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we're just going to give everyone about 30 seconds for them to be able to come into the meeting good evening and welcome to this webinar on housing uh my name is bill mccamley i'm the secretary of the new mexico department of workforce solutions and before we get to a presentation and a question and answer session regarding the topic we're dealing with today which is the housing issues that people are going to start confronting if they're not already confronting them here in new mexico i want to say thanks very very much to serge martinez a professor of law at the university of new mexico and nicole martinez who is the director of the messiah valley community of hope one of the best housing organizations in the state of new mexico they're going to be giving short presentations on rental resources and the legal process that people are going to go through if they start having trouble paying their rent but before we go to presentations with them i would like to say that i'm immensely proud to introduce the lieutenant governor for the state of new mexico howie morales who can give an introduction on the subject and talk a little about his role regarding housing in the state of new mexico so governor thank you so much secretary mccamley thank you and your staff and the whole department for all the work that you're doing during this unprecedented times i'd also like to thank the panelists who are here with us today as well as the mortgage finance authority as i do sit on that board and work closely with them when we deal with issues and and housing within the state of new mexico as you'll see today in the presentation that's given you're going to have a lot of information that will hopefully answer some questions but be part of a bigger discussion and i think the leadership that you've shown secretary and the department to help to guide people through these difficult times is extremely important in the mortgage finance authority what we try to do is to make sure that we look at different opportunities and funding mechanisms that may be available to have people into the ultimate goal is to have people into housing and i know how important that is for each one of us and what that means for stability uh and making sure that we have quality of life within the state of new mexico what we do see across the country is that we're in a crisis and we see that there's an impact the second place even more so by covert 19. um i do want to personally thank some legislators who i know look at this and are taking this seriously and starting discussions on how this can be done i want to thank senator jerry or pc pinot representative angelico rubio and representative andre romero for their leadership and making sure that the policy piece which i hope at some later time that we can get into more having that discussion on the policy aspect of it their leadership has been instrumental and will continue to be as we continue to discuss what this means we know that the impact of coronavirus has escalated already the crisis that we've had not only in new mexico but across the country and what we've seen especially with many of the protections that have expired and you'll hear more about that um from the federal side and also in today's panel um and then you see the unemployment benefits that were there that have been cut maybe even scaled back we're not sure but what we do know is that the impact that's going to take place we see in some of the reports that are coming out by september we see that there's going to be at least 30 million americans who may be in jeopardy of being addicted and we see the impact that that would have not only in our state but across the country so i'm grateful that we have this discussion and that you joined us and are able to share some insight and maybe some ideas um that we can look towards as we continue to tackle this pandemic we also see the importance of what education means and for me education and housing is so important and they're tied together and i say that because i know when you look at academic achievements and you look and see what takes place within a community they're correlated and making sure that you can have stable safe housing that place where a person can call home that they have that in place has more of an impact than in many of the in-class activities that take place so i do want to make sure that we can connect the dots and recognize that this isn't just an issue from workforce solution or an issue that's dealing with affordable housing or homelessness it's a much bigger issue that affects every single one of us and i'm grateful that you have joined us here today to help us with this discussion to have the ideas and the passion needed to make sure that we can have ultimately that american dream that dream that we want for every new mexican is that home ownership in that safe environment so secretary thank you for allowing me to join in on behalf of myself and governor michelle lujan grisham we're grateful for all the work that's being done by each one of you across the state thank you governor really appreciate you being here and you sticking around through the presentations and help answer any questions we might have at the end speaking of which before we go to the slide deck that stacey our pio is going to bring up in a second i just want to say a couple things number one we are recording this and this will be available on the new mexico department of workforce solutions youtube site so if you know of folks that might benefit from the information here but can't be on tonight please understand it will be recorded and available for public consumption secondly if you do have a question there is a q a box at the bottom of your zoom screen please feel free to ask your question there and if you have a very specific question regarding your situation uh regarding your housing if you want to put in that q a box your name your email and where you're from in addition to your question that's not going to the public but we'll have it and we'll do the best we can to find the information that you need and get you a response as fast as we can we're here to try to help provide all the information we can and that's a good way to do it so stacy if we could start with the slide deck real quick uh thank you once again we want to really show our appreciation to all of our panelists today and and appreciation to the organizations that they're coming from if we could go to the next slide please just as an introduction some people may ask why is the new mexico department of workforce solutions uh hosting this um event today and the reason that it caught our attention was this we actually put out a survey to people on unemployment over the last couple of weeks we had about 6 000 responses and one of the overwhelming things that we found was that people are very very worried and concerned about meeting their rent requirements or being able to pay their mortgage as the pandemic kind of drags on that is further that issue is further concretely looked at by the u.s legal services corporation which shows that there's about 105 000 households here in new mexico that might be at risk for eviction as we move through the pandemic as many of you know the last 600 weekly cares act payment was released to claimants at the end of july and many of people use that money to help pay for their august rent know that we are working very hard there is a new program called the lost wages program unfortunately is not as much it's about 300 per week and our organization at workforce solution was the first state in the country to apply