 Sorry, I was muted. Hi, Rita. How are you doing? I'm good. Um, I'm driving to apex though. I have a family emergency, but I am on the call. I just want to let you know. You have one minute. It's now six o'clock. We will dive right in. We would like to welcome everyone to this evening's June 10th meeting of the affordable housing implementation committee. Thank you for joining us. And we will get started right away with roll call. Stella Adams. LaVon Barnes. Laura Beatty. She has sent out an email earlier that she may not be here. So she needs to use absence. Diane Katate. Here. Lucille Constantine. Here. It's Nicole Diggs. Here. Tiffany Elder. Here. Tammy Farrell. Nicole Furnace. I think she asked for an excuse absence as well. Okay. Courtney, James. Here. I, Jarvis Martin. Here. Rita McDaniel. Here. John Parker. Venus Sanders. Here. Timothy Spalman. Here. Angela Big Lewis. Thank you. So for this evening's meeting. We'll cover some ground rules. Go over the minute. Stella Adams is here. Thank you. Thank you. I have presentations by community, community development staff and Durham housing authority staff. Followed by some discussion and. For the first time. Some public comment. And then we will wrap up and go over the meeting schedule for the last two meetings for 2021. So to cover ground rules. The first, please show respect for everyone in their opinions. And then we'll have a discussion. And then we'll have a discussion. And then we'll have a discussion. Presum goodwill. There will be one speaker at a time, speaker at a time allowed for these virtual meetings. Only the speaker will be unmuted to eliminate the background noise. All other participants will remain muted until called upon. Committee members can raise their hand to speak. And the comments in the chat will be reviewed and addressed as feasible. Again, there will be one speaker at a time allowed for these virtual meetings. And then we'll have a discussion about that. And during the meeting, after each of the presentations, time permitting, we will have space for one to two questions from the committee. Any other questions beyond the first two time permitting will be saved till after all of the presentations are completed. And before the public comment section. And of course, enjoy the process. Okay. So does anyone have any corrections or adjustments? Hearing none do. Can someone make a motion to approve the May 6, 2021. Minutes. The minutes is written for May 6. I believe that was Rita. Thank you. Is there a second? I second the minutes. Thank you, Stella. At this point, if everyone could unmute and everyone in favor, please say yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Are there any objections? All right. The minutes pass unanimously. Thank you all. Right into our first presentation by community development. Greetings. Thank you so much. Greetings, everyone. Hope everybody's doing well and had a great day. I'm Reginald Johnson, director of the department of community development. And my purpose in sharing with you today is some base points and feedback that we received and comments at the last meeting. One of the things that was shared as part of the discussion was that we needed to clarify what is the dip roles, but the different roles in affordable housing between the federal government, the state government and local governments. And so what I'm going to do is to make an effort to share some of that information as a high level so we can get a, get a good understanding of grounding and based upon the, what was requested at the last, last meeting, then our segue into a once again, a refreshing after we get that context, what the role of the affordable housing implementation committee is and the purpose and the roles in that context. Now that you have much more information than what, when I shared this initially at our first meeting, then maybe it might mean a little bit different to you, come to you differently after you've received quite a bit of information over the past several meetings. So with that, I'll begin. One of the things that I'll add is, you know, it is, can be complicated. When I worked in the city manager's office before I came to the department, one of the things that often happens, we periodically received comments and complaints about the US mail and the manager's office. And the interesting thing was, you know, residents were always not clear that the US mail delivery of post offices federal, though it comes to your house every day is federal. So it's a local government that's responsible for the mail, but you know, for a lot of folks, it's just government. And so we wanted to, you know, based upon discussion to have some clarification. So that's the purpose of this presentation. It won't be too long. Just a few slides. Next slide. So we'll start with the federal government, Washington, DC. What is their role in affordable housing? One of the first and primary things that they actually do is to provide funding for state and local governments and affordable housing and homeless assistance program funding programs, such as from the US department of housing and urban development hood, which includes the home investment partnership funds, which is one funds that you've seen before, community development block grant CDBG, the emergency solutions grants program, ESG. And then you have the homeless housing opportunities for persons with AIDS, HOPWA housing trust fund dollars and also the homeless continuing of care dollars that often flow, not necessarily some parts flow to local government, some for flow directly to entities in the continuum of care, nonprofit entities. Then you have the low income housing tax credits program that's administered actually kind of administered by the IRS, believe it or not. And then you have new market tax credits. Then also the funding includes COVID-19 emergency rental assistance for closure prevention and homelessness assistance. A lot of the COVID-19 response money comes from the federal federal government to local governments. Then they have the federal government also provides funding for public housing authorities. This includes capital and operating funding for public housing authorities. And Mr. Scott has talked about that previous, then tenant based rental assistance programs, second section eight vouchers, excuse me. That also includes those. And then in terms of housing finance and home ownership assistance, the federal housing administration FHA and many, you know, may have heard of FHA provides mortgages to individuals and loan guarantees for affordable housing development. And then you have mortgage interest deductions on federal income tax. That's federal. And in terms of regulatory, they provide the federal government provides oversight and the federal fair housing laws, which is very important. The next slide. So then we get to the state government. You know, in the state of North Carolina, but states generally, you know, for us, that's of course, Raleigh funding and program delivery. The managers, the federal low income housing tax credit program in North Carolina, some states do it differently, but in North Carolina, that's the state manager. It manages it. Go, go back to previous slide. Previous slide. Previous go back to be going forward. Go to the side that says state. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. That's it. Bingo. So the manager low income housing tax credit program. Remember, we talked about that in the previous slide, where it's, you know, national in scope in this authorization, but it's managed in North Carolina at the state level. Then the state government operates statewide down payment assistance funding program for low income home buyers, and then deploy federal housing funds allocated to the state to support housing development, home repair, housing assistance, and particularly in non-urban areas of the state. In regulatory functions as it relates to affordable housing, the state determines the scope and authority granted to local governments. For example, impact fees and whether localities can charge impact fees. That's one of the conversations that we had last, at the last meeting, because now you'll find out in the next slide, the county governments are creatures of the state. And city governments can only do have authority to engage in activities that the state explicitly permits in North Carolina. That's according to North Carolina law. Then the state government also establishes rules for all property tax relief programs. The state has three and remember the county is a tax collector and the governance for the tax collecting comes from the state government. And then the state oversees the state building code that governs how the quality and nature and how we construct buildings across the state. Next slide. Then we have the county government. The county government in terms of program delivery and funding provides emergency rent and mortgage and utility assistance funded with county, state, and federal funds, state, and county funds. The city of Durham supports home repair for low income home buyers, particularly in unincorporated areas funded with state and county funds. Durham County only has one municipality across the city of Durham, but in other counties, they might have several municipalities until you have unincorporated areas that are serviced by the county government. The county also uses county in the county on land for affordable housing development. County is doing that. And then there's a member of the county Durham, Durham homelessness continuum of care and a partner in the operation of entry point Durham. As you recall, that's one of the ways that persons, homeless persons enter the homeless system through entry point. Implements property tax relief programs established by the state and the state actually, the county actually implements the programs. And then in terms of COVID-19 response, emergency rental assistance, which is funded with federal funds. So money might come through directly from the federal government that our county has received some of those funds. And then there's some funds that we receive from the federal government that we've given to the county. And then I have a note here that's actually a pair of affordable housing development and a courted note for here in Durham. Counties do not receive federal funding for affordable housing development or homeless assistance. The funding goes to local governments in the case of larger cities or to the state. Durham county does not have a housing department or community development department. Most housing related assistance is managed through the department of social services for here's the DSS. Next slide. So the city government. The city government in terms of funding and program delivering serves as the HUD local entitlement administrator participating jurisdiction of PJ for short administers local dollars in support of affordable housing and homeless prevention. For regulatory as it relates to affordable housing, the city governments regulates local land use policy. For example, the density, how many people can live on certain echo land, how many buildings, how high they can go and where they can go. And about all of that is within the state law framework. And that's through the city county planning department. Then also city government enforces federal. Fair housing laws and regulations that's done through neighborhood improvement services department. And then also enforces the minimum housing code. That's neighborhood improvement services. Next slide. So what I'm going to segue to, and this is the repeat, but now that we have shared what the different governments do, I'm going to go back and reground us and our federal home Durham program. That's our goal is to make Durham affordable, livable and inclusive. And this is a repeat now that we have the different context. That we've shared previously. Next slide. So going from the slides that we just talked about, about the city's role. So we talked about the federal government's role. We talked about the state's role. We talked about the county's role. And we talked about the city's role. So when we get to the city, this is more detail on the city's role. And it's a goal. And you've seen these before to build a 1600 new affordable rental homes to prevent, to preserve 800 affordable rental homes, to move 1700 homeless persons into permanent housing, to provide 400 affordable housing home ownership opportunities to first time home buyers. Next slide. Help 3000 low income renters and homeowners remain in or improve their homes to create at least $130 million in contract opportunities for minority and women owned businesses. And support nearly 3000 jobs as a result of the construction operations and resident spending over the life of the housing, created forever home Durham with federal home Durham funding. I just saw a question that popped up in the chat about what was a time period over these. So our plan is to initiate all this work over the next five years, although particularly for some of it, it won't be completed within five years. We probably will be going into six or seven years because some of the construction projects have a two year lead time. Next slide. In terms of the federal home Durham funding. And this goes back to the slides that we talked about earlier in the city's role. After the US Department of Housing and Urban Development entitlement funds includes home investment partnership funds. CDBG community development block grant funds. Emergency solutions grant ESG funds. And housing opportunities for persons with AIDS. And then the city has added local dollars. One portion, two cents on the property tax rate that generates about seven, just over $7 million a year. That's called dedicated housing funds. And then we have the 2019 affordable housing bond that was passed by the voters. Next slide. And so I'm not going to go line by line. We did do that previously. And of course you'll have this and be glad to answer any questions. But in terms of the federal home Durham budget, you see the categories for homelessness, multifamily rental, neighborhood stabilization, financing pallets. And then of course the program operations. And this incorporates those funding sources that I just mentioned. And so next slide. So we're going to segue to another, we had divided up my presentations. And so Julia is going to pull up the next presentation. And this goes segues back into the purposes and responsibilities of the affordable housing implementation committee next slide. If you recall the purpose of the affordable housing implementation committee created by the city council's to advise the community development department on the implementation of the affordable housing investment plan that we just discussed. Next slide. The committee will have the following duties and responsibilities to advise the administration on the affordable housing investment plan, including the affordable housing bond passed by the voters of city of Durham, guarantee transparency and accountability in the expenditure of bond funds. Next slide. Review the expenditures with particular focus on housing construction, job training and the inclusion of minority and women contractors to ensure the city's goals are met. Provide feedback and guidance on the city's communications to the public about the process on the implementation of the affordable housing plan and provide briefings to the council every six months regarding the committees, activities and the affordable housing plan. I think that concludes my presentation. And so I just wanted to share that context. I hope that we were able to answer some of the questions that were presented at the last meeting. We'll turn it over to the co-chairs. Thank you. Thank you for that. And I do believe we have some time before the next. Presentation for questions from the committee. Just one or two questions. If there are any. I have a question that is sort of related to this. So I was reading about the, um, the tax credit, uh, grant. I guess it's not a grant. Specifically, um, a waiver of those monies that we are able to give to Durham residents. And I understand that we cannot give a grant because the state, I think prohibits that. Is that accurate? Yeah. So, uh, just to reground everybody. So now that I know what you're talking about at first, it wasn't, it wasn't clear, but it sounds like that you're talking about the, uh, long time homeowner grant program that was just discussed actually in the work session to today. Oh, I didn't know it was discussed today, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so, uh, so the question that you're asking, there is state governance on, um, um, property taxes are basically governed by the, the, the state and anytime, uh, jurisdictions not, uh, uh, once they're set, they're not permitted to distinguish between other people in the payment of taxes. Okay. So