- (female announcer) Production funding for Behind the Headlines is made possible in part by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund, and by viewers like you, thank you.

- The challenge of affordable housing in Memphis, tonight on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] - I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian, thanks for joining us.

I'm joined tonight by Dorcas Young Griffin.

She is Director of Community Services for Shelby County Government, thanks for being here again.

- Thank you for having me.

- Amy Schaftlein is Executive Director of United Housing, thanks for being here.

- Thank you.

- Along with Bill Dries, reporter, with The Daily Memphian.

We'll talk about affordable housing and just the challenge of it.

You were on, Dorcas, a year and a half ago.

Time lost all meaning.

COVID, talking about some of these challenges.

But for each of you, talk real quickly the role of your organizations.

Yours is a nonprofit, obviously this is a division of county government.

But I'll start with you, Amy.

What is, for people who don't know it, what is United Housing?

And what role do you play in trying to address these challenges?

- United Housing is a nonprofit housing developer.

We're also a counseling agency.

And our mission, from the beginning of our inception, back in the mid-'90s is all around making home ownership possible and accessible for Memphians of all incomes, but mostly low-to-moderate income.

So we provide financing, we also provide the home buyer education, the home maintenance.

Once you get in the home, that's not the end of it.

You gotta know how to maintain home ownership over time.

So, that's something that we work with our clients on everyday.

- I think when we had you on, Dorcas, it was partly, there was a great deal of COVID money, in going to help people.

Maybe talk about the role that y'all played then and now, and at least somewhat more normal times that you play in terms of affordable housing.

- Yeah, normal times, right.

So yes, back in 2021 we received with the City of Memphis, a hundred and thirty-two million dollars to distribute to residents who were experiencing hardships with rent payments, with evictions, and just housing stability.

We have successfully distributed all of those funds in Shelby County.

I do wanna just give a shout out to the team that has done that this week during the National Association of Counties, Secretary Janet Yellen gave a big shout out to the conference about Shelby County, and the great work that was done by the team in terms of eviction prevention and housing stability.

We are now at a place where that unprecedented amount of money is not here.

And so we are now really looking to leverage existing resources that we have to continue the work of keeping people stably housed.

It's the biggest challenge that our division, and I think in a lot of ways, county government faces.

Because there is a great need for folks to be stably housed in this community.

The people that we know about and the people that we haven't even touched yet.

- You talked when you were on about, well one, the $132 million, part of what was remarkable then, people can go back and watch that show, I won't revisit the whole thing, was communities around the whole country were struggling to spend that money, which seems counterintuitive, how do you do that?

And actually, Memphis got extra money, right?

Because the federal government took money from communities that weren't spending, or spending it properly, and gave it to those that were.

And Memphis benefited from that.

But part of what you talked about was, you had money available, but there wasn't housing available.

And I can't remember the number.

You said, "Sometimes I'll have thousands, "and thousands of dollars for these families, and I have nowhere to put them."

And I always come back to that dynamic.

- I think that I really struggled, that keeps me up at night.

Really just thinking about that.

We have had so many resources available for families.

And some of those families we were able to keep in existing housing.

And so that's a win.

But there were too often times, I can't give you an accurate number, but I can tell you it's more than 100, there were countless times where we were able to maybe pay people's back rent.

But we weren't able to keep them from being evicted, because maybe they still got far behind.

And when they were evicted, we could give them a check and try to help get them put somewhere, but there was nowhere to go.

I think the issue that we have is not only affordable housing, but also safe and quality housing in this community.

And again, it's a huge challenge.

And we know in community services, people are talking about public safety.

And public safety is on a continuum.

Housing has to be a part of any public safety plan.

- Yeah, yeah, let me bring in Bill.

- And, what does that look like in the public safety plan?

Is it the location?

Is it the features of it?

Is it the amenities that are around it?

- I'm gonna lean on Amy.

But for Dorcas, community services, it is safe, quality housing.

You can't have housing that is sick.

Like if people are sick, because they are living in a place where there's mold, where things are falling apart, that breeds so many, the outcomes of crime, the outcomes of just all of the things that we're faced with.

- Well, when so many neighborhoods have had decades of disinvestment, and then you have a foreclosure crisis that comes in and strips wealth out of these neighborhoods, and then turns the houses into rentals, and then you continue to build, build, build out, but yet, you neglect your properties within the city, you're gonna have these instances of properties that are just not hardly livable.

And when you see people living with holes in their roof, holes in the floors.

Funding to get that fixed is something that we've worked with Dorcas on at Shelby County, using American Rescue dollars is home repairs for the elderly, because they are living in substandard, usually single-family, but there are also many apartment complexes that have been disinvested in, as we've heard.

So, I think that's really important, is to maintain our housing stock, as we continue to build new.

