Mortgage Matters

Wesley Knight 0:00
This is a KU NV studios original program. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 jazz and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education to

Roland Daniels 0:40
Hello. Good morning Las Vegas. Welcome to mortgage matters. I'm your host. Roland Daniels, a certified mortgage advisor with Geneva financial. My NMLS number is 355859, our company, NMLS number is 42056, and I'm here with my fantastic co host, Heidi Griffith, good morning. Heidi, well, good morning. Roland, good morning. How are you Sunday? I'm good Happy Sunday. It's a beautiful day. It is absolutely wonderful. I agree.

Heidi Griffith 1:13
So good morning everyone. I'm Heidi Griffith, I am also a mortgage advisor and your Director of Client Services. My NMLS number is 2247754, if it's your first time, tuning in mortgage matters is about helping you better understand options around housing, home ownership and long term stability, whether you're thinking about buying your first home, buying again, or you're already a homeowner, our goal is to give you clear, honest information so you can make confident decisions moving forward, Roland and I care deeply about the broader housing picture, what's happening in our community, how policy and programs affect real people, and how access to stable housing shapes families and neighborhoods. So if you have any questions or thoughts about anything we talk about today, you're more than welcome to give us a call. We're at 702-210-2057, again, that number is 702-210-2057 and if you want to learn about any upcoming classes or events or just listen to today's replay, you can visit our Facebook page by looking up mortgage matters radio, so we have some really exciting guests in the studio, don't we? We do. We do. We're joined by two community leaders who've been working in the housing space for a really long time. And I think what makes today's show so special to you and me is you know that while our guest rules are different, their goals are very much the same stability, access and opportunity and housing, isn't it? It is their work frequently comes together in ways that matters for renters, homeowners and the families and individuals affected by housing decisions daily. So I am super excited. We've been talking about this a lot. We've been thinking about what we're going to talk about today. I'm so glad you can both be here. We're joined by Kathy Thomas. She's the Chief housing officer at the Southern Nevada regional housing authority. Hello, Kathy, hello. Welcome Kate Zook, sitting next to you if you've if you've heard Kate on the radio before, she's the director of Silver State Fair Housing Council, if you've tuned in, you're probably fairly familiar with Silver State Fair Housing Council. I talk about it weekly. We do and so good morning to you both. Good morning. So excited that we could bring you both together. I think that this is going to be a great, great conversation. So why don't we just take a few minutes so that you guys can both let listeners know what you do, who you are, how it all works. Kate, why don't we start

Kate Zook 3:45
with you? Okay, well, thanks for having me back, and I'm with Silver State Fair Housing Council. We are a private nonprofit agency that assists people with housing discrimination questions, and we serve the community and community members who have questions about discrimination. We also help housing providers to understand how fair housing laws are interpreted, how they're applied in day to day interactions that they have with their tenants, with their prospects. And we work with private groups, we work with the housing authorities, we work with local government agencies, all to raise awareness of the goal of equal housing opportunity in Nevada.

Heidi Griffith 4:34
That's wonderful. Thank you again for being here. Thank you, Kathy, Hi, Hi, glad to be here. We're glad that you're here. Thank you.

Kathi Thomas 4:41
So my role at the Housing Authority, as a chief housing officer means that a lot of the large programs that most people hear about the most like us, public housing, that's that's under my purview, some of the developments that are not federally. Eight. It that a lot of people don't know we own are also within my realm. Another department we have is Housing Choice Voucher. Most folks know that is Section Eight, right? We have about 13,000 section eight vouchers across Southern Nevada. So that's the housing portfolio. The Housing Authority also does a lot of workforce development. And family self sufficiency programming, because we want the families who want to move from wherever they are now to wherever they envision themselves being. We want to help that, and that includes home ownership. So even in this really tough market, we are helping families transition from Section eight and public housing into home ownership through our family self sufficiency program.

Heidi Griffith 5:47
Because you work really closely with people towards that goal, don't you? Absolutely?

