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good afternoon everybody this is Sean Heath director of Hamilton for the city of Charlotte glad we're able to join you
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today let's do quick introductions on the city side and then I will jump into some
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slide content and then we'll finish up with an opportunity for Q a so let's go ahead and do quick introductions Jackie
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we'll start with you all right thank you Sean I'm Jackie Claire and I work in the
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community engagement division of Housing and Neighborhood Services and I am the community grants manager
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I think Mike I'll toss it over to you
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not sure if we have Mike yet we can go to Pat can you hear me oh yeah there you are
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Mike all right sorry about that um technical difficulties I saw Mike Curtis I'm the business support division manager and housing Neighborhood
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Services
0:58
thanks Mike Pat good afternoon I'm Patricia Mason I work in housing and Neighborhood Services
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business support I'm the risk and compliance manager
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and hi everyone I'm Gail Whitcomb also with housing and Neighborhood Services and I
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am the point of contact for the non-profit housing support grant that
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you are interested in so during the application process
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um you will be able to reach out to me with any questions that you have my contact information will be later in the
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presentation and it's also on the website
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and it's good to see everyone my name is a Warren Wooten I'm the assistant director for affordable housing for
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housing and Neighborhood Services and they're going to help out with any housing program related questions at the
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end of the presentation it's good to see everyone thank you Warren hey Jackie can I put
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you on the spot and let you give it a try on the share screen to see if it works better on your side and if not
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we'll go with mine yeah absolutely thanks
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as Jack is doing that at neglected Dimension that we're recording this session
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so it can be available to others that may have not been able to join today that looks great on my screen Jackie
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thanks a bunch all right so now I've got to figure out how to drive it so I don't know where the buttons are there it is
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okay okay fantastic so once again Shawnee housing
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department um we'll try to move through the slides relatively quickly because most everything that we've packaged here in
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the presentation is consistent with if not identical with the notice of funding
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opportunity that was already released and you have at your disposal but we thought it would be helpful to provide a
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little bit of color commentary from the city's perspective so on May 22nd I did
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a presentation to city council and presented on a number of topics one of which was the concept that we would use
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a proposal really that we would use some of our federal stimulus funds here on this slide referred to as arpa or arpa
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which is the American Rescue plan and the proposal I presented at Council a month ago was that we would set aside
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six and a half million dollars of our federal stimulus funds and focus it on
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what we're now calling the housing support grant program opportunity today and I think the proposal very well
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received by Council they're intrigued by the idea supportive and want us to move forward in an accelerated fashion so we
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work very quickly after that May 22nd meeting to stand up the request for proposal get that out have the last week
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have the informational session today and then have about a one month period of time from the date the notice of funding
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opportunity was released in order for eligible non-profit organizations to submit their proposals so I'm pleased
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how quickly this has fallen into place over the last couple weeks in terms of the purpose of the program
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we wanted to do something very different with this funding opportunity and because if you think about historically
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what we generally do with our housing and homelessness related funding opportunities is
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um generally speaking it's it's going to be either large non-profit organizations and or for-profit developers that we're
4:27
partnering with and those entities have been great partners and they will continue to be great Partners
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um but we also know at the same time in parallel I know I've received a lot of feedback over the last 12 to 18 months
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what are the types of things the city of Charlotte can do to better demonstrate a
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connection to kind of small medium-sized emerging non-profits in the
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community that are really doing good work around housing and homelessness issues but may not always be able to
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compete against those really large well-funded well-established non-profits and
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for-profit developers so um having a chance to talk to a number
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of those entities as I've kind of stepped into this role over the last year I'm having a chance to see some of
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the programming in action I was really passionate about us trying to find a way to develop something that's really
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targeted towards that small and medium-sized non-profit community so that's really what this is intended to do and you can see here the purpose of
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the program by Design This is fairly broad so focused on either projects or
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programmatics support um medium-sized emerging nonprofits and
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there'll be subsequent slides to get into a little more specific information on that to advance Housing Solutions for
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individuals or families that are either homeless or at risk of of homelessness and there is also direct reference on
5:54
here on projects or programming that are focused on communities or individuals
6:00
and households that have faced the disproportionate or disparate impact of covet 19. I don't think that will be
6:06
that hard to demonstrate but it's a necessary feature because it links directly back to the federal funding
