 We're going live in one minute. I'm getting ready to hit the record, but it's now six o'clock. Hello everyone. We will call this meeting to order. Thank you everyone for joining us on this. I believe our sixth public meeting of the Affordable Housing Implementation Committee, October 7th, 2021. We have a lot to cover in this meeting for the agenda. So we are going to dive right in. Per the last meeting, I just want to give a super quick note to let everyone on this call know, again, that the website for tracking projects, et cetera, related to the affordable housing bond is up. So be sure to visit the foreverhomedurham.com website for additional info on projects and activities. That's foreverhomedurham.com. But let's dive right in with Roll Call. Hey Roll Call, Stella Adams. Present, I'm sorry. LaVon Barnes. LaVon Barnes. Laura Bede. Diane Cotate. Here. Lucille Constantine. It's Nicole Diggs. Here. Tiffany Elder. Here. Tammy Farrell. Nicole Furnace. Courtney James. Here. I, Jarvis Martin. Here. Rita R. McDaniel. Joan Parker. Is it Joan or John? I'm sorry. Is it John? Yes. Okay, John Parker. I'm sorry. Okay. Beena Sanders. Here. Timothy Skalman. Here. Angela D. Beak Lewis. Attendance is completed. Well, today's agenda will include quite a bit. We have presentations from community development staff from Durham Housing Authority and quite a few other items. I won't run through that agenda list given that I know that we are a little pressed for time. But I will walk through the ground rules here. To start, please show respect for others and for all opinions. Presume goodwill, be fully present. One speaker at a time. At the end of every presentation, if we are ahead of schedule, we will have time for one to two questions from the committee. All other questions will be held to the conversation that we have on the agenda for discussion toward the end at 730. Please use specific examples. And committee members, feel free to use the raise hand option to let it be known if you have a question or a comment following a presentation and enjoy the process. Thanks, Tiffany. Next, we're gonna move to minutes and we do have some changes to record tonight. We also wanted to do a friendly reminder to people that, and I'm gonna read you a piece from the bylaws, but we're now wanted to remind everyone that we need to have notice or a request for an excused absence for at least 48 hours prior to the time of the meeting. That's in section two, absence on page four of the bylaws. I won't read the whole section, but that is what it says. The member shall notify the co-chairs of the office of the city clerk of their impending absence at least 48 hours prior to the time of the meeting. So just thank you all. And Juliette, I did notice that Laura joined us and should be recorded as present. So for the minutes that were sent out, the minutes of the September 2nd meeting, we wanted to also note that Nicole Furness was absent and under section four under approval of the minutes, we wanted to change the word approved to moved. And then under section six, somehow the forever home website got deleted. So we just wanna add that back in foreverhomedurham.com at the end of that section. And then lastly, under the section seven DHA property updates, second sentence, we just wanna change have to are. And Juliette was aware of most of those in advance. So apologies that we didn't get, anyways, so at this point, I don't know if anyone else has any additional changes to the minutes, and otherwise I'd look for a motion to approve them with the changes as noted. Lucia has a hand up. Thank you. Hey, Lucia, go ahead. Hey, I noticed that it said self annexation and I think it should be self attestation. Oh, right. Thank you. Do you remember exactly where that was? I didn't see that. I think toward the top when we discussed emergency rental assistance, right? But I don't have the particular section. I have it in front of me and I will find it and I will send it to Julia in the chat, okay? Make note of that. So thank you for noticing that. We had emailed some of these in advance. Okay, is there a motion to approve with the, I believe that's five changes. I can make a motion. Thank you, Courtney. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Nicole. Okay, at this point, could everybody unmute and all those in favor of approving the September 2nd meeting minutes with the changes as noted? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, great. Thank you all so much. Back to you, Tiffany. Perfect. And our first presentation will be a housing project update by community development department staff. Greetings, everyone. Reginald Johnson, Director of the Department of Community Development, Community Development Department, I should say. Glad to be before you. Hope everybody's doing well and being safe. One of the things as I was thinking about what we've covered thus far and sharing information with you as well in terms of our development and what's been progress we've made and how we are shaping up recording the progress that we've made. But I hadn't really talked squarely about the challenges of COVID impact on development here in Durham and the projects that we have and for have a home Durham. And so that's one of the things that I thought would be the theme for this particular presentation is to share with you what are the impacts of COVID-19, the COVID-19 pandemic on affordable housing development in Durham. And so what we'll do is talk through some of the projects. You just have a few slides, just a short presentation and just give you a basic overview of what the impact has fortunately in Durham. And with the projects we have overall, I think we've fared well, but we have have some bumps in the road and we'll talk about those. So if we go to the next slide. So in general about COVID-19 impacts, of course, everyone knows about the pandemic, but what happens on the ground is with respect to the impacts on development kind of range in six areas that have, do have impacts, direct impacts and financial impacts, quite frankly. One of them is the general contractor availability. As you know, contractors, our work has been progressing during COVID, but and it's been very tight. And then some contractors are having challenges with the labor market. And so having available contractors to be it on projects has been a challenge and being available at particular times for projects. And then a lot of times the general contractors have the subs that they work with and that's been impacted availability as well. And that can have an impact on the, if you're trying to do a project, whether you can, your general contractor can get the subs that they need. And of course that can have an impact on the project schedule, of course. And we all know that the saying that time is money. And so that does can have a financial impact. And then I'm sure everyone has talked about or heard about the construction costs in terms of cost has been increased. And here's an example that lumber, the cost of lumber has increased 250% during COVID. While we expect it to go down as the situation changes, I don't know that it will get back to pre-pandemic levels. So that's something to also keep in mind and then the other pieces steel as well as copper also have been increasing costs. And then also we have supply chain disruptions. So for example, when the COVID got into place, a lot of people thought that a lot of manufacturers thought that everything was going to stop on some places it did. But in terms of, for example, wiring and the people who make wiring, manufacturing wiring, the plants are stopped on the manufacturing. And not all of that causes supply chain disruptions. I don't know if you had a chance to watch, I can't remember one of the national news just yesterday and they talked about all of the tankers that were off the port of coast of Los Angeles out of the side of the port. They were like 72 of the huge tankers that were loaded because they couldn't get in with various supplies and impact as has. That's what we're talking about when we talk about supply chain disruptions. You're not able to get the products that you need when you need them. And when you do, you have to pay more cost for them than you would normally pay during the pandemic. And then the other pieces are a straight financial impact in terms of the interest rate volatility. We've seen some of that. Fortunately, our projects generally have been able to weather the storm pretty good with the low income, particularly with the low income housing tax credits, but it has been a challenge and they have had to do some restructuring. Next slide of the deals, restructuring of the deals. These are some of the projects that we've had going on during the pandemic and we talked about these before. One was the Farrington, one is the Farrington Road project, which is now named Crescent. It's a Lawrence Street residential developer. That project fortunately was able to lock in some tax credits at the probe at a good time. And so they were able to weather that storm and they also had a deal where they were initially in their plans, they had structured parking, but they moved the surface parking, which is cheaper. And so they were able to handle the buffer, the increase in construction costs. Ross Road is another project for reinvestment partners. We're gonna talk a little bit about that in detail for this and this presentation, but they have had some challenges and a dramatic increase in cost that has affected the rehabilitation project to those 42 units. Then of course they had the Durham Housing Authority projects, J.J. Henderson, new construction, J.J. Henderson, Tyler, we have in Elizabeth Street. Those have done some value engineering and had to do some deal structuring changes. They had a housing authority to talk a little bit more about the impacts of COVID, but they've been able to still move forward, but it does, did require a lot of imagination and movements of the deal structure to be able to weather the storm, weather the pandemic, but they've made progress. Ashton Place, Ashton Place is the new development just for awarded tax credits for Ashton Place 51 senior apartments next to Willard Street, next to the bus station. So that's an example because that project was set during pandemic and it's new construction, their plans incorporate all of the new increases. And so the amount of money that they have that we are providing, they have good relevant and current costs costing. And so they should not be impacted unless anything something happens dramatically. Then Hardy Street project, which is also DHSC and self-help, they were able to lock in pricing. But fortunately, they