 Awesome. Good morning, everyone. It is 11.02 on Tuesday, August 10th. I feel like I haven't seen you guys in a while. Thank you all so much for your patience. And for the public that is watching, I did want to just briefly explain. This affordable has a task force actually was formed just prior to COVID. However, we did not have an opportunity to have our first meeting before COVID hit. And so when we started meeting, we were operating under the city's emergency declaration that allowed for virtual meetings. And then last month, the emergency order had expired. And so we were unable to meet remotely. However, due to the nature of the work that this committee does, especially with the talent that we have in busy professionals, we know that our job is probably best suited remotely. And also, of course, with the numbers of COVID-19, we certainly don't want to put anybody at risk. And so we wanted our office or our committee to remain virtual. However, we needed an act of council to allow us the ability to do that. That action by Columbia City Council last week under the emergency order. But there is also an ability for us to continue remotely. And so it is the expectation that with the exception of meetings that we have to do in person and maybe of course in the future when we do presentations to County Council or City Council or even to the general public, we may be meeting in person. But for the foreseeable future, we expect to be meeting remotely. And so we're able to do that now that City Council has acted. So I just wanted to lay that framework out for everybody so that you understand why we did not meet last week, the last month. But the work of this committee continued, even though we were unable to meet. We did not meet as a full task force. The committees have continued to meet and we are working, continue to work on the horrible housing task force. So thank you so much for being here. I know that we have several people who are watching on the YouTube channel or streaming live and that are very interested in this topic. I've heard from folks. So thank you for tuning in and listening to our work. And we will continue to work on the issues that are important to us here in the Midlands. With that framework, I want to move forward with talking or actually going to, I don't know if Dr. Solz, oh wait, wait, sorry, before I go to Dr. Solz, I did want to officially, we did introduce her at our last meeting, which was two months ago, but she is physically here today. We have with us Pam Baino Reed, who will be replacing the Comet appointee. And so she's the new Comet appointee on this task force. And so I just wanted to welcome Pam and Pam, give you an opportunity if you want to say anything. Just it's a pleasure to be here. And I know the work of this committee and I know how important and impactful it is to the Midlands. And I'm just delighted to be able to contribute. Thank you so much for being here. And I would say that Pam, certainly she brings her expertise from the comment, but Pam, everyone who knows Pam knows that Pam is a Columbia native has grown up here and has been working in the community in various capacities and various organizations. So I think she brings a lot of diversity and perspective. And so we're really happy to have you as part of our task force. So with that said, I did want to give Dr. Solz an opportunity Dr. Solz or Ms. Vernon, both of you have been working. And I think Ms. Berkowitz and others have worked with you guys for everyone you might recall it's been a few, it's been a few months since we had this conversation. But when the presentation from the task force was made to city council, there were some questions about the definition of affordable housing and we certainly wanted an opportunity to just look at the concerns that were raised. I know that there was some conversation as to whether or not we want to go away from using affordable housing to using attainable housing. And then there was some also just some discussion about the language before we start our public education piece of this. And so we asked a subcommittee of the task force to get together and just word Smith a little bit and make that presentation. So I'm going to let Dr. Solz take over from there on their discussion and their work. And I believe they have a recommendation for us. My apologies. I was trying to unmute you think after 18 months, I wouldn't know how to do this. So I will say that the four who were kind of serving on this subcommittee spent several days going back. Right. We used it. And definitions to craft this. And I think Brenna would agree that we, we respectfully disagree on some things. So this is where the four kind of landed. And it's quite simple. Affordable housing consists of inclusive, equitable and safe places to live. For owners and renters. Christ such that all Colombians can afford necessities of living and fully participate in our community. What you will see that is missing or what you won't see. Is a number. And we were very intentional with that. Based. Honestly, on the fact that that 30% hood. Definition that we all seem to talk about constantly. Was chosen. Decades ago. And Dr. Grady, you can comment on that. But it was when it was chosen, it was just a number they chose. So we couldn't find any data. To. Back the fact that that's the appropriate number for 2021. So we intentionally left that number off. We also. Wanted to make sure that. And I think. Another one of the subcommittees kind of had gone into this. This idea that you don't want stereotypes. When talking about affordable housing. That we still just don't have the right definition for it. So again, we wanted this to be a definition that included our most at risk. But also that. Working class. So, so. It is a true community definition. Am I missing anything from the subcommittee. Any questions from the larger group. Any questions for Dr. Sal's or the, the committee. I will say, um, Dr. Sal's. I like it. I mean, I liked our other one, but I certainly understood where the mayor was coming from when, um, having some. Some things spelled out. Um, I think that your, um, explanation regarding staying away from numbers is important. Um, and I do think that we can accomplish what the mayor is looking for as far as numbers and the population that, you know, as we set our goal, um, as we look at that at the, at the population we're trying to reach can be reached by the goals that we set. So as we talk about the number of units and we, we've discussed this before, but as we look at the data from 2021, we'll look at, you know, what would be the goal of a additional inventory for 2022. We can say, you know, a certain percentage being at this percent of median income or something out like that. So I think that all can be