for that new program through the federal emergency management administration at the national level and we're hoping to have those wages out excuse me those benefits out in the next few weeks we're not sure exactly what the date is yet but we're working as fast as we can to get those out that program is from the week ending august 1st through as many weeks as we have funding for we don't know that yet but if you are on unemployment and certifying for those weeks we are working very hard to be able to get you that funding that is available under that program the last thing i'll say before turning it over to ms martinez from community of hope is that the time to start talking about assistance is as soon as you know that you're going to have an issue with your rent as soon as you know you're going to miss a check the time to start having a conversation about rental assistance the time to start negotiating with your landlord is right away and with that i would like to turn the presentation right now over to nicole martinez who i would like to say i have known for almost a decade she is the director of the messiah valley community of hope in las cruces and one is is one of the most experienced knowledgeable people in the state regarding housing so nicole i'd love to turn it over to you thank you secretary mchandley good evening everybody hopefully i can shed a little bit of light on some of the programs that are there to assist people as they are facing uh eviction or are precariously housed on the brink of of homelessness during this pandemic so i want to start off saying that i i am familiar with the programs that are at the community of hope but i'm going to give some broad information about areas in the state that might also have some of this funding and how you can reach out if you are in need so first i just want to touch on the cares act funding and cares stands for coronavirus aid relief and economic security act and so there has been funding that's come through different channels that we've been able to utilize during this pandemic one of those has been through the community development block grant that was distributed through our city municipality who then reached out to some of the non-profits who already had cdbg grants so we did get an influx of assistance to help people that found themselves impacted by covid with loss of income needing assistance with ending their homelessness or preventing their homelessness and also preparing for um how to respond to the pandemic some of these are not affected by cares act funding but might be available in your community so i just again want to give this general overview so that you know when you're reaching out to agencies in your area to kind of ask about some of the funding that might be available to you and to verify if you are eligible for those programs another one is tenant-based rental assistance and that one is also one that is funded through our our city of las cruces here and is available throughout the state in other areas emergency food and shelter program did have cares act funding which we were able to apply for so we received a general efsp grant that helped us to help people end their homelessness and prevent homelessness and then we got additional cares act funding through the emergency food shelter program which is a federal grant we also received emergency solutions grant through the new mexico mortgage finance authority and our agency in particular has a grant through the new mexico mortgage finance authority that's called rental assistance program basically we call it rapp and that provides funding for rapid re-housing people who are experiencing homelessness as well as homeless prevention and the mfa has is also supplementing that grant with care's funding to respond to the pandemic uh department of housing and urban development waiting to see what cares act funding will be available there they have implemented a lot of waivers in current programs so again it's it's good if you ask your community partners if they have funding available through department of housing and urban development if you are facing homelessness stacey if you could move the next slide please the department of veterans affairs is offering the cares act funding that's uh eligible to veterans throughout new mexico in the ssvf program that's supportive services for veteran families program and every county in new mexico has access to supportive services for veteran families and it's administered by three separate agencies throughout new mexico the messiah valley community of hope the agency which i'm at covers dona ana county and then through this map you can see that the other counties are covered by either the veterans integration center or goodwill new mexico and so they've made sure to have assistance in every county throughout new mexico and that's again for eligible veterans throughout our state next slide please this is just a little bit more information on the rental assistance program that is administered through the new mexico mortgage finance authority that goes to particular grantees so we've all applied for this funding and here are the agencies throughout new mexico who do have this funding now this is just about again that rap program but many of these agencies that are on here have a lot of those other type of fundings that i mentioned before so for example the community of hope we have rap homeless prevention funding we have rapid rehousing funding we have hud funding including tbra and cdbg so it's helpful to reach out to some of these agencies to see if any of those other funding agencies or have if any of the other agencies have these funding sources or if they can refer you to the appropriate channels now on here i do have director contact information and you may or may not hear back from the director but they will likely send it to the caseworker who's appropriate over that particular program so for example if you were to email me here from hope xena i would make sure that i would get your information to the appropriate caseworker here at community of hope and i would imagine that our partners would do that as well next slide please so how to get help well i would encourage you to gather any eligibility criteria that you might need and some of the some of this will depend on the agency that you're working with so it differs from agency to agency many of the grants will not differ because they are expected to be allocated in the manner in which the manual is created but then there are also agency specific policies so what i would suggest is making sure that whoever you're reaching out to that you're asking what their eligibility criteria is for their programs so it does depend on the funding source and those requirements might be different but some of the basic things that are really helpful if you are about to find yourself close to homelessness or an eviction have your lease agreement ready so that the agency can verify that lease agreement and work with that landlord and reach out with that landlord if you do have proof of income or loss of income that's helpful for us to to have on our file and make a determination about the assistance needed if you have that eviction notice or a three-day notice either of those would be helpful family documents can also be helpful by that i mean you know if you have a you know verification of family member identity things like that they're not always required it's just sometimes if you have that and it's part of your file it gives a comprehensive picture but again not always required for the grants some it might be or it might be an agency policy so again that's why it