 Good afternoon chair test. I am seeing that all the commissioners who are going to be at the meeting today except for Commissioner McWhorter has not logged in yet. Yes, just just a minute or two ago, I received a text message from Commissioner McWhorter. I am not sure if I'm going to be able to make the meeting this afternoon. I have an emergency situation with my granddaughter. Okay, we do have five. And so I believe we have enough for form. Yes. With that, I'll call the meeting for order. I'd like to call the February 28 2022 housing authority regular meeting to order. Due to the provisions of the governor's executive orders. Number in dash to zero and dash to nine dash to zero, which suspend certain requirements of the Brown Act. And the order of the health officer of the county of Sonoma to shelter in place to minimize the spread of COVID-19. The housing authority commissioners will be conducting today's meeting in a virtual setting using zoom webinar. Members and staff are participating from remote locations and or practicing appropriate social distancing. Members of the public may view and listen to the meeting as noted on the city's website and as noted on the agenda. Members of the public wishing to speak during item six public comment or during our public hearing items will be able to do so by raising their hand and will be given the ability to address the commission. As a matter of housekeeping, I'd like to remind commissioners to keep their audio on mute unless they are speaking commissioners other than chair can mute themselves. Staff will remain muted until needing to speak as members of the public during the meeting, you will be participating as an attendee. Your microphone and camera will be muted. Only today's panelists will be viewed during the meeting. We will be calling in from a telephone and choose to speak during the public comments portion of today's agenda. For privacy concerns the host will be renaming your reviewable phone number to resident and the last four digits of your phone number. The city of Santa Rosa is committed to creating a safe and inclusive environment free from disruption. We will not tolerate any hateful speech or actions and are well staffed to monitor that everyone is participating respectfully, or they will be removed. If necessary, we will also immediately end the meeting. Zoom host please explain the public comments will be heard how public comments will be heard at today's meeting. To agenda item the item is presented the chair will ask for the housing authority member comments and then open it up for public comment. The host and zoom will be lowering all hands until public comment is open for the agenda item. Once the chair has called for public comment the chair will announce for the public to raise their hand if they wish to speak on a specific agenda item. We will be calling in to listen to the meeting audibly you can dial star nine to raise your hand. The host will then call on the public who have raised their hands. Public comment will be limited to three minutes and a timer will appear on the screen for the commission and public to see. If you provide a live public comments have been heard, the meeting host will read email public comments. If you provide a live public comment on an agenda item, but also submitted an email, your email public comment will not be read during the meeting. Additionally, there is one public comment period on today's agenda to speak on non agenda matters item six. This is the time when any person may address the housing authority on matters not listed on this agenda, but which are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the housing authority. Thank you. Roll call. Clerk please call. Okay. We'll go ahead and do the attendance roll call. We'll start with Commissioner Burke. Commissioner Burke. You're muted. Okay. Commissioner Downey. Commissioner McCorder is absent. Commissioner Rawhouser. Here. Commissioner LaPenna. Here. Vice Chair Owen. Here. And chair test. Here. Let the record reflect that all commissioners are present with the exception of commissioners McCorder and Commissioner Downey. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Any statements of abstention today? Seeing none, I'm moving on to item number four. Staff briefing. I thought we may have an abstention today from one of the commissioners. And I have a question regarding the property that was once known as the journey's end location. As I have an outstanding conflict with them. So I'll be recusing myself from that conversation. Do you mean report item number 12.1? 575. Yes. The medicino avenue. I'm sorry. The 12.1. Thank you for joining me. So we'll move on to number four, staff briefing. Before I introduce the staff briefing, can I ask that all commissioners please have their cameras on just so that the members of the public can see commissioners during today's meeting. Thank you. Item 4.1 is a staff briefing, housing authority fiscal year 21, 22, second quarter financial report, Kate Goldbein, the administrative services officer will be making the presentation. Yes, good afternoon, chair, tasks and housing authority commissioners. I'm Kate Goldbein, administrative services officer for the housing and community services department. This memo details the first half of fiscal year 21, 22, funding and expense for the authority. The authority continues to trend well in all categories. There are two items of note, project budget and expenditures and loan repayments and funding sources. So as noted in the quarter one staff briefing, project budget remains high due to one-time pandemic related funding. That includes the CARES Act, CDBG, CB, CARES Act, Housing Choice Voucher Program administrative funding and the American Rescue Plan Act, ARP, Emergency Housing Voucher Services fee funding. Additionally, the 2.7 million of home art funding that the authority approved at its November, 2021 meeting is now also included in the project budget. Moving to funding sources, the highlight is loan repayments at over 3.8 million primarily due to Lantana loan pay downs. This is notable because this funding can be included in new loans for affordable housing through the authority's notice of funding availability process, which you'll be discussing in a few minutes. And just for some context, last year at this time, we have 410,000 of loan payments in excess of budget. This year we have 3.8 million. So this is the briefing and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. Any questions of the commissioners? Commissioner Burke, let's see your hand. Yes, thank you. I reached out to Kate having had a couple of questions and they