 It's about 130 and I think all the commissioners that are going to be present are here now. Thank you. Good afternoon. I'd like to call the April 24, 2023 housing authority regular meeting to order. Members of the public may view and listen to the meeting as noted on city's website and as noted on the agenda. As a matter of housekeeping, I'd like to remind commissioners to keep their microphones muted unless they are speaking. 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 under well staff to monitor that everyone is participating respectfully or they will be removed. If necessary, we're also immediately in the meeting. Clerk, please explain how public comments will be heard at today's meeting. At each agenda item after the item is presented, the chair will ask for housing authority commissioner comments. After the commissioner comments, the chair will open the item for public comment. The chair will first call for in-person public comments and then will request public comments from those participating via Zoom. For members of the public joining the meeting via Zoom, you will be participating as an attendee. Your microphone and camera will be muted. If you're 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 viewable phone number to resident and the last four digits of your phone number. For members of the public attending in person and would like to make a comment on hearing items, when the chair calls for public comments after an item has been presented, please go to the closest public speaking podium and the upper tier of chambers where the clerk will unmute your microphone and permit your comment to be heard. The Zoom host will be lowering all hands until public comments via Zoom are opened for the agenda item. Once the chair is called for Zoom public comment, the Zoom host will call upon each member of the public and the order that their hands are raised in Zoom and will continue to call upon those who wish to participate until the list in Zoom is exhausted. If you're calling in to listen to the meeting audibly, you can dial star nine to raise your hand. Public comments will be limited to three minutes per speaker per item. Public comments are limited to one comment per speaker per item. Once all live public comments have been heard, the clerk 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 heard during the meeting. Additionally, there is one public comment period on today's agenda to speak on non-agenda matters item five. 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. Before I ask the clerk to do a roll call for attendance at the request of city's IT team to assist with streaming the meeting and capturing commissioners as they are speaking. When a commissioner has a question or comment, please ask the chair to be recognized. This will allow time for the camera to shift to a new speaker. Ask the clerk for roll call now, please. Okay. All right, we will start with Commissioner Newton. Present. Commissioner Smith will be absent. Commissioner Rawhouser also absent. Commissioner McWhorter also absent. Commissioner Downey. Here. Vice Chair LePenna. Here. And Chair Owen. Here. Okay, let the record reflect that all commissioners are present with the exception of commissioners Smith, Rawhouser, and McWhorter. Thank you. We'll move on to item number three, which is statements of abstention. Are any commissioners, any commissioners, if there are any statements of abstention on any items today? One will go on to item four, which is a study session. Item four, part one is review of the 2023-24 proposed housing authority budget. And Goldfine will be providing the presentation. That's quite all right. We'll get an agenda to you right now. Thank you. Thank you. We did not. That's item number five. We're in item number four. Okay. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Owen and members of the Housing Authority. Megan Bassinger, the Executive Director of the Housing Authority. Kate Goldfine, Administrative Services Officer, and I will be presenting the budget to you this afternoon. Kate is bringing that presentation up so it could be viewed in the chamber. All right. So before you this afternoon is the fiscal year 2023-2024 housing authority budget. And just as a reminder, this item is a study session for it is for review and comment and no official actions will be taken this afternoon. So the Housing Authority's mission is to ensure adequate, decent, safe, and sanitary housing for qualified people within Santa Rosa consistent with federal, state, and local law. We'd like to begin by touching on some of the Housing Authority's accomplishments in the current fiscal year, which is 2022-2023. As you may recall, we have the emergency housing vouchers, which is a tranche of 131 vouchers for homeless individuals that meet certain eligibility criteria. As noted on the screen, we have 80 housed and 21 looking. Prior to this meeting, I reviewed our data and we have an additional individual house. So it's inching up. We currently have 81 housed. We have conducted 1,577 unit inspections through our housing choice voucher program. These are part of the biennial inspection program movements for any new voucher holder who is relocating to a unit or coming off of our waiting list. And then we also conduct quality control inspections to ensure that the inspectors are meeting the requirements of the housing choice voucher program. Within the past year, we've transitioned from a paper to electronic waiting list. So in prior years, in order to secure a spot on the housing choice voucher waiting list, we collected thousands of paper forms during a one-month period. With the assistance of the city's IT department, we transitioned to an electronic waiting list in fall of 2021. And through that process, we received over 7,200 applications that are randomized and then placed on our housing choice voucher waiting list. We also have 73 project-based vouchers, which are PBVs committed. These projects will look familiar to you in that we've coupled the project-based vouchers with our disaster recovery housing assistance. So we have 30 to Caritas Homes, which is located in the downtown area next door to the Caritas Village. We have 30 at 3575 Mendocino Avenue. This is the former Journeys and Mobile Home Park. It's a total of 30, but 17 are on Phase 1 and 13 are on Phase 2. And then the Canary at Railroad Square, which is a 129-unit development, has 33 project-based vouchers. We also have project-based vouchers committed to projects that have not commenced construction. All right, the laptop seems to be stuck. All right, well, we received some technical assistance. I'll just keep on moving with our goals and initiatives for the upcoming fiscal year. So some of the objectives of the Housing Authority and the Housing and Community Services staff in fiscal year 23-24 are to obtain 100% lease up for the Emergency Housing Voucher Program. Based on our lease ups for the program thus far, we should be making good progress in that objective moving forward. We also are striving for a 98% lease up rate for our Housing Choice Voucher Program. We're currently at 85% utilization and 94% of our budget. So it's a balance between how much funding we have allocated and the number of households we can serve. And then finally, looking to use our Housing Choice Voucher resources for preservation and development of units, which is what we've been doing for the project-based voucher program. So as you may recall, we've had requests to allocate project-based vouchers to developments, and I touched on a few of those earlier. And so we look to continue advancing those projects and looking to see if we have additional opportunities to project-based some of our units. And I'm just going to pause a moment while they try and get the presentation back up. All right, Chair Owen, if it's okay with you, we'd like to proceed. So the screen right above you is not illuminated, but the presentation is being projected on either side of the Council Chamber, and I believe you can see it at the screen in front of the staff table. We have our iPads with them as well. Mr. Deoni? Unfortunately, I'm not able to see the screens. Can you come to the side over here? Is it up there? Mr. Deoni, can you see that one screen? I can see this one right here. Does that work for you? Yes, thank you. You're very welcome. Thank you. Okay. Want me to move those chairs? Okay, so we are now proceeding to the fiscal year 2022-23 accomplishments of the Housing Trust. The Linda Tuna senior projects were senior apartments were completed. This was the first wildfire funded disaster recovery project in California, with 26 affordable units with 13 project-based vouchers. The Boyd Commons, which is Orchard Commons, which is located on Boyd Street, 45 affordable units was completed and leased up. Bennett Valley Apartments, which as noted on the slide says, soon to be under construction, I'm happy to report that we closed on that transaction last week, and we are anticipating construction within the next week or so. And that is the reuse of the Bennett Valley senior apartments, includes housing authority funding and project-based vouchers. And this was done in conjunction with the city's real estate team. So it is one of the first surpluses of city sites that we've been able to turn into affordable housing. So we're very excited to have that begin construction. As earlier noted, we have numerous CDBGDR projects that are under construction. So there's three. Caritas Phase 1, the former journey's end site, located at 3575 Mendocino Avenue, and the Canaria Railroad Square projects that are under construction. And the fifth project, Burbank Avenue, is in the process of finalizing its funding needed to start construction. So we are hopeful that we will have an announcement on that in the coming months. And then finally, the compliance staff has monitored over 5,300 units for affordability and age restriction requirements. In the upcoming fiscal year, the trust staff will continue to manage the loan portfolio, which is currently valued at over $178 million. So this is all of the loans that have been provided by the housing authority and are still securing its sites. We receive annual reports on the status of those loans. And then as indicated by some of the efforts during the year, we manage the move-ins and recertifications of those tenants who are in units that are restricted by regulatory agreements. And as we have done in prior years, we continue to pursue additional funding in order to help provide us with resources to advance affordable housing throughout the year. Are there any questions on this portion of the presentation? He's good. Give us a thumbs up. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Good afternoon, Chair Owen and commissioners. I apologize for our technical difficulty. I do. Yeah, real quick. Thank you. Going back to slide four, the housing choice voucher goals of 98% lease up-rate versus the recent 85% this year. And you talked about there's a difference in the budget and just the number that you have. So how do you get there from 85 up to 98 for next year? How do you bridge that gap? So one of the efforts that is currently underway is pulling names from our housing choice voucher waiting list. As indicated on some of the efforts for this fiscal year, we have several thousand households that are on the waiting list. Staff is actively pulling those names. So what happens is those individuals are called and we verify if they are still eligible for the program. In the last month, we called 100 new households from that list to see if they were still eligible and then to move them through the process of issuing a voucher. So that is one of the ways that we are going to increase our lease up and our voucher utilization. I think also as we see these projects with project-based vouchers coming online, those are additional resources that we can or units we can put people in in order to increase lease up. Okay, thanks. Yeah, I just wanted to see what the issue was there. It sounds like you're just processing them through, basically. All right, thanks. Any other questions from commissioners? Hearing none, we can continue. All right, thank you commissioners for your patience. So I'm Kate Goldfein, administrative services officer for the Housing and Community Services Department and I'm happy to present the authorities for this fiscal year 23-24 proposed budget today. We follow federal and state regulations and program and funding mandates, city council and housing authority policy and direction and city leadership directives to formulate the budget. There are three program areas within the authority budget. That's administration, rental housing assistance and the housing trust. This slide shows the total budget for all three programs at its highest level. You can see the proposed 23-24 budget is up significantly. The main driver of this is a state grant of $20.7 million. It's the infill infrastructure grant to the housing trust and then various other programs and divisions had increases and decreases, which I'll discuss in detail in the coming slides. So we'll begin with the administrative budget and this is a little under $1.6 million this year. All the Housing and Community Services Department programs that benefit from these services pay for a portion of the costs based on their salaries and that's including programs outside of the housing authorities purview. The trust and rental assistance programs are budgeted to pay about $1,459,000 of these costs. Costs include city overhead and technology support, liability insurance, salaries and benefits for staff who support the housing authority and services and supplies. So this is the year-over-year comparison of the administrative budget and overall it went down slightly. 98% of the costs in this budget are uncontrollable, meaning that we're informed of our share of the cost or of staff's salaries and benefits and we are required to pay at those amounts. So salaries and benefits include the admin staff who directly support the authority, which is the administrative secretary and then a portion of a city marketing and outreach coordinator and that person helps us with website updates, advertising of waiting list openings or notices of funding availability, public meetings, press releases and such. For salaries and benefits, like I mentioned, city employees are unionized. So our salaries are negotiated between our unions and city management. Once they're agreed upon, we're required to pay that amount and city employees received a cost of living increase on effective July 1st. So salaries did increase this year. Moving on to services and supplies at $79,000. So over $50,000 of that is shared services and supplies that we use as part of the larger city organization. That's our annual audit at between $25,000 and $30,000 a year. Copier costs at between $17,000 to $20,000 a year. Vehicle expenses, maintenance, gas, replacement fund for our department car, shredding services and the like. The controllable services and supplies budget is $28,000 this year, 2% of our overall budget. And that includes things like professional organization, memberships and dues for the admin staff, meeting costs, conferences and training, trade subscriptions, things like that. And then also general office supplies like pens, paper, binders. And so Megan and I discussed this budget and we purposely increased it this year after several years of decreases due to COVID. So staff are back in the office, supply utilization is up and offsite trainings have resumed. So we want to be able to be able to pay for that. The city's share, the authorities share of city liability insurance is $75,000. And that decreased because the authorities share of all liability claims as part of the city organization decreased. Then we have information technology at $279,000. This is super important for our department. So we have hardware, right? Like servers, computers, monitors, phones, iPads, the things that you guys are using. And then we have specific software used by each division. So the rental housing assistance division has custom software built by our IT department that manages all the data related to our 2,300 existing clients, plus like clients that are coming off the waiting list potential. We also partnered with IT for the electronic waiting list process that greatly increased efficiency, greatly decreased paper use. The housing trust also has a custom built software system that tracks that $178 million worth of loans for hundreds of loans. It's all the software you would think about. So Microsoft Office Suite, internal and external websites, the meeting posting and presenting remote meeting software such as Zoom, all of that. And then finally, city overhead is about one million this year, and that includes support from other city departments. So the largest of that is the city's finance department. And the accounting division assists us with federal reporting and auditing. Accounts payable makes sure that all those assistance payments go out to landlords each month for all of those clients. We use accounts receivable and cash receding to receive loan payments. We also utilize purchasing software as needed and payroll, things like that. It also includes the city attorney's office, so that's for meeting support and a gender review, contract and loan document review, interpretation of new housing laws and mandates and other services. It includes all of our human resources needs, so recruitment and hiring, administration of leaves, discipline, risk management. It includes all of our facilities costs, so we're able to be in here. It's all our offices. It's the maintenance and janitorial among that. So that's what goes into that million dollars. And so it's great this year that that decreased a little bit. And I don't expect that to continue. I think that salaries and costs of goods will continue to increase. So it's great that it decreased this year, but I don't think that that's going to be a trend. All right. Now we'll focus on the new funding sources available to the two programs, Rental Housing Assistance and Housing Trust. So federal funding is down to 63% this year, and the only reason is it's lower than usual is due to that one-time large state infill infrastructure grant. So federal funding is usually around 95% of the budget. The Rental Housing Assistance Program is budgeting to receive $38.7 million for the Housing Choice Voucher Program, another little under $2.7 million for the Emergency Housing Voucher Program, $41 million, 59% of the total budget. HUD has not released our administrative allowance yet this year, but we anticipate we'll have it by the June budget adoption. That program also receives very small institution reimbursements from clients who have underpaid or landlords who have been overpaid that funding comes back into the authority. The trust receives three federal grants, CDBG, HOME, and HOPWA, $2.6 million, 4% of the funding this year. I called out state grants separately because of the very large IIG grant of $20.7 million. We also get the permanent local housing allocation plan grant of about $1.2 million. Local funding to the trust is 6.5% of the total. It includes real property transfer tax, impact fees, loan repayments, compliance monitoring fees, and property rental. And then the trust also has 4.7 million of uncommitted carryover from prior years. So that is loan repayments that came in between January and June of the fiscal year. Those have not been committed. It includes impact fees that came in over budget and unused admin funding. Okay, this slide shows summary expenditures by category, how we're using the funding shown in the prior slide. So rental assistance is our largest expense by far, nearly $38 million over half the budget. The housing authority passes through those funds from the federal government to landlords for the housing choice voucher and emergency housing voucher programs. We also have HOME-TIBRA tenant-based rental assistance. That is also rental assistance going to landlords in the local community. State grant loan activity is shown separately because it is a large amount this year. Those are the two grants I just mentioned. Loan activity is about $7.4 million. We're utilizing all the funding we have available, plus the carryover from prior years. We have sub-recipient funding of $583,000. The bulk of that is federal HOPWA, which is Housing Opportunities for Persons with HIV and AIDS. That it goes to our nonprofit service provider. And we do have local funding going to fair housing and homeless service providers as well. CDBG public services is next. That's at $207,000. That's 15% of the annual CDBG grant that can be expended on