that's why, that's why, uh, the city cannot decide to make that a grant or the county cannot. That has to be state. Well, the local government can do it. Do it. And that's what you have a proposal on today. Okay. But it has to be within the guidelines of the state. Okay. All right. That makes sense. Thank you. I don't want to make sure I don't want to lose you because it can get complicated. Yeah. That's helpful. Thank you. Um, this is Stella. Yes. Um, can you tell me, um, how much of the, um, affordable housing bond has been, um, committed already. Um, and it's under contractor and the development. What percentage has already been kind of already, um, Determined. Um, yes. Let me do that on follow up because we just had agenda items that relative to the affordable housing bond that was on the, it's on the work session now. Um, that was today we just discussed today. And so I was going to include those, but, uh, other than the work that the housing authority has done, we really have not actually, uh, spent any of the bond money, but we are putting committing it to projects and I'd be glad to give a report on that. Thank you. At our next meeting, I'd appreciate that. Uh, yeah, actually, uh, we'll have it before the next meeting. We'll send it. We'll send it to you. Uh, when we, um, uh, proud to do it before the end of the month. Thank you. Is there a timeframe of when the bond money is supposed to be used up for affordable housing. And things of that nature. Uh, yes, ma'am, it is in this sense, uh, we, and we talked about this in a couple of previous meetings. So, and I just had just mentioned it. So though our goal is, and it's about six to seven years to be able to complete, have completed all of the projects. Uh, we initially said five years, uh, but due to a COVID and the fact that some projects require extensive lead time. So, you know, when we're talking about multifamily development, it's almost a 24 month lead time. And so we might not start a project until the end of the five years. Um, and so that will push it in six, six and seven, uh, years. But I think that within that timeframe, we'll be able to accomplish all of those goals with the resources that we have. So with the price of lumber and stuff going up, that you know, it's been recently on the news and stuff. Well that money, and if it continues to go up with that money, um, that we have allocated for affordable housing, how would that affect that bond money? Cause we won't get any more bond money for that, will we? No, ma'am. And you hit the nail on the head. That's what some of the agenda items we presented for, before the council today do dealt with. So this is the bottom line on it. We have a fixed amount of money and cost increase have been escalating dramatically. I mean, literally in the past two or three months, dramatic, dramatic increases in construction, traction costs. If we proceed as scheduled, that means we have less money, uh, because the cost has increases, uh, costs has increased. And so one of the things that we're going to have to do is to do some management and possibly restructuring and possibly delay quite frankly, uh, to make sure our resources are managed in a way, uh, that we're able to, to, to maximize the resources with the increases. Well, we pray that this increase we have is temporary, that it will be, um, come back down to, you know, whatever's supposed to be normal, uh, after a period of time, uh, the housing authority can, and Mr. Scott can talk more about that because he's actually in the trenches now on that point. But it is a reality of what we probably will not do is just all press ahead with all projects. We're going to have to make some differential, uh, to take into account the dramatic cost increases. They are significant. And so your, your question is on point and on time and reality. May I ask another question? Oh, absolutely. So hypothetically, if the cost of the materials keep going up, that's going to mean that that's going to take away from the money that's supposed to be going toward affordable housing. So will that mean we'll get cheaper quality material? Or will in another 10 years we'll be able to ask for, can Durham ask for another housing bond? I'll ask to answer the last question first. The question is, can Durham ask for, uh, another affordable housing bond? The answer is yes. Um, the bond is put forth by the city council and presented to the voters voters. This is actually the city of Durham's the one in 2019 was our third affordable housing bond. We had one on a much smaller, maybe 25 years ago and another one after that, maybe 10 years after that. So the answer is yes. The question is whether the voters will approve it. You know, that's always, you know, part of the discussion in a part of the role. So the answer to that question is yes. Uh, in the, in, in weather, um, you know, the cost, I think, you know, Mr. Scott, who's in the throes of it may, you know, I don't know whether the limb, um, elaborate on that more, but the cost, I don't know that we'll get cheaper material. What they'll try to do is to try to manage the, all of the costs that deals more so with, uh, materials, but also the construction costs and labor and those sorts of things. Um, and one of the things we're talking about is maybe not starting projects. Uh, also versus projects that are already underway, usually projects that are under, they're already underway. The contract is already in place, but I think he can, uh, give more examples as he's in the throes of it right now. There was a question in the chat that perhaps you could respond to. Reginald, it was, um, noting that in addition to sending information to the committee, uh, perhaps CDD could have some sort of dashboard on the forever home website. And I'm wondering if you would like to comment on progress on the website. Uh, yes, I will be glad to probably comment on it. We've actually, we'll have a dashboard and literally be a dashboard on the website that will show, uh, how we're accomplishing these goals. Uh, the goal is to unveil the website by the end of the month. Of course you all will be emailed. We thought we were going to have a demo at a meeting, but it's not, we're not that far advanced to be able to do that, but we are working with the city and consulted that presented the data for you, uh, Moss and Ross team, and they do have mockups of the website and it actually does have a dashboard. Uh, right now you can go to the city of Durham community development website, uh, to get updates. Um, and there are updates now on with projects that we've, uh, done and that's underway. The other immediate questions, uh, again, we can continue the conversations after all of the presentations, but we can move forward to the DHA, uh, presentation. Thank you so much. Good evening, everyone. So I, uh, my presentation will, of course, update you on where we are with the development work that's going on that's related to the bond, but also I wanted to cover some DHA things as well. So as soon as, uh, this black brings up the presentation, I will begin in earnest, but I wanted to talk a little bit about, uh, what's happening with our, our repairs and also to just give a little background on, what has been transpiring internally and stuff that people aren't going to see. Um, but we have been working on to try to deal with some of our systemic issues. Um, and then give a couple of dates and one I'll share now because it's not in the presentation because we just got word today. That, uh, the American rescue plan, uh, there's, there was $1.1 billion of housing towards vouchers that were issued to over 626, I believe housing authorities and DHA, uh, was able to secure 68 of those emergency housing vouchers. So those are for people that are homeless or at risk of homelessness. And we'll be working with the, uh, the COC, the, the continuum, continuum care group in which to, uh, um, disperse of those additional 68 vouchers. So we're very excited about being able to bring some additional resources to dorm. Next slide, please. Uh, you all have seen this lots of times. So next slide, please. So a little bit about what's been happening with DHA, uh, and addressing our property management issues, largely dealing with our work orders and just overall how we improve our property management. So back in October of, uh, this past year through December, we were doing a lot of work on sort of assessing our property management operations, assessing