have to do with items in the budget that aren't necessarily directly in the purview of the housing authority. And Kate responded, this was all through an email communication that items that are in that category could be annotated for the future. And I think I'm fine with that. So specifically what I was interested in doing more about was why the red 10 million dollars is shown in the budget information for the housing authority. As far as I know, we've got no responsibility, no involvement with that program at all from the standpoint of the housing authority board, the policy makers for the housing authority. And similarly, the portion of the CDBG funding that goes to homeless services. At one point in time, there was a direct responsibility on the part of the housing authority, but that's no longer the case. And Kate and Megan, you may have others that are in there that I'm not aware of, but those are the ones that kind of came up that really, I'm thinking, why are those in the housing authority budget since we don't really deal with those? Kate suggested that that has been a concern of hers or an issue that she noted. And she was suggesting that perhaps those items be annotated in the future just to make that point clear. And that seems fine to me as long as it indicates that there's no policy responsibility or involvement on the part of the housing authority, that would suit my concerns. So anyway, and Kate, you may want to, hopefully I correctly communicated your response. Yes, thank you. Are there any other comments from commissioners today on this particular item? Seeing none, I will open this to public comment on item 4.1. Chair Tess, if I may before, maybe before we do that and ask the staff, what do we need to do? I mean, I'm one person of seven. What would the next step be if the idea that was discussed was something that the housing authority wanted to include in the future? What would we need to do to have that happen? Is this discussion sufficient or do we need more? I think from, this is Megan Bassinger, director. I think that from Kate, in my perspective, I think your direction is sufficient and we would just be making a notation to provide further explanation on how those funds are being handled. So it would be no change in the city's budget structure, but just a notation on that those are not within your purview and so they should not be directly included in the information that you are receiving on a quarterly basis. Okay, thank you. And I apologize for putting it in there. Thank you. Thank you. Good questions. We are now taking public comments on item 4.1. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand and you will have three minutes. Chair Tess, I see no hands raised at this time. Thank you. We'll move to item number five, study session. Item 5.1 is the fiscal year 22, 23, Notice of Funding Availability Priorities. Nicole Rappan, Interim Housing and Community Services Manager will be making a presentation. Good morning, Chair and commissioners. So today we have before you the fiscal year 2022 to 2023, Notice of Funding Availability Priorities. Next slide, please. So a little bit of background on the item. Notices of funding availability are issued annually and also when funding becomes available. So the city receives annual allocations from HUD for its federal funds like community development block grant and home investment partnership funds and local funds through the city's annual budget process that are typically included in our annual NOFAs. Other funding that comes in on a one-time basis has recently been CDBGBR, the Disaster Recovery Funding and permanent local housing allocation funds from the state which have resulted in additional NOFAs in the past two years because of the specific requirements and timing of those funds. So over the past three years, we've had six NOFAs issued between our normal annual NOFAs and those special one-time fund NOFAs. Five out of those NOFAs focused on new construction. And part of that is because of the requirements of the funding source. So CDBGBR and PLHA program funds had to be used for new construction. And that was two of the NOFAs out of the last six. Next slide please. So here you can see the projects that were awarded as a result of those NOFAs that have been issued those past six NOFAs. So there are those two lines here in blue indicating the two rehabilitation loans that were issued as a result of NOFAs. And then there are 11 loans that were issued for new construction. Again, this is over the past three years. Next slide please. So our upcoming NOFA, we will likely have funding sources that includes CDBG, HOME, PLHA, which is the permanent local housing allocation fund and local funds. At this point in the year though, the amounts are not yet known on how much money we will have in each source. And I've got an asterisk here by CDBG and local funds because those programs have eligible uses that include rehabilitation. If we're going down through the list, CDBG can be used for rehabilitation and preservation. It can also be used for acquisition and relocation and demolition costs, not new construction specifically for the construction part of it, but you could use acquisition related costs for a project that ended up being a new construction project. PLHA has to be used for new construction related costs. HOME is most easily used for new construction, but also has several requirements tied to it that make it a little bit more difficult to award in general, which we will get to later. And then our local funds are less restrictive and can be used for either new construction or... Next slide please. So we have a couple of options going forward, which is why we are here speaking with the Housing Authority Board today for some direction. Considering that our past six NOFAs, well, out of our past six NOFAs, five have been focusing on new construction, we wanted to come to the Housing Authority Board to get some direction on if the Housing Authority wants to continue to focus on new construction or maybe make a carve out for rehabilitation. So the first option being focus on new construction, which is what we have been for the past three years for the most part. So what that would entail would be developing a NOFA and point scoring system with the ad hoc committee that's appointed for new construction projects, similar to the fiscal year 21-22 NOFA that we did last year. There would be the potential for all funding sources to be utilized for new construction projects dependent on the applications that came in if we had applications coming in for, for example, like acquisition for the CDBG funds, which are the ones