eligible public services. The city council directs that funding, and it's directed it to homeless services for many years. Moving around the pie, we have salaries, benefits, and services and supplies for staff who work directly for the trust and voucher programs. That's equivalent to 22.45 full-time equivalent employees. And then finally, we have allocated costs of $1,459,000. That is these programs share of the admin budget that we reviewed a moment ago. All right, now we will look at the rental assistance budget year over year. So this is 100% federally funded, funds the Housing Choice Voucher and Emergency Housing Voucher programs. HUD provides us the rental assistance budget and the admin allowance that we need to run the program. So HUD has not yet announced the final admin allowance, but they did notify us that funding would increase. So HUD calculates a per unit, per month amount that they give us for the program, and then they pro-rate that down based on the total amount of funding available from Congress. So for the EHV program, they don't pro-rate it. They give us 100% of the admin allowance. This is a new program. It's funded by the American Rescue Plan Act as part of that package. They want it to succeed. They are giving us the admin to run it. The Housing Choice Voucher pro-ration is expected to increase from 88% to 91% based on the total amount of HUD funding available. So this current budget, the 2324 proposed, has 91% of the current year, 2223 rates. We expect that the 2324 rates will go up a little bit. I hope so, and so by the June budget hearings, we should have that amount, and this should have increased slightly. For rental assistance, HUD also said to expect about a 10% increase in total funding. That's great. We have been seeing those costs increase, and I'll discuss that more in a minute. So then moving on to expenditures, salaries and benefits are at $2 million. The increase is contracted merit and cost of living increases for staff. Service and supplies at just under $419,000. So that increased because we always want to utilize the full amount of admin allowance that HUD gives us. We want that to be available for our use should unanticipated events come up during the year. We have that budget available. And once HUD announces the final 2324 rates, we will budget the additional funding in services and supplies because we have exactly what we need for salaries and benefits, so this will likely increase a little bit more. And allocated costs increased along with salaries. So now I want to talk about rental assistance. That increased across the board. So the rental housing assistance manager, Rebecca Lane, and I reviewed this carefully and looked at trends and actual expense for each program. So for Santa Rosa Housing Choice Voucher clients, we have 1,915 vouchers right now. We increased the per unit per month cost 5% from 1260 to 1325 based on the trends that we're seeing. We also have port-in clients that come to Santa Rosa from other housing jurisdictions. And we have a large amount of those, between 250 and 300 a month. 99% of those are coming in from the county of Sonoma. They're coming to Santa Rosa for multifamily, which is larger units and higher rents. They tend to have more turnover than our Santa Rosa clients, which means that the rent contracts are newer and higher. So the originating housing authority, generally the county of Sonoma, sends us their rental assistance and a portion of their admin fee, and we manage those clients. Port-in rental assistance also increased 5% from 1470 per month per unit to 1550. And then finally the emergency housing voucher program. We have a full year of data now. The program started back in June 21. We budgeted the same amount as the housing choice voucher program. At that time was 1260 per unit per month. Now that we have data, 81 lease ups, we are seeing that the actuals are considerably higher. So we increased that assistance to 1500 per unit per month, which ended up being a 19% increase. All the information that we have from HUD indicates that we will be able to, that we will have enough funding to pay these increased costs. And there were no changes to the full-time equivalent staffing this year. This basically summarizes what I just explained. Okay. Now we'll look at the housing trust. So the next two slides are the detail of that. The housing trust has 15 different state, federal, and local funds, each with its own regulations. So federal and state funds are generally highly regulated. Local funds can be somewhat less. 26.5 million of new revenue available. This is much larger than usual. As I mentioned, it's that state infill infrastructure grant that's going to six housing development projects and improvements to Martin Luther King Park. In other new revenue, we have our federal entitlements of CDBG, home, and HOPWA. We have received our final allocations from HUD, and our overall total for those three decreased about 40,000. CDBG and home decreased and HOPWA increased. We're getting the state permanent local housing allocation grant for the third of five years at about 1.2 million. We're budgeting for 247,000 in loan repayments this year. That is much lower than last year because last year was an abnormally high year, in particular due to the completion of the Lantana Homes Project. The 247,000 this year is more in line with normal budget years. We also get impact fees. We're budgeting at 1.6 million in 2324. Those are paid by developers whose market rate housing impacts the surrounding area, and they pay that fee instead of including affordable housing in their developments. The city has designated those fees for affordable housing, and we increased that year over year from 1.4 million to 1.6 because as of last month now, we have already received 2 million this year. So we anticipate that to increase. Finally, we have Brookwood property rental at about $10,000 and compliance monitoring fees at 182,000 that round out the funding. Compliance monitoring fees increased because we had so many new units come online in the last few months. In new transfers, the City General Fund real property transfer tax contribution is 2,125,000 this year. So per council policy, a portion of real property transfer tax is allocated to housing and homeless services each year, and each year it increases 5% until it reaches the total of 100%. The total RPTT budget decreased. It was 5 million in 2223, and we got 45% of that. In 2324, it's 4.25 million, and we get 50%. So we're getting a higher percentage of an overall lower amount. But most importantly, as you're aware of, in 2223 and 2324, the City has chosen to fund homeless services with one-time American Rescue Plan Act funding which allows the entirety of the RPTT to go to the housing authority. Once the ARPA funding for homeless services has expired, homeless services will need to utilize RPTT and the housing authority share will decrease. It's anticipated that that will be the fiscal year 2425. Finally, uncommitted carryover in the trust also increased, as I mentioned, that's loan repayments that come in in the last six months of the fiscal year, impact fees that came in over budget or unexpended admin or loan budget. Looking at expenditures, so salaries and benefits decreased in the trust because staff were assigning duties related to the City's mobile home rent control ordinance. The ordinance was updated in January and trust staff support that program, so resources were moved there and out of the housing trust. Services and supplies decreased just slightly, mainly because CDBG and home decreased, less funding is available. Project admin is the portion of home and CDBG that can be used for salaries and benefits for specific projects, so it reduces the amount that we can allocate towards projects, so we don't use it often, but we do want it to be available and any unused project admin will roll over into the next year's uncommitted budget. Oh, and then finally, allocated costs decreased slightly as well with the salary decrease. Okay, loan activity decreased from 9.6 to 7.4 million. We have lower CDBG allocation, less RPTT available, and less loan repayments from prior years. State grant funded loan activity, again just called out because it's so large this year because of that grant. We have sub-recipient funding of $583,000 this year that goes to non-profit service providers. Federal HAPWA is the largest source that increased $40,000 over last year, and then we also allocate funds to a fair housing service provider, and in 2324, we are utilizing local funding to fill the gap in reduced CDBG funds to keep current homeless service providers funded, so we can use 15% of the CDBG grant for public services, and so when that decreases, when the grant decreases, our allotment to public services decreases. The city has chosen to use this public services funding towards homeless programs, the Family Support Center, the homeless service center and the living room, and so we're utilizing local funding to keep those three programs at their full amount, and we have to decrease them due to the public services decrease. The City Council's first goal is to reduce homelessness, so we're not going to reduce those programs. We have to HUD tenant-based rental assistance. Right now, we have 42 clients, and monthly assistance is between $60,000 and $65,000 monthly, and those costs have also increased slightly as state rental protections have expired. As I just mentioned, public services is allocated to homeless programs, and our overall allocation decreased, and the reduction to full-time equivalent staff is due to the shift towards mobile home support. All right, this basically reiterates what I discussed in the previous slide, but it also notes that the Housing Trust Budgeted Reserve is at $705,000 this year, and that's required by Housing Authority Policy. So finally, next steps in the budget process. So Megan and I will review and present the Housing and Community Services Department Budget, including the Housing Authority, with the City Council in early May, along with all the other city departments. That's May 9th and 10th. We'll be back in front of the Authority on June 19th for the budget hearings, and then we will return to Council on June 20th for their final approval of this 23-24 budget. So this concludes the presentation, and I'm happy to answer any