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HomeMy WebLinkAboutAffordable Housing Board - Minutes - 02/06/2020AFFORDABLE HOUSING BOARD REGULAR MEETING 2/6/2020 – MINUTES Page 2 housing units in Fort Collins. Benefits include privacy, single family lifestyle, semi-private outdoor areas, strong sense of community and relative affordability. Disadvantages include unpredictable cost increases, housing instability, difficult/costly to move homes, power dynamics with operators, limited tenant protections, shared utility billing. Main issues from residents’ feedback: utility billing transparency, maintenance responsibilities unclear, fear of closure/housing instability. Owners and managers struggle with poor communication, maintenance enforcement, lack of resident rental insurance. City is looking at many changes to codes and standards focused on residents’ rights. May require updates to City Plan and collaboration with Larimer County. Comments/Q&A: • Diane: Can you define downzoning? o Ryan: Reducing development potential • Rachel: What does screening mean? o Ryan: Visual screening of the foundation typically, but can include property line screening. o Jen: Does that include fencing along the street? o Ryan: We don’t typically have fencing requirements for residential areas. • Diane: Zoning often implies density specifics. Is there a density component? o Ryan: When we used to have mobile home districts, they did have density requirements, but since they’re in LMN already, they would be limited to 9 (or 12 if it’s affordable). We’ve been talking about if the density here should be higher than 9 or 12. o Kristin: What’s the current density? o Ryan: It varies but they’re mostly under 12. • Rachel: If you rezone, could that potentially devalue the land? o Ryan: Potentially, but that’s hard for us to say. o Kristin: That argument could definitely be made. o Rachel: Does this open the door to the City getting involved in other private property matters? o Sue: There have been legal claims in other places that this sort of downzoning is an unconstitutional “taking.” • Kristin: The step toward preservation is critical for maintaining our current affordable housing stock. While it is a controversial topic, I think it’s forward thinking of the City to come up with real tools to preserve this type of housing. o Diane: I think we have to look at the financial trade-off if we lose these units. o Sue: That is a very valid point and I want to point out that not all parks are the same. The rezoning would not have to apply to all communities, and there’s still a question whether it would be voluntary or mandated. • Jen: For the 14 parks in the GMA [growth management area], is the City looking at rezoning those? o Ryan: That would be a conversation when those areas got annexed. o Sue: We only have direct authority over the 10 that are within city limits. • Kristin: What’s the timeline? AFFORDABLE HOUSING BOARD REGULAR MEETING 2/6/2020 – MINUTES Page 3 o Ryan: We’re going back to Council for a work session in late April and will have to create a new zone for them to consider by then. • Rachel: Does anyone know the cost for relocating a home? o Sue: I believe about $8,000 for a single wide. o Kristin: And a lot of them can’t even be moved. • Diane: It seems clear that whatever the county decides to do will be huge. A majority of those units are in the GMA. o Sue: Yes, and I think how we lead in the space with influence that. Resident’s Rights – Sue Moving forward on items that don’t require Council approval, including mini-grants to work with residents to either handle problems or figure out what they need. For example, sewer scoping or audit of all the trees in the park. Some ordinances are ready and may come forward in the next few months—may include who is responsible for unsafe trees, billing transparency, etc. The moratorium is in place until either end of August or until we implement work in the preservation space. Also creating tenant/landlord handbook specific to mobile home parks, and that will be available in English and Spanish. • Jen: A lot of this sounds really close to CCIOA [Colorado Common Interest Ownership Act] which has a robust set of rules and regulations around HOA and the like—it seems like they could adopt something like that and not reinvent the wheel. Council Priorities – Sue There are about 20 priorities from the current Council, and about 10 are in Sustainability Services Area, with 5 being in Social Sustainability. One of those is focused on affordable housing. The City Manager has also approved the hiring of a Housing Manager to add to our team and capacity. He would like to have an ad hoc council committee focused on affordable housing, but that will likely not be convened until after the Housing Manager is hired. Sue has been asked to bring preliminary results from Impact Fee/Inclusionary