Financing of construction of thousands of portable Housing Units in the reader new york metro area. That experience motivated his involvements of politics or serving in the commission, becoming an elected member of the town finance board, setting a budget policy for the city and led to his run for on breast rated he is he now sits on two committees. One of them is the select committee on economic disparity and fairness in growth. Where he led the committee in a whole series of hearings and conversations about what the right strategies are to try to try to tackle the growing disparity in prosperity opportunities in places. We are really excited that he has joined us to talk about what congress has learned. There are going to talk about place and hear from fabulous people who are making really great efforts in places to make a difference for those residents. We are going to try to think about how does the dynamic there relate to what the feds are doing . We tend to spend a loss of our time in looking at opportunities like newmarket tax credits and how can we improve programs but i think it is worth taking a moment to step back and reflect beyond that to the bigger ideas. What is the kind of role and what is the mission of the federal government in helping these places take off . We have limited time. Congressman, i wanted to start by inviting you to reflect on the work of the committee and how you think about the placebased dimensions of economic disparity and the lack of opportunity. So many of these very richly to very racial and income i stated communities. Rep. Himes thank you. Im grateful for the invitation to participate in this. It is very timely. Toward the end of the committee, we are thinking a lot about what we are going to report back to congress and how we are going to do that. This is really critical stuff. The map really says it all. The committee was formed because arguably this is the point in history within which we see by most measures staggering economic disparity. That is an easy thing to stay and hides an awful lot of economic factors in it. There has obviously been substantial growth over the generation but we are seeing now sort of divide spy however you want to do it, we are seeing a level of economic disparity that is unprecedented. It is not just an economic or moral problem thats a political problem. I will not get too much into it beyond the scope of our conversation about our politics are on fire, partly because two many people partly because too many people feel like they have a stake in the system. That is a deeply embedded value for americans. Too many people are arriving at the conclusion that it is a fantasy. Placebased becomes important and im going to back out of this because i also think people. Place is just a legally designated patch of dirt. That is really important because people do live in communities. But people are also important too in terms of investing. Sometimes i worry that if we only think about dollars going into neighborhoods or geographies that we are not doing the hard work of thinking about dollars going into a geography, if they are not accompanied by those dollars that invest in the social capital, the personal capital, the education and the job training, you run the risk of getting a lot of buildings and businesses that employ people from elsewhere. It is a fascinating question. It is funny. It is like the fractal diagrams. What you see nationally is repeated at the block level. I represent one of the most affluent communities in connecticut but embedded is a city which has dire poverty in certain neighborhoods. Really thinking hard about those geography, particularly those like the ones i have seen that represent your typical western or coastal communities of affluence, you are cheek by jowl with communities that need the investment that dr. Theodos was talking about. Sarah you describe the degree of difficulty. You have been looking at the federal effort in this regard and obviously there is a lot we can do to think about how we can make all the programs were effective and stronger. What is the federal responsibility here . What do you see is the federal role given the size and pers base of this and pervasiveness of what brett was describing . Rep. Himes i think this is a really important question because in my opinion, and lets be clear, what i do know is something about what works in the south bronx and that sort of thing. I expertise comes from political challenges associated with putting together holistic efforts that are required for this stuff to work. So it is a little bit. I will tell you this, what the federal government does very well is related to its scale. We can mobilize resources that no community group, no enterprise or organization or minister pallet he can contemplate. That is really important. And, we can also serve a unique role in the transmission of best practices. I have to put a little apost rphe, because i am going to make the argument that we have to do a lot of research and to help policymakers understand what works and what does not. Frankly we do not. There are a lot of good people in energy and commerce who do but we do not. As you know, people like me to not have a solid finding in what works and what does not work, so they process shifts into a political world where this city councilmember needs this designation because it is important to city councilmember supports the mayor. We really need make the research better. Frankly, i think some of the problems with the Opportunity Zones were predictable. It is a super important question because what we do is break scale. What we do not do frankly is understand the specific communities. Even members of congress and senators, there may be neighborhoods you know but you do not know them the way a communitybased organization and faithbased organization or a city councilmember i understand the challenges and opportunities in those neighborhoods. In addition, i will make the argument that we have never quite cracked the code perfectly of how you come by the knowledge of local aspect liability. That the federal government will probably never have with the scale and a best practice of transmission of the federal government needs. Let me close with one example. In thinking about this conversation, i have an extraordinarily good staff on the select committee of economic disparity spends a lot of good time trying to figure out what examples around the country are good examples of placebased development. It is kind of