 Thanks, Leora, for reminding me to turn on the microphone. Welcome on this beautiful sunny spring day. Oh, maybe it's not sunny, but it is spring. The first item on the agenda is a call to order. So Sarah, can you do the roll call? Chair Burke. Vice Chair Johnson-Morgan. Commissioner Olson. Here. Commissioner Owen. And Commissioner Test. Let the record reflect that all commissioners are present with the exception of Commissioner Downey. Thank you. The third item on the agenda is a presentation for the outgoing commissioners, and I see Helga Lemke here. I don't see David Harris, but hopefully he will show up. So we can say thank you to him. But I just want to thank both David and Helga for their service. I certainly enjoyed working with both of you over the years. Helga, you have been here the longest of the three of us, and sorry to see you go, but I understand that that time comes, and again appreciate your service very much. You both brought great experience and perspective to the board, and we'll try to fill your shoes going forward in the things that you were able to add to, add value to the Housing Authority. So thank you for that. Just appreciate your dedication and hard work, and this extends to both you and David. If you have ideas that you want to share, please. I'm available text message to David Harris, and I would love to thank both of you for getting together for lunch or coffee. So if you have thoughts about how things are going in the future, please reach out to me. So Helga, why don't you come up here, and we have one for David, so when we can corral him, we will present that to David as well. So number four is apparently not. Then we'll move on to public comments, and that's item five. And Mr. DeWitt, I believe you have a card in and would like to make some comments, so please proceed. Thank you. My name is Duane DeWitt. I'm from Roseland in Santa Rosa. I have with me today a 26-year-old study, the comprehensive Housing Affordability Strategy Annual Report for the city of Santa Rosa. I want to read a couple of things from this, and I want you to keep it in mind. In this report which was issued in December of 1993, it pointed out that on June 2nd of 1992, the city of Santa Rosa adopted two key ordinances which were created to address the chronic scarcity of affordable housing, while at the same time balancing residential growth within the city's abilities. It was really important, and it basically adopted a mixed use ordinance and a second unit ordinance, small house, small lot ordinance, to try to get this affordable housing, specifically stating these above noted ordinances as a means of encouraging the development of affordable housing. It's actually been falling short of the mark. What needs to happen is public housing in a city the size of ours, which is now close to 200,000 people. How you get that is by approving Article 34, which is a state-mandated approach in which a city decides it will rely on using the assets of public housing. I've talked about this before in the past, and I've been talking about it for 26 years basically to talk about things here, back since Mr. Burke was the leader of the housing authority, and I think it's really important that you folks begin to advocate for public housing. In the past some have tried to say that, oh, it's not council policy, but these are all new council members, and none of them have actually ever been asked the question before. I think it's time to put that back on the approach. It says that the public housing, the housing authority's policy board members are active and strong advocates of new affordable housing. That was said in 1992. So you folks can step up. You can say, yes, we want to advocate for public housing and find new ways to get in as much housing as possible. Excuse me. The important thing here is that no one has really ever surveyed the community to see if we, the taxpayers and the residents, support it. And I believe you'll find now that there is a majority opinion within the city of Santa Rosa that people would support having nice tall high-rise buildings like Bethlehem Towers or Silvercrest. Thank you, Mr. DeWitt. Thank you. Just FYI, I started my career doing lots of public housing and that's been suggested and discussed in the city of Santa Rosa over the years and I think the major problem could stand to be corrected but I believe the funding is just not available for that type of development currently. But if you have some information to the contrary, I'd be interested in that. So, I'm going to go to Kate Blessing Calamora. Yeah. Okay. Does that come close? Yes, pretty close. So, yeah, my name is Kate Blessing Calamora and I work for Eden Housing which is down on the East Bay in Hayward and it's a nonprofit affordable housing developer. We have properties all over the Bay Area including here in Santa Rosa. We have a lot of properties and we have a lot of rental apartments on Bellevue and my colleague Louis is responsible for Dalneato and we applied for project based vouchers and are still waiting to hear the outcome of our applications but wanted to share a little bit about our projects. So, in 2014, Eden Housing was a nonprofit company for the purpose of preserving the affordability of these units in Santa Rosa and going into the acquisition we knew that we needed to rehab the property and that time is now so these project based vouchers would really allow us to leverage a lot of permanent financing and construction financing to support the project in the long run. It will preserve much needed funding. So, we have a lot of resources and we have a lot of resources in our site with many units as we already discussed and while we want to begin this rehab in the next year we're concerned about the funding we have right now and that it won't be enough to do the high quality rehab that we're looking to do. So, we really, really hope that we hold dear. Lewis is also here too and is available to answer questions about Del Nido. It's a 206 unit property and they are