mcfarland welcome to conversations with l mcfarlane broadcasting from the marcus garvey house here in north minneapolis and you know it's all about the neighborhood this is a conversation about how we build our community our neighborhood house by  house family by family we're focusing on business creation business development economic development and culture it's a wonderful conversation a robust conversation one of the guides for this conversation is my brother to take us on a musical journey mcfarland welcome to conversations without mcfarlane over the summer we've heard stories watch doris developing about changes in the banking industry the financial industry regarding mortgages and pleased to have on today's program nathan a brennaman who is deputy attorney general for the state of minnesota who worked to advocate and to assure minnesota's interest in this national suit the challenge to five major companies with their practices for hiring and lending particularly to minority communities nathan thank you for being here i want you to start this program by telling us the background and as you describe what happened nationally in the minutes there was interest i want to a panel here to weigh in with questions to clarify our goal here is to explain what's happened nationally in the housing market for quite problems and challenges the solutions being offered by the government and that some companies are responding to i've asked president of the many apples or been leaks got great to join me hosting this program scott thank you and also reverend randolph staten who was the representative of the coalition of black churches an african american leadership summit to join and former state legislator as well as will knowledgeable well the question of housing in our community here first of all nathan brennaman thank you for being here well thank you very much for having mr and if you would background this was big news when he broke the summer about a settlement with five major banks around the mortgage crisis in the country give us the back story well the settlement the discussions  settlement started back in the fall of two thousand and ten and it really started with what came to light as what was exposed as robo signing that had been occurring by by all service of some more than others robo signing by them of affidavits that were then filed in court to procure foreclosures on certain properties this came to like quite publicly th new york times reported on it was reported elsewhere and shortly after that a fifty state attorney general investigation was developed to investigate those allegations of  from there however it expanded the federal government got involved in particular hud and d o j got involved with the states to investigate and what started as an investigation just into robo signing  developed into a broader conversation with the five biggest servicers about settling in what were pretty commonly recognized problems with the way that these services were  dealing with homeowners who are in trouble on their mortgages we know that in our office we have been hearing for homeowners for a long time who are falling behind on their payments trying to talk to their service or about what to do and really getting the runaround from the servicers and not getting straight answers applying for loan modifications and not knowing whether or not they're going to get it having lost paperwork not being able to talk to the same person all sorts of problems and so it was i think many states were having the same sort of troubles and so it quickly expanded to talk about servicing more generally and how the five biggest banks i should just name who those were forty of those are bank of negotiations when four were there was an executive committee among the states that was leading the negotiations on the half the states minnesota was not on the executive committee but we were following it closely what was going on and today with the department of justice and the housing and urban development from the federal standpoint primarily although there were other agencies involved as well came to a settlement that we're here to talk about today which is a two which is been widely reported as a twenty five billion dollar settlement nationally against the biggest pointers it's of the background he said it started off with the government looking at robo signing this technique but it expanded into examining the wider relationship between consumers and the banks what were the findings out of that expansion take place and what kinds of things were discovered in that process well the robo signing  was confirmed it turned out that what it was like in order to prove that a service or is entitled to foreclose on a property in many states you need to go before a judge the service or needs to go before a judge and submit an affidavit which is essentially the proof of that this homeowner was delinquent in their mortgage that that this service or holds title property and they have the mortgage on it and the because they're in d fault they're entitled to acquire the property these were being mass produced and verified by by no one in particular not even read by the person who was signing off on it and so there was really a lack of diligence on behalf of the services to really dot the i's and cross the t's to foreclose on these properties and obtain i mean what they were doing by by showing these to courts is obtaining these people's homes and it was just i think  shocking to many people that there was so lax in the gondolier and cavalier about proving that these people they were getting back these people's homes and so and it also turned out that there was of just straight forgery that that they had to think it was called surrogate sign or program or where they had a raft of people signing another person's name on documents that were then presented to court so that that was borne out but what also came to light many of the servicing problems that i just talked about and i think that many states have experience and it's