might be helpful in case a certain agency says that they need to have a social security card or birth certificate or an id and if you are lacking those things then again community of hope is an agency that can help you get those things in our area and you might ask the partner agencies in your community if they can help you do that as well that sometimes helps to speed up if you are looking to get another unit because those things might be required from a landlord as well so how long can you receive assistance and how much can an agency help that is determined by the funder of the agency that's administering that assistance and so your case worker should be able to help you figure that out how much assistance they can give unfortunately funding is limited we're trying to make the dollars go as far as we can but hopefully we're able to instill that there is a response and that we need we need more action we need more more housing but please reach out to us and and if you have any que tions please put those in the q a and i am obviously staying on this call to answer any questions and uh thank you again for for letting me participate in this thank you nicole really appreciate it i just saw we got a quick question uh yes this information will be public we are recording it and it will be on the new mexico department of workforce solutions youtube site either later tonight or tomorrow and we'll be sending out a press release with that information so if you want to look at this again please feel free to check this video out or share it with anybody moving forward and i'd like to at this time turn the presentation over to professor serge martinez from the unm school of law to talk about the eviction process and how to work with your landlord and then through that process professor martinez thanks secretary i want to give you a heads up i'm getting notices that my internet connection is unstable so my apologies if i disappear um but you know the you've alluded to it and i've heard um uh before from lots of folks but the the one of the keys to think about is if you're in a situation where you can't pay your rent instead of saying ah that's it we're just going to get evicted it's just it's all over right um really it's key and it's important to talk to your landlord about this uh for the most part you know the landlords are willing to listen and talk to folks and what i hear from them anecdotally is that if someone will come and talk to them and be transparent and explain what's going on in their life now they're much more likely to to talk to them and see if they can work out some sort of agreement that will allow the person to to stay in the place even though they're experiencing you know financial issues that are causing it causing them difficulties to pay the rent um but that only works obviously if you go and talk to the landlord about it if you if you are excuse me if you wait till the very last minute then or wait till after you you know the time has come to pay rent the landlords um have um are much less likely or ex have much less reason to want to talk to folks and so again i can't say this enough as soon as you know as soon as there's a situation where it's clear that you'll have trouble the first thing you do is just start to talk to people and be open and transparent and explain what's going on and right there's no guarantees and landlords are under no obligation to work out an agreement with you but it's much more likely to happen if you go talk to them than if you don't and so i would encourage everybody to do that um but even with the best will in the world um folks are finding that um that you know they can't pay the rent and they're not able to work something out with the landlord things do happen so i get that this is not it's not your fault if if uh if you if you can't make this work but i do encourage everybody to try to do it and come up with ideas be creative say here here's what i can do and here's what i'm thinking and um you know you're more likely to to be able to work something out and and hopefully avoid all of the trauma of eviction now that said right there are times when it doesn't work out and i want to talk about what happens in that situation and what to expect and what you can what you can do and how to respond in that if you're facing a victory so can we get to the next slide great thanks so if you you missed your rent it has happened to lots and lots and lots of people or is about to happen to lots and lots of people uh around the country and around the state and we're expecting to see unfortunately to see larger numbers of this uh coming up as as various sources of support evaporate or are diminished or um become less accessible so you so if you're in that situation right if you are in a situation of you can't pay your rent and your landlord can't work it out with you there's this there's a defined process in certain steps that that have to happen right the first thing is before anything happens your landlord has to give you what's called a three-day notice and that is just uh just what it says it's a notice that you have three days to pay the rent it's not an eviction notice right we regularly run into folks who say well i got this three-day notice so that means i'm evicted right no that's not what that means that means you have three days to come up with the money and if you come up with the money that is owed within those three days and offered to the landlord the landlord has to accept it um if you can't so that's why it's important to be you know to take action and scramble as needed if you if you're in that situation um you still have you know if you if you're late you still have the three days to come up with the rent if you can't come up with the rent within three days then the landlord has the is legally allowed to start the eviction process right they can file papers in court to try to get you to try to evict you um but it's still a process the landlord has to go through that process to evict you they can't just decide on their own i'm gonna change the locks and kick you out i'm declaring you to be evicted and our least to be over right it has to go through the courts so there's still time to um to try to work things out or at a minimum to get things don't get things in order so once once you have reached the point where you've gone past the three days and been unable to pay it and the landlord does decide to to go to court to a victory they go to court they pay they pay a fee to file the papers and then they will give you they're required to give you notice of that and you'll get um it's a you know it's just a piece of paper that says this is the notice that you have a there's a lawsuit filed against you and you have a hearing set for a certain date at a certain time can we get the next slide um so the oh look look at that so the paper will also say why the landlord is trying to evict you and you're entitled to a hearing right you're able to go to court and explain your situation now there is obviously there's a pandemic and a lot of places are not doing business as usual the courts in new mexico are still open they're still doing hearings many of them are doing hearings by phone or by video it's going to depend on where you are in the state and which court you're in but there's excuse me many courts are making it so you can appear without coming in in person and you know other courts are taking precautions but you are if you if you no matter how the hearing is set up whether video or audio or in person you have to attend to raise your rights to be able to explain to the court what you think your rights are and why you shouldn't