that are not typically used for the new construction. So it would also not preclude a rehabilitation or preservation project from competing and being recommended for funding, just like we had in that 21-22 NOFA last year. Next slide, please. And so the other option would be to allocate a portion of the funds in this upcoming NOFA for rehabilitation and or preservation of existing affordable housing units. So what that would look like is likely developing a NOFA with ad hoc committee with a point scoring system for new construction projects and most likely a separate point scoring system or any rehab or preservation applications that come in. Out of our funding sources, the ones that are eligible for rehabilitation and preservation would be CDBG and local funds most easily. So we would allocate the CDBG and local funds portions from our budget for rehabilitation and that would be dependent on sufficient applications. The ad hoc committee would determine the amount and further details because at this early in the year for the planning of our budget, we don't have those numbers available yet, but that would be available to the ad hoc committee that would be reviewing the NOFA and working with staff to develop the point scoring system. Next slide, please. And lastly, with this second option for setting aside some funds for rehab and preservation, it would also not preclude the available funds from being used for new construction. If for example, we didn't receive a sufficient number or adequate projects applying for the funds for rehab and preservation. It's more of guidance for staff and the ad hoc committee as they're developing the NOFA and reviewing applications that come in. Oh, next slide, please. I wanted to also say that there was outreach to the development community prior to this meeting to let them know that we were having the study session to give developers the opportunity to speak during public comment on this item and speak to you directly to advise of what needs there are in our CNOS community. Again, the intent of this study session is to receive feedback from the Housing Authority ward on which way you would like us to proceed for the upcoming NOFA to either put funds towards new construction primarily or to allocate a portion of the funds for rehab. So our recommendation today, it is recommended by the Housing and Community Services Department that the Housing Authority hold a study session to discuss funding priorities for the upcoming fiscal year 2022, 2023, notice of funding availability and provide direction to staff to either one, continue focusing on new construction projects or two, allocate portion of the funds available for rehabilitation and or preservation of affordable housing units in accordance with the applicable funding source, eligible uses. So with that, I'd like to open it up to the Housing Authority board for discussion and I am happy to answer any questions that come up. Do we have any comments from the commissioners? Commissioner Burke. Thank you, thank you. Thanks, Nicole, for your putting this together. I think it's a very important topic for the Housing Authority to discuss and also happy to hear that the applicants were notified and I'm looking forward to hearing from any of them that might be at this meeting and have suggestions for us to consider. I start off by just saying that I lean in favor of the idea of option two, which opens up a little more emphasis on rehabilitation of existing units and I say that knowing that there's a high priority in the community and by those that are, well, at the state level, the regional level, looking at communities to produce a number of new housing units. So it's not an easy topic, given the fact there's limited funds and a huge need out there for both housing preservation and rehabilitation as well as new construction. But I think that's important to consider this mainly because I believe there's a fair amount of, this is kind of subjective, but just my experience is there's a lot of housing complexes out there that are in desperate need of improvement and it's affecting the lives and kind of the wellbeing of those people that live in those complexes and also note that overcrowding is an issue and the Gen H housing report that was recently published speaks to the fact that there's a fairly large number of units in the west side of Santa Rosa that are overcrowded and this is perhaps a way to address that issue. And whatever we decide, I think it's important to communicate to the city council and to applicants and the community the reasons for our decision, whatever the decision is from the housing authority, just to make sure we have that knowledge and that buy-in from people to the degree that's possible. I'd also be interested in having staff's assessment as to maybe where the highest priority needs are in the community and I know that's probably not an easy thing to come up with, but any ideas about if you had next number of dollars to spend where are they gonna have the biggest impact on the community would be helpful. And then also the other consequences of maybe not putting all of the funds in new construction, just kind of what the prone con might be of a, for instance, if we did choose option two, what would be the pros and cons of that? Realizing that we can fund new construction or housing preservation, regardless of whether or not we pursue option one, which is what pretty much the path we've taken primarily in the past, or if we decide to move to option two. And I do think kind of one final comment is that if we do move in the direction of option two, that in addition to those that typically apply for our funds, that we do some major outreach to those that typically don't apply for our funds, because I think there's a number of complexes that are owned by private individuals, for the most part, or corporations that may have housing conditions, which need funding to improve them to make them more habitable for those in the community that are lower income. So those are my comments and I just look forward to the discussion. Thank you. Commissioner Burke in response to a couple of your points. We do know that there is need in the community for rehab from the past few no-fists that we have done. We have been receiving applications for rehabilitation to these focused no-fists. They haven't been awarded, but we do know that there is that need in the community typically the funding requests that come in for rehabilitation of units is a smaller dollar amount than the need from our new construction partners. And as far as a pro-con list, that's a little bit more difficult to provide because you're