were able to add 13 more units to their project with them able to lock in pricing. And so that was good. So those are general things. I would say one example in Willard Street is not on here. And we probably should have put Willard Street on here that just had the dedication. But here's an example I think everybody can relate to. They were able, as we were going into the pandemic, had all of their supplies, equipment locked in in terms of under contract already. So that was to their credit. But you also do know that suppliers were just not honoring all of their contracts. They were saying, yeah, I'll agree to pay, you agree to buy these refrigerators for me at this cost. But now there's a shortage on refrigerators. I can sell them higher. And so I'm not gonna honor the contract that I had with you. And so, and they break the contract. And so that also contributes to the host supply chain. Actually, in the case of Willard Street, and this is very relevant. An example, they were supposed to put black and white refrigerators in the apartments of black and white appliances. And actually the black and white appliances weren't available at the time. Their supplier said, well, we have steel appliances. And so we'll give you steel appliances instead of not breaking the contract. So that's how the apartments at Willard Street, the 82 units that have steel appliances in them. And so that was up to their credit. But I think that's an example of how this is real. And it can relate to everybody, because I think everybody knows about steel and different between steel and a different color refrigerators. But I mean, that's part of the, to their credit on that one. Next slide. One of the challenges that we had, and I talked about this earlier mentions earlier was the Ross Road project, which was by Reinvestment Partners, which was a real big facilitation of 42 units at 28116 Ross Road. Just to refresh everybody's memory, that's 42 units and nine units were set aside for households owning 30% of lower area median income in rain. 33 units were 60% and below. And the initial contract used financing initially was 2.3 million from the city, 1.4 million supportive housing loan from the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency. And Reinvestment Partners also made a contribution to that. Next slide. So the Ross Road, and that's the reason we call it a perfect storm experienced the dual impacts of the uncertainties with the rehab projects and the worst of the COVID-19 cost increases. Unfortunately, we discovered asbestos into, they discovered asbestos into building primarily in the tape on the wall board, which led to a significant increase in the scope of the rehabilitation work. So there was asbestos, they discovered it, but it was on the tapes, they thought it was on the tapes. But it determined that it was a little bit further than that. The developer had to build the project, bid the project out multiple times, going back to one of the things we started with before in order to secure sufficient bids, as required by city procurement policies for the city-funded projects. The bids received were significantly above the original construction costs because of the changes in the scope and the construction cost increases during the pandemic. Then overall, the construction cost increased by 3.7 million, leading to a request to the city for an additional total city investment of 2.3 million from the city and moved it to six million, six million dollars. Next slide, which is quite a bit and abnormal. Next slide. So we've learned some lessons from this project, particularly as it relates to COVID, but also because this was a rehab project. Remember in new construction, you're always dealing with current prices, with rehabs. You need to make sure that you, if you're gonna need to tear it down to the studs, that that's what the scope of the project is. So we are proposing to support the increase of the Ross Road project in order to complete the project because it's already underway. We're about halfway finished and people are still living in the development that a low to moderate income. One of the things that we're gonna do, what's gonna be key is that we're gonna change how we evaluate rehabilitation projects and the application process going forward. We are going to, as in particular for building is 30, 25, 30 years old, that they plan on doing a good rehab and not doing a rehabilitation, a short scale rehabilitation to get the building working properly or rehab properly. Next slide. Ross Road. This is, I think I've gone over this slide. So next slide. Gone over this slide. So here we go. Nick, go back one slide. So if you could move forward. Here we go, here we go. So construction costs are not expected to return to the pre-pandemic levels. So they went up, in the case of lumber we use that example, it went up 250%. It's probably gonna come down, but it's not gonna come down 250%. It might come down 100 or maybe 150, but it's still gonna be higher than the level that it was at the pre-pandemic level. And since the amount of debt affordable projects can carry is kept, the increase in cost will result in a larger gaps in the need for more subsidy. Remember when we started off the meetings, we talked about our role in providing gap subsidy, gap financing to meet the gap. So the city is increasingly trying to encourage the development of extremely affordable units serving households at below 30% AMI, which have substantial highest subsidy needs. Currently the actual amount of the subsidy per unit is higher than what was initially projected in the forever home-during program was developed. And if the need for higher levels of subsidy per unit continue, the city will be able to fund fewer units. At the current rate of subsidy, staff estimates that approximately 330 fewer family, multiple family rental units than originally projected would be funded. Basically what's that saying, if these costs persist, that it will have an impact on our overall goals over the blunt length of the forever home-during program. Next slide. So with that, I just wanted to share that information with you to give you a share impact on COVID and its impact on our housing development. And I'm standing for any questions. Thank you. Thank you so much for that. I saw a few questions at the chat and some hands raised. I think Venice was the first one to raise a hand. But I think her question's in the chat as well. Venice, if you want to unmute yourself to ask, that'd be fine. Yes, from my understanding, I had spoke to someone and a home depot as well as Lowe's. That was recently, maybe like two weeks ago that the cost of lumber has gone down. So we keep hearing during the housing meeting that the cost of lumber has gone up to prevent some of these projects or people from getting decent housing. So I would like to know, what is the projected cost of lumber so that those who want to be able to live nice and affordable housing, that the projects will be completed? So that's a good question. What I would say we can provide just an example of what the increase has been. I don't have that at the top of my head. But what I can say is that lumber and actually a housing authority may, staff may be able to share because they might be a little bit closer than I. The part of lumber has increased. Yes, it has gone down. But the question is, is it going to go down to where it was before the pandemic? Did I lose you on that? No, you haven't. Okay. And so we can, and our budgets are based on, were initially based on where it was before the pandemic. So even if it increases, you know, 50%, which is still a lot, that does have, my point was that, that still has an impact on our overall budgets. And then I would also say, you know, where the, I'll stop there. I'll stop there. I don't wanna confuse, we can get some numbers on numbers to, you know, kind of really, really quantify to give examples. And if I can just chime in even for further clarity, you know, if everyone keeps in mind that the housing bond and the projected units were estimated back in 2019 when the bond was passed. So that's before a sharp increase in a slight decline. So again, just like Reginald just mentioned, it has come down, but it's nowhere near where it was in 2019 when the estimated number of units based on the housing bond dollars was projected. And John, there's a comment that you have in the chat. Did you want to mention that or we can move to- Well, I just said, if you can find the historical charts of lumber right online, it's pretty easy to find, but it really did spike up in 2021 and has gone down, the variance has gone down significantly, but it definitely is higher than where it was when the bond issue passed. And Miss Della? My question was, where are we in terms of we had to like, if we're just talking about lumber, where would we, what are our contracts at now? What's the assumption? So the assumption right now is those are actual costs that for these projects. So what we're talking about is what the over over the five years will be that we might have to look at less units. Fortunately for new construction, the cost is built in because they present numbers. One reason we talked about Ross Road is because there was a dramatic increase in the cost. If that makes sense. I don't know if that's answering your question. Reginald, when you talk about the 330 units, are you talking about the preservation of affordable units? Which is, I'm assuming that the Ross Road would, because it's a rehab, as well as the J.J. Henderson rehab, that those renovations are included in the preservation of affordable housing number, or am I incorrect in that assumption? Are the whole 330 units coming out of the preservation number, or are they coming out of both the preservation and the new construction numbers? No, that's actually a good question. Very good question. I'm going to ask Karen Lotto to elaborate on that. Good evening. So to answer your question, Ms. Adams, what we did was take an average of the per unit subsidy that we estimated across the board for multifamily new construction and preservation and said, okay, that was what we estimated back in 2019. What is it running out now if we average all of our projects? And then said, okay, if this average persists, then what is going to be the impact on our ability to subsidize? So it is an average of both new construction and preservation. I think that that's a dangerous way to do it because we could lose all of the home ownership opportunity that could all come out of that one. I mean, with the renovation, I think that that's where the problem is, is in the increase and the increased cost, the amazingly high cost on