just undeniable the service or for whatever reasons simply were not doing a good job and working with homeowners to talk to them about their their mitigation options when they were  facing delinquency you know the horror stories just go on and on in terms of people who're you know in their homes they had some problem in their life unemployment or a health problem or something else they were reaching out to their lender to see if there was any opportunity to to stay in the home to get on a modification type plan and and the servicers i don't know how else to save it just didn't do a very good job sometimes they would dual track people which means sure we'll talk to you about modification but the same time we're going to go ahead and start processing your foreclosure and so you have these ridiculous circumstances where you may have a homeowner who gets a letter saying congratulations you're ready for a trial plan at the same time they're receiving a letter from the same service or same in two weeks we're going to foreclose on your property and so you know there are all these left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing all these problems with the service or and i think that the  more we learned in the more we talked got into the investigation some of those things were definitely borne out let me put this in context a reference that let me go to you and i want you to talk about this era there was a time when this community and all communities around the country were i think moving aggressively to get people into homeownership we had discussions on this program about of the pathway to wealth creation that it was necessary important to figure out how people could get the right kind of advice the right kinds of deals and move into becoming a homeowner to build equity the mission was to build wealth in our community and we said many many times that the pathway to what for americans is them the home ownership in the mortgage lot of people got into the housing market the backstory than to the need to examine the issue that we were looking at today and that's the the robo robo signing and people needing modifications and foreclosure prevention is that there was this period were a lot of people were actively becoming homeowners but there were some failures at the same time would you give the back story from your point of view what the lay of the land was in general well i think you're exactly right and i'm interested in hearing some additional information about how the agreement came about what's in the agreement in terms of making people hold again because part of what we understand is that we want people to have the initiative as political is talked about before to take on an issue to to want to change their lives and so forth but there are some also so many things from an institutional point of view that has caused institutional racism to to exist to such a degree that now we have been sort of set back from a major ini plan the plan was to move at least fifty percent of blacks into homeownership by the age of thirty that's moving into an area about which you can also began to accumulate well this crisis has come alone  and what we see it is is that it has been a major institutional setback from a problem that was already exacerbated with the kind of disparities that exist between blacks and whites i'm interested in also hearing when we look at what the final conclusions were like oh we are now in a situation right now by which we understand that large numbers of blacks amat hispanics and so forth were not responsible for what happened we also understand now that people who want to buy homes find it more difficult to be able to get into homes because they in fact the victim is being blamed and when we look at the solutions i think it's interesting to know ought to see whether or not the solution is reached a part of making people all communities whole again in may it may in fact benefit some number of individuals but it does not deal with the kind of institutional problem that has been set up by which is still more difficult now for blacks and hispanics to be able to get homeownership and so those are there are a number of questions that we have and i guess i'm also interested in and and from a political point of view you you want to know how the agreement and it sounds wonderful and i you know it really kind of there are some different kind of things happening when i go into into wells fargo now i bake it wells fargo and i said to them i said to the command speak to the to do manager and he must he thought i had some problem with him wow what's happening here everybody is so friendly i've never seen so many black and hispanic employees had in my life and i also understand that that doesn't just happen there has to be something that motivated a move into this area so i see from a complex and point of view from the people from a number of black folks who have my son even has had a couple of months ago been in will and wells fargo and when you as fargo you see something different and so i knew that there was something institutionally that happened to also motivate management to come up with some policies like that but so there are a lot of questions we asking institution point of view we see a major setback with the actions that occurred with the foreclosures so let me ask you scott great to reflect on the same question terms of the back story you've been here as president of the minneapolis relief a couple of years now but before that you were the urban league c e o in milwaukee madison madison wisconsin but from madison and also from the purview to the degree that you can say it of the national urban league what was the housing story how big a story was this and how big of a hit has our community taken because of the housing mortgage foreclosure crisis sure just to dovetail on revenue standpoint that it was already a problem when even when even when housing when the housing industry was good for people of color and we were seeing an increase in minorities