be evicted or why you don't owe the money that is being owed um and you know to be able to raise those issues though you have to attend if you don't go there's a really good chance that you'll just get evicted um without anybody ever hearing your story so the one thing that i always stress is don't just ignore it and hope that it will go away and get better it will not you have to go you have to attend um it can be scary obviously to go to court um but it is um it's intended to be accessible to folks who don't have lawyers it's also if you don't go the court will find uh almost certainly find against you and you will get an order of eviction against you um so the um when i talk about evictions right a lot of people recently have also said things like but isn't aren't are they even doing evictions now didn't the supreme court say we don't have they're not doing evictions right now that you can't evict people um and i want to clear up what that exactly means and how it works and how it doesn't work uh can we go to the next slide so the state of the supreme court of new mexico in at the end of march issued an order they gave an order saying we understand that there's a pandemic on and so we're going to um make it so folks make it so fewer folks are actually getting physically evicted during the hand them so it's not an it doesn't apply automatically it doesn't apply to everybody and every renter and it doesn't mean that you won't get an order of a victory it just means that as of right now while this order is in place if you qualify the sheriff can't come to your house and physically remove you and your family from the apartment um but it doesn't it so it doesn't mean that you can't get an order of eviction and it doesn't apply to everyone right it only applies to folks who are being evicted for non-payment of rent and who can show the courts that they are currently unable to pay the rent right so obviously you cannot it's hard to show the court that if you don't go you have to show up in court to show them that you are not able to pay the rent and like i said it doesn't mean that um it doesn't apply to everybody only applies in cases where you're being evicted for non-payment of rent there are lots of other situations where you might be facing eviction that could be if you're causing safety health and safety issues or the landlord is accusing you of doing that they still have to prove that in court or if you have a month to month lease that the landlord has decided to terminate right that is still a valid and um a reason that you can get actually evicted from your your home during the period that the supreme court court order is in place and like i said i can't stress this enough it doesn't mean you can't get an order of eviction against you you still would have that and still be on your record so it's really important to go and address these things but even if you do are in that situation raising this saying to the court i can't pay my rent because i'm currently unable to hammer on a financial hardship the court is supposed to say okay i'm ordering the place restored to the landlord i'm ordering that you're evicted but i'm telling the sheriff that they can't do anything about it until the supreme court takes back raises lifts the order that they've that they've given her we don't know when that will be it's not permanent though it will end and when that does happen right it'll be go back to enforcement of all these orders and people will start being able to be evicted however what it does do is buy some time right so if you're in this situation and you get an order of eviction but you've been able to successfully say to the court i you know i'm covered by the order of the of the supreme court um that gives you the chance to maybe go talk to the landlord again to try to work something out a couple of the courts have mediation programs that are that can help folks in this situation but even without that program you are allowed to try to work something out because the landlord knows that as long as you know as long as this stay is there you're they're not able to actually remove you physically so there's you know it's an opportunity for folks to try to figure something out and avoid you having to be evicted and the landlord having to find new tenants and you know all the things that go with that so my advice is to go to court to understand what the what the rules are here in this current situation right you may different courts are handling it differently sometimes the judge will just ask why can't you pay the rent and you say oh i you know i'm out of work it doesn't have to be a covert 19 related reason you don't have to show that it's connected in any way to the pandemic but the court may ask you are you able to pay the rent some other other courts are have been asking for a little bit more information so you might want to be prepared to show you know bank accounts or whatever to show that you are having uh income issues at the moment um it is obviously you know being evicted is traumatic it is a a scary thing to hang over people's heads and i encourage you if you are in this situation to understand how the process works and how you can make try to make sure that you're protected but also to immediately start reaching out to all the folks that nicole was talking about and all the other any other sources because they are out there and you know we're hoping that there will be more before the court lifts its order but meanwhile there's a little bit of time to try to to scramble and make this all work i think that's all i have on my slides right thank you professor i really i really appreciate it and so uh basically the final message before we go to q a uh is something that is really important for everybody all the time during this pandemic eventually the solution all this is to open up the economy and get more people back to jobs so they can earn an income and pay their rent but to do that we first need to get the virus under control and keep the virus under control as we've seen from around the country a lot of times when you quote unquote open back up people stop wearing masks they go to parties they forget to wash their hands all the things that you hear over and over and over and are probably sick of hearing by now but these are the tools that we have to really stop the spread of the virus so it is vitally vitally important that everybody keep up the fight against covet 19. every time you're in public please wear a mask please only go out when you have to and that includes not going to like backyard barbecues please don't leave the state and come back without quarantine if you can that's one of the ways that the virus spreads especially with some of our neighboring states who haven't been uh kind of as strict in their coca-19 rules and that they're seeing therefore seeing more cases so if you could do these things we literally as the governor says are all in this together and the more we can do that the more we open up the economy get people back to work and that will be the solution that we all want to get to so i appreciate you all very much for your presentations if we can go to the next slide thank you so there is a q a box on your zoom uh channel if you have a question and you want to ask it please do so if you have a specific question about your situation regarding your rents or mortgages or whether you might be up for eviction if you want to put your email in the q a please not the chat but the q a it will stay private and if we don't get to your question we'll do the best we can to answer that so let's start with these first the first one i believe is for