discussing adding units to the property right now but it's still early, somewhat early in the phase and we thank you for your support for affordable housing and we appreciate it. Thank you for your comments. Appreciate it. We're at item 6 on the agenda which will be the approval of minutes. We have four sets of minutes. I happen to not be available for two of the four. So, September 24th, October 22nd, November 26th and February 25th are the four meetings where there's minutes. So, let me just ask a question. Are there any questions about modifications to the minutes? And if I don't hear or need to do that, yes. Commissioner Tello did you have a comment? Commissioner Test, I'm sorry can you turn on your microphone please? Thank you. I would have to abstain on three of the four minutes. Yeah, and thanks for pointing that out and you know one of the things, the procedure that the housing committee has to do is to make sure that there are not suggested changes to the minutes that the chair has the option of just accepting the minutes as presented. And I can do that. Is there a need for people to comment on their absence? No, there shouldn't be. The absences are reflected in the minutes themselves. That is a part of the minutes who was there and who wasn't so the minutes will be accepted as presented. Which takes us to item seven which would be the chairman commissioner reports. I have a couple of comments, but let me ask other commissioners if they have comments they would like to make it this time. No. So my comments just briefly would be first of all to welcome our new board members. The city council had a daunting task, lots of applicants, lots of people with strong experience and background and I know they worked hard and diligently to decide who was going to fulfill or replace the people that stepped down from the housing authority and I think it's a my feeling is good choices were made and we've got a good group and look forward to working with you all in the future. Thanks to Leora previous meeting. I watched a little bit of the tape and it confirmed what I had heard and that's that you did a great job. You didn't accept my offer to take the gavel today. So I guess I'll and this is the staff. I noticed that in the minutes back in the fall we had an item that gave members of the housing authority the opportunity to take the item for consideration for future meetings and that's not on the agenda today and is there a reason not to continue that process or can we just make sure that we have that item on future agendas? Let me follow up on that chairman. I'll have to confirm whether it's a standing item on the council's agenda as well. I just don't know sitting here. I think it's a good opportunity for members of the housing authority to bring up items and if you get support from other members then you put it on the agenda in the future. Committee reports. Any committee reports? There's one item on the agenda where Commissioner Tess, Commissioner Johnson-Worgan and I participated in but there will be more on that later. So we move to the executive director reports and the communication item. Yeah, thank you chairman Burke. There's a communication item at monthly activities report attached to your packet listing some key activities over the past month. Be happy to elaborate or answer any questions. Any questions or comments on the director's report? I just want to thank the staff for their extra time on weekends handling the waiting list and interviewing people. That's much appreciated. So we move on to item 10 on the agenda and we have a staff report. Thank you Megan. Good afternoon. I'm Megan Bassinger and this is manager. Before you, we have an item on a fiscal year in 1920 focused notice of funding availability for affordable housing. Staff is presenting the housing authority with the option to issue a focus NOPA for $3.7 million of 1920 funds. We are anticipating approximately $5.1 million being available in 2020. We are also looking at the funding subject to NOPA requirements that we have associated with CDBG and home funds. This would allow the housing authority to assist projects and position them for either 9% tax credits which are due on July 1st, 2019 or for state MHP funding. I know that there are a lot of projects that are ready to start construction targeted to large families, seniors, workforce or special needs which includes veterans, people experiencing homelessness. Some of the qualities that we would like to see in potential applications similar to what we have done in the past would be projects that are submitting for 9% or MHP funds for the station near Coddingtown in city designated priority development areas or in opportunity zones. We are also looking for deeper affordability so these would be units at 30 and 50% and significant projects that may include additional civic benefits. Ideally these projects would be able to start construction in the next year. The self-scoring for the 9% tax credits would be a $1 million in funding and a $1 million in funding for the city of Coddingtown. We would be looking at the developers' qualifications and capacity and their ability to maximize other funding sources. We are also asking that the housing authority appoint a sub committee to assist in the review of these applications which we are anticipating occurring in May in advance of the housing authority. We are also asking that the subcommittee and provide us with the direction to proceed with this focus NOFA and this would be by motion. I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Megan. Yes, Mr. Coyne? Just to add to Megan's presentation it was her idea when she learned that the second round of applications for tax credits were due July 1 and the second round of applications for tax credits were due July 1. The practice of the housing authority is typically to approve your budget and then after July 1 we would solicit proposals through a NOFA but in light of these deadlines it was Megan's idea to create what we call this focus NOFA just