questions. Commissioners, Dr. Downey. Appreciate it. The amount of work that went into putting this budget together, and that appreciation is based on having to go through an audit. It wasn't an auditor and an attorney several years ago when I was chair, which was a very intimidating process. In addition to that, is there any opportunity to turbo-charge performance, meaning the generation of housing opportunities, without completely ripping up this budget? In other words, putting together more places for people to go, getting people off the list, getting them set situated, and to a standard appropriate permanent place to live. So, Commissioner Downey, I'd be happy to answer your questions. First, I just want to acknowledge that the Housing Authority's budget is audited on an annual basis, and that is one of the expenses that was touched on in the early part of Kate's presentation. So there is an annual audit that is conducted by the city's outside auditors, and additionally, HUD does review our expenditures on an annual basis as well. So there are many sets of eyes that are taking a look at our expenses. In terms of turbo-charging, the development of housing, I think in this upcoming fiscal year that's going to be challenging. I think we certainly had an opportunity that we did fairly well at with the allocation of community development block grant funding, the disaster recovery funds, which allowed us to advance 377 units of new housing, and that was coupled with additional resources. So in order to get those projects moving so quickly, there was also an allocation to the State of California in additional tax credits, which helped advance those projects quickly. The state was also had robust resources that they were allocating towards new affordable housing units, and then finally, at the same time as the allocation of the CDBGDR funding, the Housing Authority allocated 100 project-based vouchers. So it was a compilation of all those resources that allowed us to move those projects forward so quickly. I think the reality going forward is we're going to be a little bit more restrained in what we're able to do because of the limitation in funding at the state level through the Department of Housing and Community Development. The tax credit environment is highly competitive and projects aren't able to receive allocations as quickly as they had in previous years. So we're certainly going to do our best to advance projects and look at our pipeline to move those forward. But I don't think we're going to have the same amount of resources locally and at the state level in order to move them like we saw in the past few years. Yeah, I don't think it was an interesting experience going through the law that myself. Thank you. I'd like to be recognized for a couple of questions, please. Commissioner Newton. I'd also like to thank you for putting this together. I know a lot of work went into this. And so I appreciate it. I'll appreciate you taking some time while flying to go over it with me in detail to kind of bring me up to speed. I did a few more questions that came up during the presentation, if you don't mind. I didn't hear anything about the veteran vouchers in the presentation. I didn't see them anywhere in the budget material. Those come from the county. But I'm curious how you sort of plan for that in your annual budget. Yeah, so those are the VASH veterans Affairs Supportive Housing vouchers. And those are included in the housing choice voucher total of $1,915. I want to say we have 413. I believe 413 is correct. 413, 419, something like that. And those clients are referred to us from the VA. And we have had a dedicated technician working with them. I'm not sure if that is the same now. But those are part of our larger tranche of vouchers. The 413 is what you expect to come your way next fiscal year. That's the amount of vouchers that we have available. So we lease those up as they are referred from the VA. So we're not at 413 right now. I don't know that number, but I could get it if you would like it. Are we separate on that? I'm just curious what the demand is on the VASH side and sort of how we plan for that and how well we're meeting that demand. So... We can certainly follow up with more details on the VASH program and their utilization. It is referred through the VA and additional vouchers actually need to be allocated in conjunction with HUD and the Department of Veterans Affairs. So it's a little bit more complicated than just the traditional housing choice vouchers, but we will provide the entire authority with additional information on that program. Yeah, I'd appreciate that. No problem. One more if you have any questions? Go ahead. Did you say that the Housing Community Services Software Department is developing its own software for some of these programs? So yes, it already has. So our Information Technology Department did develop with our program staff customized excellent software for both of our main programs. That's interesting. I just assume there might be some sort of off-the-shelf custom type software that these departments use in other cities or governments or things like that. That's probably cheaper. I don't know. You know what? It's not necessarily. It's interesting. So various times throughout my last 10 years with the department, we've looked at those solutions and the cost savings is not what you would expect and we have really good support and the ability to customize our reports or anything we need for an audit or for a budget or for a new program like emergency housing vouchers. We were up and running with that within a month whereas the larger software companies it was taking months and months and months and they weren't able to do their HUD reporting. I heard through the grapevine. So I think it's a worthwhile expense. Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like you thought about it. Appreciate it. Nothing else for me. Thanks. Commissioner LePenna, any questions? So I have a few and I was working off the attachment one. I appreciate the graphs but being a numbers person, I go to schedules. So in no particular order, the state grants are going from $1 million last year to $21.8 million at $20.8 million difference is that going to be part of the NOFA that's coming up? No, so that grant, the IIG grant that is the primary amount of that was in order to apply for it, we had to include projects at that point in time. There are six specific projects. Two of them are affordable. One of them is Caritas Homes Phase 2 which is the second 64-unit component of the Caritas Village site and the other is Ponderosa Village which is a 50-unit affordable project located on Roseland Avenue. And then there's... I'm sorry, there's... And then the third is the Benevelli Apartments which is the reuse of the Benevelli Senior Center site and then the other three are market rate developments. So those funds have already been allocated? Correct. And then looking at the transfers in to send the real property transfer tax was $2,250 for last fiscal and then $2,125. The amount that's provided is going from 45% to 50%. So what did that number go down? Because the city's overall RPTT budget went down so it was $5 million last year and this year it's $4.25 million. So they're expecting fewer property transfers this coming fiscal year. So a lower activity in terms of real property transfer sales? Yes. I think if I could just expand on that we're already seeing a decrease in the RPTT revenue. It is not meeting the current fiscal year projections so that assumption is in line with what we're seeing in reality. So from a macroeconomic standpoint we're seeing a slowdown in real property sales in the Sonoma County in the city specifically? Yes. And then the uncommitted carryover funds what is that? So those are the funds that are mainly loan repayments that have come in between January and June of the current fiscal year so we don't know what that's going to be so we don't budget for it. We just utilize those funds in the coming year. It's also often impact fee revenue that's come in over budget so for example this year we budgeted 1.4 million because it looked like it was slowing last year but we've already received $2 million through the first three quarters so that's increased and then a smaller portion of it is unused admin budget from previous years. Now one of the repayment sources and a meeting we had earlier this year was the Stonehouse sale that that were those funds repaid? Yes those funds were repaid a close of sale and off the top of my head it was in the $200,000 range through a variety of sources. And then what we're talking about for the rental assistance went from 1260 to 1325. So can you explain what that represents? If you're looking at what a qualified tenant is going to be paying is that what the assistance program is toward their rent? Sorry that is our portion the housing authorities portion towards their rent. They also pay I believe 30% of their income. So the program requires a minimum contribution of $50 per participant and then up to it can actually go up to 40% but generally it's 30% of their income so it's based on that household's income. And as I understand it there's a fair rental price that's done annually by the department to figure out what the fair rental rate is for one bedroom, studio, two bedroom, three bedroom. So HUD actually provides us with those figures on an annual basis and those are considered the fair market rents and so they do survey the real estate market in jurisdictions and identify what is the fair market rent for a particular size unit. We do have a waiver from HUD to increase that to 120% of FMR in order to keep our rentals competitive with the market. So the city does its own it takes the HUD's numbers and it makes its own adjustments based upon its own analysis as to what fair market rents are. Adjusts it based on the waiver that we were provided by HUD. Up to 120%. Up to 120% and all that information does need to be reported to HUD on a per household level so that's how they get down to the the annual average contribution per unit is they're looking at it across our program. One of the situations that was occurring during COVID when people were not employed or deferred is that the rental assistance because they had to pay a minimum of $50 but their income went away for a period of time so that rental assistance was more