Kathi Thomas 5:51
Yeah, we have a family. That's what it's called, family self sufficiency program. And there are nine case managers in that program, and every one of them and the department director are all certified by HUD as housing counselors. So anybody that's interested in walking that path, they can walk that path. How do we help them do that? First of all, if they start working and their income goes up, we take that increase in income, instead of them paying it on their rent, right? We put it in an escrow account, so when they finish the family self sufficiency program, they can walk away with several $1,000 and I mean several 1000. We've had folks exit the program with as much as $45,000 to put down on a house. Typically, folks are walking around with between seven and $10,000 depending on how far their income increased, but we want it to be an incentive instead of, you know, paying that rent to us, push it aside for yourself so that you can pursue home ownership or starting a business or finishing a college Education, families can use that escrow account however they choose. And that's been really exciting. I think,

Heidi Griffith 7:06
you know, there's so many misconceptions, actually, in both spaces, in the fair housing space and in the housing space, that that really just brings to the front of everything, that there really is great work being done out there, and we really are trying to make people's lives better.

Kathi Thomas 7:22
You know, it's about choice, and ideally, folks who are low income or working class get the same choices that everyone else gets, but sometimes they're roadblocks and barriers placed in their way. And so in fact, I look to Kate a lot that some of those barriers are systemic discrimination, kinds of barriers, some of them different kind of systems issues, like they didn't finish high school, or we've got a number of households where the head of household was a victim of domestic violence, there are all kinds of things that become barriers and it limits choice. Our objective is to give people back that choice, that agency, where they can choose for themselves and they can navigate. And so I look at our roles really, as being navigators, Sherpas, almost right. Like you haven't been on this path before, but I have been on this path before. So I can tell you how to pack your backpack. I can tell you which plants to eat and which ones are poisonous. I can tell you right, all those things that when you are struggling, there's either no one to tell you or you never had an opportunity for someone to tell you. That's how I really see our role, working with our residents.

Heidi Griffith 8:48
That's fantastic. It is absolutely yeah, I mean, and there are we meet with so many people that those roadblocks are there. And you know, even when we talk about home ownership every single week, and we understand that not everyone is in the position today, and one of the main talking points that we have with folks is it might not be today, but if your future, if as you look forward to your future, and that is a goal, and that is something you want to achieve, we'll walk by you, and we do, you know, we reach out to services just like yours, because They are available, and so many people just get told no, yes, and that's why Roland and I are here, is so that we can hear more yeses and figure out what we need to do. Because you're absolutely right. Some you know, we have these conversations all the time. We do. We can't make general assumptions about anyone, because we've never walked an inch in anyone's shoes. And we do all. We all have different stories, and our goal is to make everyone as equal as we can, to get you to the same place. If that's where you want to go, right?

Roland Daniels 9:53
Maybe it's not today, but it doesn't mean that you won't be in a position to purchase tomorrow, next month or next year.

Kathi Thomas 10:00
Right, right? Well, I think often we have even folks who are who've been working for years and say, we tell folks it's impossible to do like that is the current myth that even nurses and school teachers and police officers are all having a difficult time purchasing their first home. Why would someone living in public housing think they should be able to buy a home? So first of all, we're working with them so that they can become teachers and nurses and police officers, right? But they get on a career path that works for them. And then while we're talking about that workforce development component, we're really giving people permission to dream. I love the FSS case managers, because when they start working with the resident, they ask them to dream. If you could do be have anything. What would that look like? So many of us have had our dreams squashed, stolen, denied, ridiculed, right? And yeah, to be given permission, almost to think bigger than your current circumstance, to say, Okay, that sounds great. Now let's map a path to get there, rather than having someone say, You will never be a ballerina, right? Someone will say, okay, so you're interested in dance, and there are lots of things you can do and make a career of related to dance, right? And helping the individual map something that makes sense for them where they are now and walking with them. You know, sometimes we use this phrase hand holding. We got to do a lot of hand holding with people. It's almost used in a disparaging way at the Housing Authority. We don't see it that way. We see it as partnership, like you hold hands with your partner and that hand holding. I'm doing air quotes. Nobody can see my air quotes. I talk. I do it a lot, right? But that proverbial hand holding is really being in partnership. We don't do stuff to you. We don't do stuff for you. We do things with you.

