Welcome to Pick Me Up, I'm scared. The podcast. I'm your host, Madeline, and today we have a very special episode. We are doing,

it's actually our first ever interview on the podcast. So the interview today is going to be with Kyle

Lopez Schmidt, who is the founding executive

director of the South Tower Community Land Trust, which is something that's really near and dear

to my heart because it comes out of the Tower District, which is the neighborhood I mostly grew up

in in Fresno, California, my hometown.

So hi, Kyle.

Thank you so much for being here today.

Yeah, I'm so excited to chat with you.

I'm really excited to.

I know you read my book, and I talk about Fresno in it a lot.

I am a big fan of Fresno.

I think Fresno needs like a public redemption arc, and I'm always so excited to hear about other

people who love it. So, you know, the reason we're doing this today is that you are working

on a really special project that's coming up. Do you want to talk a little bit about the

queer housing summit? Yeah, we're having the second annual queer housing summit August 24th, both virtually,

so you can log on anywhere in the world and in person at the Tower Theater in Fresno. And

this event has been really our, the space that we're making to really dive deep into the LGBTQ plus

experience in housing as well as

how we can bring like our queer creativity, our anti-capitalist thinking caps into solving the

housing crisis and making sure that, you know, everybody has safe, affordable, affirming

housing for, you know, the entire community, affordable, affirming housing for, you know, the entire

...