than to use the simple math of 30% of it was paid for by the tenant it was more than that. Has that come back in line where the tenants are paying generally 30% of what their income is toward the how is that working? You know what that I would have I'll have to look at that but I would say more importantly what is happening is total rent is going up so the housing authority is continuing to pay more and the tenant is also continuing to pay more. So the fair market rent is going up but are you seeing or do you track what percent is the tenant paying the fair market rent is that going back up is it coming back down or is it saying about even? per each person but I'm not aware that we track it as a trend but I can talk to our program staff and see if we can take a look at that. That would be interesting to be able to track to see what's going up because as we had during COVID times there's only so much money allowed toward rental assistance and the tenant is not able to pay more than those are the budget is capped and then we have an issue with how much the tenant can how many tenants can be paid? So the rent is going up is that correct analysis Megan? going back to one of the initial slides that is one of the balances that we have to maintain with the program we only have so much budget so we need to make sure we are serving the households within our approved budget so while our actual voucher utilization may not be at 100% our budget is at 1260 to 1325 but the port in was a higher amount of 1470 so if you have somebody say from let's say Monterey County that's now living here and their port in for rental assistance which the city does not pay that housing authority pays to the city and then it's funded where it passed through that's a higher dollar amount how is that calculated so for those if we have 275 monthly is about an average like 273 of those will be from the county of Sonoma and so we can look at that as a group and average out the rental assistance for them so we're looking at Rebecca and I are looking at each month how many people are leased up and what is the total amount of rental assistance and then getting an average and that just is a higher amount than our normal clients and does that person that's ported into the city's program still have to find a unit that fits the fair market rent so you got a higher port in allowance and the same fair market rent we're budgeting to be able to pay that amount and the other housing authority is going to give us those funds we need to have it in our budget so that we're able to pay it in our budget so we're going to have a fair market rent and that's all my questions again thank you very much for the presentation and putting this all together I know it's a lot of numbers especially when you have allocations from different departments within the city and how that's applied any other questions from commissioners I believe we open enough for public comment now so we want to do in person public comment making public comments on item 4.1 we'll begin with comments from those attending in person chambers once we finish with in person comments we'll hear comments for those participating via zoom if you wish to make a comment via zoom please raise your hand if you're dialing via telephone please dial star 9 to raise your hand so if you'd like to make a public comment go to the closest podium in the upper tier of the chamber and I believe we have someone that would like to make comment on 4.1 hello you can state your name for the record if you so choose you'll have three minutes to make a comment hello my name is Dwayne DeWitt from Roseland my apologies it was hard to hear the speakers up here I asked Ms. Baskner excuse me she mentioned an avenue was getting some of the housing along with the Caritas were six projects were funded what avenue was mentioned I believe it's Roseland Avenue Roseland Avenue and Roseland thank you miss so thank you very much for all the work that's gone into this I came here today to put forward a proposal to you to perhaps use some of this carryover funding essentially we've been in the same model for decades and we perhaps might begin to help the development community with new approaches it's been over 50 years since former manager Ken Blackman and others decided that Santa Rosa wouldn't have public housing but essentially the taxpayers are funding millions upon millions of dollars of housing for low income residents one of the ways that we could begin to utilize the project based voucher system in a more efficient and expedient manner was by using this approach that I have given you folks the written article about where you would specifically target utilizing funding to help seniors and veterans get themselves into project based housing utilizing new construction techniques that have actually been used for over a quarter of a century by the private development community they can get a motel or hotel housing within two years it takes public funded types of projects decades sometimes as Lantan approved and what we would like to see happen out in the community Sonoma County Housing Advocacy Group and other advocates for affordable housing is rather than buying up all the apartment excuse me the rental hotel stock which is happening many hotels are being bought with public money and putting people in there is that we should be building more of this type of hotel model utilizing the extended suites you can see them going up down in Petaluma Marriott Courtyard things like that the La Quinta on Santa Rosa Avenue the Ace Hotel right over here in the old railroad square area they got them up in two years and they're profitable so the idea then is for the housing authority to look at this profitable business model and find a way in which you get the housing built much quicker and you bring revenue back in to the housing authority the housing trust that you spoke of and you have it continue to roll over so perhaps any of that uncommitted carryover monies could be utilized to research this possibility and bring this up as soon as possible it will be brought up by the Sonoma County Housing Advocacy Group during the budget hearings every opportunity in the forward thank you do we have any other public comments from the chamber seeing none do we have any on zoom Chair Owen I see no hands raised at this time in zoom do we have any email commentary Chair Owen we have no email public comments thank you this is there's nothing to be voted on for this thank you for the presentation and we will move on to item number 4.2 which is fiscal year 2023-24 knows the funding availability priorities so it will be one moment while they restart zoom in order to project on the screen above you apologize for the delay thank you clerk can you please stop sharing your screen thank you okay Chair Owen I believe our technology is now back together great thank you so we'll go ahead and move on to item 4.2 item 4.2 is a review of the fiscal year 23-24 notice of funding availability priorities mark Hughes program specialist and Nicole Delphi-Orentino Housing Community Services Manager will be making the presentation good afternoon Chair Owen and commissioners as Megan mentioned today we are going to do an overview of the fiscal year 23-24 notice of funding availability priorities so the notice of funding availability or NOFAs are issued annually and the NOFA process has occurred over the past eight years and when funding becomes available so an overview of the RENA goals for the 2023-2031 RENA goals the city of Santa Rosa has the goals listed here on the screen so to produce 1218 very low income units and 701 low income units currently we have 594 units under construction in the low and very low income categories so the RENA goals are set with the association of Bay Area Governments ABAG and the state housing units needed to meet needs in the state they then assign a goal number of units at each affordability level for the jurisdiction to produce so there are additional units that the housing authority has committed funds to like the CDBGDR projects are not included in the 594 units under construction but they may need to be prioritized to be fully funded and to be able to start construction and under construction may mean housing authority loans density bonus agreements or housing allocation plan agreements these are the number of affordable units that we have an agreement with which we restrict affordability so the approximate amount of funding that will be available in the upcoming NOFA is approximately 8.1 million for CDBG community development block grant will have about 1.2 million permanent local housing allocation PLHA is 1.2 million and local funds will have about 5.7 million for home funding will have roughly $650,000 and that will be issued separately in a rolling NOFA that will not contain a due date of $740,000 of the home funds are for the mandatory community housing development organization or CHODO set aside the CDBG funds can be used for rehabilitation and preservation they cannot be used for new construction but they can be used for acquisition PLHA can be used for local funds local funds are less restrictive and can be used for new construction or rehabilitation home funds are most easily used for new construction but they can also be used for acquisition pre-development costs and sometimes for rehabilitation deploying the home funds and the rolling NOFA will allow for the funds to be deployed more easily within the expenditure process starts with the study session to solicit direction from the housing authority once staff receives direction from commissioners we will then release the NOFA applications will be due approximately 30 days after the NOFA is released staff will then review and vet applications then an ad hoc committee will meet to review the applications and amend projects for funding once we receive the ad hoc committee's recommendations then staff will present the recommendation to the housing authority for funding awards and to hear any public comment related to the use of the funds so it is recommended by the housing and community services department that the housing authority hold a study session to receive information on the fiscal year 23-24 about the use of funding availability process and provide direction and we are happy to take any questions that commissioners may have any commissioner questions