Heidi Griffith 12:15
I love that. I love that. So you're, you're walking alongside

Kathi Thomas 12:18
them absolutely, yeah, every step of the way. And if they start running, we start running too. If we need to get on a motorbike, we hop on one too, put on your helmet. If we can take a jet plane, good, even better. But however quickly someone wants to move towards those goals, we're committed to moving at that same pace.

Heidi Griffith 12:38
You're doing great work. Thank you. Thank you. No, thank you. So, so let's, let's kind of bring you both into this so you both work in housing, right? Obviously, very different areas, but again, you do collide, probably more often than I even know about, right? So how would you describe where that work intersects?

Kate Zook 12:58
Well, from the fair housing component. I think that that one of the things that we have realized over years and years of doing this is that, as Kathy said, a lot of times, people don't know where to start. They don't they don't even know how to dream. If you don't know these things are out there. It's very, very difficult, and for so many of the people that we work with who believe that they've been turned away from housing or treated differently because of characteristics that make us who we are, our race, our national origin, our sex, our disability, our family status, it wears and it really can bring you down. And it's so important with programs like the housing authorities are doing with programs like ours that we're constantly out there reminding people of their rights. And you know, when we do this, we do run into walls, don't we? Yes, and we talk about the protections related to housing discrimination, but our age isn't protected, right, right? The fact that we have a section eight voucher is not protected. A criminal history that might have some mitigating factors to it. It's not protected our credit score, and there are so many ways that people feel disenfranchised over things that they may have had some control over, but they're willing to work on it. And so I think that's where we have to stand together and make sure you know. I want to let the Housing Authority residents know and the program participants that they do have rights, and we want to help the housing authority when they are advocating for their residents and for their program participants, because we have to do it together. We have to do it together.

Kathi Thomas 14:55
It's been so important to have Silver State as a training partner.

Heidi Griffith 15:00
Oh, that's right, because you do trainings, obviously.

Kathi Thomas 15:02
So we have to be sure that the employees that work at the Housing Authority and that vendors with whom the Housing Authority works understand this, what's what's protected, what's not, what's expected, right? So there's some things that are not protected, but the Housing Authority clearly expects our landlords and our employees and our vendors to treat the community a particular way. So where we interact, where we partner, quite a bit is in that space so that Silver State can come and provide that training to us, to the city, to the county, like, Who don't you train? Kate, I don't know, because I've worked in a couple of places now I think about it. Kate's always been there,

Heidi Griffith 15:58
but you are too. Kathy,

Kathi Thomas 15:59
yeah, okay, you know, we're in these streets, ain't we? Kate, we're in the streets, but it's in really important that just because you've got trained once, right, that you you're not going to remember everything, because it's not necessarily your, your day to day thing, like, if you're folk, if you're a property manager, you're fixing the faucets, collecting the rent. I was joking about that earlier, right? You're not focused on this aspect in your day to day work, but you need to always have it as the foundation. So the training can't just be a one off. So we have to bring in not only the new employees, but ongoing training for our landlords and our continuing employees, and it also sends the message that this is important. It's when we do the training, it's mandatory. Everybody got to show up, and you can't leave early and take long breaks in between. You have to be there and be engaged the whole time. So our key partnership with Silver State is right there, is making sure that everyone understands what the law is, what the expectations are, and what to do when you're in that situation. Who do you call? Because there's some things are just outside our purview. So we're going to call and say, Is this something

Heidi Griffith 17:25
we do? We call Kate. Kate's pointing to her head right now, right?