particularly african americans and hispanic population moving into homeownership at the same time it was a low it was low in the twin cities it's low in madison it's low in milwaukee it's lower than our white counterparts across the country  particularly when you look at building wealth as you alluded to earlier we talk about white families with the average net worth of nearly one hundred thousand dollars and you talk about black families with twenty twenty times less than that and so when you look at the when the bubble busted burst it we're seeing african american families with net were lower than five thousand dollars and so to me that is not the opportunity a lot of us would use that opportunity to to start a business to send our children to college to even leverage to purchase another home  and just have that stability that is gone and wiped out and i'm not sure that twenty five billion dollars it is it is a good monetary number but when we dig behind the scenes and really see what's happening now we get folks that are coming in our doors at the minneapolis urban league saying that this is agree just this could be criminal the we don't trust the banks and to me twenty five billion dollars is far less than what it's going to take to repair and make folks feel comfortable with the financial system moving forward although that is really one of our pathways for building well so to me it's dollars i look at folks who who need to be kept whole who are in their home or who have lost their home they will have the opportunity to to pull down some of these dollars but i don't see twenty five billion in any new homeownership opportunities for people in the community so i'd like to talk about that a little bit more as we move forward in the program i'm male mcfarland this is conversations with al macfarlane continue this discussion in just a couple of seconds talking about the homeownership the mortgage crisis it's an important issue about the solutions being afforded by the federal government and by the state of minnesota pleased to have was our guest nathan eight brennaman who is deputy attorney general talking about minnesota's a participation in the national settlement state to be right back sh and we wanted to sort of explain that in today's program explain who was involved what the terms of the settlement were i'm pleased to have to do that one of the representatives of minnesota's participation in this settlement nate brennaman is deputy attorney general and is here to talk about the settlement and so nate let me turn to you again would use sort of explore the key provisions of the settlement twenty five billion dollars that the federal government got an agreement from five major companies those companies allied bank what used to be g m a c bank of america citi bank j p morgan chase and wells fargo and so twenty five billion to do what well thank you and i can definitely explain the main terms of the settlement i'd like to start though just responding to a few of the comments and in that you know this settlement isn't in my view and isn't wasn't intended to be i s and what it was primarily intended to do i believe was to provide immediate relief to homeowners fix some of the servicing standards the problem of which i was discussing previously and to attempt for people who are on the fence having trouble with their mortgages to try to keep them in their homes and so let me talk a little bit about the key terms the first of which is there are new servicing standards that the servicers need to follow some of the problems i address is hopefully going to alleviate those problems people before when they wrote you know won't get answers back from servicers now there's time lines on which people the servicers need to write back and tell people whether or not they have a modification so those good white and down think i said it's forty pages but it is it is intended i think to solve some of the problems with servicing that we saw before and then the monetary aspect there is a the biggest component of the settlement i think it's seventeen billion out of the twenty five billion dollars as what is called the federal menu options it was the federal part of the settlement that the federal government primarily negotiated how that breaks down from minnesota back up and talk federal versus minnesota so the federal settlement was twenty five billion dollars the states shares approximately two hundred eighty million dollars with an m million of that about one hundred sixty seven million is this these  called the federal menu and what what that is is that that's the servicers can essentially earn credits that will accumulate up to one hundred sixty seven million dollars by doing a number of things that are designed to help people keep people in their homes so people who are in their homes having to trouble making their mortgage payments this is going to help them get first lien principal reduction zz secondly if they have a second mortgage on their house or many people be eligible for a second lien principal reduction so bring down the amount of the money they owe on the house and therefore bring down the monthly payment that they own the house as well as short sales as you mentioned  r deeds in lieu whenever a bank accomplishes and works out with the homeowner one of these situations that will help a home or stay in their home they are in a credit towards the seventeen billion or the in minnesota the hundred sixty  seven million dollars and so it gets pretty complicated pretty quickly because sometimes it's a one to one credit so every dollar that they give someone in a principal reduction will be earned credits sometimes they only earn fifty cents for every dollar of aid that they give to a homeowner but that that is primarily designed to keep people in their homes the direct payment part of the settlement as a little bit different focus that's for people who have been foreclosed on who had a sheriff's sale occur on their home between january first two thousand and eight and december thirty first