funny and this is no criticism of our staff because we talk about authority and say shouldnt we hold that went up . And that was 90 years ago. What about the harlem childrens zone . What about southtown, baltimore . We do not know that and we need to have ready answers to those questions. Sarah you have come to the urban institute, virtual home here, sometimes the rules not only were research but actionable database information in the hands of the people locally who are making the decisions with the federal government providing the infrastructure and the scaling capacity to act on that information. It sounds like a pretty nice model here from where we sit. Let us talk about one of those tools you mentioned which was Opportunity Zones. As you said, maybe some of the challenges we have encountered were predictable. I think, brett has done a lot of work, even at the time to suggest the tool could be better targeted. From where you sit and what your community where committee has found, what do you think has been the extent to lift up her potential and can we make tools now Going Forward and make this a more effective tool . Rep. Himes i want to answer that question with some humility. The truth is dr. Theodos has done some research more than others of us have. I am a critic of the program frankly and others because i live in a place where there is a lot of investors and others. I have been a little concerned of the constant celebration of the richness of the turns of the returns of the opportunities. I am also a little a critic because if you think about anyplace, if you want to be a little stereo typical, there are places that are declining. There are places in stasis and then there are places that are improving. That is driven by the market. In my own community, i usually think about my own community because i myself in trouble if i think about challenges in rural america, but the city of stanford is a good example. Stanford has a substantial pockets of poverty but the city is growing like a weed. Developers are thirsting to invest. Businesses are moving in and there are opportunities in neighborhoods in stanford that will simply for developers that would otherwise do what they were going to do. I would contract that was certain neighborhoods in bridgeport. Bridgeport struggles in a way that stanford is not. Stanford does not. We need to be more thoughtful about targeting resources in ways you want to exclude projects are going to get done anywhere and you you want to be really thoughtful about trying to reverse the momentum of the markets. I hate to say that. It is not a popular thing to say but there are communities that were completely built by economic dynamics that are long gone. If you are not forwardlooking about what the community can be in the future, you will throw an immense amount of money behind trying to replicate something whose industrial and commercial logic is two generations gone. To me, it is how do you find the communities that are in stasis or advancing slowly that you could really accelerate the momentum. Sarah i love that and i am hoping my colleagues will put in the chat a link to a tool that brett and others have built here that was designed to help Mission Oriented investors assess the trend line neighborhoods so they could decide whether they wanted to put their Opportunity Zone investments into places that were probably as you say already going to follow that path regardless. We have been trying to create stuff that will help local actors. I am going to ask for a two word to close. Rep. Himes am going to give an answer driven by legislative advantage. Reform. If you said could you stop Opportunity Zones and someday you will create a new one. There is a number of intense orientation and really hard to get stuff done. Consistent with the principles that we have been talking about. Sarah that is the one thing everyone was excited about. It was such a rare word a bipartisan focus on these communities at all that there was perhaps a little bit of looking to the sides from some of the probably predictable the appreciate the focus short community were committee had. The appreciate was leaders who have been going innovative work we appreciate leaders who have been doing innovative work. Congressman, thank you so much for being with us. Rep. Himes if you will grant me another 15 seconds, something did not come out. After that reform to replace the osc program. We did not get to this because of time but this is very much on us. The magic of placebased is because you approach a location. At the end of the day, it is a legally defined patch of dirt in a holistic way. Shame on us at the federal level for not being better about coordinating the educational investments, the job training, the nutrition, the housing in an integrated way. Because we do not do that, you waste an awful lot of money, creating housing where people either do not want to live or they do not have access to transportation or creating a really good Magnet School in a community where people have two dress or dont dress. I did not want to let my time pass without saying we need to tease out the process of integration of resources. Sarah i do know and i am excited that there are lots of conversations about how the federal government can be as effective at that. As you know, congressnot make that so easy for all the programs congress does not make that so easy for all the programs being divided. Thank you so much, again, and i look forward to hearing from our call. Our colleagues. Brett thank you so much congressman himes and thank you so much sarah for walking us through. I thought that was a very Rich Building step as we think about what it means to do playspace development and what the federal role should be with having federal programs. Yet, they of themselves are not necessarily able to achieve playspace development. Placebased development. We have a lots of people doing just that. I want to welcome laura berner who is president and ceo at the port in cincinnati and Carol Naughton who is ceo at purpose built communities in atlanta. And alisa williams, executive of Development Based in new york city. Welcome and thank you for joining us. We are going to jump right in because we do not have loads of time. I want to start first with laura. We have an acronym a soup of federal playspace development programs. How do they actually play on the ground . How do you mix and match and bring them in making playspace development happen and what role does federal resources