hello i'm shelley freeland eddie the vice mayor of the city of sarasota welcome to another edition of commissioners corner today we have a very exciting topic that is really something that is moving the city of sarasota forward and that is the topic of affordable housing our mission really is to provide affordable housing options for low income residents of service and and also empower or rosen's lives so it's for us it's more than just housing people it's also helping improve their lives i went to your web site and i pulled some very important facts and it says you know and i didn't know so the assumption is that i didn't know then maybe some of our viewers didn't know this going to read some of the information authority was most recently voted as the most outstanding housing agency in florida you have eighty five in state peirce utilize a two generation approach to propel and empower families with an intense focus on early childhood learning that's aligned with the campaign for great love for reading talk to me about how the housing authority gets into the business of education really i think it's been kind of an evolving thing for me but as well but just learning more about how a child's brain develops when it devolves from zero to five learning that low income kids sometimes face the thirty million word deficit time they enter kindergarten and how how we have an opportunity and really i kind of now feel almost like a social responsibility we have so many kids living in our housing who are low income very low income that if we're ever really going to get ahead of this and break the cycle you know generational cycle generational poverty is much tougher for school and they're on a level playing field they have every opportunity to succeed in school and in life as any other kid so what does that mean in terms of what you do day to day in housing good question so we're doing several things on a day to day basis we have an afterschool kind of homework club in our sh a learning center now we have a computer lab that was done aided by the education foundation we actually pay for a teacher from booker middle who is really passionate about this to come in and tutor our kids and that's also made possible in part to a grant from the community foundation of sarasota county so we have after school you know intensive help we have an on site v p k which is voluntary pre kindergarten for four year olds again you know a lot of these kids enter v p k not knowing their alphabet not knowing their numbers and so it's even more critical that we get them and v p k and we felt it was really important that we have a quality v v case center on our site and we actually have built a permanent v p k classroom janie's garden phase three wow we also do book giveaways sixty six percent of low income families don't have books in the home so how can we expect kids to be great readers and have big vocabulary it was without books and so we're doing book giveaways in fact tomorrow we're doing our second annual book of cops and kids where the police officers help us give books to our families and make sure our kids have at least two books each and if we do this kind of on a repetitive basis pretty soon every family should have at least a read that children that live in poverty hear as few as thirty million words less than children who live in a fluid homes and we talk about the reading gap that occurs in the summer but this is low income housing or living in a low income poverty situations right and so what you're saying is that the housing authority and many of our viewers may not know is that you have a nonprofit and you work with charitable nonprofit donors to be able to provide educational opportunities for residents right so that they can have a bridge from one con to career and moving on into you know a better quality of life you know why is that important to housing well i guess i guess it's  something i'm really passionate about i just it's become just very crystal clear to me that if we don't do this if we don't make this investment of resources or there be time money b classroom space if we don't make this relatively small investment when these kids are young before the evening at the school we're basically delivering to our public s system a very very challenging situation and i really don't think honestly they're very well equipped to overcome so so i feel that housing is not just our housing authority i'm trying to challenge all my peers to do everything we can to help you know get books in the home encourage parents to read to their kids every night have after school homework clubs i mean all these things that we're trying to do to mitigate against this thirty million dollars thirty million word gap that they face when they get into school and it's all through hearing language and being exposed to words and that's how their brain develops when they're when they're young so we're trying to do everything we can and you know our industry has done a lot to try to i guess play catch up and help our adults residents become self sufficient you know we were very engaged with s t c for example helping our single moms get their ged and those types of things but it's clear to me that if we don't do something with our kids who are growing up in that environment we're going to be playing catch up when they become an adult and they require you know a subsidized housing unit and they didn't get it you know their high school diploma and their and that's that is absolutely something that we don't want to be visiting with our kids you know eighteen twenty years from now and we're trying to stop that and so what you're doing you're doing is you are slowly bridging the gap in terms of economic sufficiency for our next generation in terms of giving them the skills and tools that they need to be able to compete on a better level because what we know is that from a housing budget perspective you know you're supposed to fend you're supposed to spend thirty five percent of your budget on housing and you're suppose to spend fifteen or twenty percent on transportation after you deal with those factors and food and dead then what happens is that there is a smaller piece of the pie in order to dedicate to some of the things that are most important in terms of education child care after school assistance and if you are trying to address the housing need  sometimes if you're in a low income crisis situation you don't have the ability to pay for after school tutoring and education needs that are critical so that you know your family can stay on grade level rating and so your produce and a more equipped generation that comes down the line said that you know they can be successful and produce and get back as well as actually the other good thing we're doing is we have a green met with the school board but are our parents  signed