two thousand and eleven and for those people that's a process that's underway right now in fact in minnesota the letters the claim forms just went out to minnesotans here on october twelfth most of the letters went out and so i think there are so between forty and fifty thousand eligible consumers who were foreclosed on in that time period they will receive a claim form that  they fill out and return it will allow them to get some monetary relief it's projected to be around fifteen hundred dollars per borrower and again i don't think that anybody i would say that that you know equates for every person to the harm that they suffered but this was a settlement intended i think to bring some immediate relief to people who were foreclosed on and so those are the servicing standards of direct payment  for also making this possible i think this is a critical piece of that we need to have more dialogue and more discussion on even dialogue about who decided who gets what who decided what was going to be and cry and i understand it is not going to solve all of the problems is force or crisis is concerned but when we come up with the solutions if in fact we're saying that claims are going to be sent out that monies would be available that force is for preventing foreclosure but people also in the having to qualify which means that you have a large number of people who may be employed that may end up being able to qualify for those loans and the people who in fact part of that claim was designated that he who is a group of people blacks and hispanics that were specific and egregiously heard and that's part of  i'm saying so how these things get worked out it could even be that in fact we started off with one group of people who we say we're using because we know and i understand you're used to blacks and and hispanics  because it was they were more serious and profound that you could see it affected but what what had but when you come up with the solutions do we have the same kind of thought process and at the to reach the people who with fact what's your sense are we targeting and delivering relief and remedy to the people we've described as damaged by this process do you think well i can tell you for the direct payment part of the settlement that's the part where it's people who have been foreclosed on you know that information came from the banks i mean it's it's everyone who was foreclosed on in minnesota in a certain time period where the service or was one of these five largest banks and the foreclosure sale happened in a particular time period now  so you know it's pretty the relief is there's a structure for it's just it's just everybody who was foreclosed on by one of these five banks and i know that for our part we're really trying to maximize minnesota's share of that settlement and we've been reaching out and our housing advocates and community organizations around the metro and around the state to try to get the word out to people because we can really maximize the benefit of the settlement  in minnesota by having good education and good public awareness that these claim forms are coming that people should look at them that people should fill them out and get them and get them back  mean we have a lot of dollars to do but see i remember sitting in on after the fact that tobacco seven minutes that occurred significant settlement that occurred for the state of minnesota is concerned i think the attorneys b most of the money for that was concerned but we also discovered that in fact there was a disproportionate number of african americans who were affected by smoke but when they relieve mechanisms were put in place african american is to receive very little if any of the kinds of dollars that would help deal with the problem and the relief for the problem is concerned and so you know you just concerned that we about who gets brought into the discussion about what happened and when do they get and brought into the discussion about what happened does it occur after everything has already been divided up or does it occur before it's divided up scott and that's certainly a good point i would just ask the deputy general that it sounds to me that you know we been allocated two hundred eighty million dollars but it sounds like if we don't get enough education out to the homeowners or the folks that face the challenge it sounds like either we we're going to lose that money if we don't find enough folks that can take advantage of  it or maybe this is my question where does it go if if we can only find one hundred million dollars to use towards families that need this relief or where does the additional dollars go if if i might ask well it depends on the bucket of money i mean again it gets a little complicated before the the federal release that i discussed there is one hundred sixty seven million dollars and that's really up to the to the banks now that may sound a little bit like the fox guard but the banks are the ones who initiate the principal reductions the short sales etc now there is a federal monitor in the built into the process was supposed to one of his key functions is making sure that the money is fairly allocated for that part of the between the states and minnesota for instance doesn't get it not its fair share but for the direct payment piece that i've been talking about for the people who are actually foreclosed on there's just one point five billion dollars set aside for that now claim forms are going out in every state at the same time and it's really a function of how many people respond and so the projected amount the minnesota's going to get is around thirty four million dollars for that piece of it but it all depends on the number of people who send their claim for back now if we get some sort of ninety percent response rate we're going to get a bigger cut of the one point five billion than if some other state only has a twenty percent response rate understand it's not set in stone sure many claims as we get sent in are going to be paid and so i think that's