Housing Trust Fund Board, Regular Meeting

1. 0:02Yeah. Okay. Okay. Thank you. But a gift card for participation. Okay. Encourage people [clears throat] maybe future anticipation. Okay. But that'd be good. Um I mean I think also like um so shifting into next year this board is going to be more driven by the members if that's like how it ends up continuing. We're still trying to figure out transition plan. But I think also it could be a good chance to maybe get some more people in the community like interested and being something a little
2. 0:46bit more like the CAC where it's very like residents kind of meet and bring ideas and um I will double check. I think we still have some money like we still have money in the small line item budget. Um but also maybe just do some I got to check on the logistics of asking for gift cards or you know as a city thing and see what's allowed or not. Um so I'll check on that. Anything donated? I think so. I just got to double check on the rules. Okay.
3. 1:20Okay. Thanks. Um and also, yeah, if we have some money in our thing, if we get because we did that in the past, we we got rolling groceryer gift cards um for like housing trust fund stuff. Sounds good. Um and do we have a date? No. Um, off the top of everyone's heads, does anything um, does the week of November 16th seem off the top of your head? That's the week before Thanksgiving. just not. Okay. Cool. I will do some um basic logistics and then I'll kind of reach out to folks if it wants to help with making a flyer or something like that once we kind of get more details.
4. 2:17And then also just ideas. Okay. Cool. Okay. Cool. Um, and thinking of a good outgoing person with a louder voice than me to be a bingo color. [laughter] Uhhuh. So, yeah. Um, [snorts] on that night in November. Yeah. So, I'm available. Okay. Um, yeah. So, those are kind of the I'll put together kind of like a list of what we need to do and then you guys can draw somewhere here. Yeah. That would be crazy. I mean, we're also going to make up the cards to be I mean, I know we should still put maybe like if we get
5. 3:08a big each one can have like a number associated with it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I don't know. We'll think it through. Okay. Yeah, maybe we can meet and go through logistics. Um and yeah, I guess also seeing if any um any other organizations want to participate or agencies, whatever. Um just realized I'm looking at the wrong agenda. Okay. So then the other anything else about that? So my plan is to um before October put together like a to-do list and stuff and then run it by you all. We don't have a meeting scheduled for October. Um so I think we can meet one-on-one if we want to and I can just
6. 4:00reach out to folks to kind of put some stuff together. Can Raider Hudson fix donations for Hudson roots at that time? It Yeah, that's a good Yeah, that's a good idea. Yeah, because if they do it directly to Promise, it avoids all of the city. Yeah, but if they want to partner, given that, you know, there's not a lot of fun. Yeah, I like that idea. Yeah. Okay, I like it. Just making sure no one else's join. Okay. So then the next thing on the list um
7. 4:46was so something I'm also thinking about is how to something we could maybe just brainstorm on. We don't need to necessarily implement it but thinking about how to make a better clearing house of housing information. Um, partly because also like I know I answer a lot of questions and like I kind of want to think about how to fill that role a little bit, but also I know a lot of our other organizations get questions constantly and I know like in a dream world I feel
8. 5:18like there could be like a one app for affordable like for you know housing, but I also know that's difficult for a lot of reasons and I know like places have housing navigators and we don't have like unless you have a case worker it's like you're just spend your day calling and emailing ing all these different places to get information. So, I'm wondering if you guys have any ideas. The like smallest scale of this is me just doing a better job with the housing web page and then like what would be a
9. 5:47bigger [laughter] a bigger version of some kind of platform or person or something that makes it easier for people to actually find resources, apartments, stuff like that. Oh. you know, FAQ is obviously, you know, frequently asked questions. Yeah. From the website. That's a good Yeah, you might be able to build into the website, so to speak, depends on what you're trying. Oh, just be warned, the city's website software is not Say it one more time. The city software is not the most uh modern. It's a bit clunky. Um,
10. 6:36can I I mean obviously AI there's a lot of like whatever but this seemed like the perfect kind of tool for an AI like you know how you can like ask question or you can train it to like if this question's asked this is what you say like is there anything like that that like it's a call line. Yeah call line or like a chat line. Yeah, like a messaging chat. This feels like a good use of that technology in some ways. The only drawback at least for me is I always like to talk to someone if somebody insists on which would be me.
11. 7:17Yeah. I want to speak to a representative. I want to speak to who does it connect to? Right. Yeah. If even if it did connect to a person, do they have the capacity to handle the potentially? Right. And a lot of folks aren't necessarily techsavvy or don't have and Right. Yeah. And I also have folks who I mean this is not the problem we're trying to solve, but I don't know if this happens to you, but I like because of Hudson, I get calls from people who are in like Hudson County, New Jersey, like Hudson, Ohio, and like you can get like pretty far into the conversation before being like,
12. 7:51"Wait, wait, wait, [laughter] let's rewind." So I Yeah, I think sometimes like And okay, so something else. So, the um county um health and human services made like a kind of like an AI thing like that on their website and it is really good in the sense of like you put in like I'm looking for a food bank and it brings up all this stuff but it's not I don't know what the word is. It's just like I feel like sometimes people need Well, I feel like personalize.