play . Laura that is a big loaded question. I will make may be a few points. I think we discussed Opportunity Zones legislation and frankly in cincinnati, we have not seen any positive impact on it. No intended to impact. We only see projects that were going to happen anyway and returns being in hand by the thunder. Unfortunately, that has not had a positive impact. We are an old city in cincinnati with a loss of cool architecture so we have been very new to storing tax credits so state and federal historic tax credits have been used very extensively in our city as well as market tax credit. I would say there are two things that happen. One of them is developers will take the money and projects like life tax are very rich and developers do very well with those. We are almost trying to balance as a Public Sector, their intentions and where they are going to put those. I think we all agree that mixing is better than concentrated poverty. Yet, because of the lifehacker tool, we end up with more low Income Housing in the same neighborhoods that have too much already. In particular, that is a tool that i think will be more valuable if it allowed for more mixed income rent and not just low income so we could diversify the portfolio of housing inside our neighborhoods. With regard to new market tax credit, zones are incredibly valuable. But, there is a town there that works really well in an established brotherhood where the rent established neighborhood where the rents are high enough. One of the regulations is you cannot have more than 80 of your project income from rent from residential. You have to rely on a robust on commercial components to the project. The rent in these emerging neighborhoods, the places where we are working at the report authority, they do not have high commercial rent right now. So we can probably get the apartment rent but we cannot get the commercial rent of projects rent and projects stalled. We have to bring in more layers. From the federal tools behalf, it would be nice to have them reformed and more flexibility because we want it to really focus on these emerging neighborhoods, the ones that have been not looked at for so long and bring them back in a healthy way. Brett thank you. I left that context and how specific you are getting and drawing in i love that context and how specific you are getting and drawing in your projects. We have had a couple q and as q as projects. Some of these tools work in both projects that context. Carol, i want to come to you next. As far back at least as jay and jacobs who had some disagreements about how to do placebased development and some effort in congressman himes are more about physical transformations. Some are more about Resident Services or organizing or engagement. Probably being in either extreme means that either we change the topography of a place but do not benefit the people we intend to or we have created some elements of a safety net that helps the people who need to programs but do not necessarily affect the neighborhood as a whole. I know this is something the purpose built model has given a lot of thought to so how do you balance these two . Carol we are neighborhoodist. We know neighborhoods are the places that shape us. It is where people live, love, grow and work. We think about how do we create healthy neighborhoods that support people along their lifes journey. Youre always thinking about the intersection between people and place we are always thinking about the intersection between people and place. Over time, we have seen that when you are really programfocused, and not really focused on the place itself, when people get a little success and change in their park it, if the their pockets, if the neighborhood can no longer compete for them, they will move to a better place. Anybody would do that and nobody should be criticized for making that choice. On the other hand if we are only thinking about place and the buildings there and not the People Living there and there opportunity to take advantage of new investment that comes into the neighborhood, both in Public Sector and public and private sector and philanthropy, that we are missing that too. You are trying to think about both things in everything we do. We have evolved over trying to be thinking asking ourselves every day are the things that we and our 28 communities that are part of the purpose built communities across the country, what are the things we need to be doing that will result in people who live in the neighborhoods have been invited to work, experiencing better racial equity, Greater Health incomes and upward mobility. We test with those three things. Are we evolving over time in a way that the investments are made and the programs are offered and the businesses in the committee the committee altogether working as best they can along the page to create a place that is healthy . We know healthy neighborhoods will ultimately produce happy and Healthy People and that is what we are infamous for. I want to say plus one to laura who identified figuring out how we can use the low Income Health tax credit. A mechanism that works really well with a mature market. How do we make that available to support mixed Income Housing because we know delivering Affordable Housing in a fixed income environment is likely to create Better Outcomes for kids longterm. We just looked at research that came out about 10 days ago, looking at the importance of friendships across economic status as being a really important lever for economic ability. Part of that is proximity. How do we create people across incomes to be in the same place and go to the same schools . Some of that is driven by federal policy and state policy but will he for . Creating an opportunity for mixed Income Housing is really important. The new market, tax credit and all of our markets use tax credit and yes they are valuable and do things other resources cannot and are incredibly complicated and expensive. I object a lot more to the fees with the new Market Program than the Income Housing tax program. Often, for many communitybased organizations, they may only do one or two of those deals. And never become experts so how dreamy so how do we make opportunities so they have a better experience using the new Market Opportunities and deploy them in the way the Community Needs . That is an example of how to be think about federal policy and the tool being able to be used people on the ground and not just fancy pants developers. Brett thank you carol. I