the rehab side, and that maybe we should absorb those 330 units there unless you can document that they're coming out of the new construction. Well, I think it's really important. For example, I think it's really important that we preserve those very low income pieces. But I think we ought to, particularly, but we ought to be creative about what preservation is, right? And so perhaps where we could absorb some of this is in the long-term tax assistance program grant that where we preserve, where we go, where we have the tax grants that allow people to remain in their homes because they're not being forced to sell, that we maybe kind of ensure that we have some kind of preservation program for these low and very low income people and try to document that as a counterbalance to these construction costs because we can't afford, nobody is a stronger supporter of very low income and preserving existing affordable housing than I am, but you can't double the cost on a rehab from 2.3 to $6 million and be fiscally sound. And so we have to be thinking outside of the box about how other ways we can preserve affordable housing like through the tax grant program and other means of preserving units, not just the rehab of units, but also the preservation of existing home ownership opportunities, the existing, where we were talking about maybe new home ownership, maybe the preservation of very low income home ownership to counterbalance this thing because you can't, we have to have units for 30% and below median, but we can't do it at 600, I mean, $6 million at a doubling the cost on a rehab, just can't do it. So I would say Ms. Adams, I totally agree with you in this way. One of the things we learned, we can't afford one of these again. There's no question about that. We do understand and committed to rehab, but we have to be careful how we enter rehab projects and we won't enter one like we did with this one again. That's assured, but preservation is important, but we have to be, as you say, creative in how we approach it and definitely agree with you on that. Diane, I think I saw your hand up. Yeah, thanks. Reginald, I was curious, has the department anticipated or thought about using federal COVID relief dollars to deal with some of these cost increases so we don't, so we are still able to meet our goals? So I would say that the money, COVID money that we have of jurisdiction over, you can kind of be on some shaky ground. That's number one. The cities COVID, we don't have jurisdiction over that. That's a whole other part of the ARP funding. We are using some of our CDBG funding to be able to cover parts of this cost, increasing this particular project as well as some funds from the affordable housing bond. But that's probably the best answer I can give right now. Perfect. Well, we are right on schedule for our next agenda item, which is a DHA property update. And if there are any follow-up questions from this or any of the other presentations, we can catch those when we get to the discussion, committee discussion at 7.30. Give me one second, Mr. Scott. So good evening, everyone. We will, as the presentation comes up, we're gonna be able to give you some updates on a couple of things. One being where we stand on residents who are behind in ranch. And then two, we'll talk more about our development activities. I don't know if most of you have paid attention to the news lately with respect to the emergency rental assistance program. Excuse me, it's being administered by the Durham County Department of Social Services. They have paused the acceptance of applications right now. They haven't necessarily said that's it, but they paused right now. They're just trying to play catch-up with the number of applications they've received. And we hope that once that moves a little further along, they may be able to re-accept or should be able to accept more applications, but that's really gonna depend on what the status is on the number of applications. The amount really is the key. The amount of money that's being requested for people that are behind in their rent and what's available. So we can give you, however, though, an update on where we are with our applications so far. If you could go to the next slide, please. And the next one. This is a little, I don't know if it's the same on you all screen as mine, but it's like it's a little too large. Juliette, is it possible to resize that? If you could go to the third slide. So where we stand right now, we've actually just got some updated numbers. Go back one, please. So as we've been talking about, we've had nearly 700 families that are currently behind in their rent. And we've applied for funding so far of about 390 or so of those families. And thus far of those 390 or so families, the updated numbers that we have here are that we've received about, I'm sorry, we applied for $648,000 in rents that are going to rears. And that's out of a total, and this is based on some earlier numbers. So these numbers are going to change because the original number of families that we had, 691, were based on early in the year numbers. So we've gotten other people that have fallen into some of these rent or a rear situations. And we've had other families that have gotten funding and moved out. If you recall, there were about 160 or so families that had less than $200 that they owed out of the almost 700. So quite a few of those we know have gotten assistance outside of the rental assistance program. And we just don't have quite yet what our updated numbers. So next month we'll give you a better account of numbers probably as of the end of September at least. But where we stand now is that instead of $480,000 that applied for the third bullet, we're actually at $648,000 that we've applied for. And as of now, we've received 87,000 of that in actual payments. So there is continued progress around trying to have our family access the available e-wrap money, but we still have a long ways to go and that quite a few families still have been non-responsive to all of our outreach efforts. And just to recap those outreach efforts, it's been, we've included in their rent statements information on how they can get access to these dollars. We've made phone calls, we've sent emails, and we've been knocking on doors. So we've tried every effort we can to try to inform residents that the e-wrap program is available, not to mention some partnerships. We have churches to try to get them to get their rents caught up. So we're still working very hard on that. We've increased the number of staff that we have doing our outreach and processing, but it has been a little slow at this point with that last roughly third or so the residents that are still behind. So we're continuing to push that and we are hopeful that we can get everyone to access every available dollar that's out there. So with that, I'll move on to the next portion and we're doing a little tag team this time around. I'm gonna have Anthony Snell conduct the rest of this presentation. He is our director of real estate management, he's our director of real estate development and is the gentleman who has been taking over, taking names and moving all of our development efforts forward. So Anthony, I'll pass it on to you. Thank you, Mr. Scott. At this point, I'm going to walk through an update of our DDMP and that's the Durham Housing Authority downtown neighborhood plan. There was a comment as a question to ask earlier before going through about the price of lumber. I did, Mr. Johnson tried to take a quick look at the lumber futures prices and I'll share a few stats of some of this you have gone over, but just for the good of the body. The 52 week high for lumber was at 1670. And the 52 week low was at 454. It closed the day at 634. If I go back and look at last year, those future prices in February, well, last year this time, the close of October, it was 478 mentioned today, it closed at 634. And then when I went back to take a look at the early part of 2020, February of 2020, it's at 460, as Mr. Johnson indicated, it's certainly a challenge for us on the development side. We are not expecting lumber prices to return to those pre-pandemic prices because of the demand at this particular point, but we have seen some improvements. And we are trying to do approach the price of lumber a little different. We are looking at going directly to some of the meals in some of our purchases, those packages, cutting out the middleman, hopefully saving some money in the prices. So it's forcing us to work harder and smarter in our efforts to address these prices as they increase across the projects. I just wanted to share that with you. As Anthony, if I could, I also want to emphasize that right now Congress is in a heated battle around infrastructure funding. And so that's going to dump some number of trillion dollars into our economy that's gonna have a focus around construction. And so that too is gonna put some pressure on construction costs in the coming years. Thank you, Mr. Scott. I will not walk through each of our projects, but I want to share some highlights on the progress that we are making on some of our key projects and just share those with you briefly. Next slide, please. One more, please. So on the JJ Henderson Rehab, construction completion is now roughly about 21% when I shared, when we put this together, we were working with some older numbers. We got some updated. So we are roughly 21%. And this is a project as Mr. Johnson indicated that has been challenged by supply disruptions. We've had some unfortunate incidents on with staff. We had to replace our project manager. And so we have had some challenges, but we are now picking up steam with this project. Our shared prosperity for this project is 21%. We are always working with our developers to try to ensure that we can increase those numbers and we're trying to be creative in our approach to increasing those numbers. Next slide, please. This project for the rehab, the most of our investment is here is actually in the systems of the building. We were talking about the systems of the building. We're talking about things such as the heating, the air condition, electrical and plumbing. And this slide here, it shows the new plumbing pipes. Of course, the unit has been demolished and we're showing the new plumbing that has been put in the building. Next slide, please. This is a slide of a completion. These are slides of units that have been completed in stack A. We are doing the building in stacks. We are currently starting on stack B and C. We had planned to do them one stack at a time, but we're going to double up on B and C to try to catch up with some time due to the