to see what projects in our pipeline can get ready to compete for those two funding sources and come back to you in June with that. I think we have, yes. I mean there's some risk in that and that you don't have the money allocated and so I guess you can put language in the NOFA that informs people of the possibility that may not come to fruition but don't remember that happening so it's probably a low risk situation. And with the funds being local funds they are generally what we do is budget, 1920 we budgeted and so on and so forth. That's a good idea. And the timing would be that should there be a development that the committee feels can move forward we would have that action the same day as you are acting on your budget in June. Yeah. Questions, comments from members of the commission? The criteria to look at these are they very similar to a T-CAC application in terms of that scoring? Our scoring is not as structured as T-CAC but we would be looking for an applicant to submit a draft application if they were proceeding with 9% or for MHP so we could see how well their application would be faring. Can you talk a little bit more about the location? I know that I just mentioned that I watched portions of the tape of the recording of the last meeting and I remember Commissioner Olson in the southwest area and the concentration of a lot of projects in one area. To what degree can we if the housing authority wishes to do so, encourage more distribution of submittals for request for funding for affordable housing? By identifying the station areas we would be looking at the downtown and that is a specific area for the housing authority for the city. The north station area is the area around Jennings Codding Town so that is more of a centralized core and then we can also look at the downtown core if that was an area of interest for the housing authority. The Roseland area has its own specific plan as well so if it was your inclination we could incorporate that the area must be included in a specific plan for the housing authority. That would be a good point for a specific quadrant that could be done as well. Would it be a disadvantage the criteria which I understand the reasons for the criteria? Would it be a disadvantage to applicants that might submit something from the east side of Santa Rosa further to the east outside of the downtown area? I'm not sure. I think there are ones in an area where there has been less affordable housing development and other where there has been more but ones in one of the areas that have been identified. I think we might want to look to the self scoring of the applications and the proximity to transit and services which would kind of concentrate them more towards the downtown area or areas that are already fairly well identified. I would just like to see us work in the direction of being able to disperse housing throughout the community having the amenities and services that are appropriate to the population being served but at the same time helping balance schools and every other piece of infrastructure in the school. Those are my thoughts and I don't know if anybody else feels like I do about that. Yes, I think we have a question. I think this is a question. We would also have our federal funding, so the CDBG and home which we would issue a separate no for after the July 1. So those funds could be used to focus on different areas, different populations if you wanted to look at rehab like we have in the past. That would be another opportunity some people who are already have something in the works to build affordable housing down there, or is it still just kind of mulling around down there? There, the only project that I am aware of that has received approvals from the Planning Commission that hasn't proceeded with financing is the Roseland Village project. And that's in the Roseland specific plan area. I'm not aware off the top of my head of other projects, but that doesn't mean that they don't exist. Thank you. My thoughts on a committee, and you'd like action on that today, or just to have to start the discussion. I haven't spoken to anybody, but I'll tell you my thoughts just leading off, and it was just given Commissioner Owens' background on supporting, funding for, and looking at loan applications for affordable housing. I would, I'm sorry to spring this on you, Jeff. I'd like to have you consider being on that committee. Phil, you as well, because of your background and experience having done this a number of times, and then I would look to another one of the three of you to maybe volunteer, and if you don't, I'll call you, lean on you. Those are my thoughts would be to start off with the two commissioners to my left for that reason, and then to add another person depending upon their time and interest. So you want to think about it, or are you willing to make it? You want me to do it? Yeah, give it a stop. Okay, so we've got two of the three, and I don't know, since the two of you are here, Leora, or I am the... You'll be willing to do it? Okay, so we've got three. Thank you. Good. And so we want a motion, and it would be for the committee, including the committee, in support of the staff proposal. Approved proceeding with the focus NOFA funding availability for 1920 to stimulate either MHP applications or 9% tax credits, and then to appoint the subcommittee which is comprised of Commissioner Owen, Commissioner Olson, and Commissioner Test. So, you know, is there something in the packet? No, it's just a motion. So I looked at members of the board to advance the motion. Could I just ask one more for the questions? So the application period would be about a month, right? Correct. And so we're... There are probably people that you're already anticipating that would... We are aware of at least one developer who is anticipating applying for 9% tax credits in July, and we'll see what else we're able to get out there through our regular NOFA distribution list. Can you say who that developer would be? That is Phoenix Development