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source here the American Rescue plan and that was really the the intent of the funding that was released by the federal
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government to cities and counties all across the country moving on to number three here
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whereas the overall program is envisioned as six and a half million the maximum award per entity request would
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be capped at two and a half million dollars and you can see the last bullet point here that we would expect to award
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a small number of Grants under this program you may Wonder well what is a small number so I would venture to say
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that having not received any of the applications that or at least not reviewed into the applications I don't know exactly what the number will be but
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I believe somewhere in the range of three to five so we want the individual grants to be a meaningful we know
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there's a trade-off you know one philosophy or one approach with this sort of thing is to take six and a half million dollars and spread it across the
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most number of non-profits that you could possibly do we're electing not to do that with this particular program so
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it will be a relatively small number of awards that are made and I would just underscore that as a result that means
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that being an eligible Organization for the program does not translate any guarantee that any funding will be
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received under the program itself next slide please foreign
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in terms of the eligibility of the organizations themselves this is focused on registered 501c3 organizations that
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have a current 990 filing with the IRS the Org the requesting organization must
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have at least one full-time staff person and an operational an operating board of
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directors the non-profit needs to have been founded in a formerly established
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at least two years ago in terms of the financial size that
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we're looking at there's a minimum requirement that the non-profit have an operating budget of at least 250 000
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and there's kind of a maximum threshold that annual operating Revenue be less
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than seven and a half million dollars in the most recent fiscal year or so and maybe I should have put or in
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bold on this particular slide so there are two ways to be eligible as it relates to size or age of the non-profit
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it's either to fall within that 250 000 to 7.5 million dollar range or if it's a
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non-profit that was founded between two to ten years ago so just to give you a specific example let's say there's
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someone on the call that had annual revenue of eight million dollars in the most recent fiscal year
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well if they were founded between two to ten years ago they could still apply for
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this particular award so you really need to think of those as it's kind of an either or kind of a scenario
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and once again back to the federal requirements associated with the use of American Rescue plan funding it's
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necessary that the organization be able to demonstrate in its application how the program or project would be
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connected to communities that uh born that have borne into a disparate impact
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related to cover 19. next slide please in terms of the nature of the projects
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that would be eligible under the program once again by Design This is intended to
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be very broad it's intended to be very inclusive it's intended to really pull
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in a lot of things that we're already currently funding with some of the larger non-profits and or for-profit
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developers here across different funding opportunities with this one we're trying to bundle it all under one umbrella and
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say if you're an eligible organization and you've got an affordable multi-family rental housing project
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great or if you've got affordable home ownership great that would be eligible Supportive Housing would also be
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something that could be pursued temporary emergency housing or non-con congregate shelter scenarios also
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eligible use of funds and then finally Supportive Services which could be Tethered to one of the items above as
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applicable or pursued on on a standalone basis once again maximum amount of the request
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is two and a half million dollars and then just to draw a finer point on this
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last thing here this is really intended to be Tethered to a specific project or
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program it's not an it's not designed to be General operating support separate and distinct from the program
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we're talking about today last month we launched a also an arpa funded program
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that we're referring to as the community resiliency fund or the community resiliency grant program it's very
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different than this one in a number of ways I'll just make two particular distinctions one is that separate
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program is designed just for operating support and two the maximum award under
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that program is 250 000. so um it's very separate from this one you
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might be wondering if you are eligible for this program and the other program could you apply to both yes you could so
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long as you meet the deadlines so for the program that we're discussing today the deadline is in mid-july for the
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community resilience grant program on operating support for eligible organizations the the deadline for
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requesting that funding is June 30th next slide please
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so I'm going to go through these next few slides fairly quickly this just takes the eligible uses on the prior
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slide and teases out a little information as I had said before this information is identical with what was
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provided in the notice of funding opportunity when it was released in terms of multi-family rental housing it
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can be either new construction or it can be naturally occurrable affordable housing for rental purposes consistent