looking at either putting a larger amount of money towards new construction of units that takes a little bit longer to get through the construction phase, versus keeping our existing affordable housing stock in good condition. So both are very significant needs in our community with our current needs for affordable housing, new construction, and keeping what we have. Thank you, Nicole. Commissioner LaPana. Yeah, I agree with and would choose option number two. I agree with Commissioner Burke. I'm looking at it based on my background as a building inspector and a code enforcement officer that a lot of existing stock after a while gets run down and it needs to be inspected and it needs to be updated and brought into compliance. And without doing, when you would do rehabilitation you would probably find a lot of properties that you would not know about when someone goes in there to rehabilitate. We might find some properties that in the end we may wanna purchase also. So I think we've got another way just through the rehabilitation maybe to increase units available for people. So I would agree with Commissioner Burke and go for option two. Thank you. Commissioner Alhazer. Yes, thank you. As I'm sitting here in the middle of two new construction experiences right in front of me they're starting on the fifth story which separates me from the mountain. And so I no longer get to watch the sun break over the mountain in the morning and it takes an hour for each the sun to rise to break over each story. And so it's a lot of the new construction it's definitely affecting the mindset of our community and changing the way we can see it with the fact that we're going four and five stories which traditionally our community did not allow us to go vertically because of the mountains being important to us. And then also we have to be mindful of the new construction with the water that's being used. And we have to also think about the sustainability so maintaining the what we have going on and the rehabilitation of existing units would be a great way to really honor the sustainability mindset that we have in this community. Thank you. And a note about the rehabilitation loans also for the group. So any rehabilitation loans that would be given out would also come with a regulatory agreement restricting the units for affordability term of 55 years. So that is something to keep in mind as Commissioner LaPenna's point on bringing more units into the fold. Vice Chair Ohn. Thank you. I'm looking at the list here and Nicole the projects you have listed these are over the last three years. The project's awarded. Yes. So just doing some math on here. So that's that total is 55.3 million. It's 14 projects. And five of those projects are $38 million which are the CDBGDR fund. So that's a one time. So if I take those numbers out we're looking about $16.9 million in NOFA that was not CDBGDR funded. And then if I look at what was done for rehab the two rehab projects and then the community housing Sonoma County operating assistance, I'll put that in the rehab category. That's about 1.4, 1.5% of the 16.9 million. So then the question is posed, well, is that enough? And for the time that I've been on the housing authority and recognizing other commissioners comments on here I would state that that is not enough. Another way to look at it is that in Nicole you brought this up of the projects listed the 14 if you take out the five that are CDBGDR there's nine projects, two of them are rehab. So that's 22%. So the rehab projects take a much smaller piece, dollar wise. So just doing math on it and I would look at it and state that we would do option two and to help staff going forward that the NOFAs would have if I'm looking at 1.3% as to what's been done in the past five years if we could take that up to 5%. And that doesn't sound like a large number in terms of NOFA availability, 5% would be available for rehab. But if you look at what the dollar amounts are compared to new construction costs I think that would be adequate and you could make a case that is an improvement over what's been done over the last three years. Thank you for that feedback. I wanted to also bring up. So in that table maybe if we could have the recording secretary go back to the projects awarded table on the screen for just a moment. I believe that's slide three. There was an additional rehab loan that was approved by the housing authority last year for the West Hearn property that came in as a somewhat emergent request for rehab. So that was not in response to one of our NOFAs specifically which is why it was not on the list. But that loan was roughly in the amount of 250,000 if I'm recalling correctly. So I just wanted to bring that up that there was an additional rehab loan not in response directly to one of these NOFAs that was not on the list. But I definitely see your point about wanting to increase the amount of funding over the three to four year period. Thank you. Do we have any other questions of staff? I have a comment to make. I agree with the previous comments about option number two. What I'd like to see is if we can do more outreach for rehab projects. I look at Earl Street and Giffin Avenue. Earl Street had only eight units for rehab and Giffin Avenue was a congregate setting situation. I also added up all the new construction units which was quite amazing. 628 new construction units. We have to compliment ourselves and had ourselves on the back even though there's a lot more to go. So those would be my same comments. Option two, I'd like to see more outreach for rehab projects. Thank you. Any other comments? Okay. We are now taking public comments on item 5.1. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. You will have three minutes. Chair Tess, our first comment is from Chris Westlake. Thank you. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and commissioners. My name is Chris Westlake. I'm a consultant for Burbank Housing Development in Santa Rosa there. And for our project in Burbank Avenue, we were successful in receiving CBGDR money from the commission. I really appreciate that. And also some PLHA funds are there this year. And I would just like to emphasize maybe priorities looking at making it a prior for the CBGDR projects or disaster projects. They're very hard to get financed through the state side of it. And with the high housing costs now coming through COVID, it continues to accelerate our housing costs and our projects and which enforces this to go out for other funding sources. So maybe seeing a priority for that and also for the new construction as new projects are coming online because the city of Santa Rosa does have a large housing rena number to meet. And unfortunately that doesn't get met with a lot of the rehab work that's been done. So I see the priorities being new construction and then maybe a priority for disaster projects that have other funding in them. Thank you. Thank you. Chair Testa see no other hands raised at this time. Thank you. So we will be moving on since this is a study session. Just a comment to staff. So with what you've heard today, how do you see us proceeding? So likely at the next housing authority meeting we would request an ad hoc committee to be appointed to review the NOFA and the next point scoring system. And then staff would begin meeting with that ad hoc committee to develop the point scoring systems for both the funding sources that require only new construction and for the funding sources allowable for rehabilitation and or preservation. And we would come out with and published in NOFA likely either this spring or early summer. For those funds. Thank you. Chair Testa I see that we do have another hand raised for the NOFA priorities. Okay. I don't see the hand. Who would that be? This is Mrs. Lemus. Hi, my name is Yesenia Lemus. I am with mid pen housing and I would also like to make a comment here. We are seeing a high need in our community for a new construction and in order to be competitive for state and federal funding, we really need some local funds for the new construction. So I would like to recommend to continue prioritizing the focus for a new construction funding. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Any other public comments? Seeing none, we'll move forward with item number seven, approval of minutes. We have minutes of the January 24th, 2022 meeting. Are there any changes? I'm sorry, Chair Testa. We're actually on public comments on non-agenda items at this point. Oh, I'm sorry. You're correct. Thank you. We're now taking public comments on item number six, non-agenda matters. This is the time when any person may address the housing authority on matters not listed on the agenda, but which are within the subject matter section of the housing authority. If we must make a comment on via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Chair Testa, I've seen no hands raised at this time. Thank you. Item number seven, we have minutes for the January 24th, 2022 meeting. Are there any changes? Seeing none, the minutes are approved as prepared. Item eight, Chairman Commissioner reports. Do we have any commissioner reports? Seeing none, I do have a comment and a commission chairman report. I attended the February meeting with the mayor and other chairs, and it was announced that Diane McDonald is the new city council person for district number three to replace Jack Tibbets. There was also a comment from the community advisory board announcing a community improvement grant for projects up to $2,500. Those would be neighborhood type of projects and anyone interested would contact community engagement, one word, at srcity.org. Secondly, myself and the chair of the planning commission had a meet and greet virtual meeting with our new city manager, Mariskesha Smith. She is the former deputy city manager of the city of Stockton and also worked with the city of Oakland. She was very interested in the Santa Rosa housing authority issues in particular vouchers and especially emergency vouchers. I had described to her some of the financing projects in our pipeline and she requested a copy of that as she was quite amazed what we have accomplished recently here. She's well experienced in dealing with HUD and with state HCD and offered her support where we might need it. And that concludes my comments. We'll move on to, is there any other questions? And if not, I will open it to public comments on item 8.1. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. You will have three minutes. Chair Testa see no hands raised at this time. Thank you. We will proceed with item number nine committee reports. There are no committee reports on this agenda. Item number 10, executive director reports communication items. Good afternoon. There are no written communication items this month but there are a couple of items that I would like to bring to the housing authority's attention. First, wanted to let you know that last Thursday, February 24th, the city council and the city's department heads met to have a goal setting session. So those are in the process of being refined and once they are adopted by council, I will be bringing them to the housing authority to share with you. So you are aware of the city council's goals going forward. Just to give you some updates on some items that we have talked about in past meetings, staff is in the process of setting up tours at the Herron Veterans Village site and you'll be receiving dates and times in the coming days to get on your schedules. We're gonna do those in small groups and hopefully those dates and times will work with the commissioners. Also, we staff is working on a 50th anniversary video and materials for the housing authority. So that is underway with the city's communication team. We're just in the beginning stages, but it should be a great retrospective of all the work that has been accomplished by this body over the past 50 years. And certainly commissioners will be engaged as we really get into more active steps of developing those materials. And then finally, just want to acknowledge all the hard work of our housing choice voucher team. As of today, we have 28 emergency housing voucher units released and 52 issued vouchers. So those are the individuals that are actively seeking units. And this is the emergency housing voucher program, 131 vouchers that the city of Santa Rosa was awarded in the summer of 2021. So it's been a great lift for part of the housing choice voucher team. And it's great to see individuals who are referred to the continuum of care. So these are homeless individuals being able to find a place to live. I'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Do we have any questions of staff? Seeing none, we are now taking public comments on item, excuse me, did I see a hand? Commissioner Rahar, sorry, you have your hand raised. Yes, I was wondering if there were still any of the emergency vouchers available or if they've all been distributed. So the referral process that we are adhering to and this is as directed by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and as agreed to with the continuum of care is they need to be referred to the housing authority to either Santa Rosa or the county's housing authority by the continuum of care. So they need to go through referral agency. So if individuals are interested, they should reach out to the continuum of care working groups to be referred. But based on the information I have, we have over 131 referrals on hand because some individuals are not either are qualifying or have not been able to complete all the steps. So we have more referrals than we have actual vouchers as of right now. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Okay, we are now taking public comments on item 10.1. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. You will have three minutes. Chair Testa, I see no hands raised at this time. Thank you. Item 11, consent items. There are no consent items on this agenda today. We'll move forward to report items for item number 12, Nicole Rathburn. Item 12.1 is a report 3575 from Mendocino Avenue, phase two funding recommendation. Nicole Rathburn, interim housing and community services manager and Julie Guerin program specialist will be making their presentation. Thank you. Good afternoon again, Nicole Rathburn, interim housing and community services manager. And we also have Julie Guerin program specialist with us today. We're going to be doing this presentation for you jointly. So I will go ahead and present to you the background information with details from Julie. If I may interrupt for a moment. This is the point that I was going to recuse myself in the conversation. And so I'll be leaving the meeting. Thank you. Okay, so as long as that's with you and with everybody. Okay, thank you. Line off, thank you. Thank you very much. Have a lovely day. All right, if we could go to the next slide please. So I'll be going over today with you why this request is in front of you and then Julie will get into the details about the project at hand. So as you I'm sure remember our last notice of funding availability or NOFA was published on October 1st with applications due later in the month of October. Just over one and a half million dollars in home funds were available on this NOFA in addition to the permanent local housing allocation program or the PLHA program funds that were awarded by the housing authority to two different projects in December. The home funds were not awarded and remained in the housing authority budget because there were not any projects that were eligible for home funds that applied during that NOFA cycle. The home funds in general can be more difficult to find eligible projects for because all of the funding sources all of the other funding sources for the project aside from their small gap must be already committed to the project and home funds must be the last money in. The project also has to be able to start construction within 12 months of the award. So these two factors combined make it a little bit more difficult for us to award home funds by doing an annual solicitation with our funding sources. In October at the time of this NOFA from fall there was a project 3575 Mendocino Avenue phase two that was anticipated to be fully funded. So the developer did not submit an application. Can you go to the next slide please? So in late January the developer notified staff of a funding gap of about $1.5 million due to an unanticipated tax credit equity shortfall and additional construction costs that had come up that they were not aware of when our NOFA was open in October. So this project has received an allocation of over $20 million from the state disaster tax credits. And along with that funding source comes a mandatory construction commencement date of April 10th. The timeline of this construction start date does not allow for the developer to apply for funding in a future NOFA that we might put out which is why we are coming to you today with this request so that you can consider awarding funding to this project so that it does not lose the $20 million disaster tax credit award that it's received. Next slide please. So when staff was notified of this funding shortfall for the project we had the developer submit an application to us so we could assess the project and the financials for it. On January 31st the developer which is BRJE phase two Housing Partners LP submitted their funding request an application for $1.56 million in home funds for construction related costs for the Mendocino Avenue phase two project. This project meets all of those hard to hard to find and hard to develop eligibility requirements for home funds. All of its other funding sources are fully committed. 95% is committed to their project. That last 5% is what they're asking for from the Housing Authority and Construction Commencement would be in early April 2022 provided we could close the loans in that timeframe. These are the two difficult criteria for us to meet, find projects to meet to be eligible for home funds which is also why we did not award them in the last notebook. Next slide please. So the project name is probably familiar to this group because we have a prior Housing Authority investment in the project. So there is 3575 Mendocino Avenue phase one and there's now this project is 3575 Mendocino Avenue phase two. It's two different phases of the same merger project. We consider them two separate projects for the sake of Housing Authority funding and affordable housing funding in general. So the phase one project has 17 project-based vouchers that this group has awarded to the project in addition to 11.9 million dollars in CDBGDR funds that were awarded last year. Phase two, so this specific project already has 13 project-based vouchers awarded that happened in June 2021. In addition to CDBGDR that was actually awarded by the County Community Development Commission. Due to the timeline to commence construction, this unanticipated shortfall and the tax credit equity with the increased in construction costs and the existing Housing Authority investments in their projects, plus the difficulty for projects to meet the eligibility requirements of home funds are all factoring into why we are bringing this request to the Housing Authority today outside of the annual middle school. Next slide, please. So with that background on why we are bringing this request to you today and the events that led up to it, I'm going to hand the presentation over to Julie Guerin, program specialist to go over with you the details about the project and how the project would have scored had they submitted their application during the October fall of 2021 NOPA. Good afternoon, Chair and Chairs and Commissioners. My name is Julie Guerin and I'm a program specialist for Housing and Community Services. As Nicole mentioned, I will be taking over the presentation from here and reviewing the