Kathi Thomas 17:29
Because that's what happens. Like this, is this is outside the purview of what we do, or even should do? You should let the subject matter experts help in that space. And that is where we work a lot. It's beyond awareness. You know, not that awareness, but this is actual training and deepening the knowledge and the toolkit, if you will, with shared language and how, when I get stuck, what do I do? And if I can't get past that, who do I call, like, really equipping people to address discrimination in housing, right?

Heidi Griffith 18:05
Because this is the law too, right? I mean, so you have to make sure that you're following the law and you're like you said, you're even your landlords, right? Yes. So if I was a landlord and I was renting to let's just say I was allowing a section eight voucher, then I would have to follow these same guidelines. Yes, yes, yes. Okay, so Kate, tell me when you go out and you do these trainings, and let's use the Southern Nevada regional housing authority for an example, just because, you know, maybe we're listening and we don't really understand what that training is. What what do we cover? And how do we explain to, let's just say, an individual landlord, maybe somebody who's listening, who has a property that they're renting out. How does that work? And what does that look like?

Kate Zook 18:44
Well, I think the most important thing is they have to know the characteristics that are protected. And as I said, there's, there are a lot of misconceptions about that. I can't as a senior, I will say, I can't tell you how many seniors call me and say, well, they're treating me differently because of my age. That's horrible. It's not illegal under the Fair Housing Act. And therefore, how do we look at this? And how do we how do we find the protections that are there? Make sure the landlords know these are the characteristics, and every single one of your tenants is protected in multiple ways. You are responsible for this. And then we want to look at, do we know about examples of similar things that have happened, and many of them are cautionary tales, right? You know this is this is how the law is being interpreted. We have to look at how each administration in the federal government is interpreting how these laws are applied, because it can change from administration to administration. We need to know that so that we can make good referrals for people. And we also need to know that to. To encourage landlords to be compliant and do the best that they can.

Roland Daniels 20:05
So what are the protected classes?

Kate Zook 20:08
The protected characteristics are race, color, national origin, religion or not having a religion, sex, family status, presence of children under the age of 18 and disability. Under Nevada state law, in the progressive state of Nevada, as I like to say, we have additional protections for sexual orientation and gender identity or expression, so all of those characteristics are protected, and we cannot make decisions about whether we're going to provide housing or provide program services to someone based on any of those characteristics. And those are the words that we need to get out again and again and again.

Heidi Griffith 21:01
And you offer these these trainings frequently,

Kate Zook 21:06
all the time, all the time, all the time. And we do different types of trainings for the housing authorities. We have grant funding so that we can provide them with free trainings for their staff. And we will come out and do those trainings. I'm a huge fan of in person. Let's talk through things we do accredited trainings for real estate professional,

Heidi Griffith 21:27
which is important because real estate agents are to follow all of this

Kate Zook 21:31
stuff Absolutely. Because we're not just talking about rentals, we're talking about sales, we're talking about lending, we're talking about appraisals and advertising and all these different things. So everybody needs to understand how, how these things work. Accredited trainings for the real estate professionals. We do community trainings all the time. And people can go to our website, www.ss, FHC, dot, O, R, G, and we will list all of our trainings and for housing providers, they can get on a monthly email list. We provide free trainings online, two hour trainings that focus on disability, three hour trainings that cover all of the aspects of fair housing we want to be out there. We do trainings for attorneys, not so that they're going to going to go out and sue anybody, but we want landlord attorneys to have good information right to give to their clients.

Heidi Griffith 22:33
That's wonderful. Yeah. So you can visit www dot s, s, f, h, c.org, to find that information, we'll actually also put we post all of their upcoming trainings and classes on our Facebook page. So if you didn't write all of those letters down, you can head over there and we'll direct you in the right direction as well. You do other types of trainings. We'll talk about that later. We'll talk about the tester program. I talk about that weekly, but we'll talk about that later. Let's get back together. So So Kathy, Kate, you know, you guys do so much, and there's just, there's too much information to have in this conversation, right? We could sit here probably for days, and I could learn new things about both of you. What do you think the biggest piece of misinformation out there is about what you do. Let's start with Kathy.