delays. You're talking about supply interruptions and how we have to work around things. These cabinets that are originally, that are part of stack A, they are not actually the color that we had planned to start with. We were having problems with the supplier and we went back to get the closest color, the closest style cabinet that we could get to what we originally had planned. And this is what we are doing in stack A. And this is how we were having to adjust as we move along with the project. But as you can see with these projects, we have put in new flooring, upgraded the bathrooms, new appliances in the kitchen. And also we replaced the old HVAC system there. They are individual that were that, if you're looking at that third picture right there in the middle where you see that column, that column used to house the old system for the HVAC and then you see the new individual units that have been installed in the units. So this is the finished product of the work that we are doing there at JJ Henderson for the rehab. Next slide, please. The other project that's taken place on the site there at JJ Henderson is our new construction. We're referring to it currently as a JJ Henderson Moorhead seniors complex or development, I should say. That closes project closed. The financial closing was in July. Some of you may have been present for our groundbreaking ceremony that took place in August. We currently have the, there's an auditorium that's connected to the existing structure, which is being demolished. That's underway. The project is projected for completion first quarter of 2023. And if we have a WMBE, but a MBE WBE participation here is 29%. Next slide, please. This is just a quick slide from the groundbreaking ceremony that took place on August the 27th. We had great attendance from the local state, level and again, if you were there with us, we appreciate you being there. And this again, it's just progress being made with our projects. Next slide, please. This is the auditorium demolition. As you can see, a lot of the interior demolition has taken place. A lot of the old equipment has been removed from the roof. Next slide, please. And you'll see where we are actually starting to detach the auditorium from the existing structure there, J.J. Henderson, the larger building. Talking about running into unforeseen construction issues. When we're doing this rehab, we had to do our asbestos remediation. We did that. And as you see there, there is a wall there, which would be to your left in this photo, you'll see that black stuff on the wall. Well, once we got in to start doing the work, this was new asbestos that we found. So once again, talking about unknowns and things that can happen on the site, well, that slowed us down a couple of days because now we have to have that remediated and disposed of properly as we move along with the overall demolition from the main building. Next slide, please. This is some of the horizontal work that is taking place there on the site to where you see the trees that area. That is where the temporary parking is going to be located there on the site because we are going to start work. Once we finish the demolition of the auditorium, we're going to start work at the rear of the building where the actual new building will go. And that's going to disrupt the parking there. So we are building a new temporary parking to the front of the building to try to accommodate the residents as well as this is the start of some of the horizontal work for the site, the installation of the new storm water system that we are waiting for that to arrive for to get installed as well. And that's going to allow for us to complete the temporary parking on the site. Talk a little bit about Liberty Street and 519 East Main Street. Next slide, please. As you are well aware that this site is taking place in five phases and we are currently focused at this point, we are focused on phase one and also phase two and three of the project. Big hurdle that we had to overcome in regarding the business terms of our, working with our co-developer Lowell Street residential, we had to finalize our master development agreement. Well, this agreement sets the business terms for the partnership between Lowell Street and DHA for the undertaking of the redevelopment of this entire site. Next slide, please. Elizabeth Street, that's phase one. We anticipate that we are gonna have a financial closing on that transaction now that's slated for February of 2022. We are going to pursue early demolition of some of the old structures there on Liberty Street where we have actually undertaken our early relocation there. These buildings are vacant, so we wanna move forward with the actual demolition of those buildings at this time. Our projection for the completion now is the third quarter of 2023 for Elizabeth Street. Next slide, please. Commerce Street Apartments. This is phase two and three. We are now undertaking these phases simultaneously. We are projecting a fourth quarter 2024 completion. That there is a family of the phase two and phase three. There is a family phase and then there is a seniors phase. So where we are with this project right now, we have submitted the, I think we've submitted the initial application, the preliminary application for the 4% tax credits and we're preparing to submit the full application at the late November, maybe early December for the 4% low income housing tax credit application on this project. And that would be phases two and three on the site. Next slide, please. The other developments that have been taken place with our BDMP is we have moved forward with the developer request for proposal for three additional sites that includes the DHA office in the County Justice Center, Forest Hill Heights and Fayette Place. We issued the RFP in June of this year. We have received responses. We received nine responsive bids. There were actually 10, but only nine of them were responsive and that was for 11 proposals. And there are some of the respondents submitted more than one proposal for different sites and they were allowed to do that. We are now in the evaluation process of those proposals. We are projecting the first quarter of 2022 as to make our selections as far as the successful partners that we will go forward with for the development of those sites. We have a evaluation committee that's put together that includes staff from DHA, staff from the County, staff from the city. We have actually one of our residents participating in that evaluation process. And then we have other interested individuals within the community that have knowledge of the development process as part of this evaluation committee. Next slide, please. The other project I wanted to report on is Moreen Road Apartments. I wanted to give you an update on this because at our last meeting, Mr. Johnson provided an overview of the portfolio of loans that the city had outstanding. And one of those loans actually included Moreen Road, the loan with the city, next slide, please. The loan for the city is going to help us to replace the sewer sanitary lines here at the development. This is a picture of the existing lines in the development, the old cast iron, the original sanitary lines. This is in the interior walls. We're replacing all of the plumbing in the interior walls as well as the plumbing in the crawl space underneath the buildings and from the connections from the building to the actual sewer city system. So all of that is being replaced. The overall, the investment for the improvements that we are making is about $2.6 million. The city is providing us a loan of $2.3 million. It's a 12 month construction process. We're well underway. Right now it's broken into three phases. We are in phase one. We are projecting to be completed with phase one by mid to late November. As far as relocation of the residents, all of our relocations are taking place on site. We are not having to relocate anyone off site to make these improvements. So we're proceeding now. We have relocated our initial residence, which was a small number. And we are projecting to relocate two buildings probably somewhere around the beginning of November. We are not going to be relocating individuals doing the holidays because we do not want to disrupt their holidays with relocation, although it's all taking place on site. Next slide, please. This is again, this is a picture of showing the actual work that's being done. The one on the left is showing that the new sanitary lines or sewer sanitary lines that have been installed. And you can see the work that has been taking place. Primarily the works because of the way the lines are run. They're course they're in the bathrooms and then the kitchen. And in this slide here, you're seeing the new kitchen lines that have been actually installed in this building. Next slide. And this is a happy day for us. This is the completed work. These are the units in which we have actually installed the new lines and completed all of the work that we needed to do in the units. Restoring the drywalls, having to do some work on the floors because tiles are being misplaced. And certainly these units are now ready for occupancy. I believe, okay. That made, that's it, Mr. Scott. Excellent. I did see a couple of questions in the chat. One asked a question about the rental assistance. How does the delay in the availability of ERAP funds impact evictions? For those families that are in process or who have reached out to us, it does not impact them at all. Our commitment is all families who are working with us on repayment, whether it be through an agreement with us or that we applied for funds, they are not in any danger of eviction. We do have real concerns about families that are not being responsive. And I'll emphasize again, that HUD has made it clear that PHAs must collect past due rent. That's why we've made such an effort to try to reach families to get them into some sort of agreement with us and or to be applying for funds because we can demonstrate that these families are in process of paying. But those that have been non-responsive and right now there's quite a few, we're very concerned about where that's gonna put us shortly. So we're working on additional communication strategies around that to really emphasize the families. It is critical that they reach out to the housing authority and connect with us about their past due rent payments. Let's see, there was another one in here. I guess I should turn it over to you Tiffany in terms of questions to respond to, but I did wanna make sure I was able to catch that one. Thank you for that. Actually, Diane, quick question. I know that we are a