Housing Ordinance [IHO] research from our consultants, EPS, and a report on the community land trust. We may also need to add a Land Bank work session in late spring/early summer. Current negotiations for Land Bank property on N. College. Don’t need Council approval to purchase the land, but we do need their approval to appropriate the funds to the purchase. Went earlier in the process than usual due to some political concerns. We have permission to continue with the due diligence, and the City Manager has the authority to sign the offer. • Kristin: Are there parameters for purchasing Land Bank properties? Like how many units it has to fit at a minimum, etc. o Sue: We have an internal Land Bank team including people from finance, real estate, the Urban Renewal Authority and Social Sustainability. The code does guide it around what amenities have to be available. We haven’t bought anything since 2006. Generally looking for 5-10 acres, generally like to be able to do 100 units. It’s zoned CS so there is no density requirement, but the site itself will dictate how many homes AFFORDABLE HOUSING BOARD REGULAR MEETING 2/6/2020 – MINUTES Page 4 it can accommodate. We look for parcels aren’t easy to develop because we intend to hold them while necessary infrastructure is built around them, and we have the ability to sell land out of the Land Bank if it doesn’t become ready to develop in time. • Kristin: Can you remind me how this board is involved in the policy work that’s involved around inclusionary housing and impact fees? o Sue: Even though it’s fast moving, it’s early in the process. We haven’t gotten much technical information to report. The kickoff meeting was a little bogged down by people wanting to talk about other things. • Kristin: Looking at last month’s minutes, it reminded me that Josh mentioned putting together a group to talk about affordable housing in metro districts. Do we know the status of that? o Sue: I can check with him. o Jen: There’s something for metro districts scheduled for May 12 on Council’s calendar. B. Home2Health—Meaghan Overton, Senior Planner Strategic Doing event debrief. Working with county to do health impact assessment, so we’ll be able to take both economic data and health impact recommendations and suggestions. We haven’t done that sort of analysis before. IT will talk about the ways different housing pathways might impact different health outcomes and vis versa. Comments/Q&A: • Diane: We thought one of the outputs of the Strategic Doing event would be getting an email with contact info for our tablemates to connect to get the work done. o Meaghan: Yes, that is coming. • Jen: What happens after the storytelling event at the Lyric? o Meaghan: That event is in late February, and in the meantime, the Center for Public Deliberation will be out in the community listening to stories. We want to ask people what things they think can make a real difference. Getting people to engage in our existing and future toolbox. And moving into the second year of the grant (mid-year) we’ll focus on actually using that toolbox. • Sue: I think it’s important to note that because this is the health and housing nexus, there may be pieces we have to pop out that are more housing-specific. o Kristin: Except we need to make the case that housing is the biggest indicator of health. Housing is health and they are very connected. o Sue: I think that’s what’s holding our group back from moving faster. Not seeing that link as clearly. 7. BUSINESS a) City Council Six-Month Planning Calendar • February 18 – Montava second reading, Land Bank second reading AFFORDABLE HOUSING BOARD REGULAR MEETING 2/6/2020 – MINUTES Page 5 • March 17 – Hughes Stadium b) Council Comments—not discussed c) Review 2020 Work Plan—not discussed d) Open Board Discussion • March 25 at 5:30 is the joint meeting with CDBG – housing presentations and discussion 8. BOARD MEMBER REPORTS a) Liaison Reports—not discussed 9. OTHER BUSINESS a) Update on Affordable Housing Projects • Kristin—140 E Oak Street Development Overview, not utilizing any City funds through the Competitive Process o Partnership between Housing Authority and Downtown Development Authority o Did public outreach in 2016 and originally intended this to be a hotel, but the plan changed after the Elizabeth Hotel was built. Plan to now have multi-use building with 66 affordable units; the DDA is completely donating the land and has $6 million in equity to contribute to this project. That allows us to access tax credits, and now we believe we have the whole amount. o RFP received 14 design responses, reviewing these now o Will probably need to be 5 stories to reach goal number of units o Aim to start construction in 2021 b) Future AHB Meetings Agenda • Ryan will return in March to continue update • Meaghan will return in March to continue update 10. ADJOURNMENT: 6:01