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what we with what we historically do with our Housing Trust Fund requests for proposals there are a few Baseline
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requirements that we have in place for multi-family rental housing one of which would is that it needs to focus on
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households that are at 80 percent or below an area median income there also
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needs to be a certain percentage it's 20 percent to be specific of the units need
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to be devoted to households that are at 30 percent am I or below and then we
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also have in a minute a minimum affordability requirement for the multi-family multi family rental of 20
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years lately for new construction we're generally seeing proposals that are at
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least 30 years if not 40 and for naturally occurrable affordable housing 20 years has been the norm of
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what we've seen recently next slide please affordable home ownership so here we're
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thinking of scenarios where it's new construction single family detached or townhome styled housing
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here once again we have an AMI requirement where the housing would need to be focused on households at 80
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percent AMI or below for home ownership there's no requirement that gets down
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into the 30 AMI level for for obvious reasons there um minimum affordability period on home
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ownership scenarios for us is 15 years and then last year you know there are
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different homeownership models not just in Charlotte but across the country and we do have a requirement for this
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particular grant program that if there is a homeownership request that's being made that the non-profit be able to
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demonstrate that there's either a shared Equity or shared appreciation component to it for the for the homeowner or that
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it's being done under Community Land Trust model which which provides you know 99-year affordability or even
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permanent affordability that sort of thing next slide please
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Supportive Housing Development so here we'd be focused specifically on Special Needs housing such as elderly for the
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homeless population and we have also put in a specific requirement here that the
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request the nonprofit must either have or commit to submit an application for
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financing from the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency for their Supportive Housing development program
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next slide please contemporary emergency housing or
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non-congregation shelter once again trying to be Broad and inclusive this could be via a lease or an acquisition
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in rehab or a new construction scenario and the units would need to be focused
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on families that are homeless or at risk of homelessness next slide please
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Supportive Services as I mentioned before these could either be Tethered to one of the eligible uses mentioned
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previously and or on a standalone basis and given some examples here on the
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slide next slide please on additional considerations here the
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the core point is as I mentioned before our funding source for this is the American Rescue plan from the U.S
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treasury Department so this would be federal funds and there are some
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requirements as many of you all of you would know associated with federal funds um I'm going to leave it at that for now
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because there are a few slides closer to the end of the presentation that Jackie's gonna make a few finer points
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on this particular topic next slide please so this is a very important slide and
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once again this is identical with the information that was released when we announced the funding opportunity
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so these are not eligibility requirements but these are attributes that we will be looking for in the
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proposals and the more attributes a proposal has the stronger the proposal
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will be so theoretically a proposal could have none of these and they could still pursue funding theoretically a
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proposal could have all six of these and could still pursue funding and as I mentioned before because it's a finite
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resource and we'll have a relatively small number of awards that are made theoretically a request could include
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all six of these attributes and not get funded so I want to make sure that we're putting appropriate context around this
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but but fundamentally what we're trying to do is demonstrate these are specific attributes that the city of Charlotte is
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very interested in in terms of the value proposition for a particular proposal so
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bottom line here the more of these you can check the box on the better first would be a a track record that the
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requesting organization has a track record of delivering programming in marginalized for underserved communities
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second I mean this kind of goes hand in hand with number one to a degree the the
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underlying project or programming request focuses on corridors of opportunity areas of influence one of
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the subsequent slides will show you a visual I'm sure many or all of you are familiar with our six quarters of
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opportunity the quote-unquote area of influence is a slightly larger Geographic boundary associated with
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because the six corridors themselves are fairly narrow so the areas of influence essentially just extend those boundaries
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out a bit so we'll have a visual of that in a second on number three here
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one area where I frequently receive questions from city council when I'm
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making presentations is what are some specific things that we're doing as it pertains to our housing and homelessness
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work to really focus on very hard to house populations including Justice
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involved residents homeless families and voucher holders you know we know how
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challenging it can be for housing Choice voucher or other types of rental subsidy holders to get access to housing so