little bit behind in scheduling and we were gonna take questions for presentation if time allowed. And there are quite a few questions in this chat and I'm torn on whether we stick with our initial goal or try to tackle some of these right now or wait till the session. I share your concern. I guess my question would be if both Anthony's will be available through the end of the meeting. And if so, we can keep moving and then come back at 7.30 to many of these questions. Thank you so much. Sorry. Thank you. Perfect, in that case then and thank you for that. We'll move to the MWBE contract and presentation. While that presentation is coming up, I'll just set the stage that one of the goals for our work in affordable housing was to ensure that we have a minority and women-owned business participation and provide a way and assistance and support to be able to accomplish those goals. And this also includes a work around section three. And so one of the things we decided to do was to engage a firm to help us and support us in that. And we went through RFP process. Karen Lotto, assistant director for strategy for community development will be introducing the firm and doing part of the presentation. But I just wanted to open up that. We're very pleased with our selection and looking forward to the work and the contribution that they're able to contribute. And so Karen, I'll turn it over to you. Thank you. So Juliette, if you could go to the next slide. So as Reginald has covered, and as we've discussed earlier on, we have an overarching goal for the Forever Home Durham program to create $130 million in contracting opportunities for minority and women-owned firms. The way we're getting there is by requiring that all city funded projects award at least 11% of contracting opportunities in terms of dollar value to minority-owned firms and 7% to women-owned firms. And then as Reginald indicated, we are also seeking to maximize opportunities for local hiring and to make sure that our Davis Bacon and section three compliance requirements are met. Next slide. So in December of 2020, we issued a request for qualifications for consulting services to oversee MWB contracting and Davis Bacon section through compliance. We received seven responses and are very pleased to have selected United Minority Contractors of North Carolina as our vendor. The city council in August approved a 42 month contract with UMC NC. And I am going to turn it over to Patrice and Renee and Brenda, I'm not sure who's presenting for UMC NC but ask them to introduce themselves and then to introduce their firm and go over a little bit of the work that they're going to be doing over the next 42 months. Thank you, Karen. Good evening, everyone. My name is Patrice Gilmour. I'm chair of the board of directors for United Minority Contractors of North Carolina. United Minority Contractors is a nonprofit minority business, specifically construction trade organization that was founded in 2005. I've been the chair of the organization for the last five years. My experience is in the construction industry. I'm going on my 22nd year working specifically in construction. I spent part of that time as a person that worked on project sites as a project manager and assistant project manager on various construction sites throughout Durham and Raleigh. But I transitioned halfway through my construction career and started working specifically on finding diverse contractors to work on the projects that my companies was building at the time. So I've spent my entire career working in this space and we're extremely excited to be working with the city of Durham on this project. I'll let Brenda Pollard, who is our executive director of the organization and Renee Jones, who will be one of our lead project managers on this contract to introduce themselves. I don't hear Brenda, so I'll go ahead. I'm Renee Jones. I, like Patrice, have been in the industry for quite some time, about 18 years. I have spent the majority of that time doing this work, being an advocate for minority and women-owned businesses. I've worked a lot in the Durham area. Patrice and I really have been a part of a lot of your or more visible projects in the area. And so we're very familiar with the landscaping. We're also familiar with a lot of the, I would say, political interests and community interests as far as this is concerned. And so we've put a lot of things in place to try to make sure that we have communication with all levels that are needed as far as this particular subject is concerned. We also have a lot of experience with compliance. I've ran probably compliance on about 45 different programs across the Southeast. And so we're very familiar also with that part of it and making sure community development has all of the information that they need for that. By chance, I am also the president of the Hispanic Contractors Association. Here we cover North and South Carolina. So that will be an added benefit for us as we move forward in working with you on this project. Thank you, Renee. I was just talking and of course my was on mute. So you probably saw my little room, but nothing coming out. I am Brenda Pollard. I am the executive director of United Minority Contractors. I have been with the organization since 2005. And I look forward to working with you guys. This is going to be an exciting time and looking forward to helping a lot of individuals and their housing concerns. Thank you so much for having us and including us. And I just add to what Renee and Brenda have already said. You can see a little bit on the screen, some of the projects that we've worked on in the Durham area. I'm not only that, but we've also worked for the city of Raleigh for the North Carolina Department of Transportation, Wake County Public Schools and the YMCA of the Triangle. All specifically focused on making sure that diverse businesses and people from the communities that we're looking to serve with your project have a voice and a seat at the table. So you won't find three people that are more diligent about equity and inclusion than Renee and Brenda and I. In fact, I think we have a reputation for probably being some of the two people that you don't wanna come up against when there's something related to equity and inclusion. So we're really excited to help the city to achieve their goals and also to partner with your developers and your contractors. Next slide. So this slide outlines our scope of work. And as Karen mentioned, it kind of straddles MWBE contracting. So making sure that we have an adequate and appropriate number of minority and women-owned businesses working and engaged on these projects. But it also covers Davis Bacon, Section 3 residents and Section 3 businesses. So we'll talk about that a little bit on the next slide. But I did wanna highlight some of our scope of work as it relates to the MWBE contracting portion of this project. We are here as a conduit and a resource for your developers, general contractors and subcontractors to make sure that they have a winnable strategy for how they're gonna engage with minority businesses. And then it is our job to make sure that we monitor and help to actually shape their outreach and provide them with support during the pre-qualification process as they're trying to find the right contractors to work on your projects. And then Renee Brenda and the rest of our team will be there from beginning to end to make sure we are auditing and monitoring the compliance of your general contractors and developers with what your goals and guidelines are. So we won't rest just at bidding, we'll make sure that throughout the construction activity that the MWBE firms that were engaged at the beginning of this contract also finish this contract. And it will be our priority to make sure that they finish it. And it's a successful relationship that can continue on other projects for the city beyond the list of affordable housing projects that we have as part of the scope of work. Next slide. And then finally, we are here as a support for workforce development section three and local hiring. We understand fully the importance of making sure that residents have an opportunity and a seat at the table in, having an opportunity to earn a livable wage, enter into the construction industry, which as you all may be aware, we have a labor shortage. So we are looking for good people who are ready, willing and able to come and work with us in the construction industry. I'm particularly passionate about that as someone who's worked my entire life in construction. And as a woman, I believe it to be part of my mission to make sure that I'm attracting more women and particularly women of color to this industry. So I'm particularly passionate about that and excited about the opportunity to do that. I've managed section three and local hiring programs on Charlotte Housing Authority projects in the past and I'm actually working on another project with a major healthcare organization in Charlotte. And so it's something that's near and dear to my heart and Renee and Brenda and I have extensive experience in monitoring such programs. So we will be tracking all of the hiring for our general contractors and subcontractors. We will get a forecast of their hiring projections and we'll make sure that those job opportunities are clearly communicated with the Housing Authority and other Durham residents who might be interested in working on the project. We will be hosting a number of outreach events that really get the community excited about these work opportunities and answer any questions they might have about the industry because I believe that's one reason why a lot of people are not working in our industry is because they don't really know the technical nature and really some of the advanced technology that we have in the industry. Most people think it's just hammering nails and we'd love to provide some outreach that helps to inform people about what the new construction industry looks like. And then of course we will be completing and making sure that all of your general contractors complete any section three workforce, a Davis-Blake and compliance requirements in terms of reporting, we'll collect that information and make it available to Karen and Reginal and the rest of the team there so that they can communicate that with you and you can communicate that with the public. Thank you, Patrice, for naming Brenda. Tiffany, I think we have a couple of minutes for questions. Yeah. Madam Chair, I have a question. My question is based upon your comments and the scope of work, I want to be clear that you will be working with these small contractors in this process that if they