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Buzz - 9-18 - 24 - Changemakers

Today's 8 o'clock Buzz features some of the Community Shares Changemakers, including the Lifetime Achievement Award to Michele Erikson, and the Collaboration Award to the Tenant Resource Center, represented by Hannah Renfro and the Legal Action of WI, represented by Heidi Wegleitner and Erin Kautz. Listen as they speak about how their organizations support social justice by promoting literacy, and prevent marginalization by supporting low income tenants in eviction, diversion, and defense partnering. The full celebration will be Thursday, September 19, at Union South or online.

Broadcast on:: 19 Sep 2024
Audio Format:: other

Hi, this is Jan Miyasaki, the host of the Wednesday 8 o'clock buzz. Thank you for tuning into W-O-R-T. If you like what you're hearing, please consider making a donation at W-O-R-T-F-M.org/donate. And this morning, I'll be speaking with the Community Shares of Wisconsin Change Maker awardees. The Community Shares of Wisconsin brings the community together with 17 nonprofit organizations raising funds for an awareness of the local social justice and environmental justice movement. And they are the, I think, if I'm correct, and you can call me Sherry later. But I think you're the oldest social justice action fund in the country. So this year, Michelle Erickson has been honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award. And this award acknowledges an individual who has developed, promoted, or advanced social justice in their work. And Michelle Erickson has been honored for her work and strong sense of social justice promoting adult literacy. And she served for 18 years as executive director for the group Wisconsin Literacy. So in Wisconsin, 1.5 million adults need advanced skills training. And the group supports 80 community-based literacy programs throughout Wisconsin. And its member groups provide literacy services to adults and families right there in their own communities. So stay tuned to you here from Michelle Erickson. And then I'll also be speaking with Hannah Renfrow, executive director of the Tenant Research Center and Heidi Wegleitner and Erin Cott's, staff attorneys at Legal Action of Wisconsin, and TRC and Legal Action are recipients of the Community Shares of Wisconsin Collaboration Award, and this award honors community shares member nonprofits that demonstrate the power of collaboration in their work, and then leads to impactful social justice change within our community. They've worked together for years to support low-income tenants in Dane County. And this award highlights the eviction, diversion, and defense partnership. This project provides education, advocacy, and legal representation to those who, without this, then this is my throw-in. Without this important collaborative work, our systematically and permanently marginalized. That is what happens, and this partnership really takes the strengths of both groups and for the greater good. So we're going to be meeting the Change Maker Awards. The award ceremony is tomorrow, the 19th, and you can join them at Union South on the UW campus, or you can join by streaming online, and just want to get that all in. But good morning, everyone. It's great to have you here and to have our listeners learn more about your group's work and your contributions to promoting social justice in our community. So I'm going to say hi to everyone. Good morning. We've got Heidi and Erin by Google Meet and Michelle and Hannah Renfrew are here with me in the studio. So I'm glad we could all be together. I'm going to take some time focusing on each of your organizations and your work, and I just like to share this time with you all together. I get the nomination papers from community share, so I do know something about you. So Michelle, your nomination paper from the Wisconsin Literacy group begins with a quote from a D. Elton Trueblood, "You have begun to understand the meaning of human existence when you plant shade trees under which you know a full well you will never sit." And your group says that this quote sums up your decades of passionate community service on planting the seeds of literacy across Wisconsin, seeds that have helped thousands of adult learners and their families grow and blossom, and that will nurture future generations, right? Folks that we will never know. So congratulations on your award. Thank you. So Michelle, I guess I want to start with you because this is a lifetime achievement award. It's really focusing on the 18 years before your retirement from Wisconsin Literacy, but you know, how did you come to be involved with adult literacy in Wisconsin? I guess it really started with a phone call, a fundraising phone call from the Beloit Friends of the Public Library, and I was recently just graduated from college, and I was just not in a position to give at that time. I had school loans and trying to make my way in the world, but I had noticed a flyer about being a tutor at the library, and I saw this flyer, and I could probably be a tutor. And so I learned about the training, became a tutor, became involved in the Stateline Literacy Council in Beloit, and met my first student who just really had quite an oppression on me in terms of the skill set he did not have, and the challenges he was having just getting by recently laid off of work, not feeling comfortable to go in the library because there were so many books. He did not know the names of the letters or the sounds that they made. He was a 39-year-old male with a third-grader son who was struggling in school, and I was just seeing