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that's something that we're certainly interested in is is really kind of the target population associated with the
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project or program that you're bringing forward number four you know this of course will depend on
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the specifics of the project or program but I would say it's fair to say that all else equal to city likes to see
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other funders involved in initiatives so there's an element of Leverage associated with our funding and you know
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we're putting money in in collaboration with other private or public sector funding sources is something that's of
18:30
interest to us number five because this is one-time funding and I would say it's
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certainly my hope that we'll be able to find creative ways in the future to do things like this even though we won't
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have the the covid related Federal funding at our disposal anymore you know
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the fact is that this is one-time funding that we're relying on from the federal government so one of the things
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that we're interested in in the project applications is a demonstration by the applicant that they have a credible plan
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to sustain the project or program beyond the use of the city's funds other you
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know to the extent there's a cliff effect where our funding goes away okay how is the applicant thinking about the
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future in order to sustain whatever it is that hopefully our funding will be a catalyst to put in place and then the
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last thing and you know each one of these is important so I'm not going to pick any favors but um this one is is last but certainly
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certainly not least which would be any ability of the applicant to demonstrate
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an existing level of community support for the project or program that you're
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bringing forward I think um it's always helpful for us to know that you know the
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community being served um kind of literally and figuratively is not just aware of but supportive of what
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you may be bringing forward as a project opportunity next slide please
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so as I mentioned before with our six corridors of opportunity which are named here on the left side of the slide you
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can see the purpose of the visual is to show you with some color coding when we refer to quote-unquote corridors of
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opportunity areas of influence how it's a much expanded footprint relative to
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the corridor itself so once again it's not a requirement
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um that the programming be here but as mentioned on the previous slide it's a
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preference because the vision with quarters of opportunities is for the city to continue to be very intentional
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about harnessing investments in underserved communities under invested
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communities that are facing a whole range of challenges related to you know crime and and lack of employment
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opportunities and and you know lack of educational attainment so you know
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there's there's not a single there's not one you know single thing necessarily that the city can do to address all of
21:00
these challenges but with corridors of opportunity I think it's intended to be a recognition that if if our housing
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work and our in our jobs and Workforce Development and economic development work and our infrastructure work with
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with CDOT for example are all being as intentional as possible about a strategic focus on
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these areas that over time and this is obviously a kind of a multi-year kind of a thing we can start to really move the
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needle in a meaningful way in these particular communities next slide
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in terms of the timelines as I mentioned before mid-july is the deadline for submitting applications to be specific
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July 14th at 5 PM that'll be a firm deadline so there won't be any extensions beyond that date then we'll
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enter into an application review period where you know I will assemble across
21:53
Department review team to evaluate and score the proposals and then my target
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is to provide a briefing on the recommended funding Awards to City
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Council on August 28th as you're aware city council has a summer schedule so they meet less
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frequently during the July August time frame so I think August 28th is really the first opportunity that I will have
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and and I plan on doing everything within my power to be ready to bring in the funding recommendations at that
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council meeting so basically what that would mean is anywhere from the three to five awards
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that staff recommends I would take those to city council and they will vote on on
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the proposal on the staff recommendation um generally it's done as a two-step
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process so August 28th would be my opportunity to discuss the recommendations with city council and
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then based on their input I would bring it back at a subsequent business meeting
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as soon as possible for an actual vote so that gives you a sense for the
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timeline that we're on next slide please
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for those projects that are selected and and ultimately approved by Council for
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funding then there would be a few steps to go through in terms of completing vendor registration and submitting
23:19
current certificates of insurance and then of course working through the the contract development and execution
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process just as I believe we attempted and have moved very quickly coming out of the May 26 council meeting
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in order to really craft and stand up and publish this funding opportunity I
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will commit to doing the same as it relates to doing our evaluations on an accelerated basis getting those
23:46
recommendations in front of council once it's approved by Council working very aggressively with our internal Partners
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on the procurement team Etc to get contracts in place as quick as possible these are all necessary
23:59
steps in the process you know that there's a reason that we have to go through all of these hoops as a public