who has the Dunn Flats Project. I see, okay. So we look into that, or you're pretty sure you'll have to step down? Okay, okay. So we just lost one of our committee members. Being in the banking business and working on loans with funding from local sources this can sometimes be a problem. Okay. Lira, we... Thank you. Step it up. Okay, we have... So a motion to the effect that Megan had just outlined from a member of the... There we go. That's it. With the three members. Oh, excuse me. Yes, thank you. So we have a comment from Mr. DeWitt for item 10.1 before we proceed. Thank you for reminding me, Mr. DeWitt. Thank you, sir. My name is DeWitt. I'm from Roseland in Santa Rosa. I wanted to thank the chair for discussing the importance of having scattered site distribution of our affordable housing in the city of Santa Rosa. Being from Roseland, I know that we have the highest number of affordable housing projects probably proportionally in the city. I'm very happy that you're looking into possibilities of doing more things in more places. I don't come here as a representative for any company. I don't make any money in the provision of affordable housing. I just am an advocate with the Sonoma County Housing Advocacy Group. And we're hoping that perhaps you can make a point of dispersing the funds in a more equitable manner to different housing producers, if you will. Some people in the community they kind of laugh and say, well, the Santa Rosa Housing Authority is the bank of Burbank and that most everything seems to go to those folks and it doesn't seem as fair to some of the other housing providers. So I've noticed recently that even though the city of Santa Rosa had goals of having city-centered affordable housing production, this body, the Housing Authority, gave a substantial amount of funding to put housing out on the farthest edges of the city, out on the southwest border on Bellevue Avenue area and over in the far east in Montecito, excuse me, the Rink and Valley area, and that money mostly went to Burbank Housing. So I'm hoping that in the future for this one you'll look at some different housing production people. I am not specifically affiliated with the Roseland Village project being put together by mid-pen housing, but I did attend most of their meetings as they planned for it and I'm hoping that you can be supportive of them getting their project finished as soon as possible. They may have some problems in the future because of toxic remediation, but I still think it's very important that they get the support to get the funding and get that project finished up as soon as they can. So with that said, I'm hoping that you'll at least occasionally look on a positive manner from comments from the public. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your comments. So now we're to a motion. Along those lines about mentioning the committee in addition. I make a motion that we... Do I read that? Vice Chair Johnson-Morgan, can you speak into the mic a little bit closer? Thank you. I make a motion that we approve proceeding with the focus notice of funding availability and I waive the reading the rest of the title. I'll second that message. Okay, we have a motion. We have a second. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Sarah, do you want to do this or should I do it on a motion? I haven't really had too many motions. Okay, we're good. The motion carries. We have a committee and we have a approval from the Housing Authority to proceed with an offer. So thank you. Ms. Bassenger. Okay, move to item 10.2. Additional limited preference for housing choice vouchers. Program waiting list. We have Rebecca Lane making the staff presentation today. Thank you for your patience, commissioners. While I sort myself out here, I'm going to be doing the remainder of the presentations for today. My name is Rebecca Lane. I'm the manager of the housing choice voucher program for the City of Santa Rosa and the item that I am first presenting today is a request to amend rather the current administrative plan for the housing choice voucher program to increase the number of vouchers available under the limited preference for disaster affected families. Unlimited preference is a tool used by public housing authorities to specifically address an urgent community need with the resources of the voucher program. The waiting list is not reordered under a limited preference. The preferences are referred to as limited because the housing authority sets aside a determined number of vouchers for the specific need. Only that number of vouchers may be utilized for the limited preference and the waiting list may be open to the families that qualify for the voucher under their preference at any time. Housing authorities also designate a procedure for accepting referrals and generally this is achieved through a partner agency that works with the target population. Santa Rosa Housing Authority currently has two limited preferences. One is for family experiencing homelessness who are referred through partner agencies that have adopted a housing first model of homeless services programming. There are 24 vouchers currently set aside for this limited preference. And one is for disaster affected families who are living in the city limits of Santa Rosa as of the October 2017 wildfires and experience direct or indirect displacement as a result. The families are referred through the Rebuilding Our Community Center which is established as a voluntary organization active in disaster. There are currently 24 vouchers available under this limited preference as well and this item proposes expanding the number to 48. The ROC or Rebuilding Our Community is a collaborative network of agencies working together to address the long-term recovery needs related to the 2017 wildfires. Case managers from multiple agencies including staff specifically trained in disaster response work with families to access a variety of resources available through ROC partners including the housing choice