who's the executive director of a better way incorporated will be talking a lot about tonight homelessness affordable housing and a micro housing pilot program but before we get into talking a little bit about these generals backgrounds i would die first thank them off for coming on the show tonight and i know it's very busy but we have an important topic here and hopefully we can get some you know legislation passed on from some good bills that you've all raised so before we get started though i said to troy single has devoted his life to public service and government political and policy post at all levels he graduated from rowan university with a degree in business trajan and finance in two thousand and eleven he was elected to his first term in the new jersey general  representing the seventh district and then he was elected to the new jersey and in twenty seventeen he serves now as the senate military and veterans affairs chair the economic growth vice chair in the budget appropriations legislative oversight committees his pet board member of row leduc association his primary focus remains on job creation economic development and the needs of new jersey's working families all these are very important because a lot of people out there that know him and they go oh like to hear about things that he's done for them and  physicist he's had the science education at princeton university's plasma physics lab in his role to lead his work with hundreds of teachers and students inspiring professionals and the next generations a promise of technology the american association of physics teachers n as one of the country's top seventy five leading contributors to physics education he was raised in new jersey he received his da from bard college in physics his main ph d s both in physics from johns hopkins university and he did post doc work on very busy guy serves on the board of directors of the research and development council of new jersey and lives in kingston with his family perry sure is the executive director of a better way as we talked about earlier a better way was created by law enforcement officers and mental health professionals who knows that youth at risk for incarceration previously incarcerated individuals in their families had the least amount of job training the lowest rate of employment they worked to transition clients and their families into self sufficient saving taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars biographies but also great contributions to new jersey and to your feels all different fields so senator singleton we know that affordable housing is an ongoing debate for new jersey as evidenced by decades long debate over the  doctrine decision to you tell us a little bit why this is such an important issue for you but well housing is integral to not only the common fabric of our state but also has so much to do with the economic and educational opportunities that we see in our state so the idea that we have to get housing right is as truly a building block for so many other facets of our society and my desires as someone who was born and raised in philadelphia and then in a row house before we had up to move to new jersey we want to be in a place where the zip code shouldn't determine any was future opportunities and we will make sure everyone has an opportunity to grow and by looking at our housing policy when there's so pigeonholed sometimes just focused on the income of this person or that who lives there we lose sight of what real american dream of owning a home means to so many people it is sometimes their most tangible their only asset they'll ever have so for us to create a structure that is mindful of the responsibilities of government as far as trying to make sure that everyone has an opportunity but also allowing folks of different socio economic means to live amongst each other in a way where they can live work and play and learn from each other i think that helps benefit our society to great laughs and from my work working with habitat for humanity and now burlington in the greater marsh area that we've worked is the merger there is a member of that board i see real real life what it means to put those keys are someone's has so as a legislator some obligation to do anything i can to make sure that other people have a chance to live their point of the american dream ok you also ha maintain our home but so many of my neighbors who the economic downturn hit them hard they had they lost their homes so let's try to find a way to stabilize those networks and be innovative and how we do especially with our first time homeowners as well give them an opportunity at a leg up to be able to buy those homes so we can make a more robust middle class and agree urban or suburban setting your conversations with individuals around the state have you found that people are finding it harder to realize the american dream being able cycle like i was when i first graduated because i didn't want to stay at home i used to live in on my own but it's so hard for so many of our young college grads to just to be to get out and did that opportunity to buy their own home so i see it every day weather center ledge office is i know p how bad is our housing crisis and do you find more and more people especially those in the middle class are finding it difficult to make ends meet and there's no doubt that this is getting harder and harder here in new jersey expensive state would offer tremendous services the price of homes rental intone a center saying things talking about is one of the highest i think or six highest in the entire country and so from the recession on forward this is becoming something i also have a senior in college you know young people are veterans you know people who are in struggle to just make ends meet become a really significant issue you know i was just came back from portland oregon and it's a thriving