reached, um, that way. us and keeps us people, well, keeps people away from stare and typing who affordable housing is for. So that would be my comments on that. Does anybody else have any comments on it or any questions or clarifications? Councilwoman Devine, I will say I just got a text suggesting some wordsmithing on participate versus engage. So again, to me, those are wordsmithing versus larger definition. And I will pass that along after the meeting. So we can certainly take a look and see if that, those two words can be swapped out. Okay. And Erica, can you put that back up so we can all maybe kind of look at what, so the the word fully participate to fully engage in our community. Engage is, I would offer a softer word than participate. Fully engage in our community. Okay. So that's the wordsmiths suggestion. Correct. Thank you very much Dr. Solz and the committee for this. I'm sorry, somebody have a question? Okay. Well, if after we kind of look at the engage switching that out, we can certainly move this forward back to city council for looking consideration. Councilwoman Teratio, I know that I don't believe that your body had any questions or any concern, but do you want to send this definition back to your council as well? Sure. I would like to do that. And while I'm speaking up, can we verbalize why we stuck with affordable rather than attainable or another word? And as we can have that conversation, I know that we talked about it when we first talked about it. And I don't know if Dr. Grady or Dr. Solz or anybody wants to maybe talk about that. I know nationally there has been a conversation about attainable housing. And I do know that there are actually some cities who make the reference to attainable versus affordable. I know part of our conversations were as far as, as we want to deal with HUD dollars and things like that, maybe just being a little consistent, but knowing that there are conversations nationally, you guys on this task force have a lot more breadth and depth as it relates to the national conversation. Does anybody want to maybe comment on that? Dr. Grady or Ms. Matthews or Dr. Solz, anybody, I'd love to hear any comments that you have about the transition away from the word affordable to the word attainable. I know on a national level, we still use, in my industry, trade association groups, we still use the word affordable simply because it's one that from a definition perspective, I think people kind of are easily, they easily understand the word affordable. You know, whether regardless of what type of housing, options that you're giving people in the community, I kind of think it covers a broad spectrum of how to engage. So, I mean, I like the word affordable. I'm not, I can live with either one of them, honestly, but, you know, I partially, I'm partially for the word affordable versus attainable. And I'll just say that I think it's largely a function of branding. I think there's a set of people who feel like the word affordable has gotten stigmatized. So, we came up with attainable as a different word that kind of says the same thing. And honestly, I kind of tend to lean on, well, as Ms. Matthews said, you know, it's the term of art that's used most broadly is affordable. And I think attainable is just sort of a fuzzy kind of way to try to say the same thing in a different way that I don't think is really necessary, but I think I'm in the same place where if the sense of the room is that we want to use attainable, I'm fine for that. Councilman Devine. Any other comments on that? Can I just circle, say one more thing? You know, we talked about the word sort of branding was mentioned. And I, from where I'm coming from in order to sometimes get things done, you know, the first thing you have to do is branded in such a way that there is not an automatic pushback or perhaps a little bit more space in people's head to imagine something different. And so while I am happy to defer to the will of this body, that's just the input that I wanted to share is that as soon as we throw out affordable housing, a lot of times, you know, in terms of sort of getting things done, and I know that's not necessarily the point of the definition, just wanted to verbalize that. And I can, I guess let me just add another food for thought. And this is something that I think maybe Councilman Teratio, as we, since we're talking about the definition, we also, once we get, and I think Brenda, you and I and Jennifer can talk offline, but I think maybe next month we'll be in a position to talk about the education plan and how, you know, what are the needs and as far as we're doing and branding. But I guess I've thought about this ever since it was first discussed on attainable and I've been in national meetings and others where I hear some people use attainable, but as has been suggested, I think more widely used, it's still used as affordable for their practitioners. But I also think that, you know, I guess one of my concerns is if we start using attainable, are we acquiescing and accepting the stigma that affordable has given as opposed to maybe stepping further into the task of educating our community about what affordable really is and helping alleviate that stigma by the education piece instead of changing it to make it more palatable for people who might not have that space in their head. So I agree with Councilwoman Teratio, I've had those challenges with some of my colleagues sometimes and the broader community when we talk about affordable and I think that, you know, if the goal is to get things done, then sometimes you do what you have to do to get it done. So that's one school of thought, but I just refer just consideration that, you know, are we really truly living into and stepping into our mission? If we change the wording to make people accept it more instead of, you know, doing the work as to educating them as a why affordable housing is good. So I would just add that for everybody to think about and then we can talk about it a little bit more. I don't want to take too much of the presentation's time but maybe we can think about it a little bit more as we talk about the education rollout and what's our role and what's gonna be the schedule for rolling out the education piece and whether or not we want to change that terminology. Got it, thank you so much. Was there anybody else that had anything else to say? Yeah, Councilwoman Devine, if I can kind of chime in from a marketing and communication standpoint, I tend to lean a little bit towards attainable because it's more of an empowering term. You know, when you say affordable, sometimes that means that a person is lacking whereas attainable, it's like this is something that I can reach for and actually get. So that's just, you know, my comment on