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HomeMy WebLinkAboutAffordable Housing Board - Minutes - 05/02/2019AFFORDABLE HOUSING BOARD REGULAR MEETING May 2, 2019, 4:00-6:00pm Colorado River Room, 222 Laporte Avenue 4/4/2019 – MINUTES Page 1 1. CALL TO ORDER: 4:02 2. ROLL CALL • Board Members Present: Jen Bray, Curt Lyons, Diane Cohn, Rachel Auldridge, Catherine Costlow • Board Members Absent: Kristin Fritz, Jeffrey Johnson • Staff Members Present: Mariel Miller, Pete Iengo, Liesel Hans, Sue Beck-Ferkiss, Brittany Depew • Guests: Jennifer Fairman, Jennie Baran, Kathryn Dubiel 3. AGENDA REVIEW • Going to add discussion on “fee group” right after open board discussion 4. CITIZEN PARTICIPATION • Kathryn Dubiel: Housing need for women who exit domestic violence. Sue suggests following up with Women League of Voters to get summary of event they held on this topic. • Jennifer Fairman with Larimer County: Within county strategic plan, focused on goal looking at economic opportunity and housing burden. Aim to reduce housing burden by 5% by 2023. • Pete Iengo with Fort Collins Utilities: Supporting Mariel in her public participation efforts • Jennie Baran: Interested resident 5. APPROVAL OF MINUTES From April minutes: Page 4, write out “request for proposal” instead of RFP; page 3 Diane comment “only project that adds units” instead of “only project that adds this many units” Curt moved to approve April minutes as amended. Diane seconded. Approved 4-0-0. 6. PRESENTATIONS AND DISCUSSIONS A. Water Conservation—Mariel Miller, Water Conservation Team, Water Shortage Response Plan Water Conservation Team is reviewing and updating water supply shortage plan. Have not AFFORDABLE HOUSING BOARD REGULAR MEETING 4/4/2019 – MINUTES Page 2 had declared water shortage in over 5 years; taking the opportunity to prepare while not in a shortage. Objectives: Remind people what a shortage is and plan for responding, make any beneficial changes, and look for new opportunities. Timeline & Outreach: Currently meeting with City departments and boards, stakeholder engagement, public input, final amendments to Council at beginning for 2020. This plan pertains to Fort Collins Utilities water district. Will reach out to other water districts to discuss cooperative opportunities. Mariel discussed further details about shortages and what they entail: What is and is not limited, what causes them, how often they occur, the difference between the varying levels (1-4), resources for handling. Impacts to affordable housing: water rate increases in level 2-4. Can be challenging if renters have lease requirements about the condition of their lawns. To increase resiliency at future affordable housing developments: Less lawn, high efficiency plumbing fixtures, rain barrels, etc. Resources currently offered: Free sprinkler audits, Larimer County Conservation Core does free home assessments and retrofits, income qualified assistance program (IQAP). Plan update ideas: Create water budget for each property, instead of prescribed restrictions; year-round watering schedule complimentary to water shortage plan; voluntary response level; restrictions on landscape watering; minimize restrictions at splash parks. Questions/Q&A: • Curt: Why is raw/well water not restricted? o Mariel: It has to do with water rights. Fort Collins Utilities has its own water rights that we distribute to our customers, but raw/well water is outside that. • Mariel: What other impacts might there be on affordable housing? o Diane: Utilities can’t set different rates for different income levels. o Mariel: We have a new program that may not completely satisfy that but it might help. o Sue: Often, the landlord is paying the water bill. o Rachel: It can be a flat fee or meter-based. o Curt: I’m thinking about someone I know who uses very little water, and she pays more per gallon since there’s a minimum. o Mariel: That’s good feedback. Even with the tiered system it’s higher. o Sue: I think in a lot of affordable housing, the water is often covered by the management. o Jen: Multi-family it’s usually the owner who pays, although they may pass it through. o Diane: I’m guessing there’s more sensitivity to that at certified affordable developments. AFFORDABLE HOUSING BOARD REGULAR MEETING 4/4/2019 – MINUTES Page 3 • Jen: This isn’t all Fort Collins residents? o Mariel: Right. This is just Fort Collins Utilities customers. • Jen: How does this affect livestock and agriculture? o Mariel: Our current restrictions are silent on that. o Jen: If they’re absent, they’re unrestricted? o Mariel: Currently, yes. • Diane: When we’re restricted, is there additional administrative need? o Mariel: Yes. We pretty much switched to what we would normally do during the 2013 shortage, and it was all hands on deck. It was complaint-based enforcement. o Diane: Is that being looked at for level 3 or 4? o Mariel: Yes, we’re looking at how we might look at enforcement for different levels. • Jen: Are there any tips that might help people during a shortage? o Mariel: Yes, lots of communication and marketing go out to our customers. • Diane: Have we seen a change in per capita usage in the past 20 years or so? o Mariel: Yes, it has dropped from about 200 to 140 gallon per person per day, including all uses. Just looking at household, it’s around 70 gallons. • Diane: I’d like to know more about the income qualified assistance program. o Pete: It’s a 23% discount on water, wastewater, stormwater, in exchange for participation in some of these programs. You have to participate in LEAP in order to be qualified. That allows the program to exist because the administrative costs are much lower. o Diane: They’re required to participate in programs, though? That always worries me because it’s an added burden. o Pete: I should clarify there aren’t requirements to participate in programs, but we highly encourage it for additional savings. • Diane: There are no restrictions on indoor water usage currently? o Mariel: Not currently. One