the lieutenant governor lieutenant governor what can mfa do to encourage individual housing authorities to participate in permanent supportive housing projects this is housing for people who are experiencing homelessness and you have high barriers to maintaining housing thank you secretary thank you for the question there's a couple things that can be done and i think that there's going to be more discussion as we continue to navigate through this but one of the first things that can be done is to continue to make our gap financing funds available and i think that that's extremely helpful to make sure that we can help encourage uh for public supportive housing to make sure that that's done for the permanent side as well the other part that's actually going to come in front of us and we're looking at october and november in the mortgage finance authority board meeting is to look and see um just to set aside it's about nine percent uh tax credits uh that's set aside for the permanent housing portion of it and i think that this is their opportunity to weigh in on that and to make sure that board members understand the importance of that because with that nine percent tax credit that's extremely beneficial especially with the regional housing authorities that we want to work closely with cool thank you uh the next question maybe the next couple questions are for me um will the lost wages program the one that's the three hundred dollars per week require proof that employment was terminated or limited specifically because of coven i do have a letter from my manager stating that but i'm curious because not everyone might so as we read the rules for the lost wages program it will require a separate acknowledgement that you are not employed because of coven that will it's a self-certification process so we're not going to require any documentation for that but you will be asked that when we get the program up and run ing on your weekly certification and then the way we're planning on the program you should just be able to get your money from there the next one is probably for either nicole or surge a lot of undocumented families are being evicted without due process threatened by their immigration status what can organizations working with them do to assure them that they will be protected are either of you uh comfortable taking that question i mean i can address what the law says right which is that you know the the landlord tenant law that i've described applies whether regardless of your immigration status so there shouldn't you know there shouldn't be any issues with that but i've heard uh you know more from many many sources about folks who say look you know we're you have to leave because of your immigration status and we don't have to go through the procedures and and folks are justifiably concerned about that and so they don't you know they don't want to go to court and have that sort of contact or they may not want to just you know they may not feel that their rights would be protected and they have those concerns so i mean there's no simple answer to that other than the organizations that work with folks really um i think should recognize you know but that the law does offer those protections but it's understandable that people are concerned about how they might apply on their in their individual situation and it's just going to require you know individual counseling and understanding uh the situation and the risks and concerns but the law does not you know on its face discriminate between you know people of different immigration statuses nicole is that something you had something to add um in terms of undocumented families being evicted um not necessarily but you know questions i'm sure about undocumented families and receiving assistance and that's something that's a little you know out of our purview but i know that at this point it's my understanding the cares act isn't covering undocumented families but i know specific agencies are trying to work to help people in other ways without utilizing by using funding sources that are allowable with people who are undocumented so again not necessarily within my purview to say what is allowed by by the cares act or federal funding but i do know that i can say that for our organization if we do have funding um that is allow allowable then we are utilizing that funding and secretary if i if i we just made something there um as far as that goes on the undocumented aspect of it the mortgage finance authority has assisted some uh individuals who are undocumented who didn't get unemployment and that was our hsg trust fund and so i just want to make people aware that there is some support that's out there through the mfa trust fund excellent thanks to all three of you very much the next question is to me many people's unemployment has been on hold for weeks they don't know how to get information as the hotline is difficult to get through on are there common problems we can help people avoid the biggest thing is to try to call on thursdays and fridays a lot of things that we find at the unemployment office is that people get very very concerned over the weekend and everybody calls in on monday which is the same day that a lot of claimants call in to do their weekly certification we encourage everyone to go online if they can 95 of our claimants either apply online or do their certifications online uh we've worked very very hard to make our website easily usable it has never gone down and on our youtube site the same place that you're going to find this video at youtube.com nmdws you can find tutorials on how to both apply and certify for standard unemployment and for pandemic unemployment assistance the other thing i would encourage people is to check their online correspondence a lot of times they'll get notices from us that will let them know where their situation is and if our people need anything sometimes people call and call and call and they forget to check their online correspondence and it can answer their questions for them next question and this is probably to either to serger nicole i'm a caretaker of a 59 year old lady she can't work because of extreme vertigo she filed for said but was denied i'm assuming that's unemployment she's waiting for her appeal she receives food stamps but is running out of money to pay for housing and utilities the bank will foreclose on her house she probably can apply for public housing but still would have to pay utilities what can i do to help her any programs out there and this is a lady from otero county nicole is that something you might be able to talk about yeah um so this would it sounds like it's a mortgage instead of a rent so that presents a different program that would be utilized to to help if i'm wrong on that if the bank's foreclosing again that's why i would guess it's a mortgage i know that the efsp program will help with mortgage instances again um each agency would have to decide if the person meets all of the eligibility requirements for the efsp program but it would be worth trying to find out in your your community uh who administers that and if there is funding for that uh from that community um and anywhere else i think in there to see if there are other options for assistance if it is rent um then that's where uh it would get tricky with public health well public housing then could help with rent um if they were if she was able to get on them there's a kind of a long waiting list so that would probably be difficult and i would say that in the interim again if it's rent that uh should reach out to some of the agency providers in that community to see if they