that, you know, to kind of think more more about how we want to communicate that. Thank you. Thank you, Pam. That's a good point as well. You know, there's also, we have the constituency we're trying to serve. And so, you know, if that's an empowering terminology for the constituency that we're serving, then that's something to think about as well. Okay. Any final comments before we turn this over? Okay. So next on our agenda is, I'll set this up a little bit. I asked Ms. Matthews if she and her team would make a presentation to our task force regarding what is happening at CHA and their plans in the next several years. I think as we tackle and we are now towards the end of this year, we're halfway through the year. And so at the end of this year, remember we talked about, we will reevaluate what has been added into, what inventory has been added into our market over this year as we set our goals for the next several years. But I also thought that it was important that as we think about the next several years that we also think long-term. And Ms. Matthews did a presentation to us, and she's mentioned it here, but hasn't had an opportunity to do the full presentation about what CHA is doing as it relates to their current housing stock and adding into replacing some housing stock and then adding new units. But I think what's probably bigger for me, which is a little eye-opening and I know surprising to some of my colleagues, I just wanted to make sure everybody was keeping that in mind as we thought think through this and think forward. But public housing as we know it nationally, will look very different in the next several years. And that won't be just locally, but that's nationally. And so I think that we have to know that and understand that as we're setting our goals because that will certainly impact the affordable housing and how it looks within our community. So I wanted Ms. Matthews and her team to make that presentation. So Ms. Matthews, I will ask you that. But I also, if you could lead with, I would love to find out the question I get from a lot of people is the status of Allen Bend Court. So, and I think you'll probably address Gonzalez as well, but the two main things and Marion Street, those are the three that come up a lot when I'm talking to people in the community. So if you could certainly address those head-on, Allen Bend Court, I think probably the biggest one. And then if you're not talking about it in your presentation, if you could kind of give us an update on Gonzalez and Marion Street as well. Awesome, thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Devine. I'd first like to say before we begin our presentation, Ms. Cindy Herrera, who I have on my team, she'll be presenting with me today. She's our Chief Development Officer. But I just first wanna say to Councilwoman Devine, just wanna thank you for making affordable housing a top priority for our community. You know, those of us who work on this task force alone who have given our lives so passionately to create affordable housing, this has given us an organized opportunity to display our work throughout the community and keeping the community engaged and letting the community know that we are dedicated and committed to doing the work so that all of our families can live, work and thrive and prosper just as any other citizen in our community. So I just wanted to say that before I delve into the presentation. We do have updates on the Allen Benedict Court and Marion Street and others throughout our presentation, but I'm super excited to go ahead and just give a brief overview of kind of where we are with Allen Benedict Court. We have had some heavy lifting to do to get our final approvals from HUD. And just, this is kind of hot off the press information, but we did receive our final approvals to demolish Allen Benedict Court. We received those approvals on last Thursday. Wanna say thank you, special thanks to City Council for your support. As I mentioned, Councilwoman Devine, you've been tremendously supportive in this effort. And I certainly wanna thank the City of Columbia, Teresa, City Manager and her team for all that they've done to help us get to this point. I'm going to ask if our presentation today is roughly 20 minutes. And if Cindy Herrera is gonna drive the PowerPoint, do we, Cindy, do you have access to? Okay, so Cindy, you can go ahead and flip to the next page. So one of the things about our Columbia Housing's Vision 2030 plan is our Vision 2030 plan is a strategic framework by which Columbia Housing will use guiding principles over the next nine years, which is why we call it Vision 2030, that will be our framework that we will use to reposition our entire public housing portfolio and create new quality affordable housing in the City of Columbia and Richmond County through public-private partnerships using private capital. Our plans include the investment of over $500 million for preservation, redevelopment and new construction of affordable housing. So in other words, this investment will not only improve the quality of our existing portfolio, it will also increase the supply of affordable housing in the City of Columbia and throughout Richmond County. Through Vision 2030, we've engaged partnerships with nationally recognized and experienced affordable housing developers to help us accomplish this aggressive plan. I would be remiss if I didn't say, and it is so important to note that this $500 million in economic investment will not only provide quality affordable housing, but it will also result in a significant contribution to the local economy, expanding opportunities for minority-owned businesses, women-owned businesses and small business enterprises, all of which will satisfy Columbia Housing's 30% participation goal. Cindy, you can go to the next slide. A little history about Columbia Housing, for those of you who may not know. In 1934, Columbia Housing was created under the State of South Carolina Public Housing enabling legislation to provide affordable housing for citizens with low and moderate incomes. Today, our mission is to leverage the power of housing to build a foundation for individuals and families to thrive. We provide affordable housing to 6,500 families throughout the City of Columbia and Houston County through our Housing Choice Voucher Public Housing and non-subsidized housing programs. A little history on public housing. While often used generally to represent all affordable housing, public housing is actually a specific federal program and was the first federal program to provide safe, decent and affordable housing for low-income families. Since the 1990s, the federal commitment to the public housing program has greatly diminished and funding has been significantly reduced, resulting in a