13. 8:24for someone else. Yeah, I was going to say because it feels it's like such a crisis that it doesn't feel just talking to you, right? I feel like I would feel that way too. I think it's a good way to get people information. Yeah. Right. I mean, maybe that's also like it it's like here I mean there we do have a lot of great agencies, you know what I mean? That do have staffing and stuff. So maybe it is a way to be like if you want to have person Yeah. and like start here like do you live in Hudson? Are you moving to
14. 8:51Hudson? are you like it can be something that's kind of like that. Um yeah, I'd like to think about that. Okay. And like Jeff, from your knowledge, I always assume things are way more complicated than I have knowledge about. Um, if all the different like affordable housing places, would there be any way for them to like collaborate on like an intake form so people could fill out one Yeah. thing? You mentioned that before. The problem is that if the problem is one particular Well, they're going to meet roadblocks. Yeah.
15. 9:36So, our waiting list is cool, right? So, if it comes to us, we're going to push it back. M um and there there I can't remember the name of organization but I recently found there's some type of organization that we're supposed to be connecting to if there's a referral system um try to find out extensively um and it's pretty good except for I'm a new leader and I wasn't aware of it so some of the stuff is like sitting and upon catching up there I can't help anybody because Right.
16. 10:11So what happens when you you know they can do one single application but every organization has their own okay what if I get what you're saying and I I also feel like there might be some privacy issues too of like that may also what if there was something that was more internal like I don't think you guys are all competing for tenants like I feel like you have way more I don't know but if there is something that was Like let's say you work Catholic Charities and you get eight
17. 10:43phone calls a day. You could go on to this and it's like okay Greenport Gardens is accepting tenants. You know Crosswinds is not here's the basic things you should know about. So just so before we send people calling everywhere we know like okay try jaws and comments first you know either that or if we can do it quarterly to update your listing of units that are available not even to places that are renting and may not need to do it anymore at least quarterly. Yeah having this updated so if there's no availability at
18. 11:16that time just at a hotel you can say in a vacancy. Yeah. Um and but if we can update that list so that we can probably be able we can share those with uh each housing organization as well as the service providers so they can say hey try these resources. Yeah. Then at least like they don't have to come to me if my waiting list is right. You won't be able right. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. or also understanding kind of like basic I don't know income levels they might be looking for other requirements.
19. 11:52Um I feel like that's doable. Yeah. And it might just be able to be on a could do it on we can do we could do this on like a Google doc and share but some central location keeps it but each of us can be able to print it out. Yeah. or give the services pull the days like these are available and even like something I think is helpful if we have that is just knowing when positions change like you know what I mean if I'm like oh go call so and so at promise then it's like oh they're not there
20. 12:24anymore I think even that could be helpful um because yeah I just hate when someone is so stressed and exhausted and then I just give them a list of phone numbers to call right um I do have like a list of like subsidized housing providers, but I don't like posting it online because I usually like to tell people like when they ask me like, "Hey, number one, like there's waiting lists. These have and also like I'm not recommending any of them." Like, you know what I mean? Like the city can't be recommending
21. 12:56um a landlord or anything. Um but I mean, we could like list something that's just like I mean, we we do have some we have HHA on there obviously, like we have um but we don't list all of them. Okay. I think that's something that could be doable. Yeah. Maybe this also starts with a conversation meeting with all those housing groups. Yeah. Uh and and that will be advantageous to this organization because we can post some resources from there. Yeah. Spreading the news of who we are, what we do. Yeah. I think it can help. Yeah. It has to be the one.
22. 13:35Yeah. Agreed. Um, I think that's the start. Yeah. And also maybe having something in print available at the city so that if people come in or whatever, we can like hear like a brochure and things that don't change. You know what I mean? Like phone numbers for Catholic Charities or But if we can get that meeting prior to being Yeah. So that some of those folks can um Yeah. Yeah, volunteers get some bleeding. That'll kind of help them. Yeah, I think it's a good idea because if we can I can reach out. We schedule it for like October, then we have bingo November. Yeah.
23. 14:16Anyone online? No. Okay. Um, that's cool. Anything else you want to add to that combo? Okay. Um, so my last thing is we are not meeting in October. I'll send a reminder out. Um we do have a meeting in November on the calendar. Um that's going to be I think TBD with the bingo event if Okay. Um but that that it would either we have to do one more before the end of the year just to kind of close things out. So probably November ideally so we don't have to meet in December. Um but I will keep you all updated.
24. 14:59I don't know. [laughter] Um, yeah. I mean, part of this too is like I mean at HCPA last week we had the same conversation just because HCPA's budget is dwindling. Um, so yeah, I've been talking to Logan and Joe about like what kind of what things look like and so don't quite have that all figured out yet, but part of my hope is that the housing trust fund committee continues to meet a couple times a year. Um, and maybe there's I don't know quite how the admin of that
25. 15:37works, but um, and then I think I'm just trying to like spread out a lot of the work into different parts of different organizations, like build up capacity, but I'm also open to suggestions. Okay. Um, before we open up to any public comment, any other comments from the board? Good. said from the board. It's okay. Now it's public comment. Any public comment? Well, you know, now it tempted me. [laughter] That is my fault. But in the meeting last night, the thing with the the bliss towers, it's taking way too long and it's something that
26. 16:20needs to happen and I spoke in favor of it yesterday and that would alleviate a lot of the issues, the difficulties in finding housing. M I may actually be looking for something. So don't be surprised if I come upstairs to your office, see some of these resources. Okay, sir. Um, anyone online? Nope. Okay. Can I have a motion to adjurnn? Ellie makes a motion. Seconds. Okay. Thank you all. Thanks, Margaret. Have a good evening. Bye. Leo.

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