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sector entity hopefully taxpayers would appreciate there are lots of checks and balances that are built in so I can't
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bypass these checks and balances but I can commit to you that this will continue to be a top priority for me to
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move this forward as quickly as I can next slide please
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um I won't go into a lot of details here other than to make to me the punch line here is in recognition of the fact that
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to the extent you know we're focused on small medium non-profits here that may not have a lot of cash in reserve to you
24:37
know stand up a project and then wait six months for city funding so what we want to do here is for those entities
24:44
that are selected once we get the contract in place then we will work to release 30 of the award
24:51
immediately really you know at the outset of the project and program
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um providing the award recipient with some capacity to get stuff going with the city funding itself and then we will
25:04
through the Contracting phase based on the specific nature of the project or program develop a payment schedule for
25:12
the remaining 70 percent of the funds and over what time period that will be released my bias will be for all of it
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to be released in a fairly accelerated format but I wouldn't really be in a position to get more specific than that
25:25
today because it's really going to hinge on the nature of the project itself
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next slide please then at you know at the end of what we
25:38
would consider the grant period depending on the project or or program itself there will be an expectation on
25:45
our part that we receive a final report it'll be important for us to be able to
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point to the impact of this particular grant program how the dollars were put
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to work to the extent we can identify some impact stories or success stories
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and and frankly that's just the sort of thing that also puts us in a better position to try to make the case that
26:07
hey this is just the sort of thing that we should try to find creative ways to do in the future with different funding
26:13
sources so as you would expect for Grants of these size there will be some expectations on our part that we receive
26:19
information during the Grant and at the completion of the programming next slide please
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in terms of required documentation I'm not going to to read any of this off the
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slide it's it's explicitly identified in the notice of funding opportunity and
26:39
the requirements of submitting an application so I don't think there's anything on here that would surprise
26:44
anybody but a few things that people will have to have in order as part of their application in order for the
26:50
application to be considered complete and ready for review next slide please
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okay so now I'm going to turn it up I'm going to step out for a second get a glass of water I'll be right back and I'm going to turn it over to Jackie to
27:03
go through some of the mechanics on how to apply and uh one slide or two related to the federal reporting requirements
27:09
thanks all right thanks Sean all right so all of the grant
27:16
applications um that houses the neighborhood services works with are online on our online
27:22
application grants portal if you are navigating here for the first time the
27:27
easiest way to to find it is to go to the website and search for housing
27:34
support Grant and that will bring up the the web page where you received the information about today's workshop and
27:41
where you received the information about the grant program itself so at the
27:46
bottom right hand side you'll see a black button that says submit application go ahead and click on that
27:53
and that will bring you to the grants portal you may want to bookmark that so
27:59
that you'll have it handy for the future and don't have to go through these extra steps
28:06
all right so once you are on the portal page you will either log in if you have
28:13
logged in previously and have a username and password or if it's your first time using the portal you will click the
28:20
button to create a new account and then you will fill out both your contact
28:26
information as the applicant and your organization's address and phone number
28:33
your tax ID number and other contact details for your for your organization
28:40
if you already have if your organization has applied before for a grant and you
28:47
already have an account but you were not the person who submitted that application you can reach out to me if
28:54
you need to get the user login details or to create a new user in the in the
29:03
existing account and my contact information is on the website in that
29:08
gray box on the right hand side of your screen toward the bottom of the page so
29:14
you'll see my contact information there I'm also your support for technical support with the Grant application so if
29:21
you run into any any problems with the with the website just shoot me an email
29:28
and I will try to to troubleshoot and get to the the bottom of it
29:35
also on this page I just want before I turn over to the next slide I want to point out that the guidelines for the
29:42
various grants are listed here you can see um the red box around the housing
29:47
support grants so you can view the grant guidelines and I've also added the grant
29:53
questions as well so if you want to take a look at those things before you start
29:58
to fill out an application or create a new account go ahead and click on that and you can download those details
30:07
all right so on the next slide if you already have an account and you need to
30:15
make any updates to either your organization's details or your details
30:21
as the applicant you will click on the pencil icons to make any edits you do
30:27
want to make sure that all of your contact information for both your organization and the applicant is up to
30:34
date and current and to see the open grant opportunities
30:40
you'll go to the top green menu and click on the apply button this is going
30:45
to bring up right now there's probably four or five open Grant applications so
30:51
you'll see all of them and you just want to be careful and be sure that you are applying on the the correct
31:00
application because the applications are not interchangeable so the one that you're looking for for this program is
31:06
one that says non-profit housing support grants and you'll click on the apply button and then of course you can take a
31:13
look through the other applications to see if you qualify and want to apply for any of those as well but for this
31:21
program you want to just click on the housing support Grant link
31:30
all right so once you have created your
31:36
login and you've taken a look at the application one of the questions that are in the application is registration
31:43
for sam.gov and you'll need to provide your entity unique entity ID which is
31:53
um I think like a 13 or 14 digit number and sometimes you'll receive an
31:58
expiration date when you register um we've found out recently that
32:04
um sometimes you'll receive a confirmation back from them and it says that your entity ID does not expire so
32:12
if if they give you an expiration date add it in the application along with
32:18
that ID number and if they don't give you a registry or an expiration date
32:23
then you can just leave that blank you are able to submit the application without the expiration date so to get
32:32
this unique identity number you need to go to sam.gov it's a two-part process so
32:39
the first step if you don't have a unique entity ID number is to register
32:44
to get that ID number then the second step is to register your organization
32:52
and so the second step is you'll be asked to provide information financial
32:58
information about your organization your tax identification number and