capital backlog of over $60 billion nationwide. Columbia Housing, as many housing authorities across the country, has been strongly encouraged by HUD to turn to the private market to address our capital backlog and needs. As noted earlier in my presentation, Vision 2030 will reposition, send you can go to the next slide, will reposition our entire public housing portfolio and create new affordable housing in the City of Columbia and throughout Houston County through public-private partnerships using private capital. The private capital will be leveraged with conversion tools provided by HUD that will result in a gradual elimination of all public housing and transition to another affordable housing platform. The HUD conversion tools provide protections for all residents. For example, tenant rent will remain the same, which is based on 30% of the monthly adjusted income. Tenants will continue to receive rental assistance from HUD that will pay the difference between tenant rent and market rent, and there is no negative impact on the family. In addition to Vision 2030, is the culmination of Columbia Housing's nearly two years of planning in which every public housing property that we own, which is 1,680, it's 28 communities located in the City of Columbia and throughout Houston County has been thoroughly assessed by third-party professionals, including architects and engineers, appraisers, and environmental consultants. Columbia Housing's public housing portfolio through these assessments, it revealed that we had a capital need of over $250 million dollars. HUD has never adequately funded capital funds and statutorily prohibits public housing from accessing private capital to address those needs, therefore to address our over $250 million of capital needs, we will transition our entire public housing portfolio to HUD's rental assistance demonstration program and others that will enable access to market debt and equity for the preservation, redevelopment, and new construction of affordable housing. Now I'll turn over the presentation to Ms. Rara, our Senior Vice President of Development and elaborate more on the strategic framework of our Vision 2030. Hello everyone, nice to be here today with you and have an opportunity to share with you our exciting plans for Columbia Housing. As Ms. Matthew has mentioned, we are moving towards the RAD program, which is a national program that HUD has implemented back in 2012 to allow the public housing across the country to be able to convert to another form of subsidy. What RAD basically does is it converts the property to a property-based voucher platform that has a long-term contract that is renewed in perpetuity. It requires that the ownership of the properties continue to be controlled by either a public or a nonprofit entity, and it also requires a use agreement is recorded on the property to assure that the units will remain permanently affordable for low-income households. Today, across the country, there's been over 200,000 units of public housing that have been converted under RAD, and those conversions have raised $11.6 billion of private capital to be able to rehab and or rebuild the affordable housing units. In the state of South Carolina, to date, we've seen 1,800 units of public housing converted that have raised about $53 million of private capital to improve the conditions of those housing units. Last fall, when we began this process, we issued a public solicitation for developer partners to work with us on this undertaking. We are very excited that we were able to attract some of the most well-known and experienced affordable housing developers throughout the Southeast. This is just kind of a list of our partners. Several of the more nationally or regionally known affordable housing developers have also partnered with smaller developers in the city of Columbia to be able to build additional capacity for future development of affordable housing. So I'm gonna start with all of our properties and talk through the repositioning of each community. The Oaks at St. Ann's Park, which is the former Gonzales Gardens community, located at Forest Drive, Washington Street, Ontario Street, and McGuffey Street. We've been working on this project for several months now, and are excited to say that we have a tentative closing date set for November 17th of this year. This project will consist of 95 senior units. You can see in the lower left-hand side here, this is a conceptual drawing of the senior building that will be located at the corner of Ontario and Forest Drive. So it'll serve as kind of the anchor property on the site. It will have a three-story elevator building with 95 units that will serve specifically individuals age 62 and older. In addition to that, there will be 190 family home units that will basically provide an opportunity for families. These will consist of two and three bedroom units. The total development cost for this project is a little over $58 million. And as I mentioned, we have set a closing date for November the 17th of this year. And we would anticipate that the initial occupancy would begin in April of 2023. This is a project we're partnering with Mungo Construction and Urban Matters. They are our development partners that we are working jointly with on this project. The Haven at Palmer Point, this is the new project that will replace the Marion Street High-Rise Building. This is located at Carter Street in two-notch road on a site that the Housing Authority previously purchased. Our partner in this project is Grinshore Development. They're a nationally known affordable housing developer that has worked with many housing authorities around the country. They're based in the Chicago area. The beautiful building that you see here will be a three-story mid-rise building. There will be 150 total senior units. The total development costs for this project are a little over $31 million. We also are hoping to close this project in November of this year with an occupancy in April of 2023. You can see the site plan here. This project will also include a small commercial component of about 4,500 square feet that you see over to the right side with the small parking area here on the site plan. And we anticipate that this commercial area will include medical offices and other services that will compliment the residents living in this building. We're very excited. This is a beautiful project, and we're looking forward to having a wonderful new building to serve the residents that were formerly residing at Marion Street. Allen Benedict Court is also, as Ms. Matthews mentioned, we were delighted to finally get over our final hurdle and get our approval letter from HUD last week. And so we will be moving forward with the demolition of Allen Benedict Court within