our staff. Um, in addition, because we had vacancies for a while, we, we, uh, were able to secure a temporary agency that had more or less specialized and sort of the property management arena. And they were able to do some backfilling for us while we went through this assessment and making sure that we were able to address those, those gaps in, in manpower. In January, we, uh, started doing testing and that testing was in sort of two categories. One was our property management, um, sort of administration, if you will. And two was regarding the maintenance. And there were six tests, uh, or six areas of focus, as you can see here on the management side, dealing with the management of our resident community, our, our maintenance management, maintenance occupancy, financial management, fair housing, and, and just overall decision making. And then on the maintenance side, it covers pretty much the basics, right? You know, electrical, plumbing, appliances, safety in general, uh, heat and hot water, uh, and additionally just general, general repairs. So these are all, um, very specific areas that we focused on in, in, in order for us to try to improve how we're delivering on the property management side. Next slide, please. From January through April, um, we, based on those assessments that were, that were given, we then started training our staff and focus on staff development. So based on the testing of those areas that you saw on the previous slide, um, we really focused in on fair housing, outreach and leasing, financial management, risk management, uh, safety and security, capital fund. That's of course a big part of, of how we deal with, uh, major, major repairs. Um, PIC, which is, um, uh, I knew I was going to forget that acronym, but the, the PIC program and the EIV, which is, uh, deals with our ability to see what the, uh, a person's financial situations are. Those are two systems that are HUD based that allows us to report to HUD, but also allows us to see what's happening with our, with our properties as well. Our residents, I should say, I should say as well. It allows HUD to assess us and to see the various things that are going on. So it's important that the information that goes into the PIC system, which looks at our, um, our, I'm going to say that the things that define what a resident's income is, their family composition, things of that nature and allows HUD to see how our families are. It also allows us to be able to analyze that data. And then the, uh, EIV deals again with how we look at our financial obligations that our residents have. Record keeping in general and then, and then reporting. Next slide, please. So this past month we then went back and reassessed our staff to see how well they did on the training that they were given. And since that time this month, we've been focused on additional training, dealing with rent calculations, customer service. And from all of that, we are now in the process of redoing our job descriptions. So we're going to incorporate new expectations for all of our staff based on all of what they've been trained on. And those will go into effect this month. And that'll, that is what our staff will be measured against going, going forward. The other important piece is that I think I've mentioned as before, we did a solicitation for additional contractors to help supplement and our existing workers and be able to allow us to get caught up on our backlog. And those contractors are, we, we had three respondents and of those three, only one was a full general contractor, but the other two were contractors that had areas of specialization. And so we're looking at how we could use those. We're going to continue to keep this solicitation open, however, so that if there are other qualified contractors that apply, we can then incorporate them as a part of our efforts as well. And I just wanted to mention that the testing that I talked about was all based on the National Center for Housing Management, which is a training organization that's been around since the, really the 1970s, specifically set up to address public housing authorities. And then another company called the Nail Ride Company, which again specializes in providing assistance to housing authorities, all based on HUD rules and regulations. Next slide, please. This is a, an overview of our work orders. And this is as of April because our reports are actually do this, this week for the month of May. And at the, at the end of March, we had 1128 work orders that were outstanding. We received in a month of May, another 1103 work orders, 56 of those were emergency work orders. And the staff was able to close 1335, leaving an end imbalance of 920. We will, now that we have some contractors on board, they've actually have been vetted and approved. We'll be able to get started in earnest on bringing that, that backlog of work orders down. Next slide, please. A little bit about the work order system again, this is just a recap of what we've talked about before, in terms of how the work order process is supposed to work. Residents calling those work orders to their respective management office and those work orders are prioritized based on three categories, emergency, which requires a 24 hour address, urgent and then routine. And based on that, that assessment, those work orders are prioritized. Resists are, could check on those work orders. Because they are supposed to be assigned a work order number, but a lot of the complaints that we've heard about the work order system saying that residents have called in work orders. They haven't gotten work order numbers. They've called in again and found out that the work orders were never inputted in the system. And so as a result of that, we procured a call center. So going forward, and this should be in place by July 1st, going forward, we're going to have a single line that residents can call. It will go to a third party company. That company will track those work orders. They'll give them work order numbers and they'll be in our system and it will avoid a lot of the inconsistencies that we've heard as complaints from our residents. So we're excited to finally have gotten through the procured process on this and we are supposed to be meeting with that vendor next week. And we can work through this. They said it should take less than two weeks to get the system up and running. And then we'll have one simple number for residents to call and we can better track our work orders and get better reporting. Next slide, please. Next, I want to shift to an issue that is of great concern to us all. And that is what's happening now that we are coming to the end of our moratorium. We have almost 1600 active leases between our public housing and affordable housing programs. Next slide, please. Of those 1600 people, almost 700 of them are behind in their rent. The total amount due is $940,000. And this is as of March. I don't have the updated numbers here, but this is as of March. I do know that those numbers did go up since March, but not as much as you might think, but they did go up some. Next slide, please. Of that, those almost 700 households, when you strip away fees and other charges, when you look at how much of that is strictly rent, it's well over $900,000. And of those 691, I believe the number of 691 households, about 161 of them actually owe less than $200. The 524 total $892,000 in total rent due. Next slide, please. When you look at the most recent funding that's coming from the federal government that is being administered by the Department of Social Services on behalf of the county in the city. Residents who owe rent can qualify for that assistance based on rent that's owed between the months of March of 2020 up until now. The challenge there is that there's a great deal of folks who owed rent prior to the beginning of the pandemic. And we'll talk about that in just a second. But right now for that period between March and March, and again, it doesn't include May or June, we have well over $700,000 that our public housing residents currently owe in back rent. Next slide. So 335 residents owed $187,000 prior to the pandemic. So those dollars that the county and the city have can't be used to deal with these arrears. That's just the way the federal policy is. Excuse me. And so what DHA has done, we have applied for a grant to hopefully cover all of this money as well. Next slide, please. And the DHA is launching what we're calling a