how all that connected and wanted to see where I could help. So we sat down at his kitchen table and started to work. You know, folks are vulnerable to have to acknowledge that, and yet it's so important literacy does play in a person's ability to participate in our community and in the workforce. Can you talk about what that takes as we want folks to feel less vulnerable? Certainly. You know, in our agency, we work with adults who are English language learners, who are coming from other countries or have been here but haven't mastered the English language, and then we also work with Americans who have kind of carried with them most of their lives this, you know, challenge to decode words, and so that part of it carries a little bit more shame, actually a lot more than an English language learner who is learning their second or third fourth language, but when you've lived here and you haven't mastered that decoding skill which kids master in first, second grade, it becomes everything becomes quite a challenge, and I think it takes an immense amount of courage as an adult to come forward. There are ramifications at your employment with your health care, with your children, in so many aspects of your life when you're not able to decode words just to get through your day. And so it's a lot of courage to come forward, and the beautiful thing about our literacy agencies throughout the state is that they're working with anybody, everybody, no matter their background, no matter the level, and trying to get them to a place where they can get closer to their full potential. Right, and that teaching done with, you know, non-judgment and respect. Absolutely. Absolutely. So tell us about Wisconsin literacy. Well Wisconsin literacy has been around since 1985, and it has been serving literacy agencies, or one of those intermediary agencies that works with state government, workforce partners, health care, a lot of different partners to try to garner resources and partnerships that then can spill out into the local communities across the state. And those communities are the ones that are working with adult learners in and out of the office, training the tutors, the volunteer tutors, we have a whole cadre of thousands of tutors that volunteer their time to work one on one or in small groups. We have bigger programs that have instructors in classes, and we feed those agencies with funding, with professional development, tutor training, advocacy work, and we're really actually fostering those connections, helping them to foster those connections in their communities to serve more adults more efficiently and effectively. And tell us more about the statewide, the breadth of the, you know, you're about in four-fifths of the counties, or Brittany, or maybe 90 percent of the counties, I should say. Yeah, we are. And we work really hard to then develop the relationships with different partners, but to make sure that people in, you know, like northern rural counties have access to services and if we can, in our network, partner with other organizations that might offer services or that have volunteers within their organization that are willing to be trained as tutors. So we work hard to make sure that, you know, that people can get to where they need to get. The learning how to teach online through the pandemic was kind of a bit of a silver lining in the sense that we've trained a lot of tutors to work virtually, and that has opened up much more opportunity and services for adults that are struggled to get, you know, transportation might be an issue, childcare might be an issue. So we have really adapted how we help those programs provide services. So what are the tools, instruments of literacy, acquisitions, CLC's days? Is it this book? Do you do it online? It's all those and more. So yeah, literacy is not simply, it's basic form we talk about the just the decoding of letters into words and sounds and sentences and so forth. But there's so much more and we do a lot. We have a digital literacy manager right now that's been running a program and so we do a lot. It is hard to get through if you think of your day, you used to say think of your day without being able to read the physical hard copy words that you come across in a day. But now today, think of the electronic media that you come across in a day, even pumping your gas, checking your healthcare record. There's just so many things, banking and even during the pandemic, grocery shopping during the pandemic vaccines, there's so many things people need digital skills for. So that's a big part. And one of those are issues around understanding health, right? Absolutely. So can you talk about the health literacy? Sure, we have a division called Wisconsin Health Literacy and that division works with healthcare partners, both within and outside of Wisconsin, to help both sides of the issues. So we talk about organizational health literacy, which is health systems, the healthcare organizations and how they communicate, how effectively they communicate, and then we work with individuals to help them understand the healthcare system itself. So we try to reduce that gap of communication between healthcare and individuals by training healthcare professionals, how to use plain language, how to communicate health, challenging health information in ways that all of us can understand. And then we build skills of adults at the local programs with health literacy programs to help them learn about, for instance, we've had, let's talk about the flu, let's talk about diabetes, let's talk about opiates and pain medicines. And so we drill down information