waivers for a certain date i contend and statins are aids data and we've actually gotten pretty intense in terms of monitoring which of our kids are chronically absent at school because we know that chronic absenteeism means they're not learning like they can't learn if they're not in the classroom so we've been doing this most intensively with altavista which is where a lot of our kids are just shirted for elementary and we are now a part of their swiss teams where we invite the parent and the child and their teacher and the social workers and dr shirley and i mean we're all sitting there at the table and i think it is significant when the parent the child look up and i'm sitting there and ken waters or v p of resident services or tony wood or your resident army and our youth coordinator are at the table it's not just the school it's the school and the housing authority sure and we do it in a supportive way we try to identify ok what are the barriers to having your kid here at school on time what you know why are they why do they have so many unexcused absences and we're trying to really just reiterate this is a critical thing and we  did notice last year that the families we were really meeting with intensively those attendance measures actually improved for those families so it's just i think that to me it's a leadership thing i mean having you know public leaders like you as well recognizing that this early childhood learning piece is critical for our society for our economy i think as we continue to raise awareness in our community that just a small investment and these kids law is you know early on is going to pay huge dividends in their lives and in our for our economy later on absolutely getting to the subject of affordable housing if we're looking at the data that we know about now a person that makes minimum wage in the state of florida earns eight dollars and five cents an hour that's a little over three hundred dollars a month we know that market rate for one bedroom houses apartments condos in this area goes at around one thousand dollars per month that market our redevelopment of the former very distressed infamous cheney public housing complex so i think you know the first thing i think that's significant to highlight again is that we've removed a major area of blight and our community there and now we've replaced it with very attractive new housing with you know modern amenities central air ceiling fans in the bedrooms you know all the things you would expect in a normal market rate apartment we are we've built that and all three phases the other neat thing about james garner is it is a mixed income so i think that's important for the community to know we didn't knock down public housing and build back all public housing so for example phase three has seventy two new apartments twenty six of those will be public housing around and about a dozen more would be  based section eight there will be fourteen market rate units that's there's no subsidy attached to that and then there's eighteen low income housing tash credit units where the rents would be you know below market but you know significant rents you know these aren't you know you know necessarily inexpensive but it's obviously it's affordable for someone making say fifty to sixty percent of median income so where would that put us in terms of someone that's in that category definitely helps and you know it's really i mean are affordable housing problem like other communities are not unique and special it's really a supply and demand issue sure i mean i'll give you an example our section eight voucher families when they get a voucher and they go out and do our rental market when i say our run a market i mean from north port to burden there's just not a lot of modestly priced rental units available right so it is completely supply and demand you know i wish there were more affordable units being built and rosemary but just the fact that we're adding a thousand rental units to the market the overall him and tory i think will continue to relieve pressure because it's a trickle down if i didn't think i do think there will i think there are people who are who could afford more who would be willing to pay say a leaven twelve hundred dollars to live in some brand new units that are being built and rosemary and walk to work and all this stuff and the units they're going to be moving out out i think are going to be become available ok say for our voucher holders or are other you know working class people who just can't find rental units so i think that's going to help i think the fact that the city has allowed the development that's another i don't know it's already in existence huge so those types of things and i've heard of a couple of other apartment complexes that are being discussed and proposed you know in or near the city so you know all that helps i mean we really went about ten years in this greater housing market without building apartments and so the lead up to the bubble you know as you recall they were converting apartments into c s so we were losing rental units leading up to that and then all of sudden homeowners went through foreclosure and were forced back into the run a market so it just put a huge squeeze and again because there wasn't enough supply of the rents of have started really overheating and making a very difficult you know almost impossible for someone minimum wage are near there to really afford to live around here which is i think people are realizing you know that is a have you know a family of four where you have children in school and you have transportation needs you want to work close to where you live to reduce those calls in to have this project to be as close to the city limits and proximity it's pretty much fifteen minutes to anywhere it's going to be a tremendous impact let's talk about local hiring efforts at face three i know there was a tremendous emphasis placed on the euro project to make sure that there was local hiring opportunities local companies were involved talk to us about that yes there there was and there continues to be i think you know back when we did phase two it was a much different  construction market if you will and so the really the only big construction projects going on at the time or i would say public in nature so we found that when we built phase two we could find skilled labor from the north sarasota community you know you know willing ready and able to come on and take skilled positions whether it was h b c or framing  and so it was a priority we made lots of efforts through the career source and it yielded a lot of positions at the time it's right so that's a good problem the challenge for us and fit building phase three is it was hard for us to find skilled labor in the community to come and work because they had other opportunities and they