project application details and scoring. So in this slide, we see an aerial graphic of the project site for 3575 Mendocino Avenue and the site is at the former Journey's End Mobile Home Park which was burned down in the 2017 Tubbs Fire. Next slide, please. So a short summary of the 3575 Mendocino Avenue phase two project. The developer is BRJE phase two housing partners which is Burbank Housing Development Company and Related, they are working together. The requested loan amount is $1,560,000. This is a new construction project and the loan funds will be used for construction related costs. The project includes 31 bedroom units targeted to seniors, 37 of those units will be affordable housing and one will be an unrestricted managers unit. And phase two of the project includes 38 of 162 affordable senior housing units on a 0.42 acre parcel. So next slide, please. A little continuation of the summary. So the affordability mix for the phase two project includes four units at 30% AMI, nine units at 40% AMI, 15 units at 50% AMI, another nine units at 60% AMI and one unrestricted managers unit. Again, the unit mix is 38 one bedroom units and for the environmental piece, the project is in compliance with CEQA. They have already completed a sustainable community's environmental assessment under the California Environmental Quality Act and this assessment was approved by the planning commission and the city council in December of 2020 and they have completed a NEPA environmental assessment in July of 2021. And this loan would be a conditional commitment on a pending RROF, which is a request for release of funds process. This is part of the process for the environmental review with HUD. We, in order to complete the loan commitment, we would need to receive a document which is called the AUGF or the authority to release grant funds from HUD. So that's a condition of this loan commitment and that is part of the environmental assessment process. Next slide, please. So on this slide, we're just gonna go over the criteria. I'm not gonna read through all of this, but the project application that we received was evaluated and ranked based on the fall 2021 NOFA selection criteria and this criteria was decided upon by an ad hoc review committee prior to the, for the 2021 fall NOFA. The categories include readiness, affordability, bedroom size, special needs set-asides, leveraging, project competitiveness, developer and management experience, on-site services, amenities and other factors and the total possible points would be 100. Next slide, please. So we will review the scoring and analysis of the application and application materials received on January 31st, 2022 for 3575 Mendocino phase two. So in the readiness category, the project received a score of six out of 10. The project has already completed ANEPA and a CEQA approved by the Planning Commission and City Council. They have submitted their building permits and the only pending item is the design review process. For the affordability category, the project received a score of 18 out of 20. This is based on the affordability table that was created for the NOFA scoring process. And based on that table, the project received 18 out of 24 affordability. For bedroom size, the project received a score out of two out of eight. All of the units are one bedroom. If you keep in mind that this project is for seniors only, then we realize that there's a reason that they're all one bedroom, but based upon the scoring matrix, they received a score of two out of eight for bedroom size. For special needs set-asides, the project received a score of 12 out of 12. 100% of the units are for a special needs set-aside for seniors. Under leveraging the project received a score of seven out of 10, the loan amount requested is 5.5% of the development cost for project competitiveness. The project received a score of 10 out of 10. So 95% of the funding is committed and the project has already received an award of $20 million of tax credit allocation committee, 9% tax credits. For the developer experience category, the project received a 15 out of 15. The developer has significant experience in the region they have over 20 developments in 20 projects in Santa Rosa, good standing. For the onsite supportive services or onsite services category, the project received a score of six out of seven. The project has significant onsite services, including a dedicated services coordinator and referrals to off-site services. Under the amenities category, the project received a score out of three out of three with multiple amenities within a half a mile. On the other factors category, the project received a score of four out of five. The project has, as Nicole stated, a previous Housing Authority Award for phase one of CDBGDR funds, 17 PVVs in phase one and 13 PVVs in phase two. And the final and total project score is 83 out of 100. And I would just mention here that if the project were to be compared to the two applications received in the fall 2021 NOFA, the project would have ranked first out of three. Next slide, please. And so with that information, it is recommended by the Housing and Community Services Department that the Housing Authority by resolution approve a conditional commitment of loan funds to BRJE phase two housing partners, LP, in the amount of $1,560,000 in home funds for construction related costs of 37 affordable housing units and one unrestricted managers unit for 3575 Mendocino Avenue phase two located at 3575 Mendocino Avenue, Santa Rosa, California. And that concludes our presentation and Nicole and I will be available for any questions that you may have. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioners, I see Commissioner or Vice Chair Owen, your hand is raised and you have comment to make. Yeah, so is the total project 162 units? So the total affordable housing units, sorry, the total project is 38 units. I'm sorry if that was a little bit confusing on the slide. They do have 162 units in the phase two, but that's not the affordable portion of the project. Okay, all right, so 162 is phase two of which 38 is affordable. Correct. And is that with, go ahead Megan. Sorry if I can interject, it's actually three phases. So the journeys in the 3575 Mendocino is broken down into three phases. Phase one was the 90 plus units that you previously awarded funds to. This 38 units is phase two and then the remainder is phase three and that together totals about 162 units which replaces the mobile homes that were lost from the fire. Okay, thank you. Now, phase one received CDBGDR 9% tax credits. The 9% tax credits for this project did not come from that, just