why we've been really reaching out to housing advocates or community organizations to try to spread the word hey these claim forms a common make sure you pay attention to fill in back out get them in let's get our fair share of the money in minnesota are you are you getting a feeling that you're your partners in this settlement the five banks are they doing enough outreach you know is this all part of are you doing well you know what are you doing what are your partners doing enough are they required to do outreach by the terms of this little guy well the banks  primarily are required to well they're required to give the relief under the federal menu part of the settlement that we've been talking about and they really have an incentive to do that i mean that may sound it's not aspiration they don't pay their seventeen billion dollars worth of the end of three years they have to pay that amount plus penalties into the federal treasury so they need to pay one way or the other and according to the monitor they've at least started just servicing standards i think are where we're really going to see the rubber meets the road i know that we in our office we've gotten hundreds of complaints from homeowners who are having trouble dealing with their service or working out an issue maybe delinquent on their mortgage and need some help and so the servicing standards they had one hundred eighty days to implement from the time of the settlement that's just about now in fact and so now is when they should be implementing these and i think over the next few months hopefully we are going to be able to tell that they really take these to heart or this is a business as usual with the service that one real small question because we at the point in which information is going out that people are supposed to respond to oftentimes we need to interpret what this information is so people can respond to it how much money has insight new for example received for educating the public or doing information about this that's happening now because i i mean how you communicate say is who might get the message how important it is for certain people to get the message and show let me just ask the question about it's a good question to fair question and we've had one communication from wells fargo and that's recently about some classes they were introducing to help people learn about their programs but beyond that none and so i think that's consistent with around the country i'm a member of the national newspaper publishers association that is the black press of america two hundred newspapers across the country that serve and address and provide voice to black people in every city every major community in this country and the question is has these settlement specifically reached out to our community using what we call the information infrastructure of our community to interpret and to  engage our people we'll come back and talk more about that i mailed mcfarlane listening to conversations with al macfarlane when i come back another person is on the streets on the trench in the trenches on this issue of housing ishmael reed is director of the north side to say that it wasn't a good mistake because no reads a great novelist a great poet one of the greats in our community but ishmael is real thank you for being here you lead a legacy organization in north minneapolis an organization one of the defining characteristics of this neighborhood forever and particularly as a neighborhood went from being a a white neighborhood to a black neighborhood now it's going back to being white again but housing has always been at the center of that and we've always had conversations about how we create wealth and how again we improve and modify and clean up and fix up the housing stock and that means in part fixing up the knowledge an opportunity for the families of the people that have been renters are moving to different houses what's been the impact of the housing crisis in general and what do you see as the potential positive outcomes of this settlement to the degree that you're aware of it well leading up into the two thousand says is the market was relatively stable and before it took off on a boom there was a great opportunity to create wealth in the community housing stock was that at a low and at the time interest rates were low as well and create an opportunity for renters to become owners and owners to renegotiate what may not been the best mortgage loan terms unfortunately what happened as as the market as the market went up and housing values went up i think unscrupulous lending practices took away a great opportunity and so you had introduced to the market two year adjustable rate mortgages three year adjustable rate mortgages thirty day adjustable rate mortgages where homeowners had had had taken a piece of the american dream and fully recognized it only to have it snatched from them and so what we would hope that will come from what this settlement will be a catalyst is to our market is that all time low again and so maybe for some of those to some of those that have what we fear as an agency whose whose main duty it is to inform the residents is that information isn't flowing in the resources to flow that information aren't being and aren't been provided and so my question about the settlement is is it up to the banks to do this outreach and war funds set aside to do this or are we left to the good the good intention of these same banks that came to a settlement to do the right thing and make sure that they do reach out to the african americans and to the hispanic community residents where you think well you mention that you department you know the attorney general is trying to partner with agencies and organizations have you reached out to this one in particular northside residents redevelopment council you might not know but have if you haven't this is the kind of organization that you want as a partner i think what are you doing and to his question are the banks required to create partnerships in there to