would love to draw you in. New york city has a long history of placebased development but now rather than public sucked or development, we have seen big billion dollar or more private sector Capital Projects transforming neighborhoods. New york city used to be separate or distinct in some of these issues of displacement but now other cities are catching on and maybe not in a good way. How do you see the need for playspace development in new york . Thank you. I will probably say plus plenty both the things laura and carol said. I left the neighborhood framing. I think it is absolutely essential that when we are talking about placebased strategies and playspace investment that we really have to ask ourselves the tough and critical questions. I think one of those is if we are honest, we do not actually know how to consistently and successfully inject huge amounts of investment into a place, especially a low income place. I would add on that, especially a low income place of caller or emigrants and actually ensure the place is available and successfully observed overtime for the communities from the beginning. I think that is an incredibly, especially when asking about rural communities, one of the places that stretches across urban and city and suburban and rural pretty consistently. I think, that has to really beg the question of what walls can be put in place as part of faithbased program to really ensure the art creating preservation and sustainability for that community over time to continue to grow and expand so how are we actually having conversations about things Like Community ownership coops, clts. They are housing enforcement. And really creating their rental protections. And the homeownership protection that needs to happen in order for placebased policies to be successful. I love that congressman himes said something about celebrating return and i think lauren laura and carol both touched on this in different ways. The more we think about success for return on investments, then ultimately, i think new york city has cropped an variety of investments. We have about a 250,000 spread between our lower income and our highest income. There are dealing with a lot of variety if we are defining that in terms of return on investment. We are setting ourselves up for the investment and return to driveways happening which is not with the neighborhood needs and its president and communities need. Brett yes, driving challenges to the front. One of the q and a, also talked about climate. I know certain parts of new york especially are dealing with that. Laura, what if we succeed in simulating market when a place takes off . How do we ensure there are part apartments and homes for people and also for their children as they move into that stage to stay in a neighborhood . Or to move to another neighborhood. How to be meet those needs . Laura i think this is a place in particular were we have to say we have not done this directly. If we look at someplace like williamsburg, in two in terms of return of investment, it is doing well but it is not a neighborhood for the low income communities and residents that are there so how every inking about rental protection and how are we thinking about protection and investments for the Small Business is . In order to be there and stay. Industrial factories in these communities and also creating opportunities to build wealth and intergenerational wealth. In new york city, we have a lot of first generation whether it is migrating from the south or other similar across the country. Were it they are able to come to the community and purchase homes at an incredible rate compare to what theyre worth now. They do not have the opportunity to leverage their home to be able to pay for therapy member or child to go to school, whether it is college or Vocational School of any kind. Then, the question is where do they go . We have folks who are open to mentally making the decision to leave new york city are ultimately making the decision to leave new york city. Especially members of the black Community Within central brooklyn, leaving new york because ultimately they do not have an option to move to the next place. So are we creating a housing construct in these neighborhoods in order to move up . Whatever the definition is, one bedroom to twobedrooms and people shift. As we all know, their Housing Needs and demand but if you set up a context where the only way to do that is to shift out of where you are, it has to ask the question of fundamentally, have we been successful in creating the playspace transformation. Placebased preservation. Brett laura, cincinnati is not new york city but you have seen areas of increasing market demand. The Public Sector does have some role in that of developing the rhine district. It was primed for development in some ways. There are other neighborhoods with weaker department demand. Do we have the federal tools we need to do playspace to work in all of cincinnati . And, do we just see need more of what we have or do we need different . Laura that is a good question. And encouraged full read the article about over the rhine from 2018. Our over the rhine neighborhood is our williamsburg has tremendous architecture and is immediately adjacent to our downtown. It has blown up. Grown grown from 90 vacant to 60 full. It was the redevelopment managed by a nonprofit. My work throughout the county is in all the rest of the neighborhoods that do not have the same assets that over the rhine had. I mentioned earlier some of the problems with the tools and being useful to me. The other thing that could be helpful for our organization as we try to patiently and equitably develop his other neighborhoods is to have a guarantor or a Balance Sheet so that i can be patient. Our Major Corporation put about 400 million at the disposal of the over the rhine developers said they could be patient as rent came up. The rent came up quickly. I neighborhood rent will not go up so quickly. The corporations are not as interested in our small neighborhoods as they are in our immediately adjacent to downtown neighborhoods. I can use the benefit of some kind of Patient Capital that would allow us to take the risk and start to invest in these neighborhoods and write way, in the ride way, waiting for the markets to come around. Brett mapping back to the examples in the opening remarks, half 1 billion might be enough to stimulate market demand in over the right or in eastlake but in other markets contexts that are shrinking, like