fresh start program. And the objective here is that all of our residents who are currently behind in rent will literally get a fresh start. The combination of the DSS funding, plus what we hope to get from a grant, we want to make sure that our residents will have a clean slate going forward. We are bringing together a team of people right now. We have hired, in fact, they're going through training this week. I actually met them earlier this week. They're going through training to learn about DHA, to learn about the program that DSS has. And their objective will be to reach out to each of these 700 plus families and advise them on how they can apply for the funding from DSS. Rather they apply to DSS directly if they utilize the partners that DSS has created, or if they work just directly with the housing authority. Either one of those three opportunities are all three together. This housing specialist team is being charged with going out and connecting with those families to get them on the right footing and get them to a point where they have a zero balance with their remaining rent. Next slide, please. So we are currently getting the word out. So this is one of the forums in which to do that. We also, next slide, please. We also have included the county's flyer in the rent statements that went out for June. We will continue to have flyers in the rent statements over the next few months as needed. The team consists of three permanent staff. So even beyond this situation we have with the moratorium and the behind rent, but even going forward, we're going to have this team of people that'll be the residents to be able to reach out to them, to help them address whatever issues they may have and their ability to pay rent, help connect them with other resources, whether it's DSS, not pandemic DSS money, but other DSS money or some of the relationships we have with community partners and churches, and be able to work with those families to make sure that if they are having trouble paying rent, they will not be subject to eviction. And that is really the overall objective is that those families that have the inability to pay, we want to make sure that they're not subjected to eviction violence. And as I've always said, now if you're choosing not to pay, that's another story and we will pursue eviction for those families. Next slide, please. So with that I'm going to move on now to give everyone a quick update on where we are with our development activities. Next slide. So as you know, the J. J. Henderson renovation work has begun. The demolition of the auditorium space is underway. They already started on the first stack of units. So there'll be two units on each floor going up straight up vertically that the renovation work is actually going on. Actually underway currently. So they're expected to finish that first stack of units by July. And then they'll move on to stack number two and continue on until they complete the entire building. Their overall completion is expected to be finished by December of 2022. Next slide. And the new construction, which is currently being called Morehead seniors is scheduled to break ground in. July. Fall goes away. Thank you. Schedule to start in July. Oh, and I forgot to mention the WNBE numbers are looking pretty good. We still think they're going to do better with 30% on this new construction. I think it's 22 on the rehab. Those numbers are still coming in. And we expect them to continue to honor those, those numbers. The goal again was 30%. For, for our WNBE. Clients. Next slide, please. And the next. So moving on now to the Liberty and Main Street site. This is the. Community has right now 214 units on it. And again, just for quick reference. Phase one is the top right there. That is the, the site that it is. Funded by 9% low income housing tax credit. That is called the Elizabeth street apartments. Phase two was being called the comer street apartments. We were going to apply for 9% tax credit on that one. In this past month. But because of some of the things that were alluded to shortly ago in terms of rising costs. It was decided to instead of going for a 9%. To instead to go for a 4% low income housing tax credit and combine phase two and phase three. There'll be some cost savings there. It'll also gives us greater flexibility with the 4% tax credits. They don't currently exist with the 9% tax credits. And basically once you get a 9% tax credit, it is capped at that amount. But what a 4% tax credit deal. You can actually increase the number of. The volume of the tax credit that you apply for. If need be. Next slide, please. And again, this is the first phase of demolition. Demolition is scheduled to begin next month. And construction will start immediately thereafter. Next slide. And Elizabeth street apartments that was going to be. Excuse me. That's the first phase of this at 72 units. As mentioned, demolition expected to start next week. Construction to start right next month. I'm sorry. And construction is expected to start just after that. Next slide. And as I mentioned, we're going to start with demolition. And instead of. Phase two. Being the next project by itself. We're going to combine phase two and phase three. We'll get cost savings there. And that's one of the ways that we're looking at trying to address. These incredible rising cost of construction. I'll talk a little bit about that. A couple more slides. Next, please. And again, just a rendering of commerce street. You guys have seen this that first, we're going to look at this. We're going to look at this. We're going to look at this. We're going to look at this. We're going to look at this. This is 84 units. I believe phase three is scheduled to be the same. But now that we're going for the 4%, there's going to be another look at this. It's probably going to end up being about the same number of units, but we're looking at this. We may be able to get some greater economies of scale. Which may mean we get more units. Next slide, please. So let's talk about the. 8,000 pound elephant in the room, and it's going to be a little higher than what we would normally see for housing. And for what I say, housing for a personal home versus a construction loan on a project like this. And as of today, those rates are now 5.3% But the one thing that is less predictable than interest rates is what's going to be the same amount of revenue. And so it's going to be the same amount of revenue. And it's going to be higher than what you would normally see for housing. And for, what I say, housing for a personal home versus a rates is what's been happening with our construction cost. And so there is some data here showing you the kinds of increases that we've seen just in the last few months in some cases or at least the last few years. So siding 30 to 70% PVC, 160% increase just since the fourth quarter of 2020, similar with copper wire, 270% increase. And then when you look off to the right, you can see comparatively what's been happening with construction costs, virtually on a week by week basis, you're seeing rather incredible increases. So a year ago, and I'm not gonna read all these, I'll just pick one out, the first one. A year ago, random length dimension lumber was 342 and that number has risen to from, even from last week from 1174 up to 1263. And you can see this whole list of what's happening with these prices. As Director Johnson mentioned, we are hoping that this type of volatility and this incredible rise in prices is something that's temporary. Temporary in terms of how rapidly it's going up and then temporary in terms of hopefully it'll go down. Sometimes when things go up, they stop. And other times they actually go back down. We're hoping that they go back down. All the word about why the construction costs are so high has pretty much been laid at the hands of, well, supply has been disrupted because of the pandemic, weren't as many factories open, these sorts of things now demand has gone up so prices are going up. I am hoping that means that once supply starts to pick up again, that we'll see an easing on the demand numbers so that we can see prices come back down. But meanwhile, it means for projects like Elizabeth Street, that's about to go under construction. If you all recall, I believe it was the last meeting I mentioned that we asked for an additional $1.2 million because of increased in cost. So that raised our bond related funding for the Elizabeth Street