33:05
information about your executive director's contact information and I
33:11
know these slides are small they might not be able to to read all that but that's the that's the gist of it and
33:18
then you'll receive your registration this takes a while the Second Step can
33:24
take more than 15 days or so so you want to apply for your ID number and register
33:31
as soon as possible because it can take it can take a while before this
33:37
information will be finalized by um the IRS the government sam.gov so
33:46
just do that as early as you can
33:53
alright that's all that I have I'll turn it back to Sean thanks Jackie I appreciate it
34:00
so this concludes the formal part of the meeting in terms of the presentation you
34:05
can see here where to go to access everything Jack you just made reference to and Gail
34:12
would come on my team who introduced herself at the beginning of the call will continue to be the point person as
34:19
additional questions emerge after the discussion today so her contact information is shown here on the slide
34:26
so with that we can transition into questions if um
34:32
if folks have any Jackie any recommendation from you on
34:37
how it best to facilitate the Q a part here let me just take a look and chat and see
34:42
if anyone put any questions in there they did not so I would suggest using
34:49
the hand raise feature and then we can call on you as we see your hand raise to
34:55
have an orderly discussion Jackie
35:05
so are there any questions to start
35:12
I'm not saying any hand raised come off mute and Shout out a question as well
35:18
it feels fashion way
35:25
can't believe there's no questions well Jackie this is Nimish how are you I'm
35:31
fine thanks Namaste to everybody uh Gail nice seeing you after a long time uh the
35:38
thing is that we Refugee immigrants and minorities are in process of working with Habitat Humanity
35:45
and some landowners within the area of Albemarle and Central
35:52
trying to see if we can put some small housing for seniors
35:59
and we don't know how to apply because this is not what we do every day but we
36:06
do work with people's issues and try to handle it the way we can we have a
36:12
Center crisis center where many of your city councils have visited
36:17
we would like some kind of help and use responded to my email to see Dr Chan
36:24
from CACC sometimes people who are writing grants
36:30
are not familiar with real issues on the ground so if there is a way to meet someone and
36:37
understand that this is what I have and how should I put it into your list and
36:44
be eligible or not eligible it's fine but we don't do this every day and most
36:51
of the grant writers are asking for money we are I'm very open and straightforward to say things so forgive
36:58
me if there's something that you don't see that it should be said but I don't mean to say anything wrong I mean to say
37:05
that we don't have enough money to hire somebody to do it but we are in process and we see that many seniors from
37:13
Refugee immigrants and minorities are left behind by their children and they
37:19
come to our crisis center they will not go to homeless but because they don't
37:24
come from the culture that allows them to sustain there so is there a way or
37:30
partnership that we can do and learn how to finish this process
37:38
let me start and then I'll like to invite Warren or anyone else to Twin a
37:43
little bit I think you know one of the things we really attempted to do with the questions that were built into the
37:49
request for proposal uh which in many instances mirror those
37:54
specific funding prioritization attributes that identified is to be very
38:00
transparent in terms of what we're interested in the types of the types of attributes that are most compelling to
38:07
us and then you know not expecting that non-profit organizations especially a
38:13
small and medium-sized ones are going to have you know full-time professional grant writers on staff we know that's
38:18
not the case but just looking to each of you based on the hopefully fairly explicit questions that we've posed to
38:26
provide your best your best response to breathe life into your project opportunity in a way that demonstrates
38:31
to what extent you are putting forward a proposal that kind of meets or beats
38:38
those those thresholds that we've established I'll stop there see if Warren's got any other suggestions
38:43
yeah I mean I think that this is a common issue um that we have a lot of great Partners
38:50
who are working in the community who recognize that there is a housing component or a housing issue with a
38:57
specific population um that you're serving but you're not you know
39:03
necessarily A Housing Organization or a housing developer per se
39:08
so I think that Partnerships um are is a great uh first step is is
39:16
bringing a partner to the table to do the development component for you maybe to help with the grant writing component
39:23
I could also see um you know maybe submitting for and
39:28
this is kind of going back to Sean I'm not sure which of these opportunities or if either would be appropriate but
39:35
almost a a pre-development ask and maybe it's the other Grant opportunity that Sean mentioned earlier around doing some
39:43
pre-development work which would be which would be grant writing but also be doing some Financial feasibility about
39:48
looking at the land that you have looking at what it's zoned for and what
39:54
can be constructed there getting some detailed cost estimates some things that
40:00
um you could hire someone to do but like you said um without some grant funding for that
40:06
um you wouldn't wouldn't you know you wouldn't be able to do on your own and I
40:12
think that what Sean was also alluding to is that um you know this application process
40:20
that Sean and the team has developed for this particular opportunity is is meant
40:26
to be user friendly so there's there's lots of things that are not being asked for in this grant opportunity that you
40:33
would see in one of like our Housing Development uh where the list of attachments is is 27 you know items long
40:41
and they're we're asking for all sorts of technical detail that's not what's being requested in this uh ask it's been
40:48
specifically designed for um for organizations that do not have
40:54
those levels of capacity to be able to still participate in this offering so starting hopefully I didn't go straight
41:00
there that's helpful Warren thanks and I would say you know feel free to connect with
41:06
Gail after the call if there are any specific follow-ups that you've got and we can handle it from there thank you
41:12
thank you so much one more question about the employee uh as you know we
41:18
don't have enough funding so that one employee who is there
41:24
is not fully employed like salary but maybe taking a stipend for gas money and
41:31
time and still working because the organization cannot afford it so is
41:38
there a way because most of our funding goes towards the work we do and we would
41:44
like to understand if we are still eligible to apply or not
41:50
yeah I've had a couple questions come in along those lines and
41:55
I want to be really consistent on all of these and always gravitate towards you
42:00
know if the requirement says asked then we're just going to have to stick with X so for this one I would say to be
42:06
eligible The Entity needs to have one full-time employee and part of that goes
42:12
back to you know we are going to award a few grants they will be fairly sizable because there'll be a few number
42:19
um so we need to be sure that we're comfortable that it's a partner that can step into that kind of funding and be
42:25
ready to deploy it and and that's that's one among a number of ways that we're doing that part partly we're
42:31
establishing the the Baseline operating budget we're establishing the requirement that they're being operating
42:37
board of directors and we're also establishing the requirement that there'd be one truly full-time staff
42:43
person that's employed by the nonprofit organization thank you sure
42:50
um I'll take the next one here in the chat and then maybe Warren you can take the one after it
42:56
um yes 501c3 can apply if you have if
43:01
you are either two to ten years old or you have an operating budget greater than 250 000.