the next 30 days. And we've just begun our preliminary redevelopment plans for the site. This is the preliminary site plan. What you see down here at the bottom is Hardin Street. So there are two senior buildings that would be focused on Hardin Street. In the middle, you have townhome developments for families. And on the right-hand side along Laurel Street, we have a component of workforce housing that would not be directly subsidized, and it's geared predominantly towards the single individuals. A part of the market that we found that the Housing Authority has typically never addressed are the non-disabled, non-elderly single individuals. And so this building would be workforce housing for those individuals. So right now, the conceptual plan is that there would be a total of 168 senior units. These buildings are three-story buildings with podium parking underneath. So it's kind of an urban feel along Hardin Street, which is more of an urban busy street. It also will, by putting parking underneath, it will reduce some of the surface parking for the development as well. The townhome units that you see would consist of 96 family units. And the workforce would also be a three-story building with some podium parking underneath, and that would consist of 99 units. The total development cost for this project is $88 million. Right now, our estimated closing date for the first phase of this project would be in June of next year, with occupancy in June of 2024. All right. The next two communities that are traditional public housing communities is Latimer Manor and Arrington Manor. Latimer Manor, located at Lorac Avenue and West Avenue, we've partnered with the Hallmark Companies. It's another renowned regional affordable housing developer out of the Atlanta area. And at Latimer Manor, we are still just working on preliminary design concepts. This will be a new construction project. It'll be redeveloped under RAD with demolition of the existing units. We anticipate that we would come back with approximately 220 rental units. And we would also have a home ownership component at Latimer Manor. And we anticipated be approximately 50 home ownership units. We're looking at a first phase that would commence in the second quarter of next year. This project is a multi-phase project and would probably extend through 2025 or 2026 to complete the entire project. Arrington Manor is our small senior building located at College Street and Oak Street. We would anticipate this would also be a RAD demolition. The building is in in in poor condition. We would anticipate we would build a new senior building on the same site with approximately 80 units. Again, it would be a senior building that would be restricted to 62 and older. And we anticipate that this project will move forward at the end of next year quarter four of 2022. We're partnered with Penrose Development. Again, a national affordable housing developer. They're actually based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The next two public housing communities is the Reserves at Faraway, which is located in Richland County at 2000 Faraway and Dora Randall on Doral Street and Randall Avenue. Both of these projects would be RAD projects. We have partnered with Mercy Housing, who has then partnered with F.A. Johnson, who is a local consultant in the Columbia area. Mercy Housing is the largest on-profit affordable housing developer in the country. They have extensive experience. We're working with their Southeast office out of Atlanta. So the Reserves property would also be a demolition and we would be doing new construction on that site and Dora Randall would be the same. It would be a demolition with new construction. The timing and the conceptual plans for these projects are still in discussion. We anticipate these would be later in our development plan. These projects would move forward probably into 24, 25 and 26, as far as the timing of these two projects. Then we have a group of properties that the Housing Authority's affiliate, the South Carolina Affordable Housing Initiatives, Inc. are what we refer to as SKY. We will be utilizing that nonprofit in the Housing Authority, but we'll be redeveloping some of these properties ourselves. Hammond Village would be a RAD conversion. We're doing substantial rehab using FHA financing under their 223F mortgage program. The same for Lewis Scott Court, which is located in Richland County in Eastover. We anticipate that would be a RAD conversion also with substantial rehab. Both of these projects are smaller communities. Hammond Village is 78 units and Lewis Scott Court is 67 units. So we believe that we can do substantial rehab and be able to accomplish the quality of housing that we want to be able to offer to our residents. And then interesting, the Housing Authority has what we call a scattered site portfolio that consists of two different components. One is a group of small properties. These are 18 different properties making up 476 total units. After completing the assessments, we've identified about 70 of these units that will need to be demolished and the remaining units would be rehab. The Housing Authority would also do these through our nonprofit. And finally, we have almost 300 single-family homes that are scattered throughout the city and the county. And as we've assessed each and every one of these houses, we have a combination of properties that we will do various things with. About 155 of them will be substantially rehab. We will then put those under a lease purchase program either for residents to be able to lease those with the goal of eventually purchasing those homes. In addition to that, the remaining 140 homes, some of them will be immediate demolitions because of their current condition. The others will be units that we will sell to a related nonprofit or other nonprofits who will basically be able to rehab them and sell them as well as affordable home ownership housing. In addition to the existing, that's our existing portfolio, in our, one of our goals is to expand the number of affordable housing units as well. So we've brought on new development and we have some partners we're working with to communities. The PASIS Preservation Partners and Soho Housing Partners is our partner for a couple of these new projects. PASIS, again, is a large nonprofit affordable housing developer who has partnered with Soho Housing Partners. They're based in Georgia. The first project is called Willows at Watery. This will be new development located at Shakespeare Road and Roof Street. There will be a total of 104 senior units and 160 family units. The total development cost for this is a little over $64 million. We anticipate closing in January of next year with occupancy in July of 2023. Another project that we're