- (female announcer)   Production funding for   Behind the Headlines   is made possible in part by   the WKNO Production Fund,   the WKNO Endowment Fund,   and by viewers   like you, thank you.

- A newly expanded effort to build and rebuild neighborhoods in Memphis, tonight on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian.

And thanks for joining us.

Tonight we're talking to two leaders of organizations they've been here before, working on blight, on rebuilding neighborhoods, working with community development corporations, and affordable housing and so on.

Steve Barlow, the head of Neighborhood Preservation Inc. thanks for being here again.

- Thanks for having me.

- Roshun Austin is president and CEO of The Works, a community development corporation that does a whole lot, and we'll talk about that, thank you for being here again.

- Thanks, Eric.

- Along with, Bill Dries, reporter with The Daily Memphian.

Let's for people who aren't as close to this or somehow miss the many other times that you both have been on talking about all kinds of issues of neighborhoods and redevelopment and affordable housing and blight remediation, give me the 30 second, I'll start with you Roshun, what The Works has done, we'll have Steve do the same, and then we'll talk about the combination and why and what that means.

So I'll start with you Roshun.

- Okay, so my elevator pitch for The Works is that we're an affordable housing developer, both multi-family and single family and everything related to that.

So housing counseling, we do mortgage lending.

We also did some small business lending under the healthy food financing initiative and have a very robust health and wellness initiative, and everything related to engaging communities, families, and not just one group in the family.

So we deal with children and adults in the family, seniors who don't have extended family and throughout our neighborhoods.

- All right and Steve.

- About little over 10 years ago, Neighborhood Preservation, Inc was formed to address the expanding problem at the time of abandoned houses and real estate in the city of Memphis and Shelby County.

Roshun was a founding board member over 10 years ago.

And in the years since the areas of focus have been on networking, which is bringing people together who care about fixing the problem of abandonment and substandard housing and poor conditions that real estate and Memphis policy work, because those things don't get fixed without systemic approaches.

So we've worked on policy pertaining to land banking, tax foreclosure law, and code enforcement, and then innovation.

So we've had a board and a team of staff who have been interested in innovating and showing the way and experimenting in a sense, seeing what can be done and what works so that hopefully we can show the path forward for other groups to do more and for scaling up efforts that work well.

- And so with that in mind, you all have worked together, but you also, you work, Steve, your group works with all kinds of organizations around town, other CDCs and so on.

You all work, not just in your, I don't know what your original territory was, because you actually work with, you're one of the bigger CDCs, if not the biggest, and you work with a lot of other ones, why combine and what does that, what kind of new initiatives and new endeavors does that create?

- I think it's some of the same things we've done separately we'll be able to bring those things together, and without me having to go to another entity to do the policy work, we can bring that in house.

But the opportunity is beyond the work we've done in Memphis.

Not that we're moving outside of Memphis, there's plenty to do here, but we can go after national funding sources easier, have easier access to funds from large foundations nationally and even lending institutions because many of our deals were tough and we couldn't get them financed, the affordable housing deals locally, and so we had to go nationally anyway, but we now have way more capacity to do more deals and build more affordable housing here in Memphis.

- Same with you, I mean, why combined with The Works and again, I'm sure many groups who have worked with you, are like, oh gosh, does this mean that now Steve and MPI is only gonna be working on projects with Roshun and obviously Roshun shaking her head, but, what are the benefits for the work you all have done?

- One thing we've always said is we don't do development, we don't do real estate development and Neighborhood Preservation, Inc doesn't do development.

However, there is a need for an expanded capacity organization to do the actual development work in the community.

So we did everything, but the development really, we were doing real estate assembly with our partners.

We were doing everything from zoning work to community engagement work that all leads up to development, but we were never directly involved in development.

And since The Works has experienced doing development at the highest level of any entity that does community development, actual physical development work in our community, it seems to be a great opportunity for our team to contribute our skills.

We have lawyers and planners on our staff who are an important element of a development team.

And the thing that is so perfect about it in my opinion, is that The Works Incorporated already has the same bottom line we do, which is not making money, although we do need to make money on deals, but that's not the bottom line.

The bottom line is impacting neighborhoods and families and working together to build a better community.

So that's, together we think we can do more than we could do separately.

- Yeah, let me bring in, Bill.

- Roshun talk about, to Steve's point.

Talk a little bit about doing things that are strategic and then kind of the gap between strategic wins and scaling this up to where it really has a momentum that continues to work.

That we really kind of haven't seen before, although we've seen some important wins and some important development in areas where it was thought impossible just several years ago.

- Yeah, so I think, I mean, I think this is a great move for Memphis strategically.

If you look at community development across the country, first of all, it's a lot older and I always kind of talk about that.