at a really readable level and provide learning opportunities for individuals. It's overwhelming if you get a prescription and then that you have the pharmaceutical companies paperwork and then maybe your pharmacy will provide you kind of something more understandable but that's like five pages to let alone understanding what's in there and what you're taking and then just even just understanding the label, I mean, I appreciate your being able to decode all of that. Certainly, yeah, we just completed a 10-year medication label project to help make those labels easier for people to read and understand. So that was really good work and it impacted a fair amount of pharmacies and health systems in Wisconsin. I'm speaking with Michelle Erickson. She is the recipient of the community shares of Wisconsin Lifetime Achievement Award and this acknowledges outstanding lifetime achievement to a foreign individual who has developed, promoted, or advanced social justice in their respective career and under Michelle Erickson's 10-year as executive director at Wisconsin Literacy. You know, you oversaw significant periods of growth for the organization now, growing from a handful of organizations to 75, located in about 88 percent of Wisconsin's counties. So congratulations. And I feel really lucky that I can have you all with me and if you could stand by because I wanted to introduce and honor the recipients of community shares of Wisconsin's Collaboration Award. And again, these awards are being presented tomorrow at Union South and UW campus at the awards ceremony and you can log on to the website, you can stream it online to learn more about this. And this award was developed to honor community shares member nonprofits that demonstrated the power of collaboration and their coordinated efforts led to impactful social justice change within our community. And boy, this year's award is really demonstrate the power of that collaboration to promote social justice. So with me is Hannah Renfors, she's executive director of the Tenant Research Center, one of the awardees. And then also joining me is Heidi Weglechner and Erin Cott's staff attorneys at the Eagle Action of Wisconsin. And this award honors a particular project that I think touches on the intersections of all of these real barriers to housing in our community. And it is the eviction diversion and defense partnership and the project provides education and advocacy and legal representation, right? That's what you need to those who, without this, would be, I think, systematically permanently cast into this sort of marginalized underclass forever. So hey, thank you. Heidi Weglechner. Good morning. I'm Erin Cott's. Good morning. And then also here with me in the studio is Hannah Renfors. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Good morning, Jim. Hey, so Hannah, I'm going to start with you because at the Tenant Research Center, you provide the advocacy, the connection to, I think, needed services to support, usually, but not always, low-income tenants. So can you talk about, just generally speaking, and then we'll get to the partnership project on the work of the TRC? Yeah, thanks so much for having us, Jan. The Tenant Research Center, the heart of what we have been doing since 1980, is education and empowerment of the community. So we provide information and to tenants, to landlords, to amazing partners across the community about rental rights and responsibilities to really empower people with these are your options. These are the things that you can do and have that information. So if somebody gets a five-day notice, there's a lot of folks who think, "Well, I have to move out right now," and to be able to talk to somebody about, "This is what that means. Here are your options. Let's look at your lease together to empower them to know these are the options that you have." That's really the heart of what we've been doing. In 2020 with COVID, we were able to expand our programs dramatically with funding from the federal government, distributed through the city and county, and we were able to really expand our services through eviction prevention and also in our housing counseling and other services. This is a crisis of housing instability in our county. This is something that people, it's so emotionally draining for the folks who faces this is uncertainty. It's just so important to be able to collaborate with legal action to provide this necessary legal representation. The nomination papers for this, a legal representation, qualifies to power imbalance between tenants and landlords by ensuring that tenants, especially those who are members of marginalized groups, have access to the same quality of legal resources that counter parts enjoy. This partnership, TRC, provides the housing, counseling, financial assistance, and legal action represents the tenant's best interests in the legal matter. This is so important. Heidi and Erin, staff attorney's at Legal Action, I want to hear more about the partnership in a minute, but can you talk about you know what that power imbalance looks like between landlords and tenants? Absolutely, you know, in Wisconsin, the eviction process is quick, cheap, and easy for landlords. And the statutes don't necessarily offer much protection for tenants. So the more information tenants have about their rights and the more access to justice they have through free legal aid helps to, as the nomination says, modify that power imbalance. And it can be really frustrating when we're often sitting in court or in a Zoom courtroom kind of waiting for our case to be called, and we can see how that power