working with in the county with PASIS Preservation and Soho is called Hunt Club. It's a new development that is on Hunt Club Road and this consists of 160 family townhome units. Our total development cost is a little over $30. Again, we're looking at a possible closing in January of next year with occupancy in July of 2023. Another project in the county we're working with Connelly Builders. Connelly is a local affordable housing developer that's located in Lexington and they will be doing, we will be partnering with them on a project called Huntington Court. This is located at Trenham Road and O'Neill Court. It'll consist of 228 family units as a total development cost of a little over $40 million. This one is scheduled to close mid-year of next year with occupancy in December of 2023. We're very excited about all of these new projects as well as the improvements to our existing portfolio. So if we were to summarize, what we did is we went back and we looked at where the housing authority was with hard units. Back in 1998, prior to the demolition of some of the larger public housing communities, the housing authority had a high number of 2,911 traditional public housing units. These were all under the traditional public housing program. Today, we have 1,684 traditional public housing units. Through our vision 2030, we know that we're going to lose 323 units that are not viable to rehab. And in addition to that, we're gonna convert the remaining 1,361 public housing units. So our total public housing development will be zero by the end of 2030. So all of our public housing will be eliminated and replaced with affordable housing using the housing choice voucher platform, tax credit platform and other types of affordable mechanisms. The new development that we're gonna create through this plan is 1,550 units plus our 1,361 that we'll convert will bring us back to our 2,911 units. One of the primary goals of the vision 2030 plan is to not have any net loss of affordable housing units. And as indicated here to actually increase the number of units that are actually available within Columbia Housing's portfolio. We're very excited to be able to bring this number of units back to our community. In addition to the development that we do directly, the Housing Authority facilitates additional affordable housing development because we serve as a conduit issuer of multifamily housing revenue bonds on behalf of private developers. By issuing tax exempt bonds, it results in a substantial savings in the interest cost on long-term debt if the issue of the bonds is a unit of local government. And under state law, local housing authorities are eligible to issue tax exempt bonds. What the bonds do is they allow 50% of the cost financed with tax exempt bonds to qualify for non-competitive both federal and state low income housing tax credits which creates equity for the property reduces the private financing that has to be secured which in turn allows the rents to be lower. So these types of projects basically result in an indirect subsidy that restricts the rents not necessarily a direct subsidy like the Section 8 voucher program provides. Currently, we have multiple bond projects on the drawing board. We have closed one project to date this year. In addition to that, we have all of these other private development projects that we are working with private developers on. There's a total of three projects with 148 units. I'm sorry, that number's incorrect. I apologize. It's actually 348 units now that will actually be preserved. I forgot to add in this new group. And the total development costs are actually $62 million. And then new construction, we have 1128 units that are scheduled for new construction. All of these projects are scheduled to close sometime in 2022. I don't anticipate that any of them will close yet in 21. So these are all bond projects that we're working with developers on. So we're very excited to be able to expand affordable housing through the tax exempt bond program as well. All right, any questions? We'll open it up. I can't necessarily see people. So y'all would just jump in if you have any questions for Ms. Herrera or Ms. Matthews. I have a question. Oh, go ahead Pam, sorry. So presently Ms. Matthews are all working with anyone here at the Comet. Because I think it would be a super idea if we can marry up what we're doing with re-imagining the Comet as far as redirecting our transit system and make sure that there is public transportation where you're expanding properties. Absolutely. Well, Pam, thank you. You know, I have you on speed now. So consider it done. Okay, all right, good. Yeah, but we are, you know, one of the things that we do is we have been looking at the current transportation, you know, places, but we certainly, you know, we'll be in touch to work on the updated transportation plans to make sure that our, you know, units have still have access to, you know, transportation to the Comet. And we can be a little bit more nimble and make sure that we modify according to where your properties are, you know, where the people are best for we. Absolutely. Cindy, you want to add anything to that? Yeah, thank you, Pam. That's very critical because all of our projects are repositioning is basically financed with tax exempt bonds, low income housing, tax credits, special types of mortgages and all of the lenders and investors. One of the things that we do have to address in every funding application or financing application is in fact the public transportation issue. So for those projects where there may not be public transportation easily available or a stop within the development, we certainly will be reaching out to you to make sure that we can assure that there is public transportation available to all of the new communities that we will be developing. Perfect. Thank you so much. Hi, I have a question. Are you all working with anybody with the Department of Mental Health to provide maybe housing for our mentally challenged population Absolutely. Yes, we are. Mental Health has been a tremendous partner. In fact, we've got our first allocation of funds for Mental Health where they awarded us over a million dollars. And so they're just a great partner. Cindy, would you like to add any? Yeah, the two developments that we'll be closing this year, both the Oaks at St. Anna's Park as well as the Haven at Palmer Point, both of those will have set aside units in which we will be working with the Department of Mental Health clients. And that's based on a grant that we actually receive from them for those units to be set aside specifically for their clients. And we meet on a regular basis with South Carolina Mental Health as well as the local Columbia Mental Health Office. Okay, I'm just interested in the