Kathi Thomas 23:25
Yes, there are a couple of areas of misinformation. One is that we do emergency housing or homeless oriented housing, okay? We don't, right, okay? And there are lots of providers out there, both the county and the city run pretty extensive programs, including street based outreach and navigation centers and a lot of folks literally in the streets. In fact, they just did the homeless count recently, right? So that misconception, right? It's the Housing Authority. Then house me that got these homeless people in my alley. Come house them. You come get them and house them. And actually, it doesn't work that way, right? We have lengthy waiting lists, much longer than I like, because we only have so many vouchers,

Heidi Griffith 24:20
and you said you had

Kathi Thomas 24:22
13, 13,000

Heidi Griffith 24:24
and are all of those being used? All of

Kathi Thomas 24:27
them are being used? Wow, every single one of them. Wow.

Roland Daniels 24:29
How many more are needed in the valley? Whoo, we

Kathi Thomas 24:33
in the valley, about 40,000 wow, if you looked statewide, we are short. This the whole state of Nevada. We are short about 80,000 affordable housing units,

Heidi Griffith 24:48
80,000 we've got 13,000 that are in use right now. We're short about 80,000

Kathi Thomas 24:54
about 80,000 statewide. Those a little over half. Are needed right here in Clark County. Wow, which makes sense, right? Most of the population, of course, right. Second misconception is, all we do is public housing the projects. We're actually a housing developer. We build brand new from the ground up. We do a lot of housing preservation, meaning we take old stuff, fix it up so that it meets modern standards. A lot of folks don't see us as a true housing developer,

Heidi Griffith 25:32
and you are and you are, so we're kind of running short on time. We're going to continue this conversation into next week. I really I want to talk about marble Manor. So I want to hear all about that. So we've got a class coming up that I want to just talk about really quickly. We do we will be at CPLC for the path to homeownership workshop that's going to be next Saturday, February 7, and that's a HUD certified counseling agency as well. It's a full day intensive first time home ownership class. Rowling teaches the lending portion. You'll hear from HUD credit counselors. We'll talk about credit, how to improve your credit, how to raise your credit, how to keep credit right. We're going to talk about budgeting. We're going to talk about homeowners insurance, what it looks like to go look for house but I think the most valuable piece of information you get from that, because we can go on Google and figure out how to buy a house, what that looks like. I think it's more about, once you get that house, how to become and become a successful homeowner, and what that looks like moving forward. So I think that's the biggest takeaway we provide lunch. There's snacks. I love some snacks. You do. It really is a great afternoon. You know, it's a long day. It is. It's from 830 in the morning until 233 o'clock. Yeah, we get up 233 o'clock. If it's something you're interested in, you're more than welcome to give us a call or text us. We're at 702-210-2057. Again, you can call or text us at 702-210-2057. To register. You can also head over to our Facebook page. Mortgage matters radio. Before we leave this episode, I want you guys to let us know how we can reach out. I know Kate, you gave us your your website address. How about a telephone number to call if you have housing, if you have fair housing questions.

Kate Zook 27:19
For fair housing questions, we encourage people to call our Las Vegas office at 702-749-3288, or relay Nevada, 711, and you will get in touch with somebody. We actually answer our phones.

Heidi Griffith 27:33
That's they do 100% I am firsthand telling you they answer their phones every single time. Kathy, how do we get in touch with the Southern Nevada regional housing authority?

Kathi Thomas 27:44
Yes, 702-595-0330 that that rings on my hip.

Roland Daniels 27:50
One more time, please. 702-595-0330

Roland Daniels 27:57
if you have any questions about anything that we've talked about today, please feel free to reach out. You can call or text us at 702-210-2057 that's 702-210-2057 thank you for spending part of your Sunday morning with us. We'll be back to continue this conversation next Sunday morning at 7:30am right here on KU nv 91.5, until then, believe in what's possible, even if you've been told that it's out of reach. And remember, stay true to yourself and your mind Bye. You. You.

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