were hiring within the region i think were a little below our twenty two percent goal for nor sarasota i think we're around fifteen percent we want now how the final numbers are going to shake out a lot of that was we did do a lot of local hiring in terms of the general and skilled labor category because that was really all we were ill to to get to terms of people who were already gainfully employed in the construction trades but the other neat thing again i referenced this for some of our phase two employees but we had at least four recent people from the community who came on and were working for some be permanently hired by those companies it's quite so i mean i think that's the neat thing is people came on they were given an opportunity and there's so much demand right now for all of these subcontractors that if they see someone who can do the job and is willing to show up and work every day and they do a good job on james three they're i k a can you join us permanently because we got a lot of other stuff gone and the area so those are positive  i want to say we had about six also six minority owned subcontractors and we were able to reach out to get to participate in phase three so i think that helps you know keep a lot of the  money you know in the community is a while which was one of our goals so it's been more challenging for phase three but i think for good reasons it's not that there were skilled people in the community who didn't have work and couldn't figure out how to get on our jobs and work there's just we reached out to them but you know they have other jobs that are a thousand get them right i understand that you had in place a one general contractor that kind of helped in terms of recruiting and yes they have they have played a very large role in terms of our roots in the community to get and i kind of credit them for finding a lot of these minority owned businesses to come on and do some of the work so and i understand that now there's a better tracking system in place to identify you know not only for this project but for future projects local you know contracted and skilled employees so they can be available to refer at their jobs so i think that's a wonderful thing and it also talks about the power of collaboration a partnership for a local company and you've got someone like ernie and his team at duke on a career shares with career source and with that satterfield the contractor on this case the project to make sure that you continue to get the word out that there is a need for the various phases of the project i know that they're out of the city you will see notices that laborers are needed in this particular area so the additional efforts that have been taken to make sure that the community was aware of expertise and even the city i think it times was finding itself you know the north service office in the city is finding itself kind of being put into that role which and that's that's  said there are i think the city and the county now uses the process for a lot of the major public works you know i mean we're basically setting the stage as to how you know good business is done on a local level and that with the right people in place you can find the labor part of it was that during the kind of slower period there were some more folks that were available but now that the boom has qana come back that you know you've got folks that are skilled that are already working on their jobs but you also have a crop of individuals that are ready to be trained to be funneled through and trained in the process as well so that we can begin to prepare for the hotels that are coming in the development downtown because the goal is that there's economic development throughout the entire city and that it's not just individuals that are working at your complex or in north say or soda but can be available for jobs in the entire city and i think we can use that model to really  together as contractors and to have that network and place and agree so i'm going forward what do you see the role of the housing authority in terms of expanding affordable housing opportunities in our city where we are that's always a goal for us just because we know there needs to be more for a while zoning i mean we know we can't do it alone you know i think there are other nonprofits in our community you are also being aggressive in terms of  number of years ago that people may not be aware of and through the nonprofit while the nonprofit now owns and manages sixty seven affordable rental units you know on top of what the housing authority h know you wish that there were opportunities to live through out the community and the assumption is that the only place that you can achieve low income or fordable housing is that enough apartment complex typesetting i mean what you're doing with the sou corporation is putting dollars in place to invest in properties through out the community because you may want to live closer to where your child goes to school or closer to where you work and if you work closer to seventy five or closer to university in three zero one you want to have that option and we always talk about you know that part too if it is i live in conjunction to where i work and in conjunction to how much i spend on transportation to get back and forth to work and to the extent that sarasota can become more attractive in terms of having housing inventory we could recruiting employees that we need if we have local housing that's closer to where the jobs are right now and that's especially true from  they're not real big on moving out in the suburbs the way the previous generation the they want to live in town and walk so i don't even want a car exactly so and then you have your seniors too we forget about our senior population that are living on fixed income they're retired they are juggling between you know health care expenses and some other things in this can't be burdened by the high cost of living in a but need to be able to get you know back and forth to the doctor or whatever you know there are so many variables that i think we forget about and we do have a seventy five you know that's you know right there in the rose mary for elderly and disabled which is just a great location as you mentioned in fact i'm working on we have to make companies to do better about partnering for housing in the community and i don't know whether that's something that can happen at your level of the conversation but we hear so many times that folks do not invest companies here because housing stock is so limited and if there were partnerships with organizations like your nonprofit that if there were funding opportunities you could build more communities in terms of you know the millennial getting out of college or those moving back into the area or even retirees you know to be able to have an opportunity to com