43:08
but with annual revenue no more than seven and a half million so as long as you fall into one or or both of those
43:15
two categories you would be eligible
43:22
so the next question is um uh would funding for rental assistance
43:29
or subsidies be an appropriate use uh the people who don't uh don't have
43:35
vouchers uh sorry I can't read the whole question here uh might need some assistance to
43:42
bridge an affordability account for uh a period of time to be housed
43:49
um I I'm not intimately familiar with exactly the wording in this RFP
43:54
um I think that unless it's specifically excluded in the list of activities you probably could request that this under
44:00
this RFP I will also let you know that uh there is a tenant-based rental
44:07
assistance RFP that's specifically coming out it will be out within the
44:12
next month that you could also apply for that type of activity under that program
44:18
as well so uh so Sean unless you specifically
44:24
excluded rental assistance or rental subsidies from this grant I would say it would be an eligible activity
44:30
I agree yeah I agree next question here on multiple projects
44:38
yes if if there are multiple projects from one entity
44:43
then that would be perfectly fine I my preference would be just to submit it as
44:49
a as a single kind of bundled request with different ornaments on the tree
44:55
underneath of it you know you know in aggregate if there are multiple requests the two and a half million dollar cap
45:02
for an award would still apply whether that be for one underlying project or two or three but that's just a
45:09
long-winded way of saying yes multiple projects are fine from one entity
45:14
um our preference would be that you submitted as a single application
45:20
on the next one is there any sort of expiration date on funds I would say I'm going to give a a fairly
45:28
conservative answer and if Kathleen if you have a question that kind of takes
45:33
this to the next level ping Gale separately and then you and I can chat
45:38
as needed so with the American Rescue plan the city of Charlotte is considered the funding recipient and we have a
45:46
requirement with American Rescue plan funds that we obligate all the funds by the end of calendar year 2024 and that
45:53
we expend all of the funds by by end of calendar year 2026. so
45:59
um obviously with this program there's no issue with us we will obligate the funds well before well before the end of
46:05
24 and we will expend the funds well before the end of 26 but then
46:10
there's a question of to what extent do any of those deadlines extend into sub-recipients like this so that was a
46:17
long-winded way of saying my sense is that as long as all of the funds are expended by the recipient nonprofit by
46:23
the end of calendar year 2026. I know with absolute assurance that we're fine if any of you have scenarios where you
46:30
think that you have you would have programmatic needs where the receipt of the funds would actually be expended
46:36
beyond the end of 2026 that would be something I would encourage you to Ping Gale on and then she'll gather those
46:44
questions and then I can work with her and the rest of the team to provide a more definitive response to that
46:57
um looking down to the last question I'll start and then I'll ask Warren to weigh in as well
47:02
so I mean Sports is your voting connection training so in terms of
47:10
the eligibility of an applicant so only non-profit organizations can pursue the
47:15
grant um Warren why don't you read that and see
47:20
if you have yeah um so the question the question is uh how does a for-profit housing Support
47:26
Services partner apply for this opportunity and the answer is is that they couldn't directly apply for this
47:32
opportunity because you have to be a non-profit but you know I would say you
47:37
know probably all of our non-profits that we partner with that provide any type of Supportive Services do at least
47:44
some type of subcontracting to a for-profit contractor or service provider so for instance you know the
47:52
shelter brings in medical um Personnel to provide medical services
47:58
they bring in mental health professionals to provide Mental Health Services
48:03
um uh so so that is how you would access this if you are a for-profit that
48:11
provides various types of Supportive Services for housing related
48:17
um stability Outreach effort is that you just partner with um someone that's doing that work and is
48:23
applying for this Grant and you could come in as a contractor providing services
48:32
thank you moving on to the next one is there any anticipation of awarding
48:39
the award ceiling to any one organization I would say
48:45
um and I'm glad we're recording this so we can all we'll have this for posterity right
48:50
um yes there is an anticipation I I think that that's that's why we we established an award ceiling
48:57
um in order to signal to the marketplace that we have an appetite to fund a project or program up to that
49:05
amount that's about as far as I can go because beyond that it really depends on on how compelling the requests are and