have any of the funding sources that i i talked about or any other supplemental funding sources my list was not comprehensive there's also linkages programs um and other types of you know private donations that come to agencies where they have a lot more flexibility in assisting people so i would say to reach out to the agencies in your community and see depending on whether it's a rent or a mortgage to see how they might assist her with that and there's also utility assistance available as well i know in our community our city is helping with utilities right now some of our other grants and then again flexible donations that we receive or private um foundation funding that we've received and those might be available in other communities as well and i know that some of the funding that we've received especially you know from mfa and some of our other partners have asked that we try to extend our reach to some of those white areas in our state that aren't being covered statewide by these programs so even though um it might seem pretty bare bones right now and some of those communities you know heavily funded in albuquerque for something like you know the rental assistance program or las cruces again some of some of our our agencies are trying to extend our reach you know for our organization we're trying to assist in otero and luna county right now as well thank you serger uh governor do you guys have anything to add to that no regrettably i you know it highlights sort of the scarcity of the resources so it's really important to just you know turn over every possible stone at the moment and and address all the resources that we have or access to resources that are that are out there um and it's you know it it's hard out there okay um so also i just want to add one thing as well regarding utilities i thought nicole brought up a really important part for utilities most of the bigger utilities in the state currently have a moratorium on shut offs because you can't pay your utility bill so as an example the public regulation commission instituted in march a moratorium on electricity cut-offs so no electric company in the state should be cutting you off because you can't pay your utility bill at that time some cities have as well i know that both santa fe and albuquerque have done those uh new mexico gas company and the albuquerque water authority both have those moratoriums and as nicole said in the city of las cruces there's actually a fund set up to help you pay your utilities which is great because your bills aren't just simply adding up over time as you don't get shut off you're actually paying them off over time so that's really great so if you have an issue with your utility payments please understand to check with your utility provider most of them are probably going to have moratoriums on shutoffs but i would check with your local city to see or or local provider for water and wastewater that sort of thing to see what kind of programs they have as well moving on to the next question um hello i am wanting to know what program i am qualified for i am currently four thousand dollars behind on rent uh may you please contact me um i've got that and so we'll we've got your email address and your phone do serger nicole it's kind of the same answer just check with your local providers on that we should get them that is that kind of where we're at yeah okay um let's see what is the le and this one's to surge what is the legal process for tenants unable to pay due to coven that are the end of their lease is there any support or protection for landlords that do not want to renew that lease uh not under the current stay that we've got right there's the the state is very narrowly tailored to situations where the landlord is trying to evict you for non-payment of rent and so so yeah that situation that that the question is about is is all too common right if you if the stay prevents you from evicting somebody um then it's you know you can go you can uh give them a 30-day notice that you're terminating a month from at least and it'll be terminated and there's not much that can be done in terms of the protections that the supreme court has given or any other sorts of uh states or moratoriums right now it's uh it's it's a gap in the in the protection of the law or that the the supreme court's order uh just doesn't cover okay next question serge might be for you as well what if i only have half of the rent and can't come up with the rest of rent what can happen to me so the law says that if you don't pay the whole rent the landlord can can you know give you your three-day notice and then they can take you to court to to try to have you evicted for non-payment you know that situation is not at all uncommon what you're talking about um and the the best that i can say is go talk you know immediately try to talk to the landlord and see if you can get work out a payment plan and say look i've got half and here's what's going on with me if that doesn't work then the law you know the the the stay that i've discussed the non-payment for non-payment of rent evictions would still apply for even paying a partial rent but coming up with half the rent doesn't mean that the eviction process can't start okay and that's when you should reach out to your your local agencies to see if they can help with the rest of that rent right and i think that's the important one too if you have an issue where you know you're only going to pay the rent from what i'm hearing from you guys ask now start talking with your landlord now start talking with your uh agencies now right right okay this one might be to howie or nicole if someone is homeless in the navajo nation can they still get help from the county that uh isn't something that i could answer um but i would suggest calling um some of the agencies that are working with navajo nation to see and depending on which county uh you're in and mfa might be able to yeah respond to that uh better than i governor is this is this something you might be able to talk a little bit about yeah thank you and such an important topic um as we've seen the impact on all of the states uh but specifically the navajo nation what culvert has done um and we're glad to see that those numbers have have improved and that they've taken measures to keep people safe in those areas we want to make sure that all services and all available resources are there and i do believe that communication with the county level is important and i think with the regional aspect and the reaching out of that and i know from commitment from the nmfa to continue to be supportive of those housing authorities to assist whether it's within the city within the county uh to make sure that we take care of those new mexicans who are living on those on those lands i also want to make sure that we can also here as well some more information because this is a big part of it for me being part of panels like this is the amount of information that i'm able to take back the questions that we're able to ask at times even to develop programs that may be specific to some of these questions so um in short is just those should be available and we encourage that they reach out again we're here as resource for mortgage finance authority to assist and to be in communication with those counties in those local municipalities thank you so this one is either to surge or nicole if you no longer have a lease and are now month to month and the landlord accepted your late rent do they still have to go to court to do an eviction so so i'm wary of providing any sort of legal advice for someone specific situation um so it's hard to say but