of the ideas is to create water budgets for households, it could be indoor or outdoor. • Diane: What’s the highest water usage typically in a home? o Mariel: It depends what appliances you have. If you have mostly older appliances and fixtures, toilets can use a lot of water. Each flush can use 3.5 gallons. Inefficient water heaters take longer to heat up, so you have to run the water longer until it gets warm. B. Private Activity Bond—Sue Beck-Ferkiss, Social Sustainability, Consider request to assign 2019 capacity Request from Housing Catalyst for our Private Activity Bonds (PAB). Every year, the state gives us bond capacity—not actually funding but capacity. The Housing Catalyst request is for a mixed-use project with 66 affordable units. It will be in the former Elks location AFFORDABLE HOUSING BOARD REGULAR MEETING 4/4/2019 – MINUTES Page 4 downtown in conjunction with Downtown Development Authority. They will require $12 million in PAB, which is more than this year’s capacity. Our allocation this year is almost $9 million and Housing Catalyst is asking for the entire amount to be assigned to them. Housing Catalyst does have the authority to issue bonds, so they will issue their own. The PAB committee (staffed by Social Sustainability Department, Economic Health Office, and Finance) supports this request. Comments/Q&A: • Sue: Would you like to make a recommendation to City Council about this request? o Jen: No one else requested? o Sue: Not this year. Until 2017 it was first-come first-served, but that was when there was excess state capacity. There is now a March 15 deadline for requests. o Diane: Why did we decide on a March 15 deadline? o Sue: If you don’t act to issue the bonds yourself or assign them to someone by September 15, they get reverted back to the state, and we wanted to give ourselves enough time. Diane made a motion to support the assignment of the City’s full 2019 Private Activity Bond capacity to Housing Catalyst pursuant to their request to be used for the new construction of affordable housing. Catherine seconded. Passed unanimously 5-0-0. C. Board Liaison Assignments, Review & Assign Would like to assign board members to serve as liaisons to other, relevant boards. Would not require constant attendance, just keeping up on their minutes and major projects. • Jen—Board of Realtors and joint board pilot group • Diane – Senior Advisory Board • Rachel – Planning and Zoning • Catherine – Economic Advisory Commission 7. BUSINESS a) Council Comments—not discussed b) Review 2018 Work Plan—not discussed AFFORDABLE HOUSING BOARD REGULAR MEETING 4/4/2019 – MINUTES Page 5 c) Open Board Discussion a. Sue received email from PDT, they are putting together a work group to help them with their Development Review Fee Study, which will be going to Council in October 2019. They would like to have the first meeting the week of May 13, total of 3-4 meetings wrapped up by June. Would like to have someone from the Affordable Housing Board. Meetings would take place 5-7p.m. • Diane: I spent 6 months on a fee working group, and I’d like to know if they’re using that final report. o Sue: I don’t think there is overlap of people from that group and this one. • Diane: Will they be discussing the fee waiver process? o Sue: I don’t think so. • Jen: I wouldn’t be available until the week of May 20. • Diane: I’m just too busy. • Sue: Jen, do you want to do it, or are you a backup if one of the absent members is interested? o Jen: I’d like to ask Jeff and Kristin if they’re interested. b. Diane presented at Senior Advisory Board about both Volunteers of America (VOA) programs and Affordable Housing. Shared Affordable Housing Strategic Plan goals and developments coming online. Also talked about where things are with older adults in the community and averages for social security incomes. Good conversation, they were very interested and engaged. c. Diane and Jen attended joint sustainability boards and commissions meeting. • Jen: Used the triple bottom line scan tool, which was a good experience. Talked about mixing housing choices. It was interesting to see things I see as positives be viewed as negative by someone on a different board. I think the tool could be useful for this board when looking at bigger projects and items. • Diane: The tool was focused on accessory dwelling units (ADUs), and it felt like it didn’t always get at some of the benefits of affordable housing in general. It was interesting to grapple with the way the questions were worded—it was a little tricky to use, but there was good conversation, and we came up with a lot of the same general responses. It was generally favorable for ADUs, which was surprising. • Sue: How did you feel about the opportunity to discuss it with other boards and commissions? o Jen: It offered a lot of perspective in terms of the weight it holds with other boards. They certainly don’t consider it in their day-to-day discussions. It was good to hear some of that devil’s advocate AFFORDABLE HOUSING BOARD REGULAR MEETING 4/4/2019 – MINUTES Page 6 perspective, to formulate ideas on how to work with that and not against it. o Sue: I think they’re going to do at least one more meeting, with the hopes of getting more boards and commissions members there. d) Liaison Reports—not discussed 8. BOARD MEMBER REPORTS a. Placeholder—no current updates 9. OTHER BUSINESS a) Update on Affordable Housing Projects a. Village on Horsetooth grand opening rescheduled to May 9 at 10am b) Future AHB Meetings Agenda a. July meeting falls on July 4 and August 1 meeting Sue will be out of town o Diane: I’d vote for July 11 o Jen: My preference for August would be to either cancel or reschedule so Sue can be there. o Sue: I think our first plan would be to take August off and then add back a meeting if anything time-sensitive comes up. c) City Council Six-Month Planning Calendar a. May 7 Sue has a staff report on Affordable Housing, good news item that we exceeded goal in 2018. 10. ADJOURNMENT: 6:10