number of units that maybe have been set aside. Okay, there's 40 units to date, 20 units in each of the communities of the two communities we're gonna close this year. Maybe we can consider that we have a larger number of mentally challenged folk in different categories. You have some young folk, then you have some older folk and I'm not sure if 40 units would even touch anything that we have going on in Columbia. Well, you know, Mental Health also provides services just throughout, you know, anytime we call them we, anytime any of our families might need mental health services, we make those referrals and they do provide services to folk that we don't necessarily have a designated unit for, but those services are still made available to, you know, to our families. I know what is it, just add, and I can't see everybody. So, Julianne, are you still on? And if you are, you may wanna just address. So Ms. Williams, you know, CHA is the only one that has housing. So there's other entities that also provide housing for folks who might have mental health issues. And so there are, there's Mercy, I think, Babcock Center, so there's others as well. So I think to your point, which certainly should go to our accessibility committee that's chaired by Ms. Berkowitz and Ms. Solz, we need to make sure that we are looking at the number of those units as well, because that's certainly something we have to highlight. But Julianne, are you still on? I can't tell. Yes, I'm still on. And I think we're probably working with the, with the same folks at the Department of Mental Health that the housing authority is. So we currently are working with them on the development of another youth home. So that'll be for youth between the ages of 17 and 24 that identifies female. We opened one two years ago for youth identifying as male. We have properties that are specific to individuals that are recovering with mental illness in both Richland and Lexington counties. And we are running a voucher program through the Continuum of Care for homeless individuals that are experiencing mental illness. So I'm not sure what the NOFA is gonna show this year when it drops for the Continuum of Care for housing for the homeless, but we do know that we've got to increase those vouchers as well as a result of COVID, Mercy's opened an adult drop-in center for individuals that are experiencing homelessness. And we're seeing a larger number of what we have in the past of folks on the street that do have a diagnosable mental illness. So, and, you know, Regina, I would say if you'd like to join the subcommittee that's looking at accessibility, we'd be happy to have you join that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all very much. Thank you, Ms. Williams. Any other questions? Can I add this too? I just like to add something on the mental health services. You know, most of, I mean, as you mentioned, Castle Woman Divine, there's a lot of organizations in our community who provide more comprehensive services to assist mental health consumers. And we certainly, you know, take every opportunity to partner with those groups from the housing authorities perspective. We don't have staff that provide that comprehensive services that, you know, some of our families might need. And so, as I mentioned, we certainly look forward to continued partnerships with our community, partners who do provide those comprehensive services. And I would just add that this is a 2030 plan. And so the 40 units that I identified are for the first two projects expected to close this year, we anticipate as we continue development with the other projects in future years, we would have additional units that would be set aside as well. Like I say, we have a close working relationship with South Carolina Mental Health in which they are actually helping fund some of the set aside units as we develop new communities. Thank you so much. Welcome. Are there any other questions for Ms. Matthews or Ms. Herrera? I can't see everybody, so please jump in. Just want to say thank you all for what you're doing. I've got to hop off. I've got a noon call. So thank you all for the work. Thank you, Councilor Minnan. Thank you. So I just wanted to add, and I guess make sure the takeaways, it was a lot of great information. Task Force members will make sure that we get you a hard copy of their PowerPoint so that you have that information as you help us talk about this. But just a couple of points I wanted to make. Number one, I think as we talk about the education piece, I think as CHA undertakes these developments as more private developers undertake their developments, I think that will help as far as the elimination of the stigma of affordable housing. I tend to, I know that people don't, when they talk about affordable housing, most people, their mind completely goes to public housing that existed in 19, so I think we transformed the inventory away from public housing, which I'll be honest and I'll share with the Task Force. I've shared this with Ms. Matthews offline when I first saw the presentation that frightened me because I do know the needs in our community. And so to hear that public housing as we know it will be gone, sorry, public housing as we know it will be gone, really frightened me, but seeing the presentation and understanding the transformation, it is, I think it helps to that whole point of, I think Ms. Baderry talked about when we talked about changing the attainable, it gives that empowerment of transitioning away from public housing to having true affordable attainable housing. This one would be owned by the Housing Authority. So I think we have to look at it that way and I think that'll help us as far as we educate everyone. But I also think that that tells us that we need to make sure that we are aggressively setting the goals and this Task Force, this combined expertise that we have in this Task Force will help us as we continue to make sure that there's more inventory within our community and meeting the needs that we have. So I'm excited to see this presentation but I also I'm inspired to know that we got a lot of work to do. We got, this Task Force has to collectively work and make sure that we have more inventory that will just supplement what the Housing Authority is transitioning from. I have a question. Yep. Hey, Shayla. Hi, sorry, I'm getting my hair done so I can't come on camera. But quick question. I was just wondering, is there anything that the realtor or the Building Association community can do just because I hear, I know that we're going to have a lot of beds and units for people but is it going to be long-term tendency? Like is the goal to just, so they live there in perpetuity or I know it's going to be kind of a revolving door and if there is a way to involve