imbalance plays out with people who are representing themselves. Because they are not aware of their rights at all, entering into agreements they'll never be able to meet that will result in eviction. And that's really difficult because we know that had they had that information, had they had that representation, they would be in a much more safe, protected, empowered place. Thank you and that's Heidi Wagner, Erin, the folks coming in without lawyers, when you know housing should be kind of a basic right, but our society does not provide lawyers when people are facing eviction, right? Heidi's talking about people without lawyers. There's no provision of free or automatic provision, right? Correct. There is no access to attorneys for civil legal matters in this country. A lot of people think that when something important is on the line that they'll have free representation because we do provide lawyers in criminal cases, however that's not the case in civil legal matters, including in eviction court. So there are a lot of tenants who do not have access to a lawyer to represent their interests and just beyond not knowing their rights. Even if they are somewhat aware of them, it's much more difficult for them to sort of articulate those rights in the same way that an attorney can, just because we have that special language sort of that the court also speaks. And I wanted to make clear, these are folks who also have children in their households. They might have elderly folks. They might have folks with disabilities that are facing this loss of housing. Hannah, we'll start with you describing the idea and what was the need for the eviction diversion and defense partnership. Yeah, so in 2020, with COVID funding, the tenant resource center was distributing millions of dollars in rental assistance, which was helping tenants across Dane County and making sure that landlords were receiving their rental payments and tenants were able to stay in their homes. That rental assistance has been distributed through different iterations of that program that emergency rental assistance program. In the community in 2021, TRC came to the table and said, we want to do more rental assistance, but we want to work with partners for legal representation because so many of these tenants, they really need that as well. And legal action was at the table. Community justice, Inc was at the table and UW Law School was at the table. And they all said, yes, let's do this. And the city and county said, we'll support it. And that's a systemic change piece because otherwise it just feels like crisis to crisis and putting a temporary fix on things, right? Yes, absolutely. The-- be proud, I mean, this partnership on this because there's three really big pieces I want to get to about this project. But the partnership, just providing the legal representation, was really, really effective. Yes. Can you tell folks about that? Yeah, absolutely. So we've gone from less than 1% of tenants being represented to now around 25% of tenants are being represented in court. The result of the work of the eviction diversion and defense partnership through rental assistance, housing counseling, our services, and legal representation is 87% of eviction cases are dismissed right now. This means that individuals are able to stay in their homes, families, as you said, are able to stay in their homes. You mentioned children being evicted. We know from our data in a 15-month period of time, but in January 2023 through the end of March of 2024, there were over 1,000 children who were facing eviction in Dane County. So this is affecting all of us. And this-- it has been hugely impactful for those individuals, their families, but also their communities. They're able to stay in a community where they can support each other, their families are able to stay in schools, they're able to stay at jobs. That helps everyone around them as well. And, you know, court is intimidating, people are worried about everything that's going to ripple from this displacement, and it's really hard to make their own case for themselves as well. Absolutely. And so to have the support of legal action, it just right there shows the impact of having someone dedicated to make that case for you, Heidi. Absolutely. And it's great to work with other legal services partners, too, including Community Justice Inc and the UW Law School and the People's Law Center that had also been delivering free legal services. Legal action-- our mission is to provide civil legal aid, and I've been doing eviction defense for 18-plus years, but as Hannah said, you know, we could only-- that representation had only been available to 1% of the folks, because our resources are so very limited. So this partnership has really been critical to expand that access to justice. And the second part-- the second part to the partnership is so important that legal action attorneys helped tenants remove their names from online court records, including dismiss evictions. So Heidi, tell us about that, because, you know, once you get that eviction, or even the attempt, right, so let's say you're one of those 88% of the people, or what was it, you know, the 82% to 90% of this mess, but it's still there, right? That's right. The court records are required to be kept for at least two years for a dismissed eviction. Most people don't have two-year leases. A lot of folks are month-to-month, they're on a one-year lease, and they have to be searching for housing. Or they may have agreed to move out as part of a eviction settlement. And having that eviction record out there just results in people getting