the baltimore example, it may be double that or even triple in some examples. The investment size in the amount for smaller enroll areas is a question we have their but i think of this less as purely an urban rural divide as a do about a strength of market demand and the amount of subsidy needed to fill in the gaps that the market demand is not meeting. Carol, lets go to you. At eastlake, it was originally done with some big investments, with the hopes of partnering with the local public county authority. And a loss of philanthropy and social enterprise. All that supported a Robust Community intermediary, a local foundation. It was a backbone to redevelopment work over the years. Bringing forth a charter school, grocery store, ymca, and more. But sustaining this backbone, or as a San Francisco grad called this, Community Quarterback, over decades is not easy. I am particularly interested in the federal role here. Of the Development Cycle and neighborhood growth which is longer than i think most people appreciate. 23 decades, not 23 years. Is there adequate support for the specific infrastructure for backbone organizations or neighborhood or resident groups and others and if not, what else is needed . Carol thank you for that question. We think the Community Quarterback organizations are the secret to equity and excellence and i would argue you cannot have one without the other. The Community Quarterback organizations are nonprofits thinking about what the people in this neighborhood need to be successful long term . Our thinking five years, 10 years, 15 years down the road which are critical pieces. In the government and philosophic world, it is sometimes hard to make the case for this kind of world. At the same time, he would never see a business with multiple lines of business operate without a c level office where all the lines of business come together and someone is thinking about do i have a complete line of business . We also talked about a Community Quarterback as an organization like if you are remodeling your house, you do not invite the subcontractors who sit around your Kitchen Table and let them figure out who is going to do the Electrical Work when and who will do the plumbing work when, and who will do the painting work. Have a general contractor who thinks about when all this will get done and it to to get done in scale to reach the picture the family has set forward. That is what a general a Community Quarterback does. When you are funding a project that is playspace, it is an Affordable Housing project but is nobody thinking about the totality of how that works together . I think this is an easy thing for the federal government to do. To include system funding for a nonprofit Community Quarterback organization for 20 years. It does not need to be a lot of money but if you put in 200,000 dollars every year, that could be matched by philanthropy or other income or local government money, then you could really create a Game Changing and packed in neighborhoods to sure that neighborhoods the investment was done in a way that lifts up both excellence and equity. Brett i am already wishing we had a whole day. It is merited. I feel, because i know the work of each of you, i feel like we barely scratched the surface. Some of the land making work and the design and engagement work and the organizing work. Everyone just these two go to your websites and learn more and read about she. The last question, i will make it lightning one. Is there something you want to recommend . If you have not heard or you want to emphasize something the federal government needs to expand on or add or is there a tons of question for practice that we need to grapple with . Let us circle around. Barika, lets start with you. Theodos barika we know all know about Racial Disparity that shows up. Economy, wealth. There is exceptional data by want to caution if we are thinking about creating federal and state and local policy to be very mindful that what we are not doing is creating policy that determines by creating proximity and accessibility to whiteness. I think that is a hugely problematic thing to reinforce and create in our policies. I think we need to be very thoughtful and mindful about what we are doing and what the data says and how we are thinking about taking that and applying that into policies within our community. Brett laura, lets go to you. Anything you want to add. Laura i want to quickly add that sweetie that we all should be scared to death of the movement and greed in our world and Institutional Investors buying singlefamily homes. It is having a disproportional impact on low income neighborhoods and black and brown people in the tones when our biggest challenge is stopping the wealth gap. This Massive Movement is taking the opportunities away. The easiest way to solve the racial wealth gap is through more homeownership and that is becoming increasingly difficult. Brett thank you and there are limited tools federally to help. Carol i am in violent agreement with what barika and laura just said. I was really excited by the Community Organization fund idea that the administration was looking at. Creating a multibilliondollar to make the needs of a Community Meet the needs of the community where it is in its all journey involves the people and the place. I would love to see that come back. I think that would be a real game changer. It can be the glue and a grease between all of these countries and programs that already exist. Brett thank you so much. I will add my last word. I see many changes needed to many of the federal tools. Even more than changes to any one of the, i feel like we have an order of magnitude issue. We are going pulling a squirt gun into a raging fire. We got the water, we know how to build housing, we know how to support businesses. The market economy has illustrated it is much bigger than our Public Sector response. Lets take that as a challenge and look ahead. Thank you so much. Laura, carole, barika. To congressman cspan is your unfiltered view of government. Comcast is partnering with Community Centers to create so students from low income families get the tools they need to be ready for anything. Comcast supports cspan as a Public Service along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. Listening to programs on cspan3 cspan radio just got easier. Tell your Smart Speaker play cspan radio and listen to washington journal daily at 7 00 a. M. Eastern. 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