um that would probably be something that i if i were in court that i would raise that um or reach out to uh legal aid or a legal service provider to ask that question get specific advice about that question but it's a it's a particular situation that someone who knows all the details would probably have to be there to answer unfortunately okay the next question is probably for nicole where or who can be contacted in order to get help in the southeast area of the state with rent um again it's going to depend on which area that is um and i don't want to have mfa be the response for everything because there are a lot of agencies that are around and that are helping but i knew that do know that they are really good also at referrals so referring to which agencies might be appropriate to contact in those areas like i said you know mfa trying to make sure that um some of those places that haven't historically been covered are now getting coverage by some of the the agencies around so if if that's one that um if you you could still be anonymous but somehow maybe restate the question and leave your contact information that's something that we could get back to you on okay so if you want to leave your contact information with your specific uh question in the q a we can hopefully find a provider and get back to you on that with that question um oh please please come here man you just i just want to jump in because i know that new mexico is a large state and there's many miles between uh different communities specifically in the southeast region um i've found that we've had much success on reaching out to our congressional delegation uh people like beverly allen working for for heinrich and senator heinrich and senator udall um as well as um congresswoman socialism i think that they're resources that are really helpful and i would start with them because they know what what agencies and what programs could be of assistance to whatever those needs are so i don't want to forget about the importance of our our local congressional delegation and the importance that they have to making sure you're connected to the right services throughout the state excellent and lieutenant governor while i have you there are numerous questions regarding funding for housing programs i know we don't want to get into specifics but would you be able to talk about kind of the process there and what the discussions are going on regarding that situation yeah absolutely secretary and and i appreciate the questions because that's going to be helpful in formulating how we can have responses to these there's several funding opportunities and there's funding opportunities whether you're a service person maybe in law enforcement maybe a buyer maybe a teacher just some of the examples of some of the funding that may be available through the mortgage finance authority there's other funds that are available through usda and other funds that may be available through hud and through other type of programs so there's so many that are out there that are beneficial and i think that that's been one of the areas that i've wanted to focus on along with my board members on mfa is to make sure that we can get awareness out there to the public the best resource that i can give because there's so many individual needs but there's so many programs that are out there is going to housing nm.org that is going to be the website that will lead you to the direction the specific funds that may be available and beneficial to families and getting that that home ownership okay um this is this is one that is interesting and nicole this one might be for you if someone gets evicted but still wants to vote in november presidential election is there a way for them to re-register to vote when they do not have an address what a great question um what what we have done so we help people register for vote here at community of hope um and they use our address because we are a homeless service center and so i would hope that uh throughout the state that there are agencies that are homeless shelters that allow people experiencing homelessness to use their address um if that is a place where they are receiving most of their services and and um and and getting most of their needs met so but in terms of what that looks like in each community i'm not sure who is helping in each community for people to re-register with that address but again i know here in our community that absolutely we could help people re-register quickly we have internet access and again we we have mail uh services here for people experiencing homelessness and so that they we're able to provide an address for them thank you so much for that there's a couple more general unemployment questions uh the first is regarding the lost wages program so as we've said the state of new mexico will be using current unemployment uh dispersals to meet the 25 portion of the program that the federal government is requiring so that will mean that people will get if they have certified four weeks they'll get 300 extra per week for the weeks that are eligible and that we get money from the feds for the second question regarding that is if i'm running out of my eligibility will i still get the 300 the answer is first off if you're running out of initial eligibility you should be able to apply for what is called pandemic unemployment pandemic extended unemployment compensation so you should get another 13 weeks of eligibility with that if you get done with that you should be able to go to an extended benefits program so every time you run out of one of these programs please go to your online site at jobs.state.nm.us log in go for a hit apply for benefits there should be a very short form for you to fill out and you can go right into the next program the other question is if you have certified for the weeks ending in august 1st and then for however many more weeks we are allowed to give this money for you are already in that program and you should be able to get dispersions there dispersals there once we get the money out okay let's go to the next question um [Music] i have been homeless for two months now i am still working but have had a loss in pay i did not meet eligibility for unemployment and have had difficulty in reaching programs because many are not being manned i have an issue with getting into a home because rents have skyrocketed and many apartments have a waiting list does anyone have any suggestions nicole we might want to start with you i know this is your specialty sure so my suggestion again would be to reach out to the agencies that are providing rental assistance um because the the case workers have the expertise and knowledge of landlords that do meet the criteria for subsidized housing hopefully there's there is assistance in your community without knowing that makes it kind of hard to know that answer but i know that if you are in a community that has some of those subsidy programs that reaching out they should be able to help you navigate finding a place that doesn't have a rent that doesn't meet the definition of affordability and finding apartments where they have already established relationships with landlords to streamline that effort that would be my suggestion is reaching out in your community to housing providers thank you lieutenant governor i know you've got to take up at 6 30 and so let me get this question to you uh tax credits only work if the housing authority agrees to project base vouchers so our region will never be able to compile a competitive allocation for nine percent tax credits because the housing authority said no in grant and luna county and whatever other