first phase from $1.2 million to $2.5 million. And for DHA, that's the only funding that's been committed so far from the bond. That number has now gone up another half million dollars. So this is exactly the kind of thing that someone asked earlier about what's happening and what are we doing. So our development partners are looking at other ways in which to try to cut costs, including going back to our next slide, please. Actually, I think I have this sort of laid out. The efforts to address this is one, we've been working with the general contractors to try to get them to hold prices, meaning don't raise your prices, just stick with what you most recently gave us. And so it's kind of a domino effect because the general contractor has to beat up on the subcontractors who have to beat up on the suppliers and hopefully everyone wants to have some level of agreement. So that at the end of the day, at least the project can continue to move forward as opposed to just stopping altogether. The other thing is looking at ways in which we can try to absorb those price increases internally by doing things like deferring more of the developer fees or as I mentioned earlier, looking at ways of going back to the state and see if they will increase the amount of money that they make available. These are all ways in which they're being looked at. As we go forward, if this continues on, we're also looking at perhaps looking at different ways perhaps going about the funding of the project by using some of the more recent programs that HUD announced, something called a Section 18 Blend Demo Dispo, which is one of the lovely terms of HUD. It simply means that you can take some of the product, instead of it being a full rad deal, you can use this thing called the Section 18 Blend and that will allow us to use the vouchers to help fund the project in a slightly different way. And in some cases, you get higher rents for the voucher program than you would under the normal rad process. So there are no exact answers right now. Everyone across the country is struggling with this issue. We are hoping, for example, that there might be more federal relief in some way in terms of making more tax credit dollars available to help in dealing with this gap. The good news is that this is not a dorm issue. This is a national issue, which means that it needs national attention. I was on an industry call last week and we had some folks from HUD on and we asked a question in terms of what is the federal government thinking about in terms of addressing this. And frankly, personally, I'm a little worried about what happens once the infrastructure bill gets passed. Will that add additional pressure on prices because you're seeing a lot more demand on construction? So these are all questions that are yet to be determined. But we are going to press ahead with this site. The one thing that's been clear anyway is that prices are not coming down anytime soon and we need to get the work going and get it started. And hopefully there'll be additional relief that's gonna come at the federal level and at the state level that helps fill these gaps that we're seeing. Next slide please, which I think is my last. I wanted to also mention that we are releasing the RFP to request for proposals for the remaining three sites of the DHA downtown and neighborhood plan. That would include the DHA office space, which should yield about 290 additional units, the Forth Hill Heights site, which should yield about 500 units and the Bay at play site, which should yield at least 500 units plus some additional retail commercial, hopefully. This should be released tomorrow. If all goes well, I have a little bit of homework to do tonight to make sure that we can get that out. And there'll be a 90 day response time. The difference between this and what we did the first time around is that we did a request for qualifications, which was a simpler process. We merely asked if anyone was interested in being a development partner of DHA, did you speak to what your qualifications are? But in this case, we're asking for actual proposals. So we get to see full blown proposals by interested respondents that lays out very specifically number of units, costs. They have to come back with what their financing structure will be. All of those things that gives you the opportunity to evaluate whether or not they're going to be able to put forth the kinds of developments that we all hit hope for. We're gonna be sending this out to a bunch of developers who've contacted us over the last couple of years interested in this. We'll be posting it on our website. And if anybody's interested, of course, we could send it to them directly. Next slide, please. Yep, that's the last one. So that concludes my presentation. Thank you all. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Scott. And we now have time for some questions from the committee. I have a question. The money that Mr. Scott said that the Durham Housing Authority was using it for repairs. Does the bond, is that money coming from the bond or is that coming out of capital or the operation fund? Yes, it is coming from operating dollars, right? We have funding that is kind of routine maintenance things that is supposed to cover. And then we have the capital fund, which is for big ticket items. So we will be utilizing both of those. We are also going to have evaluations by outside professionals that make a determination of what your top priorities are in addition to what we're getting from our residents or what we're getting from our staff. To prioritize what our major capital repairs will be. We have about $5.7 million for all of our units, which works out to about $2,500 per unit. And that's it. So we will have to prioritize what our capital expenditures will be. And then for the routine things, we'll continue to use our normal operating dollars to address those. We are also very hopeful that as a part of the infrastructure bill, there is a current proposal for something in the neighborhood of about $40 billion for specifically for housing authorities. We don't know how much of that would come to housing authorities as capital fund versus some kind of grant program or what have you. But we are optimistic that with the passing of an infrastructure bill, there will be additional dollars that will be made available to housing authorities that wouldn't normally be there. So we have some hope and optimism around that. We will have a plan in place that will make sure that whatever funding is available we'll be able to quickly put that funding to use. I'm hopeful that it'll be much like the American Recovery Act funding where HUD provided funding to housing authorities and they gave them three years to spend it, but they didn't get in the way in the way that HUD tends to do. The biggest challenge, frankly, was trying to marshal up the contractors to be able to do the work. And I'm not talking about here in Durham because I wasn't in Durham at the time. This is when I was in both Richmond and Baltimore around that time. But we're hoping there's at least some element of the funding that is now targeted for housing authorities that gives us the kind of flexibility to jump in and take care of these major capital needs that our properties have. Okay, if no one else has a question. I have a question for Mr. Scott. Go ahead. Hey, Mr. Scott. I just wanted to ask where did you move the residents from Liberty Street and have they all been moved? Yes, so there are, I think there were, there were 21 units that were occupied, I believe. And I can't remember the breakdown. I gave that a previous presentation. I don't have those at the top of my head, but there were 21 units that were established at the Willis Street Apartments. We had, I believe, 11 residents who moved to Willis Street. We had other residents who moved to other DHA properties. So I think we had three families that moved to Laurel Oaks because they had larger bedroom needs. And we had a couple of families that actually relocated on site. And going forward, I should mention, each phase of work that has to get done, as part of the approval process that HUD requires, we have to establish a relocation plan. The Housing Authority has brought on a relocation company that is working with our families directly. It's not the one that was on JJ Henderson, for you all that remember that. It's another company that we have. And so for each one of these phases, like we