the real estate community just because everybody that I've met that has approached me about homeownership, they do want to be homeowners eventually and maybe getting the realtor's association a little bit more involved the people who want to volunteer to do seminars or do anything else like that. Nobody's reached out to me on the Task Force but I just want to let you know you all know that we are here as a resource as well to assist people in transitioning out of temporary housing or rental housing so that they can make room for other people who may need rental housing. So sometimes in my past as a property manager I saw that sometimes I didn't have occupancy because people wouldn't move out and it's hard to be sustainable as a property manager when you have people for five, six, seven, eight, 10 years it doesn't leave room for new people who are maybe moving to Columbia to the city who may need affordable housing. So just a thought, just volunteering our time to educate and get people prepared if they want to purchase a home or even finding opportunities for affordable housing units that are permanent housing it's just something to kind of keep in mind just because when I looked at the numbers in the presentation it just seemed like overwhelmingly was it rental and it's just not sustainable in long term if we fill up all those beds and then nobody moves. Yeah, Shayla thank you for bringing that point to everyone tonight. We do have our portfolio while it's heavily rental we do have components in there that we just didn't break down that does have home ownership in there and I'm gonna reach out to you because we really need your partnership and assistance on the home ownership component. Some of the home ownership component consist of housing that is currently in single family units that is currently in our housing stock and that we plan on doing some comprehensive renovation too and then some of them it's new construction affordable units and so I'll certainly be reaching out to you to get you guys engaged in that partnership. Please do just know that I'm here and I'm passionate about it and I just wanna help people to no profit no personal gain or benefit it's really hard when people come and they don't even have the first step or first clue and I'm here and my team is here to assist and educate. Thank you. Thank you Shayla. All right, so we're, I'm sorry does somebody say anything? Yeah, Jeff Armstrong, fantastic presentation Ms. Matthews Cindy that was great. I was wondering from a public education and awareness standpoint if there's elements that we could decide on as a task force that we wanna pull out to have an FAQ or hot points we could go out when we're talking about what we see as the questions that were always asked as a group and pull that out from your presentation because there's so much robust information. That's a great idea. We could certainly use all the help we can in educating. We do have a key component of each of the individual projects as community engagement. The developers that we've partnered with we've set forth some very specific requirements about community engagement as they move forward. But I think certainly if we had a community-wide approach to being able to answer the kinds of questions that come up on every project regardless of where it's located I think that would be very important for people to understand. And I think the education process to get people to understand that what this housing is and it's not traditional public housing and it does have a capital and private developers and that they're truly public-private partnerships. I think certainly educating the community on that we'd be very excited if the task force could help us with that process. Yeah, that's a great idea, Jeff. And I know Brenna said she had to drop off force 12 o'clock as well. So I'll make sure that and Jennifer had to go earlier. So our education committee can work on that with you and Cindy and Ms. Matthews we'll reach out to you guys to help make sure we're telling the story correctly. Excellent, thank you. All right, well, we're a little over from 12. Sometimes we go to 12.30 but I'm really trying to keep y'all to 12 because I know everybody is super busy. So Tanya, do you have a question? Yeah, I do have one question. You know, with North Point that's one of the biggest problems people stand for 10 and 15 years. Will that information for home ownership available to us because we are on the nonprofit organization we're no longer, you know, we still do her but we're no longer directly on the hood. We have a nonprofit organization over our property. Yes, go ahead, Cindy. Okay, yes. We will be working with everyone when we get ready to launch the what we're calling a lease purchase program the goal is to be able to prepare the residents while they're in the units to be able to purchase those units. And we'd like to prepare that to occur, I get up, you know, kind of what we find the ideally it's about a five year timeframe maximum when we do lease purchase programs. And so we very much will be working with all of the resources in the community that assist in the home ownership education process, credit repair, all the things that we need to do to be able to prepare the residents for the eventual home ownership. Thank you. And if anybody is ready, if you know time if anybody is ready to begin the home ownership process and getting prepared, please let me know just, you know, shoot me an email and I'll get them connected with our home ownership person on our team. She does a very good job at getting people prepared and kind of meeting them where they are right now. So just let me know, okay? Yes, ma'am, I will. Thank you. All right, well, thank you, Ms. Matthews and Ms. Herrera. We appreciate you guys' presentation. Great information and this will, you know, help inform our work as a task force as we continue to move forward. So briefly as we round out, let's try and get out within the next three minutes since I've got y'all over a little bit. Is there anything going on, any announcements or anything that anybody has from the task force? Hearing none. Okay, hearing none. Committees, we need to make sure that we're on point. Next time we need to kind of hear a report back from our committees. So I'll make sure I ping everybody offline to make sure that the committees are meeting so that we're prepared for presentations next month and our action items. And then we will also lead with our education committee so that they can talk about next steps. So that we can start getting the community engaged as we start talking about not just the need for affordable housing within our community, but the desire for partnerships to improve our inventory. So if nothing else, we are adjourned. Thank you, everyone.