town a beautiful town and what was striking about it is there was homeless people men women children on street corners everywhere there were ten  cities you know on one hand here is a town that is thriving in the other hand it has a serious homeless problem in new jersey what i find is it's sometimes not as much in our face but it's equally as a problem we have i believe on the order of ten thousand homeless people again yes or veterans these are children these are vulnerable people you know the people that you deal with each and every day that we deal with in our districts and so it is beholden upon us as legislators and as members of the community to do everything we possibly can to ensure that we can get people into homes that they can afford to be in these homes that there's job opportunities and that they can live the american dream the attorney general's office because the fact of my background being in law enforcement and also focusing on reentry the way we want to try and do things the taskforce was look at really to from a different perspective we were looking at it from an individual perspective by how it affects families but what people forget is the fact that when a person is incarcerated not ten they have a family where there is a significant other or there's a child and our goal was always trying to reduce the rate of incarceration for younger children who are children of the interactions and our goal always was to focus on incarceration for a family structure so we did was we kind of brought the task force up into multiple levels and focused on multiple things one was education another was training them was counseling and also legislative aspects to try to figure out how we can put together and support bills that are focused on when it comes to reentry we were a vocal point and supportive of the second chance act of the governor signed a few years ago that focused on one individual goes for interview  focused on in addition we also focused on housing because that is a very big issue when it comes to incarceration when a person comes home from across racially have a ton of obstacles set in their way and we think about incarceration it's supposed to be focused on three things one is punishment that means the time that are locked up for the crime he committed the seconds restitution that means funny as payback when it comes to fines the third thing which one was not saying is we have built when a person comes home they find out the fact that they still have their scarlet letter of incarceration on their chest they find it hard to get a job they find it hard to get trained they find it hard to resources and they find it harder even to get aid location to live in and if you don't have a location kind of  but it's worth it and for for us a large part of those individuals who have been car srijit in the new jersey and throughout the country were better and as well people forget that eighty percent of the population around the country of those who are incarcerated veterans new jersey is about ten percent and for us to have veterans who are coming home from incarceration and being homeless and i have no place to go i think it's a travesty i think that any senator who has served time for his country should never be homeless that's test just the fact that we walked by and say thank you for your service this is how we can thank them for making sure they have a place to live we just can't have lip service we've got to put actions behind those words or actions always do speak out of the words i said to those about that i think it's you know it's easy to say thank you but yes it's holes fix a big problem you know if i look at it is that the affordable housing and the homeless this issue is so big and the old adage is you the elephant one bite at a time in this as one component of this tiny home pilot program we're talking about these quickly design quickly they can be quickly implemented parcels and projects where individuals we can take folks off the street and do the holistic thing that perry's talking about which is which is critical but you can't get someone to feel comfortable about being able to get a job when it worried about the roof over their head for if they know they've got a roof that night then they can start thinking i can clean myself up to get ready for this job or here's where i can now say i'd live and that's what we're trying to do so the structures of these really small  those homes all of our social service agencies that many of us come in contact with all replete with with lists of people who need housing and as the weather has turned a bit more chilly that list is going to grow even more and there's no county there's there's no particular area there's no any way better than everybody else this is just a piece to that component and ideally what we'll do we set up the structures we have the sort of listen idea where individuals are go and we try and funnel folks to those homes not as a permanent services that i hope that individual get themselves ready so they can transition from this facility is small to an actual apartment or a townhouse or their own home so it's a piece of that process of getting folks from the streets to a permanent residen tiny holes we take as an opportunity to do that in quick order because we can build them fast and put them in places where we think and not get underscore think we won't run into some of those sort of local issues because of the state money that comes with individuals who are homeless such an innovative way is true i was talking about two in a short period of time get people off of the street and you know there's a couple things and try going through all the pozen some of the challenges that are that are there but what the bill's going to do is first say we're going to require that the state agencies find the money from the federal government and it's out there and then