01:23:33 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
So when there's set aside units for tax credit properties, they are required to give their link partner 30 days to refer a special needs population referral for that.
01:23:45 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
And so if you are someone exiting homelessness, you meet that definition.
01:23:49 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
So we would send over a referral for that unit, whether it's case managed through them or through us.
01:23:55 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
And then we work together to keep that tenant stably housed.
01:23:58 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
So my team is also part of the retention as far as we want to make sure that client stays stably housed.
01:24:06 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
And we want to talk through tough situations.
01:24:09 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
And we have worked through some tough situations with Wendover.
01:24:12 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
For example, we had a senior woman who moved into one of their properties and
01:24:19 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
A lot of times what happens when people move into a unit is they are exiting that fight or flight survival mode.
01:24:26 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
And so oftentimes their body can relax and think and experience not being in survival mode for the first time.
01:24:36 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
And sometimes that triggers loneliness.
01:24:39 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
It triggers a mental health episode.
01:24:41 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
It triggers an illness where their body is now able to recognize, hey, I'm sick here.
01:24:47 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
In this particular situation, this woman was experiencing mental health crisis.
01:24:50 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
And another landlord probably would not have responded the way that they did and would not have recognized the whole picture that, hey, this is a woman in crisis and she needs help and making her homeless is not going to help her.
01:25:02 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Right.
01:25:02 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
So we creatively worked together to keep this woman stably housed and she's doing really well now and she is still in housing.
01:25:09 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
And that's just an example of how we were able to work together to salvage this person's housing even in a tough situation.
01:25:17 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
There are some, if any, maybe this isn't the case, but when you approach a new landlord, what are some misconceptions that they might have?
01:25:24 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
There are a lot of stereotypes out there about homelessness, and I'm sure that most of us have those in our head when we hear the word homeless, what that looks like.
01:25:33 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
And part of what we have to overcome is that perception that there's a certain way that people are when they're homeless or how they maintain their homes.
01:25:41 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
And what we find most of the time is all of our folks are so grateful to have a home again.
01:25:47 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
are so excited to have a place that they can call their own, that want to take care of it, that want to be a part of the community and want to give back.
01:25:58 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
So some of the misconceptions that we have to overcome are honestly the same barriers we have to overcome when it comes to the leasing process.
01:26:04 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
We are constantly negotiating several things.
01:26:07 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
And if I can,
01:26:08 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
kind of describe what some of those are.
01:26:10 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
But we are looking to work with landlords who are willing to accept people with evictions.
01:26:16 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
It's very rare to find a person experiencing homelessness that has not received an eviction.
01:26:21 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
Chances are they're going to remain in housing for as long as they can and do not have a place to go.
01:26:26 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
And until that eviction comes through, they are there.
01:26:30 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
They're not able to move out before that eviction hits.
01:26:32 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
So we are looking for landlords who are going to work with folks that do not make three times the rent.
01:26:38 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
We are looking for two, even 1 1/2 times the rent, because wages have not gone up and kept pace with the historic high that we are seeing for rents right now.
01:26:48 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
We are also looking for them to work with people that don't have rental backgrounds.
01:26:52 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
A lot of our folks exiting
01:26:53 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
foster care, guess what?
01:26:55 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
They don't have an established rental record.
01:26:57 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
And you see landlords that are skittish.
01:26:58 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
They don't want to rent to people that don't have established rental records.
01:27:02 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
They don't want to work with people that have poor credit.
01:27:05 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
They don't want to work with people who have any criminal background.
01:27:08 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
And what's really tough right now in Florida, especially, is we are, in a sense, criminalizing homelessness.
01:27:16 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
You can be arrested for existing on a sidewalk.
01:27:19 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
And when you aren't willing to accept people that have a criminal background, or at least look back and say, hey, this person made a mistake in their 20s.
01:27:27 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
They're in their 40s and 50s.
01:27:29 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
This is haunting them.
01:27:30 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
Let's not count this against them.
01:27:32 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
And we ask them to look at criminal records on a case-by-case basis rather than just a flat out, no, we aren't going to work with you.
01:27:40 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
We're constantly, whenever laws are released as far as evictions, for example, something came through in July of this year that if you sign up as a tenant to have e-mail notifications, they can just e-mail you an eviction notice and boom, if you miss that e-mail, if it goes to your junk, if it is,
01:27:59 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
not an e-mail that you're checking regularly.
01:28:01 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
You can be blindsided by a notice that you missed because they no longer have to post it on your door if you opt into that.
01:28:08 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
So there's a lot of tenant education that goes into our work as well.
01:28:12 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
We're explaining to people, this is how you get your security deposit back.
01:28:15 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
Because when people are coming through Homeless Services Network, we want to set them up to be educated tenants
01:28:23 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
wherever they go.
01:28:24 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
what I mean?
01:28:25 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
Because so many people don't know, if I don't fill out this move-in inventory form and note there's a crack in this tile, at the end of this lease, if I don't have a picture of a crack in that tile and noted on my move-in condition sheet that it's there, they can charge me $1,000 to replace that floor and there's nothing I can do about it.
01:28:43 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
And we see it all the time.
01:28:44 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
We see erroneous charges leading to evictions that we cannot fight.
01:28:49 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
We see double charges for rent that we are constantly
01:28:53 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
coming back and saying, hey, just last week, we had a ledger that was sent to us.
01:28:57 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
It was a double charge from March 2021.