commissioner delaney during a last NOFA conversation several of us were seeking input from applicants as to what their experience was like applying for NOFA and I'm curious did you get any input from people who were applying for funding to build low income housing and what their experience was like the second question was I didn't know if we could do this but an attempt to disperse the housing throughout the city so it's not concentrated in one area was that a part of the conversation as well too so we have a more diverse population of supported housing or did that not make the conversation as well thank you commissioner downing sorry as I swivel to try to address you as well so to respond to your first question I believe the study session that you're referring to was when we were revamping our NOFA process with the new point scoring system and that process we did reach out to developers to ask what was working and what wasn't at this point we have the point scoring system and the NOFA process that has been working well and at this point is not in need of any major overhaul so we did not actively search out any of that feedback we routinely receive inquiries from developers who are in need of funds asking what types of funds may be available and letting us know about their upcoming needs but not about the NOFA process specifically over the last few months we're part of this process and regarding your second question at this point we are just putting the funds out for availability to see what applications we seek if it is the direction of the full housing authority board to somehow prioritize developments in a certain area we can look at what that would mean for our funding sources some federal requirements actually don't allow you to identify a geographic area for the use of the funds so we would need to be cognizant of those requirements of the need of our existing projects that only have a little bit more need for the financing to be complete so they can start construction and wanting to make sure that those projects don't jeopardize any funds so there is a lot to take into consideration when we make direction or priorities like that it is the request of the full housing authority board we can definitely look into that and what it would mean for our future NOFA just by many conversations things are going well going forward good thank you any other questions from commissioners I have a few questions can you go back to the slide that shows the rena goals now if you could translate very low and low those income categories as to what that relates to in terms of a percentage of area median income sure and the ABAG committee combines the extremely low and very low categories for us so very low is actually up to 50% of AMI so for us usually when we are looking at area median income levels we talk about extremely low being 30% of area median income and then very low being 50% of area median income and that category that indicates 1218 units needed is both of those categories combined and then the low income would be the 80% of area median income or lower and those are the two categories that we focus on the most with housing authority funds what does moderate go up to for AMI moderate would be 120% of area median income and then above moderate is anything over that so while we are looking at arena goals in a lot of times that is understood to be how much low income housing needs to be provided or housing to people making less than median income that actually is with the 1995 above moderate will take you above 100% of median income is that correct right so the arena goals are a more holistic approach to looking at what housing the city needs as a whole in the different categories including low income but not specific to only low income there is a lot of different names that go along with each one so workforce housing is another category that is put out that people will read about my understanding that is 80 to 120% of area median income is that and that is not labeled here but is that fitting to these categories when somebody talks about workforce housing and what categories does it show in the arena goals generally workforce housing falls into the moderates so 80 to 120 it's one of the more difficult areas for us to touch with our resources and then there is a comment here and of 594 affordable units under construction so and it was addressed in the presentation that there is it's the 594 that are tracked by the city and that would attract being that either funds were provided a density bonus was provided but no funds but there was an accommodation provided by the city because they were providing affordable housing units what other categories fall into the that would be tracked for the 594 you got the two big ones the other one would be the housing allocation plan units inclusionary units planning department that we track by the housing authority so ADUs are not tracked as far as arena numbers is that correct ADUs would be tracked on the head side on the planning side of the house but the ADUs do not have an affordability component with them any longer are ADUs counted as far as the arena numbers they if they are restricted they would be counted towards the very low low and moderate but I believe not if they're not restricted and we can find out that information and get back to you but in general for the very low low and moderate it's the units that are subject to some kind of deed restriction so there is a recorded affordability agreement that is dictating the income and rent for that particular unit arena numbers have been talked about for a lot of years and they come out from how many units are being provided for housing needs and they fall into different categories which is what we're talking about so there are a couple of units and we'll have a presentation later about what's in the pipeline and if there's a significant amount of money that went out for CDBGDR funds that were provided with 9% tax credits at the state level but not the city level that are not tracked but and I brought this up in prior readings as to while we're looking at the state level it covers the amount of units that the city has some sort of deed restriction or provided that what we just went over either density bonus or such but doesn't cover a project that has 9% tax credits for tax credit purposes at the state level with TECAC for being 100% affordable so I just want to make sure that the city has the credit for its rena numbers even though the city is not tracking that because there's not a housing allocation plan or a density bonus or loan funds provided so 594 is good I understand how that number is derived but I want to be able to make sure that we can have all the units that are being built in the area which are more than 594 units that will be affordable as we're trying to figure out how that gets put together so maybe up to the city council level they can see that these are the numbers that are actually being put against for the rena numbers not just what the city has to track it's more commentary than a question sorry but what we've done in the past is try to have our NOFA be ahead of the state level housing and community development HCD Super NOFA and as far as I can tell that the scheduling for the Super NOFA at the state level has not been posted yet do we know what the calendar is for the Super NOFA at the state level and the reason why we're doing this is because we want to make sure that there's any local funding source that the developer has been provided or achieved or awarded can be counted what they're going for for their Super NOFA numbers do we know what the schedule is yes we do and I was able to pull it up so the NOFA it looks like it has gone out today for the state funds with applications due at the end of June okay so we may be skipping ahead but the estimated timeline after we receive the feedback from the authority would be to release a NOFA first part of May and so we would still be able to release the NOFA and receive the applications and then come back to the housing authority for any potential awards before that may due date for the applications to the state for the Super NOFA so would we it doesn't look like it would time out and Megan I can probably look to you on for this that we would have successful NOFA recipients at the city level would you put that on to their state application no I don't think the timing will correspond but what we have been trying to do in prior years and the timing does not work out this year is we had been trying to track with the 9% tax credit deadline which for the last couple of years had been July 1st and so we were able around this time of year issue our NOFA in the spring take action in June we had selected developers with a resolution for their tax credit application TECAC moved up those deadlines to April which really took it out of sync with the city's budget process so there wasn't a way for us to know the resources that we would have available in enough time to develop that NOFA process thank you I liked when we were doing that before and it just didn't time out this year because it makes it from an applicant standpoint easier to know what they're getting locally to go to the state level in the past we've also had a subcommittee set up to go over the applications for that will we be doing that and is there a recommendation to have a subcommittee to review the applications for this should we try and set that up now or should we wait for the next meeting to set up a subcommittee so we would be looking for an ad hoc committee because it is a discreet review I'm using the wrong term ad hoc we're looking for and they would meet one, two, possibly two times I think given the absences today it would be best to wait until the next meeting to see if there are commissioners that would like to volunteer for that committee if we can have it on next month's agenda to set up an ad hoc committee to go over the super NOFA applicants so what would be our next step so the next step would be for staff to receive any recommendations or directions from the housing authority today formulate those into the NOFA document and release the NOFA to start receiving applications we touched on this a little bit with Commissioner Downey's questions we have a point system in place it's received generally positive feedback it seems to be working so we're