have some hiccups along the way to hold their hand to try to overcome whatever hurdles that they may have. And can we also assume that as these opportunities go out, sometime the paperwork involved gets to be an issue with some of these guys that they don't have in place office staff that may can respond timely. So will you all have the resources to help them get that paperwork properly completed so their bids can be given a fair chance? And then thirdly, is there a mechanism based upon your comments about providing opportunities and knowledge for people who don't know about the industry for some type of ongoing training for people who may want to get in or who may need to expand their workforce doing this process? So as an answer to the first part of your question, absolutely, we consider ourselves as a minority trade organization and Renee would echo this as the president of the Hispanic Contractors Association. We consider ourselves to be here purely to be an advocate and to provide assistance to minority businesses that are encountering issues with administrative operational challenges. So we have as a nonprofit trade organization, we already have the built-in resources to assist with that. We have an ongoing partnership with the North Carolina Bar Association. So we have quite a few attorneys that are at our disposal to provide advice and resources to minority contractors that are encountering legal issues. We have financial partners who can help us with any of our trade partners or subcontractors that we encounter that might be encountering financial problems. And administratively, we've got a number of people at our disposal who can help with how to fill out paperwork, how to complete prequalifications, how to submit your monthly pay application because we found that it's not for lack of doing the work that many of our contractors aren't profitable and successful, it's that they're getting hung up on administrative or paperwork. And we really consider ourselves as an organization to be here first and foremost to assist with that. And so the ability to collaborate with the city is just icing on the cake for what our original mission is as an organization. And then the second part of your question in terms of a mechanism to provide some training. In past programs, we've partnered with existing organizations that do construction readiness training. We've provided what we feel like is the practical knowledge of how to implement things on sites while some of our partners can provide the book knowledge. So we often partner with organizations like Goodwill Industries, Community Colleges. I would certainly encourage, because we know a little bit about Durham Tech's program, I would certainly encourage that we might try and foster a collaboration with Durham Tech as a way to help to inform residents who might not even be aware of the opportunities in the construction industry. And I think that's a great built-in resource already. And we try not to recreate the wheel. We just try to enhance and collaborate with existing programs. Thank you for that. We do have a request for you to drop your email and website in the chat, if that would be possible. Karen? And I just wanted to add to what Patrice said that we do have an ongoing partnership between the city through the Office of Economic Norse Development and the Durham Housing Authority to do a construction training program that is starting to ramp up. And we will be connecting UMCNC's team to really bring those practical connections as people go through the training program. How then do we start to connect them to employment opportunities? And similar question to before, to the last presentation with the goal of keeping us on schedule. Will the two of you be available as we get closer to our group conversation, conversation which is after this next presentation so that we can continue with the rest of the questions? Do you? Okay, thank you. And with that, we will move to the Committee on Healthcare Homeless and Housing presentation. Thank you. Appreciate the opportunity to be with you. I'm Russ Pierce, Executive Director of Housing for New Hope. And with me tonight, I'll ask her to introduce herself. Good evening. I'm Maia Noshel with Alliance Health. We are the Behavioral Health Managed Care Organization serving the citizens of Durham who have Medicaid or are uninsured with Behavioral Health Services. And I probably should say for those who aren't familiar with Housing for New Hope, we have kind of five responses organization to the crises that are happening around affordable housing and homelessness. We're the designated and sheltered coordinating agency. So we're the primary provider here for street outreach. We are building out a new unit focused on housing location and navigation for those who are coming out of the homeless service system and connecting to housing opportunities for the primary provider, one of them of rapid rehousing in the community, one of the primary providers of supportive housing and then also involved in affordable housing that have been since the late 90s. So delighted to be with you. If we could go to the next slide, I know we've got 10 minutes so we're gonna move as quick as we can to stay within that time. So just a little bit about what this committee is, we are part of the coalition on how affordable housing and transit. But our genesis really came from the fact that when COVID really kicked in and caused the rest of us to have to find responses, we began a number of us gathering together who are leaders in various respects to the different homeless service providers and also number of the healthcare providers. So when folks at UMD had to move to the Marriott, a group of us gathered together to figure out what is that going to look like? How do we make that work? When they left the Marriott and some went back, folks went back to the shelter, some went to an alternative site, many of them went back in the housing. Again, we gathered a group together to figure out, okay, how do we practically do this? We did the same with the white flag situation in the last winter, which white flag is those moments where it's too cold for folks to stay outside overnight. So we had to come up with creative solutions because in many cases, the regular solutions weren't working because of COVID regulations and guidance that we had. What we found was that we were having two parallel conversations. There was a group that would gather with Dr. Jake Feigel from Lincoln Community Health and Healthcare for the Homeless to talk about healthcare issues. Then there was a group that I would convene along with others that was focused on housing and homelessness. And that brought us to this point of realizing we have these two often siloed conversations happening. Part of this has to do with the way funding comes, particularly from the federal government, where there's a silo here, there's a silo here, and there aren't a lot of us that are regularly trying to work back and forth across those silos. But once we pause and stop and thought about this, we realized we needed to have a more comprehensive response. And so as we have done this work together, as we've been in conversation with a lot of partners in the community, we realized that the work that you are doing has the potential to help move us in very, very creative and innovative and important ways as we look to how housing healthcare and homelessness are actually deeply intertwined and connected. Next slide, please. So I just want to kind of point out the irony of someone who introduced themselves from the homeless and housing world and someone who introduced themselves from the healthcare world. So I think the fact that we have even come together to be able to understand each other's point of view, each understand kind of each other's systems and structure and figure out that there are joint solutions to problems that will never be solved if we stay in our silos. And this quote from the World Health Organization back in 2008, I showed this everywhere I go, because even then we knew better than what we did and still do in terms of the power of housing in terms of positive and cost-efficient health outcomes. I mean, we know that people who live in chronic homelessness who are under a bridge and we're trying to find them to give them an anti-psychotic injection to control the voices in their head or that we're trying to find them to make sure that they can make their next dialysis appointment or that someone who left our crisis facility and detox that they can go to a safe stable and decent place to live while we continue in treatment and recovery. You know, no system can figure out how to do that all on their own. Again, to achieve some joint outcomes. Next slide, please. So I also showed this slide everywhere I go there. Robert Wood Johnson did a survey of physicians in an article called the blind side of medicine. And it was never the intense that healthcare happens within four walls that you make an appointment to see your doctor, you come in, he does his annual evaluation. And even if he knows that you're in an abusive relationship even if he knows that you don't have enough money to feed you or your kids by the end of the month even if he knows that you are on the verge of homelessness that healthcare has always had kind of blinders on we're here to treat a medical condition and the rest of your life we just wish you well. And we know that that's not the best way to do things. And out of this Robert Wood Johnson study that asked physicians, if you could write a prescription for something other than medicine what would you write a prescription for? And overwhelmingly they said they would write a prescription for housing. And so essentially we took that inspiration about five years ago and began meeting with two outpatient clinics in Duke that were under the guidance of Julia Gamble who many of you all know is a major advocate and healthcare provider for people living in homelessness and said, can we do that? And the Durham Housing Authority was generous and allocating some vouchers. We provided some funding for supportive housing case management. We worked out some processes with Duke University or Duke health systems I should say around how we could access housing for some of the highest utilizers of the emergency department with the most chronic and complex health conditions that we're living in homelessness. And five years into that program we've housed 37 people who are still successfully housed. We have had a couple of people who have passed away because by the time we housed them they were so ill that at least they were able to die in a warm bed in a place