You look at the first CDCs in Bedford-Stuyvesant and Newark and the New England area, not New England, but the northeast, they are robust institutions that build thousands of units.

Often they're the largest landowners in the areas where they work.

They have community health centers, theaters.

We don't, we've never had that here in Memphis.

Our movement is quite a bit younger.

So late '80s, early '90s is when we started and we've just not grown a lot.

And so in a place where you have, we're down about 38,000, probably greater than that now, because it's been a few years, forty thousand units of affordable housing in a place with a very high poverty rate, and-- - Repeat that math again, I'm sorry to interrupt you.

We have 38,000 fewer affordable housing units now?

- Than we need.

- Than we need.

- Than we need, and so between 38 and 40,000 quality affordable housing, so we have some naturally occurring affordable housing.

And I always say some of those places, people shouldn't live if you've ever walked in any of them, but we've had kind of patchwork efforts without a lot of strategy.

And there have been some successes as throwing darts at a board, sometimes you hit the bullseye, and I think we just need to plan that out better.

And so we are making a better use of the resources that are available to us, whether they're people resources or financial resources, and I'll kind of not contradict Steve.

So I always want to remind people that nonprofits in particularly ones like us, community development corporations are corporations first.

And so we do need to generate revenue to do the things that we do.

We serve a charitable purpose and we have the benefit of not paying federal taxes.

But joining forces officially, legally with NPI is important.

We've done some multimillion dollar deals together, even though they had not been the developers, they were very involved in our Frayser project.

They were out lending partner and really NPI set the wheels rolling on Frayser in the first place and brought in The Works, to help complete that deal.

And so in terms of strategy, I think it was just the right time.

We've only seen a poverty rate to grow in Memphis.

We've seen neighborhoods decline further over the decades.

And so we could have kept doing what we've been doing unsuccessfully and maybe get a hit every once in a while, or we could join forces and really impact the lives of families and neighborhoods.

- Steve, on the policy side of this, how does this being together affect policy?

Are there some areas of policy that you can get into that maybe you couldn't before, or do you see things in, with an eye that's closer to it, that makes you think, okay, this policy, we need to see some change in this area too?

- Well, our first commitment is to continue to do what we're doing well together, at least the same, if not better.

And I think we're gonna get better at what we do.

And one of the ways in which we'll get better at what we do is exactly in that area you're talking about, which is expanding probably a little more into some of the affordable housing policy advocacy work.

We have, NPI, Neighborhood Preservation, Inc, we have naturally moved into the space of quality, affordable housing, because what's the answer to abandoned, blighted, substandard property, using it in a way that's responsible.

And that is in demand in our community.

And what is that in our community?

Quality affordable housing.

And so we've gotten into this space of needing to both have better enforcement against low maintenance of the kind of substandard housing conditions, which are pervasive in our community, especially in the core of Memphis and finding ways to build back.

One of the things in our blight work at Neighborhood Preservation, Inc, that has been the biggest lesson for me over time is that nobody's happy with just removing blight.

What's next?

It's always the question.

As soon as you clear away that house that everybody's been complaining about for 15 years, the next question is, okay, what are we gonna put there?

- You're not just gonna leave it open, are you?

Yeah, and to that point, do you think that affordable housing policy reflects some of the skittishness that may be people who make those policies have about, okay, it's okay to tear down that house on the block, but let's not get carried away and create a lot of affordable housing that's going to bleed over into areas where some people who make policy think it shouldn't be, is that a reality?

- Yeah, the, not in my backyard, yes, build affordable housing, but anywhere, except for near me, that's N.I.M.B-ism is definitely pervasive in every community and probably in the world.

Nobody, everybody wants to solve the problem, but nobody wants to help solve the problem.

- Yeah.

- But the way that you address that is by responsible management of the property.

And that's one of the things that is a real strength of The Works Incorporated as a partner for us and what we've observed in their work, in the first multi-family deal they did, which is in south Memphis and in what we've observed in their work in Frayser, the emphasis that this woman right here has on property management as a, basically a wrap around service, it's not a wrap around service.

I mean, every, it's not just collect your check, it enhanced the quality of your life and your family's experience of life, make sure we have excellent educational opportunities, excellent infrastructure, excellent access to food.

All of those things are so important.

And so when, what I would argue is that when you have that sort of access and that sort of mindset on property management for affordable housing, then you don't have the pushback from neighbors that you have had historically when people who the majority of property managers of affordable, or housing for people who can't afford above a certain amount, a low-income property management is a just to making the money only game.

They're not, people aren't focused on everything else.

So that kind of neighbor versus a neighbor who is managing property really well, it's a whole different experience.

And so it will begin to erode that negative perception of what affordable housing is in our community, I think.

- The most, I think I'll turn to you, Roshun, most, I would think most affordable housing in Memphis is built by, managed by one way or another federal money or local housing community development, I think of, am I right about that?

