So

good afternoon and welcome to the pre-agenda interview for Wednesday, September 30th, 2026 for the Housing Opportunity Fund Advisory Board.

Where clerk please read the title of the bills.

Bill 852.

Resolution appointing Deanna Davis to the Housing Opportunity Fund Advisory Board with the term to expire September 6th, 2030.

Bill 854.

Resolution appointing Oliver Beasley to the Housing Opportunity Fund Advisory Board with the time to expire September 6th, 2030.

Bill

855, resolution appointing Walter Lewis to the Housing Opportunity Fund Advisory Board with a term to expire, September 6th, 2030.

And Bill 856.

Resolution appointing John Katz to the Housing Opportunity Fund Advisory Board with the term to expire September 6, 2030.

Thank you.

For the record, we're currently joined by Councilwoman Strasberger and Councilwoman Warwick and Councilwoman Gross.

What I would like we can start with Ms.

Davis, if each one of you would simply introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about yourself, tell us why you're interested in serving on this board.

After we've let all four of you had a chance to speak, we'll turn it over to members for a question.

But over the last 15 years, I we invested volunteered for my community, which is the normal area.

Through that process, we were able to secure a grant, Detroit Neighborhood Grant.

Through that relationship, we were able to have a partnership with Wallett Capital.

I've always been interested in housing and community development.

I'm John Katz.

My company is the Brandywine Agency.

And

I

think it's the elephant in the room is that this is a day when we're talking about perhaps doing more with less or doing what we can with less, right?

If when it comes to housing, when it comes to making difficult decisions around you know where limited funds can go to make the most impact to both provide critical housing for those who need it the most and you know doing everything we can to encourage people to live and to stay in the city and to provide you know funding to programs that are that are tried and true.

What's your if you have one, what's your theory for what's your kind of strategy when faced with those decisions generally like if you have examples from outside of housing or if you have a theory for how that works within you know housing in particular that's also helpful.

You can answer in any way you want but I'm just curious because it's let's just be honest that's what we're dealing with as a city right now and what's it's what the URA is dealing with.

It's what the housing opportunity fund is dealing with as well currently and you know into the foreseeable future

so I can start um I think for me I generally try to take a systems approach to these kinds of things.

And one of the things that I I don't believe in is uh sometimes when faced with fewer resources the maybe gut response is well let's just kind of divide it evenly and and spread it out and and sometimes that approach doesn't allow anything to be effective.

And so you know just making sure that we're for me being strategic about what resources that we do have and trying to ensure

um

that we're making the greatest impact with the decisions that we're making.

Just a piggyback a bit on what he spoke about aside from taking the systems approach a more place based approach to stabilization and growth for not just the properties themselves but the people in the areas for economic mobility so there's the three generations of the children, the parents and succession is how we're going to stabilize the areas in my opinion.

I've either been a consumer of these programs or my clients and consumers of these programs.

And uh I appreciate how important they all are and when faced with the challenge of where to make cuts I think it will be important to hear from uh staff where they're seeing the need and uh I'm hoping that the that we find find other cuts in the budget and can preserve some of this funding

so we did

yesterday when we had an orientation that was one of the things that we're going through my hit like as far as like what what products already worked meaning like one of the programs they talked about was a joint bench and board action housing like how did that work who went through it what was the good points what was the bad points I think we would need more background to really understand where we could cut or where we could grow

thank you all that's um that's helpful and um encouraging and so I I appreciate you all like I said and thanks for answering that one question

thank you let the record reflect we've also been joined by Councilman Wilson.

We've been going down the line but

I I'll

let you get acclimated first I'll go to Councilman Sharon.

Thank you uh Mr President thank you all for your your willingness to serve here um

you

know the housing opportunity fund is really important citywide but but really

is

one of the things that I can point at in the city that I think we do well in my district.

I can't say that for a lot of other things can't say that about trash back up can't say that you know about demolition but I can say that about

you

know about the housing opportunity fund.

And so I I kind of wanted to to go through some of the the programs that the housing opportunity fund has had and I think one of the things that we will be looking at I guess as we're all trying to figure out how this budget cycle is going to go is um you know how do we how do we advocate to keep some semblance of these programs operating while we're not funding them you know at the at least at the levels that we were before um so the program that I think all well I can tell you my my staff is most familiar with is is the hat program.

Um and what we know the the way that HAP works from my perspective is we get a call we're never the first call

it

you know we're we're the sixth call of it's really cold my house in the winter and the the windows are you know just not working anymore can you help me?

And it's it's never somebody on their best day.

You know they're not not presenting themselves as as the the person they want to present themselves as um and we're able to get them into the program i you know maybe not right away but hopefully hopefully soon enough when the windows open um and generally it's the Hilltop Alliance that's able to work with them to get them through this process.

It used to be the Hilltop Alliance actually performing the the work as well that is has changed um administering the grant.

But I I wanted to ask a little bit about you know any of your familiarity with that the hat program and you know what that what that can mean for individuals and and frankly it also like major burden off my staff because if without that where do we turn you know how we what what do we look for?