of their own. And we have seen almost a 60% reduction in emergency department visits. So we know, we know it works but part of the problem is we've never figured out how we can work on it together. Next slide please. And so part of the work of kind of this group that came together that Russ was describing because one of the things that COVID resurfaced for us and I hope that this is a lesson that sticks with us and that is what happens when there's gross health inequities to people who can literally die. And so we began looking at some other national models of health and housing partnerships. And you can see some of the ones that we have looked at where we've taken kind of the, on the affordable housing and the development side of that, the funding for that, we have coupled that with supportive services focusing on health outcomes and that's one of the things that we're hoping out of the work of this committee in the city of Durham that we can look at some specialized pilots to do what these other communities have done because they didn't do anything magical. They took what was happening already and they just coupled it with both kind of Medicaid as a payer and the supportive services that provide treatment for people who are the most vulnerable with severe mental illness and addictions and have shown remarkable outcomes especially around public costs. These are people who no longer went to jail who no longer use the emergency department as their primary healthcare. And really it was just a quality of life issue for people being treated with dignity and respect. Next slide please. So even though this has been just a super quick kind of high level, you might be asking yourself so like why would we not wanna do this? This is so obvious and it fills in this huge gap and it is very hard work to do that because we each operate under very highly regulated and complex systems. We operate under HIPAA. There's very little I can say to Russ unless we have some special arrangements for the sharing of that information. I don't know the difference between a 4% and a 9% tax credit. I just need access to housing inventory and a willing person to take somebody who might be actively psychotic. And so but sometimes we just can't get out of our own way to see that there are ways to work around some things that look like insurmountable barriers. And the other thing that's just happening nationally that I hope Durham takes advantage of and Alliance has been part of this. We actually were an investor in the Ross Road development in the set aside of three units at the cost of over $400,000 to us. And that is healthcare is making capital investment dollars to acquisitions for rehab and new construction in return for set aside units for this special support of housing population that we're describing. And then the last thing is, we all, COVID has infused a lot of money in our systems but that's short-term money. And sometimes it has enough restrictions that it can't be flexible enough to do what we want. Medicaid is a payer of healthcare and while it doesn't allow for room and board payments, yet it does pay for supportive services. It pays for outpatient therapy. It pays for psychiatry. It pays for medicines and to have shared, not only kind of shared goals in this but also shared an integrated financing so that the financial burden of all of this isn't on one system or the other, we think is another just exciting potential of this collective work. And then final slide. So as we've worked together in these ways, a number of us have had different experience working in various disasters like hurricane-type disasters and things like this. And one of the gifts of those moments, if I can put it that way, is that you are forced to work together across your silos and your boundaries. You just find a way in the midst of those moments. And I think that again, COVID-19 provided us an opportunity like that but in light of what we continue to see with the affordable housing crisis here in this community, and especially for those who are working with our most vulnerable neighbors day in and day out, it's a crisis that's not going away. And so we're trying to really push this idea of we got to find ways to work together like it's a disaster and a crisis because it is. So the things we just wanted to ask as you continue to provide guidance to community development in their efforts was, to continue to find ways to incentivize collaboration among affordable housing developers, homeless service providers and healthcare providers. I feel like we've seen this to some extent around the homeless service system in previous RFPs, but what would it take to see more of that related directly to healthcare providers? There are models out there more than willing to talk with folks about what those look like and what we're learning because a lot of what we're doing is learning so that we can be better resources. Another piece is to continue to promote it as I think has been done, meaningful inclusion of units as set aside for homeless populations and those at or below 30% of AMI. Often these populations are going to need more than simply the housing, they're going to need supportive services. And that's where we have to bring a lot of resources together to bear to provide what will be needed. And then the last one, I think this comes from our kind of silo busting efforts is that encouragement to follow guidelines and regulations where you must and innovate and be flexible where you can. I think one of the great exciting pieces for our community has been, with the affordable housing bonds, there is a different flexibility than comes with other funding that gives Durham the chance to innovate and lead and in ways that other communities have been doing and maybe even go past it and create models that can be used in other places. So we just want to ask those things, offer those things this night and appreciate the time in what is clearly a very packed schedule. We appreciate your time on this evening. Thank you very much for that. If we can take a quick aside before getting to the committee conversation and do the approval of meeting schedule, Sara? Yeah, thanks, Tiffany. Juliet, can you pull up the draft meeting schedule? I believe all of you were sent this in your packet. There were actually two versions, but we've been asked by the clerk's office to present our schedule for the next year. So we're asking you to approve that tonight. So just briefly, I want to note that we are planning on meeting next month, Thursday, November 4th. Some versions had that X out, but we do want to meet. We will not meet in December. And then for next year, we're proposing that we start in January, the first meeting of the month, sorry, the first Thursday of the month on January 6th, and then go every other month with a few exceptions. So it'd be January 6th, March 3rd, May 5th. And then in June, we're proposing the second week of June because there were issues around DPS graduation. So we've tried to accommodate that. Those of you that are more informed than us, if you know that that's the wrong date for graduation, please let us know. And then because city staff and others are often on vacation in July and August, and it's too hot, we skipped to September. And then after that, again, we proposed a November meeting. So at this point, I would welcome discussion or suggestions from committee members. And then if anyone is amenable, we would need a motion and a second to approve this. Are there any comments or concerns? Madam Chair, Mr. Bonner? Yes, Mr. Bonner. I don't see any issues. So I'd like to move to accept the calendar, tentative meeting schedules as written. Stella, Adam, second. Great, thank you. Let me ask, are there any other comments or questions before we call the vote? Hearing none, would everyone unmute and please say aye if you support this meeting schedule? Aye. Any thanks? Anyone opposed? Okay, great. Well, we'll continue back with the agenda and see you in November. Thank you. Thank you for that. So we have a load of questions in the chat and I will try to run these companies so that we can maybe go back to the DHA property and see if there's any questions that were still pending. Karen, the first of which is, hang on a second, I think 10. There's a question, is there a reason DHA couldn't just pre-enroll students who were pre-enroll residents who were behind in rent and emergency rental assistance program based on the information that's already on file about them? Yes, it is a process. We have to follow based on rules created by Treasury and we must get authorization by their residents that to apply and to agree on what the amount is. So unfortunately, in some respects, we have to get that authorization in conjunction with the residents. So that has to happen. Okay. And have you been approved for all of the funds requested? No, if you recall, I said we applied for, I believe it's about $650,000 roughly and what we've been approved for, what we've received so far, I should put it that way, it's about $87,000. The approval process is something different but in terms of what we've actually received, it's been about $87,000 right now. And as also mentioned that the county is pausing right now so that they can actually get their arms around how many applications they have with respect to what that dollar figure is. And they do have some sort of prioritization and maybe Karen or Reginald can speak to that. Okay. And I'm just trying to do this quickly. So how much money has been spent with MWBE suppliers or percentage spend is another question that I'm trying. Right, we don't have those figures this time around but we'll make sure we provide that for next month's meeting. Venice asked, there are a lot of families that work hard and wanna do some place to stay. Why can't some of the new apartments have to be made more accessible to more low-income working-class families? We need one affordable, right, for these families as well. I think that's a Reginald-Karen question. So I'll begin. So I have soon, and the person who asked the question, I'm sorry, I can't see my arm, is that they're talking about the market rate apartments that are being built downtown. And I would say that why can't those apartments be set aside? Those apartments that are being built downtown are for the basically market rate developments. That means that if you go back to the presentations that we had at the beginning of a series of presentations, we talked about how the market does not necessarily build affordable housing because you have to have enough rent to be able to pay your debt service and take a profit. And when you have affordable housing, you are