Or and where I'm going with it is, over the last 15, 20 years in Memphis, the 10 giant housing projects, as they were known, very kind of faceless, Paul Young, former head of Housing Community Development, now head of Downtown Memphis Commission called it, "Warehousing for the Poor."

That was the whole strategy coming out of the '30s, '40s and '50s of how public housing was built.

They in Memphis have been, systematically there were 10 of them, I believe 9 or 10 torn down, rebuilt with a mixed use, certain more mixed income, some subsidized, some not, apartments, homes, the last big one that people maybe, don't even necessarily see anymore, but is South City around the FedExForum.

And so all these have been rebuilt over time.

Where does The Works, where do you all, if at all interact with those big developments and with the big federal and state and local dollars that go into housing?

- So those are a combination of public and private funds.

And I think when people think about affordable housing, they think of the former public housing.

- Right.

- And so there was always serving families that were, what HUD defines as extremely low income.

And so those people were 30% and below the median income.

And so you're talking families they make 10,000 annually or 12,000 annually, very small numbers regardless of their family size.

And so the idea behind Choice Neighborhoods, and even with the Hope VI prior, was that you came back now with a concentration of poverty, but that you had mixed incomes in those neighborhoods.

We, and that's part of the N.I.M.B-ism probably is that people, you put 400 people that are all 30% and below the median, it's not just in their housing budget, it's in everything.

So it's their food, their access to educational services and anything, any quality of life issues, and so we tend to look at it, the whole person and their budget, and how do we address those things so they are a better tenant and so that they are more mobile, economically mobile, and they can move out of this housing.

We tend to address somewhere in the middle.

So between, some of our families, many of our families are 60% and below the median and particularly in tax credit.

So there's the federal low-income housing tax credit, which was started in the mid '80s.

People don't realize it, but 80% of the housing units in the country, are, well, an affordable housing in particularly are apartment communities.

It's not the single family detached for affordable housing, and those deals are done by private entities.

- Yeah, - And so there are private corporations and even locally outside of remove public housing with, it's still a public private partnership, so you have private people to come in and do the developments.

Nonprofits set aside is relatively small at the state housing finance agencies.

- And with that, all that in mind.

and you talked about, we have a shortage, we're 38, 40,000 need for 38, 40,000 affordable housing units in Memphis.

I mean, it's a massive number.

- It's a massive number.

- I mean, I think there are 300,000 single family homes in Memphis, something you might know, somewhere in that range.

So it's, I mean, relative to how many single family homes there are, how, so the question is, how does the city build and house and maintain another 30 to 40,000 units?

It doesn't seem possible.

- Well, I mean, and I don't think it's the job of government at all.

I mean, I think they play a role and certainly on the policy side, our legislative bodies need to play a role and address policies that are creating conferences for us building affordable housing.

And then there is some funding, there's a share in the public private space, so they can help us with infrastructure and some gap, or patient capital, even if it's not a grant.

And most people think grants, but we need to recover some of this money to do 38,000 units.

And so sometimes it's a project related investment.

It may be at one or two percent, so better than the bank rate.

But at a rate that we can get a return and put it back into affordable housing.

And so that's the role of government.

They need to incent the people who do this well, the private developers.

- Right.

- Otherwise they're not gonna be in it because you're in an upside down position in affordable housing.

- One question for Steve, then I'm going to Bill, is the other role of government, I think you've talked about this before on the show is in the 9, 10 years, you all been around you've argued for gotten passed at the state level often, rules and laws that allowed you to do more, to stop bad landlords.

Often, I think when you've been on, we've talked about individual homes that were blighted, that were overgrown, that were maybe had people living in them that had become boarded up, but people were living on the boards, maybe doing drugs.

But what about the rules around?

We've talked a lot about multi-family here.

How much work do you all do with multi-family landlords?

And as Roshun talks about many of these places are not places where people should live.

- Yeah, one of the hardest things in local government policy anywhere is what do you do about people who are living in substandard conditions at a high number?

If you enforce your codes to the letter of the law, people end up having to leave and where do they go?

I mean, that's, it's, there's no-- - Because in enforcing this place becomes, is identified as unlivable, and most people have to move out.

- They have to move out, where do they go?

Who helps them move?

Who helps people relocate where do... And so one of the things in response to that, the only thing I can say is I can't go to sleep at night, believing that we're sanctioning the kind of substandard housing that I'm talking about, where you don't have a heater, you don't have an air conditioner, you don't have floors, you have active mold growth on your walls, and rat holes in your kitchen cabinets.

And so what we have to do, I think in response to that, both in terms of practice and in terms of policy is focus resources and try new approaches because what we've been doing hasn't been working.