resource agencies and organizations like the urban league so that they can do the work of ensuring that our community is aware and can engage to use the opportunity that the settlement provides no the banks are not required to fund those sorts of partnerships that i know of  listen i can agree with you more of the i mean the the cause of this more than anything else was the origination of bad loans and predatory lending and unscrupulous lending practices that combined with then selling all of those loans on the secondary a big problem obviously and again i guess i'd i'd reiterate that this the settlement i mean i think you know more needs to be done in addition to this and i think more can be done and i'm not sure if we partnered with more you know if we haven't gotten in touch with someone please reach out to us we want to hear from people now unfortunately though there's no mechanism for us to be able to divert funds to community organizations like yours under the  settlement you know the state is getting some money but under state law we can only do two things when we receive money under a settlement we can it can flow into the general fund for general use by the legislature or can be given to individuals who were harmed by the bad acts and so our attorney general has decided to get money back to people who are harmed homeowners who are foreclosed on but there's not really the legislature has put limits on that we can't ourselves divert funds to to neighborhood organizations or community organizations you know for them to have the greatest impact in their community nevertheless you know we our main objective right now as i said before is ma minnesota state of the settlement and we'd like to get in contact with people that reach out to people so that they're reaching out to the people they know who are foreclosed on so that they send back those claim forms and we get our money for ourselves here in minnesota settlement a number of agencies all conversations in entities had to be were added fact received dollars and funds for example to to be able to get out the word to be able to get a new message about not smoking and blah blah and of the kind of things like that it would seem to me that in this matter that is many people as possible even if you're talking about people who are going to be receiving confidants and that they know about and so forth so are you saying that in fact there are no dollars that available to make that happen and so forth in terms of maximum communications with the people to make sure that they have crimes and so forth that might be in place i'm i'm still a little puzzled about how some of this and i understand it that not all of this just doesn't belong to you that the attorney general's office have done part of their disses not a be all in dol solution is for as the impact of the the foreclosure but it would seem to me from a political point of view i would want to make this a part of  comprehensive solution to deal with the beige a problem that was created in that was created in first place well at the office are trying to do our part on this problem and the attorney general  i submit has done a lot on housing in two thousand and six and seven she introduced a predatory lending bill that was really a model that was followed by many states afterwards and she got national recognition for that and it really did i think have the effect  some of the predatory lending that was happening in the state in two thousand and nine she proposed and drafted a homeowner lender mediation bill that would have required lenders to sit down face to face with homeowners and talk to them before kicking them out of their house and foreclosing on them in a mediation that legislation actually passed both houses in two thousand and nine but then was vetoed by then governor  she tried to introduce it again in two thousand and ten and it and make it through committee so in addition to that you know we've heard from just hundreds and hundreds of individuals who have been having problems with their lenders and we tried to help each one of them  navigate the the whole labyrinth of trying to get a modification on your loan so you know this this and there's this settlement which right now and we are we're just trying to maximize effectiveness of this settlement for minnesotans this was a settlement that was largely negotiated by the federal government you know at the end of the day we had the decision whether to sign on or not and two hundred eighty million dollars for the state of minnesota on the decision was made to sign on and now we're just trying to see that the maximum possible amount of money can get in the hands of minnesotans under the settlement president great president of the many up with your belief how does this organization scott great sort of connect with the attorney general's office and with the spirit of the national supplement spy out of the national urban league movement to ensure that the home ownership  creation strategy it's called intersection is part of the delivery of a solution sure thank you for asking the question one is as we're you know we're partner with a number of groups that are on the ground really that are knocking on doors every day to get that message out reverend stand that you talked about and these are homeowners who who are very weary and tired and want someone to come to their door  that's going to support them and help shepherd them through this long in some cases very large task to keep their home and so we're grateful to be partnering with folks like in c and others to to do this work but i guess i want to we need some help here and one is as i'm thinking about this i have a child that's that is in his first year of college and i am kind of lending him some money to get his four year education and in a week or two he's going to have a report card coming out and i i think this process needs a report card and i hope that kind of a mid term report card is there something that is that is being set up so that we can understand where