talked about phase two and phase three, we have to produce a relocation plan for where all those families will relocate to. The other thing I should mention, in case you all haven't been on Main Street in a while, the 300 block of East Main Street is directly across the street from our office, which is owned by the county. Construction has started there. First, they're building the parking deck, and then there's gonna be housing that's gonna be built on that site. DHA is gonna have, I believe, 35 units there as well. That becomes a relocation site for our residents that are also at the Liberty and Main Street sites. And then the 500 block of Main Street, which is going to be built after this phase is done, or after the parking is done, that also is where we'll be able to relocate families too. So the promise, and what we're doing is that all 447 units that were in downtown will remain in the downtown area. We will disperse them out a little bit because we've always talked about having a mix of incomes on our sites. But all of those families will be housed in the downtown area. And there was a presentation I did a couple of meetings ago where I kind of showed how we were looking to place those families in and around the downtown area. So you have the 300 block, the 500 block Willard Street, and then the housing that actually gets built on the sites themselves will house some of those folks that get relocated. And don't forget the JJ Henderson new construction is also a location where we'll be moving some folks too. Thank you, Ms. Scott. I think I missed that second meeting. That's fine. I can make sure as you get that presentation, as you can at least see those slides and see how that sort of works out. Mr. Scott, am I correct in thinking that isn't that Google Terrace going to be renovated also or reconstructed or, and if so, the money that's being spent in doing repairs, isn't that kind of like working backwards sort of speak? Because if you're going to tear down some of those buildings and build new ones, I'm not understanding the, I'm understanding the reason for immediate emergency repairs that need to be done, but to spend all that money, couldn't that be used toward renovating them? Well, first and foremost, we want to make sure that the residents that live in our communities are living in decent safe housing. So it seems counterintuitive to say, we're going to invest in doing repairs and those sorts of things because we're making plans to do something down the road. But as Director Johnson mentioned, the lead up to getting a project off the ground is several years. And we want to make sure that the residents that are living in any of our communities have decent units. So we'll invest whatever is necessary to make sure that those units are repaired in improper order. And we wouldn't do something that's unnecessary, but we want to make sure that we're doing everything that is necessary to make sure that those units are in working order. So we wouldn't do a repair that is not necessary today, but you might do five years from now. But we want to make sure our units are all decent and safe. So whatever we invest is going to make sure our families are in good shape. And then when it comes to the point that we get a project developed, and I mean, think about what it's taken to get our first project off the ground. We started this process in 2017. We announced our plan in January of 2019 and we're just getting to the first construction here in 2021. So it's a long lead up to getting a project from concept and financing and all those things to actually getting to the point of actually starting work. And then you can kind of say, okay, these are things that we probably will need to move people for instead of spending money on them. But we also have to have a place for them to go. And that's another major challenge is that every one of our families still have to be housed somewhere. And so the ability for us to move people around is limited by vacant units that we have. So it's a mix of we want to make sure we're not leaving more units vacant than we have to so that we can house as many people as possible until we find ways in which to do, ways in which to be able to house people and work this magic of, it's gonna take a few years, what repairs are needed versus what repairs we'd like to do. And you have to kind of mix all that up and do what's in the best interests of our families. Thank you. Mr. Scott, this is the slide you was referencing too. Yeah, this shows the demolition of the first phase. So that's eight buildings and it's 36 units, 22 of those buildings were, those units I should say were occupied. And yes, so seven families moved to Wheeler Street, eight went to Laurel Oaks, five were on-site transfers and two went to other DHA sites. So thank you, Ms. Blacker for that. Mr. Scott. This is Charles Martin. Some of the RFPs that you just talked about, like the fitted places, some of the other facilities, with the increase in construction costs, is that gonna impact when those RFPs have been hit the street? I mean, I don't give any thought that they've been holding them up to see if costs will ever come down in because it's probably difficult when people responding adequately, not knowing what the cost may be. Yeah, there is of course the possibility of that, but again, because the development timeline is so long, they will look at things as they are now and like we all are doing, they'll try to read the tea leaves to see what may happen, but it's the responsibility of that developer to determine how you're going to be able to finance these development deals given the market conditions. Because what if things don't get any better than what they are now? How would you make this project work? If things get better, then you contingent for that and you say, okay, if we have a 10% reduction in material costs, then this is how we can make these deals work, or this is how many units we might be able to build. So that's why it's important that you have experienced development partners who understand how to navigate these waters. Difficult times like this are not, I mean, this is unusual, but it's not impossible. It's not something that hasn't happened before, right? We've seen high inflation markets. We've seen high prices and spikes and things like that before. Experienced developers are gonna be able to build into contingencies necessary to say, today this is what it looks like, tomorrow if these things happen, this is what it could look like, et cetera. We're giving them 90 days to respond. So they'll have plenty of time to try to figure out, and hopefully we'll know a little bit more about what's happening at the federal level as well. And all of that can be factored into their proposal submittals. Are there any additional questions about either presentation from the committee? You have some in the chat, from members. Tim and Nicole both had questions. I would just suggest that they unmute and ask their questions directly. I was just curious you were talking about developer fees and I'm not clear on a project like this. Like what is the typical percentage rate that a developer fee might be of the total project cost? Tuesday is somewhere between eight and maybe 10%. Cool, thanks. I believe Nicole is talking, but you're on mute. I hit the wrong button. My question was really on, you talked about those individuals who are behind on their rent. And I think you mentioned that DHA residents are not eligible for that housing rental assistance program. I'm assuming that's the emergency one. And does that mean that all DHA residents aren't eligible or just those that were in the rears prior to COVID? It's not so much the residents, it's just any particular resident who had a rears prior to COVID. So that doesn't mean you're not eligible for post COVID fee. So it's just really, let's say you owed $100, but 20 of it was before the pandemic period. So you could go after the 80, but the 20 you wouldn't be able to get from the DSS funding. I think John had a question at one time in the chat. Well, yeah, my question is not so much for Anthony is really for all the panelists or for discussion item is that we have these means to communicate with the citizens of Durham. And it just seems that, I mean, it's been in the news about the rising costs and all and those of us in the real estate and building industries are quite aware of the escalating costs. But just wondering Anthony, the