their applications denied, you know, regardless of whether there's any merit to that eviction, regardless of whether they actually paid off any rent that they owed, or if that eviction was dismissed because it was unlawful. So those records are super harmful, and there is a process where you can file a motion to have your name sealed or redacted from the court record, and that helps to mitigate the harm caused by those eviction records. Because as soon as they're filed, they become public. And that, again, it doesn't matter if there's any merit to that eviction or not, or how it resolves, for two years at least, that eviction will be on there. And if it results in a judgment of eviction, it's going to be on there for more, for 20. So this is quite harmful to folks. And that record mitigation is one of the most important aspects to this project. So during that two year time, that it's updated, you can redact your name. That's how that works. Well, you could bring a motion at any time. But basically, most folks might be familiar with like CCAP or the Wisconsin Circuit Court Access System. That's where a lot of landlords and neighbors or whomever might go and look somebody up on that public court system. And once an eviction is filed with the clerk of courts, it also goes on to that online record, public record system. And those records are used by landlords in the tenant screening process. So after a dismissed case is not required to stay on there more than two years. Got it. It could. And Lyft, Wisconsin is helping folks try to identify those cases that should have come off but haven't. But if you want to get your record removed or sealed within that two years, you need to file a motion and get the judge to order that that record be sealed. And some judges are more inclined to do that in others. We have 17 branches, 17 different circuit court judges in Dane County. And we've seen sort of a variety of opinions in evaluating these motions, despite what we know to be really serious harm, including long-term homelessness caused by eviction records. Hi, I'm Blake Lightner, 18 years at Legal Action in Wisconsin, Michelle, I was thinking she's in danger of getting the Lifetime Achievement Award. Aaron, Heidi mentions the impact on future housing. And for me, this record thing kind of embeds this marginalization that can often be because of not having the representation, right, to sort of embeds and embeds and beds more. Can you talk about in your work how you see this affecting people, these records? And then you know, you have somebody who is having difficulty finding housing for a lot of reasons, including discrimination, right? Yeah, there really is unfortunately no protections in Wisconsin that limit a landlord's ability to rely on these public records. And so it's really not discrimination for a landlord to look online and see that there has been an eviction filed against someone and rely on that. However, there is a lot of research that's been done, and we have evidence that the people that evictions are filed against is not representative of the entire population. The eviction rate filing against specifically black women and black women with children is much higher than it is against white tenants. And so having these records out there, it's really just perpetuating that systemic racism. And by landlords continuing to rely on those records, it's still perpetuating that system of inequality. Right. And in classes, right? Now, especially when tenants, I'm reading from the nomination papers, when tenants have multiple evictions on their record, they're forced into living in substandard housing, taken on additional expenses in storage, and are being displaced into homelessness after finding a potential housing option, once this is found by a potential landlord due to online eviction records. So this is -- I think this is essential, Burke, Erin. Sorry, I guess I -- I think this is essential work. Going back to the idea that there's no commitment you're saying, there's no real protections in civil cases for tenants, but this is so essential. Yes, it's definitely essential. Being able to remove those records removes a huge barrier. There are a lot of times that I've seen tenants where, for whatever reason, a property manager is just waiting for that motion to be granted. They're perfectly aware that an eviction has been filed, but for whatever reason, as soon as that comes off of a public record, they can go ahead and approve that application. And so it's not -- it just seems like it's sort of an arbitrary decision that they're relying on these records. Can this impact people getting housing vouchers or getting into public housing? Can these kinds of records impact that, or can they not be used? Yes, these records can also be relied on by public housing authorities when making decisions about access to public housing or a housing choice voucher. In those cases, tenants do have a lot more protections because there are federal regulations that require that the public housing agency actually have a discussion with the tenant which a private landlord doesn't have to do. And so they at least get that opportunity to explain sort of what happened in this situation and the relevance of it and the change in circumstances. But again, that's because of the federal regulations that apply and private landlords don't have to do that same thing. The eviction diversion and defense partnership, you know, links, TRC folks with legal action. It has the -- I guess you would call it the reduction piece of the -- I remove names from online court records and then it has these tenants rights education