vouchers. Because of the success of this program so far in referring and housing families and because of the ongoing needs that more vouchers could support we are proposing expanding this limited preference from 24 to 48 vouchers. This would require a change in the administrative plan which requires adoption by the housing authority so we're asking for your approval through resolution. This concludes my presentation and I'm happy to answer questions. Comments from members of the commission? Mr. Olson. Rebecca. So these vouchers that you just take our regular vouchers and put these people to the front of the list. That's correct. Yeah. Okay. I'm not necessarily comfortable with that. I know that the fire I know all the problem but I also know that a lot of these people have been on this list for years. They've waited and waited they get to the front of the list and then they're anticipating being able to get that housing and all of a sudden somebody's put in front of them. Now I understand all the problem with the fire but I do not approve of that and I am not going to vote for it in that point. Thank you. Yes. Commissioner Test. I had a question regarding the homeless portion of families experiencing homelessness. Is that going to change those 24? Will those numbers be reduced from that in order to make up the extra on the disaster relief? No. No. The limited preference for homeless will remain the same at 24 vouchers and this preference, this limited preference will be changed from 24 to 48. Thank you. You're welcome. Could you respond to Commissioner Olson's question about the impact on people on the waiting list? I have a similar question. I just wanted to get a better insight into how it really affected people on the list. Sure. So the waiting list is, well, we spent this month calling 200 families off the waiting list. It is long though. The waiting list is right now we're calling families from I believe 2012. So the limited preference is the limited to only housing, only families that qualify for this limited preference through these partner agencies under this designation. It's limited to a certain number of vouchers. So it does not reorder the waiting list and it's only that total number of vouchers that are available. It's a small percentage of our annual turnover. So our regular waiting list will continue to move forward in the way that it does. And these vouchers will also go directly to those families that qualify so long as they're meeting the criteria of that limited preference working with those partner agencies. So it does have some impact, but it is not a significant impact on the existing waiting list and the wait time for that waiting list. And it's a way for housing authorities to address a very specific urgent need in the community. So it's a way we balance the needs as best we can through these procedures and policies. It is a difficult question because you don't want to disadvantage people that have been waiting patiently for a long time. On the other hand, we're asking for help from lots of people to deal with the problems created by the fire. And this is one thing we can do in that direction. So it's not an easy decision, but I understand the reason for it. You mentioned the consortium of groups that are involved with the ROC program. Who actually administers that? Or did you, I mean, who does the day-to-day work related to that? It's a network of community agencies including government, faith-based nonprofits. And there's an executive committee of the ROC. And there's also several other committees. The Housing Authority sits, I sit on the housing committee for the ROC. So it's a network of agencies. It's not a, there is a physical location where survivors can go and meet with their case managers. But it's not directed by any one agency. Thank you. Any other comments, questions? Yes. Commissioner Test. Another question that I had is the number of increased, another 24 of these vouchers, correct. Are we confident that there, we have people lined up that would qualify for these additional 24? Yes. Yes. Yes. The case managers continue to, on the housing committee, the case managers who are focused on housing continue to work actively with a great number of families that still at this point don't have resources available. FEMA did recently announce that they're going to extend the housing assistance for a brief period of time. But many of the referrals that we already have and those that the ROC case managers or the case managers affiliated with the ROC would put forward are people in that position who do not have any alternative housing at this point. Thank you. You're welcome. Let me ask you just one. Are you saying that these people that would come in the fire are homeless? Some of them are, yes. Some of them are in temporary housing and many of them are in housing that is currently paid for by FEMA. So we have some families who are currently living at the fairgrounds in the FEMA trailers and some families who are receiving direct housing assistance, FEMA is paying for an apartment somewhere else in the county. Okay. Well, and I'll withdraw all my, I mean, I didn't realize these people were not in housing. Okay. Thank you. Sure. Thank you. We have a public comment from Mr. DeWitt. Hello. DeWitt from Roseland within Santa Rosa. DeWitt, please. Hello. And I think we have a couple of questions to exactly how this has really affected my family now. 24, excuse me. 24 years ago, myself and other members of the Sonoma County Housing Advocacy Group were making sure that the city was trying to help the people at Journey's in Mobile Home Park not lose their housing when there was a proposal by Home Depot store to purchase the park and destroy it. Because of the fires, many people from Journey's End have been in a difficult situation. I'm hoping that this proposed limited preference voucher helps people from Journey's End who were displaced by the fires, and I'm especially hopeful that it's helping those who may be homeless and waiting to try to get a voucher. I would ask that you do something above and beyond your typical approach, and that is to publicize this, to get the word out to the newspapers and to the radio stations so that the landlords out there will understand that this is a helpful thing and be willing to be accommodating to people that get these vouchers. It's very important to overcome any negative stigma that might be there about using vouchers. This is actually a good thing for landlords, and a few folks would advocate in a positive manner and have staff get the news out to the various news agencies. It could help within the community. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. DeWitt, for your comments. Any further discussion? If not, ready for a motion, the resolution that's before you? I would like to make a motion that we approve the resolution of the Housing Authority of the City of Santa Rosa approve a revision of the Housing Choice Voucher Program administrative plan expanding the waiting list limited preference for disaster-affected families. Thank you. Do we have a motion? Second. Second. The motion. Second. The motion. Any further discussion? Hearing none, roll call, please. Chair Burke. Aye. Vice Chair Johnson-Morgan. Aye. Commissioner Olson. Aye. Commissioner Owen. Aye. Commissioner Test. Aye. Let the record reflect that the resolution carries with five ayes and one absence. Thank you. Thank you. And Ms. Lange, you have item 10.3 as well, so in fact, you're going to finish the meeting by your last presentation at 10.4, so you got a roll here. Thank you again, Chairman Burke. So this item is a request to allocate 19 Veterans Affairs project-based vouchers to River City senior apartments and close the BASH request for proposals which has been open since 2015. The Santa Rosa Housing Authority was first awarded BASH vouchers in 2009 and currently has 414 BASH vouchers under contract with HUD. Utilization of the BASH vouchers has been historically low for a variety of reasons, including high turnover with this vulnerable population. The RFP was open with 100 vouchers in June of 2015 to help address the lack of housing available to veterans using BASH vouchers. Vouchers have been allocated to projects in Santa Rosa, Windsor and Sonoma under an agreement with the Santa Rosa Housing Authority and the Sonoma County Housing Authority that the Santa Rosa Housing Authority holding the vouchers in the county will administer BASH vouchers countywide. This request for the remaining 19 vouchers available under the request for proposals would bring housing for veterans to the South County. Petaluma Ecumenical Properties or PEP Housing submitted this proposal for River City senior apartments. River City is a new construction project that will have 53 units for low income seniors and veterans. The project is located at 951 Petaluma Boulevard South on a 1.3 acre site. PEP Housing has worked with the City of Petaluma to bring the project forward. It will include improvements to the riverfront and incorporate an outdoor gazebo, a fence dog run and access to pedestrian pathways along the river. PEP Housing is also proposing a co-located wellness center, which is it is exploring in partnership with the Petaluma Health Center, which will include services to help residents age in place at River City senior apartments. This proposal was reviewed by an ad hoc committee, the project-based voucher ad hoc committee as well as the VA. And the BASH supervisor, Heather Dunn is here in the chambers if you wish to ask questions directly regarding the Veterans Administration support of the project. And we also have a member of the PEP Housing staff here in the chambers who can answer questions about the project. The staff is recommending approval of this proposal, which would allocate 19 vouchers under a 15-year project-based voucher HAP contract for the River City senior apartments. And this concludes this presentation, and I'm happy to answer any questions that you have. Thank you. Comments, questions? Members of the commission? Do they have a start date yet for construction? Yes. All right. Somewhere in the 430-cent pages of the background. Yes. And our staff member from PEP might actually be able to answer that more specifically anyway, so here he comes. Good afternoon. Jim Wallin, Director of Development for PEP Housing. The start date is October or November of this year. This is a shovel-ready project that is very critical that these 19 vouchers move us forward. So, yes, we are starting this year. Any other questions, comments? I've got a couple of others. So describe the process of the due diligence for the vouchers before they're released. In other words, this is a commitment as long as the project sponsors perform. Correct. Okay. So, just a quick... Sure. So, after this point, if the Housing Authority Board of Commissioners approves this proposal, then that allows the staff to enter into the appropriate contracts with the developer that HUD prescribes as part of the process. So, the first thing would be the execution of an agreement to enter into a Housing Assistance Payments Contract. That would be between the Santa Rosa Housing Authority and Petaluma Ecumenical Properties. And the developer will be held to the construction timeline as part of the AHAP, the agreement to enter into the Housing Assistance Payments Contract. And at the point of occupancy, that's when the Housing Authority signs the Housing Assistance Payments Contract, which is the contract that's tied directly to those 19 units. So, the specific 19 units are specified as part of the contract. And there's ongoing review of the performance of the project, specifically as it relates to vacancies, right? We want to make sure that the vouchers are actually being used. The Housing Authority actually refers the applicants, the residents, I should say, to the property. So, for that, we work with the VA on making sure that we always have people ready to refer and people who are interested in living in this part of the county. And