But when you haven't built new in these neighborhoods for decades, and we're still, and not maintaining the existing inventory, that's why we have so many people with nowhere to go even if they have the deposit to move out.

- So when you find open land, or you assemble parcels to build something that's going to help with the scale of new, affordable housing, or renovated affordable housing that is nearby, and kind of a spillover effect into that, is it harder to scale new, affordable housing than it is to build a house here, build a house there?

- It can be because we're working with, again, owners of property that we don't know who they are.

Or, if it's in the Land Bank, getting through that process.

So there's the process of assembling land like that, that is, that would have that critical mass and scale in this city in certain neighborhoods where there's been a lot of vacancy.

Number one, you gotta get banks that wanna finance something like that.

Which doesn't really happen.

And if you want private builders to do that, they're not going to, because it's just, the numbers aren't gonna pan out.

So if nonprofits work, like there has been nonprofits in North Memphis that have been able to do this, you're gonna have to assemble them hundreds at a time, and we're gonna have to work with county government, city government, Land Bank trustee, everybody has to come together and agree on being able to assemble land in that way.

And of course, the communities.

I mean you know, the communities have not had much control over what has happened to a lot of the land and properties in the area.

- Right, and that's been a key point of discussion with the Klondike Northside High project.

Mostly the Klondike part of that, which is housing.

Because the philosophy has been, the Klondike partnership of these groups has about 400 parcels out of 1300 parcels in that particular area.

And their case to the Shelby County Commission, and to the City Council for a TIF, was we know the market forces are going to come into this neighborhood at some point.

And when they do, they are going to charge market value in terms of rents, or for home ownership there, in particular.

- Yeah, and again, we're talking about the challenge of affordable housing.

We've seen that happen in Binghampton.

We've seen that happen in other neighborhoods, where people live there, they rent there, and they wanna buy, and they can't because by the time they're ready to buy, the prices have gone out of their affordability.

So I think that one reason why you wanna see shared equity programs, or some kind of longer term affordability with these 400 units, or at least half of them, maybe, to stay affordable over time, will be important.

Because if you do have market forces come in, you wanna make sure those living there now, can afford to stay, and their families can afford to come back and stay.

So, yeah.

- So what are the tools that, to use an overused phrase, what are the tools that are in the toolbox for local government to be able to say to developers, "No, this is where we want affordable housing to come to scale."

And we know it wouldn't pencil out if it were just market-driven, or if it was just, what are the tools in your toolbox to make it happen in those places?

- So my toolbox is a little bit different from maybe the toolbox of like the Division of Planning and Development, and the City of Memphis Housing and Community Development.

Community Services is really focused on supporting the people that live in these homes.

And so, what my toolbox has is, resources to try to build stronger individuals, stronger families that can sustain the housing, the neighborhoods that developers are hopefully willing to invest in.

We can build, and build, and build.

We can make all the pretty stuff.

But if people do not, if they're not strong, then the neighborhood still, we get another 50 years, we'll be right back where we are now.

So I will let the planning folks speak to the other tools, and Amy may know because she often works with both HCD, and Planning and Development.

- Before we go to Amy, you also touched on an important point here.

Because the point is not to displace people who are already there, and who have been there.

Maybe senior citizens, maybe family members who have inherited the property.

- Absolutely.

You know, I don't know, I know I'm on television, but my husband is from further out east in Nashville.

And one of the things he always speaks about, about Memphis is the people and the connectedness, and how the people make Memphis special.

And so the people make neighborhoods special.

And so, it is really critical to our long-range plan as a city, to invest in those people.

And keep those people in neighborhoods, and keep those neighborhoods strong.

It makes us unique, it makes us different.

It makes the city stronger.

And so, that really is our role in community services, is to help build stronger people, and stronger families to live in these amazing houses that Amy and a lot of our nonprofits are working on in the community.

- Okay so Amy, on the side that you work with, some of the methods that are out there?

- Well, I'll talk about that.

And then I'll go back to the people, because we also work with the people every day.

So we're a homebuilder, too.

We work with contractors, local contractors to do home repairs, so that small time home repairs, and then bigger rehabs, and new construction.

So we work the Housing Community Development.

And they have passed through federal dollars at CDBG home funds.

And the problem with those funds is they're very highly-regulated, and they put a huge administrative burden on nonprofits.

And there's a lot that we have to do, that we don't get paid for, you know what I mean?

Like we have a lot of things that we have to do outside of just the home building.

So that's a little bit of a barrier.

But those are subsidies.

And then another state subsidy that we work with is the Community Investment Tax Credit.

And that allows for banks to invest in nonprofit housing developers to get bank financing at a really low rate, so that they can invest, the banks can invest in neighborhoods where they may not have in awhile, and they get to invest in a nonprofit, which also gets them credit with their regulators.