came from the state allocation, is that correct? This, so are you asking for phase two? Phase two. Yes, phase two received $20 million in tax credit equity, yes. From the disaster tax credit program. It was disaster, so, but this was not part, phase two was not part of the 38 million? A part of the 38 million dollars in CDBGDR funding. Correct. Only phase one received loan funds, loan funds from the city of Santa Rosa and community development block grant disaster recovery. However, the County of Sonoma also received an allocation of CDBGDR and they put some of their CDBGDR towards phase two. Okay, so that's where their 9% tax credits is still DR funds, but it came from the county and not the city. That is correct. Megan shaken her head up and down, so thank you. And then there are project-based vouchers for both projects, but let's just talk about phase two. So has that this, my understanding is there's a subsidy layering review at HUD for those projects that receive project-based vouchers. How is that process going with HUD? So in order to complete the subsidy layering review, the project will need to have all of their funding sources committed. And so if the housing authority were to award the project this loan, then they would be able to commence with the subsidy layering review immediately. Okay, and how fast is HUD turning that around? So for this process, the subsidy layering review would be submitted to CT-CAC because there are tax credits and CT-CAC is pretty quick about turning around those subsidy layering reviews much faster than HUD. In my experience, they have turned those around within two weeks and they do take into account. If we ask them to expedite, they are really good about working with us. Thank you. That's all my questions. Thank you very much, Julia, very good presentation. Thank you. We have any other comments by commissioners? I just had a quick comment. Julie, you had mentioned design review. It has not yet gone to design review. Will that be scheduled before the April 10th deadline that we're dealing with here? Yes, and I was able to check in with Amy Nicholson in PED and she had said that she saw some pending documents submitted by the developer and was able to confirm that those were the design review documents, although they hadn't officially been accepted through their process yet. And so at the time of the scoring, that wasn't taken into account, but just as of yesterday, she let me know that she saw those documents coming through. And I would just mention as well that this particular project, I think it would have, it could have been scored a little bit higher on readiness. That particular category within the NOFA scoring rubric, it's pretty difficult to get the perfect scoring for all sort of examples. And this particular project I reached out to PED and they found it hard to score it on the existing NOFA rubric that we have. The process is very far along with, as far as readiness goes, it was just this one last piece of the design review that they were waiting on. I just thought I would mention that. Okay, good. And the larger project, because it is several phases, the larger project has gone through design review and phase one, for example, is in construction. So it makes getting this phase two, as long as it's substantially in the same form as the already improved larger project, go through that process much more quickly. Yes, I've noticed driving by that most of the construction on the site itself is all torn up and moving forward. So it looks like it's ready to go. Thank you. Any other questions of staff? Thank you, Julie and thank you, Nicole. I'll now open this to public comment. We are now taking public comments on item 12.1. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you were dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. You will have three minutes. Chair Tess, we do have someone with the raised hand. They are, they have speaking privileges as of now. Okay, thank you. Good afternoon, can you hear me okay? Yes, we can. Good afternoon, Chair Tess, honorable commissioners, director, passenger and staff. Thank you for the opportunity to speak this afternoon. My name is Efren Carrillo, vice president of housing development for Burbank Housing. And I am here this afternoon along with our development partner related California in support of the item before you and to assist in answering any questions you might have. As you are aware, Burbank and related with enormous support from the city of Santa Rosa and the Housing Authority that has been hard at work since the 2017 top fire destroyed the 162 unit mobile home park. We are here before you excited to share that the construction of phase one, which is that 94 units of senior affordable homes is well underway with your support. It truly is an indication of the partnership and collaboration necessary, not only to rebuild housing, but to chip away at our existing demand. As noted in your staff report and presentation with an increase in construction related costs, including materials and labor, as well as reduced pricing on our 9% tax credits on phase two. We're trying to close this gap on the second phase of this development. We appreciate the full consideration from the Housing Authority for these funds and also are appreciative of the significant lift undertaking by Housing Authority staff to have this item before your commission. We are available to respond to any items you may have for us today. Thank you again. Thank you. Chair, I see no other hands raised at this time. I'll ask the commissioners one more time since we did have public comment by Mr. Correa. Do you have any questions? Any further questions of Bourbon housing? Seeing none. Do we have a motion to approve? I'll move to approve the resolution of the Housing Authority of the city of Santa Rosa approving a conditional commitment of loan funds in the amount of $1,560,000 to BRJE Phase Two Housing Partners LP for construction related costs for 3575 Menesino Avenue Phase Two, 3575 Menesino Avenue, 8 p.m. 173, 030, 001, and waive the reading in text. Thank you. Do we have a second? I'll second chair test. Commissioner LaPenna. Thank you, Commissioner LaPenna. We'll take a roll call vote. Okay, we'll go ahead and proceed with the roll call vote. We'll start with Vice Chair Owen, excuse me. Aye. And then Commissioner Burke. Aye. Commissioner LaPenna. Aye. And Chair Test. Aye. We let the record show that the motion passes with four ayes with Commissioner Downey and Commissioner Reporter Absent and Commissioner Rawhouser abstaining. Thank you. I'd like to thank everyone for today's meeting and the meeting is now adjourned.