01:29:00 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
All this time, it had rolled over, rolled over, rolled over, accrued fees, and it was all from an error that had our team, who has dedicated housing professionals, not been able to review that.
01:29:11 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
tenant was never going to figure that out.
01:29:13 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
And quite frankly, I don't even think the landlord had done it maliciously.
01:29:17 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
These things happen and there aren't really protections for tenants in the sense that we don't have right to counsel and housing court here in Central Florida.
01:29:26 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
If we did, I think that would be something that could significantly improve
01:29:33 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
the quality of life here in Central Florida and the housing stability in the region.
01:29:38 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Is that something that is an idea that's out there?
01:29:41 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
It is.
01:29:41 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Okay.
01:29:42 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
We do see that in other cities that when they have provided right to counsel and housing court evictions plummet.
01:29:48 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
By 40%.
01:29:48 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Wow.
01:29:49 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
Because when you get an eviction in this region,
01:29:53 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
you have very, very few days to respond to that eviction.
01:29:56 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
And responding to that eviction means you got to take time off work.
01:30:00 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
You probably don't have money for an attorney.
01:30:02 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
You've got to figure out the legal process to be able to do so.
01:30:06 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
But one of the interventions that I think is a low-hanging fruit here in Central Florida that's really attainable that I keep banging the drum on
01:30:14 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
is that if I get an eviction tomorrow because my car broke down and I couldn't get to work and I'm short 50 bucks, now I got $100 late fee, $5 every day, and I call an agency and I say, hey, please help me pay my rent.
01:30:27 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
Please, help me pay to not have this eviction.
01:30:31 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
It was just filed.
01:30:32 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
If I, as HSN, want to go and stop that eviction, the courts require that be paid in cash or money order.
01:30:40 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
Guess what?
01:30:41 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
HSN can't do that.
01:30:42 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
No agency in town that I'm aware of can pay your rent in cash for you and get reimbursed for that in any grant that I am aware of.
01:30:52 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
And so that is just a local technicality that we could change in our courthouse where they could say, hey,
01:30:58 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
This agency is going to be allowed to stop rents with a check.
01:31:02 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
And how many evictions could that stop?
01:31:05 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
We had a family of eight that was housed and mid-leased, the ownership changed.
01:31:11 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
That's very common.
01:31:12 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
People sell their houses, they sell their investments.
01:31:14 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
Florida landlord law says that you have to honor that lease.
01:31:18 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
So we reached out to them and we said, hey, can you give us your payment information so we can pay you for this lease?
01:31:24 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
And they said, no.
01:31:26 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
We do not want to give you that information because we do not want you to pay us.
01:31:29 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
And we're like, what?
01:31:31 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
Why?
01:31:32 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
We don't want those type of people living in our unit, meaning people that need rental assistance.
01:31:38 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
We wrote the courts.
01:31:39 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
We demonstrated that we could pay, that these folks had done nothing wrong, that they were enrolled in a program that was committed to paying their rent.
01:31:46 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
The eviction went through.
01:31:48 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
and a family of eight had a brand new eviction, and we had to figure out how to house them with a brand new eviction.
01:31:53 Anna Ashie, Homeless Services Network
And those are the things that I say, if we had right to counsel, if we had a way to stop that eviction once it got to the court from an agency perspective, that could really have meaningful impact in our region.
01:32:08 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
As we close this episode, we have a few takeaways that you can take with you into your day.
01:32:14 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Number one, housing is a systems problem, not a single sector problem.
01:32:19 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Attainable or affordable housing doesn't happen because one organization or sector swoops in and saves the day.
01:32:26 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
It happens when philanthropy, government, nonprofits, and the private sector are all aligned around a shared goal.
01:32:32 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Number 2, we have housing units, but not the affordability we need.
01:32:38 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
We have many people moving into our region that have higher wage earnings, while our local workforce, which supports our local economy, is being forced to live farther and farther away from their place of employment, which is causing more strain on individuals and families, our transportation system, and more.
01:32:57 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Creating attainable housing that brings people closer to their jobs is a critical component of any solution.
01:33:03 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Number 3, innovation and a combination of approaches are needed.
01:33:08 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
As much as it would sound and feel great to say, we've found the one solution, that's just not the reality.
01:33:16 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Helping people stay in their current homes, restoring and renovating existing buildings, making policy changes, forming strong landlord relationships, cross-sector partnerships, and building affordable housing at scale, all of these and more are essential pieces of the housing solution.
01:33:35 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And #4, supporting housing as a philanthropy.
01:33:38 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Philanthropists can look different depending on your goals and comfort level.
01:33:41 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
From large partnerships and risk capital to direct support of a local nonprofit, there are always many ways a charitable giver can support housing.
01:33:51 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
The first step we suggest is checking out Nonprofit Search.
01:33:55 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
That's nonprofit-search.org to look for the nonprofits working in this space.
01:34:01 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
For those looking to establish A charitable fund and support multiple organizations and efforts, Central Florida Foundation has many options that can make doing just that streamlined, simple, and high impact.
01:34:16 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Thank you for listening to the podcast First You Talk.
01:34:20 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
As an engaged listener of this show, we encourage you to check out our podcast website at cffound.org slash podcast to learn more about the complex issue.
01:34:32 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
There you'll find more context to the voices that you've heard today, links to any supporting materials mentioned during the episode, and resources to help you explore additional perspectives to draw a fuller picture of the issue at hand.
01:34:46 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Through curiosity and collaboration, we can all make our community an even better place to call home.