purposely lowering the rents. And oftentimes, you're not able to get the financing that you're able to build the buildings. That's the reason you have organizations like the City of Durham and other nonprofits that step in to provide gap financing. Right now, other than the housing authority properties, the only affordable housing development downtown is Willich Street. And Ms. Lotto can add to that if I missed it. No, that's absolutely correct. The only thing I wanted to add is that the city, neither city nor the state have the authority to compel a market rate developer to provide affordable housing. So unless they so choose to do it, there's nothing, we have no statutory authority to require them to do it. Next question, are there any installation or air sealing or other energy efficiency improvements being made alongside the kitchen and bathroom and HVAC updates? If I may, yeah, so at JJ Henderson, one of the big improvements that are taking place is we're putting new roofing on that building. As you well know, as the roofing age, you lose a lot of efficiency from high rises. So we're doing that. And we're certainly on a unit by unit basis where there are issues with respect to energy efficiency loss and resealing windows and all of those things are being looked at as they go unit by unit. And of course we're using energy efficient appliances as well. And Tim, you have a question on, is the agreement something that will be made available to review, which agreement were you speaking of? Oh yeah, sorry, that was the master, well, I guess kind of in general, there's a lot of, but particularly the master development agreement that just got signed that y'all mentioned with Laurel Street. Sure, those documents are public documents so we can certainly make those available to the committee. Great, thanks. When is the first reporting on NWBE participation schedule? It's kind of hard to hear you, Tiffany. You speak a little louder. Sorry about that. When is the first reporting on NWBE schedule? Our hope, and we need to coordinate this with the MCNC would be that we would have reporting for the next quarter's report, which would be I believe in January. And I think that covers all of the questions in the chat. So if anyone else has questions, if they'd like to. Tiffany, I'm not sure if Ms. Adams' hand is up from previous or she has a question. Yeah, because I've been waiting to ask questions from the beginning. Many of my questions have been answered, but my concern have not. I was on previous calls related to the ERAP program that the DSS has operated in terms of how those monies have been expended. And I brought up my concern that the housing authority had not received a sufficient amount of funding for the amount that they have requested submitted. I was told that the priority was for people who were being evicted. And that since the housing authority wasn't gonna evict anybody while they were in process, they had been a lower priority. I'm concerned because the money has run out. And so if they have not made an allocation, it's okay if they haven't made a distribution. But if they have not made an allocation to the housing authority, that's again, fiscally responsible. The housing authority cannot absorb that loss. And so we need to make sure Reginald and Karen that in ERAP 2 that we prioritize paying the housing authority for qualified eligible applications so that we are not putting the lease of these out in the street because that is requiring that they be evicted if they don't get these resources. And if we have these resources, we should prioritize the housing authority residents are always put on the back burn. They can wait with the sewage system, the original plumbing. So that's at least 50 years old at Marine Road. Who's the first to be cut in terms of trying to cut a deal on the infrastructure? It's housing. They're saying housing is not infrastructure. And housing is 40, so depending on the federal government to do this is not gonna happen. We have to make sure that when residents do submit their applications to the city and the county for funding through the ERAP program, that the housing authority is reimbursed for those costs because there is absolutely nowhere but the streets to go if you're at 30% or below or zero income. And we're jeopardizing and the housing authority doesn't have the money to absorb those costs. We have to make sure that we set aside resources to cover those rental payments for those who have applied and are eligible. We have to do that. That has to be a priority, has to be, has to be. And then I'm gonna shut up. Every, oh, all that MWBE thing, y'all picked the right contractor. If I had known this from the beginning, I'd have left y'all alone. Thank you, Ms. Adams. So we appreciate that. We think so too. I wanted to respond. I wanted to clarify a couple of points. The first is that the county is still processing applications, so a lot of applications. And they have still $8 million in state funding that they are using to pay out applications. A lot of the housing authority, a number of the housing authority applications went in more recently. And so part of the challenge is that there are a lot of people at under 30% of area median income applying for assistance. And the DSS is doing its best to prioritize people who are extremely low income and people who are facing eviction. But their goal is to get through the entire application queue. We don't have kind of delegated authority to set aside and prioritize ERAP funds for housing authorities. We can prioritize ERAP funds for income level of groups, but not specifically for housing authorities. And we have done our best to prioritize ERAP funding for the lowest income households. And I know that the housing authority has worked very closely with the SS to try to figure out the most efficient way to upload information so as to make it, because they have a lot of applications they're trying to get in, so as to make it as efficient as possible. It is still quite possible that all or a significant portion of the applications the housing authority has put in will be approved. I mean, the DSS is still working its way through a lot of those applications. And we hear you, our goal is all the application, if there are any applications that are not, that have already been submitted and are not able to be funded by the funds that the county currently has that we would like to roll those into our ERA2 program when we get that going. You have a question from Diana from Lucia. I'll let Lucia go because mine is for the entire committee. Okay. I just wanna echo some of Stella's concerns and I was wondering if there's a timeline for the ERA2 program? I'll respond to that as I share it with the city council this afternoon is that we're working diligently recognizing the need that is out there that you have talked about earlier and talked about at the last meeting. We don't have a timeframe because the county has committed to share with us that they're not gonna be distributing our ERA2 funds. We have to find a vendor or a mechanism to be able to do that. And that's what we're diligently working on. The timeframe is gonna depend upon whether we have to be able to get somebody that's already able to do it, has experience to do it, has the capacity to do it or whether we have to stand up and program with a couple of different people or different entities to be able to distribute the funds. I would say it's very complex. And so I just cannot give a timeframe other than we're working on diligently as possible. I've been in meetings yesterday, today and the day before and we've been declined by some persons already. We have some possibilities but there might be some other ways we have to cobble. Cobble is the word. I'll program together and we're trying to figure that out. Thank you. Okay, so at this point, I have a question for the committee and I wanted to let you know that Tiffany and I will be reporting to the city council at the work session on November 18th via Zoom, as all meetings are Zoom. And we wanted to ask you and we don't have a lot of time for this. So it may be that we'll ask you to respond by email if we don't get through this now. But we wanted to know what are highlights or concerns that you want to see reported to council. We will obviously be doing a summary of the information and the people that have come and presented and how many meetings we've had and all that logistical information. But we wanna be sure that we capture any highlights or concerns. I don't know if people wanna chime in now or email Tiffany and I separately. Thank you. Diana, can you all stand on a survey? We could. We didn't wanna wait until the next meeting because again, we'll be preparing in advance of that meeting, but certainly we can send that question out and see how you all respond. Thanks, Stella. Tiffany, back to you. Any additional questions coming from the committee or any of the presentations? And if Juliet can allow the public and in case there's any public comment. Bear in. Okay, thank you. So President, we do have time for a public comment on any of the presentations and conversation from this evening. Feel free to raise a hand or unmute yourself. There was a question in a chat that came from one of the attendees. Oh, to the UM-CNC team. From your experience, are there many or any MWBEGCs and are you engaged with them in addition to the subcontractors? Yes, and I typed a response in the Q&A chat as well. But yes, we are engaged with several MWBE general contractors, several of which are members of our organization, but we would be happy to provide contact information for any of those general contracting firms that people were interested in getting to know better. Any additional questions from committee or public? And then double checking the chat. Well, I think we just made it and fit everything in. I think Diane will be handling our wrap up. Want to thank everyone for your presentations this evening. Again, I just want to thank you all. Excellent presentations, a lot of really good information. It's wonderful to meet all of the people with UM-CNC. We look forward to hearing your reporting in January. Thank you to the committee members for all your excellent questions. And of course, thanks to committee development for preparing this and the housing authority. Lots of good information. So again, we'll be meeting November 4th at 6 p.m. And also we will send via email the question about whether you have any highlights or concerns that you want us to report to council. Are there any other last comments? And if not, we'll say good night and see you next month. Good night. Okay, great. Thank you all. Take care.