And so I think the focus of resources in particular neighborhoods, in particular types of units, like say multi-family, or say single family rentals in a cluster, what a lot of people like to talk, like to call a whole block strategy, so think about a whole block or a whole neighborhood, like when we first started working together in Frayser, we were working on homeowner repairs.

We were working on, which would be free for homeowners who couldn't afford to make improvements, which were desperately needed in their homes or else they were gonna lose their home, literally lose their home by failure because of water infiltration or something else.

We were also demolishing what couldn't be saved.

We were working with the Frayser CDC, which is an important part of our combination.

We want to continue to work very closely with anybody who's doing great stuff in their neighborhood, neighborhood associations or community development corporations like Frayser CDC, or Klondike, Smokey City CDC.

But in Frayser, we worked with the Frayser CDC to do housing rehabs, if they could be saved, and then we helped to get a demolition done through enforcement of a big abandoned building up there, The Victory Tabernacle.

And then we also invested in multi-family and we turned it into, using incentives that are available, we turned it into the best looking apartments that have been in that neighborhood in decades.

- Let me bring in Bill.

- And to that point, I think that all of us sitting around the table realized that it's been a long road to change the map of where people choose to live in Memphis, as opposed to where people have to live in Memphis.

What do you two see as the next big challenge in really changing that map and convincing people, who are among those who have to live someplace, but don't necessarily get to choose to live where they want to live?

What's the next big barrier that we're looking at?

- Well in our sprawl city, certainly transportation continues to be a barrier for families that are at certain income levels that may not have the privilege of owning private automobiles.

And so they, we don't have a great public transportation system.

Of course, there's been a lot of conversations and efforts to increase funding for MATA, but that is one of the biggest barriers.

And the other is, I always say it, our governments have failed to invest in infrastructure in core neighborhoods.

I mean, we have crumbling clay pipes, literally, and the type of investments we had to make in Renaissance at Steele they should have been done by government and not the private.

- Well, you actually created a park, as part of the development.

- Yeah, so, well, not at Renaissance at Steele because there's a park, a city, a very large city park near by it in around the Ed Rice Community Center.

But we did do a pocket park at our development in south Memphis because we talk about 10 minute walk.

Everyone should have a 10 minute walk to some great green space in their neighborhoods.

And we can't just talk about housing in isolation.

You made all of the other things that any good neighborhood has.

And so we build a pocket park and we had the assistance of state government.

And it was weird, because it was the State Department of Health, Project Diabetes, but we see a high incidence of diabetes and hypertension and diet-related illnesses in our neighborhood.

And south Memphis, 38106, this has the lowest life expectancy in Shelby County, and the difference is 14 years.

That is over a decade between someone in Collierville and south Memphis in their lifespan.

- Let me, we just have a couple minutes left and some may remember that mid August, we had you on with others, Steve and your organization NPI along Dorcas Young from Community Services, Shelby County Cindy Ettingoff from Memphis Area Legal Services were on, talking about among other things, the lifting of the foreclosure moratorium and you all are the agency that distributing the federal money meant to keep people in their homes, give us an update on what's happened with those millions and millions of dollars federal money that was meant really to go to landlords, so they would not evict people who hadn't paid now that the moratorium has been lifted.

- The quick update is, Memphis and Shelby County met the federal government requirement of 65% or more spent by September 30th.

We spent well over 90% in Memphis and Shelby County.

And the average community across the country, state, local, or county, was about 10%.

So we far outpaced our peers on getting those dollars on the street because of the creative collaborative partnership we put together here.

- And what, so then that needs, and again, what does that translate to in terms of the number of people who weren't evicted?

Do you have any kind of ballpark number on that?

- Yeah, unfortunately, I'm not ready to give you exactly the numbers-- - Sure.

- But I believe that the number of families who, households that have been helped is around 8,000 now, just on rent, just on eviction help.

But then I'm thinking the number is in about the 3 or 4,000 range on utilities, families whose utility bills were covered by the program.

- We talked about much more depth, people can get the past episode on wkno.org, or you can get the podcast of it, 'cause it was fascinating about you.

It also, I mean, it's a huge help, not just to both sides of the issue, it's a big help to the landlords who are having to make mortgage payments or tax payments and so on.

I mean, it's helping multiple people.

So the city will now be eligible or the city/county will be eligible for I think you told me before the show, another 60 million now, is that?

- There's an emergency rent assistance round two.

And then there's also state money, that's about 60 million additional.

- All right, we'll talk more about that another time.

Thank you both for being here.

Thank you, Bill, I should have disclosed, Roshun is a board member of Daily Memphian.

So thanks to her for doing that and for being here.

But I always have to disclose that, you can get past episodes of the show.

As I said, wkno.org, you can get them on YouTube or you get the podcast of the show, wherever you get your podcasts, we'll see you next week.

[intense orchestral music] [acoustic guitar chords]