not looking to make any change to our point process that's correct this is not a voting item so I don't I can't provide direction on this but what we can say is that we will go ahead and approve using the same system in place the same point system we in place and what direction do you need from the housing authority to move forward I think that's everything that we need to move forward if there's any other recommendations or direction that you wanted us to consider we would take that into consideration but we don't need anything further at this point to move forward any other comments from commissioners so with that we'll open it up for public comment on this item okay we're now taking public comments on item 4.2 we'll of course begin with these with the the folks attending in person chambers after we're done with that we'll move on to those that want to comment via zoom if you are calling in via zoom please dial star 9 to raise your hand if you'd like to make a comment in person please move to one of the podiums and the upper tier chambers you can state your name for the record if you so choose you have three minutes to make a comment hello my name is Dwayne DeWitt with the Sonoma County Housing Advocacy Group one of the things that group came into existence about was the need for extremely low income housing there needs to be affordable residential rental units built for people at the lower end of these rena numbers that's not really tracked as well in all of my memory coming here close to 30 years I've never seen that there's been a situation where the above moderate that was never met it's always been met they've always been able to build for the people at the top end the difficulty has been providing the housing for people at the lowest levels with this new NOFA being re released it's an optimum time for looking into the approach of working with different organizations than that standard you've been working with for decades and finding ways to get newer housing in under models such as I mentioned before I attend a church that wanted to put in some housing as soon as the Tubbs Fire had gone they were like hey let's help let's get something going and it turned out that trying to work with Santa Rosa City staff was the obstacle one of the dilemmas that we face in trying to get anything new or different built is bureaucracies that are used to the way they do things rarely change the hope is and I applaud Mr. Owen for asking such good questions and being in this proactive interaction with staff is that you the commissioners can actually begin on how things get done one of the ways that this can happen is during this budgetary process that you can make comments you can put forward advice to our elected officials that says you know there are opportunities out there there are new ways of doing things that are discussed across the nation and we here in Santa Rosa could be at the forefront of actually providing lots more housing for extremely low income people instead of having them sleep in tents over on the parking lot at the county buildings that's a nice temporary situation but we could be getting people into these hotels like it's been happening this budgetary approach could be the new way to say look we want hard bricks and mortar housing for our extremely low income people please lead the way on this thank you for your time okay hello you can state your name for the record if you so choose and make your statement you have three minutes for your comment hi my name is Jocelyn Lynn and I'm the director of housing development for Burbank Housing I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the city and the housing authority for your support and partnership on all our projects in Santa Rosa I'm here today to comment on the upcoming NOFA cycle and the priorities that you have to decide upon and I'd like to let you know that Burbank Housing has three projects in the pipeline that are ready and could make good use of the NOFA opportunities these three projects are shovel ready and they're disaster relief projects they are caretas phase 2 are 25 Mendocino phase 3 and Burbank Avenue apartments just to give you a brief update caretas phase 1 64 units will be completed at the end of June this year that's the anticipation completion date 35 75 Mendocino phases 1 and 2 will be completed this year phase 1 in May next month and fall of this year August to September for phase 2 and those combined are 200 units of the 594 that you talked about that are under construction so your funds have been made to good use on these projects and we're very excited to be seeing them to completion so what we're now asking is for the final phases of caretas and 35 75 to be funded for the final stages but we can help complete the picture of disaster recovery for these projects we also have Burbank Avenue which received CDBGDR funding and that is also disaster relief related so we're hoping that with looking at the NOFA opportunities for this coming year that you be able to give special consideration to these projects with disaster relief funding and there are a high priority and we you know we appreciate your support on this thank you any other commentary within chambers seeing none we'll go ahead and open after zoom comments Chair Owen we have no hands raised in zoom at this time we have one more commentary coming up in chambers we have a few comments from the chair and the chair Schellinger waterstone residential I just wanted to make a few comments here related to Burbank Avenue apartments we are in joint venture with Burbank housing I appreciate Ms. Lynn here highlighting that project and I just wanted to thank you for the award in that project and it is at risk at the end of this year and so we want to just highlight that as it is considered for this NOFA unfortunately if that project doesn't move forward the CBGDR award would be returned to the state and eventually to the feds it is problematic so we would sincerely appreciate prioritizing those disaster projects as Ms. Lynn had mentioned and keep that in mind as you go through the process and your consideration of the point categories thank you very much for your time thank you going back to zoom we have no one on zoom is that correct no hands raised at this time chair Owen do we have any e-mail commentary chair Owen we have no e-mail public comments for this item okay thank you chair Owen if I just may respond to one of the public comments that was made I just want to remind the housing authority that the point system that we do use for the NOFA does provide the highest number of points for units that are restricted to extremely low income households so that is a key factor in our point system and that would be 30% of the median income or less that is correct that is a high priority that the point system awards that significantly in terms of the other categories for scoring a project it is the highest weighted other factors that we do take into consideration which I think are also quite important are the readiness of the project because we want to make sure that we are able to advance projects in a timely fashion and help meet those arena goals so affordability is the number one point weighted system and then we have readiness is also high up special needs set-asides which do touch on senior populations homeless populations or other special needs that may be identified is also weighted quite high as well as leveraging and project competitiveness because if the project can't achieve the other funding sources needed to bring it to construction then we're not able to achieve our goals thank you for going over that that's a lot of work putting in that point system that's been tested twice now or three times I think at least three yeah great so thank you since this is not a voting item we will move on to item five which is public comments for non-agenda items do we have any public commentary and thank you very much for the presentation 4.2 very helpful right we're now taking public comments on item five non-agenda items once we're finished with in person comments we'll hear from those participating via zoom and remember if you're participating via zoom you can dial star nine to raise your hand so if you're making a comment please you can state your name for the record if you so choose that's to make a comment hello my name is Dwayne DeWitt I'm from Roseland in a volunteer capacity I've served on a number of appointed commissions and including an elected one known as the Southwest Santa Rosa redevelopment project area from 2000 to 2004 at that time we often talked about where we could get housing in the center of the city because back at that time it was already stated that city-centered growth was one of the key ways to get in the affordable housing that we were needing since then I'd also served on the 2007 Roseland community-based transportation plan and the 2016 Roseland Sebastopol Road specific plan those committees talked about housing also one of the dilemmas that comes forward is as we talk about providing affordable housing someone doesn't put together there's a disconnect between the rhetoric of the city and the actions the city of Santa Rosa has actually destroyed over 24 units of housing over in Roseland while doing projects getting affordable housing at least as I have understood is also considered preserving the stock of affordable housing that's one of the things that the city states it wants to do with the money that comes from the taxpayers it's really important that we find a way to point out that almost all housing that is occupied is at least affordable to those people the city staff uses a very narrow definition and says that it's only affordable if it has been designated as the city's approach of who lives there this allows for housing units to be destroyed and this isn't a light matter the city of Santa Rosa was deeded over housing units in Roseland that millions of dollars were paid to get the housing this last weekend the mayor of Santa Rosa and city councilman Alvarez were at the site of where the housing was destroyed by the city and those houses were occupied by people who were moderate income and lower income type people they were structurally sound inhabited houses when the city got them then the city staff went forward and destroyed them over a effort in the community to save them and put forward as an idea to