that's where we know that we do have veterans who would prefer living in Petaluma. We don't have a lot of housing available in Petaluma, so this will, that's another one of the highlights of this proposal. But yes, so moving forward from today, then the Housing Authority enters into that two-stage contract. Thank you for that. The reason I bring it up, I mean, Pep, you know, has a very good reputation, I'm sure he'll perform in great style. I've seen two situations in the years past where there were problems in the course of the development effort and the product being delivered was determined to be far less than what was promised, and so there was, it got to be contentious at the end. I just wanted to make sure that we had the ability, if somebody didn't perform, that we could say, nope, you haven't met your obligation, therefore you don't get the project-based contract. We do. We do in both stages of the contract, both in the agreement to enter into the HAP contract, the AHAP and the HAP. We have the ability to terminate the contract if the developer is not performing. Like I say, I don't expect that to happen in this case, but it's always an important piece of the process in my mind. So we, unless there's any other questions or comments from members of the commission, we do have a comment from, I think, two members of the public. Jim Wallen, you've spoken, but you've finished, okay, thank you. And Mr. DeWitt. DeWayne DeWitt from Roseland within Santa Rosa. I'm hopeful that you could ask for the option to be extended 30 years and not just 15. This is because we know that the cost of living in this area continues to rise. And in 15 years, it's going to be perhaps even harder to find affordable housing. So I would ask that you support this project, but put in a stipulation that would be for 30 years with an option for 50 years. Thank you. Thank you. I don't know if that's even an option, but, and there's other provisions for making sure the project is affordable for a longer period of time. Yes, we have the ability to extend the contract. Yes. So that's something that in other circumstances we might want to consider. Yes, Mr. Allen. Does the 15 years match the 15 years with the tax credits because they're financing part of the 4% tax credits? Is that why that 15 years was picked? Well, it might have something to do with that. Initially the housing choice voucher program regulations were written that the maximum term of a HAP contract was 15 years. It was an article in the paper today about this project. Congratulations on getting the funding secured. It's good to see the support coming from the city of Petaluma. It looks like it's very tough to come up with the funds, but an important project, so that's certainly a good thing. And also a great job in the part of staff in getting these vouchers committed to projects in a relatively short period of time. Yes, a little daunting. I wish more could have been in Santa Rosa, but it was really great to see the distribution throughout the county of Sonoma as well. So thank you. And with that, I would entertain a motion from a member of our commission. I'll move the recommendation and with the reading the text. I second the motion. OK, we have a motion. We have a second. Motion by Commissioner Allen, second by Commissioner Test. We'll call the place. Chair Burke. Aye. Vice Chair Johnson-Morgan. Aye. Commissioner Olson. Aye. Commissioner Owen. Aye. Commissioner Test. Aye. Let the record reflect that the resolution carries with five ayes and one absence. At item 10.4 on the agenda, request to allocate 21 vouchers for Parkwood apartments under a 15-year project-based housing assistance payments contract. And Rebecca Lane will make the staff presentation. Thank you again. So commissioners, this item is to approve the allocation of 21 non-vash project-based vouchers to Parkwood apartments in Santa Rosa. The housing authority opened a request for proposals in late 2018 with up to 100 vouchers made available for project-based vouchers. Again, these are non-vash vouchers, are regular voucher allocation. Several applications were received and reviewed by the ad hoc committee of the housing authority commissioners. And the committee determined that additional due diligence was required before rendering a decision on the other proposals that were submitted. Parkwood was selected to move forward because of two primary strengths of the proposal. First, the project is located in a low-poverty area with access to services in an area where there are few affordable housing units. And second, the project can serve families virtually right away because the units already exist. There are currently 14 vacancies at Parkwood, which we would fill with families from the waiting list, the housing choice voucher program waiting list. And the remaining vouchers would be allocated to the lowest income eligible residents at Parkwood. So Parkwood apartments has 54 total units and is requesting 21 project-based vouchers. This is located in Rincan Valley with adjacent to the Rincan Valley Community Park and the Rincan Valley Library. The project will serve in place low-income tenants and offers new affordable units to families on the housing choice voucher waiting list. And we do have representatives from Burbank Housing who can speak to this project. It's unique, it's an acquisition project. So this was an existing housing, existing property that was put on the market and acquired by Burbank Housing. And that sale closed in January of this year and the project-based vouchers are part of the acquisition strategy that Burbank put forward. The project was reviewed by the ad hoc committee and it does offer affordable housing in low-property area with access to services and the immediate opportunity for housing from the waiting list. We expect that the execution of the HAP contract, so with an existing project where we skip the agreement to enter into a housing assistance payments contract that I was talking about just a minute ago, we go straight