counties are served by the western regional office can the mfa look at making it a priority at the local level yeah thank you secretary and i appreciate that question because i think it goes along to the discussion of what the board will be taking up in in either october or november specifically in reaching out with us uh regional housing authorities and making sure that um we're able to work together to ensure that those tax credits are going to be beneficial again the input that we get from meetings like this is helpful as we make decisions to make that a priority i did receive a text from our head of our mortgage finance authority who's izzy hernandez and he's made a commitment for mfa to work together with those housing authorities to to do exactly that so i appreciate that i also want to say secretary just a couple things if i may in regards to to voting i used to be a county clerk so i appreciate the question about that i want to make sure that people realize that even if they're evicted um they're still registered under that address if they want to update it to go to their county clerk's office and make sure that uh you can do so whatever address that is used but most importantly that you know that you are registered to vote uh if you've done it within the the timeline and i know there was changes this last special session to the election uh process visit with them to make sure that your vote is counted i also would want to just uh reach out and say thank you to communication that we've had on all levels and including our renters our landlords the associations that have been part of that because they see the impact and they see that they have some concerns as well so when we talk about funding that's necessary it's important that we keep that part of it there because their mortgages still had to be paid but even more so that impact of property taxes that are used for services within local communities and you can see how the cycle can continue so i want to make sure that that we recognize that we're all in this together and it takes every single one of us having input from each side to make sure that we come up with the best uh possible solutions and then the last thing that i just want to uh remind everyone before i have to get off is just want to make sure that people register for the census that they make sure that they get counted because these are exactly the programs that we benefit from to help more new mexicans if we have an accurate count so it's extremely important that if you haven't done so that you'll be counted uh because i believe that uh there's been some movement around the dates but i believe september 30th is one of the moving dates that was put in as a deadline please do so because we want to make sure and help people by receiving the funding that is uh needed in new mexico so secretary thank you serge thank you for your work uh stacy and nicole and all those who have taken part in this wonderful panel and lieutenant governor thank you very much just before you take off there are a lot of questions about karzak funding i'm wondering if you wanted to kind of address that and kind of the process moving forward i know discussions are still going on is there possible you know giving people just a description of where those are yeah but the karzak funding is as we talked about earlier on what that actually means and how that's done i know that we're working through that with mfa he wanted to make i believe between 11 or 12 million available for assistance these are the type of things that we're still needing some some guidance from the federal side of it because there are some details that are attached to that and we want to make sure that we're carrying out those in a responsible way that we don't come back and that we didn't extend those funds the way that they should have been or intended to do so but again we do know that there's funding coming in and it's important that those funds that come in go specifically for the needs of housing whether it's rental assistance or whether it's permanent housing and we make sure that we utilize those so i appreciate that question i wish i had more solid answers on that but we're watching closely what's happening at the federal level to ensure that we can deliver that and to discuss that further we here at unemployment have to be very very careful with new programs that we are dotting our eyes and crossing our tees with federal funding if you do it the wrong way they can either penalize you or stop you from getting money in the future and that's why it's vitally vitally important with a lot of these new programs we fully understand as much as we can the nuts and bolts and rules of all those programs so lieutenant governor thank you very very much for your time i know you had to take off um i just had a couple one more unemployment question and i think we might have gotten everything i am not currently employed directly due to covet 19 but right now i'm being highly advised by my doctor to not find work due to cobit 19 me very me being very high risk medically well i qualify for 300 unemployment for this reason the answer is yes if you are on unemployment and an employer challenges your claim because they say i offered you a job if you show medical documentation from a doctor saying you were at a high risk for covid and i think there's seven or eight different medical conditions which the state epidemiologist has put out including severe asthma you're a cancer patient risk because of hiv those sorts of things then you can show that in case you are challenged and you should be able to stay as qualified for unemployment we did have that follow-up question regarding the peuc the extended benefits in normal unemployment you get 26 weeks of benefits currently if you run out of those weeks you get rolled over to a 13-week program called the pandemic extended unemployment compensation program which is basically the same for you once you fill out a little form you're just funded by the federal government and not our state account and then you can actually run to another 13 weeks of the regular extended benefits program which kicked in because new mexico hits certain unemployment levels in june higher ones so you should be able to get another 26 weeks total of federal benefits moving forward there so that's all the questions we have um we appreciate those of you that have specific questions we have documented your emails uh we'll work through them and try to get back to you with some answers um surgeon nicole did you have any final comments as we wrap this thing up um i'll defer i'll let nicole go thank you again i just wanted to thank you for an opportunity to share some of the information um about options that people might have and that obviously there's still some gaps things that we need to work on um especially bringing in some more homeless prevention funding as as i think a lot more people are going to be impacted uh in the future but we appreciate the opportunity to try to help our community and statewide as best we can thank you thank you everybody very much for attending this thank you so much to the lieutenant governor and also to nicole and serge for making the time today this is really beneficial once again this will be up tomorrow on the youtube site for new mexico department of workforce solutions which is youtube.com backslash nmdws and so if you know of anybody that might benefit from this information please feel free to pass along for them uh we're all in this together please wear a mask please socially distance please stay safe and i hope everyone has a really really good thank night very much