Several months ago, the Mountain Mediation conversations team began vetting the next episode of the Community Conversation series. After considering several local studies by Park City Municipal and the Community Foundation, the group started to look at housing and equity issues.
Mountain Mediation Attorney Gretchen Lee said the conversations team convened a panel that will begin Tuesday’s conversation by presenting the city’s housing research to bring participants up to speed.
“We have a local employer. We have somebody from the city who works in affordable housing. We have no man's Housing Trust coming from the state-level Utah Housing Coalition. So the participants can sort of get a feel for okay, this is the problem from, you know, the federal level, the state level, what it looks like in our community, and then down to the local employer level, and we actually have somebody from a member of Latinos in action coming to high school group because they had done a study that has housing intertwined in it.”
Lee said the meeting format doesn’t require any preparation. Still, there is information on a couple of studies available on the Mountain Mediation website if anyone wants to learn more. Lee said the objective of the meeting is to provide a platform to understand one another better and build new relationships.
“We would love to be able to hear everybody's different perspective but as well to provide that base for, you know, people that feel like they may not be directly impacted, but they are because we're all in the same community together and that is just a critical point of these community conversations is to provide that space for people well, maybe I'm not affected, but h, I heard about from this person, and oh, I hadn't thought of it that way.”
Lee said the center started the Community Conversations program about two years ago, and all the events have been online, but this summer, in-person meetings will likely start back up. The center plans to continue offering remote participation as well as translation services.
For anyone interested in joining in the community housing conversation, a zoom link can be found here.
Meeting ID: 899 1166 9963
Tuesday’s conversation starts with the panel discussion from 6:30 to 7:00 P.M., followed by break-out sessions, with a wrap-up by 7:45.