events that you do together. Hannah, can you tell folks about those? Yeah, that's been a really wonderful opportunity as well to be in the community. We've talked a lot about this internally at TRC and with our legal partners about making sure that we are in the communities that we're serving so that we are as accessible as possible. And so in addition to having the attorneys representing tenants who have been referred to them for redactions, we do reduction clinics, community-wide reduction clinics. We're doing targeted redaction clinics. Our staff is organizing one targeted for the Spanish-speaking community actually next month. But in addition to those are these outreach events where we're talking to individuals at like a community resource fair, either hosted by us or other organizations and also collaborating with legal action at particular properties in Dane County where individuals, tenants have come to us and said we're experiencing these problems or we've seen a number of eviction filings or we've seen some unlawful practices and we're able to go out with attorneys and talk to tenants about what are their rights, what are their options. There also is an element of that of talking to the landlords and letting them, you know, here are, here's what the law says and, you know, making sure that there's that education side, there's that education piece on both sides of them. But that's been really impactful just being, again, like being out there in the community so that people see us and know that we are working together, that we can provide these services and change it with each other is really important. And so people need to know what the rules are and you can teach that and make people more aware. And then there are folks who are also vulnerable because of language, right? And TRC also does provide services to those who are language minority. We have, yeah, we have over 30% of our staff now are bilingual Spanish-English speakers. They, so we've been able to do tremendous work and outreach with the Spanish-speaking community in Dane County. So we have almost half of our outreach events are actually done in English and in Spanish. We have team members on all of our programmatic teams and our admin side who are bilingual and can work with landlords, tenants, service providers to be able to provide those services. And you all, Heidi Leitner and Erin Cox, you can't see us, but I was also listening to music and watching Michelle Erickson and Heidi Renfro identifying the problem and the beginnings of hatching the plan, right here, here. So, you know, I had to just enjoy that moment. I was watching you just sort of in, just kind of in that mindset and it's wonderful. You know, on the two weeks before the community shares award ceremony, I note on my calendar that it's going to be community shares, what I call community shares, Palooza for the two Wednesdays beforehand. And I get to meet these wonderful awardees. And today we have Michelle Erickson who is receiving the Lifetime Achievement Work Award for her work in promoting adult literacy for decades and then for 18 years as the Executive Director at Wisconsin Literacy and then also from the Tenant Resource Center, Hannah Renfro, the Executive Director and from Legal Action, I'm Erin Cox and Heidi Leitner who are receiving the Collaboration Award. And that demonstrates, this award demonstrates a collaborations that are very powerful and can lead to impactful social justice change. And you know, I always feel badly when I have people kind of stay and I can't focus on you. All I want is, but you two here prove to me why because you started hatching the plan. So I have to say that's why I love getting a group of people together. And then we have, of course, Heidi Leitner in danger of getting the Lifetime Achievement Award. But anyway, before we, with our last bit of time here, Michelle, you know, when you think about exactly that, you know, looking for partnerships, looking for solutions, right? In a time when people are pretty, you know, focused on, you know, meeting their own surviving, right, or even now just kind of making things happen and to make a commitment to serving your community. You know, what's the, what's the, you know, what drives you? And you hope we'll drive others. Sure, sure. I think, you know, you know, making a, giving back, you know, so many of us, you know, live very fortunate and privileged lives, and so many don't, and that I feel like when you're on the other side that, you know, I think it was Marion Wright, a gentleman who said, you know, service, community services, the rent we pay for life. And I truly believe that that in our lives, it's, it's, it's very easy to give back. And, you know, like tutoring one or two hours a week, when you can have the opportunity to really change someone's life, I was thinking of the Tenet Resource Center's work and their clients and what if they're not reading or speaking English well, you know, that just lays on a whole nother layer of challenge and difficulty. And so there are just so many great community shares organizations and other nonprofits throughout the state and throughout Dane County that there are opportunities to jump in and really just make a difference. And you get to determine, you know, how much you can devote to that or, you know, in where your works in your schedule, but there are just a plethora of opportunities to make change. So, and, and, you know, legal rights are already in a special code. And so if you have to decode and decode, you know, really then creates a greater and greater privilege, right? Absolutely. As is