bring in revenue and keep those houses in use at least until a future situation the dilemma we face then is that we need to get the folks who do the talk to do the walk preservation of affordable housing has to come with you any more public comment in chambers seeing none we'll go to zoom this time and zoom any e-mail commentary chairwoman we have no e-mail public comments for this item thank you we'll go ahead and close public comment and move to approval of minutes do any of the commissioners have comments on the minutes from our last meeting seeing none we'll go ahead and approve the minutes this does not require a vote is that correct that's correct moving along to item 7 any other reports I don't have any reports any of the commissioners have any reports they would like to make thank you do we have to have public comment on this there's nothing discussed thank you number 8 is committee reports I don't believe there's been any activity of committees to report on thank you and we'll move on to item 9 which is executive committee reports thank you chair we'll start with the executive director update some of it may be a recap from items that have been touched on throughout the course of the meeting as I mentioned during the budget presentation last week the city closed on the sale of the former Bennett Valley senior center to free bird development so this is a project that the city staff Nicole and her team as well as the city's real estate division have been working on this project the housing authority has also provided a loan in excess of 5 million dollars and identified 30 project based vouchers for the site so we are thrilled to see this start construction in the near future and advance 60 plus new units of affordable housing as Ms. Lynn from Burbank housing mentioned caritas homes phase 1 is beginning its lease up there are 30 project based vouchers for the housing authority so we are looking to open the waiting list to assist Burbank in leasing up those units additionally there are over 30 units that they recently conducted a lottery on so there's been outreach to the public who are interested in occupying this particular property and then finally I believe at the March meeting there was a brief discussion about the housing choice voucher waiting list we are looking to see if we can open the housing choice vouchers and then I would be happy to answer any questions before I move on how long would that be open 30 days correct and then attached for your reference is the monthly pipeline report which speaks to the affordable housing units that we have provided funding or have agreements with and are advancing to provide any responses you have any questions from commissioners Mr. Newton question on the waiting list so you open it up in June for a month but there's already a bunch of people on it right we talked we said it's like a 10 year waiting list with 8,000 people on it is that for the housing choice vouchers and then so when you open it up now to these folks who go to the end of that line correct so right now there's about we received over 7,500 applications in the last time we opened it which was fall of 2021 we generally open the waiting list in the odd years in the even years we kind of clean up the waiting list make sure people are still interested they could be housed by their housing authorities their income could have changed so people who come onto the waiting list are randomized and then added to the end of the waiting list an advantage of opening it is that it does give people the opportunity to get on the waiting list and our project based voucher units what we do is go through the waiting list see if people are interested in occupying those properties so there is the opportunity for them to be housed much sooner if they are interested in particular properties that we have units that our project provides for people who are interested in that this is the document I was referring to when we were looking at the redo numbers being 594 units and I'm pointing out the integrated community development projects and quanta springs apartments and santa rosa avenue partner these are the ones I'm looking at the first one is 151 units and 33 I believe that is density and I'm just curious if I believe that these are both 9% tax credit deals which would have a requirement for their affordability to receive the 9% tax credit so if I know the print is getting smaller and smaller on this and I had to put my reading glasses on to read it so I don't know if we can add something that talks about the afford well we do have the number of units as to whether or not we're going to have to back into what the redo numbers are and again commentary more than a question and any other questions from commissioners open for public comment now yes sir do we do it from the sonoma county housing advocacy group main question when we listen to these types of things is veterans preference back in the day it was stated a preference of some sort when they were on these section 8 housing lists then they came up with the hud bash voucher system and basically what's been going on is a lot of that use has been through the project based vouchers utilizing them to help get some projects done I was hoping that staff could actually in the pipeline for the future specifically call out how many veterans are on the list and is there a preference for them then with the new people that come on is veterans preference allowed for them to be in the list of veterans specifically I know of veterans who have gotten into regular section 8 program but it took them 7-8 years and once they got there they got their voucher and then they're there so I'm hoping that your future pipeline discussions can call out this veterans benefit if you will it was something that had been mentioned in the past I don't know if it's still applicable I haven't been able to attend your meetings until you opened them back up for public participation in person and this is a very important situation because there are a number of elderly veterans who have gotten the hud bash and then didn't get into a spot because Santa Rosa staff which handles the hud bash voucher program disqualified the unit they found a specific case happened almost 4 years ago in the summer and the man got the voucher went to the rental unit got everything approved got everything done turned it all in after the Department of Veterans Affairs had approved everything Santa Rosa City staffer went out there and measured the windows on the site and said that one of the windows was 1 inch too narrow for egress should an emergency arrive rather than working to get some sort of a waiver or some sort of a repair they just said no sir you don't get to go into that unit they withdrew that building which was known as a guest house on College Avenue at the intersection of 4th street they withdrew it from being able to have this applicability then they red tagged the building and they forced the existing tenants out of the building and that building didn't go back into being affordable housing so there's a disconnect behind the bureaucracies and I understand that's easy to happen we're not pointing fingers at any individual we're pointing out the system is not living up to its potential you could do that with the pipeline reports showing what you have do we have any comments for you Zoom? Chair Owen I see no hands raised in Zoom on email comments do we have an email comment Chair Owen we have no email public comments for this item thank you we'll move on to item 10 which is a consent item so the consent item is a resolution a budget appropriation of funds on a $43,000 for the rehabilitation of 983 Sonoma Avenue just as a reminder for consent items there's no presentation unless there are questions from the housing authority any questions from commissioners Mr. Downey correct this is the property this is the housing authorities real estate asset it's located on the corner of Sonoma and Brookwood Avenue the housing authority recently approved a lease for use in the housing authority this is a response program and as a result of some of the tenant improvements that are being done they did identify leaking windows and dry rod that needs to be repaired which is a capital improvement pursuant to the lease thank you any other questions I have a couple quick questions so the capital budget for this for reserves for this project what is it for the estimate budget so annually we budget about $14,000 for property maintenance liability insurance alarm and as noted in the budget we collect about $10,000 a year what is unexpended goes into the fund balance which is a little over $90,000 at the current point in time so what is the total cost for this work the estimate for the work is ranging between $36,000 to provide us with an adequate cushion I would like to appropriate $43,000 if the funds are not used they will return to the fund balance and the fund balance is $90,000 so we're not dipping into $90,000 but we're going to expand $43,000 so we're going to take $43,000 out of the $90,000 so we'll have a little over $50,000 remaining if there's anything that is unexpended it will go back into the fund balance thank you any other questions from commissioners in public comment in the chambers do we have any via zoom chair test I see no hands raised I mean chair Owen I see no hands raised at this time in zoom do we have any e-mail comments chair Owen we have no e-mail public comment for this item thank you can we get a motion on the resolution one of the commissioners yes the resolution that we appropriate the $43,000 for the repairs we have a second I'll second thank you for the record we show the vice chair LaPenna in commissioner Downey moved on the resolution chair clerk can we go to a vote please okay we'll take a roll call vote for this consent item and we will we'll begin with uh the mover who is vice chair LaPenna I vote aye and then the second who is commissioner Downey aye and then commissioner commissioner newton and chair Owen aye okay that motion passes with four ayes with commissioners Smith Brawhouser and McWhorter absent thank you we'll move on to item 11 which are report items I know there are no report items on this agenda which moves us to item 12 which is adjournment thank you everyone for presentations in your presence here today have a good rest of your afternoon thank you