we're going to pay the municipalities who are willing to deal with  piece of this because most municipalities have a minimum square footage in their zoning and these are three hundred square feet i love how you said about the size of a one car garage so we are going to pile it by having up to two municipalities in the north two in the central central part of the state and two in the in the south and the way we're going to start to try to get past this is by looking for municipalities up want to do this and they're out there because once we've shown that this works that this not only is good for the people who are looking for a home that is good for the municipality then i really do expect it to spread you know you alluded in your introductory remarks to that affordable housing is a issue that every town is dealing with right now and what's written into the bill is an incentive and so for every tiny home that you build in your municipality is worth two credits towards whatever your obligation is towards affordable housing you know and so it's really like anything else when you bring something new you bring something that's as we say outside of the box that people need to see it and once they see it and once they see all the services that come into play once they see that you know what's the size of a one car garage it's a home and it's innovative in how it uses space and it's it's got heat and water and facilities it's a place where you can lead and so i find myself when i first learned about this really excited because this is this is what we should be doing new jersey and you know this is not going to solve our homeless crisis but it's a piece of what we need to do that's  creative solution so i'm thrilled to be part of it so very able listen to both of these gentlemen over here you know talk about these these bills and i just want to know from your point of view these bills hold water do say and that's that's different you have some political figures who will say one thing and you something totally different i truly believe in their actions and their words and their consistency will make a big difference so how do we get this bill passed you talked about this is an innovative approach in one of the reasons why we believe it takes all of us to really drive this forward because in trenton like in washington like in our own households sometimes we don't think and do certain things because we don't it doesn't become a pressing issue for almost this is a pressing issue in our state helping individuals when they go away come home try to reacclimated themselves to our society is a pressing issue estate deals with it every day we talk about so i know how passionate he is about how important it is it when someone like andrew who scientifically has background can look through all the stuff i said you know what this is innovative this is something we need to try the only way to get that done is there to be a big chorus of other voices so we're going to need folks to weigh in with our with the senate president who statements we need with this in which speaker was quick call for with governor phil bardsley of remind them all that there are innovative approaches we can do is a piece of a bigger strategy to try to address this issue but if folks don't i said ok we can have the task force behind it ever since that time we've been receiving help and support in advisement from oregon from individual who initially put the first twenty homes together back in ninety nine that would be more li ham we're looking at the fact that we don't want to really reinvent the wheel we want to try to get the best practices and how we can apply these in new jersey but like he said we're going to need that william coalition to make the sacrifice whether it's time with the resources we're going to need to support help when i have that consistency of knocking on doors writing letters and saying you know what we need this to happen this is about families this is about our veterans this is about the homeless this is about having a better new jersey point blank i just want to add i also learned about it from sherry first who's mrs hidden away in new jersey but it is an issue each and every day and you're exactly right it's going to take a nonstop focus and attention because otherwise it would have pushed aside and it will make such a tremendous difference and as we heard these can be built quickly so music can make a difference quickly so there's no reason not to do this or think about like this what we were able to try and have something we can utilize the local high ugly you know to go all the way and so how do we get this bill many bills in the legislature and many priorities competing priorities for movement how do we get people to we talked a little bit let's give this a try if we can do that and we can get a hearing and people can hear it just like they heard it in the previous committees very negative vote very negative word for all that has to do to be heard and put up for let me just said so on the assembly side of this that yeah money is coming from the federal government to pay for this so it's in the senate budget committee right now but it's not going to cost the new jersey taxpayers a penny but support that's an important message and needs to be found there and the same thing you know we need to a major issue for the housing is a major issue but we cannot be walking down the street and seeing somebody and saying yes from the oh i could help the person whose home was and sometimes through no fault of their own but they're homeless and there is a solution and we need to senators and contact list on women and talk to them and say hey you know what this is something that is important something that will benefit the state in jersey because it won't cost anything but will help a lot of people and so i also want to thank sherry bell because i know personally i know