way you laid out how working with the developers to try to mitigate the risks of all the increase in prices. Just wondering how we get this story out so that we can keep folks informed as to the waters that we're navigating. So it's kind of just a general question really. I feel a need to really hear from our communication folks really about how to take all this information and translate it in a way that we can tell the story. Yeah, I think that's a good idea. And also I just think it's important to understand the difference between a project that is literally about to break ground in a matter of weeks versus one that you're just starting kind of to Jarvis's question earlier. So people are much more motivated to work with you when they know that that close to the project going forward they'd much rather see it happen than the whole thing gets scrapped and then no one's at work. So that's a little bit of a motivation on the side of them. And then the other story is will people kind of to Jarvis's question will people be interested in jumping at all knowing that prices are spiraling the way they are? And again, that's where I think the more experienced developer is going to be able to create contingencies to figure out how they might navigate that including saying, we might think we want to wait for three months before we want to jump in because we think this that or the other might happen. So, but I do think that's a good idea in terms of getting a word out about what people are doing and how they are showing that they're not just kind of sitting on their hands but they're trying to do everything possible. And maybe that can be helpful in motivating our state and our federal authorities to try to make some changes and give some relief as well. It's also a matter of if there was a need for a supplemental bond issue that we have well documented, well explained and kind of provide a history of the process and the project because it's so vital what we're doing. And Anthony, just you're doing a great job. You better not go anywhere. We need you through and through, see this through. Mom, does y'all want to keep me around? Okay. All right, I see a couple more questions in the chat. One is what is the cost of the third party that will take work orders? I don't know that off the top of my head. Okay. And the other is, does the consolidation of phases at Liberty Street and management challenges on construction costs impact the schedule for demo at 515 East Main? Not the first phase, it will not impact that. The second and third phase will probably have the same window for the second phase. In other words, had we applied for 9% and was successful we would know in August that we were awarded that 9% task credit and then they would have likely started in probably first or perhaps second quarter of 2022. So with us moving to a 4% because it is not tied to the same time frames that the 9% are that is 4% you can submit twice a year and 9% you get to submit once a year. Though they are likely to be on the same schedule starting work in June or July of 2022. The one challenge will be making sure we have a relocation plan that is appropriate for all families because you're gonna have more families that will be moving. That's the one thing that will have to get worked out. Thank you. And a follow-up to that question is will Oldham Towers be torn down this summer? No, Oldham Towers is never scheduled to be torn down this summer. The next phase of demolition was going to be the rest of Liberty, the Liberty Street Apartments. Oldham Towers is part of phases or 519 East Main is part of phases three and four, excuse me, four and five. Are there any additional questions from the committee regarding either presentation? If not, we do for the first time one of these sessions have a bit of time about 15 minutes for questions from attendees of the meeting outside of the committee members. I know that we do have a similar to how council meetings are run and a two minute max on the question and conversation for each one. And the easiest way to manage this might be to just state your intent to ask a question in the chat. Is that possible, Juliette, for them? Yes, if they tell us in the chat they have a question I can let them in. Okay, so are there any questions from the public at this time? You actually only have four, I can let them all in if you like. Okay, that should be fine. Okay, they all have access to come in and just need to raise their hand. Okay, thank you. Juliette, you may have to let them know where to go to find how to raise their hand. They actually have it. Helen Featherston has her hand up. Are you ready for? Yes, she should be ready. I thought that I couldn't see that. Yes. Hi, my question is I'm always confused about what is affordable housing? What's the dollar amount? Because when I think affordable I'm thinking low income but is that, what is affordable? I mean, what's a dollar amount? Reginald Johnson, I'll take an answer to that. We talked about that in one of our presentations. So the affordable housing has two bases. One is that person should not pay more than 30% of the household income and housing costs and it's also on the basis of household income and that's household income also limited by housing size, household size. And so there's a chart that I'll be glad to share with you. It's actually on our website. It was part of our presentation but it's household income, household size and also the percentage of income that a person pays on housing cost. And so that's how we determine what is affordable housing. It's a specific different, thank you. So here we go, the chart that's above us, that's on the slide, I'm sorry. As an example, the household size is across the top. The household income as a percentage of the area median income is across on the left side. So 80% AMI for family four is a household income maxed out at $72,000 for $700. Okay, so I'm looking at the chart and I'm thinking mainly about low income seniors for instance. So if we're talking about a household of one, then is that their income, they should not spend more than, let's say you say 30% more than $19,100 on housing? No, so this chart reflects the income only. So this the household income, so going back to your example for a household of one, at 30% AMI, the top household income is $19,100. So it's just a number of things, it's just a number of things that the household income was a year. Okay, and that's what Durham is based on, not the 50 and not the 80 but the 30. Well, it depends upon the program and the housing, but when you talk about affordable housing, there's no question about it with federal policies and actually state, it cannot exceed 80% of the area median income period. So when we talk about the housing authority, most of the residents and the living housing authority, Mrs. Scott will probably say they had 15% AMI. I think that's its average. Okay, all right, thank you. You're welcome. We have additional questions from the public. Then I'll jump at once. Well, in the absence of additional questions from both the committee and from the public, we do want to thank community development and DHA representatives for your presentations today and for the information you shared and for answering all of the questions that have come across, we really appreciate it. We will move forward to our wrap up now, just a reminder that our next meeting is currently scheduled for September 2nd. So we hope to see everyone there. We also have a meeting scheduled for October 7th at present. And are there any other items Diane that we should cover before closing out? Just to note that probably at that September meeting, we will have a discussion about whether to return to in-person meetings. The city has been asking co-chairs whether we want to allow the committee to vote. So we should probably be really clear about whether majority will rule on that or whether we can go to hybrid or just to share your thoughts. So again, we'll do that in September. We do plan on having another period of public comment at the end of the meeting. And lastly, look for an email from the community development department on when the communication site goes live with the dashboard. So we'll look forward to that at the end of the month and Juliette also put in the chat a friendly reminder on the site that has the current information available. So thank you all again. We really appreciate it. Have a very good and safe summer. Thanks.