And so, taking advantage of that program, allows us to finance programs that wouldn't of worked otherwise, because of the appraisal gap, or because of an affordability gap.

So even if they do appraise for what they're supposed to be, but our families can't afford that, we have some subsidy that will allow them to afford it.

And, they get in with equity already, so that's a good thing.

- How much is the big jump in interest rates hurt- - Oh, man!

- What you're trying to do?

I mean, it was not easy in the first place.

- Well no, it wasn't easy in the first place.

But, going back to what Dorcas was saying about working with people, people call us, especially during the pandemic, "Where can I go?

I need to go somewhere."

And we worked with the City for rental assistance, too.

But when you have the rates fly up, and the sales prices flew up, and then rent was also going up, we saw buyers drop out.

People can't afford, once it got over 5%, I mean, people weren't... And that's what I'm saying about accessibility.

A time when families could get into homes at 2.5%, and a lot of our Memphis families were not able to get in at that rate.

And now, they're sitting fine, and people are, they're seeing their rents rise, and they have less control over.

- Your goal primarily is to get people into home ownership?

- Yes.

- Is that correct?

That's the goal?

- Right.

- Yeah.

- The goal is financial stability.

And through home ownership is where we see is one of the major ways a lot of families are able to find that financial stability.

- How do you work with families, and maybe this is the counseling part, because having owned many homes, lovely, really old historic, leaky homes.

Home ownership is not just the monthly payment, the interest rate, as anyone who's owned a home knows.

It is all these other costs.

How do you help people, prepare people for, oh, your air conditioner went out, your heat went out.

There's a hole in the roof because a tree fell through it.

I mean, not everyone necessarily has, is ready for that.

- Exactly.

So we have, shout out to our HUD-certified counselors.

We have three housing counselors on staff.

And they work one-on-one with individuals going through their budget, what's their current income?

What are their current debts?

How much could they afford in a home?

That's something that a lot of people don't realize.

I want, they have this idea of HGTV home.

But what you can afford.

And once you get into the home, what kind of home maintenance is necessary?

Taxes and insurance, that's part of the monthly payment.

All of that stuff, they walk through the start to the end with the individuals.

And we have classes, too, four times a month.

- Your goal is really more to house people, right?

I mean, at some level, just to be housed in a stable, safe place.

- To get people into a stable housing situation, yes, yes.

Whether that is a rental, we do help people with payments towards their mortgages, as well.

We help folks that are experiencing acute homelessness and get them into temporary shelters, in order to move them into a more permanent home.

So, we are working all across the continuum of housing instability everyday.

- And you talked about strong and good neighborhoods, and that's the key.

What are, those are public safety?

Those are utilities and lighting?

Those are good neighbors, not bad neighbors?

What are those issues?

And how much can you really?

How much do you have control over?

- I'm an optimist, Eric, so you know.

[all laughing] That's a gift and curse.

How much control do we have, I don't know.

But I know regardless of how much control we ultimately have, we have to do something.

And so, when I think about good neighborhoods, that means safe housing.

And when I say "Safe," I mean the community, it is free of environmental hazards, it is free of public safety violence threats.

It is walkable.

The places that people go into don't have mold, and rat infestation.

It is not, they are not living in a position where they can't afford month-to-month, they don't know what's going to happen.

So, lots of things.

- And can I just say, if you love economic development, if you're into job creation, if you're into health and wellness, then you have to be into housing.

Because if the future of our workforce is walking past vacancy, and living with rats, and things like that, that doesn't paint a happy future for anybody.

So if you really wanna cultivate a healthy, vibrant workforce from Memphians, and not bringing them in from somewhere else, then we've gotta think about housing.

- Yeah, Bill?

- Amy, we talked several months ago at a new development in Frayser.

That is on James Road, where McLean dead ends into it.

And in that same area, the new Frayser Branch Library is right next door to this group of houses, this subdivision.

You also got part of the Wolf River Greenway and what used to be Rodney Baber Park is under construction over there, to link up to it.

What has been the impact of that, all of that, taken together, on the existing homeowners in that area of Frayser?

- Well I'll just say, when we first started and acquired that land, everybody thought we were a little bit crazy.

[all laughing] - It was a long haul, to be fair.

- It was so long, yeah, yeah.

So we got it like 2004, and then the crash happened.

Anyway, it's a long story, but we're finally completed the 34 units there.

And I think the impact is huge.

When we started, we were selling them at 129.

Now they're selling for more than that.

So people are slowly gaining equity in their home.

They're also now close to amenities, like you mentioned, the library at the park.

And they're living them, they've stayed there.

They're in their home for seven years, or more.

And these homes are energy efficient.

So I think it's given a yard to their kids.

Something else they were really excited about.

These are larger lots, and in a neighborhood, where has over the last 10 years, really started to come back, come up again.

