i'm sure all of you are aware that the situation with unemployment foreclosures and underwater mortgages affects everyone and every community in this country the stories you heard tonight are so different from the stories you would hear anywhere you were to go in the country right now tonight our guests are from the alliance of californians for community empowerment and i'd like to introduce them to you now starting with paul can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got involved in a story i was in the home of one of my clients tuning a piano and there was a volunteer he told me this organization that was pulling together disenfranchised people in the community in order to create power for people who might otherwise be quite powerless in the community could you go to a little more detail about what the programs and actions activities are for ace the banks have been taking the money out of the community put nothing back and what we've done is we've walked around went door to door has told the people what some of our projects are we're trying to help you stay in your homes our homes are being taken away from people we want them to be able to stand up have a voice to fight with these banks another thing that is the health issues you go in and you may not be able to see a doctor you may not have health care so now we're working around health issues trying to help people to have health care quality health care that would help them and one of our biggest things is to make sure that the community comes together we want to see money put back in the communities so that people can have better education  better social structure so that they can you know whether it's community park after school care whatever it is better employment more jobs we want to see money put back into the communities a set or just taken out of it you know along that  line we've been advocating for quite a long time for a community land trust as well which will put into the hands of the community control over a certain amount of land in the community and to make it available at a low rate make it possible for people who could never afford to buy before to be able to do so it's a very imaginative program the developers are not enthusiastic about because because it takes some of the power of development away from them and put it in the hands of the community but that's what we're about ace is about the community  any talk about the land trust are you talking about for cause properties are you talking about open space that that could be peloton well there's a connection between the foreclosed properties because the foreclosed properties a lot of times the banks neglect them and they become blind to properties and in that case they are fined up to thirty thousand dollars thousand dollars a day that's the banks are fine but the banks are find that they don't where half of the people who have been in our homes probably ever since they were chance are probably or just trying to start a new life try to bring up a family in a no hope and we are here defending those people so they have a fighting chance to be able to stay one of the one of the top priority for community members so so as organizers what we do is we go into troubled neighborhood we go door to door and we talk to folks about what their concerns are and the issue of foreclosures it is obviously a huge priority why because you have the blight you have the the problems in the community and one of the reasons that you have a problem is that it's not just an abandoned house but it's something trashy next door to you and somewhere where the rest can rummage somewhere where your children can be heard and you somewhere where they can break in and start to do their drugs so it just has one house so affects the whole community are there services that you offer to help them if they're in the middle of this foreclosure prout process or places you can direct them we have many resources but what we tell the people versus contact case you have to call us we have numbers we have a website you can find on facebook a c c we say acronym there's many ways to get help but the best way is to not have one voice but they have many voices and the way we do that is wheeling together we're not we're not a sin organization per se we're it's eight the people we are the neighborhood we are the people we are the people that live next door that blight where the people they see the crime so that's  is not somebody else tell us how to clean our city if that's coming together as a community cleaning up our city with our voice and working with officials to get things changed the goal is to empower the people who are losing much of what they had they may have worked all their lives and now they're losing it they're losing their jobs they're losing their homes they're losing their dignity and we can't get it back and if i active and to make that we have the most foreclosed property personally per county per state now imagine how much money has been poured out that the city that the banks will not pay back they won't pay for the blight then we lose more money city so imagine all the cities now that are sitting that being told we don't have money for education we don't have money for transportation we don't have money to improve the health and the health issues where's the money the monies and what the bank they g bonuses they get what seventy billion dollars a bonus to give out to each other we sit here and we're lacking always access just paying taxes they don't even pay the taxes just pay taxes because with that six hundred million going out that's money away from our cities we from our children which my family away from my health could you tell us a little bit about how a sinner acts with the city officials city county state officials yes we had an event recently in richm large enough and were loud enough to get the attention and i have the support of some of our city officials who are very helpful on this issue and they attended this this and this includes mayor  have other cities done this or have they done something similar we are very very committed to finding those ways to turn this crisis around and i just might add that another way to resolve this crisis  really powerful way to really reverse things is to continue to put pressure on the federal government to really do what's right to reverse this economic crisis hey you bailed out the banks you you know put corporations up by way of the policies the federal government have put into place and moneys that the federal government has put into their pockets it's time to help the average people  suffering through this crisis you know i think it's time for the nation to get together and say and we were ready for the right kind of change and we have a right to have and to leverage so i you know i i'm just grateful that we have shout out by thanking aides because this application for homeowners and our community is so incredibly admirable and so incredibly needed the rethink amount of research that  it's into understanding what the level of suffering in our community is the number of figures the fact that we have we had over nine hundred foreclosures last share the fact that we have had two hundred thirty foreclosures in the pipeline and the fact that we have nearly five thousand homeowners that are underwater is that my understand level the level of the problem that we hear often that the economy is getting better but the crisis in terms of housing and other levels i might add as well continues it continues here in the city of richmond it continues in other communities and the reason we need to keep we  need to keep people in their homes for many many reasons one it is their dreams it is their likely put their racing their families they're having an opportunity to have stable lives but it also helps create stable neighborhoods when you know issues of homelessness that we have to provide services you know we we really need to consider that staple neighborhoods are in the interest of us and so when malcolm said we all have to homeowners don't have to pay as much in principle get more money in their pockets they spend the money local businesses it helps our local economy it allows businesses to thrive and create more jobs so this is the outcome of  what we need to do on our city council approved by our recent consultant contract with the current mortgage resolution partners who will be doing th and with the banks because we want this to set down a principal payments for homeowners that are underwater it's the only way and i very grateful for ace and for all those in the neighborhood who have come out to thank our guests from the alliance of californians for community empowerment i hope you've been a little bit educated i hope that you've been inspired and i hope that you want to learn more and  join the discussion become part of the solution so that we can all try thank you