healthcare. And, you know, you can't do any of this. You can't get to work if your health is not good. And that's another language all in of itself often. And so, you know, distilling that down to where either you have a navigator to help you or, you know, you're learning the skills as well to empower yourself to engage with all these other organizations and things that you need to do for your children's school, for your healthcare, for your job. It's just extremely important. And sometimes it's the littlest thing, you know, like learning a digital literacy skill that can change how you engage with your health portal or, you know, how to access care. It's just, so a little work, a little volunteering can just sometimes move people. And you never know to which degree that they will be able to move as a result of your, your help or involvement or support. And, and Heidi, I'm Wade Leitner and Erin Cott's at Legal Action in Wisconsin. Can you, you know, just talk about the importance of legal services to low-income folks in particular, you know, you know, what you get back from doing that work as well for those who might be, you know, interested in this kind of service that you do and these kinds of collaboration with community partners. You know, however you want to take that on the work, the collaborations, you know, whatever are your favorite pieces of that. Heidi, we can start with Heidi. Thanks. Yeah, I feel so fortunate, even though our, our job can be really difficult at times, but we, we get to do really cool things and, and work with some amazingly resilient clients who, you know, despite a lot of barriers are working so hard to try to support their family and, and create a safe environment. So it's, it's really great to be able to use that privilege, that skill, that expertise from law school and practicing law to kind of be on the, on the good side. And in the eviction context, I think like there is a clear win. If you can protect someone's housing, if you can stabilize it, if you can give them, you know, more time, more power to control their future, that's a really good deal. And so it's, it, it inspires me every day. And then just to have the collaborations within our law firm, where I get to work with other inspiring and amazing advocates and we can think about really structural change and, and how we can use different types of advocacy, including litigation, but also in other realms. And then outside the firm with TRC, like we've been partners with TRC for, for decades. And when resources are slim, like they will be as this federal funding runs out, that collaboration is more essential than ever, and helps our clients. And Erin, what, what motivates you? Are you inside just a really angry person? I mean, I think that, you know, as an attorney, you have to have some sort of affinity for an adversarial system, but, you know, I do think that it's just so rewarding to see the impact that I've had and to be able to just have that ability to help someone at one of the lowest points that they might have been in their life. And having my colleagues and support from everyone in my firm and from all of our community partners is definitely helpful to, you know, get that perspective of like, that broader perspective, why we keep doing this. Thank you, Erin Cox. Hannah, I'll admit I'm just essentially an angry person and trying to direct that into constructiveness, but Hannah, you know, and all of you are in the trenches, Hannah, you know, this work is, and they say that because it has such serious consequences. Yeah, it's very heavy. And I think one of the really important things that, you know, at TRC, we stay focused on or that we've been really focusing on and other organizations are trying to do this as well as how do we make this work sustainable for the people who are in it, you know, how do we really build in practices for self-care, but also collective care and whether, you know, in the form of benefits and pay and time off and also time to do this kind of celebration for the work that we've been doing and with each other and celebrating other partners that's such a critical way to keep the work, to make it sustainable in long-term, but also to make sure that we have inclusive workplaces so that people want to be there. And I find that to be really inspiring right now is the energy that the several organizations are really taking that to heart right now. Thank you. Hannah Renfro, executive director at Tener Research Center, Staff Attorneys, Heidi Wegleitner and Erin Cott from Legal Action and Michelle Erickson, you know, with Wisconsin literacy in congratulations. The community shares community change maker award celebration is tomorrow the 19th. You can join them at Union South on the UW campus or by streaming online. It's just great to have you all here this week. They're also be giving out their other awards as well. We got to meet those fine folks last week. So thank you all for being here and I've really enjoyed your company. I just want to, you know, there is a lot of wealth in this community, but so many people who don't get to enjoy what that can bring and the stability and peace of mind. And so it's just great to have you all doing the work you're doing. Thank you so much. Thank you, Jan too, for your efforts always to highlight the work of community shares agencies and thanks to community shares for providing this platform for us and all the times that we get to share our work with the community. It's really appreciated. We'll call it Madison's when pride and joy, right? Yeah. Because the oldest social fund action fund in the United States. So thank you all.