And so, I'm really proud of that development, and I hope we can continue to build more out there.

- How hard was it to find a lender for that?

- Really hard in the beginning.

But the last five years or so, we've been able to have really great lender partners help us finish that housing.

- In your work with home owners, not renters, but home owners, an appraisal where the value of the property goes up, is not always a source of good news for a new home owner, is it?

- No, it's not, it's not.

When you start thinking again about all of the things, like, "Hey I can see down the road, my house is worth more."

But that also means that my investment monthly is more.

And that can be a real barrier for a lot of folks, a whole lot of folks.

And so, we don't, I will tell you through our toolbox, unfortunately, a lot of the money that we receive is grant funds from the federal government, or state government, and those funds are limited.

And so, we may have caps on how much we can provide a family, regardless of what, how that appraisal value changes.

And so, that can be a real concern for folks.

And we have had folks to have to give up their homes, because it's worth more, which seems completely wrong.

- Well, that's the vulnerabilities piece of it.

When you have families that are very vulnerable to losing their home because of the taxes.

That's where, like we do a lot of that kind of education from the beginning.

Know that these things happen, this is the tax, this is the interest, like all these things.

And yeah, I mean, yeah, I don't know.

I don't know what else to say, it's just really tough when you're living paycheck-to-paycheck like that and you can't make it.

- With just the three minutes left here.

A bigger issue right now, but the whole issue of blighted homes, homes that go into tax sells, end up at the Shelby County Land Bank, right?

So the intention, I'm gonna do a bad job, is the intention of the Shelby County Land Bank is for homes that no one came forward to buy them, there had to be some place for them to go, so that the title could be cleared, and they could be resold, kind of, sort of.

Right now, County Commission has asked for, what?

A 90-day moratorium, is it an audit, too?

Is that right, Bill?

Or, they've talked about an audit, an external audit.

- They're still talking about an audit, and what that would involve.

- Does that impact what you do?

- A little bit, but yes, it does.

[chuckling] - So, I'm sorry, a nonprofit, sometimes individuals buy from the Land Bank, sometimes nonprofits buy from the Land Bank, nonprofits like yours, like The Works that we've talked about.

- Right, right, right.

- Others that do that, and Commission Britney Thornton had concerns about some of these nonprofits, and I don't know if she was talking about you.

I have no idea, I don't mean to put you in that seat.

But just, does this, is that a problem in terms of moving some of these often empty homes into usable space and ownership, if this Shelby County Land Bank isn't working the way its supposed to.

- If it's not working the way it's supposed to, then we're gonna have this issue where we can't scale affordable housing.

So if it's working properly, then we'll be able to scale it.

And I think, I don't know everything that went down with Klondike and all of that.

But I think, I guess the Commission is just wanting to know, to have more transparency, maybe have.

But to me, if we're gonna get properties donated to the nonprofits, the Commission has to see those, right?

So I think it's just about educating your reps, and if you want to have access to certain units, or certain lots, just going to your representative, and talking about what you would do with these lots, and where your financing is gonna come from.

But yeah, if there's a moratorium, that doesn't really help anyone right now.

- Yeah.

Do you wanna jump in?

As a county employee, would you like to jump into this, County Commission?

- No, I will just be watching.

I will be at all of the meetings.

Many of the nonprofits that work with the Land Bank, also work with us on other projects.

So even though the Land Bank is not in my perview, it is important what happens with that, to the folks that we're serving each day.

- I do think that some of this is a function of having a new Commission that has just been in office since September 1st, who are taking a critical look at really everything that comes across their desk, because this is all new to 6 of those 13 commissioners.

- Yeah, and you did an interview with Britney Thornton, in the last week that's available on Daily Memphian telling about her concerns, and so on.

That, there's a minute left, so there's not enough time here.

But that problem of owners of homes, maybe who are up to speed on their taxes, but are renting out homes, and aren't good landlords, in areas of maybe you've done a ton of work over many years, and invested a whole lot of money, private and public, and so on.

What can be done about bad landlords at that house-by-house level?

- Well we can, [laughing]- - With 30 seconds.

- 30 seconds.

- I don't have 30 seconds, I need like 30 minutes.

What we can do is, I mean, code enforcement, I think you can educate landlords, and renters both, on their rights.

I think we can hold them accountable for being environmental hazard in the neighborhoods, through environmental court.

But there's property laws, there's a lot.

- Yeah, there's a lot.

All right, well, we can maybe do a whole other show.

Yes, thank you both for being here.

Appreciate very much, sorry not to give you enough time on that important question.

Thank you, Bill.

Thank you for joining us.

If you've missed any of this show, you can get it at WKNO.org, or you can go to YouTube to search for Behind the Headlines.

There's also a podcast version of the show that you can get on The Daily Memphian site, iTunes, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks very much, and we'll see you next week.

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