folks are where our community is and where banks are in this process moving forward before the three year clock  runs out on us there is there is it's there's a monitor built into the system who is going to have access to all of the bank's records his name's joe smith he's from and he resides in north carolina he's got some regulatory experience as well as some private experience i don't know a lot about him personally but he was chosen as a monitor he is going to have the services also of some large auditors who are going to help him crunch the numbers that the banks are giving him about how they're performing under the settlement and he's going to be issuing reports one preliminary report has already been issued just to talk about the first few months of implementation of the program i think that i don't have the website handy but i'll be sure to provide it to you he has a website that has these reports open and he is going to be reporting on the effectiveness of the settlement and the banks compliance with it you know i think a big question  as i think that's a big question everybody's mind and i don't know how effective this monitor will be but i hope he is effective and i hope he holds the banks accounting you know that to three months four months out when when is when might he have his first policeman here well the first one report has already come out and it's shown fairly compliance to be honest but many of the banks complained that they hadn't gotten everything up and running at bank of america i think was the biggest offender who was really behind the ball in terms of getting this implemented i think that report was not even contemplated in the sun in my dream i think the first one required under the settlement agreement comes out in the next  that raises a question we're down to a couple of minutes but ishmael israel and referenced that in what is the duty of the community to organize we sort of can't wait for you know decent people to do the right thing they may not get around to it but our needs are present and they're real and they're right now do we have a need we have a strategy scott great all of you to push this as opposed to pass expectation what do you think and how would you do it as a north side resident to develop counsel well our discussions have been with partner organizations such as many apples urban league and  and other outreach efforts in c r c nor site community reinvestment coalition into first getting the information and working with those that are on the ground  our agency the relationships that we have and have forged are and like to build are those with the information those that have the information so that we can get it disseminated and put it into a digestible form so that those that are on the ground such as in c r c are able to spread the word there is a you know our is no secret that we're in a recession and so it takes time for us to come up with creative creative collaborative efforts and like i said we're at the point of working with many of us early to come up with some of those some of those solutions so we're not reliant on the information to city rivers and how do we organize one of the things that i believe very clearly a sense and having been involved in understand government for at least over the last forty some years you understand and i understand to weed minnesota has the lowest unemployment rate in america it has the highest unemployment rate among blacks in america often times the government does not necessarily listen to what is happening concerned that a lot of mechanisms that been put in place right now may not necessarily do what they need to be done and what needs to be done in terms of maximizing the pot population of the availability of resources and having kollek need collective partnerships that in fact can you get that done oftentimes we want to go to church and say you know do everything we want to go to urban league say do everything but there are no additional resources also to do everything got final word on this so what we do from this institution's point of view to create partnerships to raise the flag and to reach out to the banks and to reach out to the attorney general's office and to the feds to make sure that our voices heard and that the solutions we seek are trained well one is that i think we need to continue this discussion and we need to have our evaluator come back for another another session to tell us what's really going on here too is i think we need help from the g s office to really i mean we have wells fargo we have a big partner here and a number of other banks that we can work with that that have a lot of resources that can help us get push this word out to the street and make sure that people are responding to and i think we need to get more banks bought into this because we're not only seeing them settle on this deal jay this the state why are nationwide  settlement we're seeing them settle independently themselves on mortgage bias and all kinds of other racial steering all kinds of other things that are going on and they seem to not be blinking an eye on these settlements and so we know that there are deep pockets but deep pockets need to reach into this community so that we can start to build our equity moving forward so i would just say we may need our our attorney general general to really help us reach out to some of these banks to have a real intentional conversation on how we can really get this message out and create homeownership and restore people the american dream thank you for your comments thank you attorney general deputy attorney general nate brennaman for being here thank you for your department's leadership and the attorney general thanks for the reference that and for your leadership and your service and thank you ishmael israel director of northside residents redevelopment council for your service organize we have to ask we have to demand we have to insist of ourselves first and everyone else that right prevail join us next week for another conversation with