49:13
um I have a sense we're going to receive some really compelling requests but um for any organization on this call
49:19
that believes they can package something together that adds up to two and a half million
49:26
either you know one single project or it's Mr Robinson's earlier question could it be a package of projects
49:32
then I would encourage you to do that and then ultimately it falls upon us as
49:37
the review team to go through that evaluation and um and make the selections based on who
49:43
puts the most compelling opportunities forward and some of those may get fully funded
49:48
some may get partially funded some may not get any funding at all so that's probably about as far as I can go today
49:54
given that we um I haven't looked through any any applications yet
50:03
I know I run the risk of over talking on this one but just to go back to the beginning the desire here
50:10
is to have a relatively few number of awards to a small number of recipient
50:15
organizations because we are making a philosophical choice to try to do a few
50:22
try to partner with a few organizations in really big ways rather than spread
50:28
this across dozens dozens and dozens of nonprofits
50:37
okay with with the additional question I'd invite anyone on the team that has a
50:43
perspective on that one to weigh in
50:56
um I'm wondering Shakira if you could elaborate a little on your question is there a list of partner organizations
51:02
you could reach out to just to help us better respond to you
51:08
and and feel free to come off mute if that helps okay thank you for accepting the question yes I was wondering if
51:13
there were organizations that you Mr Warren I will Wooten had mentioned that
51:19
would be interested in having sub opportunities for support services to the residents
51:28
um that I could have a list of to reach out to them to see if that might be a
51:35
partnering opportunity um yeah I I think that there's a couple
51:42
of different ways that we uh could do that one I would suggest that you could just go ahead and put your information
51:48
into the chat here so that all of the partners that are currently on the line can get your information can reach out
51:53
to you about the services that you provide and we can also get you a list of organizations that are members of the
52:00
Continuum of Care and and I would imagine that many of the people that are on this call and and almost all of the
52:07
people that are working in the homeless space or the Supportive Housing space or members of the Continuum of Care and
52:12
then you could reach out to them directly about the services that you provide okay wonderful well thank you very much
52:29
[Music]
52:38
okay there wasn't a particular percentage of the budget that we are to request so does that mean
52:45
we can request any amount up to 2.5 million for any budget amount but I
52:50
think that's a good observation um in the separate program which we've made reference to the community resiliency
52:57
fund there was a requirement that the request couldn't
53:03
exceed a certain percentage of the operating budget we did not include I don't think we
53:08
included that in this program um and you know maybe that was an oversight on my part but it's not in
53:14
there so that means you are able to request up to the full amount I think it
53:19
is fair to say that it's something that we will you know there's a reason that we're asking for some of the financial
53:25
information um so if someone is going to put in a
53:30
request at the full amount and it you know it far dwarfs their
53:35
current organizational size so if someone let me just make up the most extreme example if someone has an
53:41
operating budget of 251 thousand dollars each of the last five years and they
53:47
make a request for 2.5 million dollars I would strongly encourage you to include
53:54
something in your proposal that demonstrates why you believe you have the capacity to deliver on on a grant
54:01
opportunity that size given how large it would be relative to your kind of current operations
54:12
foreign
54:22
questions in the chat I'm just popping in the link to the
54:28
community resilience fund thanks because I feel like some people might be interested in that
54:35
yeah yeah for sure if you've listened in today and you weren't aware of that I'd
54:41
encourage you to take a look at it or if you've listened in today and you feel like oh gosh you know maybe I'm not eligible for this housing support Grant
54:48
opportunity or it doesn't seem like a good fit then I'm glad that these two things happen to be going on in parallel
54:54
just keep in mind for the link that Jackie just provided the deadline for that one is June 30th so that's coming
54:59
up pretty quick yeah
55:05
okay maybe uh going once going twice here going three times
55:16
great okay good hey thanks everybody for the time today I'm enthusiastic about the opportunity I look forward to seeing
55:22
some great applications and we'll take it from there have a good day everybody bye now