into a housing assistance payments contract. So we expect that with the housing in the condition that it's in now, it's ready to be occupied within 120 days those vacant units which will be filled by referrals from our waiting list. And then the remaining vacant, or the remaining units that are currently occupied will be targeted to the lowest income residents who are eligible for the voucher who currently reside at Parkwood. So this is a way to protect those tenants as well. So the Department of Housing and Community Services is recommending that the housing authority approve the allocation of 21 vouchers under a 15-year project-based voucher HAP contract for the Parkwood apartments. And as I mentioned, we have representatives from the project here if there's any questions and I'm also happy to answer questions. Questions, comments? I have a question. So for the remaining seven vouchers for in-place residents, have we, do we have a feel for whether or not residents in Parkwood are already on our waiting list? There may be some and we should be able to determine that now by cross-referencing. Burbank has already, or is in the process of, if they've not already completed it, comprehensive tenant income certifications of the existing residents. And so with that information, we should be able to find out whether or not people are already on our waiting list. I was at the property on Friday and talking to the current resident manager and she's been there for, I think, 13 years or so, a really long time and knows all of the families and is very excited about the opportunity for some of the existing residents to have assistance. I understand that those 14 vacant apartments will go to people on our waiting list. I kind of would like those that to be fleshed out to find out whether or not there are people who are currently on our waiting list who can move our waiting list. Yeah, the way that we'll do this is, yeah, we will have a survey of our existing waiting list for people who would qualify for the units. So that means, based on their household size, these are all two bedroom units. So we will send out notices, probably we usually do 100 at a time when we have something like this. So we'll send out notices to 100 families at a time that say, do you meet this criteria? Do you have this number of people in your household and would you be interested in living in this project when we describe the project? That allows people to come forward and develop our referral sources to Parkwood because all of the referrals for those vacancies will have to come from the housing authority. Anytime we have a project-based contract, that's part of the obligation of the housing authority is to refer eligible families to the project. So we'll survey the waiting list and that will take, depending on, you know, how many, what the response rate is, which is difficult to tell when we're looking at a specific project, we will go through the entire waiting list, we'll survey the entire waiting list for their interest and develop sort of a sub waiting list, if you will, of people who are ready to refer to Parkwood, not only in the beginning, but then going forward through the contract as vacancies come up. That's my purpose, I just want to say that I personally would like to see there's a cross-reference in Parkwood already is on our waiting list and can we move them into society there? Right, right. And then into our vouchers. Right, we had discussed with Burbank that they would be targeted to the lowest income residents, but we can certainly talk to them about adding that criteria as well. The tenants who are in place at the time that a project-based voucher contract is executed are required to be protected by the housing authority process. So we'll be working with them very closely. Thank you. Any other questions or comments from members of the board? So we do have two people that would like to speak. We'll start with Mr. DeWitt since his card was in first and followed by Mr. Weisen. Is it Bern or Born? Born. Go ahead DeWitt from Rosen within Santa Rosa. I'm very supportive of this project. I think this is a very good example of how things could be done. I just once again would ask that you have it be a 30-year obligation with the option for 50 years. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Riley Weisen, Board of Mid-Pen Housing Project Manager for the Roseland Village Project in the Roseland neighborhood. Appreciative of being able to submit an application. We were not obviously awarded in this first go, but we're hopeful through the follow-up due diligence process that the housing authority is going on that we will be successful in getting a housing voucher award. A quick update. Our project received entitlements from the city last month and subsequently has been appealed. However, it's going up to the city council for another round of review and hopefully that will be upheld in May. We're already beginning on our public improvement, public infrastructure drawings to move forward with the master plan site as well as the architecture for the affordable building. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. I know there were a number of questions from the committee that staff is pursuing. So that information will be coming back to us and we'll be making decisions based upon that information in the future. So thank you. So ready for a motion from a member of the commission? Don't be shy. I'll move to recommend the proposal for the 24, 21 units vouchers and waive the reading of the text. Thank you. I'll second that motion. Give me a second. Commissioner Johnson-Morgan and ready for roll call. Chair Burke. Aye. Vice Chair Johnson-Morgan. Aye. Commissioner Olson. Aye. Commissioner Owen. Aye. And Commissioner Test. Aye. Let the record reflect that the resolution carries with five ayes and one absence. Well, thank you all. If there's no further business before the housing authority this afternoon, we will move to adjournment. Thank you very much. See you next month.